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FORUM
FUNC Breaks Summertime Funk for First-years
Rachelle Pierre, HMS '05, measured the height of Nicole De La Cruz at Dimock Community Health Center's Early Head Start program as part of FUNC, the First-year Urban Neighborhood Campaign. Now in its third year, FUNC had a record number of first-year students participate in the pre-orientation program. Fifty-eight first-years and 14 second-year student leaders volunteered for nine community service projects throughout Boston during the week before first-year orientation. The program encourages community service while at HMS and HSDM and provides students with an opportunity to interact with Boston's patient population within the patients' own community. Other sites where students volunteered were Universal Human Rights International of the Family Services of Greater Boston, Dorchester House, Dimock Community Center's Head Start program, Germaine Lawrence School, Cambridge Public Health Department, Community Servings, Soldiers of Health, and the Barbara McInnis House and Betty Snead House. Photo by Liza Green, HMS Media Sevices
Native Students Take Four Directions Toward Medical SchoolThere's a compelling full-page ad I saw recently in the pages of the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, and other "liberal" magazines. The copy attacks the reader with its large, bold headline: "Have You Ever Seen a Real Indian?" Below is a picture of a young native woman, long-haired, fair-skinned, sitting near a row of microscopes—with one hand outstretched to her baby daughter, who is just out of sight of the camera. The ad introduces her as a "28-year-old Blackfeet Indian, a veterinary graduate student, mom, and future doctor to large animals." At the bottom is the traditional emblem of the American Indian College Fund.
Left to right, Sarah Williams (Ojibwe) and Cori Roberts (Okanagan Similkameen) take the blood pressure of Thomas Sock (Micmac) at Boston's North American Indian Center. Photo by Jeff Cleary Many would question the ad's taste, although as a native student I find it pretty funny. More importantly, I think it raises a point not often discussed—that native students can and do achieve in science and medicine, and that they often do so with families and other obligations in tow. Overall, the successes of native students in science and medicine are rarely celebrated, probably because there are so few natives in the field—at last count, native physicians composed only 1 percent of all American physicians, for a total of around 1,200. Yet there are many native students achieving goals in science and medicine for themselves, their families, and their communities every day—students who will someday be the physicians and scientists that their communities need. Since 1993, native students have come to Boston every summer as part of the Four Directions Summer Research Program to realize their dreams and begin working toward their eventual goals of science and medicine. Four Directions was started in1993 by three native Harvard medical students—Brent Hale, Shawn Franklin, and Patrick Linson—who wanted to start a program that would involve native students in science and medicine and get them in the "pipeline" to medical school. Four Directions is unique among summer programs for underrepresented minority students in that it is entirely run by native medical students and physicians, a demonstration of cultural autonomy that Four Directions takes pride in. The program's overall vision is simple: that our talented students will depart HMS with new skills, experiences, and knowledge, helping them to serve their communities and future generations of native peoples from all directions of the compass. This summer, as a coordinator for Four Directions, I have had the opportunity to work with native students who I truly feel are going to be the future strength of our communities. We have students who hold tribal offices, who teach science at reservation schools, who represent their tribes nationally and locally. We have students who work to support their families while attending school full-time. We also have a student working at Children's Hospital on one of our most important issues, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and infant mortality, which on some reservations is double the national average. Other students are taking part in groundbreaking research on asthma, morphogens, and neural tube defects. All are actively working toward a career in medicine—some are beginning the long, arduous process of application to medical school now. At the summer's end, they go back to school and back home, hopefully enriched and inspired by their summer experiences. Maybe one day we'll see their successes portrayed in the pages of the Atlantic Monthly or, better yet, the New England Journal of Medicine or JAMA. For more information about Four Directions, please contact the Division of Medical Sciences at 432-1342. —Tarayn Grizzard (Cherokee), a second-year student at HMS
How the Image Courts Meaning in Science
From the first telescope, the development of scientific thought has been inextricably linked with technologies that extend our ability to visually represent things that cannot be seen with the naked eye. Images of very distant, small, or otherwise hidden objects that clarify complex relationships can be powerful tools for research, diagnosis, and shaping public understanding of the world—provided they are used wisely. How to achieve this visual literacy was the subject of the conference "Image and Meaning: Envisioning and Communicating Science and Technology," held in June at MIT. The scientific expertise and creative energy of Felice Frankel, MIT research scientist and science photographer, were the driving force behind this interdisciplinary meeting, which brought together expert users of scientific images, from basic researchers to science writers to Hollywood special-effects wizards. Presentations on futuristic technology currently under development left me wanting to whisper, "Beam me up, Scotty" into the nearest PalmPilot. Richard Satava from Yale University pitched his idea for the "holomer," a personalized 3-D interactive medical chart; Christine Ortiz from MIT, the atomic force microscope that could one day map the surface of a DNA molecule and read it like the groove in a record; David Laidlaw (Brown University) and Rachael Brady (University of Illinois), ways to represent complex spatial data, like archeological sites or the internal structure of organs, using small virtual reality chambers that look a lot like—dare I say it?—holodecks. Sorry, no warp drive or transporters yet. Most talks were devoted to the use of images as tools, either for research or for communicating its findings. Ralph Khan of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory drew a crucial distinction between the two. For a presentation, he said, you've decided what points you want to make, and simplifying an image is desirable. But in research you have to tolerate a certain amount of complexity in your images if you want to find something new. Image Becomes ObjectBut the question we kept returning to throughout the conference was, How much image manipulation is acceptable? Most speakers advocated that the important thing is to track and explain any changes made to images. But the same scientists seemed unsettled by what smacked of playing with the data. After all, aren't the data supposed to be immutable, immune to human subjectivity?Another important question was driven by advances like gene chips that measure the level of thousands of gene products at once and multi-electrodes that record the activity from a hundred nerve cells simultaneously. How can we create visual representations of large numerical datasets to facilitate the recognition of biologically relevant patterns? Some data are particularly well suited to having their meaning and significance brought out through images. Lucia Lovison-Golob of Harvard University uses cartographic images to demonstrate the correlation between the geography of an area, patterns of pollution, and the health status of the community. And Paul Matsudaira (Whitehead Institute) recounted how movies of sperm fertilizing an egg led to a deeper understanding of the underlying mechanisms, demonstrating how dynamic processes can defy capture by still pictures alone. The other half of the image equation consists of using images to communicate science. Here, the emphasis should be on accuracy, clarity, and immediate impact. But the presenters made it clear that you should choose the image that best fits both your message and your audience. Lies, Damn Lies, and Adobe PhotoshopScientists choose the best "representative" images to illustrate the findings in their articles for their peers. Professors writing textbooks may opt for clear but incomplete diagrams for students. Some who are striving to promote science awareness in the larger community have developed creative approaches; for example, a "Science on the Buses" poster series by Frank Burnet (University of the West of England) combines eye-catching graphics with intriguing legends to get riders to ponder the relevance of science to everyday life.Many of us use software like Adobe Photoshop to tailor our images to a particular purpose. Gregg Wilensky of Adobe Systems, Inc. showed that within minutes he could transform a mundane photo of the president into an image of him holding hands with an alien, a portrait worthy of the National Enquirer. When asked if there was any discussion at Adobe about the ethical ramifications of such technology, he replied frankly, "No." Well, at least his honesty was refreshing. Images in science are sometimes belittled because of their association with a dumbing-down of the material. A common attitude in Hollywood with regard to scientific accuracy was voiced by Doug Roble (Digital Domain), who declared, "If it looks good, it's right." While this may offend my desire for nonscientists to understand what I do, how much can you teach someone if you don't have his attention? Current printed media may be more successful at using engaging images to draw lay readers into a story before hitting them with the exact biochemistry of amyloid plaque formation. Sometimes images backfire, leaving an erroneous legacy. Roald Hoffmann (Cornell University) cited as an example Bohr's radial model of the atom, which persists even though our understanding of particle physics is now much more sophisticated. This scientific icon owes its staying power in popular culture to its simplicity and its profound resonance with the structure of our solar system. What's the Worst Case?Sometimes images short circuit critical and creative thinking. When a panel of luminaries including Susan Sontag, E.O. Wilson, and Roger Penrose were asked to comment on six images showing familiar scientific events, chosen previously but concealed from them, the result was unexpected. Penrose outlined the social and moral issues one might associate with a photograph of an atomic explosion or a fetus in utero. Sontag, however, let out a mild expletive and declared that she had expected the images to be more than a kind of shorthand for issues we ought to be thinking about. She then suggested that these visual sound bites take us away from true knowledge, which is achieved by words and not images.Does this mean we should not use images? Some argue that science is about knowing without seeing. E.O. Wilson, however, spoke of a new tome that will reportedly contain thousands of his hand-drawn sketches of ants. He admits he is passionate about ants, and the drawings no doubt will add significantly to the science as well as the feel of the finished work. And yet in virtually the same breath, Wilson declared that in science writing "metaphor and emotion are not welcome," relegating them to the domain of art. The rub may be that it is impossible to have images without emotions, which is why images appeal to us and attracted so many to this conference. More so than words and numbers, images convey the excitement of scientific discovery. If the scientific journey is truly a human journey, and if we respect the human desire to be fascinated, then failing to harness the power of images is everyone's loss. It invites the fulfillment of the British scientist J.B.S. Haldane's prophecy that "the world shall perish not for lack of wonders, but for lack of wonder." —Alex Carter, an eighth-year MD–PhD student in the neuroscience program at HMS |
