The Research Institute Building at the Montreal General Hospital (MGH) is getting a new name.
Henceforth, it will be called the Pavillon Dr Phil Gold, in recognition of the now-retired 87-year-old Montreal cancer researcher.
Among the many achievements that led to this honour was his co-discovery in 1968 with Dr. Samuel Freedman, CQ (BSc’49, MDCM’53, DSc) of Carcinoembryonic Antigen (CEA). It represented the first time that a tumour biomarker had been clearly demonstrated to exist, spawning a blood test that has become one of the standard ways to check on the growth and spread of many kinds of cancer.
In a wide-sweeping conversation with FMHS Focus at his home, Gold says having a building named after him feels foreign but that he has come to appreciate the gesture. When asked by a colleague if he likes the name, he answered: “I like it better than the other possibility, which would be the Phil Gold Memorial Building.”
The longtime cancer researcher and physician, as well as the MGH Physician-in-Chief from 1980–1995 and one of McGill’s most celebrated professors, says those roles were not part of any plan.
“I never really considered what I wanted to do,” he says.
His serendipitous journey began by not actually choosing to study medicine when he was a physiology student and a self-described lab nerd.
“It was the early '50s and my mentor, Arnold Burgen [a professor of physiology], was going back to Cambridge and said to me, ‘What are you doing? Next year is your fourth year.’” Gold responded that he thought it was decided that he would be doing a PhD with him. But Burgen’s response was, “A couple of years of medicine would do you a world of good.”
Not long after, he got a call from the Faculty of Medicine’s secretary who asked him to sign some papers: Sir Arnold had enrolled him in med school.
Another of those unplanned career-defining moments was when the MGH was looking for a new Physician-in-Chief. “I went to the committee to tell them who I thought they might consider. And they said, ‘Well, would you do it?’ And I said, ‘Do what?’”
But life has obviously been more than a series of happy accidents for Phil Gold, with empathy having been an important element. His success in cancer research goes back to his rounds through the cancer wards, where he felt for the suffering of the patients and their families.
“I said, surely to God, there's got to be something more specific than radiation and chemotherapy.” And that was when he began to look further into immunological tolerance, teaming up with allergist and immunologist Freedman (who would later serve as Dean of Medicine as well as Vice-Principal, Academic).
The CEA patent, which went on to make millions, if not billions, every year, sold for $300,000. The money went to the MGH and Gold only made a dollar (“Which I lost on the bus home.”).
Bringing it full circle, the patent money the MGH received helped in the construction of the Research Institute Building in 1973, the same building that will now be named after Gold.
While Gold says it’s important for today’s researchers to get their proper due from a research discovery, he says that should never be a motivation.
“Anybody who goes into the laboratory with the intention of making money should not be there in the first place,” he says.
While Gold’s principles appear to be an important rudder for his career, he also employed what he calls Gold’s 10 Rules that he would impart to the med students he taught (he estimates he has taught 20,000 students).
Among his rules:
- Face your patient and not a screen when you’re seeing them.
- A medical student has every right to be involved in patient care.
- People don't sue their doctors because they made a mistake. They sue them because they weren't nice.
The son of a tailor who only strayed a few kilometres from the Main where he grew up, his discoveries went global and his talks took place in numerous countries.
On the subject of his career and the life with his wife Evelyn, his three kids and seven grandchildren that he feels blessed to have had, he still wonders aloud: “Were these things I intended? Or did they simply happen? I don’t know.”
If the walls of the Phil Gold could talk.
was published last year by McGill-Queen’s University Press.