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Wednesday, September 14, 2011// The Statement 3B
news in review
Five of the most talked-about stories of the week, ranked in ascending order of actual importance
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By Stephanie Steinberg
Dr. Karin Muraszko is reshaping the medicalfield
as the first (and only) female chair of neurosurgery

U.S. News & World Report
released its 2012 Best Colleges
rankings on Tuesday. Harvard
University and Princeton
University tied for the top spot,
while the University of Michigan
was ranked at number 28.

Taliban forces launched an
offensive on NATO headquarters
and the American embassy in
Kabul, Afghanistan on Tuesday.
Among the reported deaths and
wounded,. none were American
embassy personnel.

The U.S. Census Bureau report-
ed on Tuesday that 46.2 million
Americans lived in poverty in 2010,
marking the country's fourth con-
secutive year of increased poverty
levels. Median household income
also decreased to $49,400.

Two American hikers arrested
in Iran in 2009 will be in a few
days on a $500,000 bail, Iran
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
announced Tuesday. The hikers
faced eight years in prison on
spying charges.

Republican presidential hopefuls
squared off in a debate co-spon-
sored by CNN and the Tea Party
Express Monday night in Tampa,
Fla. A hot topic was Texas Gov.
Rick Perry's stance on Social Secu-
rity.
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hough Dr. Karin Muraszko
isthe only woman leading
a neurosurgery department
in the country, her gender isn't the
only characteristic that makes her
stand out. The 4 foot 9 inch surgeon
has spina bifida - a condition that
prevents the spine from properly
developing.
"You talk about short handicap
women in neurosurgery, you're
probably defining a subset of one
- me," she said in late May while
sitting in her office adorned with
photographs and medical books.
Muraszko has been in charge of
the Department of Neurosurgery at
the University of Michigan Health
System since 2005. One of the larg-
est in the country, the department
'houses 20 neurosurgeons and nine
research faculty members who
work together to save patients from
afflictions like tragic car accident
injuries, diseases that cause people
to lose control of their hands and
brain tumors that threaten to cut
off the sense of hearing.
It's a job with a lot of responsibil-
ity, and when the department fell
into her latex-clad hands, she took
it with a surgeon's vow to not make
any accidental moves.
"Many people say that it's eas-
ier to take over something that's
a burning pulpit, meaning that
there's problems," she said. "So
for me, my job was to take a really
great department and make sure
one, I didn't ruin it, and two, make
&-it even better."
With scores of male surgeons
making medical breakthroughs

before her time, Muraszko is set-
ting the precedent as the first
female chair.
"I still feel pressure about the
fact that as the first woman, I
would hate to screw things upor to
make a mistake," she said.
Out of the 4,918 neurosurgeons
in the United States in 2008, 5.6
percent - or 277 neurosurgeons
- were women, according to the
Association of American Medical
Colleges.
With such a low percentage of
women neurosurgeons, Muraszko
has had few role models in the field.
Instead, she extracts qualities from
different people she admires and
wishes to emulate. Though she is a
third-generation female neurosur-
geon, Muraszko acknowledges that
unlike some male counterparts, she
did not face rigid expectations to
become one.
"I had to strike on my own road
and create that, so in some ways
that's liberating," she said.
Muraszko knew at age six that
she wanted to be a doctor.
As a child, Muraszko spent a lot
of time with physicians who tried
to treat her spina bifida. She was in
a body cast for over a year and also
had an operation to shorten one leg
to make it the same length as the
other.
Now 56 years old, Muraszko
remembers being impressed by the
physicians who had a large influ-
ence on her life. Striving to be like
them, she earned good grades,
received her undergraduate degree
from Yale University and attended

Columbia University for medical
school.
At first, she decided to study psy-
chiatry because she was fascinated
by the mind and people tended to
share details of their lives with her.
But that path changed during her
third year of medical school when
she did a rotation in neurology and
was required to watch an operation.
"She is truly the
Jim Abbott of
neurosurgery"
-Greg Thompson,
neurosurgeon
Muraszko vividly recalls the
procedure: The patient was a male
in his 40s with a cervicalspinal
cord ependymoma. He was losing
the ability to use his arms and hold
onto his child.
"I can remember following him
to the operating room, watching
the surgeons do this long tedious,
difficult, complex operation and
I thought, 'Oh my God. Here they
are in the middle of this guy's cer-
vical (spinal cord) taking out this
tube,' and the fact that we could
get in there, take it out and he
would wake up after the operation,
actually move his arms, be able to
breathe ... it was just fascinating."
But the awestruck student knew

entering a neurosurgery career
was not as simple as filling out a job
application.
"I had to test myself because as
a person with a disability, I wanted
to make sure that my desire to do
something wasn't going to get in
the way of my ability to take care of
any patients," she said.
After completing medical school
with flying colors, Muraszko con-
vinced the faculty of Columbia
University that she could handle
the school's arduous seven-year
residency. She became the first
handicapped person to be offered
the position, though not without
debate.
In 1983, Dr. Bennett Stein, chair-
man of Columbia's, Neurological
Surgery Department at the time,
said in a New York Times article
that the department did "a lot of
soul-searching" before admitting
Muraszko.
"We were concerned that her
handicap might prevent her from
doing the work," Stein said in the
article. "We have found, though,
that her intelligence, tenacity and
motivation have enabled her to
make a remarkable contribution to
the care of our patients."
Nearly 30 years later, the same
holds true for the University Hos-
pital. Muraszko came to Michigan
in 1990 as a pediatric neurosur-
geon. She said she chose Michigan
because she liked how surgeons
worked together "arm in arm."
"It's not that people are so ego-
centric that they're in competition
with each other," she said, as doc-

tors clad in white lab coats and blue
scrubs scurried outside her office.
"We kind of view it as a team sport,
and the only enemy on the team is
disease. It's not each other, it's not
other people, it's really working to
take care of the patient as best as
you can."
Besides treating patients,
Muraszko trained students who
have gone on to become top doctors
in the field. Her most recognizable
pupil? Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's
chief medical correspondent and
associate chief of neurosurgery at
Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlan-
ta.
In Atlanta, Gupta sat in his CNN
office full, of medical books, glass
awards and half of a human skel-
eton and raved about Muraszko's
personality and teaching style.
"She's a phenomenal person,
(from) what she's accomplished
certainly, but also her approach to
life and her ability to toggle from
operating on a meningioma blasto-
ma to making sure that the resident
that she's training in front of her is
living a good life, has good priori-
ties and is going to be a good per-
son," Gupta said.
"That was really important to
her so Iappreciate that more about
her now that I'm in those shoes
training residents - how impor-
tant it is to train good people as
well as good doctors."
Back in Michigan, Greg Thomp-
son, a John E. McGillicuddy Col-
legiate professor of neurosurgery
who works with Muraszko, com-
pared her to James Abbott - a for-

- - - 1-- . 2 . .3 i .7 s l'1 1.5 6 i 7 . 8 . . 10
quotes of the week from the archives
"I would say she is not addicted... but she might The pursuit of happiness (and trivia)
have formed a habit after mimicking human beings
who were smoking around her."
AHMAD AZHAR MOHAMMED, DIRECTOR OF MELAKA ZOO IN
MALAYSIA, on Shirley, an organutan recently forced to quit cigarette
smoking - a habit developed while previously housed in another zoo.
"They're stationary booths. I'm not humongous,
(but) I'm a big guy. I could not wedge myself in."
MARTIN KESSMAN, A 290-POUND NEW YORK MAN, on not fitting
into the booths at White Castle in Nanuet, N.Y. Kessman is suing the
restaurant chain for failing to increase booth sizes.
cOURTESY OF ABC
iven society's happy marriage to all things wired, the fact that students used
to jones for an analog experience is nothing short of bewildering. Such was
the rules U the case when a feverish Trivial Pursuit fad swamped campus decades ago.
As reported by The Michigan Daily ("Nothing trivial about students' pursuit,"
1/15/84), the now-class trivia game flew off retailers' shelves, as students became
No. 307: No. 308: No. 309: enamored with what was described as a "sharp shift from the passion for video
Warm weather is Professors should You should still games." Unsurprisingly, some students were reportedly blending trivia with alco-
hol - "rewarding correct answers with beer" - and the University Activities Cen-
not an excuse to keep motivational be drinking in ter also hosted a 32-team (presumably sober) tournament.
dress like a slut for, phrases to a celebration of our How unhelathy was the board game endemic? As one student (perhaps jok-
class. Cover your minumum. This win over Notre ingly) professed: "I am definitely an addict. I tried quitting, but I started smoking.
When I tried again, I started eating and put on weight." Hmm ... we never had that
butt. isn't "Lean on Me." Dame. problem with Monopoly.
by the numbers
COURTESY OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
Number of years the U.S. Census Bureau Percent of the country's population that Percent decrease in median household
has recorded poverty levels in America. In lived in poverty in 2010, accounting for income from 2009 to 2010. The median
2010, poverty levels hit an all-time high. 46.2 million people. household income is now $49,400.

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