Obituary: Mitchell P. Fink
Mitchell P. Fink, MD (Fig. 1), one of the most inspiring and influential leaders in the field of intensive care
medicine, died at 66Â years of age on 17 November 2015 after being diagnosed this summer
with an aggressive sarcoma. This devastating news has left many of us with a huge
sense of loss and sadness.
Fig. 1. Mitchell P. Fink
Mitch graduated from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, MO,
in 1976 and completed general surgery training at the National Naval Medical Center
in Bethesda, MD, in 1981. Thereafter, he held faculty positions at the Bethesda Naval
Center and the University of Massachusetts, where he worked as surgeon and intensivist.
In 1992 he moved to the Harvard Medical School, eventually becoming the Johnson and
Johnson Professor in Surgery and surgeon-in-chief at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical
Center. He moved to the University of Pittsburgh in 1999, where he subsequently became
the inaugural chair of the Department of Critical Care Medicine. He founded several
companies based on discoveries from his laboratory and, in 2007, left the university
to oversee the formation of one of these ventures. In 2009 Mitch returned to academia,
joining the faculty at University of California Los Angeles where he held the title
of Professor of Surgery and Vice Chair for Critical Care.
During his career, Mitch cared for thousands of patients with skill and compassion,
amassed a great body of experimental and clinical research, trained and mentored hundreds
of physicians and scientists, demonstrated wonderful entrepreneurship, and carved
a vision of modern multidisciplinary critical care with lasting benefits for our entire
field. For decades, academic medicine has praised the rare individual who excels as
the so-called triple threat: teacher, clinician, and scientist. Mitch was all three
and more, adding to these triple roles the rare gift of visionary leader in both academia
and industry. I have never known anyone quite like Mitch.
His extraordinary career began early with a first author paper in Nature while still in medical school. While working in Bethesda, he forged close relationships
with the National Institutes of Health critical care group, conducting a number of
seminal experimental studies that both helped to establish the utility of animal models
to probe the host response to sepsis, trauma, and shock and to inform our current
understanding of these syndromes. Later, Mitch would conduct pioneering work using
cell-based models of organ dysfunction to tease out the cellular response to stress
from hypoxia and endogenous and exogenous danger signals, exploring key concepts of
mitochondrial dysfunction and dysoxia. In addition to his passion for experimental
research, Mitch also conducted many highly cited clinical studies, co-wrote the Textbook of Critical Care, and served on the editorial boards of numerous journals including Critical Care, Critical Care Medicine, and Intensive Care Medicine.
To all of his work, Mitch brought four enduring characteristics: knowledge, logic,
creativity, and focus. He maintained an encyclopedic knowledge of the world, able
to quote relevant papers, data, and information off the top of his head from a dizzyingly
wide range of art, science, politics, and history. He also exercised crystal-clear
logic, distilling the most complex problem into a series of simple steps, whether
this was a complicated piece of basic science or a tough business decision facing
a start-up biotechnology company. Having concisely summarized any problem, he then
brought great creativity and inventiveness to probe and tackle its solution. Finally,
he always kept a clear sense of purpose, making sure neither he nor his colleagues
ever lost sight of the larger goals of advancing medical knowledge and saving lives.
I came to know Mitch during his tenure in Pittsburgh when he oversaw one of the most
prolific and successful eras in our history, serving as a wonderful mentor and colleague,
and launching the first multidisciplinary department of critical care medicine in
a US medical school. In our daily contact with Mitch, we saw not only his intellect
and drive, but also his warmth, compassion, wit, and grace. His door was always open,
ready to listen to everyone from senior colleagues to junior residents and new staff.
He had words of kindness and advice to coach us through every disappointment and words
of praise and respect for every accomplishment. For me, as for many, Mitch was unquestionably
one of the most supportive and influential people we have ever known. Through both
his words and actions, he taught us not just about medicine and science, but about
life, relationships, honor, duty, and service. We have lost an immense presence. Mitch
is survived by his wife, Judy, and children, Matt and Emily. We extend our deepest
condolences to them. He will be deeply missed.