Featured series 
Tag: Medicine
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Nation & World
Changes to system and self necessary for health reform
Major changes, including personal and market-based reforms, are needed in order to bring health coverage to every American, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt told an audience at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum on Tuesday (Sept. 25).
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Science & Tech
‘Hot’ ice could lead to medical device
Harvard physicists have shown that specially treated diamond coatings can keep water frozen at body temperature, a finding that may have applications in future medical implants.
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Health
State’s health care plan assessed
An architect of Massachusetts’ year-old experiment with universal health coverage said Monday (Sept. 17) that because of the experiment 170,000 people have insurance today who otherwise would not, but that the problem may be bigger than initially thought.
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Campus & Community
Newsmakers
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) recently named several Graduate School of Design (GSD) faculty members recipients of professional awards. Their work will be officially honored at the ASLA’s annual conference in October.
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Campus & Community
Alexander H. Leighton of School of Public Health dies at 99
Professor Alexander H. Leighton, first chair of the Department of Behavioral Sciences (now part of the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health) at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH), passed away on Aug. 11 at his home in Nova Scotia, Canada. He was 99.
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Campus & Community
Wagers named ‘Distinguished Young Scholar in Medical Research’
Assistant Professor of Pathology Amy Wagers of the Harvard-affiliated Joslin Diabetes Center has been named to the W.M. Keck Foundation’s 2007 class of Distinguished Young Scholars in Medical Research.
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Health
Man-made medical mystery gets second solution
Researchers have created a new material that they believe improves on an eight-year-old solution to a decades-long medical mystery over the cause of widespread artificial joint failure. The new material, developed at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and implanted for the first time July 19, could help fill the demand for higher-performance joints from a…
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Health
Human stem cells help monkeys recover from Parkinson’s
Richard Sidman, Bullard Professor of Neuropathology Emeritus at Harvard Medical School (HMS), and colleagues from Harvard and other universities and medical schools published the first report of a promising attempt to treat Parkinson’s in a humanlike animal in the July 17 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Health
Broken hearts found to mend themselves
Stem cells apparently try to mend hearts damaged by heart attacks or high blood pressure. But they do not refresh hearts run down by aging. Evidence for this heartening and disheartening news comes from experiments with mice done at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
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Nation & World
Global momentum for smoke-free society
In a perspective article in the April 12 issue of The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Association of European Cancer Leagues describe the growing momentum for indoor smoking bans in countries across the globe. They identify Ireland’s pioneering 2004 comprehensive indoor smoking ban…
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Campus & Community
Avian flu drill preps for possible scenario
Let’s pretend. The first cases of a deadly new strain of avian influenza appear in Eastern Europe. In a few days, the wave of a building pandemic sweeps westward to London, skips across the Atlantic to New York — then shows up in Boston. Day by day, as the crisis multiplies, when and how does…
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Health
Manipulating genetic switch in mice eases MD symptoms
Scientists at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute have shown in a laboratory study that revving up a crucial set of muscle genes counteracts the damage caused by a form of muscular dystrophy.
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Campus & Community
New department approved
The Harvard Corporation has approved, with the support of the deans of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) and the Harvard Medical School (HMS), the establishment of a new Department of Developmental and Regenerative Biology, the first academic department in Harvard’s 371-year history to be based in more than one of the University’s Schools.…
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Campus & Community
Whittenberger, HSPH chair, dies at 93
James Whittenberger, who chaired the Department of Physiology at the Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) from 1948 to 1980, passed away March 17. He was 93 years old.
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Health
Noninfectious pathway for HIV found by HSPH team
HIV is a crafty virus. It attacks the body by invading and taking over the very cells meant to protect humans from infection. Hiding within cells such as macrophages and lymphocytes, the virus uses the body’s natural machinery to replicate itself, destroying the immune system and leaving patients open to a range of debilitating and…
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Nation & World
Stem cells, through a religious lens
Representatives of three of the world’s major religions tangled over the beginnings of human life, the disposal of surplus embryos from in vitro fertilization clinics, and the conduct of embryonic stem cell research Wednesday (March 14) at Harvard Divinity School. Panelists at the event, representing Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, each briefly presented their faith’s teachings…
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Nation & World
Legal, ethical limits to bioengineering debated
It is a truism that “politics makes strange bedfellows,” but late Tuesday afternoon (March 20), in the Ames Courtroom of Harvard Law School’s (HLS) Austin Hall, bioethics made two sets of philosophical bedfellows as strange as any Washington has seen.
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Health
Vitamin D may protect against prostate cancer
With spring on the way, Harvard researchers advise men to get more sun, supplements, and seafood. All are good sources of vitamin D, and a large, lengthy study suggests the vitamin reduces risk of prostate cancer.
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Campus & Community
Match Day sets the course
Gordon Hall’s second-floor hallway was alive with the chatter of more than 100 medical students catching up with classmates and renewing old acquaintances as they waited to be summoned past a cluster of colorful balloons, up a short flight of stairs, and into Room 213 where their futures waited. The students, members of Harvard Medical…
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Health
High-deductible health plans are linked to fewer ER visits
Patients who switched to high-deductible health plans went to the emergency department 10 percent less than patients who remained in traditional plans, according to a new study by the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention (of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care). The study, published in the March 14 Journal of the American…
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Health
I know just how you feel
When people talk with psychotherapists, the best results occur if both feel similar emotions, when both “like” each other. But do most therapists really connect with patients this way? No one has ever tried to directly measure the biology of empathy between the two.
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Health
Over-the-counter pain relievers increase the risk of high blood pressure in men
Researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have found that the three most commonly used drugs in the United States, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, and aspirin, increase the risk of developing high blood pressure in middle-aged men. These findings are published in the Feb. 26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.
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Campus & Community
CC Wang
CC Wang of the Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital died peacefully at his home in Lincoln, MA on the evening of December 14, 2005. Dr. Wang was 83 years old at the time of his passing.
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Campus & Community
William Berenberg
William Berenberg was born October 29, 1915, in Haverhill, Mass. He moved to Chelsea at a young age and was educated in the public high school before attending Harvard College as a day student. There he participated in basketball and baseball and was a member of the Phillips Brooks House. He compiled an excellent academic…
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Health
Study: Heed spiritual needs of cancer patients
People with advanced cancer felt they received little or no spiritual support from religious communities and the medical system, according to a new survey. However, those who did receive such support reported a better quality of life.
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Campus & Community
David G. Freiman
David Galland Freiman, M.D. was born on July 1, 1911 in New York City, the son of Leopold and Dorothy (Galland) Freiman. After graduating from City College of New York, David attended the Long Island College of Medicine (now Downstate Medical Center SUNY), receiving his M.D. degree in 1935. David completed an internship in Internal…
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Campus & Community
William Samson Beck
Physician, scientist, teacher, writer, and musician, Bill Beck’s life gave zestful expression to his many creative talents.
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Campus & Community
Free rides to blood drive givers
In its efforts to make giving blood as convenient as possible, the Massachusetts General Hospital Blood Donor Center is currently providing free transportation to and from the Harvard campus (or back to anyplace in Boston/Cambridge) for groups of three or more donors.
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Campus & Community
Harold Amos
Harold Amos, scientist, educator, mentor, and avid Francophile, was born in Pennsauken, New Jersey, the second of nine children of Howard R. Amos Sr., who worked in the Philadelphia post office, and his wife Iola Johnson. Iola had been adopted by, and worked for, a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family who home schooled her with their…
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Health
Poor fall behind in birth control
Modern contraception has come a long way in the past 20 years, what with diaphragms, hormones, implants, intrauterine devices, condoms, spermicides, and sterilization. But the boom in birth control has been a bust for the poorest women in the world.