The Annual AAP/ASCI/APSA Joint Meeting

AAP/ASCI/APSA Joint Meeting
Image: joinmeeting.org

For more than three decades, Michael Simons has been working in medicine. A graduate of the Yale School of Medicine, Dr. Simons has spent many years teaching and studying medical topics such as cardiovascular biology. Michael Simons has been welcomed into several professional organizations, including the Association of American Physicians (AAP).

Since 1885, the AAP has been committed to promoting physician-led research in all fields relating to health and medicine. As part of this mission, the AAP hosts a joint annual meeting with the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and the American Physician Scientists Association (APSA).

The meeting gives physician-scientists the opportunity to present and hear new discoveries in the field and collaborate with one another. The 2018 AAP/ASCI/APSA joint meeting is scheduled for April 20-22 at the Fairmont Chicago Millennium Park in Illinois. For more information, visit www.the-asci.org.

How the Jackson-Vanik Amendment Rescued Russian Jews

 

Michael Simons, Yale
Image: medicine.yale.edu

Dr. Michael Simons is the founding director of Yale University School of Medicine’s Cardiovascular Research Center and Yale’s R.W. Berliner Professor of Medicine and Cell Biology. His extensive professional background includes authoring numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals and medical textbooks, as well as lecturing around the world. Born in the former Soviet Union, Dr. Michael Simons is a naturalized United States citizen who emigrated in the 1970s as one of the Russian Jews welcomed to the country under the Jackson-Vanik Amendment.

An amendment to the Trade Act of 1974, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment was signed into law by Pres. Gerald R. Ford the following year. It was designed to address the human rights situation in the Soviet Union, which had all but forbidden the emigration of its Jewish citizens. The “refuseniks” were subject to routine persecution in their homeland.

After Sen. Jacob Javits of New York proposed tying trade with the Soviet Union to the issue of Jewish emigration, Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, along with Reps. Charles Vanik and Wilbur Mills, put their names to the Congressional bill. As passed, the amendment stated that any non-market economy nation would need to permit free emigration across its borders in exchange for enjoying a normalized trading relationship with the United States.

In 1975, only about 13,000 Soviet Jews were able to emigrate. Four years later, more than 50,000 successfully left for new lives in the West and Israel, where they continue to contribute their education, dedication, and talents.

An Early History of the Arsenal-Tottenham Rivalry

 

Arsenal and Tottenham
Image: bleacherreport.com

The R.W. Berliner Professor of Medicine and Cell Biology at the Yale University School of Medicine, Dr. Michael Simons graduated cum laude from Yale in the 1980s. His distinguished work as a physician and researcher focuses on cardiovascular conditions. In his free time, Dr. Michael Simons is interested in sports, and is a devoted follower of the Arsenal football club.

The club’s origins date back to 1886, when a group of workers at the Woolwich Arsenal Armament Factory banded together as a team. They originally called themselves the Dial Square, in reference to a sundial emblem on one of the Woolwich factories. They later become the Royal Arsenal. From the beginning, the Arsenal, or the Gunners, played in donated red shirts, giving rise to the cry, “Come on, you Reds!”

The Arsenal’s most famous rival, the blue-and-white-clad Tottenham Hotspur–known to fans simply as the Spurs–also enjoy a long history, having formed in 1882. Since 1950, the Gunners and the Spurs have faced off in the same league for every season but one.

The first match, a friendly one, between the Arsenal and Tottenham, took place in November 1887, when the Arsenal were still based in Plumstead. In 1909, the two clubs really faced off as rivals for the first time, with the Arsenal winning 1-0.

The heat turned up in 1913, when the Arsenal relocated to Highbury in North London. Now only a few miles apart, the two clubs began the fiery rivalry that continues to this day.