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"With things like the Web, we can provide Mayo Clinic-level expertise to people in our region and around the world," says Dr. Brooks Edwards '78. He serves as medical director of both Mayo Clinic's cardiac transplant program and its Mayo Clinic Health Solutions division.
EDITORIAL PHOTOGRAPHY/MAYO CLINIC ROCHESTER
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Brooks Edwards '78 is responsible for spreading the expertise of the venerable Mayo Clinic around the world. In person, however, he's a bit less buttoned-down than the stereotypical Rochester, Minn., physician. Take the enema kit in his office window with this sign: "Break glass in case of emergency."
A cardiologist, Edwards knows the value of a good laugh in reducing stress and enhancing learning. But his professional reputation goes well beyond his sense of humor: he serves as medical director of both the cardiac transplant program at the Mayo Clinic and of Mayo Clinic Health Solutions, a $250 million venture that handles licensing, publishing and one of the world's most comprehensive health Web sites.
At 50, he jokes that he hasn't gone far in life. He was born in Rochester, six blocks from his current office, when his father worked at Mayo. The family moved to St. Paul when he was 5. In kindergarten Edwards met his future wife, Terri Leonard Edwards, a pediatrician; they have three teenagers.
For college, Edwards choose nearby Macalester. He thrived in the tightknit community and close relationships with faculty. "You'd sit in class with them in the morning and have a cup of coffee with them in the Student Union in the afternoon. They really cared about us as individuals."
Despite being dyslexic, Edwards graduated magna cum laude in biology and chemistry. He returned to Rochester to attend Mayo Medical School and has remained there for nearly all his career.
"Macalester opened up possibilities--it was an international community even at that time," he says. "It exposed me to creative thinking and problem solving. Whether you're a transplant cardiologist or running a company, if you're a creative problem solver you've got a leg up."
Edwards also had an advantage in his chosen career of cardiology. His father, Jesse Edwards, was a prominent pathologist at United Hospital who specialized in heart defects and collected 35,000 heart specimens during his career. Edwards hung around his father's lab ("I was working through bags of human hearts when I was 10 years old," he says) and even served part of his medical residency under his father.
How to Interpret Medical News in the Media
Editor's note: The following is excerpted from a Mayo Clinic Women's HealthSource Q&A with Brooks Edwards '78.
The first thing to consider is whether these reports are about real people with real diseases or are preliminary results obtained from studies conducted in laboratory animals. Although animal studies provide clues about the mechanism of a particular illness or treatment, results can't be translated to humans until human trials are conducted.
Second, what kind of numbers are we talking about? Did this breakthrough occur in a half dozen people, or has it been tried in a large group of say, a thousand people?
Third, how rigorously was the trial performed? Some trials have better control of factors that could potentially bias the results. For example, a large randomized, double-blind trial (when neither the researchers nor the study participants know who's receiving the treatment being studied) is generally designed to account for biasing factors, more so than a study based on a small number of case reports.
Finally, it's also fair to ask who's sponsoring the trial. Is there a potential conflict of interest between the trial's sponsors and the results? If a trial's sponsor has a vested interested in a positive outcome, that doesn't mean that important things can't be learned, but you should probably be more skeptical than if the trial was performed at the National Institutes of Health, for example.
Medical research is in a constant state of flux, and definitive answers aren't always going to be available. Studies are limited in scope. A single study may be reported widely in the news, but to provide conclusive evidence it must be supported by other studies and be borne out over time. When a treatment has been studied only in animals, it's too early to tell whether it has practical applications for humans.
Excerpted with permission from the Mayo Clinic Women's HealthSource (c)2007. |
Edwards spends half his time directing the Mayo heart transplant program. "It's a great specialty for me. It's very hands-on. You develop a close relationship with the patients. Once somebody has a heart transplant, we take care of them forever. If they have an ingrown toenail, they come back and see us."
Edwards has extended this bedside manner well beyond his own examination rooms. When the cardiology unit did a monthly satellite broadcast titled "Cardiology Today," he put his sense of humor to work. For one segment, he dressed up as Andy Rooney of "60 Minutes" fame and for another he walked on the Great Wall of China and spoke of the "sayings of Chairman Mayo.
"It probably reflects back on my Macalester education--learning and fun don't have to be mutually exclusive," he says. "I've tried hard to pass that onto my kids--life is too short to go through it too serious. You'll die early or wish you had."
Edwards spends the other half of his time as medical director of Mayo Clinic Health Solutions, which seeks to extend the expertise of the medical colossus to ventures like telephonic services, disease and lifestyle management, print publishing and the Web. Before that, he served as medical editor of its Web site, www.mayoclinic.com, which drew about 9 million visitors in January alone.
"All of medicine is evolving to serving the needs of the patient wherever, whenever," he says. "As an institution, Mayo is expanding to be able to do that."
Although Edwards has remained close to home geographically, he is a global citizen in his professional life. He gestures at his computer screen where he has two recent e-mails about a Mayo spinoff based in Amsterdam that is developing software to manage patients with chronic conditions like diabetes. Edwards serves as chairman of the board, the CEO is in Amsterdam and much of the development work is being done in India.
"Recognizing the global world we live in has taken down barriers in my own life and career," he says. "You're not intimidated to deal with people in different countries or cultures and you can seamlessly glide through the world wherever the right people are."
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