Chapter One

Chapter 1

Introduction

I recognized Maxwell Harris immediately. It had been more than twenty years since I had been an undergraduate in his political science class. On a Columbia campus filled with intellectual all-stars, Maxwell Harris was a legend. He had been an advisor to every President since John Kennedy, and his bestselling books were classics in their field. But it was his personality and style that packed each seat in the large lecture hall. Compelling and articulate, he would sit at the lectern chain-smoking gold-tipped English Ovals. He would smoke each one down to the very tip and then, without taking a break, light the next cigarette with his last puff.

"My wife said she would divorce me if I didn't see a doctor about my cough," he told me as I examined him. "It keeps her up at night and she claims I'm banned from Lincoln Center for drowning out La Sylphide," he said with the same dry wit that charmed generations of students. "Can you give me a cough medicine that really works?"

But Professor Harris didn't have just a simple cough and he would need more than cough syrup. I had to tell my intellectual hero that he had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD.

He is far from alone. Over the years there has been a relentless rise in the number of cases of COPD throughout the world. In my practice at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York City, over 40 percent of my patients now suffer from this debilitating and frequently fatal disease. It is estimated that COPD affects 35 million Americans, but only half are aware that a lingering cough, chronic bronchitis, and shortness of breath are signs of this serious healt