From the editor

SECOND OPINION
BY SIDNEY HARRIS

Article ignored ethical aspects of stem cell research

I was disappointed with the Chronicle piece by Marc Wortman [“For Stem Cell Researcher, Connecticut’s Initiative Offers a New Avenue for Progress,” Summer 2005] that involved an interview with Diane Krause, M.D., Ph.D., and focused on her support for human embryonic stem cell research.

The superficial approach of the article minimized the ethical controversies of human embryonic stem cell research and offered readers an unbalanced and misleading feel-good article.

Lacking was acknowledgement that, with the technology currently available, human embryonic stem cell research involves the destruction of human embryos. As a former human embryo myself writing to another former human embryo (yourself), it should not need to be stated that human beings come from human embryos, but advocates of human embryonic stem cell research seem unwilling to acknowledge this basic biological fact. I was particularly chilled by Dr. Krause’s statement that she wants “the freedom to use embryonic stem cells as a tool.” I think the piece should have noted that there exist some serious and complicated moral and ethical concerns in this type of research even if Dr. Krause is seemingly not troubled by them.

If anything, Dr. Krause’s own work with adult stem cells suggests that we have much to gain from that line of research, which does not have the same moral and ethical difficulties as research with human embryonic stem cells. The article failed to mention that to date thousands of living patients have been helped with adult stem cell technology. This includes patients with spinal cord injuries, genetic and metabolic disorders, impaired heart function and so on. It did not mention that no one has yet been helped in any way by embryonic stem cells.

I would like to have seen a better analysis of these grave and pressing issues in your magazine. I hope Yale Medicine will take on this controversial topic in a more comprehensive manner with a future feature article.

Robert Kaladish, M.D.
Amherst, N.H.

Article on schistosomiasis was inspiring

I want to congratulate Kohar Jones for her impressive and beautiful article [“The Silent Scourge of Development,” Summer 2005], and you, for publishing it. Especially in this period when greed and deception are often so dominant, to see something like that article is particularly inspiring and a reminder that there are wonderful people in this world, young as well as old. Please pass my comments on to her. She deserves any recognition she gets.

John Strauss, M.D.
Professor emeritus of psychiatry
New Haven

Ibn Sina’s roots

I enjoy reading the articles in Yale Medicine very much and I think the magazine offers an excellent selection of topics.

Just as a quick note, in the mustard gas article [“From the Field of Battle, an Early Strike at Cancer,” Summer 2005], you refer to Ibn Sina, the 10th-century physician and scholar. He was actually Persian, not Arab. The reason he wrote in Arabic was that the official language for science in Iran was Arabic after the Arabs conquered the Persian Empire.

Thanks again for the excellent ideas and articles!

Setareh Vistamehr, M.D.
Instructor, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Science
New Haven

As Dr. Vistamehr notes, Ibn Sina, known as Avicenna in Europe, was not an Arab. Because he was born in what is now Uzbekistan and died in what is now Iran, his roots are a subject of debate. For more on Avicenna, see “From the Middle East, in the Middle Ages.”—Eds.

From the editor:

Nostalgia of another kind

In 1980, years after the last troops returned home from Vietnam, the military and medical establishments put a name on the psychiatric sequelae that have afflicted soldiers for as long as there has been war—post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Documented since the time of Homer and variously known as nostalgia, combat fatigue and shell shock, it is marked by anxiety, flashbacks, irritability and withdrawal from society, among other symptoms. In our cover story we examine ptsd and its implications for troops coming home from Iraq. To find out what has been learned about ptsd and how the experience of Vietnam veterans is helping today’s troops, writer Cathy Shufro spoke with Vietnam and Iraq veterans as well as psychiatrists and social workers at Yale and the VA Connecticut Healthcare System in West Haven.

We also look back half a century to the days when parents kept children away from public pools and beaches in the summertime. Polio was a dread disease, but scientists were getting closer to discerning how it acted and how to prevent it. Among those scientists was the late Dorothy M. Horstmann, M.D., FW’43, a member of the Yale Poliomyelitis Study Unit, who made a key discovery about polio antibodies that paved the way for development of vaccines. We asked David M. Oshinsky, Ph.D., a historian at the University of Texas at Austin, and author of Polio, An American Story, to profile the first woman to become a professor of medicine at Yale.

Finally, in this issue we profile Robert J. Alpern, M.D., who took over as dean almost a year and a half ago. As Yale Medicine’s editor, Michael Fitzsousa, reports, Alpern has spent the time assembling his management team, getting to know the medical school and launching a strategic plan to move the school forward.

John Curtis
Managing Editor
john.curtis@yale.edu