Genetics: Human Genome Tally: Is Recount in Order? Leadership: Summers to Succeed Rudenstein as President of Harvard Pathology: Cancer Cells' Immortality May Depend on Longevity Protein Medical Education: Taking the Pulse of Violence in America International Health: East–West Health Care Conference to Host 600 Chinese Doctors Caretaker Protein May Moonlight as Gatekeeper—and Vice Versa Pilot Study Suggests Ischemic Stroke Triggers Medicare Patients Give Higher Overall Marks to Nonprofit than For-profit Health Plans Report Gives Guidelines for Raising Teens Proceedings of the HMS Faculty Council Dean's Community Service Award Call for Nominations NOVA Airs Series on HMS-trained Doctors New Appointments to Full Professor In Memoriam: Donald Muirhead Allan Sandler Conference Shows Ways to Harness Discoveries HMS Alumni Bulletin a Finalist for National Magazine Award Honors and Advances Harvard Grad Student Caucus Probes Facets of Health Care Policy Front Page

BULLETIN Proceedings of the HMS Faculty Council At the Feb. 7 Faculty Council meeting, Joseph Bruno, associate dean for information technology, provided a status report on eCommons and the Harvard Medical Community-wide e-mail directory. Since August 2000, eCommons has added access, via the Digital Library, to Ovid, MDConsult, Elsevier journals, and Hollis, and has updated the e-mail directory and the announcements function. Bruno further discussed IT's initiative for expanded, real-time access to the e-mail directory across the Harvard medical community. He noted that access and security issues that have been of special concern to the affiliates will be respected. He also said that the recent version of the announcements function permits targeting based on role, rank, department, and institution. Currently only the HMS Offices of Public Affairs, Faculty Affairs, and Human Resources can transmit community announcements. HMI Update Robert Crone, president and CEO of Harvard Medical International, updated members on HMI programs. Established in 1994 as a self-supporting, nonprofit subsidiary corporation of Harvard University, HMI is dedicated to creating a network of international institutional partners to promote excellence in health care, medical education, and biomedical research; and to create systemwide programs, products, and solutions to improving health. HMI's current international partners include academic institutions, service providers, and corporate entities located in the Far East, India, South America, and Europe. Crone emphasized that the efforts of HMI are primarily educational and the relationships are mutually beneficial. Conflicts of Interest Joseph Martin, dean of the Faculty of Medicine, provided an update on the conflict-of-interest policies for academic institutions now under discussion at the national level. Martin indicated that he had reviewed the consensus statement and guidelines with attendees at the department heads retreat, as well as with members of the Braunwald Committee, which had previously reviewed the guidelines. The draft is currently being used as a starting point by the Association of American Medical Colleges in its broader review of the topic. Although the guidelines are not mandatory, Martin thought it was likely that they would be used by most medical schools and teaching hospitals in reviewing their guidelines. Martin also told the council that JudyAnn Bigby, HMS associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Isaac Schiff, the Joe Vincent Meigs professor of gynecology at Massachusetts General Hospital, have agreed to be on the search committee to find a successor to William Silen, who stepped down in January as dean for faculty development and diversity. They will join Augustus White, HMS professor of orthopedic surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, who will chair the search committee. Faculty Fellowships Roslyn Orkin, assistant dean for faculty affairs, summarized the annual HMS faculty fellowship process for invitational awards. Orkin explained that each year in February, announcements of the invitational award opportunities are sent out to the HMS community with a call for internal applications due April 9. A standing committee of the faculty meets in May or June in an NIH study-section fashion to select the nominees. Orkin stated that one of the greatest impediments is the difficulty of communicating this information to the entire faculty. Hard copies of the invitational award summary booklets (the Red Book) are available. Orkin urged council members to help announce the funding opportunities. Dean's Community Service Award Call for Nominations Dean Joseph Martin is requesting nominations for the third annual HMS/HSDM Dean's Community Service Award. Because community service is integral to the HMS/HSDM academic mission, this award recognizes and encourages participation in community service activities and programs. Four awards will be given, one each to a faculty member, trainee, staff member, and student. Each awardee's community service program will receive $1,000. The deadline for nominations is April 6. Self-nominations are encouraged. For more information and a nomination form, visit www.mfdp.med.harvard.edu/outreach/programs.htm or contact Jacquelyn Smith-Crooks at 432-6132. NOVA Airs Series on HMS-trained Doctors Beginning March 27, NOVA will present the first of three one-hour segments of Survivor MD, which follows the very different lives of seven HMS alumni after medical school. NOVA has been following all seven since their first week at HMS in 1987 and previously aired three programs on their training to become doctors. In Survivor MD, six of the seven are working in clinical practice from McLean Hospital to Bloomington Hospital in Indiana, and all are trying to balance the pressures of work, family, and personal lives. The shows air March 27, April 3, and April 10 at 9:00 p.m. on PBS. New Appointments to Full Professor These faculty members were recently appointed to a full professorship. Edward Benz Professor of Pathology Dana–Farber Cancer Institute Benz, a hematologist specializing in disorders of the red cell, is president of the Dana–Farber Cancer Institute and is the Richard and Susan Smith professor of medicine at HMS. His research interests are focused on the molecular pathology of inherited anemias, the novel functions of red cell membrane proteins, and the regulation of mRNA splicing during red cell development. He is also the CEO of Dana–Farber/ Partners CancerCare, director of the Dana–Farber/Harvard Cancer Center, and a member of the governing board of Dana–Farber/Children's Cancer Care. He is the past president of the American Society of Hematology and the American Society of Clinical Investigation. Benjamin Bierbaum Professor of Orthopedic Surgery Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Bierbaum is chairman of the Department of Orthopedics at both Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and New England Baptist Hospital, where he has been head of the department for more than 25 years. He is a leader in the research and design of new and better prosthetics for hip arthroplasty. Bierbaum is also a participant in studies of improved hip instrument designs, blood management in patients undergoing total hip arthroplasty, blood loss during surgery, and the use of mind–body techniques for pain control. Thomas Ellenberger Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology Harvard Medical School Ellenberger's research centers on structural studies of enzymes that replicate DNA or repair DNA damage. His group is studying how these proteins assemble into large complexes that unwind the double helix, catalyze DNA synthesis, or cleave and rejoin DNA strands during genetic rearrangements. Ellenberger is also the director of a joint research program with the other members of the Armenise–Harvard Structural Biology Center, who are determining structures of proteins involved in a variety of human cancers by X-ray crystallography and NMR spectroscopy. Frank Sacks Professor of Cardiovascular Disease Prevention Harvard School of Public Health Sacks's major research interests are the mechanisms by which apolipoproteins affect lipoprotein metabolism in humans, and biochemical epidemiology of lipoproteins and cardiovascular disease. He also conducts clinical trials on nutrition and hypertension and on cholesterol-lowering drugs on cardiovascular disease. He is chair of the DASH sodium study, a multicenter trial of the effect of sodium, and of the DASH dietary pattern on blood pressure study. He is interested in nutritional guidelines and policy. Priscilla Schaffer Professor of Medicine (Microbiology and Molecular Genetics) Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Schaffer is chief of the laboratory of molecular virology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and former chair of the Department of Microbiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. Her research interests include herpes simplex virus latency and reactivation, antiviral drug development, and antiviral drug resistance. Donald Schomer Professor of Neurology Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Schomer is the director of the Laboratory of Clinical Neurophysiology and the chief of the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. His neurophysiology interests are in the field of technology development related to long-term EEG monitoring techniques. He also has led a diverse team of physicians, nurses, and engineers in developing new and innovative medical, surgical, and interventional approaches to epilepsy. In Memoriam Donald Muirhead, HMS clinical instructor in pediatrics at Children's Hospital, died Feb. 5. He was 69. Born in Bridgeport, Conn., Muirhead graduated from Wesleyan University, Boston University School of Medicine, and HSPH. A specialist in neonatal care, he was a former chairman of the Massachusetts chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics and chairman of the Duxbury, Mass. Board of Health. Muirhead leaves his wife, Shirley; two daughters, Susan Bates and Judith Kiplinger, both of Duxbury; a son, William of Connecticut; a sister, Elizabeth Garden of Newton; and four grandchildren. Allan Sandler, former HMS assistant clinical professor of medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, died Feb. 5 at the age of 70. A graduate of Princeton University and HMS, Sandler completed his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he practiced for nearly 45 years until health concerns prompted his retirement in 1999. He spent two years in the Air Force as a Strategic Air Command flight surgeon and chief of medicine at a base hospital. In 1955, Sandler was part of an MGH team that developed the positive pressure ventilation devices that replaced the polio tank. He leaves his wife, Mary Haskell; a son, Robert of Santa Monica, Calif.; two stepsons, David Feld of Fremont, Calif., and Jonathan Feld of Boston; and a brother, Michael of Framingham. Robert Langer. Photo by Becky Sun Conference Shows Ways To Harness Discoveries Putting science to work is the essence of the Harvard–MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, a theme that came vividly to life in an HST conference on March 12 and 13. Titled "Experiencing the Frontiers of Biomedical Technology," the program was tailored to clinicians, biotech workers, lawyers, venture capitalists, reporters, and others interested in experiencing some of the trials and techniques of bringing science to market. The one-and-a-half-day event, headed by Elazer Edelman, HMS associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and director of the Harvard–MIT Biomedical Engineering Center, was based on a series of hands-on workshops addressing tissue engineering, drug delivery systems, human–machine systems, and informatics. In addition to the workshops on the first day were talks on relevant legal and regulatory issues. A plenary session on the second day summarized the workshop activities and featured four speakers who discussed the future of each area of innovation. In the culminating talk on drug delivery systems, for example, Robert Langer (above), an HMS senior lecturer on surgery at MIT and HST faculty member, illustrated the process of innovation by ticking off a series of hurdles researchers faced and overcame to develop a "chemotherapy wafer" against brain cancer. Another of the featured speakers, HST faculty member Mehmet Toner, an HMS associate professor of surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, said the future of tissue engineering depends largely on developing a blockbuster therapy. The closest thing to that right now is engineered skin, he said, but he believes the real blockbuster replacement tissue will be liver or bone. HMS Alumni Bulletin A Finalist for National Magazine Award The American Society of Magazine Editors has announced the finalists for the 2001 National Magazine Awards. Among those named in the general excellence category for a magazine with a circulation under 100,000 is the Harvard Medical Alumni Bulletin, edited by Paula Byron. Winners will be announced at a luncheon in New York in May. Honors and Advances HMS associate professor of medicine JudyAnn Bigby received the 2001 Mary Horrigan Connors Award from Brigham and Women's for outstanding contributions and leadership in women's health. The $25,000 grant will fund Bigby's choice of women's health projects. Sharon Weinstein, HMS assistant professor of psychiatry at McLean Hospital, has received the New England Council of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry first annual Achievement Award for outstanding contributions to the field of psychiatry. She was also elected to the nominating committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The National Space Biomedical Research Institute has named three HMS faculty as associate team leaders. Conrad Wall III, HMS associate professor of otology and laryngology at the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, will help lead the neurovestibular adaptation team, whose research focuses on finding solutions to space motion sickness and body-orientation problems. Alfred Goldberg, HMS professor of cell biology, will help lead the muscle alterations and atrophy team, whose research concentrates on the effects of long-duration space travel on muscles and on developing solutions to muscle loss and wasting. And Megan Jewett, HMS instructor in medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, will help lead the human performance factors, sleep, and chronobiology team, which will investigate the effects of weightlessness and the loss of 24-hour day–night cycles on human performance. David Sachs, the Paul S. Russell– Warner Lambert professor of surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, received the Medical Foundation Award for Distinguished Contributions to Health Research in January. The Boston-based health promotion organization recognized Sachs for his contributions to the field of organ transplantation. Sachs is director of the Transplantation Biology Research Center at MGH.