University of pittsb U rgh school of medicine | f A l l 2 0 1 1 p i t t m e d faculty of western penn’a medical college, 1886 of removing A n d p r e v e n t i n g 125 years the ills to which flesh is heir over the transom U n c e r t a i n t y i s morning. By then, we were seeing a third s t A y i n t o U c h ! n o t a n o p t i o n doctor at the same office. We look forward to alumni news missives. regarding the article “Uncertainty is Not Herein lies the story. Previous to the And we gladly receive letters from our an Option” in the last Pitt Med: In order to saturday morning visit, we had visited two readers (which we may edit for length, accurately diagnose ear infections in children, different doctors and been told that ear tube style, and clarity). Drop us a line. a pediatrician needs to master the use of the surgery and rocephin shots were options. Pitt Med operating microscope. It took me about four to On that saturday, we were told that my son 400 craig hall six months to learn this technique. There are would simply grow out of the infections. University of pittsburgh several advantages: 1) removal of wax in infants Three different doctors in the same office pittsburgh, PA 15260 and children; 2) visualization of the eardrum in were recommending three different courses of phone: 412-624-4358 infants and children; 3) ability to distinguish treatment. Fax: 412-624-1021 between acute otitis media and secretory otitis My wife and I had a 25-minute conversa- e-mail: [email protected] media; 4) removal of foreign bodies from ear tion with the third doctor about how confused pittmed.health.pitt.edu and nose; and 5) suture removal. we were. still, we left wondering, If we could not trust the doctors at the office for something For address corrections: Peter a. statti minor (assuming the infection would clear up on Pitt Med address correction (a&s ’59, MD ’63) its own), how could we trust the doctors if some- m-200K scaife hall santa Maria, Calif. thing more serious was wrong with our kids? University of pittsburgh Fortunately our son was re-checked later, pittsburgh, PA 15261 I read Chuck staresinic’s article “Uncertainty and the infection had cleared up. e-mail: [email protected] is Not an Option.” I only wish the doctors I hope that you can get your article to that my 2-year-old sees were aware of this. My more doctors so that other parents are not put c o r r e c t i o n s son began getting low-grade ear infections last through the same frustrations that we were. We regret that in an article about Howard December. after three rounds of different anti- Heit (MD ’71) (“Howard Heit Speaks to an biotics (and a bad reaction to one), we brought David Norvell Epidemic of Undertreatment,” Summer 2011), him back to the doctor’s office on a saturday Charlotte, N.C. we reported his late wife’s name incorrectly. She was Judith A. Heit (A&S ’69). A corrected version appears on our Web site. no more Paper Cuts Get our app! you’re a person of intel- ligence, culture, and taste. therefore, you enjoy Pitt Med magazine. you love the lively writing, the eye-catch- ing design, the great stories that come out of the school of medicine. yet you don’t care much for paper. problem solved! Pitt Med is now on Zinio, a mobile reading application that delivers the exact same material in the exact same format you get in print. (But without the risk of paper cuts!) Zinio allows us to offer such features as video, audio, and live links on your ipad (or other tablet), smart phone, desktop, and laptop. For a free subscription to Zinio’s national digital newsstand: www.zinio.com PITTMED UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH SCHOOL OF MEDICINE MAGAZINE, F all 2 0 1 1 ( special issue ! ) V ol . 1 3 , I ssue 3 d e p a r t m e n t s O F n Ot e 3 Building a sad mouse. Greenberger on Fukushima. Dr. Piano. CLO s e r 7 High-achieving high schooler. I n V e s t IG AT IO n s 8 Parental stress and childhood asthma. The rat-teen brain. at t e n d I n G 34 Partnering with Tsinghua: A big deal? Simply put, yes. a LU m n I n e W s 36 Hefflin names names. Ellis takes the path of least redundance. L a s t C a LL 40 Keeping it in the family. maud menten (c. 1923), one of the first scientists of international renown to join the faculty. ➚ cov e r s t O r y C O n t r I b U t O r s 125 Years of Removing In college, M I r I a M M e I s l I k ’ s interests were all over the place. she took courses in art history, literature, information science, film, and audio production—“all these little things that and Preventing the Ills to made everyone say, How are you going to make a living?” she recalls. little did Meislik know all those “little things” would align perfectly in the now-very-big field of media preservation and 11 digitization. as archivist and photograph curator, Meislik manages media collections for Pitt’s Which Flesh Is Heir archives service Center. she frequently works with artists, researchers, television documentar- “Although the propriety of establishing a medical school here has been sharply ians, and reporters—including the Pitt Med team [“125 Years of removing and Preventing the Ills to Which Flesh Is Heir,” p. 11]—in the hunt for just the right historical imaging. “I love my job,” questioned by some, we will not attempt to argue the question. Results will she says. “I can’t imagine doing anything else.” determine whether or not the promoters of this enterprise were mistaken in B a r B ara I. Paull [“125 Years of removing and Preventing the Ills to Which Flesh Is Heir”] their judgment and action. The city, we think, offers ample opportunity for wrote the book on Pitt med. seriously. The author of A Century of Excellence: The History of the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (1986), Paull had been editor of the University Times, all that is desirable in a first-class medical school, and if you will permit me leaving the job in 1975 to “make my way as a freelance writer.” That’s when she submitted a to say it, the trustees and faculty propose to make this a first-class school.” proposal to write the story of the school of Medicine, and the rest is history. This magazine was happy to have her make a cameo for the school’s 125th anniversary. Paull has also contributed —John Milton Duff, MD to Business Week magazine and Quaker state Corporation as principal writer for its quarterly. Professor of Obstetrics, Western Pennsylvania Medical College, September 1886 COV e r r COV e r s t O r y b y b a r b a r a I . p a ull , e r ic a L lo y d , The medical college’s first faculty members sport their ’staches, c. 1886. Pittsburgh photographer e d wi n k I ester jr., j O e m I k s C h , e L a I n e vi t O n e , Paul Fallert took separate portraits of each of the professors, then artfully arranged and devel- C h uc k s t a r e s I n ic , a n d s h a r O n t r e G a s k I s oped them together on one sheet. at the time, composite photography was in its heyday—it sure beat telling 22 people to sit still for several minutes. (Courtesy university archives.) To put a face to the future of medicine, see our back cover. Dean’s Message e PITTMED always wanted to be somebody, P u b l i s h e r but now I realize I should have been Arthur S. Levine, MD more specific. —Lily Tomlin e D i t o r i n c h i e f I Erica Lloyd We can expect that in the next few years it will be possible to map your genome (all of the genes a r t D i r e c t o r Elena Gialamas Cerri in your cells) for $1,000 or less, thanks to next- generation rapid DNA sequencing technology. s e n i o r e D i t o r Joe Miksch Abnormalities in the genome would be seen, as well. With older technology, it would have cost associate e D i t o r joshua franzos Elaine Vitone on the order of a million dollars. As you can imagine, there’s quite a buzz about this technology, which offers the possibility of identify- contributing e D i t o r ing the risk of any given disease in an individual, as well as tailoring treatment of diseases to Chuck Staresinic individual patients. But how much will it contribute to making you healthier—to the “per- P r o D u c t i o n M a n a g e r sonalized medicine” that we hear so much about? Is the technology really going to tell us with Chuck Dinsmore precision that any given mutation or polymorphism (the “genotype”) means a given disease or s t a f f c ontributors disorder (the “phenotype”) with certainty? Do our genes always hold our fate? Marc Melada, Maureen Passmore, Alexis Wnuk A report last year in Science by Robin Dowell (while at MIT) and others addresses the genotype-to-phenotype problem and is instructive: They saw that two nearly identical genomes o b i t u a r i e s c o n t r i b u t o r managed to bring about two dramatically different phenotypes.