Faculty Bibliography

''It's the first formal way to track H.I.V./AIDS treatments and outcomes on a broad, comprehensive scale and in real time,'' said Dr. Michael Saag, the principal investigator of the project, which is based at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. A chief aim of the network is to determine the effectiveness of therapies for the thousands of patients in everyday practice compared with a hundred or so selected for clinical trials. The network will track patients who receive various treatments for such ailments to determine if and how they adversely interact with those for H.I.V./AIDS. Steps will be taken to keep the identities of the 15,000 patients in the project confidential. Dr. Saag said he hoped that the H.I.V./AIDS project would be a successful pilot to develop similar networks for other diseases

Grey's Anatomy [Television Program] -- As [Benjamin O'Leary] is being readied for brain surgery, 14-year-old Harly Hernandez is brought to the emergency room impaled on a large tree branch. Harly has sustained major damage to his kidney and intestines, and his father is told that his son has only a 60% chance of survival. After Harly's organs are repaired, the large tree branch is removed in sections, and he lives. Benjamin, however, dies when his brain hemorrhages and swells during surgery. Impalement injuries, especially with sharp objects, carry a high risk of major-organ damage, as the abdominal cavity is tightly packed with organs. Although beginning a surgical procedure with the object protruding from the body may seem counterintuitive, it can make sense -- if the object is in a stable position. This allows doctors to immediately stop the bleeding and begin to suture the damaged organs before removing the object. Removing the object prematurely or all at once can risk further bleeding and organ damage

Dr. [Robert G. Petersdorf], who was known affectionately to his colleagues as the Dorf, usually swam at lunchtime. As a teacher, he emphasized the practical and demanded that his students be prepared, and if they were not, he occasionally terrified them during rounds, said Dr. Paul G. Ramsey, the dean and vice president of the University of Washington. Dr. Roger J. Bulger, who retired last year as president of the Association of Academic Health Centers, based in Washington D.C., and who trained with Dr. Petersdorf, said that 'the knowledge he could spew extemporaneously on rounds was pretty amazing.' Dr. Petersdorf became famous in medicine for a classic study of prolonged fevers of unknown origin, which he carried out with Dr. Paul Beeson at Yale. Doctors still cite the study, published in 1961, although CT, MRI and other scans have made some of its findings less relevant to practice today

Dr. Petersdorf became famous in medicine for a classic study of prolonged fevers of unknown origin, which he carried out with Dr. Paul Beeson at Yale. Doctors still cite the study, published in 1961, although CT, MRI and other scans have made some of its findings less relevant to practice today. Dr. Petersdorf trained a number of leaders of American medicine as he moved back and forth between the East and West Coasts. He had a knack for ''identifying good people who he knew would work hard,'' and in return he ''earned a tremendous loyalty from them,'' said Dr. Marvin Turck, another leading infectious disease expert at the University of Washington. Dr. Petersdorf, who was known affectionately to his colleagues as the Dorf, usually swam at lunchtime. As a teacher, he emphasized the practical and demanded that his students be prepared, and if they were not, he occasionally terrified them during rounds, said Dr. Paul G. Ramsey, the dean and vice president of the University of Washington. Dr. Roger J. Bulger, who retired last year as president of the Association of Academic Health Centers, based in Washington D.C., and who trained with Dr. Petersdorf, said that ''the knowledge he could spew extemporaneously on rounds was pretty amazing.''

All too often, however, the authors' statements seem more like polemic pronouncements than demonstrable, inarguable facts. They rely heavily on their interpretation of the 9/11 Commission report as well as circumstantial evidence. As an example, they state: 'The Bushes would not be eager for the press to learn that on Monday, September 10, the Dulles hijackers had been guests in the same hotel as Saleh Ibn Abdul Rahman al-Hussayen, the top liaison to the worldwide Islamic charities that funded Osama bin Laden.' The authors never provide us with the specifics about the funding of the terrorists, and they go on to speculate further: 'Because of pressure from Prince Bandar [of Saudi Arabia] on the Bush administration ... on September 19, al-Hussayen was allowed to fly to Saudi Arabia.' Walking through John F. Kennedy International Airport and observing these proud new TSA agents, better paid and with better benefits, it is difficult for me to believe they could be less effective than a group put together by private companies. Yet the Trentos state that 'the TSA screeners have a substantially higher failure rate than the private screeners did.' I speak with one of the new TSA supervisors, who has a background in law enforcement, and he acknowledges that many of his screeners are former teachers, clerks and students. He calls TSA 'a work in progress' but says he would never stay with the job if he didn't think there was real progress and adds that the current system is better than the former one. The contention that we are no safer in the skies today than before 9/11 may seem difficult to believe until the authors detail the poor shape of the current 'no-fly' lists, where dead terrorists and non-terrorists still abound. (For its part, the government claims that it cannot definitively confirm the identities of many of the 9/11 hijackers, which is why some names remain on the list.) The Trentos were also able to interview a sought-after hijacker from the 1980s not in some secret bunker but at an outdoor Beirut cafe. They write that the skies can be safe only 'if the U.S. government, airlines, and local airport authorities demand that our intelligence agencies finally provide a usable national database of people who should not be allowed near passenger planes.'

Molecular epidemiologic studies of tuberculosis (TB) have focused largely on utilizing molecular techniques to address short- and long-term epidemiologic questions, such as in outbreak investigations and in assessing the global dissemination of strains, respectively. This is done primarily by examining the extent of genetic diversity of clinical strains of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. When molecular methods are used in conjunction with classical epidemiology, their utility for TB control has been realized. For instance, molecular epidemiologic studies have added much-needed accuracy and precision in describing transmission dynamics, and they have facilitated investigation of previously unresolved issues, such as estimates of recent-versus-reactive disease and the extent of exogenous reinfection. In addition, there is mounting evidence to suggest that specific strains of M. tuberculosis belonging to discrete phylogenetic clusters (lineages) may differ in virulence, pathogenesis, and epidemiologic characteristics, all of which may significantly impact TB control and vaccine development strategies. Here, we review the current methods, concepts, and applications of molecular approaches used to better understand the epidemiology of TB