2012 Leonard Medal for Donald S. Burnett

Response to S. Leonard Syme’s Essay

S. Leonard Syme's essay [letter to the editor]. Preventing Chronic Disease [serial online] 2004 Apr [date cited]. The recent essay by Dr Leonard Syme contributes constructively to the dialogue on disparities (1). It validates the idea that the traditional focus on the individual and risk factors is limited and underscores the importance of environment and community. The complexity of community ...

Response to S. Leonard Syme’s Essay

The essay "Social Determinants of Health: The Community as an Empowered Partner" by Dr S. Leonard Syme addresses why, in spite of all the biomedical advances and clinical interventions, most clinical studies are designed simply to assess disease and not to assess disease in people, especially those at the bottom of a social structure. At the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where I have wor...

The 2012 Genetics Society of America Medal: Joanne Chory.

AS a senior graduate student contemplating my postdoctoral options, I was struck by the paper “Arabidopsis thaliana mutant that develops as a light-grown plant in the absence of light” (Chory et al. 1989). The temerity of looking for mutant plants that developed as if in the light when in the dark, along with the fact that this idea was only then being brought to fruition, was striking. The pos...

Three Stanford alumni to be honored with dean ’ s Medal

Surgeons and transplant centers nationwide increasingly have rejected hearts donated for transplantation despite a growing need for them, according to a new study by researchers at the School of Medicine. The study also found that the rejection of “marginal” donor hearts — those with undesirable qualities, such as being small or coming from an older donor — varied significantly across geographi...

Peggy Magnus Burnett