When Lowering the Odds of Cancer isn’t Enough, written by Tara Parker-Pope, was published in The New York Times on December 14, 2009. In this article, two pills named tamoxifen and raloxifene are discussed. These pills have been proven to prevent cancer in people who are at a high risk of getting it. Despite this good news, most women who are asked to consider taking the drug refuse and would rather have surgeries to remove their breasts and ovaries to prevent cancer. They do not want to take tamoxifen because it has serious side effects. In a group of 1,000 women, 21 would likely be diagnosed with endometrial cancer; a cancer of the uterine lining that is easily treated if caught early. 21 more women are likely to develop blood clots, 31 would develop cataracts and 12 would develop sexual problems. While more than one half of these 1,000 women will naturally experience hormonal symptoms, tamoxifen will give these symptoms to an extra 120 women. When there was a study done on this drug, only six percent of the people said they would consider it after talking to their doctors; one percent actually got a prescription filled for tamoxifen, and 80 percent were too worried about the side effects to think about filling a prescription. When a study was done on raloxifene, which significantly reduces the risk of breast cancer but has less severe side effects, the results were similar to those of tamoxifen. Doctors have called this resistance to take the drug omission bias, which is when “[p]eople tend to worry more about a low risk of harm from something they do (like taking a pill or a vaccine) than about a higher risk of harm from doing nothing.” Dr. Norton of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York is confident that new research being done on aromatase inhibitors, which lower the amount of estrogen in the body, would lead to new cancer prevention drugs with less worrisome side effects.
Tara Parker-Pope has been a professional reporter for twenty years. She writes a weekly consumer health column and daily health blog for The New York Times. Before those jobs, she was the health columnist for The Wall Street Journal. She won the Media Award from the North American Menopause Society along with the Second Century Award for Excellence in Health Care from the Columbia University School of Nursing for her article about the findings of the Women’s Health Initiative in The Wall Street Journal. In this article, Tara seems to be taking the side of the medication. She implies that the medication is there to help women more than it is going to harm them. She says, “parents gave far more credence to hypothetical concerns about side effects than about the very real danger of an unvaccinated child’s becoming severely ill with the disease.” The fact that she calls the concerns of the side effects “hypothetical” shows she understands that there is a good chance that the side effects will not happen, and if they do they will not be as serious as the disease. She calls contracting the disease a “very real danger,” which shows that she would rather deal with hypotheticals and maybes than definite dangers. In this article, Tara quotes Ms. Birkhold, an ideal candidate for the medication, who had no interest in taking the drugs. She balances these quotes with Dr. Larry Norton, the deputy physician in chief for breast cancer programs at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, who understands why people may not want to take the drugs, however, he is in full support of and encourages people to try tamoxifen. Overall, I found the author to stay neutral and give key facts about both sides of the issue. The article was very interesting and informative.
This article made me think about the assignment we had at the beginning of the year about whether or not cancer was infectious. That assignment got me thinking about how cancer is not usually infectious, but it is unbelievably serious. I found it shocking that only six percent of the people in the study considered taking the drug to help eliminate the possibility of getting cancer. What was more surprising to me was that only one percent actually got the prescription filled. I completely see why these women would hesitate and not want to take the drug, but I feel like the dangers of cancer are much greater and far more serious than the possible side effects of taking tamoxifen and raloxifene. I have family members who suffered through the treatments of many different types of cancer, and if they were given the option, they would have taken the risk of having to deal with side effects of these medications over having to go through what they went through with cancer.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
H1N1 scare distracts from West Nile Virus Threat
http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/chi-west-nile-virusjan03,0,7322936.story
By Angie Leventis Lourgos
I found this article to be very interesting when i first read it. This article written by Angie Leventis Lourgos talks about in 2009 while numerous cases of the H1N1 flu came out, a suprisingly low number of another recently new disease was being recorded; the disease known as the West Nile Virus. Usually this disease is seen in higher numbers, but many health experts believe it was due to wet springs and summers; they do not believe that it is actually going away.
Marilyn Ruiz, a clinical assistant professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that it has not gone away because they are still finding this disease in mosqittos. She also noted that it is easy to forget about, when all this commotion is circled around the H1N1 Virus.
It is said that the best time for this virus to spread is during hot summers when it is a perfect breeding ground for mosqittos. Season like those have reported many more cases of this virus.
It was also reported in 2009 there were only five cases of West Nile in Illinois, but back in 2002 there was a shocking 884 human cases with 67 deaths. This was a huge difference to see. This virus was actually first confirmed in birds here in 2001. Health officials believe that there were more cases of it than reported. Most people who contract this virus do not even know how they got it. People who have it usually show no syptoms, only such like a headache or fever. In rare cases of this virus the disease can be fatal or can case severe damage.
Many health experts say that this disease is hard to track because you need to anylize all three cycles of populations of birds, mosquittos, and humans. the disease is between mosqittos and birds and then mosquittos give it to humans.
Emily Zielinski-Gutierrez of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, "There's a lot we don't know about the interrelationships."
This makes it all the more hard to truly understand this virus.
I believe that this article was very good because instead of just talking about the H1N1 virus, which is all we hear about now, it brought up another virus that is also just as dangerous. It brings up the awareness of the West Nile and how easy it is for a human to contract it. It is only transmitted by mosquittos, and during the summer they are every where. Unlike Swine Flu, the West Nile barely shows any symptoms, a fever and a headache, but those are things that are easily cureable today. So it just shows that we have to be more aware of our surroundings and know ways to protect ourselves from further disease.
By Angie Leventis Lourgos
I found this article to be very interesting when i first read it. This article written by Angie Leventis Lourgos talks about in 2009 while numerous cases of the H1N1 flu came out, a suprisingly low number of another recently new disease was being recorded; the disease known as the West Nile Virus. Usually this disease is seen in higher numbers, but many health experts believe it was due to wet springs and summers; they do not believe that it is actually going away.
Marilyn Ruiz, a clinical assistant professor at the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, says that it has not gone away because they are still finding this disease in mosqittos. She also noted that it is easy to forget about, when all this commotion is circled around the H1N1 Virus.
It is said that the best time for this virus to spread is during hot summers when it is a perfect breeding ground for mosqittos. Season like those have reported many more cases of this virus.
It was also reported in 2009 there were only five cases of West Nile in Illinois, but back in 2002 there was a shocking 884 human cases with 67 deaths. This was a huge difference to see. This virus was actually first confirmed in birds here in 2001. Health officials believe that there were more cases of it than reported. Most people who contract this virus do not even know how they got it. People who have it usually show no syptoms, only such like a headache or fever. In rare cases of this virus the disease can be fatal or can case severe damage.
Many health experts say that this disease is hard to track because you need to anylize all three cycles of populations of birds, mosquittos, and humans. the disease is between mosqittos and birds and then mosquittos give it to humans.
Emily Zielinski-Gutierrez of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says, "There's a lot we don't know about the interrelationships."
This makes it all the more hard to truly understand this virus.
I believe that this article was very good because instead of just talking about the H1N1 virus, which is all we hear about now, it brought up another virus that is also just as dangerous. It brings up the awareness of the West Nile and how easy it is for a human to contract it. It is only transmitted by mosquittos, and during the summer they are every where. Unlike Swine Flu, the West Nile barely shows any symptoms, a fever and a headache, but those are things that are easily cureable today. So it just shows that we have to be more aware of our surroundings and know ways to protect ourselves from further disease.
Search for a Cure-AIDS
The article I read is "Search for a Cure-AIDS Turns 20" and I found it on nationalgeographic.com.The article is about the world wide search for a preventative vaccine for HIV, the virus that causes the disease AIDS.
It starts out talking about a 37 year old heroin addict who was getting his blood drain at Clinic 17 of the Bangkok Vaccine Evaluation Group. He has high hopes that his contribution to the search for a vaccine for HIV will be beneficial to society in the years to come. He is one out of 2,500 injecting drug users in Thailand that have enrolled in a trial of the first potential HIV vaccine to reach the third and final stage of clinical testing. Not only are people in Thailand searching for a vaccine but people all over North America and Europe have also been involved in the search. Almost 8,000 people at high risk for HIV but HIV negative, have volunteered to receive either injections of the vaccine called AIDSVAX or a placebo, without knowing which would be given. Over a course of three years, these participants blood is drawn at 6 month intervals. If the vaccine group shows a lower infection rate than the placebo group, there is evidence that the vaccine is working. The results will take many years to come out however, we will have results from the first trials, begun in 1998-99 in Europe and North America by the end of this year.
More than 36 million people world wide are carriers of HIV even though 95% of them are never actually diagnosed. Statistics say that every 24 hours 15,00 more people become infected with the virus while 8,00 others die from the disease caused by HIV, AIDS. AIDS is a horrible disease that takes victims mercilessly when it disables their immune system and causes them to die from otherwise treatable ailments. If a vaccine were to be developed to help prevent this disease, thousands of lives would be spared.
I think it is very interesting how scientists go about creating vaccines to help prevent the various epidemic diseases taking victims all across the globe.This hopeful vaccine for HIV would benefit society an unbelievable amount because so many people who would otherwise die from HIV/AIDS, would be saved. However if this vaccine is developed, it should not be used as an excuse to continue having unprotected sex because safe sex should always be practiced.
Does Air Travel Increase Your Risk for Getting Sick?
http://wellness.blogs.time.com/2009/08/13/does-air-travel-increase-your-risk-for-getting-sick/
I read the Time Magazine article Does Air Travel Increase Your Risk for Getting Sick? I was very interested the read this article because with the reintroduction of the Swine Flu, many people were fearful of flying. According to this article, air travel is nothing to be feared.
According to Sr. Russell B. Rayman, executive director of the Aerospace Medical Association, peoples fears are "overblown." Even though airplanes are not clinically sterile, they have rigid air quality requirements. Many people believe that everyone on a plane is breathing in the same air, this is untrue. Instead of breathing the same air with 400 passengers, you are only sharing air with the people in your row. This is because of "side to side air circulation systems" in planes and the fact that fresh air comes out by your feet as well as by your head. Dr. Rayman says "If anything pathological were in the air, it would be confined to that row, or at most, it could possibly spread one or two rows in either direction,"
Rayman says that it is unlikely for microbes to make their way along seven or eight seats and the high efficiency air filters also provide protection for travelers. Like any public place, there is a risk for disease exposure on planes when other passengers are ill. Rayman also says that because you are on the plane for a long period of time the chances of catching a disease are greater than getting on and off a bus or waiting in line at the store. If you're in an airplane flying across the Atlantic, you may be sitting next to somebody for a long period of time which is not generally true in a grocery store." Regardless of where you are getting sick, particularly with Swine Flu, it comes down to the proximity of people.
I addition to the airflow, planes have requirements for the introduction of fresh air into the cabin. 55 lbs. of fresh air per occupant per minutes according to the Federal Aviation Administration. Rayman says that there has been too much misinformation about travel safety being linked with Swine Flu, but emphasizes that people who are already sick should avoid traveling to help protect themselves as well as the people around them. "If you're considerate of other people and you have a fever or you have the flu, you shouldn't be flying," he says. "It's just common sense."
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Cholera Outbreak in Guinea-Bissau
http://www.who.int/csr/don/2008_09_24/en/index.html
The article, “Cholera Outbreak in Guinea-Bissau”, by Amanda O’Donnell, discusses a recent outbreak of the fatal disease Cholera, which we discussed in class. The recent outbreak in Guinea-Bissau infected approximately 14,000 people and killed 225 people total before being controlled by the government. The article states that in the past there have been seasonal outbreaks of Cholera that have infected the people because of a lack of water sanitation, but there has not been a recent outbreak like this one. A water engineer states that the infected water is due to a lack of funding that goes towards the water system, and also the pipes are leaking because they are about 45 years old and in need of repair. Another factor in the flawed pipe system is that the population of the capital city has gone from 60,000, when the pipe system was started, to 350,000 now and of that 350,000 only about 20% have access to pipe-born water, which in itself can be contaminated as well. Because of the lack of water, people have been forced to dig wells in their backyards, which is also dangerous because contaminated run-offs usually are in the water. However, people are trying to help clean up this situation. World Bank has started to build water reservoirs in the capital by laying pipes which has cost them about six million dollars so far. Also, the European Commission has signed a 3.9 million dollar project with the capital to improve its water system. One of the reforms that this project plans to bring to help the situation is to put solar powered water points in communities. The last part of the article talks about the fact that Guinea-Bissau has the world’s fifth-highest mortality rates for children in the world. About one in five children die in this capital before the age of five, and Cholera is definitely a factor in most of these child deaths. So, if the city is able to clean up their water system, they should be able to at least reduce the number of people who contract Cholera.
This article made me appreciate how good we have it here in the United States, because we do not have to worry about diseases such as Cholera. I think that we should try to help countries that are in a state such as Guinea-Bissau is in order to save many people’s lives from preventable diseases such as this one. I also found it helpful knowing the information that I learned in class about Cholera and its symptoms, because without it I would not have gotten such a good understanding of this article.
The article, “Cholera Outbreak in Guinea-Bissau”, by Amanda O’Donnell, discusses a recent outbreak of the fatal disease Cholera, which we discussed in class. The recent outbreak in Guinea-Bissau infected approximately 14,000 people and killed 225 people total before being controlled by the government. The article states that in the past there have been seasonal outbreaks of Cholera that have infected the people because of a lack of water sanitation, but there has not been a recent outbreak like this one. A water engineer states that the infected water is due to a lack of funding that goes towards the water system, and also the pipes are leaking because they are about 45 years old and in need of repair. Another factor in the flawed pipe system is that the population of the capital city has gone from 60,000, when the pipe system was started, to 350,000 now and of that 350,000 only about 20% have access to pipe-born water, which in itself can be contaminated as well. Because of the lack of water, people have been forced to dig wells in their backyards, which is also dangerous because contaminated run-offs usually are in the water. However, people are trying to help clean up this situation. World Bank has started to build water reservoirs in the capital by laying pipes which has cost them about six million dollars so far. Also, the European Commission has signed a 3.9 million dollar project with the capital to improve its water system. One of the reforms that this project plans to bring to help the situation is to put solar powered water points in communities. The last part of the article talks about the fact that Guinea-Bissau has the world’s fifth-highest mortality rates for children in the world. About one in five children die in this capital before the age of five, and Cholera is definitely a factor in most of these child deaths. So, if the city is able to clean up their water system, they should be able to at least reduce the number of people who contract Cholera.
This article made me appreciate how good we have it here in the United States, because we do not have to worry about diseases such as Cholera. I think that we should try to help countries that are in a state such as Guinea-Bissau is in order to save many people’s lives from preventable diseases such as this one. I also found it helpful knowing the information that I learned in class about Cholera and its symptoms, because without it I would not have gotten such a good understanding of this article.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Cholera Kills 15 Per Day in Zimbabwe
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/africa/12/01/zimbabwe.cholera/index.html?eref=rss_world. Capital lacks clean water, cholera kills hundreds in Zimbabwe, CNN.
Four of the nations largest hospitals have shut down and some doctors and nurses have gone on strike because of low wages. Other doctors and nurses refuse to work in fear of contracting the disease while working in the hospitals. Efforts to correct this crisis include importing chemicals from South Africa to treat the water, yet they have been unsuccessful. With the countries economy as awful as it is, Zimbabwe is not able to pay for these chemicals because of their bad records and lack of credit lines. 90% of citizens in Zimbabwe are unemployed and the official inflation rate is said to be over 231 million percent. Movement for Democratic Change president, Thokozani Khupe has asked the government to call on the international community to send food and medicine. He asked the government to put politics aside and to focus on the crisis at hand.
I chose this article because I feel that with all the hustle and bustle of the busy world we live in, we rarely acknowledge how much trouble there is outside of the United States. It is important for us to recognize the epidemics going around in other parts of the world that we simply overlook. I liked this article because it spreads awareness about this disease on one of the most prestigious news websites out there, CNN. By spreading awareness we can hopefully help Zimbabwe and other third world countries suffering from mass cases of Cholera and help them obtain the resources they need to help end this epidemic.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Very Sick, and Now a Curiosity
By DENISE GRADY
Published: December 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/health/22virus.html?_r=1&scp=7&sq=infectious%20disease&st=cse
The author of this article, Denise Grady, is a writer in the science department for the New York Times, and also has been writing for numerous magazines such as Discovery and Scientific America. She has a B.S Degree and a M.S in English from the University of New Hampshire. She is a very accomplished journalist, who has been awarded with many awards for her works in the scientific fields. She also received a commendation from the Newspaper Guild for "choice and excellence of crusading journalistic contributions in the areas of science and medicine," in 1986.
http://sciwrite.org/sciwrite/grady.html
In this article Denise focuses on a woman named, Michelle Barnes, and her fight with the very deadly Marburg virus . Ms. Barnes was just getting back from a vacation in Uganda, when she fell extremely ill with this rare virus. Symptoms of hers included a rash, the development of terrible abdominal pain, weakness, being very tired, and confusion. After tests revealed that she had a low white blood cell count and that her kidneys and liver were starting to fail she was hospitalized. After a while her muscles and pancreas started to become inflamed, and doctors had no idea what was going on. Even after having specialists in infectious disease looking up every tropical disease they could think of they got no answer. After a little over a week she left the hospital, but still was affected by abdominal pain, confusion, and exhaustion for over seven months. However, she found an article about a woman who traveled to the same place she did, and had died from something called Marburg hemorrhagic fever. After reading further she found out that it was believed that she caught the viral disease from exposure to bat dropping in the same cave in which she had visited. After being tested again for Marburg, test came back positive, and she was reported as the first case of Marburg virus every reaching North America. There is no cure, or vaccine against this disease, which has a high mortality rate, and one which can easily be transmitted through bodily fluids.
Experts say that it is amazing that she survived, and that no one else caught the deadly disease from her. They have warned that this disease easily could have traveled around the world by plane, and exposed itself to countless of other victims. Denise did a really great job at the end to emphasize how close it was to having an outbreak of this very dangerous disease. Ms. Barnes’s case is considered to be very mild, even though she almost died, and took her over a year to fully recover. This goes to show how deadly this disease really is, only being exposed to a very little amount can cause death.
I choose this article because there is still little known about this disease, and it goes to show how far we still have to go in the field of medicine. We have gone a long way with finding ways to prevent disease and cures, but I do not think we will ever be able to be finished with finding new ways to help cure people and fighting off new diseases. Ms. Barnes has allowed the National Institutes of Health to take blood samples from her in the hope of finding a vaccine and a way to help cure this disease. I find is extremely heart warming to find that she is making a scary situation and turning it into one in which can save the lives of others.
Published: December 21, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/health/22virus.html?_r=1&scp=7&sq=infectious%20disease&st=cse
The author of this article, Denise Grady, is a writer in the science department for the New York Times, and also has been writing for numerous magazines such as Discovery and Scientific America. She has a B.S Degree and a M.S in English from the University of New Hampshire. She is a very accomplished journalist, who has been awarded with many awards for her works in the scientific fields. She also received a commendation from the Newspaper Guild for "choice and excellence of crusading journalistic contributions in the areas of science and medicine," in 1986.
http://sciwrite.org/sciwrite/grady.html
In this article Denise focuses on a woman named, Michelle Barnes, and her fight with the very deadly Marburg virus . Ms. Barnes was just getting back from a vacation in Uganda, when she fell extremely ill with this rare virus. Symptoms of hers included a rash, the development of terrible abdominal pain, weakness, being very tired, and confusion. After tests revealed that she had a low white blood cell count and that her kidneys and liver were starting to fail she was hospitalized. After a while her muscles and pancreas started to become inflamed, and doctors had no idea what was going on. Even after having specialists in infectious disease looking up every tropical disease they could think of they got no answer. After a little over a week she left the hospital, but still was affected by abdominal pain, confusion, and exhaustion for over seven months. However, she found an article about a woman who traveled to the same place she did, and had died from something called Marburg hemorrhagic fever. After reading further she found out that it was believed that she caught the viral disease from exposure to bat dropping in the same cave in which she had visited. After being tested again for Marburg, test came back positive, and she was reported as the first case of Marburg virus every reaching North America. There is no cure, or vaccine against this disease, which has a high mortality rate, and one which can easily be transmitted through bodily fluids.
Experts say that it is amazing that she survived, and that no one else caught the deadly disease from her. They have warned that this disease easily could have traveled around the world by plane, and exposed itself to countless of other victims. Denise did a really great job at the end to emphasize how close it was to having an outbreak of this very dangerous disease. Ms. Barnes’s case is considered to be very mild, even though she almost died, and took her over a year to fully recover. This goes to show how deadly this disease really is, only being exposed to a very little amount can cause death.
I choose this article because there is still little known about this disease, and it goes to show how far we still have to go in the field of medicine. We have gone a long way with finding ways to prevent disease and cures, but I do not think we will ever be able to be finished with finding new ways to help cure people and fighting off new diseases. Ms. Barnes has allowed the National Institutes of Health to take blood samples from her in the hope of finding a vaccine and a way to help cure this disease. I find is extremely heart warming to find that she is making a scary situation and turning it into one in which can save the lives of others.
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