We, the residents of the UCLA-Olive View Emergency Medicine residency program, feel that Dr. David Talan brings unique knowledge and an impossible-to-replicate experience that adds tremendously to our educations as doctors. His expertise in infectious disease is unique among emergency medicine physicians, and with it he offers a dimension to our training that would be impossible to replace. His long and pioneering experience and research over decades in emergency and internal medicine also provide us with perspectives and learning that virtually no other physician could bring. There is no doubt in our minds that our skill sets and knowledge bases would be poorer if we lost him as an attending, and thus patient care at Olive View now and in the wider community later would suffer. We all ask that he be allowed to continue working and teaching residents at Olive View.