Michael M. Meguid

Michael M. Meguid, MD, Ph.D.
Born	Egypt
Residence	Marco Island, Florida
Fields	obesity, neuroscience, nutrition, biochemistry
Institutions	Upstate Medical University, The State University of New York (SUNY)
Alma mater	University of London (M.D., 1968), Harvard Medical School (1972) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Ph.D., 1981)
Known for	Co-founder Breast Surgery Program, Upstate Medical University Editor-in-Chief, Nutrition: The International Journal of Applied and Basic Nutrition Sciences[1] Editor, [The Proceedings],[2] [The International Academy of Perinatal and Prenatal Programming] [3]
Notable awards	Recipient of American Medical Association, Joseph B. Goldberger Award in Clinical Nutrition[4] (1997) Garry/Labbe Award[5] 2010 (American Association for Clinical Chemistry) Elected Fellow 2010 European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN) [6]

Michael M. Meguid, MD, PhD ^[7] is Professor Surgery Emeritus at Upstate Medical University ^[8] (The State University of New York), Syracuse, New York.

Biography

Born in Egypt, Michael Marwan Meguid spent his childhood in Egypt, Germany, and then England. There he attended University College London (UCL) and University College Hospital Medical School, graduating with his MB BS degree in 1968. For the next two years he was an Anatomy Prosector at UCL, while he successfully completed Part 1 of the Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons (FRCS), London qualification. From 1970 until 1976 he did his Surgical Residency at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, Children's Hospital; the Joslin Clinic, Harvard Medical School; and at Boston University Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts. It was at Boston University Hospital (now Boston Medical Center)^[9] that he began his surgical career in Surgical Oncology and Clinical Nutrition, as Assistant Professor. Concomitantly, from 1978 until 1982 he was a graduate student in the Department of Human Nutrition, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts, earning a PhD in Nutritional Biochemistry.

Over the next five years (1979–1984) he was Associate Surgeon at City of Hope National Medical Center, Duarte, California; UCLA Medical School; and the West Los Angeles VA Medical Center. He was founder and director of the Department of Nutrition, in the Division of Surgery, at the City of Hope. From there he was recruited to a tenured professor position at the Department of Surgery, University Hospital, Upstate Medical University, and the Syracuse VA Hospital, New York. He was Professor of Surgery; Vice-Chair for Surgical Research; Director of Surgical Metabolism and Nutrition Laboratory, Neuroscience-Physiology Graduate Program (NIH and NGO funded continuously from 1983 through 2011), where he trained 47 graduate students and fellows, as well as 6 PhD defenses; and Director of Nutritional Support Services at both hospitals. He was also the director of the Institutional Review Board at Syracuse VA Medical Center. He started in 1983 "Nutrition: The International Journal of Applied and Basic Nutritional Sciences"^[10] and in 2010 co-founded "The International Academy of Perinatal and Prenatal Programming" ^[3] with its open access e-journal "The Proceedings".^[2]

Research projects

• Optimizing the delivery of artificial nutrition to sick patients unable to sustain themselves.
• Understanding the mechanism of appetite regulation in a variety of conditions, including anorexia of cancer (he and his research team developed animal models to study anorexia of cancer and weight loss mechanisms in obesity, and reversal of Metabolic Syndrome after Roux-en-Y gastric bypass).
• Inflammatory diseases and space travel as this involves anorexia, the hypothalamus, its neurochemicals and metabolism of the GI tract.
• The influence of early life (prenatal and perinatal) programming on later health and disease as a key to understanding illnesses, and to developing drugs and treatment.

Recognitions

• Elected Fellow, International Behavioral Neuroscience Society^[11] (1997)
• Recipient of American Medical Association, Joseph B. Goldberger Award in Clinical Nutrition^[4] (1997)
• Editor – Section in Catabolism: Current Opinions in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolic Care^[12] (2001–2010)
• Promising Inventor Award, The Research Foundation, The State University of New York (2004)
• Ethan Sims Young Investigators Award^[13] Finalist, Annual NAASO Conference, Las Vegas, NV (2004)
• Who's Who in Medicine (2005–07)
• America's Top Physicians in Surgery & Research (2004–2005)
• Life Member, The Fellows Leadership Society,^[14] American College of Surgeons Foundation (2006)
• Garry/Labbe Award^[5] 2010 (American Association for Clinical Chemistry) (2010)
• Elected Fellow 2010, European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (ESPEN) ^[6] (2010)
• Landmark challenge to scientific misconduct case re. Ranjit Chandra

Nutrition and the Chandra scientific misconduct case

When Michael Meguid, as Editor-in-Chief of Nutrition, retracted in 2005 a paper by Ranjit Kumar Chandra titled "Effect of vitamin and trace-element supplementation on cognitive function in elderly subjects,"^[15] Chandra's filed suit. A decade of discussion about scientific misconduct followed, with the Chandra case being mentioned in 90-plus articles. In 2015 Chandra was found guilty of misconduct. The Lancet, at this point, retracted the study they had published in 1992.

The paper had been published in 2001. On reading the article, Seth Roberts, Statistics Editor for Nutrition, queried Chandra about his results "because the effect of supplementation seemed too large" and "some results were impossible." Specifically, he observed that three of the standard errors in Table II of the paper were more than the maximum possible.^[16]

Unsatisfied by the response from Chandra, Roberts consulted with Professor Kenneth Carpenter of Berkley and with Michael M. Meguid, who consulted in turn with his Regional Editors, with the British Medical Journal, and with colleagues at University of Edinburgh. One of the latter, Susan Shenkin, wrote a Letter to the Editor of Nutrition, stating that "We were surprised to see the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score in this healthy group increasing from a mean of 18 (±3) to 28 (±4) in the supplement group (Table II). A MMSE score of less than 26 would conventionally be classified as indicative of mild cognitive impairment, and one less than 22 would be indicative of significant cognitive impairment. Therefore, some of this group must have been demented according to conventional criteria, but Chandra stated that "none suffered from any form of psychiatric illness or dementia" (p. 709).^[17] and that there had been "a typographical error in the legends to the tables."

Chandra submitted to the British Medical Journal in 2001 a follow-up to the 1992 Lancet study, which was rejected. He then resubmitted the rejected paper to Nutrition, where it was accepted by this fledgling journal after peer review in 2001. At the same time, the British Medical Journal was raising concerns with Memorial over Chandra's study. Memorial responded to the British Medical Journal that there was no case.

In Fall 2015, the case was finally brought to a close in Meguid's favor, and made public in the October 2015 British Medical Journal article 'Ranjit Chandra: how reputation bamboozled the scientific community'. In January 2016, The Lancet published a retraction of the paper, 'Effect of vitamin and trace-element supplementation on immune responses and infection in elderly subjects', that Meguid had originally questioned.

Creative nonfiction

While phasing into retirement from his career as a surgeon, research scientist, and Editor-in-Chief of Nutrition, Meguid completed his thesis for the Bennington Writing Seminars MFA program. He is currently a creative nonfiction writer drawing on his cultural experience navigating between East and West, as well as his medical and research life. He lives in Marco Island, Florida, and is a member of the Association of Writers and Writing Programs AWP and Vice President of the Marco Island Writers Inc. His writings and more information can be found on his website M3writer.com

References