Kilmer McCully, the pathologist despised the up-to-date theory of heart disease, dies at 91

Kilmer S. McCully, a pathologist from the Harvard Medical School in the 1960s and 1970s, whose colleagues had him to the basement for insisting – correctly, it turned out – that homocysteine, the amino acid, was omitted as a possible risk factor for heart disease, died on February 21 in his house in his house in Winchester, mass He was 91.

His daughter, Martha McCully, said that the cause was prostate metastatic cancer. His death was not widely reported at the time.

Still debathed idea, the theory of Dr. McCully-that inappropriate consumption of some B vitamins causes a high level of homocysteine ​​in the blood, hardened the arteries with a plate plate,-the paradigm concentrated on cholesterol supported by the pharmaceutical industry was concentrated.

Dr. McCully did not think that cholesterol should be ignored, but he thought that it was a mistake to ignore the importance of homocysteine. His bosses on Harvard did not agree. First they moved his underground laboratory; Then they told him to leave. He tried to find a job for years.

“It was very traumatic,” Recent York Times Gina Kolata told the medical reporter in 1995. “People don’t believe you. They think you’re crazy.”

Dr. McCully, shaping as a hunter of microorganisms similar to Louis Pasteur, came across homocysteine ​​in the tardy 1960s at a medical conference in Boston. He found out there HomocystinuriaGenetic disease in which vast amounts of homocysteine ​​are in the urine of some disabled children.

Presenting the case of homocystinuria in a 9-year-old girl, the doctors mentioned that her uncle died of stroke in the 1930s, when he was 8 years antique and had the same disease. “How could an eight -year -old die like older people?” Dr. McCully wrote with his daughter in “The Heart Revolution” (1999).

When Dr. McCully tracked the report from the autopsy and tissue samples, he was amazing: the boy hardened the arteries, but in accumulating the plate there was no cholesterol or fat. A few months later he learned about a boy with homocystinuria, who recently died. He also hardened the arteries.

“I barely slept for two weeks,” he wrote.

In 1969, Dr. McCully published an article about cases at the American Journal of Pathology. The following year, in the same journal, he described what happened after injection of high -dose rabbits. “Ators of all 13 animals injected with homocysteine ​​have been moderately thickened,” he wrote, “compared to inspections.”

Dr. McCully continued other research. He suggested that people with low intake of folic acid and vitamins B6 and B12 should consume five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. He also recommended developing blood tests for homocysteine.

The profession of a doctor replied with a “stony silence”, Dr. McCully said The Times. He said that in 1979 the chairman of his department at Harvard told him: “We feel that you did not prove your theory.” He decided to leave and was unemployed until 1981, when the Veterans Affairs hospital in Providence, Ri, hired him as a pathologist.

“I felt to him and admired him,” said J. David Spence, a retired professor at the University of Western Ontario, who studies homocysteine. “He was neglected more than he should. It was melancholy.”

This began to change in the early 90s, when long -term risk tests of heart disease revealed that Dr. McCully was actually directed by the right path when Harvard went to the basement.

Data from Framingham heart studyinitiated in 1948 and continued, they showed higher indicators of hardened brain -related arteries among participants with a high level of homocysteine. A study conducted by Harvard School of Public Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston showed that men with high homocysteine ​​had a three times greater risk of suffering a heart attack than men with lower levels.

“At the end of the day he was right in the sense that homocysteine ​​is a marker of a higher risk of cardiovascular disease”, ” Meir stampfer, In an interview, epidemiologist Harvard said, who helped conduct the study. “He receives recognition for developing this theory and assistance in providing evidence.”

Kilmer Serjus McCully was born on December 23, 1933 in Daykin, neb., And grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, near Washington. His father, Harold McCully, was a specialist in the field of advisory psychology for the US Education Department. His mother, Lulu (Litwinenco) McCully, was a piano artist and teacher.

As a teenager, Kilmer was fascinated by “Mikrobe Hunters”, the book by Paul de Krifa from 1926 for Pasteur, Walter Reed, Robert Koch and others who studied infectious diseases. He knew almost immediately that he wanted to become a scientist.

He studied biochemistry, psychology and chemistry at Harvard, where he took part in classes with BF Skinner and graduated in 1955, known as Kim for his friends, he gained a medical degree there in 1959. In part -time, care of arthur historian M. Schlesinger Jr.

After an internship and sub -charter scholarship in Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. McCully joined the Harvard Medical School pathology department in 1965.

He married Annina Jacobs in 1955. She died in 2023.

In addition to their daughter, Martha, their son, Michael, survived; two grandchildren; two great -grandchildren; And sister Marilyn McCully.

After graduation in the 1990s, they supported his theory, Dr. McCully became a media star.

The Recent York Times magazine appeared in the 1997 article, which titled “Fall and Rise of Kilmer McCully”. In the NPR “Fresh Air” program in 1999 he said Terry Gross, the host: “It’s extremely satisfying for me, because when I was a youthful man, I just wanted to do with my life.”

But homocysteine ​​remains a controversial subject of medicine.

The main medical organizations did not recommend tests, citing mixed test results of research, or lowering homocysteine ​​leads to a decrease in cardiovascular events. (There is stronger evidence that this can prevent strokes).

“It’s a strange business for me that people still don’t pay enough attention to it,” said Dr. Spence. “Maybe doctors didn’t like biochemistry lessons.”

As for Harvard, the family of Dr. McCully said that he was never bitter in his treatment. During the meeting at the medical school in 1999, his classmates presented him with a silver plate.

It was written: “Kim McCully, who saw the truth before the rest of us, indeed before the rest of the medicine and which will not be reversed.”