Jewish Contributions to Humanity

# in a series

The Jewish
scientists behind
Vitamin C, insulin
and the
human genome.

Hope Not Handcuffs was introduced at a press conference in the Downriver area.

“and she said it’s the most therapeutic thing she’s ever done for her-
self. She says knowing she couldn’t save her own child, but maybe
being able to save someone else’s child is really healing for her.”
Once somebody enters the program, he or she continues to be
monitored. “Our angels stay in touch with
you while you’re in recovery and as you
come out of recovery,” Davis said. “Many
alumni of the program meet each week to
stay connected to a recovery community.”

THE OPIOID CRISIS

The opioid epidemic is one of the largest
crises our country has ever faced. “Programs
like this are allowing communities to come
together to fight it and to heal,” Davis says.
According to Wechsler, many addicts turn
Oakland County is launching the
to crime to fund their addiction. “My client’s
Hope Not Handcuffs in several
are primarily committing theft crimes to
police departments. The pro-
fund their addiction,” she says. “I’m watching
gram needs supplies for their
these people go to jail and come out expect-
ed to be sober; but they were never taught
angel kits. The angel kits consist
how to be sober.”
of comfort items for when par-
According to Davis, “Addiction is not a
ticipants arrive at the police sta-
moral failing; it’s a disease. Every study tells
tion. They need blankets, water,
us that it is. In Macomb County, it costs $90
mints or other hard candy,
a day to jail someone. For what? So that they
gum, crackers, granola bars,
can go back out and use again? It’s better to
chips, female hygiene products,
take that money and put it into treatment
male care items, etc. If you are
and services for the person who’s sick.
interested in donating items,
“We don’t punish people who have cancer
contact Lisa at (586) 855-4701.
and go back out and smoke,” she adds. “We
To register to become an angel
still give them treatment. We don’t punish
volunteer, go to
people who have diabetes and eat pumpkin
familiesagainstnarcotics.org/
pie and go into diabetic shock. We treat
hopenothandcuffs-angel.
them because we know humans fail. Addicts
should be treated the same.”
According to Wechsler, the cost to jail
someone in Oakland County is $105 per day. “We need to shift our
spending to accommodate treatment for those who need it,” she
says.

Want To Help?

OAKLAND COUNTY

“The opioid crisis in Oakland County is in the thick of it,” Wechsler
says.
Hope Not Handcuffs is in place in Ferndale, Holly and Troy
and is coming soon to Clawson, Farmington, Farmington Hills,
Huntington Woods, Madison Heights, Royal Oak, South Lyon,
Southfield, Waterford, White Lake, Wixom and West Bloomfield.
West Bloomfield recently filed the applications to join the pro-
gram and should get it launched “fairly soon,” says Police Chief
Michael Patton. “We’ve seen how the program has impacted over-

TADEUSZ REICHSTEIN (1897-1996).
b. Wloclawek, Poland. d. Basel, Switzerland.
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine—1950.
Healing our bodies and our bones.
The next time you take a vitamin C supplement to treat a
cold, or drink orange juice with vitamin C added, you can thank
Tadeusz Reichstein. The Polish chemist was the first person to
ever synthesize vitamin C, which allowed it to be marketed and
sold to the public as an independent supplement. His creation
of the “Reichstein process” led scientists and industry to be able to efficiently mass
produce ascorbic acid, which, among other uses, serves as an antioxidant additive
to foods. His Nobel Prize, though, was not for his work with vitamin C but for his
advancement of arthritis treatment through the isolation of cortisone—a result of his
work on the hormones of the adrenal gland. His synthesis of other steroids has also
helped make the painful inflammation of arthritis more bearable for millions of people.

RACHMIEL LEVINE (1910-1998).

b. Zaleszczyki, Poland. d. Boston, MA.
Finding the key for diabetes treatment.
Until Rachmiel Levine’s landmark study on dogs in the 1950s,
diabetes was a far more feared disease than it is today. Diabetes
is a disease that’s characterized by the inability of cells to absorb
sugar (which can result in a dangerously high blood sugar). Before
his discovery, medicine’s conventional wisdom held that insulin
needed to enter a cell before that cell could absorb sugar. Levine,
though, proved that insulin actually works on the outside of cells and
triggers them to take in sugar that’s in the blood. This is now known
as the “Levine effect”. In 1978, while serving as executive medical
director at City of Hope in southern California, Levine and a team of scientists from
City of Hope and Genentech synthesized insulin from recombinant DNA, a discovery
whose impact is quite literally immeasurable.

ARTHUR KORNBERG (1918-2007).
b. New York, New York. d. Stanford, CA.
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine—1959.
Helping crack the genetic code.
Kornberg became the head of the National Institutes of Health’s
(NIH) Enzyme and Metabolism Section by the time he was only 29.
While at the NIH, he co-discovered the chemical reactions that
form coenzymes called nucleotides—key substances in cellular
function. Later, while the director of the microbiology department
at Washington University School of Medicine, Kornberg began searching for an
enzyme involved in constructing DNA, basic to genes and the hereditary code. Within
two years he extracted and purified a bacterial enzyme, Polymerase I, which is key in
the replication and assembly of nucleotides, and thus also of DNA. The discovery was
a key step in genome analysis, which holds immense promise in the development of
new medical and pharmacological treatments for diseases. For this breakthrough in
DNA replication, Kornberg shared the 1959 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
with Severo Ochoa.

Original Research by Walter L. Field Sponsored by Irwin S. Field Written by Jared Sichel

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May 10 • 2018

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