Suzanne's letter

Judah Daniel White

I had the honor and privilege of working with Judah for almost two years.
It was both exciting an challenging.

We did baffle many individuals at the UCLA Medical Center because these people did not know that we had a 25 year history. We were able to communicate with few words, much eye contact and body language. Our relationship enabled us to push our courage to new levels.
We were involved with 11 protocols. I assigned Judah our two most complicated clinical trials.
Judah would come to work with a gentle smile and his own special routine.

First- he made his "hello" round. He would acknowledge everyone ; letting all know that he was present. With his friendly demeanor, Judah befriended everyone. He knew all the goings-on and he was invited to all the afterwork events whether it was with the cleaning engineers at the local bar; Salsa dancing with the technicians or a patient organized picnic- Judah was involved.
Next in his routine was to sit down and read a protocol. Actually his favorite task was to edit and rewrite our protocols. It took much energy on my part and quite a while to convince Judah that although the protocols did indeed need rewriting; the protocols were approved by the sponsor, FDA and our IRB. Our job was to execute and follow the existing protocol. This is when we fantasized about running a biotech company.

In his unhurried, calm and gentle manner he would finally agree. He asked me several times if I knew how to walk because he said that I ran everywhere!


In 1995, we started a Phase 1 clinical trial with my doing classification "calcimimetics" for treating hyperparathroidism.

UCLA in cooperation with Amgen was eager to start this trial. We had a major meeting at UCLA with Bill Goodman (bone guru) Isidoo Salusky (bone guru) 2 physicians from Amgen and 2 scientist from Amgen, 3 UCLA contract/grants people, Judah and me.

We were reviewing the protocol and various study issues. After 40 minutes into the meeting, Judah decided to speak. One of the Amgen scientist said" Who do you think you are, a lawyer?"
Judah looked at him and said "yes", the room was totally silenced.

This clinical trial was extremely complex and every one was concerned about its main known side effect "hypocalcemia" the drop of calcium levels in the blood.

A complicated machine was acquired so that we could instantaneously obtain calcium levels. Judah was fascinated by the machine and he became an expert in its maintenance , running and interpretation of its results. He became an expert and was needed to help other centers who had problems with this equipment.

Judah was resourceful. I know that he did not like to hunt throughout the hospital for dry-ice. So, he found a friend who would always have dry ice for Judah.

Judah was interested, involved and knowlegeable in everything that we were involved with.

He like precision which worked to his advantage with our equipment and doing ECG's on our patients. Judah took it upon himself to train and retrain our staff so that we all did ECG's with precision.

He enjoyed photography and was proud of his photos being recognized in the gallery exhibit.

Our team remembers one of his hot dates for whom he cooked a Japanese dinner- we only heard about the menu.

Judah did have a sports injury from his baseball team and needed crutches for one week.

Judah introduced several phrases in our lives: "Go figure", "Who would have known", "I'm in control" , I'm in command and "I'm flying".

It was fun for me to surprise Judah. One time when he was unable to come to work, he was shocked that I took care of matters and that I know how to aliquot the lab samples.

His greatest gift to me was to introduce Cindy Chow into our lives. When Judah went to medical school, he sent Cindy to work with us.

We miss Judah terribly and yet we are grateful to have wonderful memories of this beautiful, amazing, fabulous human being.

Suzanne

In our dialysis/nephrology community, Judah was our spiritual leader who in his gentle peaceful way fed us appropriate pearls of Jewish wisdom.

He believed in God. He believed in Miracles.
He proudly represented and taught us the special beauty of Judaism.

I often replay my last conversation with Judah in July. Judah wanted to know about our children; grandchildren, Stuart's latest Italian adventure and Jeremy et al in Ventura.

I asked him what I could do- did he need anything? His last sentence with me was about his mother Martha, He asked me to give her TLC.