AFRO-NETS> Supercourse Newsletter, May 1 2003

[Ron LaPorte <super1+@pitt.edu>]

Supercourse Newsletter, May 1 2003
----------------------------------

http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/

142 days and counting

The wedding of clinical medicine (Hippocrates) and prevention (Hy-
giene) are fast approaching. Soon it will be with us, and we will 
distribute the lecture all over the world. We are confident that we 
can hit a million, may be 10 million!!

Roadmap and Tourbus

There is precedence. In 1994 a brilliant young graduate student named 
Patrick Crispen took it upon himself to teach the world about the 
Internet. The lessons were called road map to the Internet. He devel-
oped a series of lectures that he would send out on a weekly basis. 
Tom Songer and I are some of the old coots on the Internet, and we 
learned from Patrick. His approach was fantastic, he was from the 
Southern US. He would teach out how to use FTP, while at the same 
time giving us the receipt for Squirrel soup (ugh!). His approach was 
to send emails to as many lists that he could find across the world 
informing people about his lessons. It was wildly successful. There 
were so many people coming into his site, it crashed his universities 
computer. The numbers of people he had learning from this single les-
son was staggering. He estimated that in 1995 at least 500,000 people 
had taken the lessons. This was at a time that the internet was 
1/100,000 the size it is now. If we translate this into what we are 
planning today, this would be 500,000,000. Not bad. Patrick is a 
funny, brilliant person. He followed this up with the tour bus, which 
took you for a tour of the Internet. No one has ever tried to do what 
he did in health, or in fact any field. It was a magnificent show, 
and got many people interesting in the Internet. 
http://www.tourbus.com/

Salaries should be based on how many you save

We received a great note from Orlando Barrionuevo in Argentina. He 
said: "You make us understand that Epidemiology isn´t just a cold 
collection of data loaded into EpiInfo, but a warm (and even funny) 
way to find out answers for people in need." He was really great 
about this. It drives me nuts when 'real' doctors look down on epide-
miologists. I always look them straight in the eye and say "How many 
people has your profession saved this century?" I talk with my 
friends who are neurosurgeons, the say - well, In the world since 
1900 neurosurgeons have saved about 500,000, about 200,000 we have 
had no effect, and we killed 300,000 for a net savings of +200,000. 
This is okay, but not too great. I hate it even worse when medical 
students look down on epidemiology students, as medical students have 
probably saved 500,000, had no effect on 1,000,000 and probably 
killed 10,000,000, with a net effect of - 8,500,000 - not a great 
showing - But we in prevention have probably prevented 3,000,000,000 
deaths. We have done good!! It is time to celebrate with Hygienia. 
(What I do not understand is why neurosurgeons are paid 20 times more 
than us). Part of the reason for Sept. 19, is that we plan to pass a 
bill in all the governments of the world where one's salary is based 
upon the numbers of deaths that are prevented. If this were the case, 
medical students would be bankrupt, the neurosurgeons would be living 
under bridges and we would be kings and queens living in our castles 
with Caviar and Mercedes!! 
 
Lecture:
 
Faina has redone the lecture and it is beautiful. We will be sending 
this to you next week for your comments. Once we get your comments 
back, we will be ready to start to plan the distribution scheme. We 
would like for you to think about how we can 'count' the numbers of 
people who see the lecture.
 
Lecture of the week
 
Rashid Chotani from Johns Hopkins university shared a very informa-
tive presentation on identification of bioterrorism agents. The lec-
ture takes the reader on a journey from the history of the biological 
warfare starting at 6th century BC to the identification of modern 
bioterrorism agents, including anthrax and smallpox. This colorful 
lecture consists of 2 parts with over 30 slides in each of them 
http://www.pitt.edu/~super1/lecture/lec10181/index.htm and contains 
very practical illustrations of the bioterrorism agents. The lecture 
fits very nicely with the Supercourse lecture on terrorism, developed 
by the Global Health Network last year. This lecture is recommended 
for healthcare and public health students, health department employ-
ees, and anybody else interested in this topic. Please contact Super-
course developers at super1@pitt.edu if you would like to contribute 
another lecture to this category
 
Best regards from the Prevention Roadmap
 
Hygienia, Ron, Faina, Mita, Eugene, EunRyoung, Tour bus driver, 
Julia, Wendy, Soni, Abed, Rania, Tom, Deb
mailto:super1+@pitt.edu
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