Legacy of medical pioneer lives in children
Published: February 21, 2005
Section: Front, page A14

© 2005- Landmark Communications Inc.
VIRGINIA BEACH - THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT VIRGINIA BEACH - Dr. Gary Dean Hodgen, an internationally renowned researcher who helped push Eastern Virginia Medical School to the forefront of reproductive science, died Saturday after a long illness. He was 61.


Hodgen joined EVMS as scientific director of the Jones Institute for Reproductive Medicine in July 1984 and was credited with revolutionary advances in the fields of fertility, contraception and genetic screening in embryos.

He retired from that post in 2001 because of health issues, but remained a professor emeritus at EVMS.

"Dr. Hodgen was a visionary scientist who worked tirelessly to advance women's health and reproductive medicine," EVMS President J. Sumner Bell, M.D. said Sunday.

"His legacy lives on in the thousands of families who continue to benefit from his research and the many researchers whose careers he mentored."

"He was, above all, a basic scientist who understood the importance of doing research that was perfectly relevant," said Dr. Howard W. Jones Jr., who, with his wife Georgeanna, established the first in-vitro fertilization program in the country, now the Jones Institute.

Hodgen preferred work that directly helped people, Jones said, even if it put him at odds with the established medical and political hierarchies.

"That's what sets him apart among many basic scientists," Jones, now professor emeritus of obstetrics and gynecology at EVMS, said Sunday. "He was just interested in knowledge. The thing that drove him was that he was an innovator."

Until recently, Hodgen was perhaps best known as a pioneer in screening embryos for genetic diseases.

He was the first to use the process to help a couple have a healthy child after they had lost a daughter to Tay-Sachs, a disease that paralyzes and kills its victims when they are toddlers.

The Jan. 27, 1994, birth of Brittany Nicole Abshire to parents Renee and David Abshire of Louisiana was hailed worldwide.

"Every time we look at her, our hearts are filled with such emotion for him,'' Renee Abshire said of Hodgen in 2001. "What can you say about a man who completely changed your life? There aren't enough words to say what he means to us.''

In more recent years, Hodgen was credited with bringing EVMS the first commercial application for its research. He developed Seasonale, a new class of contraceptive that allows women to have fewer menstrual cycles.

He also helped establish a world-class research program called CONRAD that fosters the development of contraceptives and products to stem the transmission of sexually transmitted diseases in third-world countries.

"In a race, it's always good to be a winner and he liked to be a winner," Jones said.

Hodgen, an Indiana native, was a graduate of Purdue University.

He started at the National Institutes of Health as a staff fellow and rose to chief of the Pregnancy Research Branch in the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Some of his work at the NIH led to the development of the home pregnancy test. He pioneered fetal surgery in primates to correct spina bifida, an operation now being performed on humans.

He revealed how unborn babies suffer brain damage from their mothers' alcohol use; he established that women could bear children using donated eggs; and his insights into the menstrual cycle, ovulation and fertility hormones have helped untold numbers of women bear children.

Despite his achievements, Hodgen sometimes made his superiors at NIH nervous.

In 1982, a year after research by Jones and his wife contributed to the birth of the nation's first baby from in-vitro fertilization, Hodgen was a rising star at NIH. The Joneses were so impressed with his work that he was invited to address a conference of doctors.

Hodgen's supervisor told him not to go, citing legislation that prohibited government scientists from participating in in-vitro research. The dispute made national news.

Hodgen had been frustrated by regulations before. He had been submitting plans for genetic diagnosis of embryos for years, only to see them shot down.

"He thought things through, and if he felt he was right, he was prepared to defend that," Jones said.

Dr. Mason C. Andrews, a co-founder of EVMS, and Dr. William Mayer, its president at the time, lured Hodgen away.

In 1984, he came to the Jones Institute as its scientific director. He said he was attracted by the prospect of pursuing the genetic work on embryos that the NIH had so often rejected.

Landing Hodgen was a coup for the fledgling medical school.

At the time of his retirement in 2001, he had brought in more than $258 million in research funds from federal agencies, private foundations, philanthropic gifts and the pharmaceutical industry .

It was his research that will be his most important legacy.

H odgen developed hormone replacement therapies and new birth-control pills. He designed ways to predict a woman's susceptibility to osteoporosis, to test men for infertility and to help men with low sperm counts become fathers.

While politicians and activists in the 1980s and '90s focused on RU-486 as an abortion pill, Hodgen recognized its potential to alleviate a wide range of medical problems, from endometriosis to brain tumors and breast and uterine cancers.

In recent years, Hodgen oversaw the creation of embryos for stem-cell research, a decision that has drawn the most intense criticism of EVMS since the "test-tube" baby.

Sometimes, Hodgen's words made headlines, such as when he championed federal funding for fetal-tissue research.

When President Clinton overturned a Reagan-era ban on using federal money for the work, Hodgen was quoted in Newsweek proclaiming, "It's the greatest day for science since the Scopes monkey trial."

Yet, with all his drive and focus, Hodgen "was a very pleasant guy," Jones said. "He enjoyed talking about science. He had a good sense of humor and he was good company."

He also found time to work with young people, serving as a Sunday School teacher and counseling teenage runaways in Washington, D.C.

Recent disputes between EVMS and the Jones Institute Foundation threaten to "tarnish" Hodgen's legacy, Jones said.

Earlier this year, EVMS filed a lawsuit against the foundation over what could be as much as $20 million from patents on products developed at the Institute, including Seasonale. The foundation has countersued. At issue is how the money should be divided between EVMS and the foundation.

"He thought he had that all fixed," Jones said.

{CAPTION} Dr. Gary Dean Hodgen was credited with advances in fertility, contraception and genetic screening .