May 25, 2001

The "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" mystery has been solved. In a recent episode of the popular ABC-TV game show, a contestant called a lifeline for help answering the $32,000 question. The contestant, Charlie Carson, identified his lifeline only as "Alan, who is a doctor at Mass General in Boston."

How many doctors named Alan can there be at the MGH? As it turns out, quite a few. So, in the May 4 issue of Hotline, a call for help to MGH amateur sleuths was published in an effort to find the anonymous physician.

Fortunately, Judy Borsody, RN, a nurse practitioner for MGH Vascular Radiology, saw the newsletter article and solved the perplexing quandary: The mystery doctor was Alan J. Greenfield, MD, (left) an attending physician for Vascular Radiology.

"Everyone in Vascular Radiology knew about it. I received the call here at the hospital, since the show tapes at 4 pm," explains Greenfield. He says that each contestant gets five choices for their "phone-a-friend" lifeline. Once the contestant is in the "hot seat," where he or she answers multiple choice questions for prize money, all five phone-a-friends are called by one of the show's producers to make sure they are waiting by the phone.

After Greenfield received the initial call from the producer, he was called by the show's host, Regis Philbin, 10 minutes later. Greenfield had 30 seconds to help his friend and former roommate answer the question: "What is the study of plant and animal tissue? A. etiology, B. serology, C. histology or D. nephrology."

Fortunately for his friend, Greenfield knew that the answer was C. When asked if he was nervous about being a lifeline, Greenfield says: "I wasn't nervous at the time. Interventional radiology has some pretty tense moments, so this didn't seem too scary. But if I really thought about it, I should have been nervous. If I got the answer wrong, 40 million people would have been watching."

Carson went on to win $125,000 on the show, and has promised Greenfield tickets to the Broadway show "The Producers" in return for knowing what histology means.