Carlos H. Schenck in the Monte Verità park, with his sentence: You are doing a great public health service.

The echo of the voices

A public health service

"You are doing a great public health service." Carlos H. Schenck, one of the fathers of sleep medicine, on Drive Awake's mission.

25 August 2026 The echo of the voices · Carlos H. Schenck

When his voice went online on driveawake.ch, Prof. Carlos H. Schenck wrote us a sentence we keep as the direction of this work: you are doing a great public health service.

You are doing a great public health service.

Schenck, University of Minnesota, is one of the fathers of modern sleep medicine: in 1986, with Mark Mahowald, he was the first to describe REM sleep behaviour disorder (RBD), and he was among the first to classify sexsomnia. His voice is the third of the Monte Verità series.

For a project about preventing sleepiness at the wheel, hearing this from someone who has spent forty years on what happens when sleep breaks is a confirmation of the route: the road is a common good, and prevention is public health. Quoted with his written permission, 24 August 2026.

Watch his voice →

What's new on the platform

Schenck's voice, on video →A sleep-deprived society: video subtitled in four languages, with the article.RBD, the disorder he discovered →REM sleep behaviour disorder, first described by Schenck and Mahowald in 1986. On Sleep Science.Sexsomnia →Among the first to classify it: the disorder on Sleep Science.The Monte Verità series →Eight World Sleep Forum voices: four online, the others in the making.