- Person
- Miriam Adelson
- Lived
- b. 1945
- Field
- Addiction medicine
- From
- Israeli-American
The story
Miriam Adelson was born in Tel Aviv in 1945 and grew up in Israel. She earned a bachelor's degree in microbiology and genetics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a medical degree, magna cum laude, from Tel Aviv University. She served two years in the Israel Defense Forces and later became head physician of internal medicine and emergency medicine at Rokach (Hadassah) Hospital in Tel Aviv. From there she turned to a field many doctors avoided: drug addiction.
In 1986 she went to The Rockefeller University in New York, one of the world's leading biomedical research institutions. From 1986 to 1989 she worked there as an associate physician specialising in drug addiction, and she has remained a guest investigator at the university ever since. Her mentor was Mary Jeanne Kreek, who headed Rockefeller's Laboratory of the Biology of Addictive Diseases and was known for developing methadone maintenance therapy for heroin addiction. Adelson and Kreek collaborated for some two decades.
The central idea of this work was that addiction is a disease of the brain and body, not simply a failure of willpower, and that it can be treated with medicine. Methadone, taken under medical supervision, reduces the cravings and withdrawal that drive people back to heroin, and allows patients to rebuild stable lives. Adelson has published numerous scientific papers on drug addiction, and her research has also explored whether addiction, including to gambling and the internet, has a genetic component.
She carried this research approach into practice, insisting that treatment and research go together. The patients she and her colleagues treated with methadone and psychosocial care numbered in the thousands, and the research gathered from that care has added to medical understanding of how addiction works and how best to treat it. In 2016 Rockefeller University elected her to its board of trustees, describing her as a doctor of internal medicine and an expert in drug addiction research.
Her choice to devote a medical career to addiction, a field that long carried stigma, helped strengthen the case that people struggling with drugs deserve medical care like any other patients.
Why it matters
Research that treats addiction as a medical disease, including the methadone approach Adelson studied and practised for decades, helps people with heroin addiction around the world recover and rebuild their lives.
About Miriam Adelson
Israeli-born physician who has spent four decades treating heroin and opioid addiction, founded methadone clinics in Tel Aviv and Las Vegas, and funds medical research and Jewish education.
More about Miriam Adelson
Sources
- Miriam O. Adelson, a physician and expert in drug addiction research, is elected to the Board The Rockefeller University
- Miriam Adelson Wikipedia
- Miriam Adelson profile Jewish Ledger
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.