Fernando Barros Ezquerro

Fernando Barros Ezquerro is a third-year medical student at University of São Paulo Medical School, FMUSP. From his childhood, he has devoted himself for the seeking of Truth, holding science to be, as synecdoche of reason, the most fitting instrument to be used in this quest. Over his life, he engaged himself to reach the environments where he could gain access to it, and urged ever more to investigate the phenomena he so far would only read about, thus, passively discover: the functioning of human mind, the complexity of integrative systems of the organism, and how might environment interact with them are questions which never ceased puzzling him. Being one of his major interests the area of immunology, the opportunity to join the efforts of Dr. Paulo Saldiva and Dr. John Godlesky to understand the role environmental pollution plays at the uprising of disease – something which frequently happens by modulation of immune responses – is most coherent with his purposes: new instruments at hand, for the very same search. Although science has great importance on itself, Fernando understands it has intrinsically also a social responsibility, and that is why he, with other six colleagues, represented FMUSP at the XXII Brazilian Congress of Medical Students, in January 2010, in which about 200 academics from medical schools all over the country gathered to outline the main goals that should be defended this year by Brazilian medical students leaderships concerning health policies and medical education. Also, believing the very touchable people are no less important than humanity, since the year of 2008 he works on a volunteer project for medical care in a poor area of São Paulo. Fernando believes this exchange experience will be most profitable in many ways: for himself, culturally; for his colleagues, by sharing what he learned; for societies and governments, by enlarging the already robust data available on pollution for rationally guiding further actions; and, finally, for his patients in the future, whose pollution-related conditions he will certainly have to cope with – asthma, allergies, cardiovascular conditions, etc.