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The highlights of my trip to ASH
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I’ve been privileged to write for HemOnc Today for a little more than a year. Last December, I caught a glimpse of the American Society of Hematology conference in Atlanta when I attended my first HemOnc Today board meeting. But it was this December, in San Francisco, when I participated in ASH for the first time in earnest. Since “highlights of ASH” in several locations around the country inevitably follow the real thing, I thought I would share my own highlights as a trainee going to the conference for the first time.
In a word, ASH is overwhelming. The Moscone Center in San Francisco is built for large conventions, and ASH this year was no exception. Thousands of participants from around the world — about two-thirds from the United States and one-third from abroad, by estimates of one of the organizers — descended upon the city to fill up a hundred local hotels, to overflow the convention center’s cavernous meeting halls and breakout rooms, and to share the fruits of lifetimes of scientific research. For me, it was an intellectual candy store. On board the plane from Raleigh-Durham through St. Louis, to San Francisco, the gargantuan abstract book was a treasure trove of discovery. Though I’m specifically interested in health services research and bone marrow transplant, I took great interest in a variety of abstracts across a range of disease states. I wasn’t the only one; an attending physician at my institution told me that he started to receive e-mails, phone calls and questions during clinic visits from patients who had rummaged through the abstracts the moment they were available.
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Once at ASH, the meetings became the abstract book writ large. In every corner was an educational session, a scientific session or a presentation, all addressing different subjects, sometimes multiple topics at a time. I reflected on a bit of advice I heard during a presentation during “Trainee Day” as part of my first day at the meeting; the speaker had advised participants to “find your niche” in order to have a successful research career. Later, amidst the flurry of intellectual activity in the general meeting, it occurred to me that I was surrounded by a swarm of successful niche-finders. But as I marveled at this display of worldwide grassroots science, I couldn’t help but wonder: Who is coordinating all of the niches, linking one to the other and deducing insights directly applicable to improving the outcomes of patients? Who is creating the incentives to prioritize one niche above another, and who ensures that discoveries in the lab make their way to the bedsides of patients as quickly as possible?
As a trainee, and as a student of history as well as medicine, I was fascinated by the autobiographical lectures from Peter Agre, MD, and Neal Young, MD. I realized then, as I had before, that great science comes from great scientists, and the best scientists have fantastic intellects that span a wide range of disciplines — from the natural sciences to the social, to history and the humanities, all of which were covered in these utterly enjoyable, and inspirational discussions.
And as an interested observer of the real world in 2008, I grew energized by the palpable excitement in the rooms of the scientific sessions. One presenter discussed a novel therapy for relapsed/refractory lymphoma, and described a patient with heavily pretreated mantle cell lymphoma who remained in a continuous remission over a year from initiation of this well-tolerated new drug. I looked around quickly as I heard audible murmurs and even a gasp from the sea of suits in the audience. And I wondered where the audience members would run to, and how fast, after the session was over: to a discussion with a fellow clinician? To the laboratory bench? To a hedge fund manager by phone in Boston or New York?
The sessions spun on, one after another, the exhibit hall glowed as an oversized carnival, the posters stretched in sheets of colors and whites across vast expanses of subterranean convention rooms, with science spilling from the pages and filling the air in excited chatter. On Monday afternoon, by schedule and not by choice, I had to say goodbye.
I left San Francisco, back, via Dallas this time, to Raleigh-Durham, tired but satisfied, as if having finished an excellent meal or a thrilling movie. And I can’t wait to go back to ASH again.
William Wood, MD, is a second year Hematology/Oncology Fellow at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and is a HemOnc Today Editorial Board member.