ABOVE: Mary Jeanne Kreek
ZACH VEILLEUX
Mary Jeanne Kreek, who studied addictive diseases at the Rockefeller University for more than 50 years, died on March 27 at the age of 84. Her work helped uncover the biology behind addiction and, most notably, led to the successful treatment of heroin addiction with methadone.
“She was a wonderful scientist who made groundbreaking contributions to the field of addiction medicine and to social equity in a way that was before her time,” Sarah Schlesinger, a cellular immunologist and physician at the Rockefeller University, tells The Scientist. Kreek championed the idea that people addicted to drugs should be treated with dignity, not stigmatized, Schlesinger adds. “[She saw] the problems of drug use as a genetic disease to which people had a predilection and needed to be treated for, long before that was a common idea. She was a real pioneer in that way.”
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