John Bienenstock, known internationally as a visionary physician, scientist, academic and a leader at McMaster University, is receiving tributes from his university colleagues. He died July 25 at age 85.McMaster University
To John Bienenstock, it was okay to fail. It wasn’t okay, however, to not try.
Whether dealing with setbacks in his research or family tragedy, Dr. Bienenstock, an internationally renowned pioneer in the field of immunology, had no interest in dwelling on what could have been or assigning blame, his son Adam Bienenstock said.
“None of that matters if you tried,” Adam said, recalling his father’s oft-repeated phrase when met with a blow: “Now, we must move forward.”
Dr. Bienenstock was known for his ground-breaking work in introducing the concept of the mucosal immune system, as well as his later research in neuroimmunology, exploring connections between the brain and immune system. He died on July 25 of a heart attack at the age of 85.
Family and friends remember him as a generous and highly influential mentor and leader, an insatiably curious visionary, a talented artist, adventurer and a terrible but enthusiastic outdoorsman. He worked hard, challenging others to work hard too, but he did so with a large dose of fun.
John Bienenstock was born on Oct. 6, 1936 in Budapest, Hungary, the second of two children. His mother was a member of Budapest’s café society. His father was a physician, who helped established a company that produced over-the-counter medications. The family relocated to London in 1939, amid growing concerns for their safety preceding the Second World War.
He was not particularly interested in religion, his wife, Dody Bienenstock (née Sanders), said, though his Reform Jewish family observed high holidays. These were sombre affairs during which they remembered those they lost to the Holocaust. By 1944, the four of them were the only surviving members of the Bienenstock family; everyone else was dead, Dody Bienenstock said.
Against this backdrop of loss and sadness, he nevertheless thrived in England. He was vivacious and outgoing, easily making friends and excelling at rugby and academics. At 14, he and a friend hitchhiked on their own to the south of France, where his older sister was working. “He was quite brave and adventurous from an early age,” Dody said.
He initially entered the classics stream at school, before changing tack to study medicine at King’s College and Westminster Hospital.
At the hospital, he met his future wife while doing his surgery rotation. Dody, then a junior anesthetist who later became a psychiatrist, first encountered him in surgery as they worked on a man with a serious head injury from a motor scooter accident. On their second encounter, again in an operating room, he was reluctantly removing a patient’s appendix, under the guidance of his supervisor.
“He didn’t really like surgery very much and he was taking a long time,” Dody said, explaining she became cross at him for taking so long.
Once they were finished, he asked her whether she had any money. When she replied yes, she recalled, “He said, ‘Good, I’ll take you out for a drink.’”
The two hit it off.
“Oh, he was funny and he was smart and he was very good-looking and had lots of hair, which he didn’t have later, and he was fit and energetic,” she said, noting that whenever bursts of laughter could be heard, that was where one would likely find him. “He just made people enjoy life.”
The couple married in 1961 and had the first of their three children in 1963.
Despite being a skilled clinician, he was drawn to research because he was compelled to understand how things worked, Dody said. In 1964, the young family relocated to the United States, where he was offered a fellowship at Harvard University. The move was meant to be temporary, so he could earn his “BTA” – or “Been To America” – credentials, which were then considered necessary to get ahead in academic medicine in Britain.
But instead of returning after the fellowship, they stayed in the U.S., where he took a job at the Buffalo General hospital. As the Vietnam War loomed, however, he had no desire to be conscripted into the army (”He’s not a war-like man,” Dody said), so he moved with his family to Hamilton to join McMaster University’s budding medical school.
There, he made his mark, both in helping to develop the university’s trailblazing medical school, and in immunology, which was then a young field.
He served as chair of the department of pathology, and later as dean and vice-president of the faculty of health sciences until 1997. In these roles, he recruited and mentored many exceptional minds, with the ambition that they not only be the best in Canada, but the best in the world, according to his friend and mentee, Kevin Smith, president and chief executive of Toronto’s University Health Network.
“When he saw a glimmer of hope, a glimmer of excellence in people, he nurtured it, nourished it,” Dr. Smith said.
Adam explained that his father believed there is far more to one’s life than the work they produce, and that one’s real legacy is the difference they make to the people they support and mentor. He took a genuine interest in others, and had a gift for making people feel important, he said.
When it came to his research, his pursuit was “quite different from what was going on in the rest of the world,” said his colleague and friend Jack Gauldie, a distinguished professor of pathology and molecular medicine at McMaster.
The body has two surfaces, Dr. Gauldie explained – the outer surface, the skin, and the inner, mucosal, surface. Dr. Bienenstock was “one of the first and best” at understanding these two surfaces involved two separate immune systems, and that the eyes, nose, upper larynx, lungs, stomach and intestines, all share a common mucosal immune system, Dr. Gauldie said.
Those who worked with him remember his exceptional ability to see the big picture. He was ahead of his time in thinking about how the brain and gut communicated, and in viewing the inflammatory response as an underlying mechanism for many diseases, from heart disease to cancer to Alzheimer’s disease, Dr. Smith said.
Among his honours, he was invested in the Order of Canada in 2002 and inducted into the Canadian Medical Hall of Fame in 2011.
Throughout his illustrious career, however, he made sure to take the month of August off every year. When his children were young, he often used this time to go camping with his family, whose company he cherished.
“He was, first off, I will say, terrible at it,” Adam said, recalling camping mishaps involving chasing bear cubs through their campsite and a giant, leaky canvas tent that needed to be painted with waterproofing each year. “It was always mayhem.”
Yet, he was in love with the Northern Ontario wilderness, and he and Dody later acquired a cottage on Georgian Bay. An avid and talented painter, he featured this landscape, with its windswept pines, heavily in his paintings.
Dr. Bienenstock’s death was preceded by that of his eldest, Jimson Bienenstock, who died by suicide in May. This loss was devastating. But as he did throughout his life, he had no interest in laying blame or ruminating about what anyone could have done differently, Adam said.
“None of that matters,” he quoted him as saying. “We move forward now, together.”
Prior to his own death, Dr. Bienenstock continued to be an active researcher and director of the McMaster Brain-Body Institute. He had been preparing to give a talk in Davos,Switzerland in September.
He leaves his wife, Dody; his children Adam and Robin; grandchildren, Bella, Elsa, Sam, Leo, Sebastiano and Oliva; and sister, Tsultrim Zangmo.