Al Krotoski

Wojciech Antoni Krotoski, known as Al Krotoski (June 20, 1937 – January 1, 2016), was a physician in New Orleans and later Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who was active in the right-to-life movement, having frequently testified on family issues before both houses of the Louisiana State Legislature.

A citizen of Poland by birth, Krotoski was actually born in Riga, Latvia, where his father, Ludwik Krotoski, was the charge d'affairs of the Polish consulate. In 1939, his parents and two older siblings were living in Warsaw awaiting assignment when Nazi Germany invaded Poland and began World War II. With Poland abandoned to communism after the war, the Krotoskis managed to reach London, where Ludwig served the Polish government-in-exile until after the war. In 1949, the Krotoskis became British subjects but that same year immigrated to the United States. In 1955, they were naturalized as American citizens while residing in Los Angeles, California.

Krotoski graduated in 1952 from Loyola High School in Los Angeles and began college at the age of fifteen, but he did not receive his Bachelor of Arts degree in bacteriology until 1960 from the University of California at Los Angeles. He entered graduate school and then medical school in 1961. In 1968, he received a Ph.D. in medical microbiology as well as his M.D. degree. He engaged in an internship at Gorgas Hospital, named for medical pioneer William C. Gorgas, in the former Panama Canal Zone.

In 1969, he returned from the Canal Zone to the United States upon receipt of a commission in the Public Health Service. He was assigned to research malaria at the National Institutes of Health office in Chamblee, Georgia. In 1972, he undertook a residency in preventive medicine at the public health hospital in San Francisco. This training required him to visit tropical centers in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. Having completed the residency in 1974, he received the Master of Public Health degree in epidemiology from the University of California School of Public Health at Berkeley. In the summer of 1975, he came to the public health hospital in New Orleans to establish a tropical infectious disease research program. He subsequently traveled to the Marshall Islands as a consultant in a radiological health program. This assisgnment included a visit to Bikini Atoll. In 1980, in collaboration with his former wife, Danuta Gwozdziowski, and others, he discovered the cause of relapse in malaria as a hypnozoite. For this endeavor, he was nominated in 1989 for a Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. When the public health hospital system closed in 1981, Dr. Krotoski began work at the National Hansen's Disease Center in Carville near New Orleans. He worked there until his retirement in 1995. He was the author or co-author of fifty-five scientific papers and was a reviewer on several editorial boards for medical journals. He also continued after retirement to lecture extensively on subjects related to tropical infectious diseases.

Krotoski was active in statewide and local pro-life organizations. He was the co-founder of The Hippocratic Resource and an elected member for two terms to the Louisiana Republican State Central Committee, a 144-member body which governs the activities of the state party. He was a member of St. Jude the Apostle Parish in Baton Rouge and the Roman Catholic men's order, the Knights of Columbus. He and his second wife, Judith, were active in the Worldwide Marriage Encounter movement until her death in 2013. He is survived by his daughter, Aleksandra Krotoski, Ph.D., an American citizen living in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and her husband, Ben Hammersley, and granddaughter, Ripley; his stepson, John; and sister, Danuta and her husband, Robert Shaw. A mass of Christian burial will be recited at St. Jude the Apostle Catholic Church on January 8, 2016. He will be interred beside his wife, Judith, at Resthaven Gardens of Memory in Baton Rouge.

The Reverend Gene Mills, president of the Louisiana Family Forum in Baton Rouge, called Krotoski "a pro-life giant, who forever changed the life landscape in the Louisiana legislature, nationally, and internationally. ... He reminded us that words have meaning. He refused to refer to the practice of abortion with sanitized words. He consistently referred to 'bortion clinics' as 'abortion facilities' emphasizing the truth that 'clinics' are life affirming and life saving whereas 'abortion facilities' are not." Krotoski presented the pro-life perspective on a variety of bills and will be remembered and honored, according to Mills, as a voice for "an ever-greater respect for all human life, from fertilization until natural death."