Dr. Garfield was born in Minneapolis, raised in Chicago, had his undergraduate education at Northwestern University, medical school at the University of Illinois, post graduate training in Internal Medicine at the Universities of Cincinnati and Minnesota, and his Medical Oncology fellowship at the latter university.
In between training he was in the U.S. Navy for two years, including one year in South Viet Nam. After his fellowship he spent one year as the medical oncologist at Tel Hashomer Government Hospital in Israel. Following this he was in private practice in Denver for the next 29 years. During this time he was a founding member of what eventually became U.S. Oncology.
He was the chair of the lung committee of that group as well as the Community co-Chair of the Thoracic Committee of ECOG. More recently he has been a member of Dr. Hirsch’s research group. He soon will be moving to Shanghai, China, where he will be associate medical director at the Promed Cancer Center.