***If you only want to read about Casey Sadler’s baseball work, please skip down to the starred portion below.
In 1938, Dorothy Hansine Andersen, a pediatrician and pathologist at the Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, published a paper titled “Cystic Fibrosis of the Pancreas and Its Relation to Celiac Disease: A Clinical and Pathological Study” in the American Journal of Diseases of Children. It marked the first time the disease had been named, and its characteristics - cysts, scars and tissue damage surrounding the pancreas and lungs - identified.
Four years later, Dr. Andersen co-developed the first diagnostic test for cystic fibrosis, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that researchers identified the gene mutations that produce a faulty protein, creating a buildup of mucus that clogs the lungs and makes it near-impossible to breathe.