Dr. John M. Freeman, an internationally renowned Johns Hopkins pediatric neurologist and expert in pediatric epilepsy who had also been a medical ethicist, died Friday of cardiovascular disease at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
The longtime Ruxton resident was 80.
"Few Hopkins physicians have had a more profound effect than John Freeman on how we treat young patients who suffer from epilepsy and congenital abnormalities and how we address the often-difficult ethical issues surrounding these potentially heart-breaking cases," said Ronald R. Peterson, president of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System and executive vice president of Johns Hopkins Medicine.
"The sensitive, compassionate patient care to which the Johns Hopkins Hospital is dedicated has been enhanced immeasurably by John Freeman's unwavering concern for patient dignity and determination to improve the lives of those entrusted to his care," said Mr. Peterson.
John Mark Freeman, the son of Leon L. Freeman, a real estate developer, and Florence Kann Freeman Lippman, a volunteer and homemaker, was born in Brooklyn, N.Y. and raised in Great Neck, N.Y.
After graduating in 1950 from Deerfield Academy in Deerfield. Mass., Dr. Freeman earned a bachelor's degree in 1954 from Amherst College where he was an honors graduate, and went on to complete his medical studies in 1958 from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
From 1958 to 1961, he was an intern, assistant resident and senior resident in pediatrics at the Harriet Lane Home of the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
In 1961, he began a three-year fellowship in neurology and child neurology at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, and from 1964 to 1966, was a research physician while serving in the Army at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Washington, before joining the faculty of Stanford University.
Dr. Freeman returned to Hopkins in 1969 and rose through the academic ranks, becoming a full professor in pediatrics and neurology. From 1969 to 1990, he was director of the Pediatric Neurology Service at Hopkins Hospital, and he was concurrently director of the Birth Defects Treatment Center at the East Baltimore hospital.
In 1991, he was he was named the Lederer Professor of Pediatric Epilepsy, a position he retained until becoming an emeritus professor in 2007.
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Dr. John M. Freeman, neurologist