Number 1 2001
Page 2

OCTOBER 15 -20, 2000

During the Congress a meeting of representatives from the countries on the Western Pacific Rim met to decide where to have the next Conjoint Meeting. Professor Thiti Kwakpaetoon, President of the Thai Division of the I.A.P. from Bangkok offered to conduct the next meeting in Phuket in January 2003. It is hoped that delegates from Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Indonesia, Phillipines and India will attend the meeting. There will be further communications about this meeting in future News Letters. The following report on the Congress is a personal view of the Editor.

I hope it gives readers some idea of what went on at the Congress. All of the other delegates will have similar, but different experiences to relate. Everyone who participated in presenting papers at the Congress will know something of the extreme generosity of the Japanese hosts. Not only were they treated well at the scientific meetings, they also attended private functions which the Chairmen of the different sessions arranged for the speakers on their sessions.

Saturday 14/10

9.00am - 3.00pm
Attended Executive Meeting of the Council of the I.A.P.
Reported on:
• Progress for the International Congress in 2004 - as President of that Congress
• The publication of International Pathology - a News Bulletin for the past two years - as Editor of the News Bulletin. It has been published four times a year. Four editions have been in full colour. Circulation is about 17,000. In the lead-up to the Nagoya Congress there have been many articles on Japan and Japanese medicine. There have been other feature articles on Malaysia and Russia.
• Development of a Home Page for the I.A.P. The address is www.afip.org/iap/. The page contains copies of the recent News Bulletins, links to the News Letters of the various I.A.P. Divisions, links to the National Pathology Organisations and other items useful for anatomical pathologists. This site may become a truly international reference point for Anatomical Pathologists. If this is achieved, the page may be able to attract paid advertising. Attended a select dinner hosted by the American Registry of Pathology at the Hilton Hotel.

Above: IAP Executive Meeting, Nagoya 14/10/00 L-R. Kon Muller (Australia), Robin Cooke (Editor), Fred Silva (Secretary, USCAP), Cecilia Fenoglio-Preiser (Past President), Ben Goodman (Vice President for North America and President of USCAP). Photo by Osamu Matsubara

Thiti Kwakpaetoon, (President - Thai Division).

Interstitial Lung Disease and Lung Transplantation: Sun Hi Jung (Korea), Koichi Honma (Japan), San Ho Cho (Korea), Henry Tazelaar (USA), Armando Fraire (USA), Belinda Clarke (Australia), Toshiaki Manabe (Organiser, Japan), Paul OÕHori (USA), Phil Cagle (USA)

Update on Inflammatory Bowel Disease. Michael Dixon (Leeds, England), Jeremy Jass (Brisbane, Australia), Heidrun Rotterdam (New York, USA), Hidenobu Watanabe (Niigata, Japan), Robert Riddell (Canada), Y.Saitoh (a radiologist, Asahikawa, Japan)

Sunday 15/10

9.00am - 1.00pm
Attended the Council Meeting of the I.A.P. and gave abbreviated reports on the Executive Report. 5.00pm - 6.30pm
Attended the Opening Ceremony. The Congress was officially opened by Prince Hitachi (brother of the Emperor, Akihito). He was accompanied by his wife, Princess Hanako. After the official ceremony, they mingled with the delegates for the display of dancing, and light refreshments. For about an hour they met delegates, and posed for photographs with delegates amidst a barrage of flashing cameras.

Monday 16/10

9.00am - 1.00pm
Examined the facilities for the Congress with a view to the meeting in 2004. Examined the Poster Display and the Trade Display.
1.00pm - 2.30pm
Attended a meeting of representatives from the following Divisions - Japan, Australia/New Zealand, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore and India to arrange a South East Asian Regional Meeting in Phuket in Thailand in 2003.
3.00pm - 6.30pm
Presented a paper on Parathyroid Pathology in the Short Course chaired and arranged by Professors Shinichiro Ushigome (President of the Japanese Division of the IAP) and Steven Silverberg (Professor of Pathology, University of Maryland and author of a number of successful textbooks on surgical pathology and gynaecological pathology). The Short Course was entitled "Intraoperative Pathology Consultation".
6.30pm
Attended a Tempura dinner at a traditional Japanese restaurant hosted by Professor and Mrs Mikihiro Shamoto (Professor of Pathology, Nagoya University and one of the Congress Organisers).

From top: Prince Hitachi and Princess Hanako meeting delegates after the Prince formally opened the Congress. Professor Rikuo Machinami, President of the Congress on the right and Professor Shinichiro Ushigome, President of the Japanese Division of the IAP on the left.

Some of the world famous Lymphoma Pathologists.L-R. Shigeo Mori (University of Tokyo), Hans Muller-Hermelink (Wurzburg, Germany), Harald Stein (Free University of Berlin, Germany), David Mason (Oxford University, England), Elaine Jaffe (National Institutes of Health, Washington, USA), Jaques Diebold (Hotel Dieu, Paris).

Tuesday 17/10

8.00am - 9.00am
Photographed selected Trade Display booths and discussed their participation in Brisbane in 2004. 9.00am - 12.30pm
Attended the session "An Introduction to Digital Imaging and Telepathology" by Bruce Williams and Florabel Mullick from the A.F.I.P. They have a very big grant from the U.S. Government to develop this facility. They are at the forefront in developing a worldwide network.
2.00pm - 3.00pm
Attended the Keynote Speaker lecture by Haruo Sugano (formerly Professor of Pathology at the National Cancer Institute, Tokyo). He was introduced by Jeremy Jass, Brisbane.
3.00pm - 5.00pm
Attended the second part of the Telepathology Session.
5.00pm - 6.30pm
Attended the Dako-sponsored Symposium on HER2.
7.00pm - 9.00pm
Attended the formal dinner at the Tokyu Hotel hosted by Professor Shinichiro Ushigome for the members of the Congress Organising Committee and foreign VIPs.

Wednesday 18/10

9.00am - 10.00am
Meeting with the two Marketing Managers of Dako (a company that manufactures monoclonal antibodies used for diagnosis and treatment) from Copenhagen and Jim Crimmins, (Business Manager of the I.A.P.) to discuss Dako's financial support of I.A.P. meetings, the News Bulletin and the web page.
10.00am - 12.30pm
Attended the Environmental Pathology Symposium on Arsenical Poisoning and Cancer. The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington has a brief from the U.S. Government to investigate environmental pollution of all sorts - industrial as well as a result of warfare - throughout the world. These investigations are very interesting and they are uncovering a wide range of abnormalities. One topic was arsenic poisoning of drinking water in India and of coal in some mines in South China.
2.00pm - 3.00pm
Attended the Keynote Lecture on Immunohistochemistry by David Mason from the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford. His international reputation has been built around his studies on Malignant Lymphoma. He will be the R.C.P.A. Visiting Professor in Australia in 2001, so I made sure that he has Brisbane firmly included in his itinerary. (He is also keenly interested in medical history).
3.00pm - 6.30pm
Presented a paper on "Pig Bel - Enteritis Necroticans in Papua New Guinea" in the workshop entitled "Infectious and other Regional Diseases in Asia". I reported the first description of the pathology of this disease and later on had the opportunity to describe the pathology of the identical condition produced experimentally in guinea pigs by Greg Lawrence working at the Queensland Institute of Medical Research.
7.00pm - 9.00pm
Attended the Nagoya Night for all delegates.

Bob Eckstein, Roma Cooke and Neal Walker at the Congress Dinner at the Nagoya Castle Hotel.

Shigeo Mori and Robin Cooke co-chairing the workshop ÒTalk-In: Messages to Young PathologistsÓ

Tempura Restaurant dinner, Monday evening. Hosted by Miki and Miho Shamoto.

Professor Bernie Ackerman and Robin Cooke in front of one of the posters that featured past contributions of Japanese pathologists to advances in medicine.

Thursday 19/10

9.00am - 12.30pm
Attended part of the sessions on "Skin Tumours" by Bernard Ackerman and Cystic and Pseudocystic Tumours of the Pancreas chaired by Gunter Kloppel (Professor of Pathology at Kiel ; Editor of VirchowÕs Archives and Past President of the European Association of Pathology). I discussed with him during the tea break the upcoming meeting in Berlin in September, 2001 (which I am advertising in the News Bulletin) and linking Virchow's Archives to the I.A.P. home page.
1.00pm - 5.00pm
I joined a tour of the Toyota Company Assembly Factory and a display of their new models. I wrote an article on the Toyota Motor Company in the News Bulletin and suggested that a special tour of the factory should be made available for the delegates. In the event, it turned out to be a very popular tour. At the display of new models I sat in the driver's seat of the Prius, their newly developed hybrid car whose motor is partly powered by petrol and partly by electricity from a bank of re-chargeable batteries.
7.00pm - 9.00pm
Conference Dinner at the Nagoya Castle Hotel with the view of the stunningly beautiful floodlit Nagoya Castle through the floor to ceiling glass windows of the dining room. During the dinner we were entertained by a group of Japanese drummers. It was interesting that the last concert in this yearÕs Brisbane Festival featured a group of Australian artists performing a Japanese drumming routine. My wife and I attended this performance on our return from Nagoya.

Friday 20/10

9.00am - 12.15pm
Co-chaired a workshop entitled "Talk-in: Messages to Young Pathologists". My co-chair and Organiser of the session was Professor Shigeo Mori of Tokai University, a private medical university in Tokyo. He was chairman of the Scientific Program Committee for the Congress. I presented a paper on ÒA Method of Continuing Anatomical Pathology Education (CAPE) - using a CD Rom formatÓ.

The other speakers were David Davies (President of the R.C.P.A.), James Underwood (President of the British Division of the I.A.P. and Vice President of the RCPath), Anna Kadar (Dean of Semmelweiss University, Budapest and President of the I.A.P.)., Antonio Llombart-Bosch (Professor and Head of the Department of Pathology, Valencia, Spain ; Chairman of the Education Committee of the I.A.P. and a former President of the I.A.P.), Jag Butany (Chief of Surgical Pathology, General Hospital, Toronto, Canada), Tseng-tong Kuo (Chief of Surgical Pathology, Chang Gung Memorial Hospital, Taipei), M. Kuroda (a senior pathologist from Tokai University, Tokyo), Konradin Metze (a Professor of Pathology from Sao Paulo, Brazil), Guillermo Herrera (Professor and Head of a very large teaching hospital Pathology Department of the Louisiana State University in Shreveport, USA), J. Hata (from Keio University School of Medicine, Tokyo and President of the Japanese Association of Pathology), Alex Chang (from New Zealand, now a Professor at the Prince of Wales Hospital, Hong Kong and Thithi Kwokpaetoon, Professor of Pathology, Bangkok, Thailand).

1.00pm - 2.00pm
Following the Closing Ceremony, I was invited to attend a farewell luncheon at the Convention Centre main restaurant for about ten members of the Japanese Organising Committee and about ten foreigners. The cuisine was exquisite, to match the significance of this special occasion.

Sat/Sunday 21/10 - 22/10

Together with thirty other conference delegates from many parts of the world, we took a post-Congress tour of the Hakone - Mt Fuji National Park. This gave us an opportunity to see some of the countryside around Nagoya and to experience the atmosphere of this popular Japanese resort area. It also allowed us to mix socially and more intimately than is possible during the formal Congress with this group of people. Saturday was fine and we had a clear view of Mt Fuji from a distance. The rice was being hung out to dry, persimmon trees were laden with ripe yellow fruit. The small garden plots were planted with all kinds of vegetables. Low, neatly pruned teatrees were planted in rows. Domestic gardens were bursting with multi-coloured flowers, and artistically adorned by lovingly tended and neatly pruned trees and shrubs.

The trees covering the slopes of the mountains were beginning to turn into various shades of yellow, brown and red, heralding the approach of autumn. On Sunday we drove from our comfortable, modern holiday resort hotel in Hakone up the steep slopes of Mt Fuji to the fifth station, at about 2305 metres altitude. From here there are walking tracks to the summit and around the edge of the crater. Many people who do this walk to the summit develop "mountain sickness" from the low oxygen pressure. The mountain was covered by thick, fast moving cloud. As we were descending, suddenly the cloud cleared and we could see the summit from close quarters.

Responding to the excited shouts of his passengers, the driver stopped the bus to allow them to tumble out in an orderly, but urgent evacuation. We then viewed and photographed the scree slopes of the old volcano in the few minutes before the curtain of cloud rolled across the landscape and again blotted out the view. This was undoubtedly the high point of the tour in all meanings of the term. Later on we visited the spectacular water falls at Shiraito. The delicate streams of water that constitute the waterfalls are responsible for the name Òwhite string fallsÓ. After the falls we all settled into our seats for the long drive back to Nagoya. We arrived at our hotel at 8.00pm.

Editor

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