Four good wishes for 2012
This is the time when we make resolutions and wishes for the New Year. I am not big on resolutions, but I do like wishes. Here are four good wishes I will offer:
- I wish for stability. The World has enough challenges now, and we don’t really need any big bad surprises in 2012. A year of unusual stability that could enable us all to move predictably forward would be good.
- I wish for a new attitude about health care. The growing cynicism about our health care system has eroded public confidence to the point where effective disease prevention methods such as vaccines, blood pressure control, and early detection tests are not being as widely used as they should. The result is people becoming disabled or dropping dead before their time. Some sort of repositioning of how we see health care in the midst of our ongoing political battle would be good.
- I wish for the type of breakthrough in cancer treatment we have all been waiting for. Yes, we have made lots of progress in cancer, and on a historical scale the net effects are impressive, but the increasingly complex biology for the over 200 diseases we collectively call “cancer” has led many of us to now believe that progress will continue to be slow and incremental. I hope to be surprised in 2012 by some scientist in some lab somewhere who will discover an elegant solution to cancer. Putting all the complexity into one solution would be good.
- I wish for a new Dean. The Colorado School of Public Health is poised to transform itself from a promising new school into a great and established school. A new Dean will be good.
Best wishes to all for a good and happy 2012.