Contents

-Summer Happy Hour/Networking Event

-Call for Webinars

-Why Volunteer with AMWA

-Book Club Update: The End of Illness 

AMWA North Central Chapter Summer Happy Hour/Networking Event

Wherever you work— at home as a freelancer or onsite for a company— join fellow AMWA members for a chance to talk shop and network at our next informal chapter get-together.

When: Wednesday, June 25 from 5:30 to 7:30

Where: McCoys in St. Louis Park

Feel free to bring non-member colleagues who may be interested in learning more about AMWA.

RSVP to Deborah Sugerman at d…@comcast.net. so that we can reserve the appropriate seating space. 

Call for Webinars

As with most AMWA chapters, North Central covers a wide geographical region (Minnesota, the Dakotas, and parts of Wisconsin). Add to that everyone’s busy schedules, and the result is that many of our members are unable to attend chapter events. Yet we have so much to share, and all our members deserve access to the educational and networking opportunities that AMWA can provide.

Fortunately, we have the Internet. To better meet the needs of all our members, the North Central Chapter would like to begin offering webinars, but we need your help.

Do you have knowledge or expertise that would be of interest to your fellow members? Perhaps you could give an overview of resources available to aid scientific communication, or share tips and tricks in Word or other software. Maybe lead a discussion of ethical issues in medical writing or the key things to know when working with clients overseas. Teach others how to use social media to improve their skills or businesses. The possibilities abound!

Offering a webinar is a great opportunity to increase your visibility in the AMWA community while sharing your knowledge with others. If you don’t want to lead the webinar yourself, we also welcome ideas for topics or suggestions of other members you think might have a great topic to share.

While some familiarity with how a webinar works is helpful, advanced technical knowledge is not necessary. We have access to a webinar service provided by the national AMWA organization.

If you are interested in developing a webinar or have ideas to share, please contact Nissa Mollema at p…@amwanorthcentral.org.

Why Volunteer with AMWA

By Nissa Mollema, President-Elect, AMWA North Central Chapter

Whether you’re new to AMWA or a long-time member, there are many reasons to volunteer. I joined AMWA in 2012 and was just getting to know the organization when I decided to volunteer in 2013. A conversation with our current North Central President, Ruth Taswell, made me think about what volunteering could offer me and what I could offer AMWA.

My first question about volunteering was, “Am I ready to volunteer?” My second question was, “What volunteer position is a good fit?” Ruth made me curious about the president position, but I wondered how I, as a newer member, could serve in this role. From Ruth, I learned more about the president’s duties (lead monthly conference calls, serve on the Program Committee, work with AMWA headquarters, etc.), as well as the privileges (travel to national meetings, meet medical writers around the country, build relationships with local medical writers, and much more). There was some work involved in volunteering, but there were so many benefits! I felt like it was a great time for me to use my skills as a leader and to build a network in the medical writer community.

The major factor that eased my fears about volunteering was that I didn’t need to assume the volunteer position knowing all the answers. Before assuming the role as president, you spend your first year as president-elect. You work under the current chapter president, getting to know more about your role and the inner workings of AMWA.

This atmosphere of mentoring is evident in all areas of AMWA. AMWA leaders want volunteers to succeed in their new roles. There is also a great culture of collaboration within the North Central Chapter. When I began serving as president-elect, I was told, “Welcome to the team!” and they meant it! I work with our current president and our immediate past president. Although the immediate past president is transitioning out of her role, she is a great source of knowledge and can step in to lead a meeting if the other two “team members” have a conflict. Our meetings are conducted via teleconference and scheduled around the lunch hour, making it easy to fit AMWA into my busy schedule.

I’ve only been volunteering with AMWA since December of 2013, but I already see many benefits and I’m having a lot of fun. I recently went to Washington, DC for the AMWA Board of Director’s meeting. During this trip, I met medical writers from around the country and cultivated new friendships. People are recognizing my volunteer work when I discuss my past and current accomplishments. While networking with a local medical device company, another medical writer said, “You sound like you’re very outgoing and a great leader: you must be, since you serve as President-elect of the North Central Chapter!” I was surprised by that compliment because I sometimes consider myself an introvert. I now recognize that AMWA is showcasing my leadership skills and helping others recognize that I’m a good person to work with.

Volunteering with AMWA might be something you just fall into or something you’re invited to do. I shared a ride to the airport with Christine Wogan, national treasurer of AWMA. I asked her how she ended up in the role, assuming she would describe a background in math or finance and a clear path in pursuit of volunteering in such a prestigious position. Instead, I learned that she started volunteering as treasurer in her local chapter (without much experience) and that soon she was invited to serve at the national level. She now says AMWA is “like a family.”

It might have taken a little coaxing and some discussion, but I am incredibly happy that I decided to volunteer with AMWA North Central Chapter. Talk to your leadership and see how you can make a difference and experience the great benefits of volunteering.

Consider this your invitation to serve!

Read more about Nissa Mollema and our North Central Officers.

Book Club Update

The End of Illness

By Paul W. Mamula, PhD

The book club met on April 26, 2014, to discuss The End of Illness by David B. Agus. The book promises to help people improve their health and lifespan. Using stories, research findings, and provocative ideas, Dr Agus posits that patients’ actions coupled with modern genetic and informational tools can help accomplish these goals.

The Book

The End of Illness contains a brief introduction, three main sections (14 chapters), and a concluding chapter. Each section covers an aspect of personal health, and each chapter contains a short summary of key points. The book caters to a general audience, but wavers between the general and technical. It reflects the author’s interest in using personal metrics, and most notably genetic sequence information, in patients’ health decisions. The book is an easy read, but one could get the basics by just skimming the short chapter sidebars and summaries.

Although all of the attendees thought the book had stylistic and content shortcomings, they did find some worthwhile suggestions. Curiously, we all noted the same problems with the book, which made for a lively discussion and prompted some curious looks from other patrons nearby.

Good Advice

The book presents good general health advice, but most of the topics are covered better elsewhere. The book also suffers from inclusion of contradictory advice in places—suggesting statins for lowering cholesterol levels for everyone older than age 40 early in the book, but later urging people to try to eliminate one drug from those they take. Many recommendations should have been tempered or qualified.

Mary Knatterud stated, “I did enjoy Dr Agus’s nuanced, iconoclastic discussion of why taking vitamin D and calcium is not necessary—and probably even harmful” as well as “his fun-to-read pleas for balance in the consumption of both food and technology.”

George Kline pointed out two other positive notes: Dr Agus does mention individual responsibility, and as an oncologist, he makes a compelling case for controlling cancer and not curing it.

The Qualifiers

Where The End of Illness disappoints is in its tone and mixture of the simple with the complex. Dr Agus is an oncologist and one of the founders of Navigenics, a genome sequencing/diagnostic company. His book is centered on knowing your genetic profile, and thus, the advice is biased toward using one. It does not provide an even description of what to do with the information, particularly for multifactorial diseases (those that have a complicated origin, such as type 2 diabetes mellitus or cardiovascular disease).

Personal actions can only go so far in improving health, however. The effects of personal action derive from the complicated interplay of the individual’s underlying genes, behavior, and environment. Therefore, the net effect of any personal action may vary, and in some cases, a clear course of action may not be obvious. A discussion of these caveats would have added some balance.

Knatterud also noted, “I was put off by Dr Agus’s glib writing style, full of irksome pitches for his commercial genetic-screening interests and for the wide use of statins; fraught with ill-conceived verbification, like ’we’re probably cancering all the time’ (p. 40) and ‘whether you should be supplementing’ (p. 143); and flawed by irritating vacillation between respectful references to some people, after first mention, by their last name (e.g., Gore for Al Gore) but others by their first name (e.g., Lance for Lance Armstrong).”

Practice Quibbles

The End of Illness reflects Dr Agus’s positive views, but doesn’t consider the darker potential of his suggestions. His suggestion for interacting with physicians doesn’t always gibe with the current reality of a typical office visit. Knatterud found Agus to be “naively, blindly aligned with doctors” at times, as when he encourages readers preparing for a medical appointment to “show up with a list…Your doctor will not judge you” (p. 56). She explained, “I was once upbraided by my longtime (and now former) family practitioner for taking up too many minutes, near the end of a yearly physical, to bring up several jotted-down questions.”

Biases

Dr Agus suggests that sharing your medical data is a good idea and uses his own profile as an illustration. He presents an optimistic view of sharing personal medical information, but he doesn’t discuss the potential for misuse. The book advocates for genetic testing, but doesn’t really elaborate on exactly how that information can or will be used. Kline pointed out, “He effusively supports genetic testing (for which he has a financial interest) without questioning the implications.”

A recent New York Times article1 reported some very real concerns about potential misuse of genetic information. The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act bill was passed in 2008 to protect patients from genetic discrimination, but it does not protect against insurers using that information to disqualify individuals for three types of insurance—life, disability, and long-term care policies. Currently, people are frightened by the possibility that some genetic information present in their medical records could be used to disqualify them for these policies. Many are opting not to have the testing done or are paying for it privately to keep this information out of their medical records. Examples such as these are not discussed at all by Dr Agus.

Given the current state of knowledge about genomic testing, advocating its widespread use and sharing of profile information is premature. Kline nicely summed up the sentiment and said, “What are we going to do with more data about us? Privacy aside, Agus would have us share it. What about the patient? As an individual, what am I going to do with probabilities of a heart attack in 10 years, a stroke in 20, Alzheimer’s disease in 15, and imminent death from kidney failure?”

Next Up

The book club continues to meet at alternate times and venues, so look for one that suits your schedule. Watch for details about the new selections in future announcements.

References

1. Peikoff K. Fearing punishment for bad genes. New York Times April 8, 2014, page D1.