Reporter Volume 25, No.22 March 24, 1994

By MARK WALLACE
Reporter Staff
Alan Lockwood can't really say why he became a doctor. He just knows
that all his life he wanted to be one.
	Lockwood, a professor of neurology and nuclear medicine at UB,
is the director of the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Center at
the Veterans Administration Medical Center, where he oversees the
operation of the most advanced medical technology in use for examining
the human body. He's also the director of UB's Performing Artists
Clinic, where he deals primarily with the medical problems of
musicians.
	As if that were not enough, in January Lockwood became
national president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, an
organization which since 1961 has struggled to eliminate nuclear
weapons and has recently branched out to address environmental issues
and issues of violence and violence prevention.
	Lockwood received both his bachelor's degree and his M.D. from
Cornell University. "My interest in the nervous system and the brain
began in my first year in medical school," Lockwood says. "I wanted to
be a neurologist and do research on how the brain worked."
	After numerous other positions, Lockwood spent eight years at
the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. He was
brought to UB and the VA Medical Center in 1991 to head the PET center
because he had gained experience on how to oversee the operation of
the PET system in his previous jobs. The PET Center has two primary
missions, Lockwood says--to provide clinical services to patients
predominantly in Western New York, both veterans and non-veterans, and
to do research on a wide variety of topics.
	"Putting the PET together took a major commitment both from UB
and the VA Medical Center," Lockwood says. "We've also had strong
support from the surrounding community, and we're trying to attract
more such support to develop and sustain new programs.
	"PET is an extraordinarily complex device that requires a team
of scientists, physicians, and technicians to operate it," Lockwood
says. "Last week when we had a job in process we had six or eight
people swerving around, trying to work together and to do things
absolutely correctly so the whole project didn't go down the tubes.
	"PET is more complex and flexible than any other medical
imaging device," Lockwood says. "Operating it requires understanding
how the image is made as well as knowing the human physiology that
underlies production of that image."
	Along with research in Lockwood's specialty on the effects
that liver disease has on brain functions, other current research at
the PET Center involves the effects of brain injury, Lockwood says. In
particular, the Center is doing research on minimal brain injuries
that later cause problems with such things as concentration and
memory.
	The PET Center is also doing research on how the brain
processes language. Lockwood says, "One of the most fundamental
aspects of being human is communicating with each other." Testing
patients with hearing loss is another current project, he says. "There
are critical periods in brain development, and if your brain doesn't
learn how to process certain types of information in that period, it
may not be able to process it later," Lockwood says. "When people are
deaf, the part of the brain that processes hearing may get
reorganized. Then, if someone's hearing is later restored, sometimes
they can't process sound information."
	As Director of the UB Performing Artists Clinic, Lockwood
stays connected to another lifelong passion--music. "When I was
younger, I maintained a career as an amateur singer," he says. "I've
always been interested in music. As a doctor, I've worked with people
ranging from famous conductors and performers to amateurs who play
piano on weekends."
	His work on the medical health problems of musicians began at
the University of Texas Health Science Center, at a time when Lockwood
and his colleagues became interested in bringing music and other arts
into the technological environment of the Center. "We wanted to bring
the arts to the Center as sort of a technology antidote," he laughs.
"Ultimately as a doctor you're dealing with human beings, and the arts
are some of the highest expressions of the human imagination."
	Lockwood and his colleagues introduced a program that
sponsored some 70 events a year in and around the huge, 625-acre
complex of the UT Health Science Center, he says, including a variety
of musical performances, poetry readings, and other performances. "The
personnel manager of the Houston Symphony Orchestra, who gave one of
the first performances, said to me that while the orchestra was
performing in the middle of the largest medical center in the world,
they still had to send their musicians to other cities to get the kind
of special medical help they needed," Lockwood says. "A year later, we
had a health care center there for them."
	Of his recent appointment as president of Physicians for
Social Responsibility, which held its national meeting March 18-21 in
Bethesda, Maryland, Lockwood says, "The things that we believe are
important from a medical perspective have political overtones, but we
explore them from the position of medical issues and public health
problems."
	Members of the PSR have been involved in issues such as the
abuse of the environment and worker safety at weapons production
facilities in the United States. "Such places were cloaked in secrecy,
and that allowed them to abuse the people who worked there, as well as
the public, in the name of national security," Lockwood says. "With
recent stories coming to light about such things as research projects
in which people were injected with plutonium without their knowing
it--which violates the basic research principle of informed
consent--you can see how important this issue is."
	The PSR is involved with many similar problems that cover a
wide range of social issues, Lockwood says. "Industry releases
billions of toxins into the environment every year," Lockwood says.
"The fact that mortality rates for cardiovascular problems are falling
in this country, but for cancer they're going up, could be related to
the waste being legally pumped out by industry. Such waste can lead to
birth defects, and to developmental abnormalities in the brain.
	"I look at my activities with the PSR as exactly in step with
all the other things I do as a physician--with my teaching, research,
and clinical work," Lockwood says. "The focus is on people realizing
their potential as human beings, which they can't do when they suffer
from disease."