Yes We Can Be Cautiously Optimistic

Yes, We Can! (Should We?).

Advocacy: yes we can.

It is an honor and privilege to address you as president of the American Society for Clinical Investigation. For more than 100 years, this organization has represented the best of physician-scientists. Since it is now 2012, there is the possibility that this could be the last ASCI presidential address. But we will assume the Mayans miscalculated and that we should look to the future. With the A...

Yes we can, but do we?

In recent decades, a curious demographic phenomenon has emerged in US science. A high and increasing proportion of PhD students and postdocs, especially in the life sciences, are drawn from beyond the shores of North America. The reasons for this are undoubtedly complex. One factor is the widespread perception in the USA that a career in academic science is marked by low salaries, poor job secu...

Future collapse: how optimistic should we be?

Prof. Kelly FRS is optimistic about the chances of avoiding a collapse, but sadly we find his arguments entirely unpersuasive. For example, have Malthus (or we) really been wrong about food security? Roughly 850 million people are seriously undernourished (lacking sufficient calories) today, and perhaps 2 billion are mal-nourished (lacking one or more essential nutrients) [1]. When Malthus live...

Beat colon cancer mortality? Yes we can!

The New England Journal of Medicine published the results of the National polyp surveillance (NPS) study in reference to colon cancer mortality among patients with colonic adenomas [1]. This is a prospective study of 2,602 patients who were enrolled from 1980 to 1990 to undergo colonoscopy and followed up for a median time of 15.8 years, with a maximum of 23 years. Only higher-risk patients wer...