50th Short Course

Celebrating 50 Years and Looking Forward

The morning panel discussion.

More than 150 people attended Biomedical
Science and Medicine in the Next 50 Years,
held in Bar Harbor, Me.

On July 31, Johns Hopkins and the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, celebrated the 50th Annual Short Course on Medical and Experimental Mammalian Genetics with a day-long symposium, "Biomedical Science and Medicine in the Next 50 Years."

David Valle, the Henry J. Knott
Professor and Director of the
McKusick-Nathans Institute of
Genetic Medicine.

Leading scientists gathered to look back on the breakthroughs of the past 50 years and speculate on the changes to come in the next 50.

With a desire to improve genetics education and bridge the gap between mouse and human genetics, the late Victor A. McKusick of Johns Hopkins and John Fuller, a researcher and director of the Jackson Laboratory’s training program, sketched out plans for the course over dinner one night in 1959.

Joe Palca of NPR moderating
a panel discussion.

Since then the Short Course has trained more than 4,000 aspiring medical geneticists from around the world.

Janet Davidson Rowley, Richard Axel, Andrew Feinberg, and
Rudolph Jaenisch.

Symposium attendees included Jackson Laboratory professor
emeritus Thomas Roderick, his wife Hilda, Anne McKusick and
Jackson Laboratory professor emeritus Douglas Coleman.

Joe Palca of NPR, former NIH director Elias Zerhouni,
Wylie Burk of the University of Washington, Kenneth
Weiss of Penn State University and David Valle.