Afterthoughts about Edinburgh and Epidemiology

Tangible reminders of my brief interlude in Edinburgh are a definite dip in my bank balance (I didn't stint on expenses, traveled in comfort); a 2012 calendar with fine photos of Edinburgh; firm handshakes, likely for the last time, with old friends from many countries; and a few stimulating and memorable talks. It's unfair to compare this IEA/WCE with any of the previous meetings because I was absent without leave from enough to count as a part-timer. On balance, I thought it was probably the best organized IEA congress I've ever attended, and a few plenary talks were outstanding. Passing judgement from Australia without having attended, Colin Butler criticized lack of vision about the future, but I think several talks I heard were all about future implications, notably the two opening plenary lectures by George Davey Smith on how we can cope with implacable limitations of epidemiological science and Raj Bhopal on the consequences of the ethnic transformations produced by the massive migrations of recent generations of humans. Very few epidemiologists seem even to be aware of this dramatic demographic, social, and economic phenomenon, but its reverberations are likely to shape the course of human affairs for many generations. I'd like to be beginning my career now rather than ending it: I can see limitless scope for research along frontiers of several disparate disciplines and branches of scholarly activity. I think it's fascinating, for instance, that so much of the greatest literature in English being written at present emanates from writers whose roots are in the Indian Subcontinent (although most are part of the diaspora). Why is this? I notice too that leading scientists, scholars, surgeons, engineers, have names that reveal their ethnic origin in that same region, or in SE or East Asia, although they may have grown up and been educated in UK, USA, Sweden or Germany. I'd like to be a population geneticist 100 years from now as the genes mix and mingle more, and try to trace genetic traits that have contributed to this flourishing of excellence. I'm sure it comes back to the fact that human progress, like the origin of species, thrives on diversity. There will be wonderful opportunities to observe and study this in the next 100 years. That's a grand prospect, some compensation for all the troubles facing humans and other living creatures in our over-populated and polluted planet. I hope the young comers were listening carefully, and heed what Raj Bhopal was saying at the Edinburgh World Congress of Epidemiology.