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Sanctae Crucis Award Recipients 2005

Peter O. Kwiterovich, Jr., M.D., ’62

By the sorrow of the heart, says the Book of Proverbs, the spirit is broken.

Peter Kwiterovich knows the truth of this biblical verse better than most. And so, he has devoted his career to the study of that crucial organ. The result of his hard work has been lives saved and spirits healed.

Peter earned his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. After an internship in pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Boston, he spent three years in the molecular disease branch of the National Heart and Lung Institute, where he first began to concentrate on research in the areas of cholesterol and its affect on the heart.

Returning to Johns Hopkins in 1972, Peter established the Lipid Research Program, of which he remains the director. In the 1980s, Peter’s lab identified a pair of proteins that that can help to predict the probability of coronary artery disease.

Today, Peter is considered by his peers to be one of the world’s foremost clinicians in the area of lipid disorders. As the discoverer of three new proteins that play a critical role in heart disease, he significantly has advanced the field of cardiac care. An educator as well as a scientist, Peter has shared his knowledge with both his colleagues and the public. The author of The Johns Hopkins Complete Guide to Preventing and Reversing Heart Disease, he has also publishedBeyond Cholesterol, which won the Blakeslee Award as the best book of the year in its field. The recipient of the Helen B. Taussig Award, given by the American Heart Association, Peter has been listed in the reference text, The Best Doctors in the United States.

Recently, Peter has turned his attention to the increasing problem of childhood obesity. Serving on the steering committee for a major research initiative, The Dietary Intervention Study in Children, Peter helped to complete the first study to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of a low-fat diet in children.

For his landmark research into the mysteries of the human heart, for his crusade to prevent and reverse cardiovascular disease through proper diet and nutrition, for establishing a laboratory that has produced a steady stream of tests, drugs and technologies to advance the coronary health of the nation and the world, the College of the Holy Cross presents to Peter O. Kwiterovich Jr., M.D., ’62, the Sanctae Crucis Award.