Everybody eats.
But too many Americans don’t eat well. Even those who eat well have only a cursory understanding of the health implications of their food. Yes, we know that fatty foods and sugary snacks are unhealthy. But at a genetic level, how much do we understand food’s ability to promote health or cause disease?
Scientific research has revealed many things but science is still keeping some of its secrets from David Murdock. The billionaire businessman founded and funded the David H. Murdock Research Institute to search for answers. And now he’s putting up $50 million more in his continuing quest to find them.
“I’m a little bit older than most of the people in this room but I’ll bet I am healthier than most of you because I’ve never been sick a day in my life in 30 years,” Murdock said last week during the announcement of his financial gift. “Now there are genetic diseases that we cannot avoid. But I believe that we can avoid most of them if we have the knowledge of how to eat and what to eat.”
North Carolina, and the Research Triangle in particular, is awash with companies developing, testing and marketing all manner of pills and medicines to treat diseases of all kinds. But Murdock swears off medicine and swears by healthy food as the key to his own health and longevity. Now 90, Murdock has stated a personal goal of living to 125. He intends reach that age – disease free – by eating a diet consisting only of fruits, vegetables and fish.
Murdock founded the DHMRI in 2005, the core laboratory of the North Carolina Research Campus. It wasn’t enough that Murdock believed in healthy eating as the key to his own healthy living. He wanted to unlock scientific understanding of that belief to benefit everyone. Murdock has committed more than $700 million of his personal fortune to support the campus and the research done there. The goal is to understand at a scientific level how the foods we eat help or harm us.
Simon Gregory, an assistant professor at the Duke School of Medicine and director of genomics at the DHMRI put this into context for me. Pharmacogenomics is the study of who benefits from taking a particular drug, he said. Gregory’s research involves trying to find out which foods are beneficial to people based on their genetic makeup.
Most people will think of a strawberry as healthy. But it’s healthier for some people than others, and scientists are trying to determine which compounds in the strawberry will correlate with particular benefits in particular people. The research is a combination of studying both food and people. Gregory, who splits his time between Durham and Kannapolis, says the advantage of the core lab is having the resources for studying everything all in one place.
“It’s a perfect storm for advancing this kind of research,” he said.
The research institute bears Murdock’s name. So too, does one of its landmark studies. The Measurement to Understand the Reclassification of Disease of Cabarrus/Kannapolis, or MURDOCK study, is a longitudinal health study tracking the health of 50,000 local residents over time to try to find the biological causes of disease. Murdock’s support is evident here as well; the study is funded by his $35 million gift to Duke University.
Although the research campus is located in Kannapolis its reach spans the entire state of North Carolina. Including Duke, eight universities are represented there. The seven University of North Carolina Schools have brought more than $45 million in grant funding to the campus, which employs more than 600. But even with that grant funding, the DHMRI needed more money. Murdock’s fortune supported DHMRI for its first eight years. This additional $50 million gift is intended to carry the institute through its next eight.
The funding problem was a function of the economic downturn, which clamped down on the availability of research grants to the DHMRI. Murdock said that scientific research takes both time and money and he acknowledged that he might have to put up more money to support the research that has become his passion. But Murdock doesn’t expect to fund the work indefinitely. He said he hopes that others, whether from academia or industry, come along to contribute to and pick up on the research that the DHMRI has started. But it’s easy to wonder if Murdock has become somewhat impatient with the progress so far.
“It’s very easy to spend money in scientific research but I want to see the results,” he said as he neared the close of his comments to a small audience gathered at the Washington Duke Inn. “And sometimes I have felt the results have been too slow in coming, so I’m pushing, pushing. Let’s make some major discoveries.”
With that, Murdock and others adjourned to a reception featuring tables adorned with an abundance of fruit.
