The Po Show

Remembering Dr. J

My former boss, Murray E. Jarvik, M.D., Ph.D., died yesterday. He would have been 85 on June 1, which was pretty remarkable considering all of the health problems he had throughout his life. He was the most brilliant person I have ever met, and he had a generosity of spirit that is seldom seen.

We called him Dr. J (though I always addressed him as Dr. Jarvik), which was very funny since physically, he was about as far from Julius Irving as a human being could be. He was about five foot four, rail-thin, with big glasses and a slight overbite, looking the stereotype of a nice elderly Jewish man. He wore old polyester slacks way up past his waist, drove an old Honda, spoke with a New York accent, and was a millionaire.

I met him late in his career, which spanned decades, and was incredibly lauded and awarded and internationally recognized. People always mention that he was the inventor of the nicotine patch, but I don't think he really considered that the primary achievement of his career. It came as an accident, as he and a couple of his research associates were pondering nicotine exposure through the skin. In typical Dr. J-fashion, he had the research associate pour liquid nicotine on his arm, slapped an adhesive patch on it, and waited to see what would happen. The guy's heart rate shot up, he felt like shit, and the rest is history. Dr. J actually didn't make much money off the patch, since it was held up in patent litigation (they eventually lost) for years, but he'd already made a fortune in real estate.

I think he was the thriftiest person I've ever met (it's not nice to say cheap), which you could tell stemmed from growing up during the Depression. He was literally a starving student in college, who lived exclusively on peanut butter sandwiches. Tales of his thriftiness are legendary, like the time a drug rep showed up at the lab for a meeting with him. It turns out he had called her to come over to give him some samples of sleeping pills, since he was going on a conference trip and was afraid he wasn't going to be able to fall asleep at the hotel. Another time he called around to a bunch of stores in the area, trying to find one that was selling a special promotional pack of batteries that had four extra batteries than the usual pack.

We used to call him a magician, because he could make papers on his desk disappear on a regular basis. He was always forgetting people's names, even people who had worked for him for years. This was ironic, since his wife was a leading Alzheimer's researcher. But I was told that he'd been forgetful even when he was young, so it wasn't a matter of age. He loved gadgets (he held a patent for a portable escalator) and was fascinated by technological advances. He was an early adopter of email and loved what computers could do, though he used to drive his assistant who helped him with computer matters batty by opening up WordPerfect again every time he started a new document.

I mentioned that he'd had a large number of health problems throughout his life, and that is no understatement. He had heart problems from when he was very young, and had a pig's valve inserted into his heart. It was only supposed to last for about 5 years, and ended up being in there for over 20. He had lung cancer, despite that fact that he had not smoked a day in his life, which was incredibly ironic considering he became a nicotine and smoking researcher. He contracted polio in his early 40s, which partially paralyzed his vocal chords, so his voice was always sort of rough and scratchy. In 1997, at the age of 74, he suffered massive heart failure, and required a multiple-bypass, and he recovered. He was in a serious car accident at age 81, and recovered. Yes, he was a tough, tough dude.

He didn't start out studying nicotine or smoking, though he ended up being a pioneer in the field. His early focus was on experimental and physiological psychology, with special emphasis on memory (ironic, yes!) and he was a researcher at UC Berkeley in the very early 50s. As far as anyone can tell, there he was the very first human to take LSD. It was a sub-threshold dose, though, so he didn't trip.

One of my very favorite Dr. J stories is how one day, he came back to the lab and announced, "I've just been to Timothy Leary's deathbed." He paused and said matter-of-factly, "There were a lot of people smoking marijuana there." It was incredible to think that he and Leary were contemporaries, and had started out doing some of the same work, though of course their careers took very different paths. When he left he heard someone ask Leary who he was. "That's Murray Jarvik," Leary replied, "and he's someone you should know."

Dr. J was not a gift-giver by nature, but I'll always remember how one year, he gave me a book for Christmas (he was Jewish by culture, but a staunch atheist). I was newly pregnant with Matthew, and it was a pregnancy week by week book. Dr. J had his massive heart attack while I was on maternity leave, but I went to see him in the hospital after he was out of ICU. I showed him a picture of Matthew and he faintly smiled and said, "What a beautiful baby."

He was constantly making us laugh, unintentionally, and he was always good-humored about it. He'd suddenly say things out loud that he was thinking, like the time we were in a meeting and people were talking about the wife of one of the researchers and Dr. J abruptly said, "Mad cow." He was thinking about how that researcher and his wife had recently gone to Great Britain, and his mind wandered from there. He didn't tell a lot of jokes, but he was pleased with himself when he thought of one. There was a researcher in the lab named Rich, and one day someone asked Dr. J something about him. "Well, I'm not Rich," he replied, then he grinned a little and said, "Well, I guess I am."

He taught me so much, from the ground up, since I knew nothing about psychopharmacology or smoking or medical research when I came to the lab. He'd hired me thinking I was going to be an administrative assistant, and I ended up doing so much more than that, because he wanted me to contribute. When I left the lab, I told him, "It's been a privilege," and he replied, "Oh, for us too."

Truly it was a privilege and an honor to know you, Dr. Jarvik, and I will forever remember you with great fondness and appreciation.