Louis C. Lasagna

Louis Lasagna is acknowledged as the “father of clinical pharmacology.” His 1954 paper on the placebo response was cited by The Lancet as one of the landmark papers of the 20th century. His intimate involvement in all aspects of the U.S. drug-approval system spanned four decades and included chairing the National Committee to Review Current Procedures for Approval of New Drugs for Cancer and AIDS, under the aegis of the President’s Cancer Panel. He served as director of the Division of Clinical Pharmacology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and chair of the University of Rochester Medical Center Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology. Lasagna was dean emeritus of Tufts’ Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences. He wrote about ethical issues facing doctors and researchers, including the books Life, Death, and the Doctor and The Doctors’ Dilemmas. New graduates at several medical schools swear to an updated version of the Hippocratic Oath proposed by Lasagna in 1962. His honors include the Modern Medicine Distinguished Achievement Award and the Rutgers Medal. Lasagna died in 2003.