Dr. Thomas Dao, expert in treating breast cancer; at 88
NEW YORK - Dr. Thomas Dao, a former research director at one of the nation’s leading cancer institutes and an early advocate of a conservative approach to breast cancer surgery, died July 16 in Buffalo. He was 88.
The cause was Pick’s disease, a rare neurodegenerative disorder, his daughter Edie Schecter said.
Dr. Dao was director of the breast surgery department at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo from 1957 until 1988. He made contributions in both the clinical treatment of breast cancer and research on how hormones stimulate tumor growth.
“He opposed the very disfiguring radical mastectomy procedure,’’ Dr. Paul Talalay, a professor of pharmacology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said Friday.
Talalay, a specialist in research on strategies to reduce the risk of cancer, said Dr. Dao “not only demonstrated that more conservative approaches to breast surgery were equally effective, but he was an advocate on the national scene for the conservative approach.’’
For decades, radical mastectomy - in which the breast, underlying chest muscle, and lymph nodes are removed - was standard procedure and was often performed immediately after a biopsy determined a malignant tumor was present. Dr. Dao’s research supported the idea that a delay between the biopsy and surgery gave the patient time to consider treatments. The two-step procedure is now common.
In the 1950s, Dr. Dao was a researcher in the laboratory of Dr. Charles B. Huggins at the University of Chicago Medical School. Huggins received a Nobel Prize in 1966 for his studies of the role that hormones play in human cancer.
Working with Huggins, Talalay said, “Thomas Dao participated in the early work on the control of advanced mammary cancer by both the removal of the ovaries and the adrenal gland.
“That was a revolutionary advance,’’ he continued, “in which Dr. Dao was major contributor.’’
Ling Yuan Dao (he took the name Thomas after coming to the United States) was born in Suzhou, China. After receiving his undergraduate and medical degrees at St. John’s University in Shanghai, Dr. Dao came to the United States in early 1950, planning to do postgraduate work and then return. But as Mao Zedong consolidated his power in Beijing, he decided to stay.
