Herbert Dorken (1926-2012)

Herbert Dorken was born in Montreal, Canada, on July 7, 1926, and died in Grass Valley, California, on February 18, 2012, at the age of 85. Dorken was a prolific writer, with nearly 100 publications to his credit. He was particularly adept at taking raw health care data that the government had assembled with no apparent interpretation and translating it so that its meaning and implications for health care practice were clear. He strongly believed that the health care system in America, and particularly its mental health system, was in need of extensive reform. At the invitation in the mid- 1980s of the National Academies of Practice, he designed a model health care system that was heralded by many health economists, but it went nowhere because it was not in keeping with either of the two most prominent prevailing political health biases. In his later years, and after his daughter almost died of Lyme disease, Dorken became an advocate of the then neglected victims of this condition, the effects of which may persist for years after initial infection.