Message from the President
President of The International Research Society of the SCPSC
President, Higashi Sapporo Hospital
Asian Editor, BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care
Member's News
Topics
Introducing interesting papers, for your reference.
Cancer Care in the Era of Artificial Intelligence
Matthew Kurian MD, Jacob J. Adashek DO, Howard (Jack) West MD
JAMA Oncol. Published online March 28, 2024. doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2023.7263
Medicine−Both a Science (Care) and an Art (CARE)
Theodore J. Strange MD, Mario R. Castellanos MD
JAMA. Published online April 3, 2024.
doi:10.1001/jama.2024.2508
Are Psychiatric Disorders Brain Diseases ?−A New Look at an Old Question
Kenneth S. Kendler MD
JAMA Psychiatry. 2024;81(4):325-326.
doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2024.0036
Member's News
Welcoming our latest addition to the Board of Directors
Dr.Philip Larkin
Full Professor
Chair of Palliative Care Nursing
Lausanne University Hospital and University of Lausanne Switzerland
Member's News
January 29, 2024. The Winter issue of the SCPSC Newsletter was published on the BMJSPCare Blog.
BMJ stands for British Medical Journal, the official name of the British medical journal since 1988, supervised by the British Medical Association (English edition) and published by the BMJ Group (English edition). It is internationally authoritative and is considered a must-read journal for doctors in Japan. It is one of the five major medical journals in the world. （Extract from Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia)
History
Contribution to the SCPSC Newsletter
“Question: What is truer than the truth?
Answer: The story.” - The Talmud, 500 AD
William Breitbart M.D.
Chairman
Jimmie C Holland Chair in Psychiatric Oncology
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
New York, New York, USA
President Emeritus, International Psycho-oncology SocietyEditor in Chief, Palliative & Supportive Care ( Cambridge University Press)
The Story
I am extremely grateful to be able to share a few meaningful and memorable moments I have shared over the past 35 years with my colleague, teacher and friend, Dr.Kunihiko Ishitani. The story does begin in Sapporo, in 1990, during the Sapporo Snow Festival with the amazing snow and ice sculptures decorating the city. I was a young Psychiatric-Oncologist/ Psycho-oncologist who had just completed my fellowship at Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center- MSK (from 1984-1986), having been mentored by two pioneers: Jimmie Holland, MD- who founded the field of Psycho-oncology, and Kathleen Foley, MD- who founded the field of Cancer Pain management and American Palliative Medicine. I had been a young Attending Psychiatrist for about 4 years, when my mentors, Dr. Holland and Foley suggested to Dr. Kunihiko Ishitani, that I would be an appropriate speaker at a conference he and his group were planning in Sapporo. I quickly searched for information and discovered that Dr. Ishitani had founded the Higashi Sapporo Hospital in 1983 (just a year before my fellowship at MSK- where Dr. Russell Portenoy and I were fellowship classmates) which was this unique 243 bed hospital specifically for advanced cancer patients that also contained a 58-bed palliative care unit. In Sapporo, on the island of Hokkaido, in northern Japan. I was amazed at this pioneering achievement. Who was this Kunihiko Ishitani? And how could he have become this visionary, pioneering clinician and, as I came to learn over many decades, this extraordinary “Humanist.”
Within months, after Dr. Ishitani’ s generous invitation, I found myself flying to Japan, with my beautiful wife Rachel (my secret weapon). We were off to Sapporo where I would be a speaker, along with Dr. Frank Brescia from Calvary Hospital, to speak at the 1990 4th Sapporo Winter Cancer Seminar on “Cancer and QOL”, featuring Dr. William Breitbart and Dr. Frank Brescia. The Conference itself was a great success, very well attended, with a comprehensive range of topics covered and lively interaction and discussion with conference attendees. I cannot recall exactly, but I think I talked on Delirium, Depression and Fatigue in cancer patients, as these were the areas of my clinical research and writing. I was an unknown entity to Dr. Ishitani. He had taken the word of his colleagues and friends at MSK and Calvary that I was up to the task of delivering high quality lectures, so I was very pleased when I caught a glimpse of him listening to one of my lectures and smiling and nodding. I was truly relieved and proud that I had met his high standards of quality.
Dr. Ishitani and his staff and conference organizers were outstanding and generous hosts. We were treated to musical and dancing events, gala dinners and a tour of the ice/snow sculptures throughout Sapporo. Most impressive to me were the 1/3 scale snow sculptures of Buckingham Palace and the White House!. I was also quite startles by the musical talents of the various speakers at the conference and faculty at the Higashi Sapporo Hospital. Rather than make speeches at the conference gala dinner, people came up and played violin, or piano etc. I particularly recall our dear friend Frank Brescia play the piano. Fortunately, I came prepared, and was able to present Dr. Ishitani with a signed copy of Dr. Holland’s first Textbook of Psycho-oncology. The only instrument I had learned to play as a child was the accordion, and fortunately, to my great relief, there was no accordion available to play! I particularly remember being taken on a tour of the Higashi Sapporo Hospital, and meeting Dr. Ishitani’s Staff. I was most honored and privileged to meet the senior nurse in the hospital, a regal woman, who was esteemed by the entire hospital staff and held in extraordinarily high regard by Dr. Ishitani. The final dinner of our stay in Sapporo, was a more informal traditional dinner in one of Dr. Ishitani’ s favorite local restaurants. We sat on pillows with our legs crossed at the table and proceeded to enjoy the feast. I learned a great deal about Japanese cuisine that evening and ate dishes I had never encountered in my sheltered New York City life. My wife Rachel was enthralled by the entire cascade of events and sights in Sapporo which were pleasantly exotic for us. Rachel always remembers that night in Sapporo, because a debate ensued as to whether in fact Rachel resembled the Australian actress Olivia Newton John. I believe the consensus was that she did, and we all laughed heartily at her insistence that she did not resemble her at all! Our flight hope was filled with pleasurable memories of Sapporo, and I left with the questions “Who is this Kunihiko Ishitani? And Why am I so impressed with him?"
Fast forward about 5-7 years and I am at the lectern on stage at the headquarters of the U.S National Institutes of Health (NIH) / National Cancer Institute, giving a lecture on Pain in AIDS to an audience of about 200 national and international leaders in Pain and Palliative Care who are attended a Consensus Conference on Pain and Palliative Care. The room is filled with researchers, clinician leaders, many researchers who have received funding from the NIH, and opinion leaders from around the US and the world. I am in the middle of my lecture, showing power point slides of various research studies that I have conducted and those of other researchers whose work has corroborated my findings or expanded on our clinical knowledge base. I stop for a moment and realize that my talk needs a bit of color and possibly humor. After all, it can be boring just citing one study after another to make your teaching points So, even surprising myself, I stop for a moment and announce to the rather large and esteemed audience and say, “By the way, in this talk I will only cite research that has been conducted by personal friends from all over the world.” Well, the room erupted in laughter. Much to my relief. And on the left side of the audience there is one individual who is laughing with such intensity that his chair has begun to tip over. Then I notice. It is Dr. Kunihiko Ishitani! Once he has collected himself, I then announce to the audience, “We have a very esteemed individual with us today, a true pioneer of Palliative Care, Dr.Kunihiko Ishitani from Sapporo! Please join me in welcoming him and honoring him!” The audience responds with enthusiastic applause, and Dr .Ishitani graciously acknowledges the applause but shakes his finger at me smiling, admonishing me for making a fuss over his presence in the conference audience. On the train ride back to New York City from Washington D.C. I find myself smiling and realize that I have learned something about my hero Kunihiko Ishitani. I realize that he is a man of extraordinarily acute intelligence because he, above most others in the audience, was able to truly appreciate by obscure and idiosyncratic sense of humor! Certainly, a sign of great intelligence! Secondly, I have learned that Kunihiko Ishitani is a man of humility. A quality that is possessed by only those of the greatest intelligence and understanding of the human condition. Humanity.
It is 2017, and I am on a 20-hour flight from New York City to Sapporo Japan. My travel mate is Dr. Gavril Pasternak, a colleague from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who is a true pioneer in basic pain research, having identified multiple opioid receptors in his research laboratory. We were on our way to participate in the 2nd Sapporo Conference for Palliative and Supportive Care in Cancer, organized by Dr. Kunihiko Ishitani and the Higashi Sapporo Hospital. The several day Conference was magnificent, with plenary sessions, and symposia, seminars, and workshops. I had a wonderful time giving a plenary lecture on Meaning Centered Psychotherapy (MCP) in advanced cancer patients, and also conducting a full day workshop on MCP. The conference was attended by close to a thousand participants. There were multiple receptions, and lunches, a gala dinner and a Tea Ceremony. At one of the receptions, I had the opportunity to reconnect with my good friend and former research fellow Friedrich Stiefel from Switzerland. “Fritz” was doing a sabbatical with Dr. Ishitani at the Higashi Sapporo Hospital, and he was recounting how fascinating the experience was. But the highlight of that reception was getting a chance to talk at length with my good friend and teacher Kunihiko Ishitani. He and I began to discuss philosophy at great length, in particular existential philosophy. Dr.Ishitani was in fact truly well versed in the great western philosophers and existentialist and we talked at great length about everyone from Kant to Jacques Derrida. I realized that there was this entire dimension to Kunihiko that I was not fully aware of and again it reinforced and clarified my sense of who he is. He truly is a Humanist, and an Existentialist, whose passion it is to understand the human condition and human suffering, in order to ameliorate suffering. This is who he is. This has been his life’s work and his mission.
When I arrived home from Sapporo, I held my wife Rachel tightly and kissed my very own secret weapon of over 35 years.
Announcement from the Secretariat
While editing this issue, we were looking for a photo that would give you a sense of spring, and we received some wonderful photos from Dr. Friedrich Stiefel, Professor of Medicine at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, who serves on the senior advisory committee of our conference, that we will share with you all.
We hope that you can enjoy a view of Lausanne's beautiful cathedral and cherry blossoms in full bloom.
We hope you enjoy a happy and healthy spring (or autumn for those in the southern hemisphere).
