U of A’s infectious disease department celebrates 50 years
Dr. George Goldsand remembers when infectious disease wasn’t an established medical discipline. When he returned to Edmonton in 1967 from training with a specialist in Pittsburgh, he was one of the first infectious disease specialists in Canada.
Goldsand founded the infectious disease department at the University of Alberta Medical School the same year.
At a special lecture Friday morning, students, faculty and other guests gathered to commemorate the department’s 50th anniversary. Dr. Lynora Saxinger and Dr. Mark Joffe touched on a wide array of topics from the discipline’s history, including the success of disease eradication and threats like the resurgence of vaccinepreventable diseases.
“It’s a little bit like a grandparent seeing a whole flock of grandchildren that have done very well, and have really built a viable, exciting area that continues to evolve and makes a fairly major contribution, I think, to health care and medical education,” said Goldsand.
He says when the department was founded, the prevailing view in medicine was that infectious diseases were on their way out, thanks to innovations in antibiotics.
There were others who started to recognize that the microbes that caused so many diseases were living creatures that could adapt and avoid being killed by the new drugs. Goldsand and his colleagues were among them.
Goldsand says one of the biggest changes he experienced was the advent of HIV infection, which changed the role of his profession in a dramatic way. He says the rise of rapid travel also affected his field.
“In the days when I got (started), people weren’t flying from one corner of the Earth (to another) in less than a day,” he said.
One of the biggest modern challenges is what Goldsand calls the disease of medical progress. He says that infections that come from things like artificial heart valves, brain shunts or artificial hips and knees can be difficult to treat.
“Those things always carry the risk of infection,” he said. “But we know that when you put a foreign body into our tissues, the normal mechanisms to resist infection don’t work as well in the presence of the foreign body.”
Goldsand says the research that came out of his department was possible because they assembled a talented team of clinicians and compares it to the difference between a hockey team counting on one player for success, versus building a strong team around that player.
“Connor McDavid (would) continue to win the scoring title, but the team won’t win any Stanley Cups.”