A lifetime dedicated to research
Professor Hemker has published over 400 research papers on Haemostasis and Thrombosis and has also dedicated his professional life to studying the action of heparin in the treatment of this disease. In this story he shows a more personal side...
Dr. H.C. Hemker, bioquímico Synapse Research Institute, Maastricht University
“There is no difference between good research or painting or music or any other art, because it is all about knowing very well a technique and then, your fantasy and your ideas through that technique con express themselves and give a beautiful or useful result.
I have too many hobbies. I have hobbies for a live of 200 years. But my main hobby is still research. Research is a detective story and you try to find out who is the murderer.
This is fibrin, this is the clot. Thrombin is necessary, otherwise you would bleed to dead if you don’t have it and also thrombin is very dangerous because as soon as you get a clot where you should not you get an infarction. So you have to keep thrombin within its good boundaries. And heparin works here.
Everybody knows about penicillin and nobody knows about heparin. At the 20th century indeed I think it saved about as much lives as penicillin did. But it is much less known”.
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