Speech-Language Pathology/Stuttering/Famous People Who Stutter/Other Professions

Journalists
Which 20/20 reporter stutters? No, not Barbara Walters! John Stossel (1947- ) overcame stuttering with therapy from the Hollins Communications Research Institute, in Roanoke, Virginia.

Doctors
Nino Salvatore was president of the Medical University of Naples. "He is a very successful professor of General Pathology. He is also a very clever and eloquent speaker, and his stuttering is, for listeners, just a fascinating style of speaking."

Sidney Gottlieb, CIA Spook
The man who brought us LSD was "a lifelong stutterer." Sidney Gottlieb (1918–1999), described by friends as "a kind of genius," had a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Caltech. He joined the CIA in 1951. In 1953 he founded the MKUltra program, which gave LSD to thousands of CIA agents, military officers, college students, prisoners, and mental patients. Many of the study participants were unknowingly dosed with the drug. Gottlieb took LSD hundreds of times.

Gottlieb's later work at the CIA included developing "a poison handkerchief to kill an Iraqi colonel, an array of toxic gifts to be delivered to Fidel Castro, and a poison dart to kill a leftist leader in the Congo. None of the plans succeeded."

After leaving the CIA, Gottlieb became a speech-language pathologist, then raised goats on a commune in Virginia.


 * 1) Stossel, J. "Stossel's Biggest Story: Overcoming the Fear of Stuttering." ADVANCE For Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists, May 12, 1997.
 * 2) Roberto De Simone, personal correspondence.
 * 3) Weiner, Tim. "Sidney Gottlieb, 80, Dies; Took LSD to C.I.A." New York Times, March 10, 1999.


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