We invite you to join us in the continuous dialogue and collaboration between scientists, physicians, healthcare professionals, individuals and companies who have dedicated their life work to combat the growing danger of today's complex diseases. We know very intimately the hard and often overwhelming work physicians deal with everyday. Healing and preventing disease has become an enormously tough job to perform and it is getting worse.

Science Magazine in April 2002 had on its cover the topic everyone in the medical profession today must deal with: "The Puzzle of Complex Diseases." The most common diseases are the toughest to crack; Heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and psychiatric illness. All are "complex" or "multifactorial" diseases and cannot be ascribed to mutations in a single gene or to a single environmental factor. Rather they arise from the combined action of many genes, environmental factors and risk conferring behaviors. Type II diabetes has reached epidemic proportion in the US and is striking people at a young age. In an article by Harvard School of Public Health, Departments of Epidemiology and Nutrition; Walter C. Willett states that studies have revealed that more than 70% of stroke, colon cancer, coronary heart disease and type II diabetes are potentially preventable by life-style modifications. In addition, various lines of evidence indicate that environmental factors are becoming more important and tougher to deal with. The challenge facing physicians today is to sort out how these contributing factors interact in a way that translate into effective strategies for disease diagnosis, prevention and therapy. continued >

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