Richard Carl Fuisz

Richard Carl Fuisz
Born December 12, 1939(1939-12-12)
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Richard Carl Fuisz, M.D. (born December 12, 1939) is an American physician, inventor, licensed pilot, and entrepreneur. Fuisz founded Fuisz Technologies, Ltd. and Medcom, Inc.[1] He is credited with bringing the first Miss USSR to the United States through his modeling agency[2][3]

Contents

Early life and career

Fuisz was born in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to Slovenian immigrants Anton and Margaret Fuisz, and has dual US/Slovenian citizenship as a result.[4]

He attended Bethlehem Catholic High School. He majored in Biology at Georgetown University and graduated from Georgetown Medical School.[1][2][5] Richard Fuisz and his brother, Robert Fuisz, established an endowed professorship at the Georgetown University School of Medicine.[1]

After graduating from medical school, he worked on public health films. He then hosted a television talk show, and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Pennsylvania.[5]

Later Fuisz was commissioned as a Lt. Commander in the United States Navy. His Naval work included a White House posting. Fuisz then founded Medcom, a publicly traded medical training company.[1]

Fuisz established the Seline Modeling Agency together with Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The Seline Agency brought the first Miss USSR to the United States.[3] Seline was acquired by the Click Agency.

Middle East

In 1981, Baxter International acquired Medcom.[1] Fuisz provided documents to Baxter directors and to The Wall Street Journal showing that Baxter International sold a plant in Israel to comply with the Arab economic and political boycotts of Israel.[6] In 1993 Baxter was the first company to face criminal charges under the anti-boycott law.[7] As a result of Fuisz's documentation and testimony, Baxter pled guilty in March 1993 to violation of U.S. anti-boycott laws and was fined $6.5 million.[8]

He told the House Agriculture Committee in 1992 that Terex Corporation had built mobile Scud missile launchers for Saddam Hussein with the "CIA's blessing".[9][10] Terex "vigorously denied" the charge and started a libel suit against Fuisz. A 16-month federal investigation concluded that there was "no credible evidence that Terex supplied Scud missile launchers to Iraq" and the New York Times printed a retraction of their Seymour M. Hersh article saying "The Times has no evidence that contradicts the task force's findings."The Sunday Herald in 2005 reported on documents provided by Iraq to the UN naming companies that had provided assistance to Iraq's weapons program. Although the US government attempted to censor the contents, Terex is listed in a table of "UK firms that sold arms to Iraq", arms that involved "rocket" material.[11]

Drug delivery

In 1989 Fuisz started Fuisz Technologies to produced a quick dissolve tablet for drug delivery.[5]

He also created the CEFORM encapsulation technology for taste masking and controlled release. Biovail purchase Fuisz Technologies in late 1999.

Fuisz formed Kosmos Pharma, a thin film drug delivery company.[2] Kosmos Pharma was acquired by MonoSol Rx.[12]

In addition to drug delivery, Fuisz has actively invented other, new medical technologies such as the remotely adjustable stent and a liquid used in the place of water to take conventional medicine tablets. Fuisz has holds software patents relating to e-commerce and electronic mail.[1]

Fuisz holds over 200 patents, including 90 U.S. patents in technology.[1][2] He endowed the Richard and Lorraine Fuisz Library at Moravian Academy.[13]

He also funded the Fuisz Scholarship fund, also at Moravian Academy, to benefit students of Slovenian ancestry. He serves on the Board of Regents for Georgetown University.

Companies

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g "Badley Paharamceuticals". Bradley Pharmaceuticals. March 9, 2000. http://cache.zoominfo.com/CachedPage/?archive_id=0&page_id=111790732&page_url=%2f%2fwww.bradpharm.com%2fpr20000309.htm&page_last_updated=6%2f14%2f2002+6%3a14%3a52+PM&firstName=Richard&lastName=Fuisz. Retrieved 2009-02-21. "Prior to founding Fuisz Technologies, Ltd., Dr. Fuisz founded Medcom, Inc. ... He served as CEO until the company was sold to Baxter International. ... Richard C. Fuisz received his M.D. from Georgetown University School of Medicine. He served his Internship and Residency at the Harvard University Service of Cambridge City Hospital, Cambridge Massachusetts. While in the military, Dr. Fuisz served in the Executive Office of the President of the United States, Office of Telecommunications Management. He holds 90 U.S. patents in technology and currently serves as consultant to Elan ... His philanthropic endeavors include the founding and funding of the Fuisz Chair of Medicine at Georgetown University Center in Washington, D.C., as well as the founding and funding of the Fuisz Library at Moravian Academy in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In addition, Dr. Fuisz is a Charter Member of the National Committee for the Performing Arts, Kennedy Center, in Washington, D.C. ..." 
  2. ^ a b c d e Samuels, David (August 29, 2004). "Susan Lindauer's Mission To Baghdad". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=980DE2DC143EF93AA1575BC0A9629C8B63. Retrieved 2008-11-07. "A dark-haired, handsome man with a soigné charm, Fuisz, 64, who went to Georgetown Medical School and did postgraduate work in medicine at Harvard, was trained as a psychiatrist and has more than 200 patents listed under his name. According to its Web site, Kosmos Pharma specializes in making oral-drug-delivery systems. He has also run a modeling agency for Russian women and worked briefly in the White House under Lyndon Johnson. During the 70's and 80's, he says, he did business around the world -- in the Middle East, the Eastern bloc, the Soviet Union." 
  3. ^ a b "From Russia with Sex". New York Magazine. http://nymag.com/nymetro/nightlife/barsclubs/features/3047/index1.html. Retrieved 2009-02-20. "Though she didn't know it, her modeling career was facilitated by Richard Fuisz (pronounced fuse), a former actor, psychiatrist, pediatrician, congressional candidate, whistle-blower, and entrepreneur who declines to comment on a published report that he has intelligence ties. Fuisz, who owned a company that did joint ventures in Moscow, was approached by the then-Soviet ambassador to Washington, Yuri V. Dubinin, to set up a modeling agency to prepare the first waves of Soviet beauties for American commerce (which often meant substantial dental work) and protect them from "adverse influences" and bad publicity like magazine "spreads about their teeth," Fuisz says ... Sukhanova was the first of ten girls he would oversee. But first, he had to free her from the Soviet Union. He did it with the help of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, now one of Russia's oil billionaires but then the head of the Komsomol, or Young Communist League, and beginning his business career in a computer venture with Fuisz." 
  4. ^ Innovators, Slovenian. "Slovenian Innovators". twin cities slovenians. http://www.twincitiesslovenians.org/2009fon/innovators.htm. Retrieved 9 July 2010. 
  5. ^ a b c d "Shorted Fuisz". Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/forbes/1997/0421/5908070a.html. Retrieved 2009-02-25. "While he has had a flamboyant career, Richard Fuisz, 57, is nobody's jailbird. After graduating from Georgetown University's medical school, he worked on U.S. government-funded public health films. He hosted a television talk show, and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in Pennsylvania. He cofounded and later ran Medcom;a manpower training firm based in the Middle East and North Africa;and sold it to Baxter Healthcare in 1982. He also founded a modeling agency that represented several former Miss U.S.S.R.s.; Having invented the technology for the quick-dissolve pills, he founded Fuisz Technologies in 1989." 
  6. ^ "Baxter Denial On Blacklist". Associated Press in New York Times. May 2, 1990. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE4DD1E3BF931A35756C0A966958260. Retrieved 2009-02-20. "The dispute centers from a memorandum about Baxter's Middle East operations purportedly on file in the Arab League's boycott office in Damascus, the Syrian capital. The memo suggests the 1988 sale of the Israeli plant and the delisting were linked. Mr. Jacobson questioned the authenticity of the memo, copies of which were sent to Baxter directors and to The Wall Street Journal by Dr. Richard Fuisz, a Washington-area businessman and former chief executive of Baxter's Middle Eastern Medcom subsidiary. Mr. Fuisz sued Baxter in 1985 on charges of wrongful termination and defamation after he was ousted from his job and demoted, Mr. Jacobson said. The lawsuit was settled." 
  7. ^ Feder, Barnaby J. (March 26, 1993). "Guilty Plea By Baxter On Boycott". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE1DE173FF935A15750C0A965958260&fta=y. Retrieved 2009-02-21. "Baxter International Inc., the world's largest medical supplies company, agreed today to the stiffest punishments the Government has ever meted out to an American business for cooperating with Arab countries in their longstanding economic boycott of Israel." 
  8. ^ Curtiss, Richard. "Pollard Mentor Rafael Eitan Turns Up in Castro's Cuba". Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. http://www.wrmea.com/backissues/0794/9407045.htm. Retrieved 2009-02-25. 
  9. ^ Hersh, Seymour (January 26, 1992). "U.S. Linked to Iraqi Scud Launchers". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E0CEFD71539F935A15752C0A964958260&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss. Retrieved 2009-03-13. "Just after the first wave of Scud attacks on Israel, an American named Richard C. Fuicz began telling United States Government investigators about a visit he made in September 1987 to a truck manufacturing plant owned by the Terex Corporation, a subsidiary of KCS of Westport, Conn." 
  10. ^ "CIA Said to Back Sale". Boston Globe. July 2, 1992. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=BG&p_theme=bg&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EADDFEA0371EB31&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM. Retrieved 2009-03-03. "An American businessman told Congress yesterday that a US heavy equipment firm built mobile Scud missile launchers for Saddam Hussein with the CIA's blessing. Both the CIA and the firm -- the Terex Corp. of Westport, Conn. -- immediately denied the allegation. Dr. Richard C. Fuisz, a physician, inventor and businessman, told a subcommittee of the House Agriculture Committee that he toured a Terex plant in Scotland in September 1987 and was told by Art Rowe, the plant" 
  11. ^ "17 British Firms Armed Saddam with his Weapons". Sunday Herald. February 23, 2003. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0223-07.htm. Retrieved 2009-03-04. "British companies who supplied Iraq with nuclear, biological, chemical, rocket and conventional weapons technology are to be investigated and could face prosecution following a Sunday Herald investigation." 
  12. ^ "MonoSol Rx". Securities and Exchange Commission. August 29, 2007. http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1398733/000104746907006731/a2178523zs-1a.htm. Retrieved 2009-02-20. "Our primary inventor to date is Richard C. Fuisz, M.D., one of our consultants. Dr. Fuisz founded Kosmos Pharma, the assets of which we substantially acquired in 2004. Dr. Fuisz is a named inventor for our issued Irish patent and on 65 of our pending worldwide patent applications." 
  13. ^ Private Secondary Schools. 2007. ISBN 0768923999. http://books.google.com/books?id=2hvGu_waz00C&pg=PA942&lpg=PA942&dq=%22Richard+and+Lorraine+Fuisz+Library+%22&source=bl&ots=zjRW71r0b-&sig=X_TZRCJacNniFHW1OVqVhfORPog&hl=en&ei=RZKfSb2YNZW6twfg2dGCDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result. "The Richard and Lorraine Fuisz Library contains 8500 volumes and fifty-two periodicals and features an enhanced CD-ROM reference center network that ..." 
  14. ^ "Fuisz Announces Formation of Fuisz Tobacco". PR Newswire. January 15, 2008. http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS166236+15-Jan-2008+PRN20080115. Retrieved 2009-02-21. "Richard Fuisz and Joseph Fuisz announced the formation of Fuisz Tobacco. Fuisz Tobacco will commercialize film-based smokeless tobacco products in the US and global markets together with leading tobacco companies." 
  15. ^ "MOVA Pharmaceutical and Kosmos Pharma". PR Newswire. September 4, 2002. http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-25872426_ITM. Retrieved 2009-02-21. "Richard C. Fuisz, MD, chairman of Kosmos Pharma. ... Kosmos' founder, Richard C. Fuisz, MD, previously founded Fuisz ..." 
  16. ^ "Biovail / Fuisz Merger Approved". Business Wire (Business Wire). November 12, 1999. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1999_Nov_12/ai_57532808. Retrieved 2009-02-25. 
  17. ^ "Dr. Richard Fuisz, Founder of Unipharm Technologies Ltd., Announces Launch of Large Consumer Program for Revolutionary Drug Delivery Products.". PR Newswire. 2000. http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-28073567_ITM. Retrieved 2009-02-25.