New music to an old melody: The 66th AAAAI meeting in New Orleans

With the images of the earthquake in Haiti still fresh in the memory, and a similar disaster just occurring in Chile, coming again to New Orleans brought back vivid images of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. The city has for the most part recovered from that experience, although molds persist in many historical and ancient buildings, putting allergy sufferers at risk as they breathe in allergens. The city of New Orleans is almost fully restored to its former glory, however, and music again pours out through doors and windows of the French Quarter, calling people in to share drinks and food while clearly stating which specific products contain or may contain traces of nuts, so that people with allergies do not need to run to their epinephrine autoinjector to treat life-threatening anaphylactic attacks. Against this background, and under heavy, rainy and windy skies, the American Academy of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology (AAAAI) held its 2010 annual meeting in the Ernst E. Memorial Convention Center, where 4 days packed with presentations and discussions displaced most other thoughts from the attendees' minds. Indeed, nights on Bourbon Street had never been so uncrowded as they were during the meeting, suggesting that attendees were perhaps sequestered in their hotel rooms, working with new information obtained at the meeting.