DNAprint Genomics (DNAG)

[mingwan0]

A recent Moffitt article. Hope we tie up with this guy:

http://www.tampatrib.com/FloridaMetro/MGA9F5S1ARD.html

Moffitt's New Doctor Leaps Borders To Save Women
By GARY HABER [e-mail]
Published: Mar 1, 2004

TAMPA - Sean Tedjarati turns on the computer, looking for the lecture he gave his fellow oncologists on women's health care in developing countries.

It reveals a lot about Tedjarati that, when the computer screen flickers to life, the first image from his presentation is not an anonymous X-ray or a chart, dispassionately listing mortality rates.

It's a photograph of a woman from the Philippines whom Tedjarati treated for cervical cancer.

The Pap test has tamed cervical cancer in the United States. But around the world, this treatable disease kills as many as 1 million women a year.

That's a statistic Tedjarati, a gynecologic oncologist at H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, aims to erase.

His fellow physicians call him a go-getter who'll bring major changes to Moffitt, one of the nation's leading cancer centers but an institution some say can do more on the international stage.

``Five years from now, you'll see that things have changed globally, and they will have changed because of him,'' says James Fiorica, who directs Moffitt's gynecologic oncology program, and the man who recruited Tedjarati.

At 36 - the curtain call for a professional athlete's career but Act I for a cancer physician - Tedjarati is a Nobel Prize laureate. Tedjarati, who was born in Tehran, Iran, and grew up in France and Montreal, shared the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1999 for his work in Africa and China as a member of Doctors Without Borders.

With his international experience and an oncology fellowship from M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Tedjarati could have gone to any cancer program in the country. He was enticed to come to Moffitt because the cancer center promised he would not only be able to treat patients and do research here, but also launch cancer screening and treatment programs around the world.

It's a cause close to Tedjarati's heart.

``How can you progress as a population when you don't have access to basic health care?'' he says. ``It's about the nobility of a person.''

Helping Women In Costa Rica

In the six months Tedjarati has been at Moffitt, he has helped engineer the largest international initiative in the center's history. He brokered an agreement with the Arias Foundation for Peace and Human Progress under which Moffitt physicians, and students and faculty from the University of South Florida School of International Affairs, will collaborate on a program to improve the lives of women in Costa Rica.

The idea is about more than medical care. Moffitt physicians, led by Tedjarati, will screen and treat women for cervical cancer. USF international affairs specialists will develop literacy and environmentally friendly economic development programs.

For Tedjarati, it represents the perfect blending of twin passions - women's health issues and international human rights - that have driven him ever since, at age 18, he volunteered in West Africa with the Canadian International Development Agency.

In the two decades since, through medical school in Connecticut and residencies in internal medicine and obstetrics and gynecology at Ohio State University medical school, Tedjarati has traveled to more than 60 countries on medical missions.

The personal touches in Tedjarati's shoe box of an office attest to his globe-trotting. On one wall hangs a collage of photographs from the Nobel Prize ceremony. On another wall, there is a scroll, written in Chinese characters, identifying Tedjarati as an honorary citizen of Anhui province in China for his work there.

Faith Prompts Action

Tedjarati attributes his commitment to human rights to his Baha'i faith.

``Service to human rights has to be part of our lives, not just an afterthought,'' he says. ``It's more than a simple feeling of charity. I hate that word, because that depicts a person in a position of desperation. Instead, I think of it in terms of nobility and elevation.''

Still, in a world of grueling 16-hour days, filled with treating patients and doing research, it takes a remarkable person to do what Tedjarati does, Fiorica says.

``You have to have the willpower and the drive to make this happen,'' Fiorica says. ``He will succeed at this, mark my words.''

Johnathan Lancaster, an assistant professor at Moffitt and medical director of the Lifetime Cancer Screening program, works with Tedjarati on Moffitt's OB/GYN team. The two have become good friends.

They are the same age, and each arrived at Moffitt in the summer, Lancaster from a fellowship at Duke University Medical Center.

``If you asked me for one word that describes Sean, I'd say intense,'' Lancaster says. ``He's a great partner, he's incredibly hard-working and 100 percent committed to everything he does.''

Tedjarati already has left his mark on Moffitt, Lancaster says.

His friend and colleague falls into that ``handful of people who come into your life where retroactively, or, if you're lucky, you realize at the time, they are going to greatly impact your life,'' Lancaster says.

The people of Costa Rica will soon find out the same.