October 7, 2010

In Memoriam: Christopher D. Saudek, Director and Founder of the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Diabetes Center

Dear Colleagues,

It is with great sadness that I am writing to let you know that Christopher Dyer Saudek, the director and founder of the Johns Hopkins Comprehensive Diabetes Center and a pioneer in the development of implantable insulin pumps, died late last night. The cause was metastatic melanoma.

A tireless healer, ever available to patients, a prolific researcher and a devoted mentor to generations of fellows, residents and medical students, Chris earned a national and international reputation for his efforts to slow the advance of diabetes. Known for his compassion and unsurpassed understanding of the human condition, he made time for his patients no matter what. His humanity and decency were an inspiration to all who knew him.

A member of the Hopkins faculty for 29 years, in 2007 he turned some of his attention overseas as the driving force behind a Johns Hopkins initiative in Trinidad and Tobago, a South Caribbean nation where a staggering one in five residents have diabetes. He was passionate about the program, designed to teach medical professionals on the island how to improve care for their diabetes patients and better spot potential complications early enough to do something about them. He relished the opportunity to improve the health of an entire nation.

A past president of the American Diabetes Association, Chris was the Hugh P. McCormick Family Professor of Endocrinology and Metabolism at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and a member of the faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 1984, he founded our diabetes center, which provided an innovative, rigorous and holistic approach to the treatment of a disease that became epidemic over the course of his career. For more than 20 years, he was also program director of the Johns Hopkins General Clinical Research Center.

In his own research, he focused on the development of an internal insulin pump, and in the 1980s, he implanted one of the first remote-controlled insulin pumps in a patient. His work, published widely, laid the groundwork for advances in diabetes treatment that changed the lives of so many.

I know you join me and the entire Hopkins community in extending profound condolences to his wife, Susan, and their four children and nine grandchildren, who will keep his spirit alive by working to help others and sailing the waters he loved off the coast of Maine.

Sincerely,

Edward D. Miller, M.D.
Dean of the Medical Faculty