The challenge of balancing scientific discovery and translation.

Abstract

November 2002 marked the 75th Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association (AHA), a milestone that permits us to contemplate the remarkably rich heritage of the Association’s scientific meetings. The first Scientific Sessions were organized by a small group of visionary physicians at Haddon Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on the afternoon of May 26, 1925 (Figure 1). The fledgling AHA was less than a year old. Presiding over the sessions were the Association’s four officers: Lewis A. Conner, Robert Halsey, James B. Herrick, and Paul Dudley White. Each played major roles in the founding of the AHA, and each served a term as its President. Little did they anticipate that their meeting of a few hundred people would grow to become — as it has over the past several decades — the world’s preeminent meeting for cardiovascular science. Figure 1. Cover of the program of the American Heart Association’s first Scientific Sessions, May 26, 1925. The scientific and public health challenges facing the Association in its first decade were formidable, as reflected in the first edition of Dr White’s 1931 textbook, Heart Disease .1 As noted by Dr W. Bruce Fye in his history of American cardiology,2 Dr White wrote that “treating hypertension is a difficult and almost hopeless task;” that “there is no specific treatment for coronary artery disease;” and that “there is no treatment for aortic valve disease” and “no specific treatment for mitral valve disease.” Clearly, there was much work to be done. The extraordinary advances in basic science, epidemiology, diagnostic techniques, surgical procedures, and pharmaceutical development that have occurred in the past seven decades and their impact on human lives are unparalleled in human history. These remarkable advances were chronicled each year in the Scientific Sessions and in the scientific journals of …