John Mason Pawelek, a dermatology and cancer researcher at the Yale School of Medicine, died on May 31 at age 79 of an apparent heart attack. Pawelek, a past president of the Pan American Society for Pigment Cell Research, had a longstanding interest in the biological factors that regulate skin pigmentation. In recent years, he became interested in understanding what causes the skin cancer melanoma to metastasize.
“Even though he was in his late 70s, John thought like a 19-year-old” in that he was always open to new ideas that cut against the grain, and was in no way beholden to current medical orthodoxies, says Greggory LaBerge, a medical geneticist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who also directs the Denver Police Department’s Forensics and Evidence Division.
LaBerge collaborated frequently with Pawelek to test the provocative idea that many solid tumors spread throughout the body after immune cells ...
