Letter From The President
As some of you may know, at the recent meeting in Sorrento described in detail by Annamaria Colao, I was elected as the new President of the ENEA. For those of you who voted for me, many thanks, and for those of you who did not, well, I hope I can prove to you that the ENEA is in good hands. It will be remarkably difficult for Leo Hofland, the new Secretary, and myself to live up to the excellent work carried out by our previous President, Philippe Jacquet, and Secretary, Sue Webb. Under their careful guidance, and the previous Executive Committee, the ENEA has grown increasingly in size and influence, and you will see from the enclosed letter from Annamaria Colao that the recent meeting in Sorrento was the best attended yet. There was a quite remarkable attendance of members from all over the world, who supported and enjoyed a magnificent programme [Abstracts - PDF]. In addition, under the ever-careful stewardship of our Treasurer, Rolf Gaillard, our finances are increasingly healthy. It is from this position of strength that we are now making our plans for the next meeting, which is provisionally arranged for October 2006 in Athens. It is never too early to plan these meetings, and already Ezio Ghigo, Chairman of the Programme Organising Committee, has been putting together a provisional programme with the POC, and Nick Thalassinos and Stelianos Tsagarakis have been arranging conference facilities and hotel accommodation. It will certainly be difficult to surpass our best ever meeting, but I am sure that the ENEA will become even more important in world neuroendocrinology. With the accession of the new states to the European Union in June 2004, Europe is set to be a large and potent force in international science and clinical medicine, and the ENEA wishes to be part of this.
Enough with triumphalism, I would just like to stress to you that both I and the whole of the Executive Committee are still fundamentally the servants of our membership, and hope to reflect your views and aspirations. We seek to represent the very best of basic science and clinical neuroendocrinology, throughout Europe and beyond. Indeed, it was recently suggested that we should incorporate on the Executive Committee a member for International Relations, bearing in mind the large number of people outside of mainland Europe who have attended our recent meeting [statistics - PDF]. We do indeed welcome membership from anyone, anywhere in the world, and I would be very pleased to receive your views on this innovation. It cannot occur without a change to our Constitution, voted on at our AGM, but I would appreciate hearing any of your own views on this subject. I would also emphasise that we hope to work well and harmoniously with all of our sister organisations, including the International Society of Neuroendocrinology, the Pituitary Society, and the European Federation of Endocrine Societies. The latter is now set to move momentously to a formal society itself, with individual membership and annual meetings. I believe that this will drastically change the perspective of endocrinology in Europe, and I personally greatly welcome this innovation. However, it provides a new challenge for us to decide whether we wish to continue with our own biennial meetings in collaboration with, but separate in time and place from, the fledgling European Endocrine Association, or whether our meeting should be specifically combined with them. There are certainly arguments for both, and I would again appreciate any views that you may wish to send to me, by post or e-mail, which we can use to inform our discussions.
Finally, I would like to emphasise that you can read this Newsletter either directly by post or on our improved website, which is now in the capable hands of Yona Greenman.
Wishing you all the best for a happy and successful year.
ASHLEY GROSSMAN