Epi Monday

(An online update of news, events, and job openings every week)

Epi News Briefs 6/04/01

Editor's Quote of the Week   "Old Epidemiologists Never Die... ...their lives just get tabled"   From Episource, First Edition

20 Lucky Winners of Free Registrations To The Congress of Epidemiology Are Selected

Twenty purchasers of the recently published book “Epidemiology Wit and Wisdom--The Best of The Epidemiology Monitor” are the lucky winners of a free registration to the Congress of Epidemiology in Toronto next week. The registrations are worth $300 each. The winners who will receive notification of their good fortune are:

1. Louise Ann McNutt/Univ of Albany
2. Paul Grimstad/Univ of Notre Dame
3. Karl Ueberla/Univ of Munich
4. Gordon Flowerdew/Dalhousie University
5. Catherine Hall/Arkansas Dept of Health
6. Janice Husted/Univ of Waterloo
7. Linda McDole Foley/Evansville Indiana
8. Stig Wall/UMEA Univ
9. Fredrick Orkin/Penn State Univ
10. T Mori/Res Inst of TB/Tokyo
11. Monica Bienefeld/Univ of Toronto
12. Kathleen Bucholz/St Louis Missouri
13. Elizabeth Barrett-Connor/Univ of CA San Diego
14. Robert Byington/Wake Forest Univ
15. Tim Jacobs/Tampa Florida
16. T Kue Young/Univ of Manitoba
17. Patrick Levallois/Inst de Sante Publique/Quebec
18. Ralph Cook/Midland Michigan
19. Barbara Glenn/Tacoma Park, Maryland
20. Karla Dumas/Douglaston, New York

Winners may contact The Epi Monitor at epimon@aol.com or 770-594-1613 for details.

 

The Jonathan Mann Award For Global Health and Human Rights Given To Retired Chinese Gynecologist

Jonathan Mann, the well-known epidemiologist who was killed in a 1998 plane crash, is honored each year by the Global Health Council for his work on health and human rights and for promoting the principle that one cannot be addressed without considering the other. According to the Council, this year’s winner of the award is Dr Gao Yaojie of Henan Province China. She has been involved in AIDS work since 1996 when she linked the AIDS cases in her area to the practice of blood selling by local peasants. According to the Council, when donors repeatedly sold blood, the problem escalated. Dr Gao is being honored for becoming a central source of information in the absence of any meaningful government response to the problem.

 

Congressional Representatives Interested in Disease Clusters

Judging by the statements made at a recent field hearing of the US Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, disease clusters will be getting more attention in the future. The trigger for the hearing was the occurrence of a leukemia cluster in children connected with Fallon, Nevada where the rate has been 42 times higher than expected, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal. Senator Harry Reid, a Demorcrat from Nevada, told the hearing he will introduce legislation this year to establish a centralized federally run system of investigating and recording clusters of cancer and other chronic diseases such as autism or asthma. A proposal for a national register of chronic diseases is also reportedly “in the works.”

Epidemiologists Say The Future Of Academic Epidemiology Looks Bleaker In The United Kingdom Because Of New Data Protection Policies

Concerned about how new government requirements and Medical Research Council guidelines for the use of personal information in medical research call for making patients aware ahead of time that their personal data might be used for research, Alan Silman and Gary Macfarlane of the School of Epidemiology and Health Sciences at the University of Manchester have taken pen in hand to contact the Lancet. Writing in the May 5 issue, they say “We believe that epidemiological studies will be seriously impaired by the revised Act [the 1998 UK Data Protection Act], and that the future of academic epidemiology in this country looks bleaker.” Already, the authors state that major difficulties have arisen in undertaking studies. To make their case that the requirements and guidelines may be excessively protective, the authors note the disconnect between the new policy and the fact that only a few people have been concerned about identifying information being passed on in their studies with tens of thousands of individuals in the last ten years. There is no mention in their letter of any plan or recommendation to address this incongruity.

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