From the Editor

Chronicling “our four students,” as they came to be known, has been a joy and an education in itself. Witnessing their growth — from students with aspirations to physicians with specialties — has been amazing; hearing what they’ve already accomplished has been humbling. Their goals are high and their horizons broad. They also are really cool people who make great company for dinner at Pizza House, lunch at Angelo’s, or coffee at a number of Ann Arbor java haunts.

These four new alumni and their classmates are the faces of the solutions to future challenges in health care, medical research and education that we often discuss in the pages of Medicine at Michigan. Here is the intelligence, the energy, the innovation and drive that will turn vexing challenges into new ways of working. The optimism through which they view the world is truly remarkable and heartening, and not born of naivete.

We’ll keep in touch with our four students and let you know how and what they’re doing from time to time. Their stories, after all, are just beginning.

Rick Krupinski
rkrup@umich.edu

Past and Present

Around 1942, we medical students were assigned a topic so as to teach us how to use the medical library and how to write an article. My topic was cancer of the pancreas (“Believing in Hope,” spring 2012). I had difficulty finding enough subjects to write about.

Now I live in an area with a drawing power of about 60,000 people. When I occasionally read the local paper and check the obituaries, there nearly always is one with the cause of death listed as pancreatic cancer. To me, this seems an astounding frequency.

I am glad that medical scientists are researching the epidemiology of this terrible disease.

Belle Calkins Richards
(M.D. 1944, Residency 1945)
Helena, Montana

Sweet Explanation

I would like to compliment Dr. Gundy Sweet on the article “Falling Short” in the spring 2012 issue of Medicine at Michigan. This is the single best, clearest explanation of the vexing problem of essential drug shortages in our country. Her ending remarks were also very well thought out and a clarion call to M.D.s to get on the stick and prod Congress into doing something. All other accounts I’ve read have neglected to cite the bills she mentioned. Thank you

Frank B. Miller (M.D. 1974)
Morganton, North Carolina

Correction

In the faculty profile in the spring 2012 issue (p. 41), we mistakenly stated that Sundeep Kalantry has an M.D. and was born in Queens, New York; in fact, he holds a Ph.D. and was born in India. Our apologies.