Abstract
“A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years mere study of books.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)
What the 17th-Century English poet said about people in general, that “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main,”[1] is especially true for doctors and all the other people in all the medical professions. And on that “continent” called Medicine, the single most crucial medical tool is: conversations.
Spoken words are like oxygen, so common as to be ignored but essential for life. A recent study found that, on average, people speak about 16,000 words per day[2] But speaking is not at all the same as having a conversation. Professional organizations meetings often feature speakers—one person talking, multiple people listening. Conversations, in contrast, are interactive, everyone having the opportunity both to speak and to listen. In Medicine, the best meetings and conferences are conversation-based, not speaker-based.
It is for precisely that reason that the Grover Conference is today the world's most influential scientific meeting focusing on the pulmonary circulation, gas exchange, and pulmonary vascular diseases (PVD). As E. Kenneth Weir, W. Wagner Wiltz Jr. and Stephen L. Archer point out in this issue of Pulmonary Circulation, in their historical review of the 15 Grover Conferences held in Colorado since the first one in 1984, the Conference is named for a man who was, and remains, not only a pioneer and innovator in the profession, but also a master of the art of conversation: a mentor. Robert F. Grover “was also an inspirational mentor and the Conference celebrates both his scientific interests and his tradition of mentorship.” Significantly, the attendees at each Grover Conference include both leaders and beginners, both the “big names” of today and the young, promising investigators who, thanks in large part to conversations like those at such conferences, will be the big names of tomorrow.
We welcome and salute the newest venue for the conversation-based advancement of our field, the Pulmonary Hypertension Society of Australia and New Zealand (PHSANZ), whose members held their inaugural scientific meeting in Sydney on 25 November 2011. Significantly, 2 of the PHSANZs 4 mission goals have to do with people speaking and listening to each other: ongoing pulmonary hypertension education, to “expand the knowledge base of PH and the complexities of diagnosis and management of this group of patients”; and lobbying power, “to create a force that will have levels of influence on many facets of PH management in Australia and New Zealand.”[3] (See the PHSANZ abstracts published in this issue of Pulmonary Circulation).
How such societies come into existence is nicely illustrated by the case of the publisher of this journal, the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute, the PVRI. It was in fact the result of a year-long conversation, on the need for such an organization, that began in London early in 2006, continued in San Diego in May 2006, and concluded in Malta in January 2007. At the original chat were 7 friends and colleagues, including Ghazwan Butrous, Ardeschir Ghofrani, Fritz Grimminger, Nick Morrell, Stuart Rich, and Martin Wilkins; they were joined by still more people in San Diego; and at Malta there were 25 experts from around the world. Since coming into existence, the PVRI has sponsored meetings throughout the world — India, China, Brazil, and nations in Africa and the Middle East — and has held annual conferences in Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Panama, and in 2012, Cape Town, South Africa. The success and ever -increasing popularity of all these meetings and conferences is due very largely to the fact that they feature discussions and debates, meaning conversations rather than speeches. The international collaboration initiated by the PVRI in supporting PVD-related educational programs and research in the Third World, where the vast majority of people afflicted with PVDs live, has assumed vital significance in controlling these diseases.
By January 2007, in Malta, when the idea of the original conversation, the PVRI, had become a reality, a new conversation began. Led by Jason Yuan, the attendees discussed and debated the necessity of the PVRI having its own “voice” in print. This led first to the launching in 2008 of the PVRI Review and then, only 3 years later, to the publication both of this journal, Pulmonary Circulation, aimed specifically at the pulmonary circulation and pulmonary vascular diseases, and a 1,690-page Textbook of Pulmonary Vascular Disease.[4] This trio of publications illustrate the crucial point that many of Medicines most important conversations occur in print. Indeed, the point was made literally in the “Welcome” editorial in the inaugural issue: “Pulmonary Circulation: A new venue for communicating your findings, ideas and perspectives,” the key word being “communicating.”
Look at the references listed for each article in this journal, and what you are seeing, in fact, are the speakers to whom the articles authors listened to before they began to speak in print themselves. The wonder and magic of such conversations is that they are not bound by time. For one example, all articles ever published on DNA may be viewed as contributions to the conversation started by James Watson and Francis Crick in their single-page article published 58 years ago.[5] For another example, it happens that 3 of the articles in this issue of Pulmonary Circulation have to do with high altitudes (Newman et al. on high-altitude PH in cattle; Pham et al. on high-altitude pulmonary edema; and the historical review by Weir et al., “Lofty goals at high altitude: The Grover Conferences, 1984-2011”), as do 7 abstracts (Abstracts 1.2, 2.3, 2.14, 2.17, 2.18, 2.19 and 2.20). In a mostly symbolic but actually profound sense, these 10 articles and abstracts are contributions to a conversation that began 351 years ago: in London on the evening of 12 November 1660, in what turned out to be the very first meeting of what would become England's most prestigious scientific institution, the Royal Society, one of the topics the 12 attendees discussed and debated — that is conversed about — was whether a pendulum clock high on a mountain told the same time as one at sea level.[6]
To facilitate further conversion, we present the Abstracts segment in this issue of Pulmonary Circulation. Submissions were received by physicians, physician scientists and investigators from the 2011 Grover Conference, the 5th Scientific Workshops and Debates of the Pulmonary Vascular Research Institute (PVRI), and the Inaugural Scientific Meeting of the Pulmonary Hypertension Society of Australia and New Zealand (PHSANZ). The international conversation among our scholars from different disciplines and across multiple geographic locations will contribute greatly to the global awareness of Pulmonary Vascular Disease.