A New Member of the Family

With the publication of the first issue of TR, I am making the transition to pediatrician. Like all good pediatricians, I will strive to be a wise, caring, and gentle soul, able to offer advice, encouragement, and reassurance to the parents as the baby grows. I will be a source of calm and cheerfulness and will help the baby’s parents if ever they should call.

So who, in this expanding and bustling family of ACR publications, are the proud parents? I think, dear reader, that you know the answer. The proud parents are you. This is your magazine, truly a publication of rheumatologists, by rheumatologists, and for rheumatologists. It will grow and prosper all the more as ACR and ARHP members participate in its upbringing, support its development, and, most importantly, become loyal and avid readers.

Helping Baby Grow up Healthy and Strong

To meet the goals of TR, I would like its content to emanate from the members of the ACR and ARHP who can contribute by providing ideas for articles, serving as authors, and assisting writers by offering their honest and forthright opinions for background and quotation. The more the content of TR reflects the important issues in rheumatology—patient care, practice management, and the changing political and economic landscape—the more relevant and lively TR will be.

Many years ago, a book by the title Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex* *But Were Afraid to Ask, shot to the top of the New York Times best-seller list and became the basis of a very funny Woody Allen movie. The title was a bit long and cumbersome but it was remarkably apt. The title conveyed a great truth about sex but the point is general. There is much that people don’t know, and about what they don’t know, people are too afraid to ask.

We never seriously entertained as a title for the new publication, What You Always Wanted to Know about Rheumatology* *But Were Afraid to Ask, but the name has merit. In establishing the goals for the new publication, the ACR is saying, “Please ask.”

With this first issue of TR, the ACR’s new baby has arrived. The baby is stirring, opening its eyes, and gazing around. So far, there has been no screaming, and I think that I can detect even a little smile on its face.

The ACR has high aspirations for its baby. Let us be good parents. Let us a raise a wonderful child together.