In 1967, John S. Stehlin, Jr, MD, left the M. D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute in Houston, where he had been on the fulltime surgical staff for ten years, and went out on his own.
His dream was not only to treat patients with cancer more "creatively" but to have a research laboratory in which only human cancers would be studied. Constant feedback would occur between the laborary and the bedside.
Fulfillment of that dream seemed far away for the 44-year-old surgical oncologist with only $6,700 in his pocket. Yet Stehlin, with a little help from colleagues, friends, and grateful former patients, seems to have made it come true.
Today, the Stehlin Foundation for Cancer Research in Houston, with 25 researchers, has an annual budget of $1 million. There, Stehlin and his young partners, surgical oncologists Peter D. de Ipolyi, MD, and Pierre J. Greeff, MD, are in the