Keith Black
Encyclopedia
Keith L. Black is an American neurosurgeon
specialising in the treatment of brain tumor
s and a prolific campaigner for funding of cancer treatment. He is chairman of the neurosurgery department and director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
in Los Angeles, California
.
. His mother, Lillian, was a teacher and his father, Robert, was the principal at a racially segregated
elementary school in Auburn, Alabama
; unable to integrate the student body, Black's father instead integrated the faculty, raised standards, and brought more challenging subjects to the school. Unwilling to send their son to the substandard segregated high school in Auburn, Black's parents found new jobs and relocated the family to Shaker Heights, Ohio
. Black attended Shaker Heights High School
. Already interested in medicine, Black was admitted to an apprenticeship program for minority students at Case Western Reserve University
, and then became a teenaged lab assistant for Frederick Cross and Richard Jones (inventors of the Cross-Jones artificial heart valve
) at St. Luke's Hospital in Cleveland
. At 17, he won an award in a national science competition for research on the damage done to red blood cells in patients with heart-valve replacements.According to Black: “I was working in the lab of a heart surgeon who had developed his own artificial heart valve, and I had a concept that the heart valve might be damaging red blood cells, so I asked to do a research project using a scanning electron microscope at the time. When I was trying to basically learn the technique, I took some blood from the heart-lung bypass machine from patients undergoing heart-lung bypass, and when I incubated the red blood cells overnight, I noticed that a certain percentage of these cells change from their normal discoid shape to one that resembled a porcupine, called an econocyte. What I did was to describe the discocyte-econocyte transformation in patients undergoing heart-lung bypass, as an index of sub-lethal red blood cell damage. The importance being that the blood cells could not parachute through the small capillaries.” He attended the University of Michigan
in a program that allowed him to earn both his undergraduate degree and his medical degree in 6 years. He received his M.D.
degree from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1981.
at the University of Michigan, in 1987 he moved to the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he later became head of UCLA's Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program. In 1997, after 10 years at UCLA, he moved to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
to head the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute. He was also on the faculty of the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine from 1998 to 2003. In 2007 he opened the new Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.
Brain Tumor Center at Cedars-Sinai, a research center named after the famous lawyer who had been Black's patient and supporter.
Black has been a frequent subject of media reports on medical advances in neurosurgery. He was featured in a 1996 episode of the PBS
program The New Explorers entitled "Outsmarting the Brain". Esquire
included him in its November 1999 "Genius Issue" as one of the "21 Most Important People of the 21st Century." He has been cited as an expert in reports about whether mobile phone
use affects the incidence
of brain tumors. He is also noted for his very busy surgery schedule: a 2004 Discover
article noted that he performs about 250 brain surgeries per year, and that at age 46 he had "already performed more than 4,000 brain surgeries, the medical equivalent of closing in on baseball’s all-time career hits record." (As of 2009, Black's surgery count had risen to "more than 5,000 operations for resection
of brain tumors".)
In 1997, Time
magazine featured Black on the cover of a special edition called "Heroes of Medicine". The accompanying article described Black's reputation as a surgeon who would operate on tumors that other doctors would not, as well as aspects of his medical research, including his discovery that the peptide
bradykinin
can be effective in opening the blood-brain barrier
.
In 2009 Black published his autobiography, co-authored with Arnold Mann, entitled Brain Surgeon. New York Times reviewer Abigail Zuger described the book as a "fascinating, if somewhat stilted, memoir". The Publishers Weekly
review commented that the book "examines racial hurdles he had to leap to become a neurosurgeon" and "alternat[es] incisive writing about incisions with his personal memoir, insightful and inspirational."
Neurosurgery
Neurosurgery is the medical specialty concerned with the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spine, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and extra-cranial cerebrovascular system.-In the United States:In...
specialising in the treatment of brain tumor
Brain tumor
A brain tumor is an intracranial solid neoplasm, a tumor within the brain or the central spinal canal.Brain tumors include all tumors inside the cranium or in the central spinal canal...
s and a prolific campaigner for funding of cancer treatment. He is chairman of the neurosurgery department and director of the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Originally established as Kaspare Cohn Hospital in 1902, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a non-profit, tertiary 958-bed hospital and multi-specialty academic health science centre located in Los Angeles, California, US. Part of the Cedars-Sinai Health System, the hospital employs a staff of over...
in Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles , with a population at the 2010 United States Census of 3,792,621, is the most populous city in California, USA and the second most populous in the United States, after New York City. It has an area of , and is located in Southern California...
.
Early life
Keith Black was born in Tuskegee, AlabamaAlabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
. His mother, Lillian, was a teacher and his father, Robert, was the principal at a racially segregated
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
elementary school in Auburn, Alabama
Auburn, Alabama
Auburn is a city in Lee County, Alabama, United States. It is the largest city in eastern Alabama with a 2010 population of 53,380. It is a principal city of the Auburn-Opelika Metropolitan Area...
; unable to integrate the student body, Black's father instead integrated the faculty, raised standards, and brought more challenging subjects to the school. Unwilling to send their son to the substandard segregated high school in Auburn, Black's parents found new jobs and relocated the family to Shaker Heights, Ohio
Shaker Heights, Ohio
Shaker Heights is a city in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, United States. As of the 2010 Census, the city population was 28,448. It is an inner-ring streetcar suburb of Cleveland that abuts the city on its eastern side.-Topography:Shaker Heights is located at...
. Black attended Shaker Heights High School
Shaker Heights High School
Shaker Heights High School is a public high school located in Shaker Heights, Ohio, USA, in Greater Cleveland. The high school is the only public high school in the Shaker Heights City School District, which serves Shaker Heights and a small part of Cleveland...
. Already interested in medicine, Black was admitted to an apprenticeship program for minority students at Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University
Case Western Reserve University is a private research university located in Cleveland, Ohio, USA...
, and then became a teenaged lab assistant for Frederick Cross and Richard Jones (inventors of the Cross-Jones artificial heart valve
Artificial heart valve
An artificial heart valve is a device implanted in the heart of a patient with heart valvular disease. When one of the four heart valves malfunctions, the medical choice may be to replace the natural valve with an artificial valve. This requires open-heart surgery.Valves are integral to the normal...
) at St. Luke's Hospital in Cleveland
Cleveland, Ohio
Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and is the county seat of Cuyahoga County, the most populous county in the state. The city is located in northeastern Ohio on the southern shore of Lake Erie, approximately west of the Pennsylvania border...
. At 17, he won an award in a national science competition for research on the damage done to red blood cells in patients with heart-valve replacements.According to Black: “I was working in the lab of a heart surgeon who had developed his own artificial heart valve, and I had a concept that the heart valve might be damaging red blood cells, so I asked to do a research project using a scanning electron microscope at the time. When I was trying to basically learn the technique, I took some blood from the heart-lung bypass machine from patients undergoing heart-lung bypass, and when I incubated the red blood cells overnight, I noticed that a certain percentage of these cells change from their normal discoid shape to one that resembled a porcupine, called an econocyte. What I did was to describe the discocyte-econocyte transformation in patients undergoing heart-lung bypass, as an index of sub-lethal red blood cell damage. The importance being that the blood cells could not parachute through the small capillaries.” He attended the University of Michigan
University of Michigan
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the United States. It is the state's oldest university and the flagship campus of the University of Michigan...
in a program that allowed him to earn both his undergraduate degree and his medical degree in 6 years. He received his M.D.
Doctor of Medicine
Doctor of Medicine is a doctoral degree for physicians. The degree is granted by medical schools...
degree from the University of Michigan Medical School in 1981.
Career
After serving his internship and residencyResidency (medicine)
Residency is a stage of graduate medical training. A resident physician or resident is a person who has received a medical degree , Podiatric degree , Dental Degree and who practices...
at the University of Michigan, in 1987 he moved to the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he later became head of UCLA's Comprehensive Brain Tumor Program. In 1997, after 10 years at UCLA, he moved to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center
Originally established as Kaspare Cohn Hospital in 1902, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a non-profit, tertiary 958-bed hospital and multi-specialty academic health science centre located in Los Angeles, California, US. Part of the Cedars-Sinai Health System, the hospital employs a staff of over...
to head the Maxine Dunitz Neurosurgical Institute. He was also on the faculty of the University of California, Irvine School of Medicine from 1998 to 2003. In 2007 he opened the new Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.
Johnnie Cochran
Johnnie L. Cochran, Jr. was an American lawyer best known for his leadership role in the defense and criminal acquittal of O. J...
Brain Tumor Center at Cedars-Sinai, a research center named after the famous lawyer who had been Black's patient and supporter.
Black has been a frequent subject of media reports on medical advances in neurosurgery. He was featured in a 1996 episode of the PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
program The New Explorers entitled "Outsmarting the Brain". Esquire
Esquire (magazine)
Esquire is a men's magazine, published in the U.S. by the Hearst Corporation. Founded in 1932, it flourished during the Great Depression under the guidance of founder and editor Arnold Gingrich.-History:...
included him in its November 1999 "Genius Issue" as one of the "21 Most Important People of the 21st Century." He has been cited as an expert in reports about whether mobile phone
Mobile phone
A mobile phone is a device which can make and receive telephone calls over a radio link whilst moving around a wide geographic area. It does so by connecting to a cellular network provided by a mobile network operator...
use affects the incidence
Mobile phone radiation and health
The effect of mobile phone radiation on human health is the subject of recent interest and study, as a result of the enormous increase in mobile phone usage throughout the world . Mobile phones use electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range...
of brain tumors. He is also noted for his very busy surgery schedule: a 2004 Discover
Discover (magazine)
Discover is an American science magazine that publishes articles about science for a general audience. The monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. It was sold to Family Media, the owners of Health, in 1987. Walt Disney Company bought the magazine when Family Media went out of...
article noted that he performs about 250 brain surgeries per year, and that at age 46 he had "already performed more than 4,000 brain surgeries, the medical equivalent of closing in on baseball’s all-time career hits record." (As of 2009, Black's surgery count had risen to "more than 5,000 operations for resection
Segmental resection
Segmental resection is a surgical procedure to remove part of an organ or gland. It may also be used to remove a tumor and normal tissue around it. In lung cancer surgery, segmental resection refers to removing a section of a lobe of the lung.- External links :* entry in the public domain NCI...
of brain tumors".)
In 1997, Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine featured Black on the cover of a special edition called "Heroes of Medicine". The accompanying article described Black's reputation as a surgeon who would operate on tumors that other doctors would not, as well as aspects of his medical research, including his discovery that the peptide
Peptide
Peptides are short polymers of amino acid monomers linked by peptide bonds. They are distinguished from proteins on the basis of size, typically containing less than 50 monomer units. The shortest peptides are dipeptides, consisting of two amino acids joined by a single peptide bond...
bradykinin
Bradykinin
Bradykinin is a peptide that causes blood vessels to dilate , and therefore causes blood pressure to lower. A class of drugs called ACE inhibitors, which are used to lower blood pressure, increase bradykinin further lowering blood pressure...
can be effective in opening the blood-brain barrier
Blood-brain barrier
The blood–brain barrier is a separation of circulating blood and the brain extracellular fluid in the central nervous system . It occurs along all capillaries and consists of tight junctions around the capillaries that do not exist in normal circulation. Endothelial cells restrict the diffusion...
.
In 2009 Black published his autobiography, co-authored with Arnold Mann, entitled Brain Surgeon. New York Times reviewer Abigail Zuger described the book as a "fascinating, if somewhat stilted, memoir". The Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
review commented that the book "examines racial hurdles he had to leap to become a neurosurgeon" and "alternat[es] incisive writing about incisions with his personal memoir, insightful and inspirational."
External links
- Curriculum Vitae of Keith L. Black, M.D. at Cedars-Sinai official website (retrieved May 13, 2011).
- Biography at thehistorymakers.com
- "Brain Power", Los AngelesLos Angeles (magazine)Los Angeles magazine is a monthly regional magazine of national stature. Published by Emmis Communications and produced monthly since the spring of 1961, LA Magazine is a combination of award-winning feature writing, investigative reporting, service journalism, and design, the definitive resource...
magazine, May 2006 (retrieved May 16, 2009). - Tavis SmileyTavis SmileyTavis Smiley is a talk show host, author, liberal political commentator, entrepreneur, advocate and philanthropist. Smiley was born in Gulfport, Mississippi and grew up in Kokomo, Indiana. After attending Indiana University, he worked during the late 1980s as an aide to Tom Bradley, the mayor of...
interviews Dr. Keith Black, Tavis SmileyThe Tavis Smiley ShowThe Tavis Smiley Show is an American public broadcasting radio talk show. A television show, simply titled Tavis Smiley, is a late night television program on Public Broadcasting Service . Both shows feature Tavis Smiley as host....
(PBSPublic Broadcasting ServiceThe Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....
), March 24, 2009 (retrieved May 16, 2009).