The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Tropical Medicine in the Fight against Plague, Death, Famine, and War

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I want to thank Dr. Lance Gordon for his very generous introduction. I was especially thrilled that Lance was able to make introductory remarks this evening because he bridges two of the most important institutions in my professional life. Lance previously served on the Board of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, an extraordinary global health institution that I have been associated with for the last 12 years, and he recently began a new position with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Not only has the Gates Foundation generously supported our work on the human hookworm vaccine for the past decade, but in addition Gates, together with Sabin, has introduced me to some of my most important scientific mentors, including Drs. Philip K. Russell, Ciro de Quadros, Regina Rabinovich, and Jan Agosti. It is also through the Sabin Vaccine Institute that I met some other extraordinary individuals including H. R. Shepherd, the founding Sabin Board Chair who died this year at the age of 89; Ambassador Michael Marine, (Sabin CEO); Brian Davis (Sabin COO); Mrs. Heloisa Sabin; and the current Sabin Board Chair, Mort Hyman, who is a unique combination of mentor and friend. In 2011, we relocated the laboratories of the Sabin Vaccine Institute to Texas Children's Hospital (TCH) in Houston to become the first product development partnership (PDP) embedded in an academic health center.1 This association came about through the visions of Dr. Mark Kline, the TCH Physician-in-Chief (an impressive global health advocate who created BIPAI, the Baylor International Pediatric AIDS Initiative), and Mark Wallace the TCH Chief Executive Officer. Simultaneously under the leadership of Dr. Paul Klotman, Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) President and CEO (also an ardent advocate and champion of global health), we have established a unique National School of Tropical Medicine to train a new generation of healthcare professionals in this area.2 Our tropical medicine clinic at the Ben Taub General Hospital (also linked with BCM) has opened and already we are seeing patients with Chagas disease, cysticercosis, and elephantiasis. We believe that we have uncovered a hidden burden of neglected tropical diseases in Texas!3 This year's annual meeting in Philadelphia has been extraordinary for a number of reasons. This afternoon, I learned from Karen Goraleski (American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene [ASTMH] Executive Director) that we have broken all meeting attendance records to date. I want to use this opportunity to thank Karen for her extraordinary leadership in her first year with ASTMH, as well as the hard work of Judy DeAcetis and the rest of the Sherwood staff. The coming year will be an exciting one with Dr. James Kazura as your new President. I hope to use this evening's ASTMH Presidential Address to highlight three important elements of tropical medicine that our Society must consider as we enter the second decade of this new century. First, I will address important aspects of tropical diseases that go beyond their health impact and examine tropical infections in a larger context of their economic and geopolitical effects. Second, given this level of global importance I want to call on the tropical disease community to consider a broad and “audacious” goal to eliminate the tropical infections affecting the world's poor. Finally, I hope to highlight a new opportunity we have to address tropical disease elimination goals as a means to implement international science diplomacy.