Public invited to attend a med school in miniature

By Hope Green

"When people turn on their televisions, they hear a lot of medical information in 30-second sound bites, and they don't understand what the implications are," says Randy Krauss, an instructor in MED's department of biochemistry. "But that information will have an impact on their lives."

Making sense of conflicting cholesterol studies, groundbreaking cancer research, and gene therapy controversies in the news is indeed a challenge for the average person. With that in mind, the BU School of Medicine is sponsoring Mini- Medical School, an eight-part evening program for the general public.

Beginning March 8, a team of MED professors will provide an overview of human biology and go on to discuss diseases, treatments, and other hot topics in medical research. Students will gain a deeper understanding of such phenomena as tumor biology and the workings of the brain. They will explore the Framingham Heart Study, an ongoing epidemiologic study launched in 1948, and the Human Genome Project, a worldwide effort to decipher the entire human genetic code.

For further enlightenment, students will participate in a Saturday-morning laboratory exercise and a tour of the Medical Campus.

"This program will give people a feeling of what medical school is like," says Krauss, a codirector of the series. "It also will teach them some of the different terms they hear in the media reports and encourage them to ask doctors more questions about their own health."

Nearly 50 mini-medical schools have been held around the country in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Smithsonian Associates, an educational arm of the Smithsonian Institution. NIH offered the first program to members of Congress, and medical schools turned the concept into a community service project in the 1990s.

BU's series is the first ever offered in the Boston area and the first in the country to add a lab component. This segment will take place in CityLab, a biotechnology learning center established for local high school students and their teachers. There, says Krauss, Mini-Medical School students will "get to touch and feel the equipment they see in the news clips, and really see how it works."

The participants will use a procedure called gel electrophoresis to screen a fictitious patient for sickle-cell anemia. The technique involves placing hemoglobin in an electrical field, Krauss explains. Normal hemoglobin has a different electrical charge from sickle-cell hemoglobin, and their respective charges make it possible to determine if the disease is present.

Carl Franzblau (at board) meets with Randy Krauss, a biochemistry instructor, and Patty Sterling, a first-year graduate student in the School of Medicine. Franzblau and Krauss are coordinating MED's first Mini-Medical School. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky

MED and the Smithsonian are advertising BU's Mini-Medical School throughout New England. If all goes well, the program will have an encore in a year or two, according to Carl Franzblau, MED chairman of biochemistry and associate dean of graduate medical sciences.

"I think one tends to see relatively high-priced medical care, but does not see the money spent on medical research coming to fruition," says Franzblau, who is codirecting the series with Krauss. "People need to appreciate that medical science is a long process of understanding the fundamental mechanisms of life, identifying the aberrations, and discovering how to modify them. And they need to see that there are a lot of devoted people involved in that process."

The Mini-Medical School lectures will run from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the following Wednesday evenings: March 8 and 22, April 5, 12, and 26, and May 3 and 10. Students will attend one Saturday lab session from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. on April 22, April 29, or May 6. Tuition is $80. For more information, call 638-5620 or e-mail rkrauss@bu.edu. For ticket inquiries, call 638-5665 or visit www.si.edu/tsa/national-outreach/mini-med.htm.