Items of Interest May 28, 2012 Issue

Conference encourages revolution in health & medicine

Eric D. Nelson

This article originally appeared on Communities@WashingtonTimes.com. April 9, 2012.

Revolutions seem to be a dime a dozen these days. But the uprising launched this week at the TEDMED medical conference in Washington, DC, just might be the most far-reaching of them all, impacting in some way, shape, or form the vast majority of those living on planet Earth. . . .

From a program that included powerhouse speakers like Thomas Frieden of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Francis Collins from the National Institutes of Health—not to mention sports greats Gabby Reece, Laird Hamilton, and Billie Jean King—it’s likely that the lesser-known performance poets Sekou Andrews and Steve Connell will be the ones most responsible for setting this insurgency in motion.

Andrews and Connell began their TEDMED presentation by asking the audience, “Where do revolutionaries come from?” Drawing on examples as diverse as Jonas Salk, Martin Luther King, Jr., and César Chavez, they emphasized the fact that revolutionaries aren’t some specially trained group of people, but simply those who are willing to stand their ground.

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