Supercourse Newsletter, September 28, 2001
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Supercourse: http://www.pitt.edu/~super1
Dear Friends,
Sept. 11, 2001: We appreciate so much the notes that you have sent to
us. We have received over 300 beautiful letters. Clearly we are ap-
palled with the public health consequences of terrorism, whether it
be in this country or elsewhere. Your notes made us feel much better.
I (REL) just completely re-wrote the grant that we put on the web be-
cause of Sept. 11. The reason for this is that I am a Professor in
Public Health, yet in the days following the Terrorist attack all I
could do was to sit bleary eyed in front of the television. Looking
back, I could have helped a lot of people if I were to present and
teach on the public health aspects of terrorism. However, I am a spe-
cialized diabetes epidemiologist. If I would have had Supercourse
lectures on hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorists attacks, I could have
helped, you could have helped in Germany, Iran, China, Tunisia as
well, by presenting to your students, family, and community about
this attack, or disasters in your own country. I therefore submitted
a grant to build 400 Supercourse lectures as background material with
your help, and then to construct just in time lectures. For example,
if there was a flood in India, we could generate a lecture on the
flood by our friends in India, that could be used worldwide. Please
feel free to use parts of this grant for your own work. If you would
like to see what we wrote, please go to:
http://www.pitt.edu/~super2/GRANT2
We received beautiful comments, with many people obviously very upset
about the attack, and what will happen afterwards. Several suggested
that we "politicize" the lecture. Although we agreed with many of the
arguments, if we lose our scientific neutrality, we lose our network
and friends. We are going to avoid doing this, if people want a po-
litical advocacy model, there are other forums and the Supercourse
will try to stay politically neutral, while scientifically/teaching
on the cutting edge.
Status of the Supercourse: The speed to which we are developing is
astonishing. Currently there are 4702 members. These people come form
130 countries out of 189 as listed by the UN!! This represents 69% of
the countries of the world. Wouldn't it be fantastic to have faculty
members from every country of the world? Below represents the coun-
tries listed by the UN. It would be wonderful if you could identify
people in these countries to have them join our effort, so we can get
100% of the world. You can look to see how many people are from your
country.
We are very pleased to have published in the BMJ last week an arti-
cle: Islam with the internet could do much to prevent disease
Abdullatif Husseini and Ronald E LaPorte for the Islamic Global
Health Network. BMJ 2001; 323: 694.
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/323/7314/694/b
Abed has done a wonderful job in developing this, and kindly allowing
me (REL) to participate. We want to focus part of the Supercourse as
a whole in preventing disease in Arab/Islamic populations. People
from all religions are invited to join.
Sadly, 5 days before the attack, we published an article titled: To-
wards an internet civil defense against bioterrorism: in the Lancet.
http://infection.thelancet.com/journal/vol1/iss2/full/laid.1.2.review_and_opinion.17562.1
In this we argued that a virtual global civil defense/neighborhood
watch could help protect all of our countries against terrorism. The
concept was an open system where we as virtual neighbors would help
watch out for each other. It you have the opportunity to review it,
we would very much like your opinion. We think that this group of al-
most 5,000 experts could use our public health minds to be used to
protect each other, and the world.
Format of lectures: We are excited as to the number of letters coming
in. Once again, it is important to indicate what we are looking for.
We want articles that are on epidemiology, global health and the
Internet. These need to be sent to us in PowerPoint. Several people
have been asking us to put their text papers, or even transparencies
into PowerPoint. We cannot do this. Most of the lectures are being
done in Siberia by a good friend, and one of the developers of the
Supercourse, Eugene Shubnikov, M.D.
Lectures: We are closing in, but it is going to be close. We cur-
rently have 474 lectures. We need 26 more to have 500 lectures by
Halloween!!! We would love to get some lectures from you, so that you
can be part of the pre-Halloween 500 lecture club.
We look forward to talking with you.
Best regards from Pittsburgh.
Ron, Akira, Eun Ryoung, Faina, Mita, Fan, Eugene, Arin, Abed, Deb,
Tom, Beatriz, Grace
mailto:super3+@pitt.edu
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Country - Number
Afghanistan -
Albania -
Algeria -
Andorra -
Angola -
Antigua and Barbuda -
Argentina - 56
Armenia - 1
Australia - 75
Austria - 8
Azerbaijan -
Bahamas -
Bahrain - 1
Bangladesh - 2
Barbados -
Belarus - 1
Belgium - 11
Belize -
Benin -
Bhutan -
Bolivia - 6
Bosnia and Herzegovina -
Botswana - 1
Brazil - 98
Brunei -
Bulgaria - 4
Burkina Faso - 2
Burundi -
Cambodia - 3
Cameroon - 6
Canada - 571
Cape Verde -
Central African Republic -
Chad -
Chile - 9
China - 47
Colombia - 41
Comoros -
Democratic Republic of the Congo - 1
Republic of the Congo -
Costa Rica - 6
Cote d'Ivoire - 2
Croatia - 4
Cuba - 97
Cyprus - 2
Czech Republic - 5
Denmark - 11
Djibouti -
Dominica -
Dominican Republic -
Ecuador - 4
Egypt - 9
El Salvador -
Equatorial Guinea -
Eritrea - 2
Estonia - 1
Ethiopia - 2
Fiji -
Finland - 17
France - 19
Gabon - 1
The Gambia - 2
Georgia - 2
Germany - 59
Ghana - 8
Greece - 6
Grenada -
Guatemala - 3
Guinea -
Guinea-Bissau -
Guyana - 2
Haiti - 1
Honduras - 1
Hungary - 2
Iceland - 2
India - 46
Indonesia - 20
Iran - 11
Iraq -
Ireland - 22
Israel - 25
Italy - 34
Jamaica - 5
Japan - 54
Jordan - 1
Kazakhstan -
Kenya - 11
Kiribati -
North Korea - 9
South Korea - 3
Kuwait - 4
Kyrgyzstan -
Laos - 1
Latvia -
Lebanon - 2
Lesotho - 1
Liberia -
Libya -
Liechtenstein -
Lithuania - 3
Luxembourg -
Macedonia - 3
Madagascar -
Malawi - 4
Malaysia - 26
Maldives -
Mali - 2
Malta - 2
Marshall Islands -
Mauritania -
Mauritius - 2
Mexico - 26
Micronesia -
Moldova - 2
Monaco -
Mongolia -
Morocco - 5
Mozambique - 3
Myanmar (Burma) -
Namibia - 5
Nauru -
Nepal - 2
Netherlands - 34
New Zealand - 11
Nicaragua -
Niger - 2
Nigeria - 9
Norway - 17
Oman - 3
Pakistan - 27
Palau -
Panama - 2
Papua New Guinea -
Paraguay - 1
Peru - 75
Philippines - 4
Poland - 16
Portugal - 8
Qatar -
Romania - 4
Russia - 9
Rwanda -
Saint Kitts and Nevis -
Saint Lucia -
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines -
Samoa - 1
San Marino -
Sao Tome and Principe -
Saudi Arabia - 10
Senegal - 4
Seychelles - 1
Sierra Leone -
Singapore - 9
Slovakia -
Slovenia -
Solomon Islands -
Somalia -
South Africa - 57
Spain - 48
Sri Lanka - 2
Sudan - 5
Suriname -
Swaziland - 1
Sweden - 15
Syria -
Tajikistan -
Tanzania - 7
Thailand - 21
Togo - 1
Tonga -
Trinidad and Tobago - 2
Tunisia - 1
Turkey - 18
Turkmenistan -
Tuvalu -
Uganda - 4
Ukraine - 3
United Arab Emirates - 6
United Kingdom - 126
United States - 2154
Uruguay - 4
Uzbekistan - 1
Vanuatu -
Venezuela - 9
Vietnam - 7
Yemen -
Yugoslavia - 1
Zambia - 1
Zimbabwe - 8
--
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