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John G. McAfee, MD, former professor and chairman of the Department of Radiology at SUNY Upstate Medical Center, and discoverer of a wide range of clinical applications in nuclear medicine, attributes his many scientific successes to a lifetime of "wild ideas." His colleagues' opinions, however, are tempered with admiration: "John is the complete atoms-to-molecule person," said one. "He's the perfect example of how to successfully apply basic science to clinical practice."
Others see McAfee's "wild ideas" as inspired vision. "John has had real impact clinically and crossed several organ systems, so that he is a true generalist in developing new radiopharmaceuticals for solving clinical problems that have had widespread and lasting value," said Dr. Ronald Neumann, of the National Institutes of Health. McAfee's research achievements, and their applications to clinical nuclear medicine, and, not least, his integrity and early academic leadership, have earned him a place as one of the specialty's most respected pioneers.
"The Only Thing That Matters is Good Health" In his last year of high school in 1943, 17-year-old McAfee was rushed to the hospital for a burst appendix. The boy who had entertained dreams of becoming a pilot came to take a different perspective on his life. "I spent three days close to death. I came to realize that the only thing that matters in life is good health," McAfee recalled in a recent interview. He put in a last-minute application and was accepted to the University of Toronto Medical School. After graduation in 1948 (the pressures of wartime had "condensed" the usual eight-year medical school program into five years), McAfee took up an internship and an assistant residency at Victoria and Westminster hospitals, which he held until 1951. He recalls that hospital clinicians held radiology in low esteem, chuckling over radiologists "shoddy" reports, and remembers thinking that "if radiology deserved its own department, there must be more to it."
In Toronto McAfee learned of Russell Morgan, MID, who had studied medicine there and gone on to become a successful radiologist at Johns Hopkins University. Morgan hailed from a family of engineers and had applied his talents to...