Memorial Hospital, on the current MSKCC campus, 1275 York Ave.
(MSKCC) is a
cancer treatment and research institution founded in
1884 as the
New York Cancer Hospital. The main campus is located at 1275
York Avenue, between 67th and 68th Streets in
New York City, with other locations in
Basking Ridge, New Jersey,
Long Island and
Westchester County, New York.
History
MSKCC is actually composed of two intimately related institutions. Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases, currently led by Physician-In-Chief, Dr. Robert Wittes, provides patient care, whose origins stemmed from a medical laboratory established on the campus of
Cornell Medical Center and funded by
John D. Rockefeller, in 1900. The original Memorial Hospital building was constructed in 1939 by a group that included
John J. Astor and his wife, Charlotte. Between 1970 and 1973 a new memorial hospital was built on the same site - originally donated by
John D. Rockefeller, Jr.Sloan–Kettering Institute, currently led by Dr. Thomas Kelly, is MSKCC's basic-science research arm. The research institute was established in 1945 with a
US$4 million gift from the foundation of
Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Half the gift was to fund construction of a 13-story research facility and the other half to provide annual operating expenses.
Charles F. Kettering, vice president and director of research for
General Motors Corporation, was to organize and apply modern American industrial research techniques to cancer research.
In addition to the Sloan grant, a public campaign to raise an additional US$3 million to US$4 million was undertaken and an important financier who stepped in at a critical juncture was the ongoing supporter
Laurance Rockefeller, of the philanthropic
Rockefeller family.
At the
August 8,
1945 announcement, Sloan and Kettering emphasized that the dramatic news of the
atomic bomb, developed with a US$2 billion research program, was a graphic illustration of what can be accomplished by scientifically organized research as practiced by American industry. If as much money and talented personnel were available as the government had for the atomic bomb, they said, very rapid progress could be made in cancer research.
The current president of Memorial Sloan–Kettering is
Nobel Prize winner
Harold E. Varmus.
Reputation
MSKCC has long been a leader in cancer
surgery,
chemotherapy, and
radiotherapy. It was the first to develop services specifically dedicated to the psychiatric aspects of cancer, to the relief of cancer pain, and to genetic counseling.
As of 2007,
U.S. News & World Report ranks MSKCC as the #2 cancer hospital in the country. The #1 position belongs to
M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
=Research=
MSKCC is affiliated with the
Weill Medical College of Cornell University, the Tri-Institutional MD/PhD program and the Tri-Institutional Training Program in Chemical Biology, which include MSKCC as one of its three sites (along with Weill-Cornell and
Rockefeller University). MSKCC and Weill-Cornell operate a joint graduate program in biomedical sciences, the
Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences. In 2004, MSKCC also established an independent graduate school, with a Ph.D. program in cancer biology: the
Louis V. Gerstner, Jr. Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. The inaugural class was admitted in July 2006.
MSKCC's new Human Oncology and
Pathogenesis Program, based at Memorial Hospital, focuses on translational research, with the goal of bringing discoveries made in the lab to the patient at the bedside.
Another focus of research at MSKCC is
immunotherapy, or using the body's own immune system to fight cancer cells. In 2006 the center was one of six institutes (along with research centers at
Harvard University, the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
Johns Hopkins University, the
University of Chicago, and
Stanford University) selected to receive a US$20 million grant for cancer research from the Ludwig Fund, created by the American billionaire
Daniel K. Ludwig. The grant, one of the largest earmarked for cancer research the hospital has ever received, will be used for immunology research.
Patient care
There are 437 beds at Memorial Hospital and there were 21,179 patient admissions in 2006. MSKCC opened a new surgical center in the summer of 2006 with 21 operating rooms. Legendary New York pianist
George Feyer gave his time regularly for decades to entertain the patients and play at the Center, until just before his death in 2001.
In music
Vampire Weekend's song
A-Punk made a reference to Sloan–Kettering in one verse, saying:
"A thousand years in one piece of silver,
she took it from his lily-white hand,
showed no fear- she'd seen the thing,
in the young men's wing at Sloan–Kettering."
The Antlers' album
Hospice tells an explicit story (in first-person narrative) of a man losing a loved one to bone cancer and watching her die in the Sloan Kettering Cancer Ward while he is beside her.
In movies
In the movie "
Step Brothers," Will Ferrell's character claims to have "smoked pot with
Johnny Hopkins." He then tells his mother that "It was Johnny Hopkins and Sloan Kettering, and they were blazing that shit up every day."
Mob initiation
In 1985,
contract killer Joseph Paruta, who served under
Sammy Gravano, was a terminal
lung cancer patient, and was initiated into the
Gambino crime family in a ceremony in his room at the cancer center and became a "
made man." He later succumbed to the disease at his home in
Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.
