Dr. Harold J. Burstein, a medical oncologist specializing in breast cancer at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, has been appointed editor-in-chief of The Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

Joan Vitello has been named chief operating officer for Lawrence Memorial Hospital of Medford. She was previously vice president and chief nursing officer of Hallmark Health System, to which the Lawrence hospital belongs.

Dr. James H. Thrall, radiologist-in-chief at Massachusetts General Hospital, has been named chair of the American College of Radiology Board of Chancellors. Dr. John A. Patti of North Shore Medical Center was elected vice chair of the same board.

Dr. Anthony L. Zietman of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center has been elected president and chairman-elect of the American Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology.

Patients interviewed after they've left the hospital report twice as many complications as their medical records suggest, a survey has found.

"This study really shows if you talk with patients about their experiences, you find out a lot of things that don't get captured in the medical record," said study co-author Nancy Ridley, associate commissioner of the state Department of Public Health."We found adverse events that had occurred that you never would have picked up from medical records."

Based on the results, she said, Massachusetts hospitals will be encouraged to include questions about patient safety in satisfaction questionnaires they routinely send out,.

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Department of Public Health asked just under 1,000 patients at 16 hospitals about infections, drug errors or reactions, and other incidents in a telephone survey. Their accounts were reviewed by two doctors. Then their medical records were examined by experts to see if the problems surfaced there.

More than a quarter of patients reported a problem, but only about one in 10 medical records showed anything went wrong, according to the study, which appears in tomorrow's Annals of Internal Medicine. Some of the symptoms developed after the patient left the hospital. Life-threatening or serious problems were more likely to be reflected in both the medical record and in interviews with the patient.

Pay for performance is intended to reward doctors for doing the right thing, but a study of the quality of care given by doctors while the incentives were rolling out in Massachusetts shows they didn't make a difference.

Writing in the current issue of Health Affairs, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, and Massachusetts Health Quality Partners report that clinical quality got better in Massachusetts between 2001 and 2003 across the board. They studied doctors groups whose income was tied to a series of measures, such as how many patients got mammograms or had their diabetes monitored.

"Our results suggest that few P4P contracts were associated with greater improvement than was occurring in other practices throughout the state," the authors write. "Clearly something was going on, but what?"

Electronic health records, public reporting of quality, or tiered physician networks could have been the tides lifting all boats. But then there's money, or in the P4P practices, too little of it.

"P4P contracts in Massachusetts might not have put enough money at stake to drive additional quality improvement beyond the existing improvement trend," the authors suggest. "Incentives may need to exceed $2,000 per physician or $100,000 per physician group."

Two Boston hospitals make US News & World Report's latest Best Hospitals rankings look a little like "Partners and Everyone Else," to borrow a phrase from former Globe business columnist Steve Bailey.

That's because Partners stalwarts Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women's Hospital are the only ones in the state to crack the magazine's 19-member Honor Roll. The distinction signifies hospitals that scored at or near the top in at least six of the list's 16 specialties. Pediatrics will have its own ranking in the fall.

Not that other hospitals didn't perform well. Our medical mecca's reputation is still intact with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, McLean Hospital, and Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital all finishing in the top 10 of various specialties.

Patient privacy is enshrined in ethical and legal statutes, but what about their doctors' privacy?

Two psychiatrists at Massachusetts General Hospital counsel their colleagues on the lengths their patients may go to in order to dig up digital dirt on them, from how much they paid for their houses to what their sexual orientation may be. Perhaps just as worrying as Internet stalking is the ease of stumbling onto suspect sources, they say in a commentary that warns older doctors not conversant with the Web that they ignore it at their peril.

"There may be slanderous information about a physician on the Web, published in a blog or on a Web page, by a vengeful patient, colleague, or ex-lover," Dr. Tristan Gorrindo and Dr. James E. Groves write in the Journal of the American Medical Association. "Equally vexing, there may be slanderous information published about someone with the same name as an unlucky physician."

By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff

Boston researchers have developed a test that can identify minute amounts of tumor cells floating in the blood of cancer patients, a discovery that could lead to better treatments with fewer side effects.

The technology invented at Massachusetts General Hospital uses a microchip scanner no bigger than a business card to analyze a patient's blood, hunting for stray cells shed by tumors. The device is so powerful that it can sniff out a single cancer cell among 1 billion healthy blood cells.

Once those cells are captured, their genetic fingerprints can help determine the most effective drug for a patient whose cancer has already begun spreading, and also show whether medication has lost its effectiveness. Now, the technology is used in patients whose cancer has already spread, but scientists hope in the future the chip will be able to detect cancer's spread before secondary tumors have become established.

In a report on the state's new law requiring near-universal health coverage, the BBC asks if Massachusetts can serve as a model for the nation, which lags behind poorer countries in some health measures despite its wealth.

"It is a brave attempt to address gaps in US healthcare without trampling on a core US value: freedom of choice," says the British story, which includes interviews with Massachusetts General Hospital's Dr. David Torchiana, former Health Care For All chief John McDonough, Commonwealth Connector head Jon Kingsdale, and Roxbury minister Reverend Hurmon Hamilton.

"Its survival is very dependent on political will," the story concludes. "All eyes, then, on the presidential elections in November."

A USA Today story also timed to the one-year anniversary of the law's deadline for obtaining coverage focuses on the costs of the effort.

"Some will say it's an overwhelming success story. Others will say it has cost somewhat more than expected, so we can't afford to expand coverage," Drew Altman, president of the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation, tells the paper. "The truth is somewhere in the middle."

The relaxation response -- triggered by meditation, deep breathing, or prayer -- can slow heart rate, lower blood pressure, and ease anxiety. But what happens on the cellular level to make these effects flow through body and mind?

In a small study whose results are reported in the open-access journal PLoS One, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center searched for genes implicated in how we respond to stress. They
compared blood samples from 19 seasoned practitioners of the relaxation response to specimens from 19 people who had no experience with the practice. The novices were then trained in achieving the relaxation response for eight weeks, after which they gave new samples.

Researchers from Northeastern University and Massachusetts General Hospital are studying ways to predict which women with benign breast disease are at high risk of developing breast cancer.

Funded by a three-year, $1.3 million grant from the advocacy group Susan G. Komen for the Cure, Barry Karger of Northeastern and Dr. Dennis Sgroi of Mass. General hope to identify proteins that can be used to decide who would benefit from close monitoring or preventive measures.

Two Boston researchers are among five young doctor-scientists receiving three-year, $450,000 grants to study cancer therapies. The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation pairs clinical investigators with mentors to encourage physicians to translate scientific discoveries into treatments.

Dr. Andrew T. Chan of Massachusetts General Hospital is testing new ways to detect colorectal cancer through methods that may help in developing ways to treat and prevent the cancer. He will work with mentors Dr. Charles S. Fuchs and Dr. Ralph Weissleder at Mass. General.

Dr. Rachael A. Clark of Brigham and Women’s Hospital is studying how the immune system controls squamous cell carcinomas and how to develop new treatments for this form of skin cancer. Her mentor is Dr. Thomas S. Kupper of the Brigham.

Imagine an itch so terrible it takes over your whole life. Or your brain.

Dr. Atul Gawande of Brigham and Women's Hospital ponders the mysteries of itch and other sensations, writing in the current New Yorker about pain, its perception, and what might be an entirely different order of sensation. He queries dermatologist Dr. Jeffrey Bernhard of University of Massachusetts Medical School and neurologist Dr. Anne Louise Oaklander of Massachusetts General Hospital about a puzzling case that nearly destroyed a woman's life.

"We now have the nerve map for itching, as we do for other sensations," Gawande writes. "But a deeper puzzle remains: how much of our sensations and experiences do nerves really explain?"

Electronic health records are part of most prescriptions to improve medical care, but only a small fraction of physicians actually use them, a new survey led by Boston researchers says. That falls far short of goals for widespread implementation by 2014, as proposed by President Bush.

Only 4 percent of doctors seeing outpatients use fully functional health record systems and another 13 percent have basic models, according to a study led by Catherine M. DesRoches of Massachusetts General Hospital and published online by the New England Journal of Medicine. Among the have-nots, 16 percent said they had bought systems but not installed them and 26 percent said they planned to buy them within the next two years.

Dr. Randall Zusman, director of the section for hypertension in the cardiac division of Massachusetts General Hospital Heart Center, answered questions about sudden, fatal heart attacks after the death earlier today of NBC newsman Tim Russert. Zusman spoke in general terms about heart disease, the number one killer of Americans.

How common is such a quick and deadly attack?

It's not uncommon by any means and often occurs in previously asymptomatic patients. Over a million people in this country have a heart attack each year and unfortunately about a third of these are fatal. Often it's the patient's first symptom or first sign of heart disease.

In many of these circumstances patients either fail to report or ignore prior symptoms. And that is bewildering when someone has a sudden and immediately fatal event. Did they have atypical symptoms instead of tradition chest pains? They may have had arm, shoulder, or jaw pain. Some people have abdominal pain that is indicative of heart disease.

Dr. Daniel Carlat, a Newburyport psychiatrist on a campaign to separate the influence of industry from medicine, has changed his mind about the three psychiatrists facing a Senate investigation into their failure to report payments from drug makers.

After reviewing records revealed by Senator Charles Grassley, Carlat is no longer inclined to give Drs. Jospeh Biederman, Timothy Wilens, and Thomas Spencer the benefit of the doubt. Instead, he says continuing medical education provided cover for "legalized money laundering" from drug companies.

"It appears that the vast majority of the money eventually reported by the Harvard Trio, a combined $4.2 million over 7 years, was drug company money that was laundered and processed to seem like it wasn't drug company money," Carlat writes on his blog. "And this, I suspect, is why it was so easy for the doctors to rationalize not disclosing it."

Yesterday Massachusetts General Hospital leaders sent an internal memo of support and sympathy for its three doctors. Biederman's work is linked to a steep rise in bipolar diagnoses among children.

Three Harvard psychiatrists facing a US Senate inquiry got a vote of confidence from their hospital as "beloved and trusted by thousands of grateful children and families." Senator Charles Grassley is looking into the doctors' failure to report payments of more than a million dollars in consulting fees from drug makers from 2000 to 2007.

A memo from top officials at Massachusetts General Hospital obtained by the Globe praised Drs. Joseph Biederman, Timothy Wilens, and Thomas Spencer as "pioneers in the field of child mental health" while also endorsing "closely managed" collaboration with industry and promising a review of conflict-of-interest policies.

"They are beloved and trusted by thousands of grateful children and families who have counted on them for treatment, counseling, help and hope. We know this is an incredibly painful time for these doctors and their families, and our hearts go out to them," Dr. Peter L. Slavin, hospital president, and Dr. David F. Torchiana, head of Massachusetts General Physicians Organization, write.

The three psychiatrists received money from companies that made the medications they researched and recommended. Biederman's work is widely linked to a steep rise in bipolar diagnoses among children.

On Sunday Biederman told the New York Times “my interests are solely in the advancement of medical treatment through rigorous and objective study.”

The full Mass. General memo follows:

Newburyport psychiatrist Dr. Daniel Carlat has staked out some substantial turf on conflicts of interest.

On his blog and elsewhere, he has detailed his decision to stop speaking at medical-education conferences sponsored by drug companies, linking such activities to "biased education, corrupt physicians, and, ultimately, harm to our patients."

So it's something of a surprise to read that he is giving Dr. Joseph Biederman, Dr. Timothy E. Wilens, and Dr. Thomas Spencer of Harvard Medical School the benefit of the doubt after reading records released by US Senator Charles E. Grassley. Biederman, widely regarded as influential in the rise in bipolar diagnoses among children, and his colleagues did not disclose all the payments they received from companies that made the medications they researched and recommended.

The discrepancy is important when it comes to federal funding from the National Institutes of Health, Grassley's hearings make clear. But Carlat, who knew all three doctors during his training at Massachusetts General Hospital, thinks the lack of reporting, while perhaps "a little sleazy," falls short of malevolent.

"I don’t think they hid these payments out of greed, sneakiness, or the thrill of getting away with something. They probably simply didn’t believe these earnings were relevant to the NIH funding they received," he writes. "The big lesson here is that Congress must pass the Physician Payment Sunshine Act, because we will never be able to grasp the extent of the complex financial relationships between companies and thought leaders without this legislation."

A New York Times report over the weekend that a Harvard psychiatrist whose work spurred a wave of bipolar diagnoses in children failed to disclose payments from the maker of drugs to treat them reminded a former Globe reporter of a similar case at Brown University.

In 1999 Alison Bass, author of the new book "Side Effects: A Prosecutor, a Whistleblower and a Bestselling Antidepresssant on Trial," wrote Globe stories about Dr. Martin Keller, chief of psychiatry at Brown. He earned more than a million dollars from pharmaceutical companies whose antidepressant drugs he was writing about in medical journals and promoting at conferences. He reported some, but not all, of the income he received, Bass writes on her blog today. She compares Keller to Dr. Joseph Biederman, the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School psychiatrist described in this Globe story last year and identified in records recently revealed by Senate investigators looking into conflicts of interest.

"Just as with Biederman, Keller’s acceptance of money from the maker of a drug he was studying constitutes a blatant conflict of interest," Bass writes. "And just like Biederman, Keller failed to disclose these conflicts to the federal agencies that were rewarding him millions of dollars in research grants."

The Times story includes an e-mailed statement from Biederman:

“My interests are solely in the advancement of medical treatment through rigorous and objective study,” he wrote, and he told the Times he took conflict-of-interest policies “very seriously.”

Four research teams based in Boston are among eight groups that have garnered $19 million in grants from a foundation focused on discovering new treatments for recurrent prostate cancer.

The Prostate Cancer Foundation, a philanthropy based in Santa Monica, Calif., announced its 2008 Challenge Awards, which will be distributed to each program in three annual payments of $500,000 to $1 million.

Children's Hospital Boston took two top honors on US News & World Report ratings of pediatric hospital specialties released this morning. Massachusetts General Hospital for Children placed lower in the rankings of specialty care at 30 hospitals, compiled from pediatrician surveys and hospital data.

Children's placed first in two of seven categories of care: digestive disorders and heart care and heart surgery, the magazine said. It came in second on general pediatrics, cancer, and neurology and neurosurgery; third in neonatal care; and fourth in respiratory disorders.

Mass. General's children's center was rated 21st in general pediatrics, 27th in digestive disorders, 16th in neonatal care, and 17th in respiratory disorders. It did not finish in the top 30 for the other three specialties.

The specialty rankings were based on reputation, outcomes, and other measures such as nursing care and advanced technology. Last fall Children's came in second, behind Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, in a different US News list of pediatric hospitals that included data on mortality, nurse staffing, and advanced care.

In the current rankings, Boston Children's and the Philadelphia hospital flip between first and second place in four categories. Johns Hopkins Children's Center in Baltimore is the only other first-place finisher, in neurology and neurosurgery.

By Kay Lazar, Globe Staff

Boston's three leading medical schools are among 14 nationwide that will receive federal grants aimed at helping scientists more quickly turn their discoveries into treatments for patients.

Under the program, Harvard Medical School has been awarded $117.7 million over the next five years, while Boston University Medical School will receive $23 million and Tufts University School of Medicine $20 million over that time period, the National Institutes of Health announced today.

The awards reflect a sea change in federal funding for scientific research. Schools that have traditionally competed within their own institutions for federal dollars must now form one collaborative center at each medical school to pull together all of its researchers and departments.

The mission of the grant program, called the Clinical and Translational Science Award, is to create a network of medical research institutions across the country that will translate new knowledge into tangible benefits for patients. Launched in 2006, the initiative has awarded money to 24 other medical schools. Total funding for the 14 new recipients will be $533 million over the next five years, the NIH said.

"Everybody knows there is a lot of great research going on but it doesn’t get to public practice," said Dr. Harry Selker, director of Tufts' new Clinical and Translational Science Institute. "This (grant program) is a big deal for the nation."

A prominent Harvard doctor is the sole finalist for the top job at a Texas university, a Dallas paper reports.

Dr. Daniel K. Podolsky (left), head of the gastrointestinal unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, chief academic officer at Partners HealthCare, and a Harvard Medical School professor, is one step away from becoming the next president of UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, according to the Dallas Morning News. He was the only candidate chosen by the UT board of regents, which must wait three weeks before making a final decision.

Podolsky, 55, would succeed Dr. Kern Wildenthal, who is stepping down in September after 22 years as head of UT Southwestern, the story says.

The federal government wants you to know how your local hospitals stack up, so today it is running newspaper ads in all 50 states -- including in the Boston Globe -- comparing local hospitals on two measures of quality and patient satisfaction.

In the Boston area, Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital -- Needham rated last in both categories. The hospital said today it has made improvements since the data were collected, from July 2006 through June 2007.

The numbers aren’t new, but the $1.9 million public push to get consumers onto the web site is.

“This is really trying to create a conversation over dinner tables in America and also in the community about how you choose a hospital,” Kerry Weems, acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said in a teleconference with reporters. “The goal is to drive the quality of healthcare up, drive costs down, and give consumers choice.”

By Carey Goldberg and Stephen Smith, Globe Staff

Senator Edward M. Kennedy, who built a storied career on Capitol Hill as a warrior, has never faced a foe like this.

What began Saturday as a mysterious seizure turned out to be a deadly brain tumor in the left parietal lobe, an area involved in language, perception and other higher level functions.

Doctors treating Kennedy at Massachusetts General Hospital released few details yesterday about his condition, but cancer specialists in Boston and around the country said that people with his type of tumor live on average less than three years after the diagnosis. Some can live years longer, some less. There is no cure.

"Certainly one of the worst diagnoses that someone can be told is that you have a malignant brain tumor," said Dr. Keith L. Black, chair of the department of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The brain "is the very essence of who we are."

By Globe Staff

Senator Edward Kennedy, the long-serving liberal icon from Massachusetts who was hospitalized this weekend after suffering a seizure, has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor, his doctors revealed today.

"Preliminary results from a biopsy of the brain identified the cause of the seizure as a malignant glioma in the left parietal lobe,'' Dr. Lee Schwamm, vice chairman of the neurology department at Massachusetts General Hospital and Dr. Larry Ronan, Kennedy's doctor, said this afternoon in a statement.

The statement said the usual course of treatment includes combinations of various forms of radiation and chemotherapy.

The doctors said decisions regarding the best course of treatment for Senator Kennedy will be determined after further testing and analysis.

_______________________________________
From: MGH Public Affairs
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 1:09 PM
To: MGH Public Affairs
Subject: Sen. Kennedy - Update from Massachusetts General Hospital
Tuesday, May 20, 2008 -- 1 p.m.

Statement from Dr. Lee Schwamm, Vice Chairman, Department of Neurology, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Dr. Larry Ronan, Primary Care Physician, Massachusetts General Hospital

"Over the course of the last several days, we've done a series of tests on Senator Kennedy to determine the cause of his seizure. He has had no further seizures, remains in good overall condition, and is up and walking around the hospital. Some of the tests we had performed were inconclusive, particularly in light of the fact that the Senator had severe narrowing of the left carotid artery and underwent surgery just 6 months ago. However, preliminary results from a biopsy of the brain identified the cause of the seizure as a malignant glioma in the left parietal lobe. The usual course of treatment includes combinations of various forms of radiation and chemotherapy. Decisions regarding the best course of treatment for Senator Kennedy will be determined after further testing and analysis. Senator Kennedy will remain at Massachusetts General Hospital for the next couple of days according to routine protocol. He remains in good spirits and full of energy."

Back in the day, surgeons used to just pick a radio station for music to play in the operating room, attending surgeon Dr. Randall Gaz of Massachusetts General Hospital says in a New York Times story about Dr. Claudius Conrad and his research on the effects of music on patients' healing (scroll down for our summary.).

“This new wave of surgeons bring their iPods,” Gaz told the Times (The image comes from Reno, Nev., via iLounge. “They bring whole mixes. It’s like they have the whole thing choreographed."

Click on "comment" and tell us about your mix.

Black men are more likely than white men to have a serious blood vessel condition repaired during emergency surgery rather than in an elective operation prompted by screening, a new study reports.

The gap persists even after accounting for the lower rate of abdominal aortic aneurysms among black men, raising the possibility that fewer elective procedures lead to more emergency operations.

Dr. Chad T. Wilson, now of Massachusetts General Hospital, writes in the Archives of Surgery about his analysis of Medicare and Veterans Affairs data from 2001 through 2003 for approximately 66,000 men, 23,000 of whom had repairs to correct abdominal aortic aneurysms.

AAAs are bulges in the large vessel that carries blood to the abdomen, pelvis, and legs. Physical examination or ultrasound screening tests can spot the problem in men who have risk factors, such as smoking, high blood pressure, and abdominal pain.

"Because they are not getting repaired electively, they are more likely to erupt and have a more urgent repair. That would be one conclusion to draw," Wilson said in an interview about the study he conducted while at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in White River Junction, Vt. "What [the study] clearly shows is that there is something there that is very surprising and it potentially very concerning.”

Newton-Wellesley Hospital is breaking ground today on a new cancer center whose radiation oncology unit sparked opposition when it was proposed last year.

The same technology exists five miles away at an affiliate of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The two hospitals had informal talks about cooperating, but no agreement was reached.

It's official: Adults 60 and over should get a vaccine against the virus that causes shingles, government health experts said today.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends a single dose of Zostavax even for people who have already had a case of shingles to prevent the painful condition and its potentially long-lasting after-effects. The vaccine was approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2006 and CDC issued a provisional recommendation then.

Dr. Martin S. Hirsch, a member of the infectious disease unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, has had shingles himself and has seen its severe complications in patients.

"I’m over 60 and I took the vaccine myself," said in an interview. "I recommend it for all people over the age of 60 unless they have a condition where it would not be safe."

Shingles comes from the same virus that causes chicken pox. Anyone who has had chicken pox -- 95 percent of the US adult population -- is vulnerable to an outbreak of shingles because the virus can lie dormant for decades near nerve roots along the spinal cord. Stress, a weakened immune system, and age can allow the virus to be reactivated. Half of people who have reached the age of 85 have already had shingles or will have a case.

Shingles can cause a blistering rash and headache, and rarely hearing loss, blindness, encephalitis, pneumonia, or death. Severe pain can linger for months or years as a condition called post-herpetic neuralgia that is more common among older people. After age 50, people are far more likely to suffer this complication.

University of Massachusetts Medical School and its high-powered RNAi research team have lured a top Boston physician-scientist to head its academic and clinical neurology departments, the school announced today.

Dr. Robert H. Brown Jr. (left), who identified gene mutations linked to the neuromuscular disease ALS, is leaving Massachusetts General Hospital after 30 years to take on his new roles in Worcester. He has already been working with UMass scientists to develop therapies for neurodegenerative diseases based on RNA interference, a gene-silencing mechanism discovered by UMass researcher and Nobel laureate Craig C. Mello.

Brown called Mello remarkable for his commitment to using basic science in the form of RNAi research to ameliorate human suffering.

"We do basic lab work on the genetics of these diseases," Brown said in an interview. "The question is, after 30 years and five or six genes, can we now find new ways to treat the problems they present?"

Brown, a physician and a scientist, founded the Day Neuromuscular Laboratory and also directs the Muscular Dystrophy Association Clinic at Mass. General and is a professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. He will chair neurology at UMass Medical School and its clinical partner, UMass Memorial Medical Center, when he arrives in October.

He holds degrees from from Amherst College, Harvard Medical School, and Oxford University, where he received a doctorate in neurophysiology.

MIT biochemist Alexander Rich has won the Welch Award in Chemistry for his fundamental insights into the structure and function of RNA and DNA. He will receive the $300,000 prize in October.

Caritas Christi Health Care's senior vice president and chief information officer is leaving for Vermont. Charles H. Podesta, 50, will become chief information officer of Fletcher Allen Health Care in Burlington, Vt., in June. Last month Roger Deshaies, formerly senior vice president for finance at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, joined Fletcher Allen as its chief financial officer. The hospital is affiliated with the University of Vermont School of Medicine.

Clifford J. Tabin, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, is one of two scientists to win the 2008 March of Dimes Prize in Developmental Biology. He will share the $250,000 award with Philip A. Beachy of Stanford. They are being honored for their work with "hedgehog" genes and how they affect the way embryos develop and form limbs, the brain, and other organs. Hedgehog genes got their name from the prickly appearance they gave fruit fly embryos.

Dr. Andy Whittemore, chief medical officer at Brigham and Women's Hospital, has been elected president of the American Surgical Association. Whittemore trained as a vascular surgeon, was a division chief at Brigham and Women's, and has been chief medical officer there since 1999.

By Elizabeth Cooney
Globe Correspondent

Many of the people who literally write the book on mental illness collect pay checks from companies whose products treat some of those illnesses.

Sixteen of the 28 members of a task force overseeing revision of the psychiatry profession's diagnostic bible have disclosed financial ties to drug or medical device companies, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest, raising concern about possible conflicts of interest.

"To me, this doesn't pass the smell test for conflict of interest,” said Merrill Goozner, a director at the watchdog center. “What they should have done is find psychiatrists without conflicts of interest."

The American Psychiatric Association, which will oversee publication of the fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, defended its choice of panel members, who include Harvard Provost Dr. Steven E. Hyman. The association also noted that all panel members have pledged not to receive more than $10,000 per year from industry sources, aside from unrestricted research grants, until the manual is published in 2012.

"We have made every effort to ensure that [the manual] will be based on the best and latest scientific research, and to eliminate conflicts of interest in its development," Carolyn B. Robinowitz, president of the psychiatric association, said in a statement.

The National Academy of Sciences elected 72 new members today, honoring a total of 15 scientists and engineers from Harvard and MIT.

The private organization, established by Congress while Abraham Lincoln was president, advises the federal government on science and technology.

Three Massachusetts reseachers have won grants to develop an HIV vaccine for children. The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation has awarded five grants amounting to a total of $1 million. The winners include Dr. Marylyn Addo of Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Dan Barouch of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and Dr. Shan Lu of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Kim Lewis, director of the Antimicrobial Center at Northeastern University, has won a four-year, $1.4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to investigate the genetics of multidrug tolerance in bacteria.

Tyler E. Jacks, director of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, has been named president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research.

Dr. Shawn Tsuda, a fellow in minimally invasive surgery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, took top honors at the Top Gun Laparoscopic Skills Shoot-Out during the annual meeting of the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons earlier this month in Philadelphia.To win, he had to show his suturing skill, depth perception, and instrument accuracy.

Michael V. Sack, president and CEO of Hallmark Health, was named a Grassroots Champion by the American Hospital Association. Hallmark Health is a healthcare system in Boston's northern suburbs.

Soldiers who survive traumatic injuries from roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan face significant impairments from their wounds. A new collaboration of academic and industry researchers, including at Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT, and Dartmouth, is bringing regenerative medicine to bear on the challenge.

Formed by the US Army, the Institute of Regenerative Medicine will devote $85 million to developing products and therapies to repair blast injuries from improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, and other weapons. The approaches will include work with stem cells, growth factors, tissue and biomaterial engineering, and transplants to help the body restore or replace damaged tissues or organs, according to an announcement today from Mass. General.

Mass. General, MIT, and Dartmouth will be part of a consortium led by Rutgers University and the Cleveland Clinic. A second consortium will be headed by Wake Forest University and the University of Pittsburgh. Each will receive $42.5 million from the Army.

The Mass. General team will include clinicians and researchers from its Center for Military Biomaterials Research and from the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary.

A national nurses organization has renewed Massachusetts General Hospital's "magnet" hospital designation through 2012.

The American Nurses Credentialing Center today announced the designation for Mass. General, which was the first in the state to receive magnet status in 2003. The name refers to how well hospitals can attract and retain nurses during a shortage. There are five other magnet hospitals in Massachusetts:

-Baystate Medical Center, Springfield
-Children's Hospital Boston
-Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston
-Jordan Hospital, Plymouth
-Winchester Hospital

Remember the fanfare when Fate Therapeutics was launched last year?

The startup's goal is to capitalize on the promise of stem cells. To do that it gathered the leading lights of the field, including founders Dr. David Scadden of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital and Dr. Leonard Zon of Harvard University and Children's Hospital Boston. Robert S. Langer Jr. and Ram Sasisekharan of MIT sit on the scientific advisory board.

Find out on xconomy.com how venture capitalists brought them (and other stem-cell stars) together, including a fateful meeting at a French restaurant near Mass. General.

At a time when government biomedical funding is flat and junior researchers are struggling to get grants, some senior scientists have been awarded a half-dozen or more federal grants each, a leading scientific journal reports -- including a Boston brain-imaging scientist.

According to tomorrow's Nature, 200 scientists won six or more grants in 2007 from the National Institutes of Health, whose budget has dropped by 13 percent since 2003 when inflation is considered. The journal's analysis included all kinds of grants, from supplemental awards to grants for arranging conferences or running training workshops.

The journal listed 22 researchers who each held eight or more grants, including Dr. Bruce Rosen of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology. His eight grants totaled $9.1 million, ranking him 14th.

Dr. Charles A. Czeisler, director of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School and chief of sleep medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, has won a lifetime achievement award from the National Sleep Foundation.

Dr. Martin S. Hirsch of the Massachusetts General Hospital Infectious Disease Unit and the Partners AIDS Research Center was honored with the Maxwell Finland Award for Scientific Achievement from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

Dr. John A. Parrish, director of the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology, and Dr. R. Rox Anderson, director of the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, received the 2007 Discovery Award from the national Dermatology Foundation.

Dr. Nawal M. Nour of Brigham and Women's Hospital, founder of a center devoted to the medical needs of African women who have undergone female genital cutting, will receive an honorary degree June 1 from Williams College.

Boston researchers are testing an old tuberculosis vaccine in a new clinical trial to treat type 1 diabetes, enlisting the low-grade inflammation it causes in an effort to disarm abnormal immune cells that destroy insulin-producing cells.

The phase 1 clinical trial at Massachusetts General Hospital is based on experiments in mice directed by Dr. Denise Faustman, who was profiled in this Globe story last week. Delivering a TB vaccine used for almost 80 years to mice cured them of a form of diabetes close to the human disease. The mild inflammatory reaction caused by the Bacillus Calmette-Guerin vaccine wiped out the immune cells that mistakenly attack cells in the pancreas that make insulin.

Type 1 diabetics must rely on lifelong insulin injections to regulate their blood sugar levels. Previously called juvenile-onset diabetes, the disease carries a high risk of complications such as kidney damage, blindness, amputation, and cardiovascular disease. It is less common than type 2 diabetes, which is linked to obesity.

Dr. David M. Nathan, director of the MGH Diabetes Center, will lead the human study, which is recruiting participants. The trial is being supported by the Iacocca Foundation, other donors, and hospital funds.

A cardiac team from Boston saw this sign when they arrived at a hospital in Ghana last week:

"Free pediatric cardiac surgeries!! In conjunction with the Boston Children's Hospital of the Harvard University, USA," a blog about the trip notes.

Dr. Francis Fynn-Thompson of Children's Hospital Boston is leading a team of 25 doctors, nurses, technicians, and other volunteers who are in the country this week, treating heart disease and surgically repairing heart defects in infants and children at Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital at the University of Ghana. The group is also offering training on how to care for children with heart problems.

They have plenty of potential patients in their limited time there, team writer and photographer Matt Cyr says on the blog.

Brain scan research led by MIT scientists shows what psychological tests of perception have long suggested -- culture can affect how people raised in the West and East experience the world at a stunningly basic level.

The FDA's approval of the cancer drug Avastin for patients with advanced breast cancer, though studies showed the drug didn't extend patients' lives, raises the question: What's good enough when it comes to cancer drugs?

The controversy over the Lipitor ads that featured a testimonial from artificial heart pioneer Dr. Robert Jarvik should not overshadow the fact that sometimes patients want, and should get, advice based on their doctor's personal experiences with a treatment, writes Dr. Victoria McEvoy of the Massachusetts General West Medical Group.

Whether banging pots and pans to test lab animals' hearing or curing diabetes in mice, Dr. Denise Faustman of Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School has consistently challenged orthodoxy about autoimmune diseases.

In a sign that Massachusetts' healthcare initiative is succeeding, use of the "free care pool," the fund that pays for hospital care for the uninsured, dropped by 16 percent in the first year of the effort to insure most residents, according to new state figures.

Congress is edging closer to allowing generic versions of advanced biologic drugs, which are made from living organisms instead of chemicals, a development that would have a major impact on consumers as well as on Massachusetts biotechnology companies.

A Massachusetts General Hospital neurologist is studying whether guided meditation administered in the virtual world of Second Life can effectively reduce stress.

A Chestnut Hill synagogue honored a Pittsburgh man who donated a kidney to save the life of Albert Sherman, vice chancellor of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester.

The Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology has awarded a three-year, $2.1 million grant to a group of area doctors working on a new kind of minimally invasive surgery.

Called NOTES, short for natural orifice translumenal endoscopic surgery, the technique passes surgical tools through the mouth, anus, or vagina to reach organs in the abdomen, thorax, or pelvis. It leaves no scars, promises less pain, and offers a smaller chance of infection, its proponents say, according to this Globe story last month.

Dr. David Rattner of Massachusetts General Hospital will lead the NOTES team, which includes Dr. William Brugge, also of Mass. General, Dr. Christopher Thompson of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Dr. Richard Rothstein of Dartmouth Medical School.

The NOTES initiative is the largest grant ever made by CIMIT, a consortium of Boston-area teaching hospitals and engineering schools.

In Manila, part of a shanty town is called a “kidney field” for the poor people who have sold theirs.

In India, a doctor was arrested this week for his role in a ring that kidnapped poor laborers who woke up the next day with one less kidney.

In China, prisoner executions were timed to match foreigners’ blood type and arrival for transplant.

This last example drew gasps from some of the 150 people attending “The Ethics of the Organ Bazaar” at the Harvard School of Public Health Friday. They were asked to weigh their horror against a waiting list for kidneys that has 73,000 names on it, a number that has grown 7 percent a year for the last 10 years. And repugnance for buying and selling organs was considered in the context of other taboos, such as drinking leading up to Prohibition or eating horsemeat, forbidden by current California law.

“We have here the elements of tragedy,” said Daniel Wikler, professor of ethics and population health at HSPH, who convened the conference. “Each time a patient with end-stage renal disease is told it will be a long time before they get an organ, life may hang in the balance. We need very convincing moral reasons before we get in the way of life-saving solutions.”

Two nursing directors from Massachusetts General Hospital have been selected by the American Organization of Nurse Executives to its inaugural class of Nurse Manager Fellows. Donna Jenkins, a thoracic surgery nurse, and Amanda Stefancyk, a nurse in general medicine, began their year-long fellowships yesterday.

Seven-month-old Cell Stem Cell, a Cell Press journal published by Elsevier and based in Cambridge, has been named the 2007 Best New Journal - Science, Technology & Medicine by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers.

A $1.4 million scholarship fund has been established at the Lawrence Memorial/Regis College Nursing Program. The Regina Petterson Wennerstrom Scholarship Fund will help nursing students pay for their nursing education and give scholarships to graduates continuing their nursing education at Regis.

A state group fostering technological innovation has awarded grants to fund nine research projects, including one proposed by the late cancer investigator Dr. Judah Folkman.

The Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center has given a total of $360,000 for proposals to demonstrate a new technology's commercial viability. In addition to the Folkman grant for work to be done at Children's Hospital Boston, three awards went to Northeastern University, two to the University of Massachusetts, and one each to Boston University, Harvard University, and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Karleen Habin, clinical nurse supervisor of the breast oncology research program at Massachusetts General Hospital's cancer center, has won the American Cancer Society's Lane Adams Quality of Life Award. Habin is the author of many published articles on cancer survivorship and symptom management.

Dr. Peter Black, chair of neurosurgery at Brigham and Women's Hospital, has been named president-elect of the World Federation of Neurological Societies. The organization represents about 25,000 neurosurgeons worldwide.

Dr. Julian B. Marsh, a visiting scientist at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University and head of the Lipoprotein Metabolism Section of the Atherosclerosis Research Laboratory at Tufts, has won a lifetime achievement award. The Northeast Lipid Association is honoring him for his career in lipidology, which is the study of fats and cholesterol in human metabolism.

By Patricia Wen, Globe Staff

A Massachusetts General Hospital research team is reporting a major advance in the years-long effort to overcome the rejection of organ transplants.

Four out of five patients who underwent an experimental kidney transplant were able to stop taking powerful immunosuppressive drugs, and they have so far lived between 15 months and almost five years without experiencing rejection. At the time of their transplant, the patients received bone marrow from the same donor.

The report in tomorrow's New England Journal of Medicine is considered particularly significant because the patients received kidneys that were different from their own tissue type. Transplants of such mismatched organs are the most common, and the most likely to be rejected, even when patients take immunosuppressive drugs.

From one to 10 to 1,000: Genetic scientists today unveiled an ambitious project to sequence the genomes of at least 1,000 people from across the globe.

Dr. David Altshuler of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute in Cambridge will co-chair the international consortium running the project, the National Institutes of Health announced.

The project underscores how quickly genome-sequencing technology is advancing. In 2006, it was big news when even one person’s genome was sequenced. Last year, Harvard’s George Church won headlines with his plan to sequence – and publish – the genomes of 10 people. That data is expected to come out soon.

Now, the thousand-genome project aims to turn up medically useful genetic information by providing the most detailed and comprehensive look yet at the genetic variations among humans.

At its peak, it is expected to generate data equivalent to sequencing two human genomes per day. Its projected costs: between $30 and $50 million.

Massachusetts hospitals today are revealing the rates of pressure ulcers their patients have acquired during their hospital stays, another in a series of statistics made public by the Massachusetts Hospital Association on its Patients First web site. Falls by patients in the hospital and nurse staffing plans were previously posted.

The data on pressure ulcers, better known as bedsores, was gathered on two days in March and September 2007 when nurses did full-body examinations of their patients. Pressure ulcers are a particular danger to certain patients, such as diabetics with circulation problems, paraplegics, or trauma patients immobilized on ICU ventilators.

Pressure ulcers are a good measure of nursing and hospital quality, Carol Haraden, vice president of the Cambridge-based Institute for Healthcare Improvement, said in an interview. The sores can become serious after skin breaks down from pressure, moisture, or abrasion, later destroying muscle and bone.

“In people who are prone to them, their ability to heal from them is often impaired,” making prevention critical, she said.

Two prominent Boston cardiologists are heading south to the University of Miami, theheart.org reports today.

Dr. Vivek Y. Reddy (left), director of the experimental electrophysiology program at Massachusetts General Hospital, will lead an expanded program at the University of Miami, according to the cardiology news site of WebMD and a university statement.

"I'm going from a great job to a great job, that's what it comes down to," Reddy told theheart.org.

Dr. Andre d'Avila, another specialist in abnormal heart rhythms, is also leaving Mass. General to become associate director of the electrophysiology section.

Dr. Vikas P. Sukhatme (left) has been named chief academic officer of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, succeeding Dr. Jeffrey S. Flier, who became dean of Harvard Medical School in September.

A physician and researcher in vascular biology, cancer, and kidney disease, Sukhatme will oversee the hospital’s research and academic programs.

Sukhatme earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in theoretical physics at MIT, attended the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, and graduated from Harvard Medical School. He trained in internal medicine and nephrology at Massachusetts General Hospital, completed an immunology fellowship at Stanford University, and was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of Chicago before becoming chief of the renal division at Beth Israel Deaconess in 1992.

By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff

Boston-based autism researchers have pinpointed a genetic "hot spot" where DNA errors appear to increase a child's chances of developing autism one-hundred-fold.

The discovery, reported on-line in the New England Journal of Medicine this afternoon, stems from the most extensive genome scanning for autism done so far. The scans found that in just over 1 percent of people with autism, a chunk of about 25 genes had been either duplicated or deleted, mainly in spontaneous mutations not carried by their parents.

Some researchers believe such copy-number errors help explain how autism can often crop up in families seemingly out of nowhere. Diagnoses of autism have skyrocketed in recent years, and the disorder now affects an estimated 1 in every 150 American children.

"It's like having a recipe where you take some of the ingredients and use half as much or twice as much," said Dr. David T. Miller of Children's Hospital Boston. "It's going to change how the recipe turns out."

One percent may sound small, Miller said. But "it is significant in terms of getting another piece of the puzzle solved" -- a puzzle that has largely stymied researchers even as parents have pleaded for answers and cures.

The findings also hold the promise that more such hot spots will explain a much larger portion of autism cases, and that studying the genes involved will cast new light on what goes wrong. Autism is seen as a spectrum of social and communication disorders that usually begin in early childhood.

Medical centers are rushing to turn nuclear particle accelerators, formerly used only for exotic physics research, into the latest weapons against cancer, a story in today's New York Times reports. (At left, a patient receives proton therapy for prostate cancer at Loma Linda Medical Center in Calif.).

Some experts say the push reflects the best and worst of the nation’s market-based health care system, which tends to pursue the latest, most expensive treatments — without much evidence of improved health — even as soaring costs add to the nation’s economic burden, according to the article.

“I’m fascinated and horrified by the way it’s developing,” Dr. Anthony L. Zietman, a radiation oncologist at Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital, told the Times. Mass. General operates a proton center. “This is the dark side