Supercourse Newsletter, March 9 2003
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Friends,
Mita has just sent me some very interesting news. It appears that we
have 9,250 faculty from 150 countries. This is rather amazing as WHO
only has 13,000 people and CDC, 9,000. We are by far the largest aca-
demic network of prevention. The 150 countries represent 79% of the
countries of the world. Below this newsletter are the countries we do
not have - let's get participants from all before the end of the
year!!
Philosophy: It is important to reiterate the philosophy of the Super-
course. It is simple, we want to develop a network of the brightest
people from science world wide. From this group we want to extract
the best scientific lectures, and make these available for free on
the Internet. What is important is that this is a scientific network
and scientific lectures, not political. During the course of this
year we had to exclude 5 lectures as they were almost exclusively po-
litical. In addition, we have been asked a few times this week to
make a statement on Iraq, which we will not. We are scientists deal-
ing with scientific issues. The way we approach this is that we have
developers who are American, Chinese, Indian, South Korean, Mexican,
Pakistani, Palestinian, Russian, Ugandan, and Ukrainian. These are
Christian, Hindu, Judaism, Islam, and undecided. If one of us views a
lecture and we feel that it is not scientific and/or too political,
it is excluded.
This is not to say that politics and prevention are not important.
Because of our different backgrounds, we have our own beliefs. How-
ever, the easiest way to bust the Supercourse apart is to take a po-
litical stand, no matter how noble it appears to be. There are very
few places one can go to find the science of prevention. There are
many, many forums where one can go to in order to present a political
statement for prevention. There are burning issues of prevention and
health; we target the translation of scientific information into the
classroom. We will not use the Supercourse for political purposes.
China: Things are moving very well in China. We have 42 people work-
ing in China. Jesse Huang, a good friend from Tennessee will be mov-
ing back to China, with an appointment in the MOH and with Peking Un-
ion Medical School, one of the best universities in the world. Upon
his return he will be working to push the Supercourse. We have talked
about having it translated into Chinese, building mirrored sites
throughout China and CDs.
Mirroring: The Sudan Site of the Supercourse is up and running very
well. We are in the process of putting a site into Mongolia. If it is
possible to mirror in these two countries, then is possible to de-
velop this in most other countries.
John Last: An Honor. John Last was a very early supporter of the Su-
percourse, and still is wonderful in his support. On Saturday July
12, 2003 he will receive an honorary Doctor of Medicine degree at the
University of Edinburgh. We are indeed proud of him.
Best Regards from Pittsburgh:
Ron, Faina, Mita, EunRyoung, Eugene, Soni, Rania, Abed, Julia, Tom,
Deb, Benjamin
mailto:super1+@pitt.edu
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List of countries where we do not have Supercourse faculty members:
Algeria
Andorra
Antigua and Barbuda
Barbados
Belize
Benin
Brunei
Burundi
Cape Verde
Central African Republic
Chad
Comoros
Republic of the Congo
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Grenada
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Iraq
Kiribati
North Korea
Kyrgyzstan
Lesotho
Liberia
Liechtenstein
Maldives
Marshall Islands
Mauritania
Micronesia
Monaco
Nauru
Palau
Papua New Guinea
Qatar
Rwanda
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
San Marino
Sao Tome and Principe
Sierra Leone
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
Somalia
Suriname
Tajikistan
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
Vanuatu
Yemen
--
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