The Doctor is Out
Taking Dana-Farber expertise on the road
By Richard Saltus
On any given day, a handful of Dana-Farber scientists and physicians are waiting in airports or cruising at 30,000 feet, with destinations ranging from Iowa to Italy. After checking into their hotels, however, they're more apt to be organizing PowerPoint slides for a lecture on lung cancer or the ras oncogene than checking out the sights.
Perhaps they've been invited to speak on a "hot" new paper to emerge from their lab, or are meeting with other leaders in their fields to plan clinical trials or evaluate grant proposals. Dana-Farber experts dot the agendas of national and international cancer conferences, and often appear on behalf of disease foundations' fundraising efforts.
Sometimes the meeting sites are alluring, places like Amsterdam, Japan, and Spain. More often, the locale is nothing more exotic than an airport hotel in Chicago or an auditorium at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Md. And on the plane, a stack of grant applications to review frequently pre-empts the latest Tom Clancy thriller for in-flight reading.
Meeting a Dana-Farber researcher in person and hearing how his or her lab operates may be decisive when the younger scientist chooses an institution for a postdoctoral fellowship.
Most Institute scientists and other staff take to the road at least occasionally, and some are on trips dozens of times a year. No matter how desirable or important, every excursion takes time away from the lab, clinic, home, and family. It's a constant balancing act, with physicians and researchers asking themselves, as in World War II gasoline rationing posters, "Is this trip really necessary?"
There is always a price to pay. "When I travel for four days," says Mark Kieran, MD, PhD, a pediatric brain tumor specialist, "these are four days out of my responsibilities here, which don't stop when I'm away. A meeting has to be worth working weekends and nights to catch up when I get back."
Nor are scientists and doctors immune from the normal perils of traveling. Several Dana-Farber researchers were laid low by apparent food poisoning at a meeting in Majorca this past summer, and some have suffered altitude sickness at the annual Keystone Symposia in the Colorado mountains.
- Next: The value of voyaging
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