Friday, November 07, 2008
Thursday, November 06, 2008
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Tuesday, November 04, 2008
Monday, November 03, 2008
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Saturday, November 01, 2008
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Monday, October 27, 2008
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Great Sadness - then we knuckle down to continue the work
Preparing for a Monday morning Harvard memorial service for President Carter's Surgeon General, Dr. Julius B. Richmond, then 6-7 days diligent work in Harvard's Longwood Medical Area.
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Friday, October 24, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Blog title...
All of those who knew John Roman and George Engel and those not lucky enough to meet them, are indebted to the authors of this absolutely splendid book for bringing alive an experiment in psychiatry that succeeded so well and proved such a shining example for our field and for medical education. This book is a happy illustration of what scholarship and literary skill can contribute to the understanding of how to care for our patients and how to teach students to improve their skills.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Thursday, October 02, 2008
Sunday, September 21, 2008
09-20-2008 Vegan Meetup at Veggie Planet Photos
Maynard posted photos from the 09-20-2008 Vegan Meetup at Veggie Planet to Flickr, Meetup.com sites, Facebook, and more.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
FRIEND Maynard Clark before YOUR life ends...
Please do say 'hi' (and friend me or connect with me) on any of my social media networks and check in with my map widget.
http://maynardclark.spaces.live.com
Maynard S. Clark is stoic about Wednesday's market drop;going to sleep early to awake at 6 am to vote take 9 am software classes at HSPH.
http://maynardclark.spaces.live.com
Maynard S. Clark is stoic about Wednesday's market drop;going to sleep early to awake at 6 am to vote take 9 am software classes at HSPH.
FRIEND Maynard Clark before YOUR life ends...
Please do say 'hi' (and friend me or connect with me) on any of my social media networks and check in with my map widget.
http://maynardclark.spaces.live.com/
http://maynardclark.spaces.live.com/
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Blog title...
Maynard S. Clark
is stoic about today's market drop;going to sleep early to awake at 6 am to vote take 9 am software classes at HSPH.
is stoic about today's market drop;going to sleep early to awake at 6 am to vote take 9 am software classes at HSPH.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Blog title...
Going home! Tomorrow's a very long day for me, starting with work in bioethics, ending with socializing with vegetarians in a Vegetarian Meetup at My Thai in Allston-Brighton
Blog title...
I'm looking for the 'HDS Group for Animals'. Are they still around? Do(es) 'they' (s/he) still exist.
My last contact info is 2005, when they appeared once at Memorial Church, and once advocating for corporate responsibility towards animals.
Could you help me locate them, a URL, or any contact persons?
My last contact info is 2005, when they appeared once at Memorial Church, and once advocating for corporate responsibility towards animals.
Could you help me locate them, a URL, or any contact persons?
I'm looking for the 'HDS Group for Animals'. Are they still around? Do(es) 'they' (s/he) still exist.
My last contact info is 2005, when they appeared once at Memorial Church, and once advocating for corporate responsibility towards animals.
Could you help me locate them, a URL, or any contact persons?
My last contact info is 2005, when they appeared once at Memorial Church, and once advocating for corporate responsibility towards animals.
Could you help me locate them, a URL, or any contact persons?
I'm looking for the 'HDS Group for Animals'. Are they still around? Do(es) 'they' (s/he) still exist.
My last contact info is 2005, when they appeared once at Memorial Church, and once advocating for corporate responsibility towards animals.
Could you help me locate them, a URL, or any contact persons?
My last contact info is 2005, when they appeared once at Memorial Church, and once advocating for corporate responsibility towards animals.
Could you help me locate them, a URL, or any contact persons?
Monday, September 08, 2008
HSPH "Ethical Issues in International Health Research" program
Working on a 10-year report on the HSPH "Ethical Issues in International Health Research" program to submit to the Dean.
Longwood Medical Area
Social Networking and Social Media are going to lighten my extraneous personal load now that I've sorted out how to tweak out and eke out efficiencies by linking them and using them in concert with one another.
Please 'friend' me everywhere, on all social media, and link with me everywhere.
Please 'friend' me everywhere, on all social media, and link with me everywhere.
Ping.FM
Ping.FM ids a great social networking tool, that I found by watching my social media guru friend in Boston, Michelle McCormack
Sunday, September 07, 2008
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Milk cancels health benefit of drinking tea: study
Englishman Stephen Twining, a tenth generation member of the well-known tea family, drinks a cup of tea in a 2005 photo. Drinking tea can reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke but only if milk is not added to the brew, German scientists said on Tuesday. (Tim Wimborne/Reuters)Milk cancels health benefit of drinking tea: study By Patricia ReaneyMon Jan 8, 7:10 PM ET
Drinking tea can reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke but only if milk is not added to the brew, German scientists said on Tuesday.
Research has shown that tea improves blood flow and the ability of the arteries to relax but researchers at the Charite Hospital at the University of Berlin in Mitte found milk eliminates the protective effect against cardiovascular disease.
"The beneficial effects of drinking black tea are completely prevented by the addition of milk, said Dr Verena Stangl, a cardiologist at the hospital.
"If you want to drink tea to have the beneficial health effects you have to drink it without milk. That is clearly shown by our experiments," she told Reuters.
Tea is second only to water in worldwide consumption so any benefits could have important public health implications. But until now it was not known whether adding milk had an impact.
Stangl and her team discovered that proteins called caseins in milk decrease the amount of compounds in tea known as catechins which increase its protection against heart disease.
They believe their findings, which are reported in the European Heart Journal, could explain why countries such as Britain, where tea is regularly consumed with milk, have not shown a decreased risk of heart disease and stroke from drinking tea.
The researchers compared the health effects of drinking boiled water and tea with and without milk on 16 healthy women. Using ultrasound, they measured the function of an artery in the forearm before and two hours after drinking tea.
Black tea significantly improved blood flow compared to drinking water but adding milk blunted the effect of the tea.
"We found that, whereas drinking tea significantly increased the ability of the artery to relax and expand to accommodate increased blood flow compared with drinking water, the addition of milk completely prevents the biological effect," said Dr Mario Lorenz, a molecular biologist and co-author of the study.
Tests on rats produced similar results. When rodents were exposed to black tea they produced more nitric oxide which promotes dilation of blood vessels. But adding milk blocked the effect.
Tea has also been shown to have a protective effect against cancer so the findings could have further implications.
"Since milk appears to modify the biological activities of tea ingredients, it is likely that the anti-tumor effects of tea could be affected as well," said Stangl.
"I think it is essential that we re-examine the association between tea consumption and cancer protection, to see if that is the case," she added.
Friday, December 22, 2006
Who I am!
Some of our clients in Boston's Tape Transcription Center, perhaps soon to be renaimed the Audio Transcription Center (or merely the Transcription Center), seem like pages out of the newspaper or radio or TV newscasts. Indeed, some days we read news that we helped transcribed the day or evening before.While I don't think of myself as defined by this job, I do find in it plenty of opportunity to think inductively about our shared world.
Against all odds: Students of African descent at HMS before affirmative action
Against all odds: Students of African descent at HMS before affirmative action
HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES
HARVARD GAZETTE ARCHIVES
Surrounded by his white peers, Ferdinand Augustus Stewart (wearing spectacles) is pictured in the third row (center) of the Harvard Medical Class of 1888. (Photo courtesy of the Harvard Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine)
Against all oddsStudents of African descent at HMS before affirmative action
By Ken Gewertz, Harvard News Office
It was a question Nora Nercessian couldn't answer, and like any good researcher, she made it her business to fill in the blank.
Nora Nercessian is the author of the labor of love titled 'Against All Odds: The Legacy of Students of African Descent at Harvard Medical School Before Affirmative Action, 1850-1968.' (Staff photo Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard News Office)
What she didn't realize was that her search would launch her on a three-year odyssey, nationwide in scope, culminating in an emotional celebration of triumph in the face of overwhelming difficulties.
The question that stumped Nercessian was this: How many people of African descent graduated from Harvard Medical School before affirmative action?
"I didn't know," she said. "The number was not recorded. So the only way was to do research. But I had no intention of writing a book. I simply wanted to compile as comprehensive a list as I could."
But as the list grew, it metamorphosed into a collection of moving and dramatic life stories, and these biographies merged to form one greater story - how a group of self-selected individuals faced enormous obstacles to obtain a medical education.
At last Nercessian, associate dean of alumni affairs and special projects at the Medical School, was persuaded that nothing less than a book could do justice to this inspiring tale of achievement. For three years, she worked mornings, evenings, and weekends on research and writing of the nearly 300-page volume. The book, which was published by the Medical School this past October, is titled "Against All Odds: The Legacy of Students of African Descent at Harvard Medical School before Affirmative Action, 1850-1968."
Nercessian scoured the School's 11,000 registrar's cards several times, looking for hints of students' racial status. When these were inconclusive, she looked for corroborating evidence in the archives of other schools and in sources such as the African American Biographical Database. She finally succeeded in confirming a total of 85, not all of whom left with medical degrees. But Nercessian decided that the book should not only celebrate graduates, but rather all those who secured a place in the Medical School's entering class and those who came for postgraduate training. The latter group amounted to at least 43 individuals.
"I was adamant that this would not just be about the famous, but about everyone who wished to study medicine at Harvard. It's a book about aspirations, a book about dreams, and about achievement on a grand scale."
Sometimes those dreams could be cruelly deferred, especially for some of the School's earliest African-American students. In September 1850, the School admitted its first three students of African descent - Daniel Laing, Isaac Snowden, and Martin Delaney. But soon after they began their studies, trouble erupted. A group of 27 medical students out of a total enrollment of 113 signed a petition protesting the presence of blacks in their class.
Cyril Johnstone Jones (from left), Harvard Medical Class of 1944; James Louis Sykes, Harvard Medical Class of 1950; Mildred Fay Jefferson, Harvard Medical Class of 1951; Chester Middlebrook Pierce, Harvard Medical Class of 1952 (Photos courtesy of the Office of Alumni Affairs, Harvard Medical School)
In their petition, the students resolved that "we cannot consent to be identified as fellow-students, with blacks: whose company we would not keep in the streets, and whose society as associates we would not tolerate in our houses." The language of the petition implied that if the black students remained, the whites would withdraw. The faculty, led by Dean Oliver Wendell Holmes, caved in to student pressure and the three black students were expelled in March 1851.
Black students had to wait until the signing of Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation before getting another chance. Edwin Howard matriculated in 1866 and earned his medical degree in 1869. Born in Boston, Howard attended Boston Latin School, then moved to Monrovia, Liberia, to study at Liberia College. After receiving his medical degree from Harvard, he practiced in Charleston, S.C., and in Philadelphia, where he helped to establish two hospitals serving blacks and was one of the founders of Sigma Pi Phi, the first black fraternity in the United States.
Admission to Harvard Medical School was an important milestone in the lives of these pioneers in the fight for racial equality, but it was by no means the solution to all their problems. Many of these students were the only blacks in their class and had to deal with isolation, loneliness, and outright rejection during their studies.
Nercessian cites the example of Hildrus Poindexter, who graduated in 1929 and went on to a distinguished career with the U.S. Army as an expert on tropical diseases and as a professor of medicine at Howard University. But in his autobiography, "My World of Reality," he writes of his struggles as the son of tenant farmers who had to work in a coal mine to finance his education and of white female patients who refused to be examined by him during grand rounds.
Oscar Stanton DePriest III (from left), Harvard Medical Class of 1954; Okogbue Okezie, Harvard Medical Class of 1957; Rudolph St. Clair Cumberbatch, Harvard Medical Class of 1959; Olumuyiwa Oredugba, Harvard Medical Class of 1968 (Photos courtesy of the Office of Alumni Affairs, Harvard Medical School)
"Every time I think about him, I get choked up," Nercessian said, "and I'm not a sentimental person."
Nercessian said that as she was writing the book, she often wondered about the experience of these students, about the inner resources and strength that kept them going.
"What kind of fortitude does it take to concentrate on your studies, to see everything going on around you and still push forward?"
As the book neared completion, Nercessian made an effort to contact every black pre-affirmative action graduate who was still living or the descendents of those who were deceased and invited them to a celebratory dinner at the Medical School. A total of 18 were able to attend, and Nercessian describes the gathering as an emotional one.
"The atmosphere in the room was electrifying. One of the graduates said he felt it was like a revival meeting."
Since the book's publication, she has received numerous letters and e-mails thanking her for her research and commenting on the importance of bringing these biographies to light. She believes that while these stories evoke the injustice of a less tolerant age, they also attest to hope and perseverance that can only enhance the story of medical education in America.
"We're very proud of the students of African descent who came to Harvard Medical School before affirmative action. Conditions were very different then, and it took a lot of work for things to change, but it's a whole other chapter of the story of Harvard, and it can only enrich the institution's history."
A limited number of "Against All Odds" are still available, free of charge. Please send your mailing address to Nora Nercessian at nora_nercessian@hms.harvard.edu to obtain copies.
Archivists
"What archivists viewed as not private would make your hair stand on end."
- Maarja Krusten
- Maarja Krusten
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Thursday, May 18, 2006
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