Medicor 2014 #2 by Medicor MF Magazine

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medicor

2014 #2 medicinska fĂśreningen i stockholm

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Bill Gatesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; Letter to KI Students 13 IgNobel Prize Initiator Marc Abrahams 16 The DNA maverick of Medical Science Craig Venter 28

The ENABLER Claes Hultling teaches people with

disabilities how to live the good life 1

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Prelude

Telling My Story When I was younger, I would every now and then imag-

ine myself soaring through the oriental continent on a scrappy train with nothing but a journalist’s hat and a rusty typewriter. There was something romantic about journalism, in uncovering the mysteries of the hidden corners of the world. It was also about giving a voice to the people without a voice.

Photo by Jingcheng Zhao for Medicor

Did you know that Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was started by journalists? The physicians joined later, as a breakaway group from the Red Cross following its failure to speak up against atrocities during the 1967-70 Biafran War. Medicine thus has a social responsibility, epitomised by MSF’s lead word témoignage, French for “to bear witness”. It was this cross-reaction between working with human physiology, which spellbound me in high school, and telling the untold stories of the world that attracted me to medicine. It was the reconciliation of cellular science and the humanities. It was the reach for a higher understanding of the human condition, one story at a time. I suppose it was this notion I wanted to bring to Medicor one and a half a year ago, and one that I return to now as I sign my last issue as Editor-in-Chief. Luckily I met with other Karolinska Institutet newcomers who also wanted to re-launch the magazine just before assuming the editorship in early 2013. There were three of us in the beginning. Jingcheng Zhao, Louise Forlin, and I could sit for hours a Friday night planning the re-launch. We went for the professionallooking magazine that would inspire students to venture beyond their lecture halls. We hoped to do it with articles ranging from general issues in medicine, international affairs, and campus life that would challenge students and give us a creative outlet through columns, reports, interviews, and analyses. These juxtapositions has brought our university life closer to both medicine and the world out there. Medicor is fortunate to enjoy the support of many brilliant students. Jingcheng’s leadership and skills in photography and layout was invaluable for the initiation process. The magazine would not look the same without his involvement. It was further vital that Andrei Pyko stayed on from before the re-launch as he has contributed significantly to our layout efforts. Beautiful photography by Martin Kjellberg has, from day ornamented, the pages and our interview quests that have inspired you as much as me. Furthermore, an organisation always need the hawkeye and that person during the re-launch has been our proofreader-general Ruslan Alam. Three other people who have dared ask the tough questions are Rrezarta Rama, Milou Öberg Sellersjö, and Vladimir Choi, whose peering over our shoulders have been fundamental to our continuous development.

Medicor Magasin Grundad 2006. Sjunde årgången. Utges av Medincinska Föreningen i Stockholm ISSN: 1653-9796 Ansvarig utgivare: Gustaf Drevin Tryck och reproduktion: Åtta45, Solna Adress: Medicinska Föreningen i Stockholm Nobels Väg 10, Box 250, 171 77, Stockholm Utgivningsplan 2014: nr 1: mars, nr 2: maj, nr 3: oktober, nr 4: december. Kontakta Medicor: chefredaktor@medicor.nu www.medicinskaforeningen.se Frilansmaterial: Medicor förbehåller sig rätten att redigera inkommet material och ansvarar inte för icke beställda texter eller bilder, samt tryckfel. Upphovsman svarar för, genom Medicor publicerat, signerat frilansmaterial; denna(e)s åsikter representerar nödvändigtvis inte Medicors eller Medicinska Föreningens.

For the last couple of terms, new students have entered and made impact. Oskar Swartling has a balanced mind with a creative openness and organisational skill. Additionally, Robert de Meijere has been a vital factor of our visual aspect progression. Several sectional editors such as Poya Livälven, Amanda Kaba Liljeberg, Sergio Scrò, Iskra Pollak Dorocic, and Ragashree D. Setty, have made positive influences on the content, and the magazine has come together more solidly, owing to their management. We further enjoy the experienced voice of well-renowned journalist Janne Andersson as a senior advisor who never lets us forget how to improve.

Cover photo by Martin Kjellberg for Medicor 2

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Photo by Jingcheng Zhao for Medicor

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Prelude medicor at a glance Of course, we could not have launched the new Medicor without the support or cooperation of people from outside of the magazine. The support of former Medicinska Föreningen President Erik Lindblom Hellsing and former Information Committee Chairman Simon Peyda motivated us in those first, tough months. We have been fortunate to have connections with the Nobel Committee’s Göran K. Hansson and Nobel Forum’s Ann-Mari Dumanski in order to bring exclusive coverage related to the Nobel Prizes. The recognition that the senior faculty of Karolinska Institutet signed up for 80 subscriptions was a great confidence boost, and we appreciate having an unpretentious and open relationship with them. The re-making of the magazine has been a group effort. Weekly meetings and particularly the kickoffs have been the highlight of my week for the last year. We have engaged about a hundred students in direct interaction with Medicor over the last year and strive to continuously involve more people in student activities. It has been vital here to allow for some flexibility regarding your participation with the magazine, because we recognise that we all are busy with our academic lives. My part in this has been small. Instead, I have appreciated savouring the unique experiences offered to me as an active editor. Four of these experiences strike me as particularly strong. Firstly, jumping on Helicobacter pylori-drinking Nobel Laureate Barry Marshall as my first ever interview. It turns out he is a light-hearted man, with a great sense of humour apart from a great intellect. The second meeting is personally most significant to me, namely sitting down with Professor Hans Rosling to talk about global health and the nature of medical education, in the spring of 2013. To sit down with such a big inspiration of mine was unreal and terribly gratifying. I want to believe he reciprocated that feeling, as he stayed talking with us and thus chose to be late for an official dinner downtown. I had chased Mattias Klum a long time for an interview, but it took until August to secure that one, which took place in a sunny Uppsala. This third meeting was a great experience as we sat down with a world-renowned nature photographer to discuss the adverse effects on human health of losing biological diversity and undergoing climate change. The fourth recollection was when Jingcheng photographed the three 2013 Nobel Laureates in a photo studio shoved into the closet of the MF Lucia Ball, from which we more or less borrowed the three guests of honour for a few minutes. Three grey-haired Nobel laureates dressed in tailcoats fighting each other with balloons is a scene I happily return to whenever I

begin forgetting my inner child. I believe that the more than 635 000 views that the photo received on Reddit justified our more or less unconventional means that evening. And here we are. My story is just one of many voices that can describe what Medicor has done over the past 16 months. I would instead like to turn your gaze to the issue you now have in front of you. We happily present to you another quality-focused issue. Our cover story features outspoken Claes Hultling, whose account can nothing but inspire us to enable ourselves and to show fighting spirit in times of hardship. Another feature is Craig Venter, who is known for being one of the first to map the human DNA. Marc Abrahams tells us how he came to start the IgNobel Prize movement and why we should reward improbable science. Finally, we feature a letter sent from Dr. Bill Gates to Karolinska’s students as a follow-up to his recent visit. All this coverage we have done over the last year has been greatly stimulating to me, often it is the meeting with a knowledgeable person in his or her field that provides the kick. However, what evokes the passion in making something like Medicor happen is the togetherness, the teamgeist, and the feeling that we – as young students – have come together and created something worthwhile. Not because of course requirements, not because we had to – but because we want to challenge old paradigms and perhaps discover new aspects of our humanity. Lastly, I hope that you have found the new, relaunched Medicor inspiring. We who have worked on it have found it self-fulfilling as a creative outlet for us to master our writing, pierce subjects that we find interesting, and speak up on meaningful and purposeful issues that affect us all. I have enjoyed every minute of it. As the incumbent caretaker of this organisation, and as a member of a fantastic team effort, I can only recommend that you too try to find a way to tell your story.

Sincerely, Gustaf Drevin Editor-in-Chief

Medicor 13#1 featuring Hans Rosling, Richard Horton, and Barry Marshall.

Medicor 13#2 spotlighting Mattias Klum, Maciej Zaremba, and Karin Alfredsson.

Medicor 13#3&4 displaying three happy Nobel laureates, and Paul Rusesabagina.

Medicor 14#1 with Katarina Gospic and Johan von Schreeb.

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Aperture One of the highlights of the Bill Gates visit was when he needed help with his presentation. Ironically, a technician came to Gatesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; assistance to help out with Microsoft PowerPoint... Photography by Jingcheng Zhao Morning May 13th. 11.54.indd 5

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Overture Cover Story

Karolinska

Global Focus

HAlftime for mf president Progress and challenges for Karin Böttiger.

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Bill gates at KI The world’s richest and biggest philanthropist at Karolinska.

The day i met bill gates Caitlin Jackson about her role as Dr. Gates’ chaperone.

But ki forgot the students Jingcheng Zhao on what worries him with the Gates visit. Includes an e-mail to KI students from Dr. Gates.

Claes hultling

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Neurobollocks

“Never accept your handicap. Learn to live with it.” Frida Segernäs has met Claes Hultling in an inspiring interview coverage.

features

Science science snippets

Nandini Rao and Nicolas Guyon about neuroscepticism.

Marc abrahams Ignobel: a Funny side of science Iskra Pollak Dorocic has met Marc Abrahams to talk about the unintentionally funny side of science.

Russia: aid donor? On the role of Russia within foreign aid systems.

Microfinance Florian Schauber discusses Mohamad Yunus’ controversial economic policy.

Ebola scare On the latest Ebola outbreak, in West Africa.

The Arts

An ensemble of medical news from around the world.

Anti-vaccination though billions of lives have been saved, an antivaccination wave sweeps the world.

The neurotourist Review of a book that takes neuroscience just a bit further.

Ronden podcast Poya Livälven has met the three doctors that produce the popular medical podcast Ronden.

Student cartoons Some comic relief in all the misery.

craig venter The maverick of medical science Medicor’s Kim Franson has met with a man that is as much a scientist as a futuristic science fiction character. Does he hold the key to eternal life?

medicor Gustaf Drevin • Editor-in-Chief | Oskar Swartling • Associate Editor | Andrey Pyko • Creative Director Ruslan Alam • Proofreader General | Vladimir Choi, Robert de Meijere • Executive Editors | Jin-Yu Lu • Treasurer | Janne Andersson • Senior Advisor Amanda Kaba Liljeberg • Editors of Campus Issues | Sergio Scrò • Editor of Global Focus | Iskra Pollak Dorocic • Editor of Science | Poya Livälven • Editor of the Arts

Frida Segernäs, Johanna Wolfsberger, Kim Franson, Saket Milind Nigam • Reporters | Martin Kjellberg, Maria Belikova, Gabriella Dal • Photographers Susanna Charboti, Jingcheng Zhao, Florian Schober, Caitlin Jackson, Andrea Bieder, Nandini Rao, Nicolas Guyon, Gayané Arustamyan • Writers Simon Peyda, Louise Forlin, Shervin Khosousi • Proofreaders | Touba Guerroumi, Mikael Plymoth, Magdalena Hrywniak, Nirupa Rao • Illustrators

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Smörgåsbord NSAIDs the key towards fighting ”superbugs” Current research performed in Australia has indicated that common NSAIDs, used as pain relievers, have an impact on bacteria, suppressing their ability to replicate their genetic material by inhibiting an enzyme component known as the DNA clamp. All three tested NSAIDs displayed a mechanism that differs from currently used antibiotics. This could be a discovery of great significance, considering the increasingly more urgent issue of approaching resistant bacteria as they pose a threat to global health.

1 TRILLION The number of scents the human nose can recognize.

Award-winning Aula Medica A total of 20 buildings were nominated for the prestigious award ”Årets Bygge 2014”. At a gala in Stockholm the prize was awarded Karolinska Institutet’s newest building, Aula Medica, with the motivation that the project was ”imprinted with new thinking, openness and creativity, claiming place in a demanding environment”. Project leader Hayar Gohary sees this as an endorsement for their work to create a signature building for Karolinska Institutet.

800,000,000 How many mobile phone subscribers there are in Africa.

WORK OF ART Check out the exhibition MEDICIN OCH KONST I FÖRENING, 29 June - 25 August this summer. Works of art connected to the Nobel Prize are on show, as well as medical illustrations and presentations of famous Nobel Laureates and their work. Medicor photographer Jingcheng Zhao’s 2013 Nobel Laureate Balloon photo will be one of those. The exhibition is arranged by the Nobel Committee for Physiology or Medicine and the art gallery, Galleri Astley located in Uttersberg (around 2 hours by car from Stockholm). Free entry. For more information: • nobelprizemedicine.org/medicin-och-konst-iforening/ • galleriastley.com/index.php/program

The solution to saving millions of lives? Education for women. Schooling of women has increased dramatically around the globe, and health researchers announce in the well renowned review The Lancet that child mortality rate has decreased from 16 million to 8 million during 1970 to 2009, and half of these are due to women getting more educated. There is still a lot of progress to be made, since 57 million children according to Unesco are still not attending school.

$12

The price for a Nigerian school girl sold as a bride by Boko Haram following a mass school kidnapping by the islamist militant group. #BringBackOurGirls

The music in your car might make you a more dangerous driver Music affects our heart rhythm, eye movements and mood, and depending on what type of music you listen to while driving it can in fact make you a more annoyed, unfocused and poor driver. On the contrary, the right type of music can make you more alert, and based on this, sound designers has currently composed music suitable for seven different driving situation, with the hopes of making your driving safer.

Twinning In April a group of eleven students from Heidelberg Medical Universität visited Stockholm and KI for one week. The German students each got a Swedish “twin” to live with, as part of the recently started Twinning activity, initiated by students in the International Committee. Five KI students have been working on the project for months, gathering sponsors and lecturers, as well as arranging visits to research facilities. A social program for the evenings was also arranged, including a Swedish, somewhat traditional “sittning”, a bring-your-own-dish dinner, pub crawl and visits to museums and Skansen, as well as a greatly appreciated stay at Solvik.

The amount of our total on-Earth-time that humans have spent as non-nomadic.

Medical student saving the life of a ”phony patient” In order to learn how to make a correct diagnosis, the 25-year-old medical student in Virginia was given the task to examine a pensioner acting as a patient. The unexpected discovery that was made saved the old man’s life: he was suffering from an abdominal aorta aneurysm that had not been noticed up to that point, and that would have bursted and become fatal if not for the observant medical student.

300 tonnes

The amount of antibiotics given to animals yearly.

Many a tears were shed as the German students left for Heidelberg. However, as is custom for Twinning-projects, a second half is to follow as the Swedish students leave for Heidelberg in June for a hopefully equally enjoyable week. Thanks to KI and the International Committee for their financial support and to Daniel Holl for helping out at MF. Hopefully, Twinning will continue next year! Kalle Garpvall, representing the Organisation Committee of the Twinning project 2014

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Karolinska

The Great Debate: Should Sweden further internationalise? By Saket Milind Nigam A single drop of sweat navigated

down the terrain of Daniel Holl’s face. It may be tempting to assume that his perspiration was related to the glorious sunny afternoon that Stockholm was experiencing. But this was not the case. Daniel found himself clutching firmly onto the podium as he eloquently debated on a topic that is very much a cornerstone of Karolinska Institutet’s rise in world rankings: internationalization. Tasked with deciphering the points of contention – both for and against further internationalization of higher education in Sweden – Jingcheng Zhao and Sune Sun of the International Committee at Medicinska Föreningen organized a British Parliamentary-style debate on April 23rd. Open to the public and featuring students from around the world, the debate showcased the multitude of talent and insight that students at Swedish universities possess. In one corner stood the experienced team from Lund University who were

assigned the stance to oppose further internationalization. Their motion to maintain the status quo was contended under the premise that equal opportunity to improve the lives of Swedish citizenry should be of paramount importance as they are the primary stakeholders in this society. They argued that language/ culture barriers associated with further internationalization may alienate parts of the native-born population. Given finite resources and Sweden’s already-altruistic role in educational freedom, the team maintained that we have reached a sufficient level of internationalization. In the opposing corner stood the passionate team from KI. They countered that by expanding international reach, we build long-lasting relationships which cumulatively enhance social development and opens up the labor market. Due to university admissions quotas, seats are guaranteed and accessible to Swedish students. Moreover, recently-instated tuition on prospective non-EU students is struc-

tured to largely offset the high cost of resources. Accordingly, further internationalization should be explored to promote Sweden’s ongoing academic globalization efforts. And so, swing after swing the participants battled in this verbal fist fight methodically dissecting the nuances of this complex question. After an engaging discussion with spectators, we adjourned feeling empowered. Joanna Kritikos (Doctoral Candidate at MTC) said, “Opportunities like this showcase the talent we have here and provide a constructive, scholarly medium to discuss important issues. I hope we have more debates in the future.” Until then, we excitedly await a potential follow-up debate with Hans Rosling, KI faculty and student speakers on the same topic.

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Debaters: Gustaf Lundberg, Johan Båge, Matti Bryder, Bunashree Kumar, Daniel Holl, Shervin Khosousi, Lucinda David. Head organisers/ moderators: Sune Sun, Jingcheng Zhao. Coorganizer: Marie Lundgren.

Viva: Vårdstuderande i vårdarbete Sjukvården utvecklas och framtidens vårdpersonal behöver utvecklas med den. Kanske har Chalak Amiri med sitt projekt Viva en lösning för en effektivare utbildning med kontakt med sjukvården och andra yrkesgrupper tidigt i utbildningen.

By Amanda Kaba Liljeberg Blivande vårdpersonal ska inte

bara läsa tjocka böcker om histologi och cellbiologi. Det tycker i alla fall Chalak Amiri, ST-läkare på Danderyds sjukhus och grundare av Vårdstuderande i vårdarbete (Viva), som menar att kunskap inom grundläggande omvårdnad är en förutsättning för att kunna arbeta i vården. Som läkarstudent upptäckte han att dessa kunskaper prioriteras bort i de flesta programmen och att det samtidigt saknas en plattform för vårdstudenter från olika utbildningar att samverka och samarbeta. En vision om att koppla ihop olika generationer, professioner och kunskaper föddes. ”Den medicinska utvecklingen går starkt framåt och sjukvården kan rädda allt fler liv samtidigt som den svenska befolkningen blir allt äldre. Denna utveckling är mycket positiv men samtidig kunskapskrävande. Viva tacklar denna utmaning på ett kreativt och, för

den svenska sjukvården, innovativt sätt”, säger Chalak Amiri.

så bra att träffa äldre personer och delta i vården och omsorgen.”

Tillsammans med vänner som idag är hans medarbetare startade Amiri kursen Viva. Sedan 2013 har drygt 150 studenter gått kursen, som erbjuds alla vårdstuderande vid Karolinska Institutet som är kårmedlemmar. I ett samarbete med Medicinska Föreningen anordnas föreläsningar. Premiären var i mars förra året med temat äldrevård. Karin Thalén är ordförande för HSB Omsorg, en av Viva:s samarbetspartners. När jag pratar med henne berättar hon om hur hon kom i kontakt med Viva och att samarbetet är lyckat. ”Vi blev intresserade direkt och fick en inbjudan att delta i en av höstens Viva-kurser. Det är ett mycket bra koncept. Vi har tidvis svårt att få tag i personal med kompetens, så det är mycket bra att få läkarstuderande som vikarier. För studenterna är det ock-

Målet med verksamheten är bland annat att fungera som en länk mellan studier och arbetsliv för vårdstudenter och på så sätt skapa karriärmöjligheter. Amiri berättar att studenterna som gått kursen är nöjda. ”Det har verkligen varit mycket värdefullt för mig att kunna arbeta med någonting vårdrelaterat vid sidan om studierna. Jag tycker kursen har varit till stor hjälp i mitt arbete och utan att ha gått den hade jag nog känt mig ganska lost i arbetet med äldre och dementa”, säger en kursdeltagare. Viva kommer till hösten 2014 att lansera Viva Career, en början till att göra en kompetensutvecklande karriär som är exklusiv för Viva-deltagare.

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Läs mer: www.vardstuderande.se

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Karolinska

Half-time for MF’s president Karin Böttiger How are things coming about at the MF office? By Johanna Wolfsberger “MF is its members!”, Karin Böttiger, the MF President says. “I don’t say I am MF, or the board is MF, we are a team together!” It has been around half a year since her election as MF’s president and she is clearly positive. “It has been really fun! It has been developing for me and I have learnt a lot about myself.” She also mentions that this leadership role is a completely new experience for her. To elaborate, she says the hardest part was to realize that what was once a hobby now has turned into her everyday job, that the people that were and still are her friends are now also her co-workers. “It is a challenge to change your point of view from being the boss to being a friend and back again a few times per day.” During the past months Karin and MF has made progress in their work. She emphasizes she has not made any progress by herself, that “MF did this together.” Karin says they are trying to get more benefits for students all the time. Different committees are working with tenacity on this matter and have succeeded to get discounts for members in the Aula Medica Café and the Curbside food truck, which has been new this year on the campus. MF is currently working hard on increasing the number of members. Since the mandatory membership was removed in 2010, MF Presidents have one point more on their to-do-list. A lot has been done, but some projects have not yet been finished. Some projects need more time than just one year. One

“One difference between me and the last four MF Presidents is that I’m a woman.” Photo: Gabriella Dal

such project is the Vision Project that Karin has taken over from last year. “We do not have a vision in MF. Without a vision, we cannot have strategy and without a strategy it is hard to have goals. This is the first step to create a long term goal for MF.” The MF team is currently working on one, as well as on the United Unions of Flemingsberg project to form a united union that works together for all different schools represented on the campus.

What has been accomplished so far under Karin

;; Attempts to increase the number of MF members ;; Curbside Food Truck + member prize ;; Member prizes in Aula Medica’s café ;; Special offer: 2 weeks for free at Friskis&Svettis What Karin hopes to achieve in the future

Create and execute a vision project Increased cooperation: a Flemmingsberg union Update MFs headquarter Work to keep the initiation kollos

The work through out the year is not a steady process. Karin tells me that there are times which are more hectic, for example the beginning of the year with the new students, but also before summer when things have to be done before everyone leaves. Karin will use the more relaxed time during the summer break for issues that have been left behind, e.g. cleaning the MF building and organizing the server. “There is a lot of pressure from KI on MF in some aspects”, Karin says. KI needs student representatives and its MF’s job to find them. MF is also interested in representatives, but they cannot pay them, and it is not always easy to find people interested enough. For all medicine, psychology or nursing students out there, MF formed a working group with KI to keep the “kollo” (summer camps for new students) the way they were. Her plans for the rest of the year are “to do everything that I can to make this a good year for MF!” Karin also wants all students to know that “if you have any questions or comments you are very welcome to contact us. We are here for the members. We want to hear what you think!”

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Karolinska

Hans Rosling pedagogically showing Dr. Gates the economic stakes in global health - using Lego. Photo: Jingcheng Zhao

Bill Gates at Karolinska Institutet

Medicor reports from the visit of the world’s richest man By Jingcheng Zhao and Gustaf Drevin Dr. Bill Gates, best known as the wealthiest person on the planet, founder of the world’s largest software company, is also known as one of the world’s most generous philanthropists, pledging to donate 99.5% of his massive $77 billion fortune. Within recent years, Dr. Gates has also been recognised as one of the most prominent and influential figures within global health.

“Mr. Gates, I need your help, but not your money!” I yelled across the room Taking a step back from Microsoft, he now works full time with his wife, Dr. Melinda Gates, at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In 2007, both Bill and Melinda Gates were awarded honorary doctorates from Karolinska Institutet for their work with their foundation. On March 31st, Bill took center stage at Aula Medica to talk about his work, the global health situation in the world today and the work and vision of his foundation. Hosted by our own Professor Hans

Rosling, this one-hour event featured a Hans Rosling lecture, Dr. Gates’ presentation, a panel debate, and a floor discussion with questions from the audience. “I first saw Bill in person at the World Economic Forum in Davos, but he was surrounded with a sea of people. ‘Mr. Gates, I need your help, but not your money!’ I yelled across the room. After which, he started swimming through the sea of people towards me saying: ‘Who said that? Who said that?’” Hans Rosling says in our phone interview. A thousand people, a mix of faculty, KI benefactors, and students, filled Aula Medica to listen to Dr. Gates’ presentation of his foundation and their work. The event received national attention, with representatives from UR, SVT and TV4. In a shorter on-stage presentation, Dr. Gates presented frontline news and insights regarding the battle for better global health, covering his and Melinda’s work, progress and the beginning of their commitment. “When I was working at Microsoft, my

“An amazing story about what has been done, but also an amazing story about what we still need to do” wife Melinda and I talked about that we were going to have a next phase, which would be taking the wealth and give it back to have the highest impact possible. It was at that time that we thought ‘what should we do?’” It all started with a newspaper article in New York Times. “It said that millions of children were dying every year from diarrhoea”, Gates writes in an email to Medicor. “The leading cause of diarrhoea, it turns out, is something called rotavirus [...]. Melinda and I had never even heard of rotavirus.” Dr. Gates went on to comment on how capitalistic market mechanisms have failed to efficiently allocate resources and funding. “There won’t be a malaria vaccine that trickles down because there

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Karolinska aren’t mechanism asking for it to be. The people who [do] have that need; their voice in the marketplace is very limited because of their economic stakes.”

generous foreign aid policy. “You set a fine example! Believe me, when I go to other countries I talk about this generosity.”

“One thing that is always in fashion is rich people. If you have got one person who has got tuberculosis it’s ‘oh no, not a rich person getting tuberculosis’”, Bill says with a chuckle. “So the great injustice is the great invisibility of the extreme health problems of the poorest.”

Gates personal passion for his new profession is unmistakable: “Global health is an amazing story. An amazing story about what has been done, but also an amazing story about what we still need to do.”

Afterwards, Bill Gates received questions from a panel consisting of Anna Mia Ekström (KI), Hannah Akuffo (Sida), Julia Schalk (RFSU), and Professor Osman Sankho, head of the INDEPTH Network in Ghana, followed by questions from the audience. Dr. Gates also took the opportunity to compliment Sweden’s

“The goal is an ambitious goal. I can talk about poverty, about health, but I think the greatest equity is that a child should have very little chance of dying. Every mother should think that ‘my child is going to survive’”, Gates concludes. “[And] I am very optimistic that we will achieve it”.

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“Dr. Gates - what would you do if you were much richer?” Photo: Gustaf Drevin

The day I met Bill Gates By Caitlin Jackson For me, it all started with rotavirus, a common diarrheal disease found in children. Not that I had it, of course, as it is more common in poor regions of the world and hardly seen in the playgrounds of Canadian cities. But since diarrheal diseases account for almost 800,000 deaths in children under 5 annually in these poor regions, finding a way to reduce the prevalence of the disease is a pretty good place to start if you’re interested in getting involved in global health. The thing I didn’t know at the time was that someone else shared this passion for reducing rotavirus, someone who is a lot more powerful and influential than I am.

my life. I was nervous when shaking his hand, introducing myself as a student of global health and seeing his smile broad-

...could have easily flung myself onto him and asked him his opinion on every global health topic under the sun

A global health defender is the phrase I have come to use for those heroes of mine who are fighting, researching, and passionately pursuing ways to reduce health inequalities around the world. It was on a wonderful day in March that I was able to escort a man who also credits his beginnings in global health to rotavirus, a global health defender and hero of mine, around my campus at Karolinska Institutet. This was the day I met Bill Gates.

en helped make me more at ease. Not that it was difficult to feel uncomfortable around the man, he gave off such a calm and laid-back vibe that it was easy to forget that he is one of the most powerful men in the world. He happily followed me to the green room to meet his panel opponents for the day, where he warmly shook everyone’s hand and was interested to hear about their expertise. His calm nature was ever so pleasant to interact with, and it wasn’t until I took my seat and saw him in his element, on stage, that I understood how this man’s voice carried such weight around the world. He is a leader and his passion is infectious. When he speaks about global health, you feel his commitment to the cause and it is utterly infectious.

The exact events of the day are a bit blurry but the highlight reel is definitely something I’ll remember for the rest of

I led him and his team around to the next meetings and interviews and could have easily flung myself onto him and asked

Caitlin is also a KI Digital Ambassador. Courtesy: Caitlin Jackson

him his opinion on every global health topic under the sun (I so badly wanted to!) but as I felt my questions bubbling up inside of me, I looked to this man beside me and felt perhaps he could use some peace. He had such a presence in a room; everyone either wanted his attention or stood back to let him impart his wisdom. I wanted to be useful and polite and perhaps a bit invisible, don’t we all deserve a few moments in a day where we aren’t being asked something? I had already met and spoken with my global health hero and I was already over the moon: we share a common enemy, we started off in global health from the same spot, and when I mentioned that I did my undergraduate thesis on a rural rotavirus vaccine campaign, he smiled and told me that he was glad I had chosen the path I did. That moment, that day, and that sentence is going to stick around for a while.

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2014-05-15 13:08:16

Student Commentary

WHAT BILL GATES TAUGHT ME ABOUT KI

A disturbing truth about Karolinska Institutet and how we can work to fix it together Jingcheng Zhao

jingcheng.zhao@stud.ki.se

Dr. Gates is no stranger to

university visits He has embarked on numerous college tours to talk to young people, including UC Berkeley, Stanford, UT Austin, and, this time, Karolinska Institutet. “I love visiting universities because students always ask the toughest questions.” Gates writes on his Facebook page earlier last year. But at KI, he didn’t get any questions from students. In fact, there were barely any students there. Despite there being over 8000 students at Karolinska Institutet, including doctoral students in contrast to less than 4000 staff members, only 15% of the 1000 tickets to the event were granted to students. Having inspected the first ten YouTube videos from Dr. Gates visit to other universities, where the majority of the audiences seem to be students, this was indeed something rather unique. I was personally in touch with the organisers of the Gates visit months prior, and tried to get a student representative, such as the president of Medicinska Föreningen or Odontologiska Föreningen, on the panel. This wasn’t even discussed, and we were instead offered to ask a question as an audience member.

After talking to numerous students from different programs through the KI Students Facebook-group, we finally phrased a question that would be relevant for all students at the university. Unfortunately, time ran out before we had the chance to ask our question as other audience members had been prioritized. Gates would proceed to leave Karolinska Institutet without any official interaction with students. Karolinska Institutet wanted very little to do with their students at this event. I decided not to give up and so I tried to email Dr. Gates. After several attempts I eventually got through and was ecstatic to receive a response shortly thereafter. This email response would be his only interaction with students at Karolinska Institutet, A visit from someone like Dr. Bill Gates is indeed a special event for our university, and that the KI organisers may have deemed other participants more important than the students, is understandable, even if this is a deviation from Dr. Gates’ other university visits. But my worry is what happens if our university starts to apply this mentality to other events, or to the university as

a whole. Karolinska Institutet recently fundraised one billion SEK where not a single cent was directly invested into education or the students. KI’s latest addition, Aula Medica, was also built without any space for students. Despite huge protests from students, it was

Karolinska Institutet has very recently reformed its management group and removed all studentrepresentatives also recently decided that KI’s new flagship research building Biomedicum would now be built without student labs, physically separating research and education on campus. Perhaps the most alarming of all, Karolinska Institutet has very recently reformed its management group (“ledningsgruppen”) and removed all student-representatives. Even more, Vice-chancellor Hamsten took this midterm decision unilaterally, without any involvement of the students.

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Vice-chancellor Hamsten replied to Medicor: ““Studentberedningen” was created [at the same time] with the ambition to better satisfy the students’ need for contact with the university leadership and to improve student influence by creating a forum dedicated to in-depth discussion of issues of particular importance from a student perspective”. He did not, however, comment on why this decision was decided without the students, despite repeated enquiries. In their annual report, the Doctoral Students’ Association welcomes the Vicechancellors initiative to create this new collaboration platform. The exclusion from the ‘ledningsgruppen’ is, however, not seen as a positive development as it is believed that this action reduces student influence on other matters and damages the transparency of the KI management considerably. “The nature of these two constellations is principally different, and presence in one does not justify the absence in the other”, says Arash Hellysaz, the chairman of the Doctoral Students’ Association. “We are, however, currently discussing how we should improve student representation with the management, and I’m hopeful that we will find a solution.” While others will argue in favor of many of these decisions, do they outweigh the costs in the long-term? Would the decisions have been different if the students had a more significant part of the decision-making process? I’m not the first one to comment on this. A recent article comparing two American and Swedish universities in Läkartidningen, co-written by one of our own KI professors, Anders Ekbom, offers some insight into more systematic problems. Top Swedish universities spend about 70% or more of their budget on research, whereas their American

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Vice-chancellor Anders Hamsten with Dr. Bill Gates, and Professor Hans Rosling in Aula Medica.

counterparts spent more than 70% on education. The report also reveals that while achievements in pedagogy and teaching are required for faculty employment in the US, the focus in Sweden is predominately on research. We also don’t offer regular pedagogical feedback for teachers, nor external teaching evaluations, which is commonplace across the pond. Furthermore, it also credits high student satisfaction as part of the reason why American universities receive large donations from its alumni, which is a major contributing factor to the success of the universities. This is rarely heard of in Sweden. How do we expect to make progress in teaching and education when we don’t value teaching experience for promotions? Is it then so strange that those researchers then make decisions that benefit research, at the cost of education?

Considering that a career in global health is less established and therefore also less available than say a traditional medical career, and that many global health professionals such as you and Prof. Rosling don’t originally have backgrounds in global health, how should Swedish students in medical professions acquire the skills and experiences to best prepare them for a career in global health? Dear Jingcheng, I had a great time during my recent visit to Karolinska. I always have fun with Hans Rosling, who has an amazing ability to get you excited about the topic while also teaching you something. Working with really smart people like Hans is one of the reasons I’ve become so involved with global health over the years. You are right that I have never had any formal background in global health. I was so busy during my early years at Microsoft that I didn’t have a lot of time to think about much else. My interest in global health started about 15 years ago when Melinda and I saw a terrible newspaper article. It said that millions of children were dying every year from diarrhea. The leading cause of diarrhea, it turns out, is something called rotavirus, which is responsible for

It is not that there is a desperate need for change. It is that change has happened, and the students haven’t been a part of it. I think it is time once again for the students to take a more active and more united stance, for the sake of our education. More than ever, we need to work together, regardless of whether you are MF or OF, student or faculty. Karolinska Institutet is our university, and we are, all together, Karolinska Institutet. More than ever, Karolinska Institutet needs to be known for its education and not just its research. In the end, this will benefit everyone at the university, and we need to remind ourselves of that. My hope is that next time someone like Dr. Gates visits, they will get to visit more than just Karolinska Institutet - the research institute, but instead Karolinska Institutet – the medical university with, you know, students. To achieve that, we need to all work together. Will you join me?

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500,000 deaths every year even though we have simple treatments available for it. Melinda and I had never even heard of rotavirus. This was the start of a journey into philanthropy for us. We had plans to give back later in life, but once we learned what was going on, it seemed like there was no time to waste. We started reading and learning as much as we could. Over the years, I’ve had the chance to learn an incredible amount – primarily from reading a lot, going to visit the areas of the world where issues like rotavirus are still a big problem, and by having the good fortune to work with many of the smartest global health minds in the world. I have continued over the years to devote more and more of my time to our work at the foundation. It is hard not to when you learn more about the great progress the world has made in global health and all of the opportunity we have to do even more. If you have an interest in giving back, my advice would be this: follow your interests, learn as much as you can, surround yourself with smart people, and get to work. When you find a cause that inspires you, and the way to get involved that engages your heart and mind, you will make a big difference in the world. -Bill Gates 13

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Science

Science snippets By Iskra Pollak Dorocic and Andrea Bieder

limits to immortality By studying the blood of one of the world’s oldest living humans, 115-year-old Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, researchers have found that our lifespan might ultimately be limited by the capacity of stem cells to keep replenishing tissues. Over time our bodies lose the stem cells needed to regenerate cells and tissues vital for life. For instance, it’s thought that we are born with 20,000 blood stem cells, and amazingly the study showed that twothirds of the white blood cells remaining in the 115 year olds body at death originated from just two individual stem cells. This finding poses the enticing question whether replenishment with cells saved from earlier in life could extend the lifespan of our bodies. (New Scientist, 23 April 2014) Using computer games to map the brain With the help of over 2000 online gamers, computational neuroscientists from MIT have published a detailed map of a neural circuit in the eye which allows for detection of motion. The brain-mapping ‘citizen-science’ game, called EyeWire, let players trace neural pathways through layers of cells to create a high-resolution wiring diagram of part of the retina. Now that the map is available, scientist can test the model by performing experiments and confirm the computer simulations produced by the gamers. (Kim JS et al, Nature, May 2014) Japan and KI More than 250 researchers, 114 laboratories, over 20 countries – this is the FANTOM 5 (functional annotation of the mammalian genome 5) consortium, a monumental collaborative effort that lead to the publication of 18 papers recently. The study, led by the RIKEN institute in Japan and involving five Karolinska research groups, presents the, so far, most comprehensive map of the expression of the human genome. Using a new sequencing technique, researchers were able to find promoters and enhancers regulating gene expression in different cell types. A big step toward understanding the secret of how human cells are working and what goes wrong upon disease. (Forrest et al., Nature 27 March 2014)

Young blood reverses aging When old animals receive blood from young ones, some signs of aging can be reversed, particularly in tissues of the heart, muscle and brain. A growth factor in the blood called GDF11 has been identified as exerting the anti-aging effect on these specific tissues. GDF11 was known to regulate stem cell activity and is abundant in the young, but decreases in levels over time. Researchers claim that GDF11 could be safer than a drug due to the fact that it is found naturally in blood, however whether the growth factor has therapeutic promise still remains to be seen. (Science, 4 May 2014) Image credit: Rob Pongsajapan (Flickr).

Y chromosome is here to stay In a 2002 study published in Nature, scientists had argued that the Y chromosome, which determines the male sex, had been diminishing in size throughout evolution. It was predicted that the Y chromosome would become extinct in 10 million years. To the relief of males everywhere, a new study which compared complete DNA sequences of the Y chromosome in eight mammalian species showed that the Y chromosome has been stable over the last 25 million years. It also contains a vital core of several regulatory genes crucial for an organism’s survival, making it unlikely for the chromosome to be completely abolished by evolution even in the future. (Bellott et al, Nature, April 2014) Powdered alcohol causes controversy For a short amount of time it seemed a new type of alcohol was soon to hit the market – alcohol in powder form. The product would offer drinks like mojitos and margaritas in small foil packet, which could then be mixed with water. American authorities mistakenly approved the product for sale, but revoked their decision after the media picked up the story and highlighted many of the presumed dangers of powdered alcohol, such as for example the possibility of snorting the powder. Certain countries, such as Germany and Japan already sell powdered alcohol products, however it looks like widespread availability of the powder will not happen anytime soon. (Scientific American, 25 April 2014)

Image credit: Dani Lurie (Flickr)

Image credit: Gopal Vijayaraghavan (Flickr)

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medicor

Science

Neurobollocks: It will blow your mind! Are we feeding ourselves the right kind of sience information or falling prey to the usual sensationalism and subsequent exploitations by the nexus of media and marketing? Recent articles about “neuroscientific findings” in the popular press would suggest the latter. By Nandini Rao and Nicolas Guyon

Illustration: Nirupa Rao

Neuroscience is all the rage nowa-

days. In quite the same way that the modern world was once obsessed with Freudian psychology, the mysterious human brain has now captured popular imagination, and understandably so. We can all relate to the curiosity - bordering on obsession or even narcissism - that fuels our search for who, what and why we are. Recent sensationalistic news headlines like “Internet pornography can make you lose your memory,” “Red wine and chocolate can boost your brain power,” and “A cheese sandwich is all you need for strong decision making”, are just some of the many examples of how reporting about the brain can go ludicrously wrong. This plethora of neuro-bollocks, a term used to describe the overstatement by popular media of neuroscience findings, has significant consequences on all our lives, mainly because the apparent legitimacy of a “scientific” article makes it more dangerous than your regular forms of misinformation. To understand why, all one has to do is think about how neuromyths like the left-right brain split, the claim that we use only 10% of our brains, or the idea that listening to classical music makes us smarter, have become ingrained in public consciousness. The lack of evidence supporting the claims of the “Mozart effect”, namely an increase in brain development in children under the age of three when they listen to the music of Mozart, didn’t stop the US states of Tennessee and Georgia from passing a bill mandating the distribution of classical music to all newborn babies. This exemplifies the power of the miscommu-

nication of science. A mere suggestion in a scientific article that was picked up by the mainstream media became a universal truth in a matter of months, leading to changes in policy making and the sale of thousands of CDs. So what happens when we’re fed misinformation that could have far more harmful consequences than spending a little more money on wine or listening to a little more classical music? What happens when neuro-bollocks is used to cate-

neuro-bollocks has consequences for how we perceive ourselves gorize certain groups of people? We know the answer to that already. So-called scientific comparisons of certain “types” of brains with the brains of “normal” people (details of what supposedly constitutes normalcy are almost never provided) has led to stigmatizations according to race, gender, sexual orientation, obesity, mental illness and more. The use of neuroscience to “establish” the biological causality of inequalities, discriminations and other social status quos has proved to be a potent rhetorical resource, often involving extensions of findings beyond their domain of relevance. Nowadays, the idea of attaching the “neuro-“ tag to anything and everything in order to confer credibility on it is also catching on like wildfire. We have neuromarketing, neuroarchitecture, and neuro-

leadership, to name a few, where neuroscience as a concept basically stands for an all-purpose non-explanation explanation of everything. Finally, neuro-bollocks has consequences for how we perceive ourselves. We are made to believe that the brain is something that can be acted upon; that food choices, Sudoku puzzles and very dubious methods like neuro-linguistic programming can make us smarter people; that the fact that we’re “left-brained” means we’re uncreative, or the fact that we’re “right-brained” gives us an excuse to be bad at math. Neuroscience is a complex field that uses a vast array of techniques, from mathematical modeling to electrophysiology recordings, but these kinds of simplistic, sensationalist claims that circulate in the media give it a bad name. It obfuscates what neuroscience has actually done to better our understanding of our core mental faculties. There’s no doubt that neuroscientists are partly to blame for this. We need to be aware of the implications of our research on society, and engage with the public in a more meaningful way. At the same time, journalists should raise their standards of scientific scrutiny and fight the dissemination of overblown scientific facts. And we, the readers of scientific news, should practice skepticism and resist the urge to share exaggerated articles. This will not only help prevent the misuse of neuroscience in policy debate, but also change how our society defines itself in this glorious age of science and reason.

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Science

The (Unintentionally) Funny Side of Science IgNobel Prize initiator Marc Abrahams on how to uncover the humorrous aspects of scientific research Story by Iskra Pollak Dorocic Photography by Gustaf Drevin How about this as a scientific

study: a medical team in Japan decided to assess the benefits of listening to opera music on recovery from heart transplant surgery - on mice.. Or, the finding that the longer a cow has been lying down, the more likely that cow will soon stand up. Or, the psychological study confirming that people who think they are drunk also think they are attractive. These are not your typical scientific experiments. In fact, the scientists behind these three studies are the most recent recipients of the IgNobel Prize – the satirical and completely unrelated counterpart of the Nobel Prize. Aiming to “honour achievements that first make people laugh, and then makes them think”, the IgNobel celebrates unusual and imaginative science. The IgNobel is the brainchild of Marc Abrahams who hopes “to spur people’s curiosity, and to raise the question: How do you decide what’s important and

what’s not, and what’s real and what’s not — in science and everywhere else?” On a recent stop in Stockholm, as part of the 2014 IgNobel tour, Abrahams as well as three past winners gave short talks about their prizes and the experiments behind them, showing that it’s possible to have a good sense of humour while performing rigorous experiments on somewhat silly subjects. Take, for example, Masanori Niimi from Tokyo University, who performed the aforementioned heart transplants and then made the mice listen to his favourite opera, La Traviata. The opera-enjoying mice indeed had a better recovery outlook, and rigorous controls were performed to prove the finding. Or take Dutch museum curator Kees Moeliker, who meticulously documented a sexual encounter between two male mallard ducks, one of which was alive and the other dead, making it the first recorded homosexual necrophiliac duck act resulting in a scientific publication.

Medicor had the chance to sit down with Abrahams and delve into the ideas behind the IgNobel.

“I never stopped collecting odd things” What drew you to the funny side of science? How did the IgNobel idea get started?

“The IgNobel [Prize] celebrates unusual and imaginative science.“

Everything I’m doing now I was also doing in some form when I was a little kid. I was off doing other things, I started off in a career in math and went on to do things in computer science and software, but I never stopped collecting odd things. And at one point, now 25 years ago, I sent some

Medicor’s Editor of Science, Iskra Pollak Dorocic, sat down with the founder of the IgNobel Prize, Marc Abrahams. Just prior, many a laugh had exploded in the lecture hall as Abrahams had brough some of his IgNobel veterans to Sweden to present what the IgNobel Prize really is all about. Topics included opera music’s link to heart surgery outcome and Dead Duck Day.

articles off to a science journal called Annals of Improbable Research to see if they might publish something. Instead they offered me to be the editor. As soon as I started doing that, I saw that lots and lots of people had done really unusual things and the ones that most appealed to me, were the ones that had this quality, they were really funny and you couldn’t stop thinking about them. And I also kept thinking , almost nobody has ever heard about any of these people, and probably it’s going to stay that way. That’s wrong, somebody should do something for them, give them a little prize or something. That’s how the IgNobel prize started out.

You recruit actual Nobel prize winners to hand out the IgNobel awards, which is such a great idea. How do you get them to participate? I just ask them if they would like to, that’s the extent of my power. Some of them have a good sense of humor that matches up to us and some people say no, but over the years there’s been quite a few that have really become party of the family.

Are there any critical voices about the Ig-

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Nobel prize? There were some in the early years. Especially older scientists who just heard about it second hand, they assumed we were people who hated science and we were attacking scientists, which is very much not what we are doing.

Can you tell us some of your favorite IgNobel prizes? There are so many. One of them is the homosexual necrophiliac duck, for so many reasons, one of which is that the story just continues and branches off into unexpected directions [such as the “The Homosexual Necrophiliac Duck Opera” currently playing in London]. Another one is the Peace prize we gave out one year to the man who invented karaoke, who was Japanese. He was not well known in Japan before he got the IgNobel prize, and then got tremendous amounts of publicity there. We gave him the Peace prize because by inventing karaoke, he invented an entirely new way for people to learn to tolerate each other. Another one was a prize we gave in 2000 to a physi-

“those who clearly were doing something to try and win a prize, they never win” cist named Andre Geim . He and another physicist used magnets to levitate a frog. Ten years after we had given them the IgNobel physics prize, Andre was given a Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering graphene, making him the first person to win both prizes.

What is the idea behind the mini-operas you do at the ceremonies? The heart of the ceremony are the 10 winners, who are secret until that moment. But between the awarding of the prize, we always do other quick things. One year we thought, let’s write a little opera and see if we can get some real opera singers to sing it. So we wrote a funny opera about science, about cockroaches and the end of the world and various things and wrote it so that the famous scientists had a little part at the end. It worked so

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well and got such a good response, so we just kept doing it. I write the story and the words, we steal the music from other operas. Writing those words and stories is the kind of puzzle I really like, it’s one of the hardest and also most fun things I work on.

Do you have any tips for Karolinska students and scientists about how to win an IgNobel? Yeah, don’t even try. What I mean by that is, a lot of people try to win IgNobel prizes. We get something like 9000 nominations every year. Consistently every year, 10-20% of all the nominations are people who nominate themselves. But they almost never win. And those who clearly were doing something to try and win a prize, they never win. Whatever this quality is, it’s a side effect. It’s not something you can plan to do.

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medicor

Cover Story

THE ENABLER Only two weeks before his wedding, a diving accident left the physician Claes Hultling paralysed waistdown. Instead of giving up, he helps other people with disabilities to live the “good life”.

Storytelling by Frida Segernäs Photography by Martin Kjellberg This is a typical view of Claes Hultling - with his back turned to you. Not because of arrogance, but because he is always on the move.

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Cover Story

“

Never accept your handicap. Learn how to live with it.

s I am walking to our meeting point, I think about humans. Humans that have a head, two arms and two legs to balance on and walk with. My legs can make me run, play football and play with my niece and nephew. What if that would change? What happens inside a person when that basic ability we all take for granted vanishes? The person I am about to meet does not have two functional legs and has lost his ability to walk. Perhaps he can answer my questions? His name is Claes Hultling. It has been thirty years. In 1984, Claes Hultling was in the middle of his own medical career as an anesthesiologist and was getting married in two weeks. “The time at Karolinska Institutet was behind me […] it was just full speed ahead”, Hultling says. The summer was beautiful and life was showing its best sides. Suddenly everything changed. At his own bachelor party, he dove head first from a jetty at his summerhouse, hit a stone and crushed his 6th vertebrae. “I never lost consciousness, and while sinking to the bottom of the sea I saw parts of my life flashing by”. His friends managed to pick him up and he was rushed to the hospital, in the same ambulance helicopter he himself, only months earlier, had been working on. Hultling describes the following days at the hospital as “grey and puke-colored.” The floors were grey and the curtains and the walls had the color of something not worth naming. He tells me about a dinner for all patients, both spinal and brain injured, and finishes his story with; “I have never been at a more depressing dinner table”. He decided that he needed a change of environment, but it was easier

said than done. The doctors didn’t want him to leave but he was able to use his influence and contacts to convince the personnel to fly him back out to his beloved summerhouse in the Stockholm archipelago. “That was probably the best decision of my life”, he says. After some more struggling and discussions he was able to use the helicopter every weekend to get out to the island and away from the hospital.

“...while sinking to the bottom of the sea I saw parts of my life flashing by” He describes the harsh rehab process during the summer including passing out, defecating in his pants and accidently urinating on his rehab doctor. “This is something everyone with a spine complication goes trough, before you know how to handle the new situation”, he explains. His motivation is admirable and even though he did not like the rehab program and how it was handled, he managed to get back. “I think I got my motivation from inside. I have had it with me since I was a kid. I have my own power and I know I want to stay in the game”. And “staying in the game” is the least you can say about Claes Hultling. He instantly wanted to build something new, a completely different way of thinking. His motivation and inner power led him to start the foundation Spinalis. At Spinalis, the walls are blue and the curtains have patterns. A large kitchen

was built where the patients could cook their own food in the warmth of an open fire. His insight in the life of spinal cord injured patients has been pivotal in the creation of a place where both souls and bodies can heal. I think of myself in a wheelchair at the age of thirty and a question comes to mind. What about children? Sex and reproduction among spinally injured men and women is a topic no one really wants to discuss. Claes Hultling is one of few, and has taught us a lot of what we know today. His son was the first in the world to be born with a spinal cord injured father. Today hundreds of children in Sweden have been born with a parent with the same injuries. Men are overrepresented among spinal or neck injuries, constituting 80 % of all cases. How can you motivate these individuals to keep on liv-

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ing? The first thing he points out is work and the ability to feel independent. “You make sure they have a decent job to go to, because it is a relief to work.” The other thing Hultling points out is what makes Spinalis very special. “You show him his own moving sperm. […] That will make him roll out to the reception, uncork the cognac and call the work agency straight away”, he says with a proud voice. With the help of a certain technique Spinalis have developed, they are able to extract sperm from the majority of injured men. “I remember myself the first time, about one year after the accident, when I saw my own moving sperm. I was high as a house and thought: shit!” he says with a big smile, reminiscing. “I celebrate my 30th year in a wheelchair this year”, Claes Hultling says chuckling. “It feels a bit strange because that means

that I have lived half my life in a wheelchair”. Thirty years after the accident, he has not yet accepted his handicap. “The

“...when I saw my own moving sperm. I was high as a house and thought: shit!” moment you accept your handicap, you are also willing to take away parts of your life”. Today he is skiing, sailing and working, a lot more than fulltime, and cannot wait to wake up in the morning. “Many people think that just because you are in a wheelchair your life has to be miserable and they feel sorry for you. What the hell, I think I have a good life anyway”.

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Motivation to live can be discussed for hours, but when I mentioned I heard something about a sailboat, a glitch of true excitement instantly lit up in his eyes. The boat he describes is not fancy or adapted because that is not the point of it. He only needs a few words to describe how the perfect day out on the sea should end. “A jar of herring, a potato and a beer. That feels really good”. Nothing is pretentious and it gives a range of freedom, and it is all part of the rehab process. “I think it is very important to find something outside yourself and your work, because that gives your life quality, a life span which is depending on something outside the boundaries of a normal life as a wheelchair-dependent individual.” That makes him a special mentor and motivator. Hultling has an understanding that is rare in his field of work and he can

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Cover Story

offer support with a completely different point of view. “Sometimes, it feels like you are fishing in a small forest lake to find something in every individual that they want to do themselves. […] That could be boats, cars, cooking or anything else”.

leading the development of rehab. One aspect that he does not agree on with most programs is pharmacy used to motivate patients. These pills are what

“What the hell, I think I have a good life anyway”

I ask him what he thinks of the future, since he accomplished Spinalis and is now spreading the word around the world. The answer is heartwarming, “I want to make sure that my brothers and sisters in the same situation are being taken care of in the right way, because there are a large number of people being poorly treated”. This is a result of a system that is not optimized nor synchronized. “We have to increase the intensity of our care programs, so that they do not feel worse than they already do”.

the public calls happy pills, for example Prozac. According to Hultling, they are pointless, because the grief is only being pushed away and will never disappear. “My first weekend out on the island I cried for hours.” We cannot be afraid of people crying. It is our way to react when something is sad, extremely funny or life changing in one way or another. We have to let ourselves cry, in order to heal.

Today, a lot of spinally injured patients survive, which means a greater strain on our hospitals and rehab programs. Spinalis, with Hultling as a front figure, is

Hultling has made it very clear that it is possible to be an innovative and committed person who loves waking up in the morning even without the ability to

walk. He has described the life of a handicapped man, and it is a different one with more complications, but with the same possibilities. A life without legs can be filled with love, passion, meaningfulness and happiness. The story of Claes Hultling proves that.

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SPINALIS FOUNDATION “The Spinalis Foundation is a charitable foundation whose mission is to promote research and treatment development in the field of spinal cord injuries. Spinalis is engaged in a longterm, scientific cooperation with Wellspect HealthCare.” www.spinalis.se

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medicor

Hej där! Vi ses på nästa InnovatiOnsdag! Välkommen till en inspirerande föreläsningsserie om allt från banbrytande medicinska innovationer till hur man ska använda crowdfunding för att finansiera sin idé! Lyssna på erfarna talare som är ledande inom sitt område och utbyt idéer med andra deltagare. Dessutom ingår lunchmacka! Läs mer på ki.se/innovationoffice

Innovation Office 23

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Global Focus

To vaccinate or not to vaccinate? The growing presence of anti-vaccination movements is a growing public health issue globally - how can it even be a question? By Sergio ScrĂ˛

Regardless of different reasons to oppose vaccines, it is important to eradicate misconceptions and help people take informed decisions based on evidence.

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Currently, the topic has become increasingly controversial and delicate. Recent data has shown evidence that certain vaccination can be harmful and can cause disabilities in rare cases. For instance, Sweden and Finland have reported rising levels of narcolepsy in 2012 compared to previous data. This correlates to the action Sweden and Finland took in order to face the H1N1 pandemic. Both Sweden and Finland recommended the vaccine for the entire population. On the other hand, scientific evidence shows how vaccinations in the past have helped eradi-

Severe complications from vaccinations are possible, although they are extremely rare

It is vital to mention that anti-vaccination movements oppose vaccination for different reasons. Safety, individual liberty, religion, effectiveness and alternative medicine are some of the main motives why people oppose vaccination. As with any medical treatment, there is a potential for vaccines to cause serious complications such as severe allergic reactions, although they are extremely rare. Furthermore, vaccination has been opposed on religious grounds ever since it was introduced. Religious opposition continues to the present day, raising ethical difficulties when the number of unvaccinated children threatens to harm the entire population through reduced herd immunity.

It is extremely difficult to have an accurate and official number of people who oppose immunisation. Many oppose just a few vaccinations, while others oppose most or all vaccinations. However, official data on numbers of cases per year of avoidable diseases such as measles and rubella are available and strongly linked to anti-vaccination movements. In Sweden, for instance, where rubella vaccines are widely available and highly recommended, there have been 51 cases for 2012 alone. No other western European country achieved such low number of cases for rubella in 2012. Japan registered 10,102 cases of rubella in 2013, while Poland registered 39,122 cases for the same year.

Governments and other political institutions in most high income countries try to face the problem related with the antivaccination groups by trying to increase general awareness of disease patterns and vaccines. By also directly addressing the safety and efficacy concerns of anti-vaccination groups, it is hoped that they will eventually realize the benefits of vaccines and the dangers of not receiving them

Yet, opposition to vaccination has existed for long as vaccination itself. Critics of vaccination have taken a variety of positions, including opposition to the smallpox vaccine in England and the United States in the mid to late 1800s, as well as more recent vaccination controversies such as those surrounding the safety and efficacy of the diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTP) immunisation, the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine, and the latest mass vaccination against H1N1 in Sweden and Finland.

cating infectious diseases. Smallpox has been the most successful case of global eradication of a disease thanks to immunisation. Similarly, polio has been nearly eradicated and the incidence of measles has fallen by up to 90% in certain areas thanks to vaccination.

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medicine

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have described vaccination as one of the top ten achievements of public health in the 20th century.

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Health

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Global Focus

The price of being an emerging donor Russia’s role in global health and its own health issues come under close scrutiny By Gayané Arustamyan

Russia has had a long history of in-

ternational development assistance (IDA), which was not always steady and consistent. Before the disintegration, the USSR used to be one of the key donors in contributing to the global health improvement. However, the choice of aid recipients was mainly defined on the grounds of ideological proximity and geopolitical goals. The situation changed drastically after the collapse of USSR, which changed its status from donor to recipient. Between 1990 and 2004, Russia received a total of US$20.4 billion in aid from international organizations and Western donors. It was not long until 2004 when Russia began to regain its position as a donor, which became most evident during its presidency at G8 Summit in St. Petersburg in 2006. It was the first time after the Perestroika when Russia made a commitment to fight infectious diseases as well as non-communicable diseases (NCDs), address key global health challenges and collaborate with its IDA partners. The first attempt of Russia as a reemerging donor was to hold the First Global Ministerial Conference on Healthy Lifestyles and NCDs in 2011 in collaboration with the UN and WHO. To date Russia’s IDA budget accounts for US$400-500 million annually, 1/4 of which is spent on health care projects. Compared to other emerging economies in BRICS, Russia is ahead of Brazil but

far behind India and China in total IDA expenses. The driving force of Russia’s leadership in global health is however very ambiguous. It strives to regain its reputation and demonstrate an ambition to tackle major health issues. On the other hand, Russia’s re-emergence on the global health arena raises polemic discussions among healthcare experts and policy-makers. According to the World Bank, Russia is becoming a crucial donor for low-income countries, yet aid assistance still remains a high priority within Russia. As a matter of fact, the Global Fund interrupted financial support for HIV prevention programmes in Russia, in August 2009, when the new grant was declined. The reason behind this decision was that Russia’s new status of donor made it no longer eligible

The driving force of Russia’s leadership in global health is very ambiguous... for foreign aid assistance. However, the Russian government failed to finance the programmes itself, instead focusing on broader issues of health promotion and prevention. Currently, very few HIV prevention programmes are being financed by the Global Fund in Russia, which led to most of the projects being closed and

vulnerable groups left neglected. The ongoing reduction in public health expenditures, USAID as well other important international healthcare projects, provokes nothing but malcontent. Russia’s life expectancy today is 69 years – the same as it is in North Korea and Iraq, 18 million people still live below the poverty line, the policy of dictatorship and increasing corruption brings the question: is this the price of becoming a donor? Over the last couple of years, Russia’s reputation of being a strong and effective international partner has been significantly undermined. The societal discontent with the government’s policy and worsening relations with the EU and the USA raises many concerns on the future health policy that Russia will chose. Whether Russia opts to strengthen its role of an emerging economy based on the principles of democracy and international collaboration or step back to the Iron Curtain regime remains unclear. Russia must find a balance between tackling its own health challenges, reaching political stability, and striving for international collaboration and enhancing its status of a donor – both for its own population and for the global community.

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Global Focus

What Happened to Microcredits? A look into the controversial economic policy of micro loans By Florian Schober It is market day in rural India: an uncountable number of fruit sellers stand along the street, the merchants are shouting out various prices and the customers get stuck in a big crowd. It seems as though everyone involved is doing a lucrative business. However, most of the fruit and vegetables traded in that hectic atmosphere do not belong to the merchants themselves. Most sellers take a loan every morning in order to buy their goods and return the money in the evening - plus up to 5% interest rate. Few calculations are needed to reveal that they actually lose a lot of their earnings due to credits being so high. Considering this, why don’t fruit sellers get loans from a bank? Unfortunately, most banks do not offer small loans to people with a low income. It has been nearly half a century since people thought about solutions, which led to the introduction of microcredits. In fact, that hit the bull’s eye. For instance, microcredits are accounted for 40% of the reduction of moderate poverty in rural Bangladesh. This success quickly attracted public interest, but has disappeared from the media for several years now. What happened to microcredits? In order to find an answer to that question, we have to go back and follow the growing success of microcredits up until the last time that we heard of them. The story starts with the foundation of the Grameen Bank in the 1970s. Their aim was to eliminate poverty and empower the rights and economic ability of women. The concept began to spread during the following thirty years and became famous with the announcement of the microcredit summit goals of 1997. One hundred million families ought to be moved out of extreme poverty within the following decade. Economists and politicians across the world were thrilled when this goal was already reached in 2005. Microcredits as a solution for poverty was a common headline in the press. It is not surprising that the founder of the Grameen Bank, Mohammad Yunus, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for “efforts

to create economic and social development from below”. These were the glory days of microcredits and most people connect Mohammad Yunus with their thoughts about microcredits. Strikingly, after 2006, the microfinance sector was thrown into crisis, which was partly due to negative press and shiftMicrocredits can help set up a sustainable life for people in poverished regions. ing economic interCourtesy: KIVA ests. Articles were towards yet another 100 million people published, reporting being moved out of poverty within the several suicides in India due to awarded next decade. However, one of the big loans that could not be repaid. It was question remains: Where should the monproven later that this was false. Neverey come from? A sparkle of hope comes theless, for the politicians, this was seen from the quite recent, but yet rapid develas a reason to completely shut down the opment of a private sector. Everyone can microfinance sector in Andhra Pradesh, now lend money to an organisation, that India, in 2010. Furthermore, several scientakes care of the distribution to and suptific publications moderated the effect of port of the borrowers. One example is the microfinance. But most importantly, the American organisation Kiva Microfunds. Mexican microfinance institute ComparEvery member that wants to lend money tamos turned into a profit-organisation would give a minimum of US$ 25, restrictin 2007. So far, the non-profit orientation ed to a certain project that is described in had been recognised as a silent moral detail on Kiva’s webpage. The above constandard of the microfinance sector. This cept comes along with some advantages. shift towards economic interests has Firstly, the success of organisations like caused a substantial debate about microKiva is constantly judged by the public. credits, which is still ongoing. Secondly, they are not fully dependent on the repayments as the money comes from .. unsolved conflict a second party. Thus, the concept of pribetween the profit and vate microcredit lenders could provide what the big microcredit institutes are non-profit sector still struggling with: a better regulation and a strict non-profit orientation. The unsolved conflict between the profit The private sector will have to prove and non-profit sector is one of the probtheir efficacy on a long run. It is very likelems of microfinance; rumours instead of ly that neither Kiva nor any other microfeasible facts. Today, the sector is striving credit institute will eradicate global povtowards renewing and controlling itself. erty. Nevertheless, addressing a part of it For example, organisations were created is a valid approach. Private microcredits in order to set up regulations, enable diaare thus everybody’s chance to support logues with policy makers and receive disadvantaged entrepreneurs such as the formal evaluation. fruit sellers on the busy road in rural InThe microcredit summit goals from 1997 dia. have been polished and are now heading

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Global Focus

Ebola in West Africa

The spread of the deadly virus is “unprecedented” By Oskar Swartling Described

Médecins

sans

Frontières as “unprecedented”, the Ebola outbreak has so far claimed a total number of 167 deaths, including 16 health care workers. In February four prefectures in southeast Guinea reported a number of suspected cases of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD, or Ebola haemorrhagic fever). Spreading to the capital Conakry and neighbouring Liberia, the latest Ebola outbreak has lead to an international response trying to fight the epidemic of a virus for which there is neither vaccine nor medication. In September 1976 a 44 year-old schoolteacher was given medical treatment in Zaire, today the Democratic Republic of the Congo, for a condition thought to be malaria. He was subsequently given an anti-malaria drug, but the hospital used substandard hygiene methods and the needles were not chanced or sterilized between the uses, leading to a rapid dissemination of Ebola in the area. This schoolteacher, who died 14 days after onset of symptoms, became the index case of Ebola, leading to the first recognition of EVD. Outbreaks of Ebola, as well as the related Marburg Virus Disease later merged in other African coutries. The symptoms of EVD include fever, muscle pain, diarrhoea, and to some extent haemorrhage, usually in the gastrointestinal tract. However, generally the total blood loss is low and death occurs due to Multiple Organ Dysfunction Syndrome. After contracting the virus, symptoms start after two to three weeks. Case-fatality rate depends on the strain of the virus, but is usually very high. The transmission of Ebola virus between humans occurs through direct contact with blood or body fluids. No specific treatment exists and though several vaccines are being tested, none is being used clinically. The first cases of the outbreak were reported in February from a remote forest district in southeast Guinea. It was first unclear if the cases actually were EVD or some other disease with similar symptoms, but was later confirmed as Ebola. It quickly spread and more districts were affected, including the port and capital

Medical professionals combat the disease to limit the spread. Credit: Médecins Sans Frontières

Conakry, a city of two million. Officials later banned the selling and consumption of bats, since the Guinea delicacy is thought to be a natural reservoir of Ebola. Following the death of a woman and her

...fight the epidemic of a virus for which there is neither vaccine nor medication. sister after a trip to Guinea, the first confirmed cases of EVD were reported from Liberia. With the deadly virus spreading in Guinea and Liberia, Médecins Sans Frontières calls it “unprecedented”. The World Health Organization (WHO) says the situation is “very serious”, but “limited [to a] geographic area”. Although the WHO does not recommend any restrictions of trade or travel in the affected areas, Senegal closed its border after the first confirmed cases in Liberia. The economic effect has been huge. With governments warning people to consume local food, a lot of local businesses are losing customers. Flight data from airlines reveals that more people are leaving Co-

nakry than arriving to it and international trade trough this port city is decreasing. The outbreak has also had a social impact with, characterised by a decline in the use of the traditional handshake and people shying away from social activities. The response to the outbreak has been vast. West African countries have commenced their emergency response plans and the Economic Community of West African States(ECOWAS) as well as the European Commission (EC) support the affected countries economically. Mobile laboratories and health experts have been sent to Guinea and Liberia. MSF has hundreds of staff on the ground, trying to prevent the spread of the disease. A number of organizations, including the WHO, have sent tons of medical and protective material. The international response is showing progress. No new cases have been reported from Liberia in three weeks and no new cases the last days in Guinea. Yet, an Ebola outbreak is not declared over until 42 days without new confirmed cases, a long period of time given the impacts the feared virus is having. With a long incubation period, it is too early to let the guard down.

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Sci-fI science

Craig Venter

The DNA maverick of medical science Some call him a god, others say he thinks he is God. Medicor has met the guy who mapped the human DNA genome, Craig Venter. We hoped to get a deeper look into what his views on the issues regarding futuristic science are, and what he has to say to students interested in research.

Storytelling by Kim Franson Photography by Gustaf Drevin As we sit down for a chat in a small

conference room on the fifth floor of Aula Medica, I could almost have guessed Craig Venter’s age from his physical appearance and his warm grandfatherly smile – after all, he’s almost seventy years old now. However, once the interview gets started, I sense an underlying sharpness and mischievousness in his otherwise calm almost quiet voice, giving the impression of a hot-headed twenty-five-year-old rather than a grandfather. Becoming a worldwide science superstar in year 2000 for sequencing the human genome along with Francis Collins, Venter may today be the most acknowledged scientist in the world not yet to have been awarded the Nobel Prize. For one of Venter’s latest enterprises, “Human Longevity Inc.”, the goal is to build the world’s largest database combining genomic and phenotypic data. “My genome was the first one to be sequenced in history”, says Venter, “and it was very difficult to interpret that genome because there was nothing to compare it to. We had the mouse genome at the same time, and that told me I was not

a mouse.” DNA sequencing technology has undergone a near unbelievable development during the last decade and Venter thinks that the time is now right for a shift in paradigm - “Big Data” is the way of the future in human health research.

“ever since we started living past reproductive age we started to change the course of evolution” Understanding the human genome and how it relates to disease is “the ultimate ‘large data’ problem”, Venter says, and his goal is to get a million genomes as fast as possible with associated phenotype data. He wants to make the statistics comprehensive enough to be used in a new “preventative medicine paradigm”. Colon cancer takes a whole of 27 years to develop in the body, as shown in research by Bert Vogelstein. Yet, the medical establishment is often only able to engage with the last three years of that development

process, when it’s already metastasized and become almost impossible to treat. “Knowledge about the human genome is crucial for early detection and treatment of many diseases.” If more effort were to be put in to preventative medicine, money would be saved, mortality would decrease, and quality of life would improve tremendously. “The term ‘human longevity’ sort of encompasses all human traits and diseases”, says Venter. “We’re not necessarily trying to extend the length of human life, we’re trying to, through preventative medicine, extend the length of healthy life. So, if you get to be 85 you have a 50% chance of having dementia. You can have a strong body, but you know, you start to lose your mental functions. That’s not a good life outcome. If you don’t die from cancer or heart disease, you’ll probably die with dementia, if you look at the statistics.” Listening to Venter, I’m awestruck by the philosophical implications of a human longevity project, but whether human life span may be extended to infinity or not is a tricky question and you first have to

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Sci-fI science

Some call him a god, others say he thinks he is God. Craig Venter is a controversial man on the international scene, but what he says can nothing but fascinate you.

contemplate why anything has to die in the first place. “Species didn’t evolve for longevity, they evolved for reproduction,” says Venter “so ever since we started living past reproductive age we started to change the course of evolution.” He explains that there really isn’t any a priori reason why biological systems have to degrade, but they do. “Changes in the genetic code lead to changes in protein structure and function. If you can’t clear out all your waste proteins every day they start to clog up systems, that’s what leads to things like dementia.” Venter thinks that we will understand these systems in the near future, and that the least we could do is to prevent diseases like dementia. Even though a spin-off of this could be to change the human life span, Venter believes there are more serious problems to solve for this planet before trying to increase the length of human life as a goal on its own: “…we don’t have a goal, a magic number of years that people should live to… it’s not our focus to extend life but to extend healthy life”. Trying to change the para-

digm of a massive field like this is obviously a difficult task. Waiting around for problems to happen, and then trying to fix them once they’ve already occurred, seems to be a hard habit for us human beings to break. “We’re not good at preventing problems. You can see that right now with climate change, right? People are resistant to even accept it, let alone do something about it.”

to break down existing barriers between institutions. Medical faculties have a long history of being divided into different departments and disciplines, but “that’s not how your body works, right?” Still, we inherit institutions that go back hundreds of years, where people get really specialized in anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, etc.. “That’s not how your brain works, right?”

“scientists like peeing in the corner of their laboratories”

Venter explains that his philosophy is quite contrary to how universities have traditionally been run. “When you break down and eliminate those barriers and just say: ‘Hey, here’s the problem we’re trying to solve’, I find that people really like to work together to bring their own specialty, their own expertise, their own discipline to the table to contribute to a solution for something that’s much bigger than themselves.” Venter says that his own institute works very differently from KI and other places, where each professor has their own laboratory, their own teams and duplicated resources. On the contrary, nobody has their own laboratory at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI).

Craig Venter’s projects are big and numerous – his staff includes scientists and technicians from many different scientific backgrounds. As a medical student myself, I’ve come into contact with professors and scientists from various departments, and I ask how Mr. Venter manages to work with so many people from different fields and make them get along. “Actually, it’s not so hard,” he replies, explaining that the main hurdle is

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“It is always the students who ask the smartest questions.”

Sci-fI science

Craig Venter Age: 67 Most famous for: being one of the first to sequence the human DNA genome Lives: in a 6 million-dollar home in La Jolla, San Diego. Dog or Cat? Dog - a minipoodle called Darwin. Recently released: His new book Life at the speed of light. Passion: To transform healthcare through the power of genomics. Most controversial endeavor: Creating synthetic life in 2010. New ventures: Human Longevity Inc. - “our goal is to extend and enhance the healthy, high-performance lifespan and change the face of aging.” www.humanlongevity.com

Even Ham Smith, the great microbiologist and Nobel laureate who now works for Venter, has a bench no larger than the PhD student or technician working next to him. “They work together on solving problems. And, I think when people are doing that, once they learn that this new system is actually possible, they thrive in it, because it eliminates all the other barriers.” Someone at JCVI once made an analogy between working for Venter and breathing fluorine liquid as depicted in the movie The Abyss. He struggled and struggled until he found he could breathe just fine, and then suddenly really started to like it. “Once people learn that they can work without all these barriers and things that they’re taught are part of academia, multidisciplinary teams form automatically and people just use the expertise that they have to solve problems. It becomes a more natural human endeavour.” Alas, that kind of milieu might be easier to create in a private enterprise than in a public institute such as KI. “Like everything in life, it takes active energy to keep it going, right? By default, people resort back to what they know, and it’s actually hard for people not to have their own laboratory territory, you know? I used to describe it like scientist like peeing in the corner of their laboratories to mark their territory, right? They do that intellectually as well as in their space, right?” At JVCI, the only territory people

have is the actual expertise they bring to the table. “You’re only as good as your latest accomplishment ‘cause those are the realities of the scientific world.” Unconventional methods and models are indeed tried out at JVCI, but whether they’re applicable to institutions like KI is hard to say. Not everything translates to a larger scale, different systems or coun-

“you’re only as good as your latest accomplishment…those are the realities of the scientific world” tries. Still, Venter feels there should be a lot more effort put in to dealing with multidisciplinary programs and breaking down the categories of science. While physicists have already solved this problem for physics, biologists haven’t yet been able to do the same for biology. As far as “Big Data” is concerned, there are not yet any biological facilities that compare with the size of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Either way, given the premise that a shift in paradigm is really at hand and that “Big Data” is really the way of the future, I dare be so bold as to predict that KI will play a vital role in that very future, some way or another.

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The Arts

Book review: The Neurotourist “Postcards from the edge of Science” By Oskar Swartling The first scientific revolution was

when Copernicus introduced the heliocentric model, where Earth revolves around the Sun. Darwin followed with the second revolution: the theory of evolution by natural selection. The third revolution came with Sigmund Freud’s psychology and the fourth when Watson and Crick revealed the structure of DNA and the following boom of genetic science. The fifth, presumed soon to be reality, is the neurorevolution. In her book The Neurotourist: Postcards from the Edge of Science (2013), Lone Frank gives an insight in the next revolution of science and cutting-edge research taking place around the world.

The author of The Neurotourist, Lone Frank. Credit: Fri Tanke Förlag

Meeting some of the worlds leading researchers in the field and often acting as a Guinea pig, the Danish author and science journalist Lone Frank, writes well and personal, portraying her first-person encounters with the pioneers in neuroscience. Exploring the frontiers, Frank dis-

covers new ways of looking at happiness, religion, economics and morality, scratching the surface of the coming revolution. As a book of popular science, most of the details are excluded, limited to a very brief chapter of the brain and the researchers’ own few comments about their work. The style of the book is clear and accessible, but one looking for more than a glimpse is referred to other works. However, Frank’s book is great for someone looking for an easy read, wanting to get an insight in today’s neuroscience. And if Frank and other’s postulations are right, we will soon find ourselves in the fifth revolution, a revolution that will change our world to the same degree as Darwin’s evolution, a revolution comparable to Watson and Crick’s discovery of the famous double helix of DNA. A change as great as when the Earth stopped being the centre of everything.

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The Arts

“Tre läkare. Ett samtal. Medicor möter personerna bakom den populära podcasten Ronden. Ett samtal om varför tre läkare väljer att dela med sig av sin vardag, hur det hela började och vad som driver dem att fortsätta. Berättare: Poya Livälven Fotografi av Gabriella Dal Det är en kylig onsdagskväll i maj.

Vi befinner oss i Enskede, en närförort i södra Stockholm där tre läkare sitter i en villakällare med hörlurar runt huvudet, mikrofoner framför sig och med ångande tekoppar bredvid. Att spela in ett avsnitt är en skön kontrast till en annars stressig vardag. De pratar avslappnat med varandra om dagen, vad som hänt sen de senast sågs och vad de vill ha med i kvällens avsnitt av ”Ronden”. ”Att gå ronden” är i sjukhusvärlden en rutin där den ansvariga läkaren går runt till sina patienter på en avdelning för att få en översikt om tillståndet för var och en. ”Ronden podcast” kan liknas vid en allmänhetens rond, eller rättare sagt en inblick hos läkarna själva. Vi får följa med och se vad som döljer sig bakom de förtroendeingivande, vita rockarna, in i den svenska sjukvårdens många fikarum och arbetsrum. Läkarrollen och sjukvårdssystemet synas. Det är den första medicinska podcasten av sitt slag i Sverige.

...ett sätt för läkarna att uttrycka sin vardag i ett nästan terapeutiskt samtal med varandra... ”Tre läkare. Ett samtal. Ingen ordning.” - så beskriver de själva sin podcast. En podcast är en relativt ny metod att dela med sig av ljud – ofta radioprogram på internet. Märit Halmin, Anders Ternhag och Christian Unge är tre mångsysslande läkare, verksamma i Stockholm som driver just en sådan podcast på fritiden. Det började som ett roligt hobbyprojekt med Christian Unge och den

nu avhoppade Totte Stub i spetsen som idémakare. Det skulle vara en podcast som diskuterade det mesta, främst ”högt och lågt” inom medicinen. De var inspirerade av bl.a. amerikanska, medicinska podcasts såsom ”EMCrit”, svenska podcasts som ”Filip och Fredrik” och ”Alex och Sigge”, men någonting saknades. Det fanns ingen podcast som beskrev vardagen inom den svenska sjukvården, en podcast som tilltalade allmänhetens alltmer växande intresse för vård, hälsa och välfärd. Efter att varit på idéstadiet i ett år och en del förberedande arbete, startade Ronden podcast att sändas i juni 2013. Den växte snabbt i popularitet bland främst allmänheten, men också bland yrkespersonal inom vården. Sedan den åttonde juni samma år, har de i genomsnitt sänt ett avsnitt varannan vecka, och är nu uppe i 25 stycken med i medel 5000-10000 lyssnare per avsnitt. Här diskuteras allt ifrån tunga etiska dilemman man utsätts för i vården, preskriberade patientfall och de olika personligheterna som påfinns i vårdens olika yrkeskategorier. Enligt de själva har det blivit ett sätt att avdramatisera den generellt mycket hierarkiska, stränga och stängda kulturen inom läkaryrket och vården. Detta genom att göra den mer transparent och lyfta fram människorna i och bakom den.

Människor som är precis som alla andra. Människor med olika intressen, åsikter och kompetenser. Anders, Christian och Märit är också de olika, vilket gör att samtalen blir mycket nyanserade och fyllda med olika perspektiv och intressanta ämnen. Men läkaryrket och erfarenheterna kopplade till det är något de alla har gemensamt. Märit är anestesiolog och en av grundarna till proteströrelsen ”läkaruppropet”; Christian är internmedicinare, författare och aktiv i Läkare Utan Gränser och Anders är infektionsmedicinare vid KS och verksam vid Folkhälsoinstitutet på

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The Arts

Ingen ordning.”

ordentligt. Skriv ut din egen kunskapsenergi och strategi. Ha roligt. Utbildningen innehåller både lycka och sorg, ”högt och lågt”, som de själva beskriver det. Man får möta alla typer av människor som var och en bidrar med erfarenhet och kunskap. Även yrket i framtiden är brett och innehåller stunder av komik och seriositet.

...mycket medial uppmärksamhet och har idag ett välfyllt twitterflöde: @Rondenpodcast

KI (f.d. smittskyddsinstitutet). Arvet att vara läkare väger tungt på axlarna och på frågan om just de är representativa för läkarkåren skrattar de och svarar ”både ja och nej”, vissa läkare gör helt enkelt mycket utöver jobbet och andra mindre – trots att det kan kännas som en homogen grupp är det inte alltid så. Från kollegor har de ända från början blivit stöttade och fått positiv feedback. De har även fått mycket medial uppmärksamhet och har idag ett välfyllt twitterflöde (@Rondenpodcast). En förklaring till detta genomslag kan vara att de alltid håller högt i tak, vilket är något som utmärker samtalen de håller – även när mer kontroversiella

ämnen diskuteras görs det med en stor nypa humor och respekt. Ett axplock av ämnen som diskuterats är pinjenötter, Tolvan Tolvansson, läkemedel och sjukdomar. Det är lätt att relatera till och skratta när det handlar om vilka medicinska specialiteter som är de hurtigaste, medan det verkligen ger en tankeställare när orättvisor och absurditeter inom vården diskuteras. Det är detta, de snabba vändningarna, som gör Ronden speciell.

Precis på det sättet varvas humor och allvar i Ronden. Det är ett sätt för läkarna att uttrycka sin vardag i ett nästan terapeutiskt samtal med varandra där man lättar på hjärtat, ett medium där man diskuterar sådant som intresserar en själv. Det har blivit ett legitimt sätt för tre vänner att träffas, umgås och bara vara. Vi i allmänheten får tjuvlyssna och delta i ett hörn. Skrattandes berättar de att Ronden lika gärna inte kunde ha blivit av, det kunde varit tre anonyma vänner som spelar squash på fritiden istället. Ronden tar inte sig själv på ett alltför stort allvar. Just detta jordnära sätt, denna enkelhet, är styrkan bakom Ronden. Den gör inte anspråk på att vara underhållande, utbildande, inspirerande eller tankeväckande – men den är alla fyra.

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Till oss blivande kollegor har de budskapet att man ska utnyttja de möjligheter man har under utbildningen – res, delta i utbyten, forska och ha för vana att läsa på 33

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2014-05-15 13:09:45

The Arts

Spexet Kleopatra Av Amanda Kaba Liljeberg På lördag kväll är jag som vanligt

sen hemifrån och får springa till bussen. När jag kommer fram, precis i tid, sätter jag mig på en plats nästan längst fram. Jag ska se Corpus Karrolinas spex, som utspelar sig i forna Egypten. En publik lika förväntansfull som jag fyller den mörka salen och bandet spelar en repetitiv, nästan hypnotiserande slinga om och om igen. Vi sitter på Teater Bristol, en intim lokal där kvällens skådespelare kommer få höra rop om omstart och uppmaningar från de kanske 120 ”regissörerna” på bänkarna. Kleopatra är gravid, men vem är pappan? Det är kvällens gåta. I en salig blandning av rimmande repliker, dans och sång får vi följa historien. ”Kleo”, trolovad till kejsaren Caesar, har inte varit helt trogen. Pappan till barnet i hennes mage kan mycket väl vara Caesar, men fler kandidater är möjliga. Är det kanske trälen Joseph? Med Joseph, som i ett tidigare förhållande har sonen Jesus Kristus, har Kleopatra delat en kärleksfull natt. Oddsen är på Josephs sida, tidigare har han ju fått ett barn utan att ens ha haft sex. En annan möjlig pappa är

den stilige, överdrivet manliga Brutus. I hans och Kleos pågående hemliga romans kan det med stor sannolikhet ha blivit en liten bebis. Under kvällen får vi träffa en rad färgstarka personer som hjälper till att lösa pappafrågan. Kleos mamma, Tuttan Kamon, stöttar sin dotter i härvan. Men egentligen verkar hennes engagemang ligga i att säkerställa att ett bröllop mellan Kleo och Caesar blir av. Kanske medan hon själv kan lägga vantarna på Brutus? Alexandra den Stora (med betoning på Stora) är en gäst som frekventerar hemma hos Kleopatra och Tuttan Kamon. När hennes mun inte proppas full med mat hoppar det istället skvaller och elakheter därur. Till obstetriker anlitas husläkaren – den åldrade och lite lurige Miraculix. Man undrar vad han har för sig där bakom skynket när han undersöker Kleo. Månaderna går och

Imaginative learning

Foto av Maria Belikova

magen växer. När den annars så mesige Caesar får reda på att han kanske inte är barnets far blir han ursinnig och fängslar Joseph och Brutus i väntan på avrättning. Kleo vädjar till sin blivande make att låta dem gå fria, men Caesar sätter för en gång skull ned foten. Det blir dags för förlossningen som alla väntat på och äntligen ska mysteriet lösas. Efter ett oändligt antal omstarter och massor av skratt kommer kvällen till sitt slut. Imponerad av hur killarna har lärt sig alla rim och danssteg utantill går jag ut i regnet. Det här var det första, bästa och definitivt inte sista spex jag går på.

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By Touba Guerroumi

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1#2013

medicor

The Arts

The Elephant By Mikael Plymoth

Seminariet Av Magdalena Hrywniak

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2014-05-15 13:10:15

Tell your story Everybody has a unique story. You can share it in many ways.

EverybodyCome has atellunique yours. story. You can share it in many ways. Come tell yours.

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Morning May 13th. 11.54.indd 36

don’t just think about it, join us today! contact: chefredaktor@medicor.nu 2014-05-15 13:10:15