Ucsf Quotes

By the time he had to head to San Francisco, for his night shift at the UCSF Medical Center emergency room, Mortenson had completed, sealed, and stamped six letters. One for Oprah Winfrey. One for each network news anchor, including CNN’s Bernard Shaw, since he figured CNN was becoming as big as the other guys. And a letter he’d written spontaneously to the actress Susan Sarandon, since she seemed so nice, and so dedicated to causes

Work by Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania, Tom Boyce of UCSF, and others demonstrates something outrageous: By age five, the lower a child’s socioeconomic status, on the average, the (a) higher the basal glucocorticoid levels and/or the more reactive the glucocorticoid stress response, (b) the thinner the frontal cortex and the lower its metabolism, and (c) the poorer the frontal function concerning working memory, emotion regulation, impulse control, and executive decision making; moreover, to achieve equivalent frontal regulation, lower-SES kids must activate more frontal cortex than do higher-SES kids. In addition, childhood poverty impairs maturation of the corpus callosum, a bundle of axonal fibers connecting the two hemispheres and integrating their function. This is so wrong—foolishly pick a poor family to be born into, and by kindergarten, the odds of your succeeding at life’s marshmallow tests are already stacked against you.34

The connection between childhood adversity and frontocortical maturation pertains to childhood poverty. Work by Martha Farah of the University of Pennsylvania, Tom Boyce of UCSF, and others demonstrates something outrageous: By age five, the lower a child’s socioeconomic status, on the average, the (a) higher the basal glucocorticoid levels and/or the more reactive the glucocorticoid stress response, (b) the thinner the frontal cortex and the lower its metabolism, and (c) the poorer the frontal function concerning working memory, emotion regulation, impulse control, and executive decision making; moreover, to achieve equivalent frontal regulation, lower-SES kids must activate more frontal cortex than do higher-SES kids. In addition, childhood poverty impairs maturation of the corpus callosum, a bundle of axonal fibers connecting the two hemispheres and integrating their function. This is so wrong—foolishly pick a poor family to be born into, and by kindergarten, the odds of your succeeding at life’s marshmallow tests are already stacked against you.

Clearly, the whole concept of “retirement” is about to undergo a major overhaul. People will have to work later in life, at least part-time, and perhaps as long as they are able. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as there is some evidence that most people are actually happier with a phased retirement 85 just so long as they perceive a sense of choice in the matter.86 On the other hand, a “gray crime wave” has now begun in Japan: Arrests of struggling pensioners over age sixty-five has doubled—mostly for shoplifting and pickpocketing—and the number incarcerated has tripled to over 10% of Japan’s prison population.87 It is also apparent that some big cultural shifts will be needed in the way we treat and value our elderly. “Our society must learn that ageing and youth should be valued equally,” writes Leonard Hayflick of the UCSF School of Medicine, “if for no other reason than the youth in developed countries have an excellent chance of experiencing the phenomenon that they may now hold in such low esteem.

found you on the CRISP website. I was looking for someone at UCSF with an R01 doing research in kidney disease,” I said. CRISP, now called the NIH RePORTER, was the National Institutes of Health’s searchable database of all federally funded biomedical research projects. I knew that the NIH’s R01 grant mechanism, which was awarded to researchers who no longer needed a research mentor, allowed the researcher to apply for smaller research grants to support someone from backgrounds underrepresented in medicine—Blacks, Hispanics, or Native Americans, individuals with a physical or mental disability, or those who grew up in poverty—at every level of education, from a high school student to a college student, a medical student, resident, or fellow.

Two recent studies led by Sophia Vinogradov, vice chair of psychiatry at UCSF, have shown that fifty to eighty hours of training significantly improved patients’ verbal working memory and learning, their ability to distinguish reality from fantasy, and their overall social functioning up to six months later. Vinogradov is now leading three studies involving a total of 260 people, in hopes of meeting criteria set by the FDA for approval of the training program as a treatment for the disorder’s cognitive symptoms.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. —Alfred North Whitehead, An Introduction to Mathematics, 1911 During my visit to UCSF’s seventh-floor satellite pharmacy, I saw the pharmacists verifying many medication orders. A

The pattern for patients in the East Bay is echoed more broadly across the country, according to Dr. Renee Hsia, an emergency room physician at UCSF who also researches health care policy. It took 4.4 minutes longer for victims of cardiac arrest in poorer areas to reach the hospital than in high-income areas, her research found. “Four minutes may not sound like much but it represents a significant increase in mortality,” Dr. Hsia said.

In 1963, Choh Hao Li, chairman and lone tenured faculty member in the Institute of Experimental Biology at Berkeley, announced that he had isolated and purified his sixth pituitary hormone, lipotropin. The magnitude of such a feat is clear considering that only one other person had ever purified a hormone, and that person was not coincidentally a student of Li's. The purification of lipotropin should have been a reason to celebrate; however, Li's colleagues at Berkeley acknowledged but did not rejoice in his success. As they perceived it, endocrinology was a scientific field that came out of the clinical sciences, which meant that Li's research was completely unsound, and they put enormous pressure on him to change his scientific topic. When that did not work, Wendell Stanley tried to 'promote [Li] out of the Virus Laboratory,' then later University Chancellor Clark Kerr threatened to discontinue the Institute for Experimental Biology because it did not fit with Berkeley's commitment to pure research. Things got infinitely worse for Li, of course, because he became perceived as less qualified with each professional achievement. [...] C. H. Li's travails at Berkeley are only half the story. In 1969, five years after transferring from Berkeley to UCSF, Li and his laboratory assistants assembled a highly complex synthetic version of human growth hormone (HGH) that was biologically active and could promote the growth of bones and muscle tissue. Rather than ignore or criticize the work, however, journalists waxed eloquently [sic] about Li's creation of HGH. One described it as no less than a panacea for most of the world's problems. Others clearly saw specific applications: 'it might now be . . . possible to tailor-make hormones that can inhibit breast cancer.' Li's discovery of synthetic HGH 'constituted a truly . . . great research breakthrough [that had] obvious applications,' ranging from 'human growth and development to . . . treatment of cancer and coronary artery disease.' Desperate letters poured in too; athletes wanted to know if HGH would help them become faster, bigger, stronger, and dwarfs from all over the world begged for samples of HGH or to volunteer as experimental subjects. Unlike at Berkeley, Li's discovery made him a hero at UCSF. None other than UCSF Chancellor Phillip Lee described Li's discovery as 'meticulous, painstaking, and brilliant research' and then tried to capitalize on the moment by asking the public and their political representatives to increase federal support of bioscience research. 'Research money is dwindling fast,' repeated Lee to anyone who cared to listen. 'We've proven than synthesis can be done, now all we need is the money and time to prove its tremendous value.' It is not surprising that federal and state money began to pour into Li's lab. What is shocking, however, is how quickly Li achieved scientific acclaim, not because he changed, but because the rest of the world around him changed so much.

God 4.0' is a visionary fusion of true spirituality and neuroscience. Both authors forcefully argue for “consciousness evolution” which is a shift away from self-centeredness that releases enhanced perceptual capabilities. This shift can profoundly influence epigenetic expression, health, and perhaps even influence the epigenetic inheritance of future generations. — Kenneth R. Pelletier, PhD, MD, Clinical Professor of Medicine, UCSF School of Medicine, Author of Change Your Genes, Change Your Life