Some people see the Internet as a way to make money.
Others think of it as a great medium for connecting individuals or for promoting their own points of view. Dr. LaPorte, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh, is striving to use the Internet to bring information about disease and public health to people in developing nations. On a shoestring, he has forged the Global Health Network, a collaboration among public-health specialists around the world. The group recently launched an Internet-based course in epidemiology aimed at bolstering public health in poorer nations. But he has irked the editors of conventional medical journals by repeatedly asserting that printed journals will be the dinosaurs of 21st-century science.