The Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine has lost an incredibly important member with the passing of Dr. Stanley Inhorn in Madison last week. Sadly, his wife of 70 years, Shirley, had passed away a week earlier.
Dr. Stanley Inhorn was born in 1928 in Philadelphia and moved with his family to Cleveland, Ohio, when he was six years old. He graduated from Cleveland Heights High School in 1946 and subsequently enrolled at Western Reserve University in Cleveland (now known as Case Western Reserve University), where he majored in chemistry. Upon his graduation in 1949, Dr. Inhorn entered Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York City.
Dr. Inhorn moved to Madison in 1953 for a five-year residency in Pathology at the University of Wisconsin Hospital, drawn by the Wisconsin State Laboratory of Hygiene, the first state public health lab on an academic campus. During his first year, he rotated through various fields, including bacteriology and virology, while also starting his own research.
An avid violinist, Dr. Inhorn formed a piano trio with fellow medical students and played in the Madison Symphony Orchestra for eight years. He fell in love with Shirley (Sherburne) Green, a graduate student and musician, at Pro Arte Quartet concerts, and they married on August 22, 1954.
Dr. Inhorn served as a doctor on an amphibious transport in the Navy stationed in San Diego. He was discharged in 1956. From 1959 to 1969, he continued in the Ready Reserve at UW, serving as Commanding Officer from 1965 to 1969.
Dr. Inhorn was appointed Assistant Professor of Pathology and Assistant Director of the WSLH at UW in 1960, becoming the Director in 1966 until 1979. He contributed to various medical research and public health initiatives, including promoting the Pap test for cervical cancer detection and establishing a Cytogenetics Lab that identified trisomy 13, aiding the understanding of congenital birth defects. He also led a demonstration project with Wisconsin hospitals to assess the acceptance of low-cost mammography for breast cancer screening.
Starting in 1966, Dr. Inhorn significantly contributed to Medicare’s implementation and the development of quality assurance (QA) practices for public health and clinical laboratories in the U.S. He chaired the CDC task force that established Proficiency Testing standards for the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act of 1967 (CLIA-67) and served on the Medical Laboratory Services Advisory Committee to CLIA.
As a former chair of the Laboratory Section of the American Public Health Association, he edited “Quality Assurance Practices for Health Laboratories,” a 1,200-page volume published in 1978. When CLIA was revised in 1988 (CLIA-88), Dr. Inhorn was appointed to its advisory committee. He also led L-SIP, a program to connect laboratories with first responders and health departments, earning the Gold Standard Award and later the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Public Health Laboratories (APHL).
He served as President of the American Society of Cytopathology (1975-1976) and received the Papanicolaou Award (1981). He was a long-time Board member and President of the American Cancer Society (ACS), Wisconsin Division, and served on the national ACS Board for eight years. Additionally, as a representative of the American Medical Association, he was part of the Dane County Public Health Advisory Committee and advised the Madison Area Technical College Laboratory Technology program. Further information can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Inhorn . After retiring as Professor of Pathology from UW in 1998, Dr. Inhorn remained active in scientific societies.
A memorial service will be held at a later time at the First Unitarian Society.