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“The
strangest kind of letdown”
On September’s day
of terror, Yale geared up to treat
survivors who never came.
On September 11, a day of
death and panic elsewhere, there was an odd sort of quiet in New Haven.
In the medical school’s clinics and classrooms, the day’s routine
activities fell by the wayside, overwhelmed by the horror of what was
happening in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. The medical center geared
up for an onslaught of trauma cases that never materialized. For 24 hours,
Yale-New Haven Hospital was on disaster alert for survivors who might
have been pulled from the wreckage of the collapsed World Trade Center
only 90 miles away. But, said a hospital spokeswoman, “It was the
strangest kind of letdown. There were no patients to help.”
Medical school faculty and
alumni who provided aid in Lower Manhattan experienced a similar disappointment.
Emergency physician Scott Weir, M.D., a veteran of search-and-rescue efforts
including the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, had never seen
anything like the devastation at the World Trade Center. During a week
on the scene he treated no survivors, only rescuers with minor injuries.
Kenneth C. Rondello, M.P.H. ’94, M.D., spent four days at the blast
site and Chelsea Piers, where an ice rink became a morgue and the set
of television’s “Spin City” a trauma center. “No news
footage you’ve seen or descriptions you’ve heard can truly do
it justice,” he said. “The air was permeated with the nauseating,
acrid smell of burning jet fuel. Everything was covered in inches of gray
ash, as if a volcano had erupted.”
Life went on at Yale but the
tragedy haunted everything that followed. No gathering could begin without
some acknowledgment of “the events of September 11.” The day
of the attacks, classes were canceled for first- and second-year medical
students, some of whom traveled to New York to volunteer in the Office
of the Chief Medical Examiner. That first night, hundreds of students
and faculty members carried candles down College Street to a vigil at
Cross Campus.
In the days that followed,
the University responded with drives for blood and donations, along with
lectures and discussions on terrorism, foreign policy and Islam. Students
at the School of Public Health held a teach-in. Medical and public health
students visited local merchants of Middle Eastern descent to reassure
them at a time when they might fear discrimination. On September 28, speakers
invited by the Department of Psychiatry and the Child Study Center explored
the ways in which people cope with a world turned upside down.
Among those determined to
get on with their lives were Edwin Thrower, Ph.D., a postdoctoral associate
in the Department of Pharmacology, and his fiancée, Bozena Sakowska.
They decided to go ahead with their wedding September 15, even though
his parents and friends in England could attend only via a conference
call. The ceremony included a prayer for victims of the attacks, and ended
on an upbeat note. “We had friends come from Manhattan,” Thrower
said. “They said this was very much needed—a celebration of
joy, love and life.”
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Stem
cell scientist urges congress to fund embryonic research
When Diane Krause, M.D., Ph.D.,
published findings this spring from her work on adult-derived stem cells
in mice, she didn’t expect to become a player in a national political
debate. “I thought it would be important for those of us in the field,”
she said in July, adding “I didn’t realize it was going to get
such press attention.”
Krause, an associate professor
of laboratory medicine and pathology, identified adult stem cells in bone
marrow that can also create new liver, lung, gastrointestinal and skin
cells. Working with collaborators at Johns Hopkins and New York University,
she found the first evidence that these progenitor cells are capable of
creating up to 15 different mature cell types.
Since the publication of
her work in the May issue of Cell, Krause has been besieged by
media inquiries from around the world. In early summer, she was asked
to testify on Capitol Hill.
Her conclusions were published
as the national debate over embryonic stem cell research was heating up
and, to her dismay, have provided fodder to opponents of such work, which
requires the destruction of human embryos. Those who oppose embryonic
stem cell research for moral reasons argue that it is unnecessary because
adult stem cell research shows such promise. Krause insists that research
down both avenues is vital.
In July she had a chance to
make her point before the US Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor,
Health and Human Services and Education, which held hearings on the federal
government’s role in funding future embryonic stem cell research.
Embryonic stem cell research
needs to be funded for three reasons, Krause told the subcommittee. First,
these cells can be grown in vitro, unlike adult stem cells. Second,
because they are the most versatile cells available, embryonic stem cells
yield far more information on how they maintain that versatility than
adult-derived cells. And third, she said, “No one can predict which
lines of investigation will lead to effective and safe treatments for
human disease.”
On August 9 President Bush
outlined his plan for funding embryonic stem cell research: only existing
lines of embryonic stem cells, left over from in vitro fertilization,
could be used in federally funded research. Research using embryonic stem
cell lines developed after August 9 would be ineligible for funding. On
August 27, the National Institutes of Health released a list of 64 eligible
embryonic stem cell lines.
Scientists have questioned
that list, noting that many cell lines are unavailable or inappropriate
for a variety of reasons.
“The president’s
plan is not well thought out,” Krause said. “It doesn’t
give federally funded scientists the freedom to pursue scientific questions.”
On September 5, Secretary
of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson told a Senate committee that
only about 24 of the 64 cell lines were ready for use in experiments.
The usefulness of the remaining cell lines, he said, remains to be proven.
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From
autopsy suite, a treasure trove of “post-mortemism”
Before photography became
the standard for capturing images of important anatomical findings, pathology
departments hired specially trained illustrators to create visual materials
for teaching and recording medical knowledge. One of the most gifted among
them was Armin Bismark Hemberger, whose career at Yale spanned six decades.
Hemberger, who lived from
1896 to 1974, is the subject of new interest and may someday be featured
in a documentary film and traveling exhibit.
A student of Max Brödel,
who is widely regarded as the father of American medical illustration,
Hemberger worked in the tradition of Vesalius, da Vinci and Dürer,
combining artistic skill with a remarkable level of scientific accuracy
to produce brilliant images in pen and ink, pencil, gouache and watercolor.
Approximately 700 of these drawings are preserved in the illustration
collection of the Department of Pathology.
“Hemberger was one of
the best,” said Ranice W. Crosby, director emerita of the Department
of Art as Applied to Medicine at Johns Hopkins, where Brödel’s
papers are archived.
Born in Scranton, Pa., on
April 1, 1896, Hemberger graduated from the Maryland Institute of Art
and Design in Baltimore. In 1917, he was recruited by Milton C. Winternitz,
M.D., as a medical illustrator for the New Haven Station of the Army Chemical
Warfare Service. His drawings are in two classic monographs edited by
Winternitz, Collected Studies on the Pathology of War Gas Poisoning
and The Pathology of Influenza. Hemberger returned to Baltimore
in 1920 for a year of study with Brödel before spending the remainder
of his career at Yale. He retired in 1962.
In addition to his medical
work, Hemberger painted landscapes and is represented in the collection
of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
In 1987, during the construction
of a new autopsy suite, faculty member Raymond Yesner, M.D., noticed two
large filing cabinets that had been pushed into the old dissection room.
“I was absolutely knocked over by what I saw—hundreds of Hemberger’s
paintings and drawings stacked one on top of the other.” An effort
to catalog the images began in earnest and steps to preserve the original
works followed. Five years ago, Jon S. Morrow, Ph.D. ’74, M.D.’76,
HS ’77, chair of the Department of Pathology, asked Katherine Henderson,
the department’s photography and graphics manager, to begin digitizing
the illustrations and transferring the original works into acid-free,
archival containers. Working with Deborah Dillon, M.D.’92, a faculty
member who provided annotation for many of the drawings, this task has
now been largely completed.
Last year, Judith Hokanson
Barbeau, a public relations consultant hired by the department, saw a
stack of Hemberger’s art on a shelf and became interested in his
life and career. She located the artist’s son in New Hampshire, where
she examined Hemberger’s original watercolors, oils, woodcarvings
and engravings. She later located and interviewed Hemberger’s former
students and colleagues, recording information and personal remembrances.
Hemberger’s work has
guided generations of medical students and physicians-in-training. One
of them was Morrow, who said that the artist “had an incredible ability
to summarize the essence of the anatomical findings of a given condition
in a single illustration. Hemberger conveys more information about a disease
process in a single drawing than a pathologist can assimilate by seeing
a dozen examples in dissection.”
With the support of Yesner
and Morrow, Barbeau hopes to make a film about Hemberger, as well as organize
an accompanying touring exhibition of his work.
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Graduate
program fosters an interdisciplinary spirit and a jump in applications
How does an academic program
go from newborn to campus fixture in only five years?
Yale’s Combined Program
in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) has accomplished this
feat by uniting 11 academic departments and fostering a sense of community
that’s evident from the lab bench to the pages of its irreverent
student magazine.
Founded on the principle that
research is inherently interdisciplinary and no longer conforms to traditional
departmental boundaries, BBS provides graduate students with flexible
opportunities to study with more than 200 faculty members from across
Yale. “There’s a lot more interchange than there ever was before
BBS,’’ said Lynn Cooley, Ph.D., the program’s new director
and a professor of genetics and cell biology. “There’s more
communication, more coordination, and fewer territorial disputes over
resources.”
The program is divided into
eight interest-based tracks: Biological Sciences, Cell Biology and Molecular
Physiology, Genetics and Development, Immunology, Microbiology, Molecular
Biophysics and Biochemistry, Neuroscience, and Pharmacological Sciences
and Molecular Medicine, each of which draws its faculty from multiple
departments. While students affiliate with a single track, they have almost
unlimited research opportunities at Yale, including access to faculty
in departments such as Computer Science, Engineering, Psychology and Chemistry.
BBS students “can rotate anywhere and settle into the lab that’s
most suited to their interests,’’ said BBS Administrative Director
John Alvaro, Ph.D. “They have a nice home base and yet they have
access to all the labs on campus.”
BBS, which streamlined the
admissions process and administrative structure for graduate students
in the life sciences, has also succeeded in recruiting students. Applications
jumped nearly 20 percent in the past year.
One cornerstone of the program’s
strength has been its partnership with Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS), which
helped establish BBS with a multimillion-dollar grant in 1996. BMS funds
graduate study and provides opportunities for students to gain experience
in pharmaceutical research at its Wallingford, Conn., facility.
One of Cooley’s priorities
is to expand partnerships between life sciences companies and BBS. She
also plans to embark on a major fund-raising effort to establish an endowment
supporting graduate education. And she wants to continue to encourage
collaborative research in emerging disciplines such as bioinformatics.
The BBS program, says Cooley, provides “a way for the campus to nurture
new emerging scientific disciplines.”
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