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János Hugo Bruno " Hans" Selye (; ; January 26, 1907 – October 16, 1982) was a Hungarian-Canadian endocrinology who conducted important scientific work on the hypothetical non-specific response of an organism to . Although he did not recognize all of the many aspects of , Selye was aware of their role in the stress response.
Selye died on October 16, 1982, in Montreal, Canada. He often returned to visit Hungary, giving lectures as well as interviews in Hungarian television programs. He conducted a lecture in 1973 at the Hungarian Scientific Academy in Hungarian and observers noted that he had no accent, despite spending many years abroad. His book The Stress of Life appeared in Hungarian as Az Életünk és a stressz in 1964 and became a bestseller. Selye János University, the only Hungarian-language university in Slovakia, was named after him. Selye's mother was killed by gunfire during Hungary's anti-Communist revolt of 1956.
Selye initially ( 1940s) called this the "general adaptation syndrome" (at the time it was also called "Selye's syndrome"), but he later rebaptized it with the simpler term "stress response". According to Selye the general adaptation syndrome is triphasic, involving an initial alarm phase followed by a stage of resistance or adaptation and, finally, a stage of exhaustion and death (these phases were established largely on the basis of glandular states). Working with doctoral student Thomas McKeown (1912–1988), Selye published a report that used the word "stress" to describe these responses to adverse events.
His last inspiration for general adaptation syndrome came from an experiment in which he injected mice with extracts of various organs. He at first believed that he had discovered a new hormone, but was proved wrong when every irritating substance he injected produced the same symptoms (swelling of the adrenal cortex, atrophy of the thymus, gastric and duodenal ulcers).Written in three parts: This, paired with his observation that people with different diseases exhibit similar symptoms, led to his description of the effects of "noxious agents" as he at first called it. He later adopted the term "stress", which has been accepted into the lexicon of many languages.Selye, Hans (1956). The Stress of Life. New York: McGraw-Hill. Discussed in and, with reference to use/translation of the term stress in many languages,
Selye argued that stress differs from other physical responses in that it is identical whether the provoking impulse is positive or negative. He called negative stress "distress" and positive stress "eustress".
The system whereby the body copes with stress, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis (HPA axis) system, was also first described by Selye.
Selye acknowledged the influence of Claude Bernard (1813–1878), who developed the idea of milieu intérieur, and of the "homeostasis" of Walter Cannon (1871–1945). Selye conceptualized the physiology of stress as having two components: a set of responses which he called the "general adaptation syndrome", and the development of a pathological state from ongoing, unrelieved stress.
While Selye's work attracted continued support from advocates of psychosomatic medicine, many in experimental physiology concluded that his concepts were too vague and unmeasurable. During the 1950s, Selye turned away from the laboratory to promote his concept through popular books and lecture tours. He wrote both for non-academic physicians and an international bestseller entitled The Stress of Life (1956). From the late 1960s, academic psychologists started to adopt Selye's concept of stress, and he followed The Stress of Life with two other books for the general public, From Dream to Discovery: On Being a Scientist (1964) and Stress without Distress (1974). The idea of "stress" resonated with humanistic psychology, and pop psychology generalised the concept.
Selye worked as a professor and director of the Institute of Experimental Medicine and Surgery at the Université de Montréal. In 1975 he founded the International Institute of Stress, and in 1979, Selye and Arthur Antille started the Hans Selye Foundation. Later Selye and eight Nobel laureates founded the Canadian Institute of Stress.
In 1968 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. In 1976 Concordia University awarded him the Loyola Medal. In 1976, he received the American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award at a Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremony in San Diego, California.
Publicly, Selye never declared his consultancy work for the tobacco industry. In a 1967 letter to "Medical Opinion and Review", he argued against government over-regulation of science and public health, implying that his views on smoking were objective: "I purposely avoided any mention of government-supported research because, being too largely dependent upon it, I may not be able to view the subject objectively. However, I do not use … cigarettes so let these examples suffice." In June 1969, Selye (then director of the Institute of Experimental Pathology, University of Montreal) testified before the Canadian House of Commons Health Committee against anti-smoking legislation, opposing advertising restrictions, health warnings, and restrictions on tar and nicotine. For his testimony Selye was funded $50,000 per year for a 3-year "special project", by William Thomas Hoyt, executive of Council for Tobacco Research, with another $50,000 a year pledged by the Canadian tobacco industry. His comments on smoking were used worldwide; Philip Morris used Selye's statements on the benefits of smoking to argue against the use of health warnings on tobacco products in Sweden. Similarly, in 1977 the Australian Cigarette Manufacturers quoted Selye extensively in their submission to the Australian Senate Standing Committee on Social Welfare.
In 1999, the United States Department of Justice brought an Racketeering case against 7 tobacco companies –British American Tobacco, Brown & Williamson, Philip Morris, Liggett Group, American Tobacco Company, RJ Reynolds, and Lorillard– plus the Council for Tobacco Research, and the Tobacco Institute. As a result, the industry's influence on stress research was revealed.
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