In Focus

www.thelancet.com/diabetes-endocrinology Vol 2 May 2014 367

Why not start with the parrots? Giovanni Strippoli, editor and regional co-ordinator of the Cochrane Renal Group and senior vice president at Diaverum, owns 800 or so, after all. A dozen he keeps in his apartment in Apulia in southern Italy. The remainder are in the gardens of his estate half-an-hour’s drive away. Garcia was the fi rst; an enormous blue and gold creature he bought in 1999. Since then, Strippoli has amassed a collection of rare and exotic birds from all over the world: Australian lorikeets, Indian ringnecks, and dozens of macaws. “Parrots are very intelligent animals”, he explains. “They learn a lot of things very rapidly; they are very beautiful, social, and communicative; and they get very attached to those who love them.”

The discussion fl its between the emotional, the intellectual, and the philosophical. “It is strange how the same thing can be very diff erent”, begins Strippoli. “The parrots are all very distinct—I love this diversity. The African grey parrot appears dull and ugly but it speaks very similarly to a human being; one of mine can actually sing a song.” South American parrots—magnifi cent in blue, red, and yellow—do not share this ability. “I think that there is an amount of energy in everything, every human being, every animal, and every tree, and this energy can be developed in diff erent ways; so the energy of the South American parrot goes into its colours and size; the energy of the African parrot goes into memory and voice.”

From parrots to perfumes: Strippoli keeps a collection of hundreds of fragrances. The source is the same: alcohol and plants. Yet the product expresses enormous variation. “One can do many things with the same material”, Strippoli points out. It comes as no surprise to learn that cooking is another passion of his.

Strippoli’s conversation, equal parts scientifi c rigour and boyish wonderment, lays bare an ideology that can roughly be summarised by Marcus Aurelius’ ancient injunction that we ask of all that we encounter “what is it in itself?”

“Giovanni seeks out the reality of things”, agrees his collaborator Suetonia Palmer (University of Otago, New Zealand). “He is not afraid to look into the dark corners of medicinal convention to discover when things might not hold true.” She cites the example of erythropoietin. “We as a medical community thought we were improving health outcomes by using it to treat anaemia for people with chronic kidney disease; Giovanni put everything together and showed that we were actually doing the opposite.”

After studying medicine at the University of Bari in the mid-1990s, Strippoli narrowed down his choice of residency to cardiology, nephrology (his father’s specialty), and oncology. He chose nephrology. But in fact the die had been cast many years before.

Strippoli fi rst met Marcel Legrain (1923–2003), his father’s mentor and a towering fi gure in European nephrology, when he was a child. “He came to visit us in Italy many times” he recalls. “He had good values, integrity, enormous generosity, knowledge and dedication. He was a real example of what it is to be a professor, to facilitate junior people, and to build their capacity to its full expression—I thought ‘this is the kind of man I want to be’.”

At the University of Sydney, Strippoli found his own mentor: Jonathan C Craig. “He challenged me to do good things in my research life: good for patients and good for students.” It is this that now propels Strippoli; a desire, perhaps more an imperative, to instill in budding researchers the importance of asking the right questions. And it was this that drove him to return to Italy. It involved a certain degree of sacrifi ce. Strippoli was in his early thirties and his career had begun to take off : he had already been made associate professor. “My life in Australia was fantastic”, he said. “In Italy, I had nothing, but I saw large potential. Little by little I started building and the potential came out—a lot of young people really wanted to do good science and needed mentorship.”

He has been back for almost 10 years now. Two-thirds of his time is devoted to research, the remaining third to clinical practice, mainly in the area of peritoneal dialysis. “A lot of my research ideas come from observing the problems and pain of patients with kidney disease”, Strippoli told The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology. It is a painstaking and time-consuming business—getting ideas off the ground and obtaining funding requires plenty of paperwork. And research is often a test of one’s persuasive skills. “A typical diffi culty of this work is that there are people who are more visionary, and people who are more focussed on the here-and-now”, Strippoli said. “So on a professional level it frustrates me sometimes to not always be understood in the vision that I present—people don’t always follow me—but this is also an opportunity for me to communicate and bring people together.”

He is u nder no illusions as to the enormity of the task facing today’s nephrologists. “People with kidney disease have a terrible life—we have the monumental challenge of improving things for them.” But Strippoli seems settled. He’s even started pressing his own olive oil. “At this stage in my life, it is not about me anymore—it is about other people. Perhaps I have now come to a level of maturity in this work.”

Talha Khan Burki

Published OnlineApril 25, 2014http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S2213-8587(14)70093-2

Profi leGiovanni Strippoli: fi nding the pleasures in nephrology