Editorial

2003 has been a very interesting and difficult year for respiratory specialists around the world. The outbreak of a virulent new disease, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, its identification and control within a few months posed a challenge and proved the skills and resources of all involved. SARS prompted the first WHO Emergency Alert, and pushed hospital resources to the limit in the worst affected areas. It took its toll on staff, with a number of them becoming sick and dying. That the disease was controlled within 4 months is a great credit to all the clinical and laboratory staff involved. Respirology is proud to be publishing the first supplement on Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome with this issue. This has been coordinated and sponsored by the Hong Kong Lung Foundation and written by people in the areas hardest hit by SARS—the south-eastern part of mainland China and Hong Kong. The editorial team at Respirology was not immune from the effects of SARS. At a time when the rate of manuscript submission continues to rise rapidly, two Associate Editors temporarily suspended their editorial duties to concentrate on SARS-related clinical work. This put an unacceptable burden on the two remaining Associate Editors. Three doctors from Japan kindly agreed to take on the role of Locum As-sociate Editor to help ease the burden. Our sincere thanks go to Dr Kuniaki Seyama at Juntendo University, Professor Toshihiro Nukiwa at Tohoku University and Dr Yukihiko Sugiyama at Jichi Medical School. Professor Masahara Nishimura is standing down as Associate Editor after 4 years. His contribution to Respirology over that time has been considerable as he handled the review of nearly 200 manuscripts. He plans to devote more time to clinical and research work. Professor Nishimura's influence on the journal over an extended period is very much appreciated. Professor Michiaki Mishima at Kyoto University joins Respirology as an Associate Editor in Professor Nishimura's place and has already started reviewing manuscripts. Professor Mishima's special interests are in sleep apnoea, the mechanics of breathing and COPD. Dr Kwun Fong in Queensland also joins us as an Associate Editor, with special interests in lung cancer and genetics. I am very pleased to welcome Professor Mishima and Dr Fong and hope they will find their association with Respirology rewarding. Our Tobacco Review Series continues with ‘Legal strategies to reduce tobacco caused disease’ by David Sweanor and ‘Smokeless tobacco and health in India and South Asia’ by Prakash Gupta and Cecily Ray. David Sweanor is a Canadian lawyer who has worked full time in global tobacco control efforts for 20 years. He has played a key role in Canadian efforts on tobacco taxation, advertising restrictions, package labelling, environmental tobacco smoke, cessation, product regulation and other issues. In addition he has been active on a similar range of global issues, working with bodies such as the International Union Against Cancer, World Health Organization, World Bank, Pan American Health Organization and numerous governments and health agencies. His primary area of work has been the interaction of law and economics as a determinant of public health, with particular recent emphasis on tax policy, contraband tobacco, the provision of tobacco dependence treatment products and the changing landscape of ‘harm reduction’ products. He has been widely published in peer-reviewed scientific journals as well as having authored work for major international health and social service organizations. Dr Prakash C. Gupta is a Senior Research Scientist at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, and Honorary Consultant at the Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai. He is Vice President of a non-government organization (NGO), Action Council against Tobacco —India and on the advisory panel of numerous other NGOs working on cancer control and tobacco control. He has long been involved with large population-based research studies in India on tobacco use and oral cancer and has published numerous research papers in international scientific journals. He has a Doctor of Science degree in Epidemiology from the Johns Hopkins University, USA and a Master of Science in Statistics from the Bombay University. He was a Takemi Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, USA and a Visiting Scientist at the International Agency for Research on Cancer, France. He has received several awards including Tobacco Free World Award from the Director General, World Health Or-ganization, Geneva on 31 May 1999 for Outstanding Contributions to Public Health. Dr Gupta is a member of several national and international expert groups. He is the Regional Editor for Southeast Asia for the journal Tobacco Control, Member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Nicotine and Tobacco Research, Regional Advisory Board of the Asia Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention, Associate Editor for the journal Oral Diseases and Member, Editorial Board, Tobacco Induced Diseases. His coauthor at the Epidemiology Research Unit, Tata Institute, Cecily Ray, has research interests in tobacco control, prevention of oral cancer as well as the epidemiology and health consequences of tobacco use. She collaborated in creating a database of scientific literature from India on tobacco use, its relation to death and disease, community intervention through anti-tobacco education and some economic aspects of tobacco. Previous research included documenting progress in a rural multisectoral development project with emphasis on primary health care for the Aga Khan Health Services, India and improving data validation for the National Cancer Registry Program (ICMR). She holds a Masters of Public Health in International Health, with emphasis in Epidemiology and Biostatistics from the School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana in 1983. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of California in 1980. The ‘Cells of the Lung’ series concludes with the review by Darryl Knight ‘The airway epithelium: structural and functional properties in health and disease’. Dr Knight completed his PhD at the University of Western Australia where he investigated the role of the epithelium in regulating human airway smooth muscle function. After a postdoctoral fellowship in Vancouver examining the role of novel IL-6 cytokines in asthma, he returned to Perth in 1997. Currently, his research is centred on exploring how the structural changes of the airway wall in asthma such as epithelial derangement, subepithelial fibrosis and fibroblast transformation develop with age, contribute to the severity and chronicity of disease and impact on its treatment. In particular, his interests involve investigating cross talk between the extracellular matrix, integrin and growth factor or cytokine receptors in the repair and remodeling process following epithelial damage. Next year we will introduce a new Review Series ‘Pleural Diseases’ beginning in Volume 9, issue 1. This series, edited by Dr Gary Lee and Dr Steve Mutsaers, will examine both clinical and laboratory aspects of pleural diseases.

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