Featured series 
Tag: Medicine
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Nation & World
Quest for a Long Life Gains Scientific Respect
In mice, sirtuin activators are effective against lung and colon cancer, melanoma, lymphoma, Type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease, said David Sinclair, a Harvard Medical School researcher and co-founder of Sirtris. The drugs reduce inflammation, and if they have the same effects in people, could help combat many diseases that have an inflammatory…
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Nation & World
Flu threats are tough to pin down
Harvard’s Lipsitch had a central role in developing the swine flu planning scenario authored by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. That report – which said that in a “plausible scenario,’’ H1N1 could kill 30,000 to 90,000 – emphasizes “this is a planning scenario, not a prediction….”
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Nation & World
Doctors’ group drops late-night ER visit fees
Harvard Medical Faculty Physicians said yesterday that it would no longer add $30 to bills for emergency care delivered between 10 p.m. and 8 a.m.
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Nation & World
A System Breeding More Waste
The fear of lawsuits among doctors does seem to lead to a noticeable amount of wasteful treatment. Amitabh Chandra — a Harvard economist whose research is cited by both the American Medical Association and the trial lawyers’ association — says $60 billion a year, or about 3 percent of overall medical spending, is a reasonable…
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Nation & World
Aspirin Can Prevent Colon Cancer in High-Risk Group, Study Says
The Harvard study suggested aspirin could prevent tumors from growing by inhibiting Cox-2, an enzyme that may play a role in the initial growth of a tumor.
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Nation & World
Doctors Don’t Agree On Letting Patients See Notes
The medical record has traditionally been viewed by the medical establishment as something that they own,” says Dr. Tom Delbanco of Harvard Medical School. “They think: ‘It’s my private notes. This is my stuff.'”
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Nation & World
Harvard Medical Study Links Lack of Insurance to 45,000 U.S. Deaths a Year
The Harvard study found that people without health insurance had a 40 percent higher risk of death than those with private health insurance — as a result of being unable to obtain necessary medical care.
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Nation & World
Diabetes Medication May Get New Life as Cancer Treatment
A national tax of 1 cent per ounce of soda and other sugary drinks could stem the United States’ obesity epidemic, while generating $14.9 billion the first year alone, health experts say.
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Nation & World
Robert Timmons McCluskey
Robert T. McCluskey, a pioneer in the field of immunopathology, died June 29, 2006 at the age of 83. McCluskey was a leader in academic pathology and nephrology and his major scientific contributions were related to the immunopathogenesis of renal diseases.
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Nation & World
Lloyd M. Aiello receives Alpert Prize for preventing blindness in diabetic patients
Lloyd M. Aiello, a Harvard Medical School clinical professor of ophthalmology at Joslin Diabetes Center’s Beetham Eye Institute, will receive the 2008-09 Warren Alpert Foundation Prize on Sept. 29.
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Nation & World
Thomas Carlyle Jones
The veterinary profession lost one of its most influential and respected leaders and the American College of Veterinary Pathologists lost its founder, Thomas Carlyle Jones, who died at the age of 95.
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Nation & World
Is all that scanning putting us at risk?
Last year, when Dr. Aaron Sodickson and his colleagues counted the number of medical scans patients underwent in the emergency room at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, some patients clearly stood out. One 45-year-old woman with a history of kidney stones had 70 CT scans over 22 years.
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Nation & World
Is Happiness Catching?
Nicholas Christakis began taking a new look at this question in 2000 after an experience visiting terminally ill patients in the working-class neighborhoods of Chicago.
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Nation & World
Does Infection Boost Prostate Cancer Risk?
In the new study, Jennifer Stark of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and colleagues analyzed blood samples from 673 men with prostate cancer who participated in the Physicians’ Health Study, a large, ongoing study examining a variety of health issues.
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Nation & World
Donations to cancer institute hit $1b
A Dana-Farber Cancer Institute fund-raising campaign has hit the $1 billion mark a year earlier than expected – despite the ragged economy – setting what is believed to be a record for New England health care institutions. The drive’s success, which will be announced today, appears to have few national parallels, although at least one…
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Nation & World
Insured, but Bankrupted Anyway
Dr. David Himmelstein is an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and a primary care doctor at the Cambridge Hospital in Massachusetts. “Our most recent study found that nearly two-thirds of Americans who declared bankruptcy cited illness or medical bills as a significant cause of their bankruptcies. And of the medically bankrupt, three-quarters…
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Nation & World
Medical grants a boon for Mass.
Massachusetts biomedical researchers are seeing a windfall from federal stimulus money, with the state receiving more in grants from the National Institutes of Health than all others but California.
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Nation & World
Child psychiatrist pens her past
Psychiatrist Nancy Rappaport uncovers a relationship with the mother she scarcely knew in her powerful familial memoir. Infused with accounts of treating her own teenage patients, Rappaport plumbs the bond between parents and children while closing in on healing.
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Nation & World
I. (Israel) David Todres
(Israel) David Todres, Professor of Paediatrics (Anaesthesia) at Harvard Medical School, died at his home of lymphoma on Sept. 26, 2008. He was 73.
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Nation & World
Shukri F. Khuri
Dr. Shukri F. Khuri passed away peacefully at the age of 65, surrounded by family and friends, on September 26, 2008, at his Westwood home, after courageously battling brain cancer for more than eighteen months. A gifted and spirited surgeon and researcher, his absolute love for life enabled him to achieve remarkable professional success and…
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Nation & World
Nick Rizzo ’09: Have compassion, will travel
Nick Rizzo ’09 has been certain since the second grade that crimson is his color. The young sports fan from Kingston, Mass., used to travel to Boston with his father to cheer for Harvard in the annual Beanpot hockey tournament. When it came time for college applications, there was no question: early action to Harvard.
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Nation & World
Mobile health van returns $36 for every dollar invested
Researchers from Harvard Medical School (HMS) have developed a prototype “return on investment calculator” that can measure the value of prevention services. Using a Boston-based mobile health program called the “Family Van” to test the tool, the team found that for the services provided in 2008, this program, in the long run, will return $36…
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Nation & World
Ten honorary degrees awarded at Commencement
Harvard University has conferred today (June 4) honorary degrees on 10 outstanding individuals: Energy Secretary Steven Chu, filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar, author Joan Didion, religious historian Wendy Doniger, legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin, immunologist Anthony S. Fauci, anthropologist Sarah Hrdy, engineer Robert Langer, musician Wynton Marsalis, and political scientist Sidney Verba.
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Nation & World
Acid-suppressive medicines increase pneumonia risk for hospital patients
Ever since a class of drugs called proton pump inhibitors was introduced to the market in the late 1980s, the use of these acid-suppressive medications for heartburn, acid reflux, and other gastrointestinal symptoms has grown tremendously. The widespread use has extended to the inpatient hospital setting, where patients are often routinely given the medications as…
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Nation & World
Brigham face transplant recipient goes home
James Maki, a 59-year-old who became the nation’s second face transplant recipient in April to repair injuries from a horrific subway accident, left Brigham and Women’s Hospital on Thursday (May 21), thankful for what he called a “new chance to build my life.”
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Nation & World
Patients expect computers to play major role in health care
As President Obama calls for streamlining heath care by fully converting to electronic medical records, and as Congress prepares to debate issues of patient privacy, one question has largely gone unasked: What do patients want?
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Nation & World
Embryo’s heartbeat drives blood stem cell formation
Biologists have long wondered why the embryonic heart begins beating so early, before the tissues actually need to be infused with blood. Two groups of Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) researchers from Children’s Hospital Boston (Children’s) and Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) — presenting multiple lines of evidence from zebrafish, mice, and mouse embryonic stem…
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Nation & World
Lessons from past explored to expedite future research
People, knowledge, communication, and capitalism were front and center last week as authorities on innovation sought to shed light on ways to speed up the development of new medical treatments from discoveries in the lab.
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Nation & World
‘Paging God: Religion in the Halls of Medicine’
What happens when a Buddhist monk visiting the United States is hospitalized, terminally ill with liver cancer? Does religion interfere with his medical care? What about his Buddhist brethren, unable to join him bedside? Who will provide the appropriate services and ceremonies? Well, says Wendy Cadge, that’s where hospital chaplains come in.
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Nation & World
Simulating chaos to teach order
A troubled piece of Africa came to North Andover, Mass., last weekend (April 24-26) as more than 50 students from a collaborative, three-university humanitarian program took part in a hands-on outdoor field course that simulated an emergency on the border between Chad and Sudan’s troubled Darfur region.