Arthur Bank

Arthur Bank, MD is an Emeritus Professor of Medicine and of Genetics and Development at Columbia University. He is a graduate of Columbia College and Harvard Medical School. He worked as a medical researcher at Columbia for 45 years where he was a professor and a recipient of many grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Cooley's anemia Foundation and the March of Dimes.

His latest book, published in 2013, is "Searching for the Best Medicine: The Life and Times of a Doctor and Patient." It is part-memoir, part-medicine, part-hematology. It also describes the author's view of modern medicine and our changing times, dominated recently by financial considerations.

Dr. Bank's first book,"Turninig Blood Red: The Fight for Life in Cooley's Anemia," published in 2008, describes a genetic disease, beta thalassemia, and the author's research into the disease. Dr. Bank's work clarified how certain inherited anemias like sickle cell disease and Cooley's anemia (beta thalassemia) develop. He pioneered research into understanding beta thalassemia at the molecular level: first at the level of the protein defect that leads to the disease; then at the level of the DNA, describing new genetic defects and mechanisms that cause the disease.In recent years,

Dr. Bank has been involved in using hemogobin gene therapy to treat Cooley's anemia. He has also been focused on investigating the control of human fetal hemoglobin; if fetal hemoglobin could be increased to high levels in adult red blood cells, it could cure Cooley's anemia and sickle cell disease.He is the author of over 200 research and clinical articles.

Dr. Bank was also Chief of the Division of Hematology in the Department of Medicine at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital, now New York-Presbyterian from 1980 to 2005. He treated both general medical patients and hematology-oncology patients at Columbia-Presbyterian for many years. He was also a teacher at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Dr. Bank's can be reached at: ab13@columbia.com. He also has a web page at arthurbank.com.