The Achkar Family

Halfway through his second year of medical school, Jean-Paul Achkar, MD, called his father. “He said, ‘What do you think of gastroenterology?’” Edgar Achkar, MD, recalls. “I said, ‘What do you mean? I’m a gastroenterologist. What do you want me to think?’”

The elder Dr. Achkar made sure the question remained his son’s to answer. He never pushed. He never so much as suggested. Jean-Paul had gone off to college with no plans for medicine, only to reconsider eventually. Maybe he would become a cardiologist.

And yet. In high school, Jean-Paul took a summer job entering data into a Cleveland Clinic registry of patients with Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. What struck him, he says, was that these illnesses never resolved. No quick fix. No clean ending. Just a lifetime of medications and surgeries and complications, sometimes running through whole families.

Today, Jean-Paul is a leading specialist in inflammatory bowel disease who has spent his career narrowing the gap between diagnosis and what can be done about it. He holds the Kenneth Rainin Endowed Chair in IBD Research.

His father’s own path began in Lebanon, where Edgar became the first physician in his family. Following medical school in Beirut, he continued his training in the United States, including a fellowship at Cleveland Clinic. At the time, gastroenterology consisted largely of — in his words — “talking, examining and X-rays.” Endoscopy involved rigid tubes. The flexible scope arrived just as he finished his studies.

He returned to Lebanon to practice. After civil war broke out there in 1975, he moved back to Cleveland for good with his wife, Jill, and their sons Jean-Paul and Alan.

Edgar chose the group practice at Cleveland Clinic over more lucrative opportunities in private practice. He wanted to work in a collaborative setting where he could walk into a colleague’s office and confer on a case. “I don’t regret it,” he says.

He became a national authority on esophageal disease. He also served on the Board of Governors, rose to associate chief of staff and was elected president of the American College of Gastroenterology, which now runs a visiting professorship in his name.

Jean-Paul was recruited to Cleveland Clinic, but Edgar deliberately stayed out of the process. He wanted his son hired on his own merits, not because of his surname. They went on to practice in separate areas, often going days without running into each other.

Years later, it was Jean-Paul who did the recruiting. He was running the GI fellowship, and he brought in his father — who had retired from clinical practice — to teach.

“I was his boss for a little bit,” Jean-Paul says. With a laugh, he adds: “I never had to discipline him.”