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Many cancers, he said, were hereditary. To prove his point, he went to meetings with families suspected of having a history of hereditary cancer. He arranged to meet family members and asked: Who in the family had cancer? What kind of cancer? Could he get medical records and blood samples, that he could freeze and store?
He drew family trees by hand, with squares for men and circles for women, indicating who has cancer and what kind. He quickly insisted on a dubious world about finding irrefutable evidence of genetic links.
Over time, the medical world accepted his claims and his work – family trees, blood samples – ultimately contributed to the discovery by others of a gene that, when it is mutated, can cause colon cancer and many other cancers. He also contributed to the work that led to the discovery of genetic mutations that significantly increased the risk of bad and ovarian cancer.
Lynch died on June 2 at the Bergan Mercy Hospital, the main teaching hospital of Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska, where he had spent most of his career. He was 91 years old. His son, Dr. Patrick M. Lynch, a gastrointestinal endoscopist at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said the cause was congestive heart failure.
Henry Lynch, a 6'5 "professional former boxer whose physical presence belied his sweet nature, was an old-fashioned researcher who never changed his habits.
Investigators like to talk about translational research, from the lab to the bedside – making discoveries in the lab and using them to treat patients. Lynch went in the opposite direction, from the patient's bedside to the bench, said Dr. Funmi Olopade, director of the Clinical Cancer Genetics Center at the University of Chicago. In the case of Lynch, however, others have taken over.
For years, epidemiologists have dismissed Lynch's data as anecdotal, said Dr. Steven Narod, who heads the family cancer unit at Women's College Hospital in Toronto. Skeptics argued that the cancers Lynch observed could have been caused by chance. They included common cancers such as colon, bad and thyroid, which can occur in almost all families.
But some health professionals, including Narod, were convinced even without the statistical badyzes. "In 1987, I looked at the family trees and said," I'm there, "he said.
Olopade met Lynch in Omaha in 1992, when she wanted to look for genes for bad cancer. Lynch offered his data.
"That day marked my memory," she said. "He gave me each questionnaire, each consent."
Dr. Judy Garber, head of the Division of Genetics and Cancer Prevention at Boston's Dana Farber Cancer Institute, said Lynch also helped her. "He was among the most honest people among academics," she said.
Cancer researchers now estimate that 5% to 10% of cancers are inherited. Hereditary cancer syndromes, like those Lynch investigated, include genetic mutations that predispose some to more common cancers.
A form of hereditary cancer is often called Lynch syndrome (it is also known as hereditary non-polyposis colorectal cancer, or HNPCC) because Lynch first identified the families in which it occurs. People with Lynch Syndrome have a higher risk of certain types of cancer.
Lynch liked to tell how he was interested in cancer genetics:
When he was a resident in medicine, he saw a patient who was dying of colon cancer. The man started talking to Lynch about all the people in his family with cancer. Intrigued, Lynch sought a research grant from the National Institutes of Health, hoping to show that colon cancer could be hereditary. He was refused.
Unyielding, he persists, collects family trees, draws family trees and ends up obtaining research grants. He especially advised cancer patients, rather than taking direct care of them, said his son.
Henry Thompson Lynch was born January 4, 1928 in Lawrence, Mbadachusetts, Henry and Eleanor Lynch. He grew up poor in the Upper West Side of Manhattan. His father, a salesman, lost his job in the Depression and his mother was a secretary.
At the start of the Second World War, Henry enlisted in the Navy at age 15, using a relative's name a few years earlier. He was sent to the South Pacific as a gunner and suffered permanent hearing loss as a result of gunshot explosions.
On his return from the war, he graduated from high school and became a boxer under the name Hammerin 'Hank.
After a few years of professional boxing, he enrolled at the University of Oklahoma at Norman. After graduating in 1951, he earned a master's degree in clinical psychology from the University of Denver the following year. At the time, said his son, Lynch wanted to find the genetic roots of schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders.
Then he decided to become a doctor. He then explained to his son that he had concluded that doctors had a guaranteed income and more career options than scientists holding a doctorate.
He earned his medical degree from the Medical University of Texas at Galveston in 1960, after completing all PhD courses. in human genetics in Austin.
Hired by Creighton in 1967, he stayed there because, as his son said, as a serious Catholic, he liked being in a Jesuit institution. Lynch founded the Hereditary Cancer Center at the university in 1984.
In addition to his son, Lynch is survived by his daughters, Kathy Pinder and Ann Kelly; two brothers, Warren and Donald; 10 grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren. His wife, Jane (Smith) Lynch, pbaded away in 2012.
Lynch was buried in a cemetery in front of Creighton Hospital, following a sign on the building stating "The Henry Lynch Cancer Center".
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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