Money and Finance
- Oliver Sacks On Learning He Has Terminal Cancer
Link to: My Own Life A MONTH ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago it was discovered...
- Patients’ Costs Skyrocket; Specialists’ Incomes Soar
Kim Little had not thought much about the tiny white spot on the side of her cheek until a physician’s assistant at her dermatologist’s office warned that it might be cancerous. He took a biopsy, returning 15 minutes later to confirm the diagnosis...
- The Cancer Lobby – By Nicholas Kristof
WHO knew that carcinogens had their own lobby in Washington? Don’t believe me? Just consider formaldehyde, which is found in everything from nail polish to kitchen countertops, fabric softeners to carpets. Largely because of its use in building materials,...
- Naked Mole Rat Genome May Point Way To Long, Healthy Life
Since Charlie Munger has talked about the naked mole rat, I figured this was fitting. Found via the Naked Capitalism blog. This comment from Yves Smith after she linked to this article was interesting: “Yes, but I saw Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control....
- The 12 Rules Of Survival – By Laurence Gonzales
Found via Lew Rockwell. As a journalist, I’ve been writing about accidents for more than thirty years. In the last 15 or so years, I’ve concentrated on accidents in outdoor recreation, in an effort to understand who lives, who dies, and why. To my...
Money and Finance
Gene Breakthroughs Spark a Revolution in Cancer Treatment
Kellie Carey's doctor finally stopped dodging questions about how long she had to live six weeks after he diagnosed her lung cancer.
"Maybe three months," he told her in his office one sunny May morning in 2010, she recalls.
Yet she is still alive, a testament to the most extraordinary decade of progress ever in the long scientific struggle against lung cancer.
Tests found Ms. Carey's lung cancer to be of a rare type that researchers had found just three years earlier by deciphering its genetic code. The 45-year-old businesswoman in 2010 went on a drug Pfizer Inc. was testing for that type. By pinpointing her cancer, the drug probably helped give her years more to live than chemotherapy would have, her doctors say.
That is remarkable because lung cancer for decades defied efforts to find drugs that could extend an average patient's life by even a few weeks.
But an explosion in knowledge about the genetic mutations that cause tumors is just now offering the first real promise of drugs that can control what is the most-common and most-deadly cancer.
- Oliver Sacks On Learning He Has Terminal Cancer
Link to: My Own Life A MONTH ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out — a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver. Nine years ago it was discovered...
- Patients’ Costs Skyrocket; Specialists’ Incomes Soar
Kim Little had not thought much about the tiny white spot on the side of her cheek until a physician’s assistant at her dermatologist’s office warned that it might be cancerous. He took a biopsy, returning 15 minutes later to confirm the diagnosis...
- The Cancer Lobby – By Nicholas Kristof
WHO knew that carcinogens had their own lobby in Washington? Don’t believe me? Just consider formaldehyde, which is found in everything from nail polish to kitchen countertops, fabric softeners to carpets. Largely because of its use in building materials,...
- Naked Mole Rat Genome May Point Way To Long, Healthy Life
Since Charlie Munger has talked about the naked mole rat, I figured this was fitting. Found via the Naked Capitalism blog. This comment from Yves Smith after she linked to this article was interesting: “Yes, but I saw Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control....
- The 12 Rules Of Survival – By Laurence Gonzales
Found via Lew Rockwell. As a journalist, I’ve been writing about accidents for more than thirty years. In the last 15 or so years, I’ve concentrated on accidents in outdoor recreation, in an effort to understand who lives, who dies, and why. To my...