Alumni Association Home > Past Issues > 2002 > March-April 2002	Print View

As a volunteer staff member, I watched as the band responded quickly and proudly as a representative of the University in the wake of September 11. At the invitation of the governor’s office, the marching band performed at the "Minnesota Remembers" memorial service on September 16 at the State Capitol. It was at this point that the band became not only a representative of the University, but of the entire state.

On September 29, the Gopher football team had its first game since the attacks, hosting Purdue at the Metrodome. As part of the memorial, the marching band unfurled its big American representational flag, and both teams entered the field in silence.

The final event was on Thanksgiving weekend at the Gopher-Badger football game. With the help of the 34th Regiment Infantry (Reserves) Band, members of the U of M Alumni Band, and members of the Eden Prairie High School Band, the U of M marching band performed a patriotic show, playing "America the Beautiful" and "Stars and Stripes Forever" and displaying the big flag.

I know quite a few lives were touched by the band’s performances, including those of a large number of alumni.

David Malerich (B.S. ’96, M.S. ’98)
St. Paul

The Real Image Problem
I chuckled when I saw, in the January-February issue, the vintage ad for Chesterfields cigarettes that had been in a decades-old Minnesota Alumni Weekly. I did not chuckle, however, when my eyes landed on the full-page ad for "body sculpting" in the same issue.

I was very dismayed by your inclusion of the massive ad for plastic surgery with its euphemistic headline and provocative photo. Using scalpels during highly invasive surgery on a human being under general anesthesia is not the same as Michelangelo artfully chiseling away on marble. To suggest that filleting away a person’s fat will turn her into a female model is an attempt to undo the health teachings of our university. Those teachings are based on the principle that an appropriate diet combined with exercise is the key to developing or retaining one’s preferred shape. Minnesota would be a better magazine without this ad; I hope it will be absent in the future.

Mark Kaplan
Minneapolis

Hitting a Nerve
As a life member of the School of Dentistry Century Club, a donor to the school’s 2000 x 2000 x 2000 campaign, and a former assistant professor in the dental school (1968–71), I am a bit troubled by Margaret Carlson’s column relative to the University of Minnesota being recognized as one of the top three public universities for research ("On Track and Leading the Pack," November–December).

It has been my lifelong belief that the mission of any public institution of higher learning is that of teaching and training its students. This current insatiable appetite for grabbing all the federal dollars one can get, the higher salaries paid to administrators, the addition of new buildings in which to conduct research, and adding new researchers does little to enhance the education of the undergraduate. It usually results in more graduate students (hired at little pay) teaching the student, while the fat cat sits in his laboratory.

I realize that research is important, but one should not limit the hiring of new teachers to those who have research on their minds. Becoming one of the three top universities in the country in graduating exceptionally well-prepared students should be your primary goal.

Harold Pressman (D.D.S. ’44)
Billings, Montana

Tone Down the Hype
Your story on stem cells in the January–February issue was more hype than proper medical science reporting. Statements such as "these adult stem cells hold the promise of cures to diseases that have so far mystified modern medicine" and "within the next five years, stem cells may begin to treat diseases with a single missing or malfunctioning cell-type, like hemophilia, diabetes, and muscular dystrophy" are premature and inappropriate. So are the statements that say stem cells later could be used to repair damaged or diseased body parts. They are inappropriate and harmful because they raise false hopes in the minds of many patients ill with serious diseases. Let’s not repeat the mistakes made with gene therapy, where promises of cures greatly exceed delivery.

If the media wish to bring accomplishments in medicine to the attention of their readers, it is better to select an area that has already delivered cures and continues to improve on them, such as the treatments for hypertension and atherosclerosis. Improvements in these treatments, in terms of both effectiveness and cost, continue to build on the impressive and very real successes.

Francis Haddy (M.D. ’46)
Rochester, Minnesota

Correction
Valsartan, the drug that reduced heart-failure hospitalizations in a University study ("Heartening Developments," January– February), is not manufactured by Ciba Pharmaceuticals but by Novartis Pharma AG, which merged with Ciba a few years ago.