Steven Gabbe
Steven Gabbe, MD
SRI President, 2004-2005
I consider my opportunity to serve as the President of SRI, then SGI, to be one of the greatest professional honors I have enjoyed. My presidential year included 2 areas of emphasis: improving the fiscal stability of our organization and increasing the engagement of our international members.
Led by our treasurer, Dr. Charles Lockwood, we took positive steps to control our costs, improve our support from a variety of sources, and develop a financial plan for the future.
We agreed to hold our first meeting outside North America and planned a conference on premature birth hosted by Dr. Felice Petraglia in Siena, Italy. That meeting was very successful. Dr. Petraglia subsequently became President of our organization in 2009.
Our meeting in 2005 was held in Los Angeles. Our Distinguished Lecturer was Dr. Stanley Cohen who was awarded both the Lasker Prize and the Nobel Prize in 1986 for his discovery of Epidermal Growth Factor. I was serving as the dean at the Vanderbilt College of Medicine in 2005, and I came to know Dr. Cohen as he had been a faculty member there. Dr. Cohen, who was then 83 years old, gave an outstanding presentation, although we had difficulty finding a projection system for his glass slides!
He spent hours visiting with our members during the poster sessions. So many presenters told me how honored they were to discuss their work with a Nobel Prize winner.
Because our meeting was so close to Hollywood, we held a “Lunch and a Movie” session. Our son, Daniel, then a film student at the American Film Institute, edited the movie, “Gattaca,” down to 30 minutes. We showed this version along with lunch and popcorn and then had an excellent discussion about genetic engineering, medical ethics and film making.
My Presidential lecture was titled, “The Women of Our Country.” Living in Nashville, I came to be a great fan of the women of country music. Their songs reflected the social forces influencing the lives of working class women including poverty, divorce, motherhood, contraception, HIV/AIDS, work-home balance, and domestic violence. My talk which included many music videos covered nearly 100 years from the Carter Family to Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, and the Dixie Chicks, and it was very well received.