In global cooperation “… every human being counts”

Long-term stability for the United States depends on fostering international cooperation, not as a last resort but as a priority, former President Bill Clinton told an enthusiastic crowd of more than 2,000 at Woolsey Hall last fall. In an explicit critique of the Bush Administration’s foreign policy, Clinton said Americans should “cooperate whenever we can and act alone only when we have to, and not the other way around.”

A multilateral approach is vital to combat AIDS and other diseases: “You cannot zap a microbe with a missile,” said Clinton, who was in New Haven for his 30th law school reunion in October. And by reaching out to help struggling nations, the United States also serves its own interests. “This is not rocket science, but every time we do it, we build a world with more friends and fewer terrorists.”

The foundation of global cooperation, Clinton said, is the idea that every human being counts. And that means leaving ideology aside, he said. “Because once you believe you have the absolute truth, then it’s not possible for everyone to count. …”

—Cathy Shufro

Encouraging physicians to speak “the appropriate language”

Media consultant Andrew Gilman once coached a NASA engineer who was part of the effort to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Preparing him for a television interview, Gilman winced at the engineer’s description of the evening’s mission: “At 23:50, we’ll effect an EVA and recalibrate the module.”

Did that mean, Gilman asked, that an astronaut would take a space walk at 10 minutes to midnight and adjust the telescope by a few millimeters?

“Yes,” the engineer said.

“Jheesh,” replied Gilman. “No wonder you can’t get money from Congress!”

Speaking at psychiatry grand rounds in October, Gilman advised faculty members who speak to the press to keep their messages simple and focused. Three points repeated three times during an interview communicate more than nine points made once, he said. It also pays to find out a little about the reporter and the story angle before launching into an interview, and to keep the school’s media relations staff in the loop.

Gilman also dismissed the notion that science is too complex to be conveyed to the public. Citing the example of the NASA engineer, he urged his audience to use plain English. “It’s not dumbing down,” he said. “It’s speaking the appropriate language.”

—Michael Fitzsousa

Keeping hope alive for the seriously ill

As a physician caring for seriously ill AIDS and cancer patients, Jerome E. Groopman, M.D., has learned that doctors need to temper their prognoses with humility, regardless of how bleak the patient’s outlook may appear. “We should not sit like a judge and hand down a death sentence,” he said during a visit to Yale in November. “Never write someone off a priori.”

Delivering the Iris Fischer Lecture, the bestselling author, Harvard Medical School professor and chief of experimental medicine at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center recounted some of the stories and themes from his recently published book, The Anatomy of Hope: How People Prevail in the Face of Illness. In the context of illness, he said, hope and science are often in conflict. “There’s a tension in how to be truthful to patients and ourselves and not take away hope,” he said. “We have to be careful about slamming the door on hope.”

His patients’ efforts to derive meaning from their illness, he said, offered a lesson about hope. “Hope arrives,” he said, “when you believe you have real choices to make, when you believe the future can be different than the present.”

—Marc Wortman

Examining how a chemical enters the food supply

Health and safety experts are trying to solve a fast-food mystery: why does a probable human carcinogen appear in such foods as French fries and potato chips, and how much of a health risk does it pose? Nga Lien Tran, Dr.Ph., M.P.H. ’85, senior managing scientist at Exponent and adjunct assistant professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, discussed the puzzle at the November 2003 Interdisciplinary Risk Assessment Forum sponsored by the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at the Peabody Museum. According to Tran, studies conducted by the Swedish National Food Administration and researchers from Stockholm University confirmed in April 2002 that unexpectedly high levels of acrylamide—a chemical used in making cosmetics, plastics and adhesives—were found in some starchy foods after frying or baking at high temperatures. The darker and crispier the food, the more acrylamide was present.

The good news, Tran said, is that neurotoxicity resulting from acrylamide exposure—which has been known to kill fish and paralyze cows—doesn’t appear to be a concern. However, people who consume a lot of these foods may increase their lifelong cancer risk by an order of one in a thousand. “We’ve let the public know, and we’re continuing to monitor and measure,” she said. “At this point that’s all we can do.”

—Jennifer Kaylin