Supercourse Newsletter, March 20th, 2001
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Dear Friends,
NYTimes:
It is very exciting as today in the New York times there was a won-
derful story on Medical Journals, 'A New World Online' (NYT, Mar 20,
2001, pg. D1). It was exciting as we got to see for the first time a
picture of Helga Patrikios who has been on our lists for a long time,
and is a good friend. Helga has been a major force in Africa to bring
the journals to Zimbabwe, as well as many other places throughout Af-
rica. It also is a very nice picture of her. You can find the article
and her picture at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/03/20/health/20JOUR.html?searchpv=nytToday
She pointed out as we all know the enormous impact of the British
Medical Journal. Tony Delamothe has been the driving force as web
editor. We got into this controversial area a few years ago when we
wrote an article called "The Death of Biomedical Journals":
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/310/6991/1387.
We argued for limited access servers to allow journals into some
countries but not others. It is interesting to see the journals be-
moaning the fact that developing countries cannot obtain AIDS drugs.
It seems a little hypercritical when journals will not lower their
prices for developing countries. The NY Times piece nicely describes
where we are now in access to the scientific literature.
World Bank:
Last week we met with some wonderful people at the World Bank includ-
ing Eugene Boostrom, M.D., Virginia Lee and others. The World Bank is
in the process of developing a gateway to knowledge
(http://www.worldbank.org). They have put a large amount of resources
in the development of an elegant web site. The concept of this gate-
way is that the site will collect information that will be important
for the economic development of countries. One of the channels is
that of health. They ask people world wide to share their knowledge
with them, and make it available on the World Bank. They do not pay
for the content (darn it), but the exposure is great. We talked with
them about developing a Mirrored Site at the World Bank for the Su-
percourse. It could be very exciting.
Islamic Heritage:
In a few weeks Abed Husseini will be coming for a few months visit.
Abed is a bright young epidemiologist from Palestine. We will be
teaching him about the development of the Supercourse. We are very
much interested in developing an Islamic Heritage Supercourse as a
start for "customized" internet prevention. Most of or religions have
a hygienic base. The concept of one-size fits all makes little sense.
We plan to start with Islamic Health and then move to areas. Muhammad
Pate from the World Bank, nicely described this as taking a diversi-
fied approach to prevention.
Supercourse Utilization:
The stages of the development of the Supercourse have been first to
develop the network, second to acquire content, and third to distrib-
ute the contact world wide. All of these have been successful beyond
our wildest imaginations. The fourth step will be to encourage people
to use the Supercourse for their classroom teaching, targeting Sept.1.
We would like to begin to identify the people who have used the Su-
percourse for a classroom teaching so that we can learn from you. If
you have used a Supercourse Lecture, or know of someone who has, it
would be wonderful if you could let us know. It would be wonderful if
you could suggest how we might encourage people world wide to use the
Supercourse.
Please return this information:
Name:
E-mail:
When did you use the Supercourse?
Advantages of using a lecture:
Disadvantage of using a lecture:
Thanks so much.
Ron, Akira, EunRyoung, Benjamin, Fan, Faina, Ying, Tom, Deb, Yue Fang
mailto:super3+@pitt.edu
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