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Michael Worobey of the UA ecology and evolutionary biology department will debate issues surrounding a possible swine flu epidemic.

By Jeff Harrison, University Communications
July 6, 2009

University of Arizona biologist Michael Worobey, whose investigations on the evolution of HIV and swine flu have garnered international attention, will appear at an event in New York that focuses on two of the most important medical issues of the day.

The event, "Breakthroughs," is billed as an evening of conversation with a group of researchers, policymakers and journalists. Two panels will be moderated by science journalist and author Paul Hoffman, who was the editor for Discover magazine and now hosts Great Minds of Science on public television.

The July 14 event will give those attending a chance to hear from Worobey, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, and currently the only American researcher involved in an important new study of the evolution of swine flu.

The event will be held at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City. The Rubin houses collections from the Himalaya region in Asia. The event is hosted by Big Think a global online forum that connects people and ideas.

One of the two panels, "The Personal Genome: What We Know Now," centers on the sequencing of the three billion base pairs of all 30,000 genes in the human genome. 

This accomplishment has set medical science on an accelerating path to understanding the role that specific genes play in various kinds of cancers, Alzheimer's, schizophrenia and other diseases. 

And the decoding of the human genome is helping scientists understand who we humans really are and what aspects of our behavior might be shaped more by nature than by nurture.

The panelists include:

• Francis S. Collins, formerly director of the National Human Genome Research Institute; co-decoder of the 3 billion DNA base pairs of the human genome.
• Esther Dyson, futurist, entrepreneur, philanthropist; one of the first ten people in the world to have her entire genome sequenced and made public.
• Boonsri Dickinson, a young editor at Discover magazine who asked three "home test" companies to analyze her genetic susceptibility to disease.
• Tara Matise, computational geneticist at Rutgers University who is currently working on the genetics of fertility.

The second panel is "Swine Flu and the Next Pandemic." Before there were large urban centers, a new virus might crop up, wipe out an entire village and then die out for lack of anyone else nearby to infect.

With billions of people laced together by air traffic and other transportation, new viruses will inevitably appear and spread rapidly across continents and oceans.

Panelists will address questions about preparation for the next pandemic, the level of public-health measures, vaccines and drug development and whether officials and the public overreacted to swine flu. Worobey will discuss where swine flu originated. Other panelists include:

• Barry Bloom, former dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, chair of the Technical and Research Advisory Committee to the Global Programme on Malaria at the World Health Organization
• Jeff Koplan, former director of the Centers for Disease Control, vice president for Global Health at Emory University
• Peter Palese, chairman of the microbiology department at Mt. Sinai Medical Center; expert on infectious viral diseases