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So close, we can feel it. Breakthroughs every day. Hope is all around
us at the Brady, and in this issue of Discovery, we’ve tried to
convey some of the excitement to you. The phrase “thinking out-side
the box” means thinking innovatively, and if I had to sum up the
way we approach our work here, I would say that’s what we’re
doing —thinking creatively. The Brady has always been a bit outside
the traditional academic mold — for one thing, we never pigeonhole
people, limiting their field of study. Instead, our approach has been
to bring together a lot of very smart scientists and physicians, and let
them help each other to make life better for our patients. The result
is an atmosphere that’s stimulating, productive, and inventive,
with scientists from many disciplines— urologists, molecular biologists,
geneticists,radiation oncologists, pathologists, epidemiologists, medical
oncologists — achieving “critical mass,” and awesome
momentum.
The Patrick C. Walsh Prostate Cancer
Research Fund is an ideal example of this: We didn’t go looking
for “prostate cancer scientists.” Instead, we opened the door
to scientists in any field with good ideas, and the results have been
just as exciting as we’d hoped . All of you who have helped, and
are continuing to help, make this possible, should be very proud of what
you have set in motion. Our new research director, Robert Getzenberg,
sets another good example of the Brady approach — his mission, with
our patients always in mind, is to speed up the process of bringing research
advances to those whose lives are depending on them.
On a personal note, it is wonderful
having Alan Partin as my successor. Dr. Partin is doing a great job, and
without having to spend so much time on administration duties, I have
been able to concentrate fully on my patients and my own work,operating
as often as always, and traveling a little more than usual as a guest
speaker, to Austria, China, Korea and India. Once again, I enjoyed a “working
vacation” this summer, reviewing video tapes of recent cases, and
formulating somenew surgical concepts for my next chapter in the Ninth
Edition of the Campbell-Walsh Textbook of Urology. Everything
I learn, and all of the advancement shappening here at the Brady every
day —particularly, new advancements in radiation oncology, brachytherapy,
and chemotherapy, as reflected in the work of Ted DeWeese, Danny Song,
Mario Eisenberger and Michael Carducci, will be reflected in the revised
version of Dr. Patrick Walsh’s Guide to Surviving Prostate Cancer,
which I am currently writing with Janet Farrar Worthington. And all of
this, as always, is dedicated to our patients and their families.
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