Pedro was born in Madrid on September 27, 1936. In late 1939, his parents brought the family to Paris to escape the fascist terror of Spain via a harrowing journey across the Pyrenees. Fearing Nazi invasion, they fled to Colombia in 1940 and moved to Chicago in 1947. Pedro began undergraduate studies at Princeton University in 1954, but found them mind-numbing and soon transferred to Washington University in St. Louis. He remained there for medical school, graduating in 1962. Pedro’s interest in medical research was influenced by such University of Washington giants as Carl and Gerty Cori, Bill Daughaday, Dave Kipnis, Oliver Lowry, Arthur Kornberg, and Jack Strominger, as well as classmates Stuart Kornfeld and Phil Majerus. After medical school, Pedro went to Johns Hopkins University for an internship and residency in internal medicine, determined to improve public health.
Pedro made his first major discovery as a medical resident. Noticing the many patients in his care who had problems with dairy products, he, with intern Dean Lockwood and medical student Jack Caldwell, developed a lactose intolerance test based on measurements of blood sugar and lactase in small intestinal biopsies. This work – the first report of lactose intolerance1 — showed that about half of the 50 participants studied were lactose intolerant, attributed to lactase deficiency, and this without any external funding, technical assistance or university supervision.
