Abstract
Throughout all his professional life, Victor A. McKusick trained students from all over the world interested in medical genetics. His scientific contributions on the development of modern medical genetics (and on its transition towards genetic medicine) have been so numerous and widespread that I have made the deliberate choice to focus, using my personal memories, on the influence he had within Europe through his teaching at the courses of the European School of Genetic Medicine, which Victor founded in 1988 in collaboration with many American and European colleagues. After analyzing in detail the contributions made by Victor in developing the school, at the end of this chapter, I propose to take up Victor’s legacy for training and suggest that professional and scientific international societies (not only those of human and medical genetics) should build together a common international program for training in genetics and genomics suited to their needs. A board of directors (BoD) where every interested society should have a representative will become the tool to manage this international initiative and to guarantee the necessary control of the overall administration of the courses. This initiative which I suggest to call “International Training Program in Genetics and Genomics in Memory of Victor A. McKusick” will take advantage of the experience, the competences, and the logistics developed during the past 24 years by the European School of Genetic Medicine. The characterizing features of such a program will be:
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Acknowledgments
I am very grateful to Dr. Anne McKusick for correcting some of my personal memories; to Mr. Matteo Dutto, my collaborator at EGF, for preparing the data presented in Fig. 17.1 through 17.7 and Tables 17.1 and 17.2; and to all my colleagues who have been teaching at the European School of Genetic Medicine (in particular to Drs. Rando Allikmets: rla22@columbia,edu and Bart Leroy) for very useful discussions and very useful suggestions on how to set up the “International Training Program in Genetics and Genomics in Memory of Victor A. McKusick.” A special acknowledgment is due to the March of Dimes and to the European Society of Human Genetics for their support to the courses of the European School of Genetic Medicine. Note added in proofAs I anticipated while writing this article, the survival of the European School of Genetic Medicine is jeopardized by the heavy economical crisis which is hitting Italy and Europe in general. Under these conditions EGF had to reduce already the number of coursers of the school and will have to close, at least for the time being, the temporary venue of the “G. Levi and V.A.McKusick EuroMediterranean Center for Genetics and Medicine” in Ronzano-Bologna. Under these conditions I want to renew my appeal to all the persons interested in the idea of internationalization of advanced training in genetics/genomics, to get in touch with me in order to find possible solutions and collaborations capable of launching as soon as possible the Board of Directors described in the text.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2012 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Romeo, G. (2012). The Influence of Victor A. McKusick on the Development of Training in Medical Genetics in Europe and in the World. In: Dronamraju, K., Francomano, C. (eds) Victor McKusick and the History of Medical Genetics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1677-7_17
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-1677-7_17
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4614-1676-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-4614-1677-7
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)