Leading by example: pastors, mentors, physician-scientists, and the ASCI
Authors: Peter Tontonoz
Journal: Journal of Clinical Investigation (2014)

Colleagues and friends, it has been my honor and privilege to serve as president of the ASCI for the past year. Thank you for this incredible opportunity. Throughout my time on the Council, I have been enriched by my interactions with the remarkable physician-scientist colleagues with whom I have had the pleasure to serve. I have been inspired by your dedication to academic medicine and to the Society. 

I have also witnessed the extraordinary dedication and sheer competence that John Hawley and Karen Guth bring to the day-to-day operations of the Society and the JCI. They make the jobs of the president and the Council easy, and they do so with professionalism, skill, and integrity.

As I step down as president, I am confident that the scientific spirit within the Council will carry on through the leadership of incoming president Mukesh Jain and future presidents Levi Garraway and Vivian Cheung and that the new initiatives I will mention today will move forward. You are in good hands. 

In 2002, David Ginsburg gave one of the benchmark ASCI addresses of the modern era when he went meta and made a major topic of his address the choice of topics for prior ASCI presidential addresses (1). David showed a pie chart illustrating that essentially only five recurring subjects had been covered in the then-93-year history of the ASCI. When one reads through prior presidential addresses, it is indeed remarkable how constant some of the major issues confronting our profession and the Society have been over the past 100 years. 

Some of the trepidation felt by ASCI presidents as they stand here relates to the unique nature of the joint ASCI/AAP meeting. This group represents both the Young Turks and the slightly more mature Turks. My pending inauguration into the AAP tomorrow night has given me a new perspective on this dichotomy. ASCI presidents are not only addressing their peers but also their heroes. What can I possibly add that has not already been said better by luminaries like Joe Goldstein and Bob Lefkowitz — especially since some of these people are here in the room? 

Having pondered the issue for half a year and still having failed to escape the confines of David Ginsburg’s pie chart, I eventually asked myself a question that I am sure many prior orators on this stage have also posed to themselves: What makes me different from those who have gone before? Then it occurred to me that, certainly, I must be the only ASCI president in the history of the Society whose father was an Episcopal priest. Perhaps that gives me somewhat of a different perspective.

Lest you fear that I am going to blur the separation between church and society, I promise that you are not going to get a sermon. Although my father is a priest, my wife is Jewish and I am a devout atheist, so I can assure you that the take-home messages here will be strictly nonsectarian. My career in science has been influenced by a series of figures who have led and inspired by the examples they set, by their actions and their presence as much as by their formal advice. Thus, my theme today is that one of the most important things we can do as academic physicians, as individuals, and as a society, is to lead by our example.