Bill Wood

Bill Wood

George W. Sledge, MD, FASCO

Aug 22, 2011
This last weekend I went to a retirement party. Bill Wood, the longtime chair of surgery at Emory University in Atlanta, is leaving the university. Emory, quite appropriately, put on a celebration in Bill's honor, and several of us who have benefitted from Bill's tutelage over the years were invited down to Atlanta to speak. Several of the speakers grew teary-eyed: such is the warmth of feeling this good man inspires. Earlier a large number of grateful patients had met to bid him farewell.

Bill Wood, for those who don't know him, has had a wonderful career. In addition to turning Emory into a surgical powerhouse, he has had a major impact on breast surgery, and has been a leader of the breast cancer cooperative groups. He co-chaired the CALGB breast cancer group, led ECOG's breast cancer committee, chaired the Breast Cancer Intergroup Committee, and more recently co-chaired the NCI's Breast Cancer Steering Committee. His CV is much more extensive than this (he has important leadership roles in the surgical community, and has published groundbreaking articles in our best medical journals), but this gives you a flavor of his place in our world.

Everyone who knows Bill Wood loves the man. He is decency incarnate, a decency that comes both from his strongly held moral beliefs and from his willingness to see the best in everyone he meets. He can be wickedly funny, and he is easily the best leader of a meeting that I have ever met (a talent I appreciate as a runner of meetings--it seems easy until you actually have to do it). He is a superb mentor who has affected the professional careers of large numbers of cancer specialists (mine included).

Though Bill is stepping down from Emory, he is hardly stepping down from an active life. He will be going to Africa to help develop surgical programs there. We all wish him well in this new venture.

I have felt, for many years, that I am part of a long chain of physicians, linking the past and future of cancer care. The metaphor of links in the chain may be the wrong one. Perhaps part of a large weave, extending forwards and backwards and sideways in time, the individual threads overlapping and entwining, the whole creating some valuable pattern.

I know that I have had the opportunity to be "entwined" with some spectacular talents, and I cannot imagine my career or my life without them. I suspect that many of us feel that way. ASCO's Conquer Cancer Foundation, through its Leadership to Legacy program, supports the careers of many young investigators through its YIA and CDA grants. When those grants are reviewed, we do not look just at the science, as important as that is in evaluating these proposals. We scrutinize the mentorship as well. Why? Because we know that it is rare to succeed in this business entirely on your own. The idea of the solitary scientist creating something out of nothing is a fantasy in our highly connected world. Being a scientist is not just about the life of the mind: science is an essentially social profession as well.

So in celebrating the career of a Bill Wood, we are also celebrating a larger principle, and recognizing a continuing challenge to our profession. The viability of our scientific enterprise, and of our community of practicing physicians, relies on the continuing existence of a core of inspiring teachers, mentors and leaders who unselfishly support those who will come after them. And sometimes even supplant them: we regularly create our own competition.

I have never understood the appeal of the novelist Ayn Rand, who some of our "leaders" in Congress view as a great philosopher. The idea that we are all in this just for ourselves, and that such selfishness is not just acceptable but actually virtuous, is one that I find appalling. Bill Wood's entire career, indeed his entire character, is a rebuke to this belief. I know whom I would want as my next-door neighbor, and as my inspiration.

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Comments

Antonio C. Wolff, MD, FACP, FASCO

Aug, 22 2011 11:20 PM

Bill Wood in many ways was one of my first bosses.  Fresh (and very wet-behind-the-ears) out of a medical oncology fellowship at Hopkins, I followed another Bill (McGuire) to Emory and joined its faculty in the mid 1990s.  The breast cancer scientific bug was already flowing in my veins, and I was immediately drawn to Bill Wood, then Chairman of Surgery at Emory and also Chair of the ECOG Breast Committee.  Needless to say, what an impact someone like Bill Wood can have as role model in the life of a junior faculty.  In the "pre" internet, 24/7-always-connected era, I still remember what a treat it was to attend an ECOG meeting and hear straight from Bill's mouth pearls like the (then hot-off-the-press, now old hat) data from the 1995 Oxford Overview that (gasp!) tamoxifen was equally effective as adjuvant therapy in premenopausal women!
Since rejoining Hopkins in the late 1990s, I continued to benefit from Bill's insight and common sense through a long association via ECOG and most recently via the Breast Cancer Steering Committee.  Bill may not know, but in fact he was the first one to ever write me a letter of recommendation in my post-fellowship career; in that case to attend the 1996 ASCO/AACR Methods in Clinical Cancer Research workshop in Vail as a junior faculty.  After that, as so aptly said, the rest is history.  George Sledge is so right; every so often we have the privilege to be "entwined" with phenomenal individuals who impact a field and inspire so many.  In my short time in the breast cancer world, I am delighted to be among the many lucky ones who have met and been influenced by someone like Bill Wood.  I am also delighted to know that others in less affluent places in the world in need of so much will now have the chance to be inspired by him too.

William C. Wood, MD, FASCO

Aug, 23 2011 8:29 AM

I am humbled by these too generous comments by two men that I admire. Any praise should not redown to me, but to my Lord who has given me such wonderful opportunities and friends.
Bill

Anees B. Chagpar, MD, MPH, MBA, MSc, MA, FACS, FRCS, FASCO

Sep, 04 2011 1:42 AM

Bill, 
God gives many opportunities to serve; it is few who take advantage and do it so well.  To be generous with your time and knowledge, to treat everyone with respect and decency, to teach and inspire those who follow behind you, to be inquisitive and conduct meaningful research, to make a difference in the lives of others -- this is what it means to be a giant in the field.  While your humility is admirable, and knowing you, completely expected -- it is time you took a bow, and accepted the compliments you so richly deserve.
a

I. Craig Henderson, MD

Sep, 20 2011 8:48 AM

When I started the multidisciplinary breast clinic at the Dana-Farber in the late 70's I told each physician who joined that they should consider themselves first and foremost a physician, second a specialist in breast diseases of all types, and only last a therapeutic or diagnositic specialist (i.e. surgeon, radiotherapist, medical oncologist, mammographer, etc.).  Although Bill. who was at the Mass General at that time, was not a member of the Dana-Farber breast program, he exemplified the physician I was trying to recruit better than anyone else I know.  I know of no other surgeon in the world who knows the medical oncology (as well as surgical and radiotherapy) breast cancer literature than Bill.  He undertands this disease in all of its subtlety.  At the same time, I know from many patients that we've treated together that he is a wonderfully compassionate and intuitive physician, as well. 


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