Microbo biography of barack

It's no Nobel Peace Prize, but Barack Obama has a new honor to brag about. Scientists have named a parasite after him—and there's no worming out of it.

Meet Baracktrema obamai, a tiny parasitic flatworm that lives in turtles' blood. A new study officially names the 2-inch, hair-thin creature after Obama.

Thomas Platt, the newly retired biology professor at Saint Mary's College in Indiana who chose the name, says it's an honor, not an insult. Really.

Platt, who discovered and named the flatworm to crown his career before retiring, has more than 30 new species to his credit. In the past, he's named them after his father-in-law, his doctorate adviser "and other people I have a great deal of respect for. This is clearly something in my small way done to honor our president," Platt said Thursday.

Platt, who is a distant relative of the president, says people pay thousands of dollars for the privilege of having a species named after them.

Parasites, which live in and get nutrients from host animals, get a bad rap. Platt says this one reminds him of the president: "It's long. It's thin. And it's cool as hell."

Platt says Baracktrema obamai "are phenomenally incredibly resilient organisms."

"I hold them in awe and with phenomenal respect," Platt says.

The worm is related,

•

•

Nielsen’s Input on ACA Recognized in Obama Presidency Oral History

Published April 29, 2024

Growing up in Elkins, West Virginia, (current population 6,800), Nancy H. Nielsen, MD ’76, PhD, could not have fathomed that she would one day not only meet the president of the United States, but work with his administration to completely transform health care in America.

Now her work — and that of many others — on the Affordable Care Act, from advocacy to implementation, has been documented for posterity in the Obama Presidency Oral History.

Nielsen, senior associate dean for health policy in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, is one of the “extraordinary people from all walks of life” invited to participate in the Obama Presidency Oral History project. Compiled by Columbia University, the history is based on more than 1,000 hours of interviews with hundreds of people.

Just being invited to do the interview was an incredible honor, Nielsen says. It also gave her a chance to review how she came to take part in one of the most significant health care reforms the U.S. has ever seen.

‘Nontraditional’ MD Student

In 1973, with a doctoral degree in microbiology and a faculty position at the J