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It doesn't scare Danny Sawyer when mummy skulls and teeth come
out of the closet. What might raise goose bumps on most people
fascinates the oral and maxillofacial pathologist.
Sawyer, chair of the CWRU's School of Dentistry's oral diagnosis
and radiology department, has explored the past as far back as
9,000 years by examining several hundred intact Peruvian and Chilean
mummies and more than 5,000 skeletal parts of others. He searches
for what diseases of the head and neck were prevalent and the
general oral health conditions of the people from the past.
"Teeth are the most stable of all bodily materials," Sawyer said.
"Even bones deteriorate more rapidly. The mandible and the skull
in general, because of their mass and structure, often remain
after other body parts are long gone. Thus, the head is left to
explain things that occurred hundreds and even thousands of years
ago."
Like the general public's fascination with mummies, Sawyer's
research drew a crowd of dental scientists during a poster session
at this year's annual meeting of the International Association
for Dental Research in San Diego.
The mummies tell a story of how people lived. Few people reached
old age, according to Sawyer. Most died from infectious diseases
or malnutrition. Warfare also took its toll as was the fate of
one young man Sawyer examined whose skull still had an arrow embedded
in it.
Sawyer's primary research area is oral cancer. He is particularly
interested in finding remains with head and neck cancers, of which
few cases have been reported and confirmed in ancient populations.
Sawyer has observed two cases of cancer of the head and neck region
and four cases of benign neoplasms of the region.
Having been trained in dentistry as well as pathology, Sawyer
also has a general interest in all oral disease, including those
of the teeth. As part of one of his studies, he received governmental
permission to bring some ancient teeth back to the United States
for analysis, including a quantitative analysis of the level of
trace minerals in them.
With the help of Arthur Heuer from the material science department
at the Case School of Engineering, Sawyer and James Lalumandier,
chair of the department of community dentistry, and dental students
Rowan Ganon and Richard Shulze were able to detect levels of fluoride
in a double blind study of the mummy teeth and correlate these
levels with the incidence of dental caries in two population groups.
By using an ion beam accelerator, Heuer undertook a non-destructive
analysis of the teeth's fluoride content. Using a technique called
the nuclear reaction analysis (NRA), Heuer bounced protons off
a spot the size of a millimeter to get a p, gamma portrait of
the nuclear reaction that emitted gamma rays. The researchers
determined the fluoride content of the teeth by analyzing the
makeup of the emitted gamma rays. Presently the group is in the
process of further analyzing the data and writing a manuscript
for publication.
Sawyer's interest in disease goes back to his childhood where
he plied his father, who was a mortician in Middleboure, W.V.,
with questions about why diseases kill people. As a high school
and college student, he had the opportunity to observe a few autopsies,
which only made him more curious about the disease process. While
taking his first course in pathology, Sawyer said knew this was
what he wanted to do with his life.
After earning his bachelor's degree in 1968 from Alderson-Broaddus
College, he attended the Medical College of Virginia (M.C.V.)
in Richmond where he earned his dental degree in 1973, his doctorate
in general and experimental pathology in 1977 and completed his
residency in oral and maxillofacial pathology.
While a dental student, Sawyer met Marvin Allison (a pathologist
with a doctorate) and Enrique Gerszten (pathologist with a medical
degree), both of whom had been involved in studies of disease
in ancient populations in South America. Over the years, Sawyer
joined them in examining skeletal and mummy materials in Peru
and Chile. Altogether Sawyer has spent over a year in South America,
mostly in three- to four-month segments, examining mummies and
collecting data. Sawyer joined the research group in the mid-1970s,
and this continuing research has produced over two dozen scientific
articles.
Sawyer's academic career has taken him to four continents. As
a medical/dental missionary, Sawyer with his wife Kathleen and
five-month old son Robert (CWRU, 2001 B.S., B.A.) traveled to
Lagos, Nigeria, where he taught and practiced pathology - at the
College of Medicine and Lagos Teaching Hospital until 1983.
For much of the time, he was the only pathologist in the country
and only one of a few hundred dentists serving a country of approximately
100 million people in an area the size of Texas and Oklahoma.
While operating the hospital's oral and maxillofacial biopsy service,
Sawyer had the opportunity to study diseases he may never encounter
in the United States. He often saw patients in the medical clinic
with leprosy, noma (cancrum oris) and Burkitt's lymphoma that
are quite uncommon in the states.
From Nigeria, he headed to Glasgow, Scotland, where he joined
the faculty of Glasgow Dental Hospital and School of the University
of Glasgow. He participated in a program directed by Gordon MacDonald
that studied the effect of iron deficiency on early oral carcinogenesis.
This work rekindled an interest in carcinogenesis, which had been
dormant since Sawyer's early training. He also had teaching responsibilities
while in Scotland in a new program from training oral and maxillofacial
pathologists from developing countries, and Sawyer helped with
the training for a brief period of time and was even reunited
with two students he had taught in Nigeria.
In 1984, Sawyer with his wife expecting their third child, returned
to the United States. He became a faculty member at Loyola University
of Chicago and later chaired the department of oral diagnosis,
pathology and radiology in the School of Dentistry. He then came
to CWRU in 1996 to chair the department of oral diagnosis and
radiology.
He noted that early in his career in Nigeria, he had the "opportunity
to teach not only in Lagos but also in two other universities
giving those dental students all of their pathology lectures."
"During that time I came to know that I loved to teach and I
certainly got plenty of practice having given over 200 lectures
in general and oral and maxillofacial pathology combined at the
three schools each year," he said.
Sawyer's research along with his experiences teaching on four
different continents has been recognized by the CWRU dental school's
Student Council. He has received their award for outstanding classroom
teaching every year since his arrival at CWRU.
One of the more popular messages he imparts to his student:
"You get an unusual view of life through teeth."
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