Born in Germany, when he was 7 years old Beutler’s family fled the Nazis, and in the U.S. he became a physician. His main career was spent at California’s Scripps Research Institute, where he studied diseases of the blood and iron metabolism.
Sound boring? Hardly: Beutler and two colleagues figured out why anti-malaria drugs produced anemia in some people, and developed a test to figure out who would suffer the problem. He also made key discoveries that helped researchers understand Tay-Sachs disease, set the stage for treatment of sickle cell disease, figured out how to preserve red blood cells, developed a drug to treat multiple sclerosis, figured out how the X chromosome influenced tumor growth, and pioneered a new therapy for leukemia and several other cancers: bone marrow transplants. And more.
Dr. Beutler stayed on as a Department Chair at Scripps until his 80th birthday on September 30. He died October 5 — ironically, from leukemia. He was 80.