Mavis P. Kelsey, MD
Dr. Kelsey earned his MD from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB), and completed internal medicine and surgery residencies at Bellevue Hospital. After a tour as an instructor in pathology at UTMB, an internal medicine position at the Scott and White Clinic, a fellow at the Mayo Clinic, and service with the U.S. military in World War II, he took a staff position at the Mayo Clinic.
In January 1949, Dr. Kelsey moved to Houston to enter private practice and to build a medical clinic. That year, he co-founded the Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, which now employs more than 300 physicians and provides care to an ethnically diverse population of over 400,000 patients at 18 clinics in Houston.
During World War II, Dr. Kelsey and R. Lee Clark, MD, worked together in the Aeromedical Laboratory at Dayton, Ohio. As early as 1946, when Dr. Clark had become director of MD Anderson Hospital, he invited Dr. Kelsey to join him at MD Anderson. Dr. Kelsey worked part-time in medicine at MD Anderson from 1949 to 1965, with a focus in thyroid disease.
Dr. Clark asked Dr. Kelsey to do three things for his new hospital: develop a clinical isotope program, since Dr. Kelsey was the first Houston physician to hold a license from the Atomic Energy Commission to administer radioisotopes to humans; edit the hospital’s Cancer Bulletin; and develop an endocrine clinic and see patients in the department of Internal Medicine.
With the support of Cliff Howe, MD, Chief of Medicine, Dr. Kelsey worked on the construction of a Geiger counter to count thyroid uptake of radioiodine. In 1949, Dr. Kelsey was the first to administer a dose of radioiodine to a patient. Later, under the leadership of Leonard Grimmett, a Cobalt 60 radiation unit was developed as the first of its kind in the U.S. Dr. Kelsey helped to recruit medical staff in the endocrine unit, including Ray Rose, MD, Tom Haynie, MD, and Stratton Hill, MD.
Under Dr. Kelsey’s leadership, the Kelsey Research Foundation was established in 1956 to support medical research and education in the Houston Area. The Foundation collaborates with Texas Medical Center institutions on multiple studies of cancer prevention. Over the years, MD Anderson faculty members have provided leadership to the Foundation board, including Charles A. (Mickey) LeMaistre, MD, and currently, Louise Strong, MD. Today, the foundation is collaborating with Margaret Spitz, MD, MPH, and Xifeng Wu, MD, PhD, in the Department of Epidemiology on studies of genetic susceptibility to lung and bladder cancer.