cancer
terrasig | May 30, 2008While I tend to off-blog responsibilities, you may be interested to read this lovely essay by Jonathan Alter in the current (2 June) issue of Newsweek entitled, "How We Really Help Ted."
There was a time when mentioning Kennedy and Jimmy Carter (or Carter's right hand) in the same breath would have meant a story about a Democratic family feud even more bitter than this year's between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. But today these men offer priceless lessons in how to overcome endless adversity and deep unpopularity and go on to lead redemptive and joyful lives that touch millions. Their…
oracknows | May 29, 2008Sometimes I wonder if subjecting myself to all this woo is going to my head. Why do I worry that this might be the case? Recently, I made the mistake of getting involved in an e-mail exchange with a prominent antivaccinationist. Perhaps it was my eternal optimism that led me to do this, my inability to believe that any person in the thrall of pseudoscience, no matter how far gone and how active in harassing anyone who counters him, can't be somehow saved and brought around to understand the value of science and why their previous course was wrong. Such efforts on my part almost inevitably end…
oracknows | May 21, 2008"Early detection of cancer saves lives."
How many times have you heard this statement or something resembling it? It's a common assumption (indeed, a seemingly common sense assumption) that detecting cancer early is always a Very Good Thing. Why wouldn't it be, after all? For many cancers, such as breast cancer and colon cancer, there's little doubt that early detection at the very least makes the job of treating the cancer easier. Also, the cancer is detected at an earlier stage almost by definition. But does earlier detection save lives? Does finding more disease before surgery that wouldn…
edyong | May 20, 2008
In the late 19th century, asbestos became a building material of choice. Resistant to heat, electricity and corrosion, it found many uses including home insulation, brake pads and ship-building. By the time that the first health problems were reported, the material was commonplace. In the UK, the material was only restricted in 1983 after thousands of people were exposed during the post-war era. The result is a latent epidemic of related diseases including a rare type of cancer called mesothelioma, which is becoming more common and is only expected to peak in incidence over the next…
oracknows | May 15, 2008Perhaps one of the most common misconceptions held about cancer among lay people is that it is one disease. We often hear non-physicians talk about "curing cancer" as though it were a single disease. Sometimes, we even hear physicians, who should know better, using the same sort of fuzzy thinking and language about "curing cancer" as well. But cancer is not a single disease. Indeed, it's a collection of dozens of different diseases, with different cell types of origin, pathophysiologies, behaviors, and treatments. True, there are a fair number of commonalities between cancers in terms of…
oracknows | May 13, 2008Last week, I wrote about factors that lead to the premature adoption of surgical technologies and procedures, the "bandwagon" or "fad" effect among surgeons, if you will. By "premature," I am referring to widespread adoption "in the trenches," so to speak, of a procedure before good quality evidence from science and clinical trials show it to be superior in some way to previously used procedures, either in terms of efficacy, cost, time to recover, or other measurable parameters. As I pointed out before, laparoscopic cholecystectomy definitely fell into that category. The popularity of the…
oracknows | May 8, 2008Although there are a lot of medical bloggers out there, there's always room for more good blogging, particularly if it's related to basic and translational research. That's why the Cancer Research UK Science Update blog is worth checking out. It's actually been around a while as an internal blog, but now it's "gone public," so to speak, allowing readers to check out its older posts. I encourage my readers to take a look.
When medical experimental therapeutics gets co-opted as complementary and alternative medicine (CAM)
terrasig | May 8, 2008Sorry to get to this so late but I wanted to weigh on an excellent post from my cancer blogging colleague, Orac, the other day on the investigation of CAM therapies in cancer. The post covers a lot of ground, as expected from any of Orac's exhaustive missives, but I wanted to focus on the comparison and contracts between NIH's National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) and the Office of Cancer Complementary and Alternative Medicine within the National Cancer Institute (NCI-OCCAM).
I am on record as a strong critic of NCCAM but a supporter of NCI's OCCAM in that the…
oracknows | May 8, 2008In science- and evidence-based medicine, the evaluation of surgical procedures represents a unique challenge that is qualitatively different from the challenges in medical specialties. Perhaps the most daunting of these challenges is that it is often either logistically impossible or unethical to do the gold-standard clinical trial, a double-blind, randomized placebo trial, to test the efficacy of an operation. After all, the "placebo" in a surgical trial involves exposing patients to anaesthesia, making an incision or incisions like the ones used for the operation under study, and then…
oracknows | May 5, 2008OK, I know it's like the post calling the kettle black, but what the heck is PalMD doing blogging on vacation? And are his two most recent posts so good? This is what I mean:
Why hospice matters
Never say "hopeless"
I recently had the unfortunate opportunity to visit a relative in hospice. I was incredibly impressed. Nice, well-appointed rooms, with a caring, attentive staff that did everything in its power to keep the dying as comfortable and free of distress, both physical and emotional, as humans can do. As a cancer surgeon, I've been involved with a number of patients who went to…
edyong | May 3, 2008I'm away for the weekend so I thought that I'd repost an article from the old Wordpress blog. This is actually the first ever article I wrote for Not Exactly Rocket Science and I've updated it slightly to take more recent findings into account. I'm considering doing these reposts every Saturday, but let me know whether you're keen on the idea.
Cancer cells are, for all intents and purposes, immortal. Having broken free of the rules and strictures that govern other cells, they are free to grow and divide as they please. In a short space of time, a lone cancer cell can form a mass of…
bleimanb | May 1, 2008I met Chris Green on a boat in Lake Titicaca in September, 2007. Immediately we realized that we had something in common...Weird animals, well kinda. For starters, I just write about weird animals, and Chris actually works with them. Also because he lives on Tasmania, he doesn't really consider the animals he works with weird; they are pretty much the most normal animals he can think of...Whoa, that's deep.
Normal day at the office...
If Andrew and I were trying to make a joke about a typical Tasmanian person, we'd probably use Chris' resume as material. He has spent the last few years at a…
oracknows | April 29, 2008One of the most contentious and difficult aspects of trying to improve medical care in this country is enforcing a minimal "standard of care." Optimally, this standard of care should be based on science- and evidence-based medicine and act swiftly when a practitioner practices medicine that doesn't meet even a minimal requirement for scientific studies and clinical trials to support it. At the same time, going too far in the other direction risks stifling innovation and the ability to individualize treatments to a patient's unique situation--or even to use treatments that have only scientific…
sporte | April 27, 2008A potential link between lung cancer and human papilloma virus may make parents even more glad about vaccinating their children with Gardasil®. Not only are the children protected against viruses that commonly cause cervical cancer, they may be protected against some forms of lung cancer as well.
The April 25th version of Nature News reports (1) that two viruses, HPV (Human papilloma virus) and measles virus, have been found in lung tumors.
From Nature News:
Samuel Ariad of the Soroka Medical Center in Beer Sheva, Israel, and his colleagues began by analyzing tumours taken from 65 lung…
oracknows | April 26, 2008Ah, a lazy Saturday morning. So here I am in the late morning, perusing my e-mail (including e-mail notifications of blog posts) after purposely not having checked them at all last night (and, in fact, even having gone to see a movie for the first time in many months), and what should a reader send me but a bit of very good news:
RALEIGH --A panel of the N.C. Medical Board recommended Thursday that Huntersville's Dr. Rashid Buttar be prohibited from treating children or patients with cancer because his alternative medicine practice is below accepted medical standards in North Carolina.
The…
oracknows | April 17, 2008As I wing my way back home from San Diego, I've had a bit of time to digest what I saw and learned at the AACR meeting. Overall, it was an above average but definitely not outstanding meeting, and I may discuss specifics more at a later time. One key theme that seems to be increasingly emphasized is cancer prevention, and indeed the AACR launched a new journal, Cancer Prevention Research, dedicated to publishing high quality research on just that topic. This new emphasis on prevention is long overdue because once cancer has developed the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, and even our best…
oracknows | April 15, 2008I love my iPhone. I really do.
There is, however, one thing I don't like about it, a characteristic that (or so I've learned) the iPhone shares with many other "smart" phones, and that's its annoying tendency to interfere with poorly shielded electronic devices. The phenomenon, known as radiofrequency interference, manifests itself as hysterical bursts of mid-frequency electronic buzzing that sound something like "dit-dit-dit-dah-dit-dit-dit-dah," or Morse code on speed with a continuous buzz behind it. The problem appears to be most common with GSM-based phones, such as AT&T (the iPhone'…
terrasig | April 14, 2008Apologies in advance for just this quick link, but the topic is very timely given our highly-read post last week suggesting the repeal/modification of DSHEA, the primary US legislation directing the weak oversight of the dietary supplement industry.
Herbal Science International, Inc. and FDA informed consumers and healthcare professionals of a nationwide recall of twelve dietary supplements that contain ephedra, aristolochic acid or human placenta because they may present a serious health hazard to consumers [press release]. FDA has long regarded dietary supplements containing ephedra, a…
oracknows | April 13, 2008So there I was, wandering through the exhibit hall at AACR when I came across the National Cancer Institute booth. The NCI has a booth at AACR and ASCO every year, and this year is no different. As I do most years, I wandered through the booth to see if there was anything that caught my interest, such as information that might help me stay funded.
There it was. No, not any information that could help me keep my NIH funding, alas. Worse, it was something that might make it even more difficult if in this tight funding environment the NCI is actually spending money on this stuff. The sign read…
oracknows | April 12, 2008...I don't know when I'll be back again.
Well, actually, I do. I'll be back Wednesday night. But as you read this I should be in the air and on my way to sunny San Diego to attend the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research. It's a big one, too. Around 12,000-15,000 cancer researchers, give or take, will be descending upon the San Diego Convention Center to discuss the latest and greatest basic and translational cancer research. It's one of my two favorite meetings each year, one that I try not to miss. It's also often a good source for blog material about the latest…