Alan DeCherney
Alan Decherney, MD
SRI President, 1994-1995
The year that I was president of SGI, 1995, was exactly 20 years after my first meeting; I had just started as a faculty member at Yale then and I was scientifically overwhelmed I understood very little about what was presented. I was therefore humbled and honored, as most presidents have conveyed, becoming president of the SRI.
In 1995 I was also president of ASRM. This did present not much of a challenge compared to how complicated the leadership of these societies are today.
I have always considered myself primarily a clinician and a scientist second, so it was interesting that in my presidential year there was a crisis in the society; in that people felt that SGI was becoming an organization that catered to the basic scientist, and not to clinical science. In fact, I received letters from a few elders of the society, voicing their concerns about the shift in focus of the society. I therefore convened a retreat, mid-year, to discuss these topics. This was held at the Palm Beach Ritz and was skillfully lead by Jim Roberts and members of Council. Fortunately, on the airplane on the way down I met Pentii ( Finn) Siiteri and I invited him to sit in on the sessions, since he brought the history of the society from an advantage point of an elder scientist to the table. It was a highly charged meeting with lots of debate. It was concluded that there was a home for clinician scientists in the SGI and it was imperative that this relationship must be nurtured. An overwhelming concern was over specialization and narrowing of each individuals’ focus.
This, of course, was the beginning of what we call today translational science. A parallel problem was that the Society for Maternal Fetal Medicine, The American Society for Reproductive Medicine and the Society for Gynecologic Oncologists were increasing their scientific programs dramatically. This compounded the concern, that the clinicians would be leaving SGI to present at their respective society meetings instead.
The president before me was a wonderful basic scientist who actually-understood translational science long before it was defined, and that was Dr. Gary Hodgen, who was the epitome of a translational scientist and I think the fact that he was elected and one of the few PhD’s to ever assume the helm of this organization perhaps triggered the concern in-regards to the intrinsic balance.
Dr. Robert Barbieri was my program chairmen who did a superb job. My presidents invited speaker was Sam Their who at that time was head of the Institute of Medicine, he spoke about the dawning of “managed care”, and about how the new paradigm in medicine would impact the life of the clinician scientist. These foretold great changes in medicine that are still evolving. The C.D Christian Distinguished lecturer was David Ward from Yale who was the “inventor of FISH”.
The Presidents Distinguished Scientist Award went to Paul McDonough, and the Presidents Achievement Award went to Roger Lobo.
My year was the first year of the Journal of the SGI which eventually became Reproductive Sciences which ended a long controversy.
The meeting was held in Chicago and it was rich and varied with 59 oral presentations and 428 poster presentations. The balance between Reproductive Endocrine and Maternal Fetal Medicine was equal with a small contribution from GYN Oncology.
For me the highlight was the presidential speech, what I did was to produce a musical film that was an Odyssey. I was “The Penguin” from The Batman movie, on a quest to become president of the SGI. Along this voyage the Penguin encountered many members of the SGI who advised him on how to become president of the SGI. What I did was splice the singing heads of members of the society into movie scenes using an Advent machine. Roberts Creasy and Resnick sang “Anything you can do I can do better”, Romero sang an original song geared to the SGI “South American Way”. The Reproductive Endocrine Board was represented by Haney, Weiss, Adashi, Rebar & Wallach who sang “I’d like to pass you if I could” which was dubbed into the movie “History of The World Pt. 2”. Doctors Dalton and Parisi utilizing the melody from “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” sang “Equality is a Girls Best Friend”. Seven Dwarfs from Sleeping Beauty represented by Barbieri, Schiff etc. et al singing “Hi Ho, Hi Ho, Research Is a Docs Best Friend”. Dr. Roy Pitkin, editor of the Green Journal sang to the tune from Oliver instead of “Pick a Pocket or Two”, “You Have to Publish a Paper or Two”.
The film started with “A Comedy Tonight from Something Happened on The Way to The Forum” and ended with me leaving the room to a scene from the biographic movie of John Phillip Sousa playing “The Stars and Stripes Forever”.
This fulfilled two dreams of mine, to write a musical comedy and to leave the room to a triumphant march; alone.
I emphasized in the conclusion some aspects of my philosophy of life “Work is more fun than fun”, work with people who are smarter than you and their luster will be reflected by you. Success should never be a goal, but a reward. Never say no to an opportunity and basically, I am an “optimistic guy”.
I thank the Society for this wonderful opportunity and still look forward to the annual meeting with excitement.