John L. Fahey, MD, emeritus director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Immunology and Disease at the University of California, Los Angeles, died August 19, 2014, at the age of 89. He was a member of the AACR for more than 56 years.
Fahey was born Sept. 8, 1924, in Cleveland. He joined the U.S. Army in 1943, and then studied at the Ohio State University in Columbus, Wayne College of Medicine in Detroit, and Harvard Medical School in Boston. He then joined the U.S. Public Health Service and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) at the National Institutes of Health in 1953, eventually becoming the first chief of the NCI’s new Laboratory of Immunology in 1963. Fahey joined the faculty at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in 1971 as professor and chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology with a joint appointment in the Department of Medicine.
Fahey’s laboratory and clinical research was focused on immunology, specifically cancer, auto-immune disease, immune deficiency, and AIDS. He was also very involved in international training in immunology and HIV and AIDS research in developing countries, particularly in India.
Fahey was founding president of the Clinical Immunology Society. He first joined the AACR in 1958 and was also active in the American Society of Immunology, the American Society for Microbiology, The Association for American Physicians, and the Clinical Research Society.
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