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As the death toll approaches 600K people worldwide, one must consider why were we not better prepared for this type of outbreaks. We all believe it was coming someday, but our decision makers did not care for that. Moreover, it seems that instead of learning to play ball together, the political world has decided to play different games, with different rules (or with no rules). Fortunately, the medical and scientific world has decided to do otherwise, and different joint initiatives have been mounted to search for an effective treatment and vaccine for covid-19. As scientists, we must join to achieve objectives for the collective good. We cannot forget one main lesson from covid-19: together, we can reach higher. Fierce competition and dubious strategies to be the first one to publish data is a less effective strategy for the common good. One must not forget that covid-19 is not the only challenge the scientific world faces. We must build larger and better consortia so that we van understand and treat different human pathologies, uniting fundamental investigation with clinical practice. The often said (but rarely used) expression, “from the bench to the bed side” must resonate now more than never. This is a key mission of the European Society for Clinical Investigation, your Society, and we should all work together towards that objective. We need more members, more colleagues to join us and make us a stronger and worldwide spread Society.
The covid-19 era also saw an enormous flooding of publications on the topic, most of them of dubious quality. The biomedical community lost time performing “clinical trials” that lacked proper controls and methodology, producing data that, in many cases, was not usable. In other cases, data was not properly obtained and interpreted, creating papers that later had to be withdrawn. And more importantly, science is dangerously mixing with politics, and often they are in opposite sides. This leads to an anti-science momentum that is dangerous to the world. Science and technology play an important role in the improvement of our life quality of the centuries. Turning back the clock and rejecting science and technology is a very dangerous game of unpredictable consequences.
Covid-19 has also changed the way scientific meetings are organized. Because of this, from September 20-30, 2020, we will have our “ESCI Virtual Meeting - covid19 edition”, that replaces the presential meeting, that we hope to organize in June 2021 in Bari, Italy. For this virtual meeting, we have invited ALL abstract presenters to confirm if they still want to present their work, this type as short or flash webinars in this virtual meeting, combined with plenary talks focusing on covid-19. Everything will be organized as recorded webinars, so participants can go back and watch again, posting questions to the speakers to be answered later. We will combine this with addresses from the ESCI Presidency, the European Journal of Clinical Investigation (EJCI) editor in chief and the local organizer of the next ESCI meeting in Bari. We will also include a couple webinars for young scientists. Two good news: the event is free, only requiring previous registration, and the confirmed abstracts will still be published in a special edition of the EJCI. This special edition will be available online, and, as always, will have a DOI.
As always, please inform us of initiatives that you would like to see implemented, or please send materials that you think are of interest to be included in our newsletter. Consider ESCI a place to discuss science at multiple levels, in which fundamental scientists can look beyond their benches and biological models towards a clinical application, and in which clinicians can look for fundamental biological explanations for disease and treatments.
We wish you good health, stay protected and protect others, and let us make good science together.
Best regards
Paulo J. Oliveira, Ph.D.
ESCI President
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