John P. Peters

John P. Peters was known not only for his pioneering work in human metabolism, but also for his passionate efforts to bring National Health Insurance to the United States at the close of the second World War. He was accused of being a Communist because of this cause and his loyalty was questioned by a review board of the National Institutes of Health where he served in a $50-per-year consultant position on a Public Health Service peer review panel. He fought to clear his name, to have the right to face who had accused him in a case that ultimately came before the Supreme Court in 1955 (Peters v. Hobby, 349 U.S. 331). He won the case, but not the precedent he had hoped for: the right to face his accuser. Instead, the Supreme Court stated his dismissal was illegal by the Loyalty Review Board. They had reopened his case in 1953 after he had been cleared by 2 other NIH loyalty boards and the Court decided they had no cause to address his loyalty yet again. (Interestingly, the chairman of this Loyalty Review Board was also a Yalie, Hiriam Bingham, the man who “discovered” Machu Picchu). He was deeply disappointed that he was unable to get the Supreme Court to decide that he had a right to face his accuser. He knew it was a secret informant, not under oath, not present at the loyalty hearings, and he died without knowing who this person was. His third child, a son and also a physician, Richard Morse Peters, M.D. tried for many years using the Freedom of Information Act to request government records, without success even at his death in 2006. This tactic was used frequently during McCarthyism and John Punnett Peters, M.D. was quoted as saying, “It doesn’t matter much to an old fellow like myself, but it is the principle of the thing that counts.” In 2007, an undergraduate history major at Yale, Jonathan Bressler, was able to find out the name of his accuser, Louis Budenz, a former active member of the Communist Party USA and managing editor of the Daily Worker, who had recanted his beliefs and become well paid as an informant. == Early life and education ==

John P. Peters, Jr was born on December 4, 1887 in Philadelphia, PA, the third child of John Punnett Peters and Gabriella Brooke Forman Peters. His oldest brother, Thomas McClure Peters had died in 1885, at less than 2 years of age and his older sister, Brooke, had been born on August 1, 1885. He was one of 6 surviving siblings that included Frazier Forman Peters, who became a well known architect, especially known for his signature stone houses in Westport, CT. John P. Peters lived abroad with his family as a young child while his father conducted excavations in Babylonia and then moved to Dresden, Germany and then Beirut, Lebanon. His father, John Punnett Peters, was then elected Rector of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in New York, the same church his own father had served as Rector. graduating in 1908 and then returned to St. John Manlius School for one year to teach English and Latin. He started medical school in 1909 at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York City (now Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons). While in medical school, he met his future wife, Charlotte Morse Hodge, but they were not allowed to marry until he had completed the first 2 years of his post graduate training. This was a standard policy of medical training at the time, because it was deemed a distraction to aspiring doctors and this vow of celibacy was not abandoned at all U.S. medical schools until after WWII. Jack and Charlotte married in June, 1915, the same month he finished his 2-year internship at Presbyterian Hospital in New York. He then began a 2-year fellowship for research in clinical medicine at the same hospital and while there also held appointments as instructor in clinical medicine at Columbia University and as assistant visiting physician at Presbyterian Hospital. When the United States entered World War I, he was ordered abroad in May, 1917 with the Presbyterian Base Hospital Unit, which took over British General Hospital No. 1 at Etretat, France. While there, he was initially able to do some “research work in war medicine” but this fell by the wayside as his“administrative work increased to such an extent as to stop all investigation.” == Career ==

He returned to New York after the war and held positions of instructor of medicine at Cornell Medical College and Adjunct assistant physician to Bellevue Hospital, New York. Each year, the American Society of Nephrology gives out “The John P. Peters Award which recognizes individuals who have made substantial research contributions to the discipline of nephrology and have sustained achievements in one or more domains of academic medicine including clinical care, education and leadership.” == Death ==

John P. Peters, M.D. died of the complications of a heart attack he had suffered several months earlier on December 29, 1955, at the age of 68, less than a year after his Supreme Court case was adjudicated. ==References==