Worms, academic cooperation and working today

Please do not ask me to explain, but I have no doubt that this person is on to something:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Roundworms may infect close to a quarter of inner city black children, tapeworms are the leading cause of seizures among U.S. Hispanics and other parasitic diseases associated with poor countries are also affecting Americans, a U.S. expert said on Tuesday.

Recent studies show many of the poorest Americans living in the United States carry some of the same parasitic infections that affect the poor in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, said Dr. Peter Hotez, a tropical disease expert at George Washington University and editor-in-chief of the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Writing in the journal, Hotez said these parasitic infections had been ignored by most health experts in the United States.

"I feel strongly that this is such an important health issue and yet because it only affects the poor it has been ignored," Hotez said via e-mail.

He said the United States spent hundreds of millions of dollars to defend against bio-terrorism threats like anthrax or smallpox or avian flu, which were more a theoretical concern than a real threat at present.

"And yet we have a devastating parasitic disease burden among the American poor, right under our nose," Hotez said.

No one likes to talk about parasitic worms, but they are a real health problem in many areas. For many years, I have not doubted that worms infect a lot of people in Appalachia, but it's something we don't talk about because we don't want to face it.

###

According to an article in The New York Times, some leading universities are setting up interdisciplinary institutes so scholars from several academic disciplines can cooperate on studies as equals.

Here is an excerpt:

So more universities are setting up stand-alone centers that offer neutral ground on which engineering students can work on alternative fuels while business students calculate the economics of those fuels and political science majors figure how to make the fuels palatable to governments in both developing nations and America’s states.

“We give professors a chance to step beyond their usual areas of expertise, and we give students exposure to the worlds of science and business,” said Daniel C. Esty, director of the year-old Yale Center for Business and the Environment, a joint effort between the School of Management and the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

For what it's worth, this should be done within academic majors, too. One thing I have noticed in my own education and in others' is that many young people have no idea of the business behind the professions they enter. How many new teachers understand the intricacies of school financing and budgeting? I certainly hope more than the next: How many young journalists know much about the business end of their chosen field? Not many. Few know what a publicly traded company is, about earnings statements, about how stockholders expect a return on investment, etc. Their minds are filled with the ivory tower view of journalism, but they have never sat in a lecture by a business professor who explains how businesses operate in the real world.

A class in the business of journalism should be required of everyone entering this field. I can't speak about existing standards for training in other professions or trades, but such classes should be required in them, too.

###

You know, working on the day after Christmas is like working on the day after Thanksgiving. No one really wants to be here. We all would rather be able to take the week off with our families. But someone has to put out a newspaper.

See you tomorrow.