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Herb Harris, M.D., Ph.D.

Photograph of Herb Harris

...the thing that has meant the most to me about working in aging is the enlightening experience of learning that it is really feasibly and desirable to improve the quality of life of people, even in very advanced ages...

Interview conducted by: Jeffrey Light on 27 June 1997 at 10:00 AM EDT
Q: Can you describe exactly what is your profession?
A: Well, that… I actually I have several professions. In fact I’d break it down into three, there are three things that I do. One of them is I am a psychiatrist, a physician, practicing geriatric psychiatry. The second role that I have is as a program project officer for the National Institute of Mental Health and in that capacity I manage grant funding for research in the area of geriatric psychiatry and geriatric mental health. And my final role is as a scientist in the National Institute of Mental Health and in that capacity I do very basic research into the molecular mechanisms of signal transduction in the brain.
Q: So, can you describe a little bit of what a typical day would be like in some of these professions?
A: Let’s see, there is no typical day. However, what I often do as a physician, I go to nursing homes and do psychiatric consultation for patients who are there. I also do home visits for elderly who are home bound and unable to get to a physician’s office and I’m actually one of the few people who does that in this area, that’s a very interesting thing to do. I, as a program project officer, I do lots of office work, its very bureaucratic, I sit in the office and answer the phone all day and push papers around and more importantly I come up with ideas about new directions that geriatric psychiatry can go as a field and I try and implement these idea through funding and stimulation of research. As a scientist, I do a small amount of bench research, going into the labs and doing pipetting and gels and things like that. That has been less and less of a role for me in my day to day life, but I am still attempting to maintain my involvement in basic science.
Q: Many of the students listening to the interview would be interested to know exactly what you put into this, what education was necessary for this, and then what you get out of it, what are some of the range of salaries that are available in these professions?
A: Well, I’ve had for each of these roles I’ve had a different kind of educational experience. I am trained as a psychiatrist, that requires medical school, four years of medical school and a four year medical residency. In my more scientific careers, my training there consists of a Ph.D. and I actually got my Ph.D. and my MD in a special program where you can do that sort of thing in seven years altogether. And then I’ve had some post-doctoral laboratory experience in the National Institute on Aging doing research on Alzheimer’s disease, and so those are the main training experiences that I had in order to get here.
Salary range is extremely broad, it sort of depends on which career you’re talking about. For basic science the salaries are probably all over the map. A post-doc in basic science can make a salary that might be something of the order of the mid-40’s. A physician in private practice in psychiatry in this area probably the average is probably $140,000. And what I do is sort of a mixture of those things and my compensation falls somewhere in the middle of that.
Q: Most of the jobs in these professions, are they available for public or private sector work?
A: The research that I do and the program management, grant management that I do for the government is obviously a public sector kind of thing, there’s are private sector versions of those jobs, certainly there’s foundations like the Alzheimer’s disease foundations that does grant funding. There are also venture capital firms that are very much private sector entities that do things that are not very different than what I do, in terms of giving money to researchers. Of course, as a physician, that work is in the private sector, but one can be a physician anywhere
Q: Technology is playing an increasing role in the workplace. What technology do you use frequently in your job?
A: Again, it depends on which job. Well, first, as a scientist, I use technologies like polymerase chain reaction and electrophoresis and very basic laboratory techniques that are very common in molecular biology. As a federal bureaucrat I use pencils and paper and computers, not terribly technologically intensive. As a psychiatrist I use quite a lot of diagnostic technology, which is finding an increasing role in geriatric psychiatry particular imaging of the brain with magnetic resonance and CT scans and hopefully in the near future SPEC scanning and PET scanning may become actually clinically useful as well as other routine laboratory tests.
Q: In your job, do you get a chance to do much international work with scientists from around the world?
A: That is quite variable. I think that as I do my current NIH as program project development that will be an increasingly important role because many of the scientists that I find that many scientists are networked into international collaborations what I found is that the people who have been doing this longer spend more time interacting internationally and I think its a matter of time that one spends doing the work and contacts and networking.
Q: So perhaps if a student is listening today to this interview who’s currently in middle school or high school, that when they get into this profession, there will be a lot more international work?
A: Well, I hope so. I think that’s a trend everywhere in society that everything is becoming globalized and certainly that’s true of science. I think that if anything one can certainly predict that that will be true. So, yes, I would say that is something to look forward to.
Q: Since this is an international project and one of the goals of ThinkQuest is to promote cooperation around the world, are there a lot different opportunities for different ethnic groups. You might just want to talk about what’s available in this country, in the United States.
A: Well, there certainly are lots of opportunities and again it depends on which career you’re talking about. But, In science, basic science has always been a very international enterprise. If one walks around on the campus of NIH you have to remind yourself that you are in the United state because there are so many people from different parts of the word— it’s really an international experience. In our grants portfolio we are funding more and more research that’s done by either not necessarily research that’s done abroad, but people come here and do research. So the whole research enterprise is quite diversified and becoming increasingly more so. The practice of psychiatry is also something that is increasingly open to international foreign medical graduates and people of diverse backgrounds.
Q: To some of the viewers who are listening to this interview have certain preconceptions about aging and I’m sure that when you started in this profession you had some of the same preconceptions. How has your opinion about older adults changed since you began your career in aging?
A: Well the most important issue that I’ve come to understand is that quality of life is something that still has meaning even in advanced old age. That’s a preconception that many of us have that as we age the quality of our life inevitably deteriorates and that as one approaches the end of life, that there is very little that one has to look forward to in terms of quality. And that is really is not true. And the most important aspect of the work I do is to try to improve the quality of life that people have as they age.
Q: And one final question, Dr. Harris, what words of wisdom would you have to encourage young people to enter into this field?
A: In line with one of my responses to the earlier questions, the thing that has meant the most to me about working in aging is this enlightening experience about quality of life and how it is really feasibly and desirable to improve the quality of life of people, even in very advanced ages. This point was made to me in a very meaningful way when I recently met a woman who is 107 years old. She’s in a nursing home where I do consultations. She’s the oldest person I’ve ever met, she the oldest person I’ve ever talked to. It’s very rare to see someone as cognitively intact as she is over the age of 100 and 107 is just mind-boggling. And yet she was very lucid and able to discuss her life over the last century. She had memories that went back to her childhood in western Maryland and she looked forward to her 108th birthday which is coming up this fall. Her children are all around her, her baby is 87 years old. It is really extraordinary to meet a person like this to understand that life continues to hold meaning up until the very end.

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