J
One letter was all that was needed to know who you were talking about. Emil J Freireich died on February 1 as one of the most distinguished medical oncologists in all of history—and one of the first. In a discipline still demarcated by the lines between doctors who use surgery, radiation or drugs to treat cancer, medical oncology, the use of the drugs, is the newest sub-discipline. It was begun by visionaries at the National Cancer Institute in the mid-1950s. J Freireich was one of those at ground zero.