EFIS: The growing danger of self-satisfaction with numbers

Abstract

'You may not have lived much under the sea ( ' I haven't', said Alice) and perhaps you were never even introduced to a lobster ...' (Alice began to say 'I once tasted ... but checked herself hastily, and said _No, never') '...So you can have no idea what a delightful thing a lobster Quadrille is/ 'No, indeed,' said Alice, What sort o f a dance is it?' As an Alice in Immunological Wonderland you may never have been introduced to EFIS. Indeed, in response to a questionnaire sent by the Secretary of the Dutch Society for Immunology to its members earlier this year 'a large number indicated not to know what EFIS does or stands for'. Unlike the lobster Quadrille in the original story, EFIS is not a dance. EFIS, the European Federation of Immunological Societies is an affiliate body of the International Union of Immunological Societies (IUIS) whose members are not individual scientists but the European Societies of Immunology represented by their Secretaries, Presidents or other designated delegates. These, in turn, elect a four member Board, constituted by a President, a Vice-President, a Treasurer and a General Secretary. Immunology Letters is the official journal of the Federation. The Board members are elected every 3 years at a General Assembly coinciding with the International Congress of Immunology. It is in the capacity of General Secretary, at the end of a second mandate that will terminate my association with EFIS at the International Congress of Immunology in Budapest, that I am writing the present paper. In transforming my last formal report into a more personal account of the difficulties, aspirations and surprises I met in the last three years (1989-1992) and highlighting the implications of one of its most significant historical moments, I hope to widen the debate about the future of the associative structure of European immunology to all those primarily concerned: the practising immunologists themselves. In choosing Immunology Letters as the host journal for this debate I wish to underline the fact that it is the official journal of EFIS.