John P. Peters

John Punnett Peters (December 4, 1887 – December 29, 1955) His 1932 textbook Quantitative Clinical Chemistry, coauthored with Donald Van Slyke, established clinical chemistry as a distinct discipline. His research articles and textbooks advanced the laboratory in the diagnosis and management of disease.

Peters was born in Philadelphia. He spent much of his growing up years in New York City. He did his undergraduate education at Yale University and earned his medical degree at Columbia University. During World War I he served as a medical doctor in the US army.

Loyalty/McCarthyism/Supreme Court Case John P. Peters was known not only for his pioneering work in human metabolism, but also for his passionate efforts to bring National Health Insurance to the United States at the close of the second World War. He was accused of being a Communist because of this cause and his loyalty was questioned by a review board of the National Institutes of Health where he served in a $50-per-year consultant position on a Public Health Service peer review panel. He fought to clear his name, to have the right to face who had accused him in a case that ultimately came before the Supreme Court in 1955 (Peters v. Hobby, 349 U.S. 331). He won the case, but not the precedent he had hoped for: the right to face his accuser. Instead, the Supreme Court stated his dismissal was illegal by the Loyalty Review Board. They had reopened his case in 1953 after he had been cleared by 2 other NIH loyalty boards and the Court decided they had no cause to address his loyalty yet again. (Interestingly, the chairman of this Loyalty Review Board was also a Yalie, Hiriam Bingham, the man who “discovered” Machu Picchu).

He was deeply disappointed that he was unable to get the Supreme Court to decide that he had a right to face his accuser. He knew it was a secret informant, not under oath, not present at the loyalty hearings, and he died without knowing who this person was. His third child, a son and also a physician, Richard Morse Peters, M.D. tried for many years using the Freedom of Information Act to request government records, without success even at his death in 2006.

This tactic was used frequently during McCarthyism and John Punnett Peters, M.D. was quoted as saying, “It doesn’t matter much to an old fellow like myself, but it is the principle of the thing that counts.”

In 2007, an undergraduate history major at Yale, Jonathan Bressler, was able to find out the name of his accuser, Louis Budenz, a former active member of the Communist Party USA and managing editor of the Daily Worker, who had recanted his beliefs and become well paid as an informant.

Early life and education John P. Peters, Jr was born on December 4, 1887 in Philadelphia, PA, the third child of John Punnett Peters and Gabriella Brooke Forman Peters. His oldest brother, Thomas McClure Peters had died in 1885, at less than 2 years of age and his older sister, Brooke, had been born on August 1, 1885. He was one of 6 surviving siblings that included Frazier Forman Peters, who became a well known architect, especially known for his signature stone houses in Westport, CT.

John P. Peters lived abroad with his family as a young child while his father conducted excavations in Babylonia and then moved to Dresden, Germany and then Beirut, Lebanon. His father, John Punnett Peters, was then elected Rector of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in New York, the same church his own father had served as Rector. graduating in 1908 and then returned to St. John Manlius School for one year to teach English and Latin.

Each year, the American Society of Nephrology gives out “The John P. Peters Award which recognizes individuals who have made substantial research contributions to the discipline of nephrology and have sustained achievements in one or more domains of academic medicine including clinical care, education and leadership.”

Death John P. Peters, M.D. died of the complications of a heart attack he had suffered several months earlier on December 29, 1955, at the age of 68, less than a year after his Supreme Court case was adjudicated.