The spirit would be tremendous as rheumatologists with one-word names like Nomid, Anca, or Cinca compete for national teams like the Rheumeroos. For the event, the Dutch would bring thousands of fans dressed in shockingly bright orange. Not to be outdone, the Brits would import squads of hooligans who look like Wayne Rooney, their vaunted striker, and root lustily for the lads from London, Leeds, or Manchester, busting heads and rampaging wildly should defeat occur (as I may remind you, it occurred in South Africa).
If you don’t think Europeans love national competition, just get near a Swede, Dane, or a Norwegian discussing a football match among them. Their rivalry is a revelation, the otherwise sober and stolid Scandinavians getting it on, reveling in woofing and trash talk of the most shocking kind, blood enflaming their otherwise pale cheeks.
While such a World Cup may sound silly, science is always competitive, albeit at the individual level. There is an “I” in Nobel Prize, which rewards individuals (usually working separately), not teams. The exception is the occasional duo like Brown and Goldstein or Hitchings and Elion. In the U.S., academic institutions like to compete over National Institutes of Health (NIH) rankings, but the strategy to climb the ladder is to recruit or bankroll top individuals. Companies, of course, compete in product development, but the metric of success (think Wall Street) is often profitability, not basic discovery.
In the global competition, rheumatology is peanuts, but a national commitment to advance research could have a galvanizing effect, inspiring students to take up science, embark on academic careers, and strive to best their counterparts overseas. To achieve that goal, the U.S. government has to mightily refuel the stimulus program and commit to a big NIH expansion to assure that American science stays on top.
In the spirit of the World Cup and the cause of American rheumatology, I would like to unfurl the banner of Bethesda, blast a vuvuzela, and make a holy racket.
Please join the din.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!
Dr. Pisetsky is physician editor of The Rheumatologist and professor of medicine and immunology at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.
