August 21, 2003
On and off the medical bandwagon
“The Bandwagon Effect” is the topic for the Department of Surgery’s annual Struass Lecture, set for 4 p.m., Friday, Sept. 19, in Hogness Auditorium at the Health Sciences Center.
The speaker is Dr. Layton Rikkers, A.R. Curreri professor and chair of the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Surgery. Rikkers is also editor in chief of the Annals of Surgery.
“Medical bandwagons are defined as the overwhelming acceptance of unproved but popular therapies and our history is littered with them,” he writes in an introduction to the topic. “Avoiding bandwagons in the future will depend on the practice of evidence-based medicine and the encouragement of independent, critical thinking by ourselves and by those we educate.”
Rikkers has been chair of surgery at Wisconsin since 1996. He earned a bachelor’s degree there in 1966 and then his M.D. from Stanford University in 1970. After a surgical residency at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and a research fellowship at the Royal Free Hospital in London, he was a fellow in liver surgery at Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta. He held faculty positions at the universities of Utah and Nebraska before returning to Wisconsin.
He has been a member of the editorial boards of several major surgical journals, and has been a leader in surgical orginizations. He has been chairman of the American Board of Surgery, president of the Society of Clinical Surgery and the Society for Surgery of the Alimentary Tract, and is now president of the Central Surgical Association. He has a strong interest in surgical education and has received several teaching awards during his career.
This 54th annual lecture honors the late Dr. Alfred Strauss, a 1904 UW graduate who went on to earn an M.D. degree from Rush Medical College of Chicago. As an indication of his continued interest in the UW, Strauss began sponsoring annual surgical lectureships at the School of Medicine in 1950. Today, sponsorship of the Strauss Lecture is maintained by Margery Friedlander, Strauss’ daughter.
