Yes, We Can

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...

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...

Studying mitochondrial CB1 receptors: Yes we can

In biology, particularly in neuroscience, confirmatory studies are always easier to accept than new ideas. Of course, the onus of providing evidence supporting new hypotheses belongs to the individuals who propose them. The existence of mitochondrial CB1 receptors (mtCB1) belongs to this type of hypothesis. In 2008, when we first observed the presence of CB1 receptors at brain mitochondrial mem...