A follow-up to the medical education issue of the JNMA: our political irrelevancy, or what?

It just so happened that in the inaugural medical education issue of the September 2005 Journal of the National Medical Association, we interviewed Dr. J.W. Carmichael. Xavier University of Louisiana is the only black Catholic University in the United States and is located in the recently devastated city of New Orleans. As many of you may recall, Carmichael is the director of Xavier University's premedicine program. The university's premedicine program has supplied American medical schools with more than 90 black students per year for the last decade. It has been a crucial lifeline in the supply of African-American physicians and pharmacists in the United States. Just to get an idea of the importance of the Xavier program, please review a copy of the September issue of the JNMA and the articles related to student education.