Fathers and sons – values passed down across the generations in the Béres family
Running a company whose name is the same as the owners’ family name is a heavy responsibility. After all, besides constantly having to improve and innovate, the values of the forebears must be kept alive and the descendants must be taught these values, while all keeping an eye on the ultimate goal – serving the health and well-being of society. Dr József Béres, Chairman of Béres Pharmaceuticals, and his son Marcell Béres, the company’s Director of Innovation and Portfolio Management, tell us about the authenticity that imbues their work.
Today we’re going to talk about role models, about fathers and sons, but before we do, please say a few words about what turned the family name into a household name – your fifty-year-old product, Béres Drops! What made it such a ground-breaking invention?
Dr. József Béres: In the fifties and sixties, the complex physiological significance of the active ingredients and trace elements in it was not even appreciated when it came to plants, let alone animals and humans. My father, Dr. József Béres Sr., was an agricultural researcher, and his observations came from agriculture. His key insight was that with continuous soil use, certain vital substances are lost from the soil – not enough gets into the plants that grow in the soil, and this weakens their ability to resist diseases and, ultimately, undermines their health. It was clear that these nutrients were needed to maintain health. He deduced that it was not only necessary to replace one, or just a few of these elements, but that all essential nutrients must be supplemented in a complex and interrelated way. He realised that micronutrients are not just important for plants, as they also enter the body of animals and humans who consume those plants. In other words, if there’s a deficiency in the soil, there’ll also be a deficiency in humans, and even a marginal deficiency of trace elements can manifest itself in various unwanted symptoms and even in chronic diseases. The complex physiological significance of trace elements and the importance of supplementing them in humans was a revolutionary idea at the time, one that placed my father ahead of his time, and, as is often the case at such times, he got a lot of flack for it.
Marcell Béres: The fact that we need vitamins, minerals and trace elements to stay healthy seems obvious these days. But back in the sixties, the fact that zinc or selenium, for example, could be used to boost the immune system and thus help prevent diseases was not widely known or appreciated. Perhaps if my grandfather had been born somewhere else in the world, he’d have won a Nobel prize – even if that sounds a bit braggy. But he was born and worked in Szabolcs County in Hungary, and would not have left the place of his birth for anything.
There are plenty of talented people around, but not all of them end up legends. Perhaps it wasn’t just this invention of his, but his exemplary struggle to have it accepted and the strength of his personality that was needed for this.
J. B.: That’s right – he was certainly driven by a thirst for knowledge and a strong work ethic from his earliest childhood. But he became an icon, I think, because he had the courage of his convictions – he stood firmly by the knowledge he’d acquired and the results he’d achieved. What he believed in, he wouldn’t let go of, not for anything, no matter how hard they tried to persuade him otherwise. As for trace elements, no one could make him doubt their importance for a minute – even though he was unable to convince the scientific world of their significance at the time. The preparation was developed in 1972, but it could only be scientifically tested on humans after the company was established, and it was not declared a medicinal product until 2000.
M. B.: Grandfather was a charismatic personality, no doubt about it, but perhaps he also needed the socio-economic background of the seventies to turn him into a role model. People were in a weakened state, debilitated, not only in a medical sense, and he was able to give new hope to many. Besides professional jealousy and misunderstanding, he also faced political attacks, but he stood his ground; no one and nothing could divert him from his path, and he became a fighter for the truth against the ruling elites of the time.
Perhaps we should highlight one more trait of his: empathy. We know that he selflessly helped those who turned to him – he gave the Drops to those who came to him, without payment, though it’s clear that he could have got rich from it, given the huge interest there was.
J. B.: Yes, he was driven by something very different – the desire to help. His sister’s illness gave him a huge incentive to find a solution in the area of human diseases and create a product that might help her. When people began flocking to him in Kisvárda, what really encouraged him was all the appreciative feedback he got – the fact that he was able to assist in the treatment of illnesses both minor and more serious.
Now that several films and books have been produced about him, we at least know something about him as a professional. But there was a side to him that only you knew: the father and the grandfather. Please tell us a bit about that too!
M. B.: Well, we lived far away from each other: he in Kisvárda, we in Budapest, and when I was a child the distance of more than 300 kilometres that separated those two towns was much “further” than it is today, but we still managed to meet every few months. When we were together, he told us a lot about things from times past; about his experiences in the army, about the plants he worked with, about the river Tisza… and we sometimes went there with him. The love of nature radiated from him.
J. B.: He loved children and he loved his family – but the truth is that he wasn’t able to spend a lot of time with us. He would leave for work early in the morning and come home in the evenings, where our garden was waiting for him – he grew a lot of things there; the garden was very important to him. Most of the child-rearing was left to our mother, but our relationship with him was strong nonetheless. I have a lot of great memories of time spent with him: we went hiking and fishing, visited the grandparents and even played games – we played table tennis a lot… we lived simply.
Values are usually not formally passed down from one generation to the next, I guess – not without your father quoting long exhortations to you, or you to your son, about how to live. At the same time, these values tend to shape you without your noticing it. Today, how would you describe the cornerstones that anchor you, whether at work or in your private lives, and the roots of which can be found in your family’s past?
M. B.: What’s always foremost in my mind and what guides me in my life is the insistence on the truth, even if today we’re faced with very different problems than he was back then. The fact that we bring quality products to market using authentic communication can be traced back to our belief in the values we received from my grandfather and our parents. That money is not the primary thing, but that we should help others, and that we should do this with professionalism and with honest respect.
The complete interview was published in the Autumn/Winter 2022 issue of Béres Egészség Magazine.