Marc Straus

Family

Straus is the son of Samuel Straus (1914–1985) an Ashkenazi Jewish Polish immigrant from Sambir (now in the Ukraine), who came to New York impoverished at age 15. Samuel's mother had died when he was three months old. Marc's mother, Dora Straus (1918–2008) was a daughter of immigrants from Austro-Hungary. Her father worked as a tailor in Brooklyn, NY. In 1943 Samuel opened, Roman Cotton Goods, a wholesale textile store, in Manhattan's Lower Eastside.

In 1946, the family moved to West Hempstead, Long Island where he attended public school. At age 10 he a began commuting to Yeshiva Central Queens, an orthodox Jewish school, and at the age of 14 to Yeshiva of Flatbush in Brooklyn. In his first day of High School, he met Livia Selmanowitz, granddaughter of a scholar rabbi, who headed a Ger Hassidic group in Brooklyn. In their senior year they began dating and were married in 1964.

Academic and medical career

Straus earned a BA in history in 1964 from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, and a MD in 1968 from SUNY Downstate Medical Center. He was a medical intern (1968–69) at Kings County Hospital in Brooklyn, NY and 1969 – 71), was a Research Fellow in Drug Research and Development at the National Cancer Institute, working on cancer drug studies in mice which established optimal ways of combining different drugs, with a number of publications in cancer research journals.

From 1971–72 he was a medical resident at Barnes Hospital, Washington University, St. Louis. Here he devised a combination chemotherapy trial for patients with Small Cell lung cancer, an approach that became the basis for many other trials. In 1972–74, he was a clinical oncology fellow at the National Cancer Institute and Head of its Laboratory of Cell Kinetics from which he published numerous papers on the growth and treatment of human cancers. In 1971, he edited the first of three textbooks on lung cancer which for many years were the standard texts.

In 1973 he was recruited as Chief of Oncology and Associate Professor of Medicine at Boston University Medical Center where his clinical and research work focused primarily on breast and lung cancers. From 1978 to 1982 he was Professor of Medicine and Chief of Oncology at New York Medical College and Westchester Medical Center where he continued his clinical and laboratory research work. In all, he published some 100 scientific papers in journals.

From 1982 – 2008 he headed Access Medical Group, a multi-specialty group in the Hudson Valley, NY, which ultimately had 36 doctors, and headed the oncology program at a number of suburban hospitals in the areaIn 1997 he founded a medical management company which managed some 300 doctors in New York state.

He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a Member of the American Association of Cancer Research.

Allegations in a Medical Controversy

In June 1978, two nurses and other researchers who worked with him at the Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) alleged that Straus, head of the oncology division, had ordered them to falsify patients' records, had failed (in violation of law) to get proper consent from patients, and had improperly administered drugs. According to one narrative, the allegations had included changing a patient's birth date to make them eligible for inclusion in a study, reporting treatments and laboratory tests that had never been carried out, and in one instance, Dr Judith P. Swazey alleged the existence of a tumor in a patient who never had one but she left Boston University because she said school officials were reluctant to investigate the incident and even suggested that support for her department's work might be reduced.

The work in question had been carried out as part of a collaborative study with the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) within a project funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Boston University's (BU's) investigation showed that almost 15% of the results were flawed. ECOG erased from their records all data supplied by BUSM, and expelled that research unit from the study.

Straus has denied personal involvement in wrongdoing asserting his innocence and maintains that he has been framed by disgruntled subordinates. Dr Straus said that he had settled with the Government, acknowledging in an agreement to ECOG that false reports were submitted, only after becoming convinced that this legal outcome was unavoidable since the Government's regulations impose these penalties on a principal investigator even when he did not know of any wrongdoing.

On June 30, 1978, Straus resigned from his posts at Boston University Medical Center Hospital (since 1996 part of Boston Medical Center) and BUSM. He subsequently took up posts at the Westchester County Medical Center as Chief of Neoplastic Diseases and the New York Medical College as Professor of Medicine.

Fighting the Allegations

On September 15, 1978, Straus requested that BUMC establish a peer review by experts in the area of cooperative cancer data, but BUMC declined. Straus at his request met with the Executive Committee of ECOG April 23, 1979 and requested a full peer review investigation of the records. ECOG rejected the request.

In 1980, NCI awarded Straus a three-year grant of some $910,000 to conduct research into cancer. Hatch Senate Committee, Vincent T. DeVita Jr., Director of the NCI testified on June 2, 1981, "his agencies award last year of a $910,000 research grant to a scientist (Straus) …on the ground that the charges …had not yet been proven.

In 1981, Straus filed a $33 million lawsuit today against five of his former co-workers, charging they had conspired to discredit his work. Straus spoke publicly for the first time before the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and strongly denied he had engaged in any wrongdoing. Straus alleged forgeries of his signature. Ruth Moran, Straus’ lab chief from 1972 testified, "Having worked side by side with Dr. Straus for 8 years … the allegations to be totally inconsistent with what I know his scientific standards to be… The (BUMC) committee refused to see me. Dr. Straus’ chief data manager (Mary Jane Rimmer, R.N.) reported to me … that she had always been instructed by Dr. Straus to record data accurately."

"Scientists Supporting the Rights of Marc J. Straus, M.D." comprised 78 cancer doctors and researchers in 1981, chaired by Mendel Krim, M.D. and Ruth Moran, Ph.D. They petitioned DeVita, Director NCI and Arthur Hayes, Commissioner, FDA, for an unitary blue ribbon review with full disclosure of relevant documents.

In 1982, two years after the grant was awarded the propriety of that award was called into question by two committees of the U.S. Congress: the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee (chaired by Representative Al Gore (D-Tennessee)), and the Senate Committee on Labor and Human Resources (chaired by Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)). The United States Department of Health and Human Services terminated the grant under Federal regulations passed in 1980, the first time that power had been used. At no time did the committees review the records in question.

In 1982 Straus obtained medical privileges at St. Agnes Hospital in White Plains, NY. As a result of the preceding allegations the Board empaneled a review committee chaired by Terence W. Murphy, M.D., J.D. to make a recommendation regarding privileges. Strauss was appointed Chief of Oncology at Yonkers General Hospital and head of a 22 patient cancer unit. In 1985 he was appointed head of oncology at Putnam Hospital Center and head of a cancer unit.

In October 1982, Straus published a paper in Cancer Treatment Reports, a journal funded by the National Cancer Institute. The propriety of that publication was questioned in the journal Science. Dr. Straus continued to publish scientific clinical studies through 1998.

In June 2005 Dr. Straus was invited as a Visiting Lecturer at the National Institutes of Health.

Business

In 1982, Straus started CarePlus, a public company, a home nutrition companies in the U.S. In 1983 he founded Medical Registry Services, a software company providing cancer registry software support for hospitals. . In 2008 he and his son, Ari, founded MDINR, a software company which supported doctors treating patients with the anti-coagulant, Coumadin.

Contemporary art

Marc and Livia Straus began collecting contemporary art by 1966. Their collection has been featured in The NY Times, Forbes, Harper's Bazaar, Contemporanea, Art & Antiques, and ArtNews. The collection has been listed in Art & Antiques as one of the Top 100 collections in the US.

Straus has written some 35 articles in leading publications on art collecting and art criticism.

In 2002 the couple founded the Hudson Valley Center of Contemporary Art, in Peekskill, NY. Its focus is on emerging artists from around the world and supporting an economically challenged area with education programs. In 2011 Marc Straus opened MARC STRAUS, a contemporary art gallery on Grand Street, Manhattan, NYC across the street from where his father's store had been. The gallery represents 18 artists from 11 different counties. In 2014 Flashart listed MARC STRAUS as among the top 100 galleries in the world.

Public service

From 2004 to the present he is Chairman of the Board of HVCCA. From 1994 – 2004 he was a Trustee at Franklin & Marshall College, Lancaster, PA.

Writings

In 1991 Straus took a workshop at the NYC 92nd Street Y with poet Thomas Lux,and the next year received a Yaddo Fellowship in poetry at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, NY. By now his poems have published in 100 journals including Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, and TriQuarterly. He has three poetry collections published by TriQuarterly Press – Northwestern University Press: ONE WORD (1994), SYMMETRY (2000), NOT GOD (2006), a play in verse . which has been produced on stage at eight different venues including a run at LUNA Stage, NJ in 2009. Marc's poetry has been anthologized many times and he is the recipient of numerous writing prizes including the Robert Penn Warren Award lecture in the Humanities form Yale.

His poetry, which often deals with doctor patient communication and many poems are in the voices of patients or doctors. has been used in the teaching curricula of many medical schools and training programs.