Dear All,

Yet another issue of Scribe has been published today. I am proud to inform you that ISPE members from three continents have written exclusive articles for Scribe in this issue. My special thanks to Susan Pusek, Hugh Tilson, Leanne Madre, Louise Wood, Richard Hill and John McEwen who made this issue possible. This quarter's Scribeline column features Brian Strom. Please continue to send in your responses in a timely manner when you receive the questionnaire for Scribeline. I am happy to inform you that starting with this issue we will have a series of articles on different research units affiliated with CERTs in the U.S. Thanks are due to Ken Saag of the University of Alabama to make this happen.

An item of concern has been the news about the possible disbanding of the New Zealand's Intensive Medicines Monitoring Program (IMMP). Fortunately, it seems from recent exchanges in the British Medical Journal (BMJ 2004;329:51 (3 July), doi:10.1136/bmj.329.7456.51) that it's not a done deal yet. Perhaps folks in the field can send us an update on the fate of IMMP for the next issue of Scribe. Also, professional societies including ISPE should write to the Ministry of Health in New Zealand to continue to support IMMP, which has done significant work over the past three decades. I was glad to note that prominent ISPE member Nicholas Moore was one of the signatories of an open letter to the New Zealand's Minister of Health in support of IMMP.

I take this opportunity to invite volunteers to cover our annual meeting for the next issue of Scribe. Please let me know which sessions (pre-conference educational sessions, opening, plenary, hot topic, etc.) you would like to cover. Reporting for Scribe will provide a good chance to all participants especially student attendees and young faculty to make a lasting impression of their attendance in what appears to be the world's largest gathering of drug safety and risk management professionals.

Overall, articles in Scribe may appear to have a focus on happenings largely in the U.S. This is simply because of my weakness - I haven't been able to stimulate enough interest in ISPE members in other parts of the world to submit articles. If you have news that you would like to share with the rest of the membership or you have ideas for articles, please email me.

Thanks.

See you in Bordeaux, God willing!

With peace,

Rizwan*
Ahmads@cder.fda.gov

PS: Work to make Scribe available in pdf format is still not done — my apologies.

*Participating on his personal time and the views expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the FDA or the U.S. government.

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