School of Medicine

News and Publications

For immediate release: Wednesday, June 1, 2005

Contact:
Jennifer Day
Wayne State School of Medicine
P. 313-577-1058
jday@med.wayne.edu

Commencement to feature NY Times medical writer, honor Dr. Hazlett

Lawrence K. Altman, M.D., a longtime New York Times medical reporter and an infectious disease specialist, will be the featured speaker at the WSU School of Medicine commencement on Tuesday, June 7. The ceremony will also feature special posthumous recognition for James Hazlett, Ph.D., whose memory will be honored with the Distinguished Service Award.

Commencement will be at 2 p.m. in the Detroit Opera House, where 239 students will graduate.

Dr. Altman is one of the few full-fledged medical doctors working as a full-time daily newspaper reporter. He has been a member of The New York Times science news staff since 1969. In addition to reporting, he writes the “Doctor's World” column in Science Times.

Born on June 19, 1937, in Quincy, Mass., Dr. Altman went from Milton Academy to Harvard, from which he graduated in 1958 with a bachelor of arts degree, cum laude, in government. He received his medical degree from Tufts University School of Medicine in 1962.

Dr. Altman's medical internship was at Mt. Zion Hospital, San Francisco, in 1962 and 1963. He then served for three years with the U.S. Public Health Service's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta as editor of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a journal dealing with reported cases of communicable diseases in the world. He then helped set up a measles immunization program for eight West African countries, which later was merged with the World Health Organization's program that eradicated smallpox from the world. Dr. Altman then became chief of the U.S. Public Health Service's Division of Epidemiology and Immunization in Washington .

Dr. Altman has written articles for various scholarly publications on such subjects as viral encephalitis, canine cadaver blood and self experimentation. He has won several awards for his journalistic pursuits, including the Claude Bernard Science Journalism Award, the American Heart Association's Howard W. Blakeslee Award, the AHA's Howard Lewis Career Award, a George Polk Award and the first Victor Cohn Prize for Excellence in Medical Science Reporting from the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing.

In 2004, Dr. Altman received the University of California at San Francisco's medal and the Walsh McDermott award from the Associated Medical Schools of New York. His book, “Who Goes First? The Story of Self-Experimentation in Medicine,” is published by the University of California at Berkeley Press.

Dr. Altman, who holds medical licenses in the states of Washington, California and New York, is a clinical professor at the New York University Medical School. He is a Master of the American College of Physicians, a Fellow of the American College of Epidemiology and the New York Academy of Medicine and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences.

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