[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 53 (Thursday, March 24, 2022)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E295]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]





                     REMEMBERING DR. DONALD PINKEL

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                           HON. STEVE COHEN-

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                        Thursday, March 24, 2022

  Mr. COHEN. Madam Speaker, I rise today to pay a respectful tribute to 
Dr. Donald P. Pinkel, a pediatric oncologist whose aggressive treatment 
of childhood cancer at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in 
Memphis, and elsewhere, has saved thousands of lives. Dr. Pinkel died 
last week in California at the age of 95. Already an established 
childhood cancer specialist in his native Buffalo, Dr. Pinkel was lured 
to St. Jude in 1961 by its founder, Danny Thomas, before the physical 
structure had been built. He was instrumental in its development and 
staffing as its first chief executive and medical director. In 
segregated Memphis, he insisted that all facets of St. Jude be 
integrated and that the malnutrition of his patients, many of them 
Black, be addressed by a nutritional assistance program that became the 
model for the federal government's Special Supplemental Nutrition 
Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as W.I.C. With other top 
researchers, he developed chemotherapy protocols for treating almost 
always fatal acute lymphocytic leukemia that were considered radical 
and dangerous, but which proved over time to transform the illness into 
a treatable disease which now has a 94 percent five-year survival rate. 
As Danny Thomas' daughter Marlo said in a statement last week, her 
father and Dr. Pinkel ``had the same unyielding hope and were equally 
audacious in their determination that childhood leukemia could be 
vanquished.'' Memphis and the nation can be grateful this man of 
science devoted his life to saving vulnerable children. I send my 
condolences to his wife, children, grandchildren and great-
grandchildren. His was a life well-lived.

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