Pioneer in infectious disease medicine shares his perspectives in new podcast series

Dec 28 2011

Beginning this month, the journal Medicine® launches a series of podcasts featuring pioneering infectious disease physician John Bartlett, MD. Medicine® is published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, a part of Wolters Kluwer Health.

The first podcast in the 'Stories in Medicine' series is now available at http://www.md-journal.com/podcasts. In his first podcast, Dr Bartlett talks about his background in infectious disease medicine—including the impact of his experience treating combat soldiers in Vietnam—and his pioneering work in responding to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Dr Bartlett is Professor of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, and an Associate Editor of Medicine. In the inaugural podcast, Dr Bartlett shares a few insights on the unpredictable and "always electrifying" field of infectious disease.

As a young doctor, Dr Bartlett planned to be a cardiologist. But that changed during his military service when he spent a rewarding year in a fever ward in Vietnam. "It was such a reward to see young healthy people so critically ill and then regain normal health rapidly, which rarely happens in the field of internal medicine. I loved what I did—we could look down the microscope and see the enemy, we could apply a drug, and the patients got all better!"

Dr Bartlett also discusses his experiences at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic in 1981. "We had a problem in Baltimore mostly because of injection drug use. And I decided early that we needed to deal with it…so we started a clinic. There was a terrible cloud around the disease in terms of stigma. So we hid the clinic—nobody knew we had it except the patients who came to it and the doctors that worked in it." In 1983, Johns Hopkins first opened its comprehensive HIV/AIDS service, which of course continues to operate today.

The goal of the new 'Stories in Medicine' series is to provide "an accessible means for students, physicians and those interested in infectious disease to learn about articles that have substantial clinical relevance and practical application," according to podcast host Eugene Shenderov, an MD/PhD student at Johns Hopkins. In forthcoming podcasts, Dr Bartlett will focus on new articles, drawn from the pages of Medicine®, that make "substantial contributions" to the field of infectious disease. New podcasts will be posted with each bimonthly issue of Medicine®.

As the "Stories in Medicine" series evolves, Editor-in-Chief David B. Hellmann, MD, and Associate Editors Howard M. Lederman, MD, PhD, and Roy C. Ziegelstein, MD, will make podcast contributions. According to the Medicine® website, they'll share "informative and entertaining stories…featuring article highlights, hot topics, and other things on their minds." Dr Hellmann adds, "We hope our new podcast series will provide an engaging and intellectually stimulating the conversation with readers of Medicine."