Contempo 1997: The Face of Medicine

To the Editor. —The Contempo 1997¹ issue of The Journal provided an excellent review of the many exciting recent developments in medicine. Although much progress is being made on many fronts, it was disappointing that the issue did not better reflect the recent progress in increasing diversity in medicine.^2,3 Of the 62 contributors to Contempo 1997, only 7 (11.3%) were women. This shows little improvement from 5 years ago: Contempo 1992 had 57 contributors, of whom 6 (10.5%) were women. Moreover, although ethnicity is best measured by self-definition, it is possible to estimate the proportion of contributors from different ethnic groups based on the review of the photographs and names of the authors. Of contributors to Contempo 1997, only 1 (1.6%) was African American, 1 (1.6%) was Hispanic, and 3 (4.8%) were Asian-Pacific Islanders. For Contempo 1992, 3 authors (5.3%) were African American, and 1 (1.8%) was an