Michael W. Draper

Michael W. Draper is a retired doctor, professor, and researcher. He specialized in internal medicine, diabetes, and postmenopausal osteoporosis.

Draper earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Brigham Young University in 1968. He went on to earn his PhD in biochemistry from Rockefeller University in 1974 and his MD from Cornell University Medical College in 1976. His three-year residency in internal medicine was completed at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in California.

He was an assistant professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. He retired from the Indiana University School of Medicine. His career was a combination of teaching, treating patients, and clinical research.

He believed that the most important and significant pursuit of his career was a fifteen-plus-year project that he completed at Lilly Research Labs in Indiana.[1] He developed a chemical entity known as raloxifene hydrochloride targeted at the prevention of osteoporosis and of breast cancer in postmenopausal women. Eli Lilly and Company marketed this entity under the trade name Evista and more than 70 million woman have been treated with the medicine.

He and his wife, Margie, are the parents of five children. They are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.