The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation said Wednesday it would spend $500 million over the next five years to combat an "epidemic" of childhood obesity. This can only be interpreted as good news for those of us who are saddened by the fattening of America's children. Where is the money going? To halt a trend building over the past four decades, the foundation is offering to fund programs that focus on improving access to affordable healthy foods or on how to increase physical activity in schools and communities The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's new initiative will build on successful…
A patient came to see me recently after finishing a "rigorous" (read: brutal) series of treatments against a cancer known to be curable. She suffered of course, as all patients suffer from the side effects of combination chemotherapy, but did make it through without disaster. Her celebration of life had begun with my congratulations on achieving a complete remission. As time passed, however, I found her struggling. She related several symptoms that I found perfectly legitimate, yet inexplicable - nothing that suggested a serious problem. We discussed the normal recovery from…
Frederick Louis MacNeice, CBE was born in Belfast, Ireland in 1906, educated at Oxford and then lived in London not only as a poet but also playwright, college lecturer, novelist, translator, and writer and producer for the BBC. He is considered to be a major contributor to Irish poetry, possibly the Emerald Isle's finest after Yeats. His was a life bursting with life - marriages and affairs, friendships with Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis (father of actor Daniel Day-Lewis), travel, alcohol and finally death at age 55 from pneumonia caught while spelunking for sound effects for…
Things you don't want to hear in the Operating Room: 1. "My wife made this incredible cabbage and baked bean casserole last night." 2. "Doctor, why is there an "X" on the patient's other leg?" 3. "Nurse, would you bring me a double Jack-and-water please?" 4. "Stop arguing and turn up the power on the electrocautery probe." 5. "Maybe if you press a little harder with the laryngoscope." 6. "Instead of Mozart I thought we'd listen to something a little more invigorating today." 7. "Did you remember to eat a light lunch?" 8. "Doctor, he insists on speaking to you - says he's your broker…
Obesity boosts prostate cancer mortality Hmm...rather unusual choice of words in this headline...why would anyone want obesity to "boost" such an unpleasant outcome? Probably would have been better to phrase it thusly: "Obesity decreases survival rate of prostate cancer," or "Portly prostate patients portend pushing up daisies." What meaneth these fair data, anyway? Obese men diagnosed with prostate cancer are more than twice as likely to die of the disease than their leaner peers, a new study shows. They also have more than triple the risk that the cancer will spread beyond their…
In accordance with the shoddy standards of medical communication upheld in this country, here is a clarification on White House Press Secretary Tony Snow's condition. Yesterday it was implied that he had a liver metastasis removed. I assumed this required a hepatic lobe resection, which as fellow ScienceBlogger Orac has remarked, is a major operation. It turns out that the offending lesion was on the surface of the liver, not within. The recurrence of cancer found in White House spokesman Tony Snow was attached to his liver, not in the organ, his deputy said Wednesday. On Tuesday, Dana…
I just got back from a relaxing holiday and heard the shocking news that another political figure has suffered a relapse of cancer. White House Press Secretary Tony Snow apparently is recovering from an hepatic resection where a small ("tip of the finger-sized", if one believes these idiotic news reporters and their unscientific description of medical data) metastasis was removed. I read one story where a commenter remarked that the average survival of metastatic colon cancer was only six months. For once, somebody got their facts correct - the problem is that this terrifyingly short "…
Tomorrow is a travel day for me, so I guess I had better take every precaution that I don't succumb to a deep vein thrombosis stimulated by air travel. Maybe this will help: Chocoholics were given further reason to rejoice on Saturday when a small clinical study showed that dark chocolate improves the function of blood vessels. Although this small study showed the necessary salutary effect of cocoa on arterial blood vessels, unfortunately the subjects were given cocoa without sugar. Egad! Are they prepared to deal with the outrage we members of Chocolate Forever are about to unleash on the…
[Editor's Note: "Please enjoy this little blurb on the famous German Romantic poet Novalis, and send money, but quickly." This message was found in a bottle off the coast of southern Florida. We presume it is from the C. O., still off on his relaxing holiday. Here is the remainder of his note:] Georg Friedrich Philipp von Hardenburg (wrote under the pen name of Novalis) was born in Oberwiederstedt, Prussian Saxony, into a family of Protestant Lower Saxon nobility. His father was a director of a salt mine. At the age of ten Novalis was sent to a religious school but he did not adjust to…
[Editor's Note: We haven't heard from him, but we're sure the C. O. is having a jolly time on his spring break.] The Sales Pitch, Part II - Please Release Me, Let Me Go As we pick up the story, our main character had just found himself trapped in his office by a feisty pharmaceutical representative eager to pierce his eardrums with a long-bow full of crisp, well-rehearsed questions designed to match the creases of her black suit. What was this amazing product that must be seen to be believed, if not purchased by all? Let's set the scene, just like they do on those intellectually…
I am up late tonight (several hours ahead of U.S. time), just heard the news that Elizabeth Edwards has been diagnosed with a recurrence of her breast cancer and wanted to let ScienceBlogs readers know what information we medical oncologists look for in this situation. Reading the news reports about her relapse is an exercise in futility; even if her doctors provided all of the details of her tumor most (if not all) reporters would be unable to translate it into anything comprehensible. This is one of my gripes about medical news reporting - no reporters can understand what the data actually…
[Editor's note: While the narrator is off enjoying spring break in an balmy undisclosed location he asked us to reprint some of his old posts. We had actually planned to lease this space to a more intellectual project in his absence but when he gave us those Bambi eyes we relented. So here he is once again.] The Sales Pitch (originally posted in May, 2005) I let out a zephyr of relief as I guided the ol' Model T into the doctor's parking lot: another harrowing trip on the crash-test roadway known as my route to work had ended without me being extracted feet first by the jaws of life. I don…
I am leaving on a jet plane tomorrow and I do know when I'll be back again - March 27th to be exact. Oh, the agony of having to go on Spring Break (with the family, of course). Whatever will I do to entertain myself? I have scheduled some surprise posts to fill the vacant hours while I'm gone. I might even contribute something in my free time if my hotel has internet access, which I have been assured it does. Until we meet again, I leave you with the latest headlines: Reliance on ready meals puts men at risk from too much salt 35,000 Britons die a year from eating too much salt? Holy…
[Editor's Note: The following letter was read at the ceremony yesterday where the C. O.'s nephew was awarded the Eagle Scout badge. The C. O. himself never made it to Eagle, which is no surprise to us here at upper management. Hope he doesn't read this.] "Jacob, we have enjoyed watching you grow from a little boy into an outstanding young man, but today you have gained a new level of admiration from all of us. Today you attain the highest rank a Boy Scout can ever achieve - Eagle Scout. Only one out of every twenty Boy Scouts earns the right to wear the Eagle badge on his uniform, and…
If you're going through hell, keep going. -Sir Winston Churchill What is it like to have to take chemotherapy? I can't say that I know personally. I've never been diagnosed with cancer. Then why do you feel qualified to speak on such a subject? Because of what I do for a living. I've known thousands of people with cancer...not just casually, but actually cared for them, sometimes for years. Alright, if you are an expert then answer this question that has been bothering me. How do you respond when patients say they can't go on any further with their treatment? How do you convince them to…
Da mihi, Domine Deus, cor pervigil, quod nulla abducat a te curiosa cogitatio: da nobile, quod nulla deorsum trahat indigna affectio; da rectum, quod nulla seorsum obliquet sinistra intentio: da firmum, quod nulla frangat tribulatio: da liberum, quod nulla sibi vindicet violenta affectio. Do intercessory prayers (those said on behalf of another person and no, I'm not talking about having your friends quickly pray that the approaching police officer doesn't give you a ticket) have an effect on the recovery from illness above and beyond what medical treatment can provide? Answer: Some say…
"The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few." -Matthew 9:37 Entering the working world produces many emotions, such as anxiety over one's performance, quiet resignation when dealing with peculiar co-workers, even that flat feeling one gets when shlepping home after a weary afternoon in the office. These sentiments pale, however, with the thought of losing one's job. No one wants to live with the fear that they might be downsized or outsourced, yet reading the headlines reminds us that job losses continue to plague our country. Do these concerns ever apply to members of the medical…
"Chemical reactions in the brain force teenagers' mood swings" Oh, no...this is the worst possible news I could receive on a sunny Monday afternoon. What's it all about? Hormones have long been blamed for mood swings in teenagers, even though the specific scientific causes have never been identified, making it hard to understand and treat adolescent angst. Now scientists have discovered that a hormone normally released in response to stress, a steroid called THP, actually reverses its effect at puberty, when it increases anxiety. In adults, the hormone THP, tetrahydropregnanalone, normally…
Does This Explain the Disaster That Was my High School Prom? Bad-tempered women 'can blame it on genes' Ever wonder why some women seem to be more ill-tempered than others? University of Pittsburgh researchers have found that behaviors such as anger, hostility and aggression may be genetic, rooted in variations in a serotonin receptor gene. Indrani Halder, Ph.D., of the Cardiovascular Behavioral Medicine Program at the University of Pittsburgh, will present the findings today at the American Psychosomatic Society's Annual Meeting, held in Budapest, Hungary. I'm also skeptical that one gene…
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom. Ecclesiastes 9:10 I had a dream recently where I walked through a shimmering forest, on my way to an unknown destination. After cresting a hill I saw a large pile of rocks scattered next to the path. "You know," I said to myself, "I'll bet these stones would make a magnificent sculpture if they were stacked high." Then I walked on. After a while I came across a rabbit lying next on the bank of a gentle creek. I could see that…