Dora B. Goldstein

Dora B. Goldstein (April 25, 1922 – October 2, 2011), nicknamed Dody, was an American pharmacologist and professor who researched the effects of ethanol on the body and the biochemistry of alcohol addiction and alcohol withdrawal syndrome. A Bay Stater, she studied medicine at Bryn Mawr College and Harvard Medical School, with an interruption during World War II to help the war effort, before joining the faculty at Stanford University in the 1950s. Becoming a tenured professor of pharmacology, she was well known for her research and classes keeping on the edge of new biochemical visualization technologies into the 1980s, along with her efforts to promote the advancement of women in science at the university.

Beginning her research in bacterial enzymology and later neurochemistry, Goldstein published a series of papers in the 1970s that broke down how alcohol and its biochemical addiction process functions in mice, breaking the cultural idea of human addiction being a moral failing of the individual. She would continue in the following decades to show how alcohol molecules impact cellular membranes and induce resistance and dependency after long term exposure, along with the genetic markers making an individual higher risk for developing such an addiction.

Receiving several awards for her work on alcoholism, including the Jellinek Memorial Award, she also served as President of the Research Society on Alcoholism. In her personal time, she was highly active in social justice movements, including the civil rights movement of the 1960s and the LGBT rights movement of the 1990s.

Childhood and education Born as Dora Benedict in Milton, Massachusetts to George Wheeler Benedict and Marjory Pierce Benedict on April 25, 1922, Goldstein went to Bryn Mawr College to obtain a degree in chemistry. Her studies were interrupted by the advent of World War II, which led her to help war technologies by conducting chemical research for the government. Afterwards, she went to Harvard Medical School as a part of its first ever women-allowed class and studied with doctor and pharmacologist Avram Goldstein, whom she married. She finished her Master's Degree in 1949. She would also become a lecturer in the pharmacology course at the university, where she would use new computer-based simulations in the 1980s to teach the molecular structure and chemical composition of pharmacological products.

Research The overall focus of Goldstein's lifelong research was on alcohol addiction and how alcohol enters into the body and causes effects by permeating cell membranes. Then, in multiple studies throughout the early 1970s, she tested the effects of ethanol on mice and increasing levels of alcohol withdrawal. These mice would serve as general models for the effects of alcoholism on the biochemistry of an organism and other testing of biological and chemical processes of alcohol. Her findings were published in several journal articles along with the textbook she wrote titled Pharmacology of Alcohol, which was published in 1983 by the Oxford University Press.

She presented further research in 1986 at the International Medical Advisory Conference on how alcohol alters the flexibility of cell membranes upon exposure and long term effects include increased membrane rigidity, but also with a higher resistance to alcohol's effects. Speaking at the first National Conference on Alcoholism Research in 1987, she said that advances in understanding of biochemical markers for alcoholism will lead to the ability to determine those who are genetically predisposed for alcoholism and allow for doctors to prescribe lifestyle changes to minimize the risk.

Organizations After its formation as a sub-organization from the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence, Goldstein would act as president for the Research Society on Alcoholism.