Date: Wed, 3 Feb 2021 17:22:39 -0500
From: Paul coates

Dear all,
I gave Henry a  professional  bio sketch for the record. Here's something a little
more personal.

You may know that I (like Gerry - I'd forgotten that) was fascinated by Genetics
at McGill. What a time that was, mid-to-late 60s, for the field! One gene
predicted one enzyme, there was a (now very simple) understanding of how genes
were regulated, and some human diseases resulted from singe-gene mutations. That's
where my interest lay. I started a PhD program with that in mind at Queen's. It
ended a bit differently in 1972, but it was still genetics.

I met a girl from Ottawa,Vivian (n'e Katz), there in 1971 and we fell in love
pretty much instantly. You probably guess from her name that she was somewhat
more Jewish than I. However, a major thing we had in common was that she was
among the very few Jews in her high school and you know that I was one of there
few non-Jews at mine. We married in 1972, moved to the UK for me to do a postdoc
in Human Genetics at University College London, and had our first child,
Jennifer, there in 1973. Sadly, there were few jobs to be had in the UK and they
all paid terribly; otherwise, we'd have been happy to stay there.

Vivian and I got to know a wonderful American couple, Jean and Jeannie Cortner,
while we were there. He was Physician-in-Chief at Children's Hospital of Buffalo
and offered me my first real job there. We spent only a year there (praise be!)
before he was appointed to the same position at the Children's Hospital of
Philadelphia. It was not hard to accept his invitation to go there. We spent 20
or so years in/near Philadelphia and our second child, Adam, was born there.

My research focused on inborn errors of lipid metabolism and during the course
of a few years in the 1980s, I and my colleagues at CHOP and around the world
had discovered a host of genetic defects of mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation
that impaired energy production in muscle, heart, liver... That was an exciting
time. Funding was good - until it wasn't. In the early 1990s, I needed to find a
new adventure.

In the meantime, Vivian had developed a substantial career in healthcare policy,
specifically the use of evidence-based approaches to develop clinical practice
guidelines. Her reputation in the field was very high and her experience came to
inform work that I did in the next phase of my career.

I went to the National Institutes of Health for what I expected would be a year
or two. I stayed 25 years. What an exciting place to be! And to learn! My career
took a few leftward steps, first to run NIH'a Type 2 diabetes research grant
programs, then to be a nutrition research policy wonk, and finally to become
Director of the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements (ODS). That was definitely a
change. I mostly loved the work, because it had an impact on so many people, but
the people in that business have some pretty strong, sometimes strange, and
always controversial views. I like to think that I got the job because I was a
Canadian and knew where the middle was.

In the meantime, Vivian was building a rep as very big wheel in evidence-based
medicine and she said  Paul - don't you think dietary supplements (and nutrition in
general, by the way) would benefit from this approach   I agreed and began to
incorporate this into the fabric of ODS and government nutrition efforts more
broadly. This was decidedly not welcomed at first by the nutrition community,
but it has become part of the language and culture - only took about 20 years.

Our kids grew up to be far more remarkable than I. Jennifer is an artist and
musician who lives in New York with her husband, David Humphrey (also an artist
and sculptor); they are easily the most creative people I have ever known. Adam
is a lawyer and General Counsel for the Business Software Alliance in DC. He and
his wife, Colleen, live quite close to us so that their kids, Bobby and Rose,
have been part of our lives since they were born. They are a gift. Bobby is 15
and over 6 feet tall. He and I play squash together. My advantage is that I've
played for more than 50 years and I'm sneaky and his advantage is age and height;
I shudder to think what it will be like when learns sneaky. Rose is 10, a
polymath and constantly learning. It is a joy to watch both of them in action.

Vivian and I are now both retired and, absent COVID, we'd be traveling everywhere
we could. Not so much these days, but we hope for better times ahead. In the
meantime, she is an avid pianist, practicing 2 hours a day and taking 2 lessons
a week from a concert pianist. I continue to be involved in nutrition matters,
serving in the Board of the American Society for Nutrition; I'll be their
President later this year.

That's all I know!