Soundbites

January 14, 2008
Soundbites

Predicting the future of medicine
What are the goals of personalized, predictive health care? According to Fred Sanfilippo, CEO of Emory’s Woodruff Health Sciences Center, the answer is multifaceted.

Addressing participants at the 2007 Predictive Health Symposium Dec. 17 -18, Sanfilippo said, “The word ‘predictive’ is particularly important because what we want to do with a significant degree of precision is to predict the risk of onset of disease, predict the host response when disease or illness occurs, and predict what that host response would be to different treatment modalities.” — Robin Tricoles

Russian activist describes Gulag
“When I was in the prison camp, the prosecutor came to visit us,” said Russian human rights activist Sergey Adamovic Kovalev. “He told the prisoners, ‘I forbid you, in your complaints, to mention the constitution. I will not read any complaint that mentions the constitution. The constitution,’ he said, ‘is not written for you. It is written for the dark-skinned Americans, so that they will know what wonderful conditions and absolute well-being is guaranteed to the Russian people.’”

Kovalev gave a talk at Emory in December in conjunction with the exhibit “GULAG: Soviet Forced Labor Camps and the Struggle for Freedom,” continuing through Feb. 20 at the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site. — Carol Clark

Lecture honors Grady connections
Ira Ferguson Sr. ’23M pickled cadavers to help pay his way through medical school. Harvard Medical School’s Charles Ferguson shared this and other stories about his grandfather — who later became chief of surgery at Grady Memorial Hospital — at the inaugural Ira A. Ferguson lecture, a special Surgical Grand Rounds on Jan. 3.

To allow African Americans to complete medical degrees in the segregated South, Ferguson helped doctor Asa G. Yancey start a surgical residency at Tuskegee Veterans Administration Hospital. Later, Ferguson helped bring Yancey to Grady to be the first director of the Hughes Spalding Pavilion, with African American doctors on staff.

“He had worked hard to overcome obstacles himself, and was compelled to make things easier for others,” said Charles Ferguson of his grandfather’s motivation. — Kim Urquhart