From the inner city to Yale and neurosurgery

Benjamin Carson, M.D., told graduates that hardship can be a good thing.

An elite neurosurgeon born in crushing poverty, Benjamin Carson, M.D., told the Class of 2007 how learning transformed his life and urged the graduates to use their education to transform society.

Carson, selected by the graduating class of 86 new physicians as their Commencement speaker, is director of the Division of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and a former fellow of the Yale Corporation. He performed the first successful separation of twins joined at the back of the head and has written several popular books, including his autobiography, Gifted Hands. Carson shared some of that life story, beginning with his humble origins and continuing through his education at Yale College and eventual rise to a position of prominence in medicine.

Carson was a badly behaved, low-achieving elementary school student until his mother, who had only a third-grade education, began assigning him twice-weekly book reports. Her strategy worked, and Carson became an excellent student, only to backslide in high school because of peer pressure. “Peers, that’s Persons who Engage in Errors, Rudeness and Stupidity,” he joked. His mother quickly got him back on track.

Carson credited the struggles of his childhood in inner-city Detroit for his perseverance. “It puts fire in your belly. Hardship is a good thing,” he said.

He now has CEOs and royalty come from around the world for consultations. “Every single one of them would have gladly given every title and every penny for a clean bill of health,” he said. The physician’s power to restore health is cause for humility, not pride, he continued. “It doesn’t make us special, but it makes us incredibly privileged.”

Carson’s success spurred him to create the Carson Scholars Fund with his wife, Candy. The nonprofit organization gives cash awards and development opportunities to outstanding students in grades 4 through 11, with scholarships awarded for attendance at four-year colleges and universities upon the students’ graduation from high school.

Society is plagued by problems that “we in the medical profession have some of the tools to solve because we are the most highly educated people in society,” Carson said. He urged the class to be active in their own communities and to be a voice on such national issues as the 47 million Americans living without health insurance. “How can we abide that?” he asked.

Several faculty members received teaching prizes at the ceremony. The Bohmfalk Teaching Prize went to Fred Gorelick, M.D., professor of medicine and cell biology, for basic science teaching, and to Jessica L. Illuzzi, M.D., assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive sciences, for clinical teaching. The Leah M. Lowenstein Award was given to Vincent J. Quagliarello, M.D., professor of medicine, and to Karen Santucci, M.D., associate professor of pediatrics. Hal Blumenfeld, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of neurology, neurobiology and neurosurgery, received the Francis Gilman Blake Award. Damani Piggott, M.D., Ph.D. ’03, HS, received the Betsy Winters House Staff Award. The Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award was given to Majid Sadigh, M.D., associate professor of medicine. Leo M. Cooney Jr., M.D., the Humana Foundation Professor of Geriatric Medicine, received the Alvan R. Feinstein Award for outstanding teaching of clinical skills.

The class gift will be split between the Society of Distinguished Teachers, a program that supports excellence in the school’s teaching mission, and beautification of the patio outside Marigold’s, the medical school’s cafeteria.

—Colleen Shaddox

Learning, collaboration and engagement are essential, CDC chief tells EPH grads

In an increasingly interconnected world, public health networks are vitally important, Commencement speaker Julie L. Gerberding, M.D., M.P.H., told public health students during Commencement ceremonies in Battell Chapel on May 28.

Gerberding, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), described four qualities that will foster these networks. She said that in order to answer urgent questions, men and women in the field of public health will need the “fast science” that can result from integrated scientific platforms and collaborations. Public health professionals should share ideas across disciplines to create a marketplace of ideas. “We must talk not just to each other,” she said, adding that public health practitioners need to engage people at all levels of society. “We’re used to doing everything from the top down,” said Gerberding. “That isn’t going to work anymore.” Finally, CDC’s core values of respect, integrity and accountability should be incorporated into the work of public health at all levels.

Gerberding told the 119 graduating master’s-degree candidates, faculty and guests that she believes that “every life is equally valuable” and that we should continue to learn every day. “You have a privilege,” she said. “You have graduated from a university that will open doors for you.”

Officiating at his first Yale graduation, Dean Paul D. Cleary, Ph.D., presented the 2007 Award for Excellence in Teaching to Robert Dubrow, Ph.D., M.D., associate professor of epidemiology and public health. Dubrow said that any celebration of public health in 2007 “must be tempered by the catastrophe of the war in Iraq,” which “represents a public health disaster on many levels.” Peace, Dubrow said, is an essential condition for human well-being.

Student speaker Lubna Tanveer Shamsi, M.P.H. ’07, spoke with gratitude of the public health initiative of a classmate, Anant C. Shah, M.P.H. ’07, who petitioned the city for improved pedestrian safety after Shamsi was struck by a car near campus.

Prizes awarded to graduating students included the Dean’s Prize for Outstanding M.P.H. Thesis, to Martin Anderson, Anne Reiner and David Thomas; the Henry J. (Sam) Chauncey Jr. Inspiration Award, to Seamus Collins; and the Cortlandt Van Rensselaer Creed Award, to René Herbert.

—Cathy Shufro

Anxiety penetrates Yale system! Students, faculty stressed! Deputy dean to the rescue!

What happened to the freewheeling, easygoing Yale system? How did stress enter the lives of Yale med students? Was it a curse? An infection?

Thus began Infected, the second-year show presented in February by the Class of 2009. Anxiety first surfaced with the transition in the school’s office of education. Herbert S. Chase, M.D., the former deputy dean, had left, to be replaced by a seemingly befuddled Richard Belitsky, M.D., played by Mark Schlangel. What did this change portend? “Will we have to study embryology?” the students asked.

The students expressed their worries in a parody of “Circle of Life,” the hit song from the Broadway show The Lion King:

From the day we arrived on campus
Been in lecture, never seeing the sun,
There’s more to read than can ever be read
More to learn, our work’s never done.
There’s far too much to take in here,
Catch your breath and you’ll fall behind.
So we study in threes,
Shadow surgeries.
The only reason we’re not losing our minds
Is the system of Yale.
It’s what keeps us calm
Through secret codes,
Lectures forty minutes long.
It’s the only way to avoid competing—
It’s the system, the system of Yale.

The plot thickened with the emergence of Johns Hopkins lymphoma, also called Johns Hopkins disease, a plague of unknown origin that laid waste to the relaxed and hallowed Yale system of medical education. Students began to worry about exams, class rankings and competition from classmates. The virus spawned a new pickup line—“I hear the virus is sexually transmitted. Wanna find out?” Faculty noticed the change but didn’t expect the virus to spread to them. After all, they admitted, there was little contact between students and faculty.

But spread it did, as the cast performed an original song by second-year student Josh Trufant:

Dr. Bia spends his days watching Girls Gone Wild,
Fortin’s teaching Zen in the Art of Kitchen Tile,
Rizzolo’s robbing graves, Hep C’s in Duffy’s eye,
JHD spreads like cream cheese.
Now the faculty has it too—
We’re screwed! We’re screwed!

By the end of the show all had worked out for the best. Belitsky, a psychiatrist, realized the problem was all in the students’ heads rather than being caused by an infectious agent. Sanity prevailed, the Yale system was safe and calm returned to the medical school.

—John Curtis

As budding researchers, students reveal a talent for ‘mind-boggling’ science

From a study of a transgenic mouse with Alzheimer’s disease to an analysis of the effects of clinic attendance on weight loss after gastric bypass surgery, a diverse array of projects were on display on Student Research Day in May.

Jack A. Elias, M.D., the Waldemar Von Zedtwitz Professor of Medicine, and chair of internal medicine, called the quality of the science exhibits in the Hope Building “absolutely mind-boggling,” while one older guest was overheard saying to a contemporary, “Can you imagine us doing anything this sophisticated when we were students here?”

April Levin, a fourth-year medical student who plans to specialize in pediatric neurology, studied epileptic seizures in WAG/Rij rats, an inbred strain of rat that is genetically susceptible to seizures. Levin wanted to see whether having a seizure somehow teaches the body to have more seizures. Through the use of ethosuximide (ESX), a treatment for absence seizures, Levin and her team were able to prevent seizures in very young rats. Months later, a brain-wave comparison showed that early treatment with the antiepileptic drug ESX before the onset of seizures resulted in decreased seizure activity months after ESX was discontinued.

Karen Archabald studied whether prenatal discussion of breast feeding by health care providers makes a difference in a new mother’s feeding choices. Archabald, a fourth-year medical student planning to specialize in obstetrics and gynecology, found that while 95 percent of the women she interviewed had concerns about breast feeding, only a quarter of those had their concerns addressed by a health care provider. While 75 percent said they were asked about their feeding plans, only 25 percent of those felt they had had a conversation with their health care provider. “There is a lot of room for improvement in terms of discussion,” Archabald concluded.

The day’s keynote address, the 20th annual Farr Lecture, was delivered by Elias, who has spent his career studying pulmonary disease. Asthma, he said, is a “silent epidemic” that afflicts up to 20 million people in the United States alone. One slide Elias showed drove the point home, however, even more forcefully than that staggering number. The slide was an autopsy specimen from an 11-year-old girl who died in the grip of an asthma attack while her mother raced her to the hospital.

Elias ended on a note that surely left his audience of budding scientists feeling energized about their career paths: the work conducted in his lab laid the scientific groundwork for Aerovant, a new asthma treatment. Aerovant is now showing promising results in clinical trials.

Abstracts and complete theses by Yale medical students are accessible online via the Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library at http://ymtdl.med.yale.edu/.

—Jennifer Kaylin

Lu Anne Dinglasan, left, and Alison Maresh

Karen Morris-Priester and Gretchen Graff

Match Day 2007

Nationally, this year’s match was the largest in the program’s 55-year history, with almost 28,000 medical students vying for just under 22,000 slots. At Yale, for the second time in the past three years, all 84 students in the match found residencies.

CALIFORNIA
Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Los Angeles
Aram Lee, medicine-preliminary

Contra Costa Regional Medical Center, Martinez
Rebecca Kershnar, family medicine

Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, Torrance
Hassana Ibrahim, transitional

Santa Clara Valley Medical Center, San José
Anika Nina Watson, transitional

Stanford University Medical Center
Aaron Berger, plastic surgery
Paul Kalanithi, neurosurgery
Bernice Ng, dermatology

UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
Hassana Ibrahim, diagnostic radiology
Aram Lee, diagnostic radiology
Peter Yang, internal medicine

University of California, San Francisco
Jason Andrews, internal medicine/primary
Lucy Goddard, internal medicine/primary
Priya Shete, internal medicine
Stephen Shiao, radiation oncology
Ramnath Subbaraman, internal medicine
Kristen Sueoka, internal medicine/primary

University of Southern California, Los Angeles
David Jeng, ophthalmology

Ventura County Medical Center, Ventura
Emlyn Jones, family medicine

COLORADO
University of Colorado School of Medicine, Denver
Arianne Boylan, surgery-preliminary, neurosurgery

CONNECTICUT
Greenwich Hospital
Silas Wang, medicine-preliminary

Hospital of Saint Raphael, New Haven
Phoebe Koch, medicine-preliminary
Peter Lin, transitional
Robert McGlynn, medicine-preliminary
William Worden, medicine-preliminary

St. Vincent’s Medical Center, Bridgeport
James Schafer, transitional

Yale-New Haven Hospital
Omar Chaudhary, ophthalmology
Sean Christensen, medicine-preliminary, dermatology
Mary Dombrowski, medicine/
primary-preliminary, neurology
Matthew Egalka, pediatrics
Gretchen Graff, medicine/primary-preliminary, dermatology
Brendan Jackson, internal medicine/primary
David Jeng, medicine/primary preliminary
Hristos Kaimakliotis, surgery preliminary, urology
Stefan Mansourian, medicine/primary-preliminary
Anthony Ndu, orthopaedic surgery
Bernice Ng, medicine/primary preliminary
Sally Romano, psychiatry
Stephen Shiao, medicine preliminary
Linus Sun, medicine-preliminary
Edward Teng, plastic surgery
Nataliya Uboha, internal medicine

GEORGIA
Medical College of Georgia, Augusta
Omar Chaudhary, medicine preliminary

ILLINOIS
McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University, Chicago
Rajesh Rao, transitional

MARYLAND
Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
Peter Lin, anesthesiology
Arnab Mukherjee, anesthesiology

MASSACHUSETTS
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston
Bidhan Das, general surgery
Victoria Kuohung, medicine-preliminary
Ahou Meydani, medicine-preliminary
Charlotte Wu, internal medicine

Boston University
Chukwuemeka Nwanze, ophthalmology

Boston University Medical Center
Victoria Kuohung, dermatology

Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston
Bridget Collins, internal medicine
Rebecca Hunter, medicine-preliminary
Lauren Kendall Krause, emergency medicine
Karen Morris-Priester, anesthesiology
Oren Rosenberg, internal medicine
Joshua Shofner, medicine-preliminary
William Worden, anesthesiology

Children’s Hospital Boston
Christopher Janson, pediatrics
April Levin, pediatrics

Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Boston
Rebecca Hunter, ophthalmology
Rajesh Rao, ophthalmology

Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
Eric Ackah, internal medicine
Kristopher Kahle, surgery-preliminary
Aida Kuri, internal medicine/primary
Chukwuemeka Nwanze, medicine-preliminary
Oyere Onuma, internal medicine
Russell Ryan, pathology
Joshua Shofner, dermatology
Marlynn Wei, psychiatry

MICHIGAN
University of Michigan Health System, Ann Arbor
James Schafer, diagnostic radiology

MINNESOTA
Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester
Brian Koh, internal medicine/research

University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
Phoebe Koch, dermatology
Brian Yablon, medicine-pediatrics

MISSISSIPPI
University of Mississippi Medical Center, Jackson
Anika Nina Watson, diagnostic radiology

NEW JERSEY
UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, Newark
Ahou Meydani, dermatology

NEW YORK
Albert Einstein College/Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx
Cameron Page, internal medicine/primary/social

Beth Israel Medical Center, New York City
Arnab Mukherjee, medicine-preliminary

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York City
Ranjit Bindra, transitional, radiation oncology
Viral Juthani, transitional

New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, New York City
Robert McGlynn, ophthalmology

New York-Presbyterian Hospital–Columbia University Medical Center, New York City
Sheila Kumar, internal medicine
Stefan Mansourian, neurology
Alison Maresh, otolaryngology
Caryn St. Clair, obstetrics and gynecology
Lara Suh, surgery-preliminary, urology
Linus Sun, neurology

New York-Presbyterian Hospital–Weill Cornell Medical Center, New York City
Jana Colton, psychiatry
Maria Mazzeo, anesthesiology
Aditya Sharma, emergency medicine

New York University School of Medicine, New York City
Viral Juthani, ophthalmology
Victoria Potterton, medicine-preliminary
Alain Ramirez, general surgery
Silas Wang, ophthalmology

North Shore University Hospital–NYU School of Medicine, Manhasset
Masha Diede, emergency medicine

OHIO
Cleveland Clinic Foundation
Kikelomo Olorunrinu, anesthesiology

University of Cincinnati College of Medicine
Deborah Kaplan, physical medicine and rehabilitation

PENNSYLVANIA
Albert Einstein Medical Center, Philadelphia
Jessica Kirk, transitional

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
Nana Akua Asafu-Agyei, pediatrics
Jennifer Kalish, pediatrics

Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
Farrah Datko, internal medicine
Roshan Shah, orthopaedic surgery/research

Lehigh Valley Hospital, Allentown
Karen Morris-Priester, transitional

University of Pittsburgh Medical Center
Shekar Davarya, obstetrics and gynecology
Rebecca McNutt, emergency medicine

RHODE ISLAND
Brown University–Women & Infants Hospital, Providence
Karen Archabald, obstetrics and gynecology

Roger Williams Medical Center, Providence
Jessica Kirk, dermatology

WASHINGTON
University of Washington Affiliated Hospitals, Seattle
Maya Maxym, pediatrics
Brent Schultz, plastic surgery

The following students chose options other than residencies in the United States. Shobi Syed Ahmed is studying Middle Eastern and Islamic studies at Harvard University. Ryan Kelly plans to pursue teaching and research in the biological sciences. Douglas Lyssy is an investment banker at Merrill Lynch Global Healthcare Group. Kyeen Mesesan will work in international health research and policy. Alexander Nissen is in a residency training program in Norway.