A talent for the human touch

Joseph Eron '80

Fresh from his medical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, Joseph Eron '80 could hardly have picked a place to work that offered a more striking contrast. As director of the Zuni Indian Hospital in New Mexico, he ran a facility that offered only 20 inpatient beds. It lacked the advanced technologies, renowned surgeons and other assets people take for granted in a big-city hospital. And, he said, it was the perfect training ground.

At Zuni, "medical care had a lot more to do with the caring than the medical technology part," Eron said. It also had a great deal to do with teamwork among smart professionals who worked hard to make the most of the resources at hand. "We did an awful lot of good with the medicines we had and our collective brain power," he said.

Caring plays a major role in Eron's current work as well. An associate professor of medicine at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine in Chapel Hill, he directs the clinical research effort at UNC's Center for AIDS Research. His mission is to develop better therapies to fight HIV infection and better strategies for stemming the spread of AIDS.

Every aspect of this effort requires a talent for the human touch. Eron's group works with patients who come to UNC from all over North Carolina. The researchers are trying to determine which combination of drugs makes the most effective anti-HIV "cocktail," and trying to figure how best to keep infected people from transmitting the disease to others. In recent years, the team has also collaborated with clinicians and clinical investigators in South Africa and Malawi.

For Eron, the work abroad has a familiar feel. "Some of the things people are facing in Africa are some of the things I saw when I was in New Mexico," only worse, he said. Many hospitals in Africa -- especially in Malawi -- lack even the basic amenities one could count on in the Zuni hospital. But the strongest similarities lie in the cultural divide between the local patients and doctors from the outside world who come to treat them. As in Zuni, for example, patients in Malawi don't turn to the hospital until they have exhausted all other sources of help, including relatives and traditional healers.

" One of the harder things to do is to put aside the know-it-all, I'm-from-the-United States mentality" and learn to understand the patients' point of view, Eron said.

At Zuni, Eron and his wife forged a bond with the local culture by sending their oldest child to the Native American school. "The second year we were there, we got invited to people's houses for dinner," he said. "We got invited to religious ceremonies," a privilege few outsiders enjoyed.

In Malawi, Eron bridges the gap by approaching patients with respectful curiosity. "The more you understand the setting, the culture and the medical beliefs of the people," he said, "the more effective you're going to be when you try to integrate what you're doing with what they already believe."

Working on the leading edge of AIDS research while raising a family of seven children, three of them adopted, makes for "a tough balance," Eron said. The older kids help care for the younger ones, and Eron counts himself lucky to work just 10 minutes from home, which allows for more time with the family than if he had to make a long commute.

He also counts himself lucky in his enduring friendship with Binghamton alumni Jim Ludwig '81 and Damian Morris '82. The feeling is mutual. In 1998, Morris, who lives near San Francisco, learned that he had developed a large tumor on the upper end of his spinal cord. Neurosurgeons who examined him concluded there was no way
to remove it. Probably over the next few years, they told Morris, "this is going to grow, and you'll become paralyzed and eventually you'll stop breathing," Eron said.

Eron wouldn't let the matter rest. He showed copies of Morris' x-rays to two neurosurgeons at UNC. Neither felt capable of removing the tumor, but one of them steered Eron to a colleague in New York who agreed to take on the challenge.

In February 1999, Morris and his wife traveled to New York for the surgery, staying at Ludwig's home. Eron flew up as well, and he and Ludwig waited at the hospital during the 10-hour procedure.

" It turned out to be a benign tumor, and it just came out, like a banana out of a peel," Eron said.

Nearly five years later, "I'm doing well," said Morris. "I have some problems, but I'm walking, which was in doubt at one point."

Jim Ludwig "is one of the most loyal and generous friends I've ever had," Morris said. "Joe Eron is a selfless person, a brilliant man who is the epitome of modesty. I am proud and lucky to have been able to call him my friend for the last 25 years."

Dr. Eron is the recipient of the 2005 Edward Weisband Distinguished Alumnus/a Award for Public Service
or Contributions to Public Affairs. This award recognizes one alumnus/alumna each year whose life, work, career and contributions exemplify the highest standards of public service and deepest dedication to public affairs and sustenance of the common good at home and abroad.

-- Merrill Oliver Douglas, MA '82