Crime novelist Patricia Cornwell takes her research seriously, grounding her fiction in the real thing by visiting McLean Hospital in 2004 to learn about the mysteries of the human brain and the depression, rage, and substance abuse that affect her characters.

McLean has now recruited her to join its National Council as an ambassador for mental health around the world, the Harvard-affiliated hospital said today.

“Her outreach efforts through her novels and her willingness to push psychiatric illness to the forefront of everyday conversation is helping to eliminate the stigma of these diseases,” McLean president and psychiatrist in chief Dr. Scott L. Rauch said in a statement. “We are excited to have her as part of our advocacy team.”

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.

Risk factors for developing eating disorders are different for girls and boys, and a mother’s history may affect girls differently depending how old they are, a Boston study reports.

Alison E. Field of Children’s Hospital Boston and her colleagues report in the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine on their study following more than 12,000 sons and daughters of participants in the Nurses Health Study II to see what influences might predict eating disorders. The girls and boys answered questionnaires every 12 or 18 months for seven years, starting when they were 9 to 15 years old. Their mothers were asked if they themselves had ever had an eating disorder.

After seven years, 10 percent of the girls and 3 percent of the boys said they were binge eating – overeating and feeling out of control -- or purging – vomiting or using laxatives to keep from gaining weight -- at least once a week. For girls, purging was more common than binge eating. For boys, the opposite was true. Few boys or girls did both, the study said.

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.

A Harvard hospital and a Canadian university have formed an alliance focused on brain research, the institutions said today.

The Center for Neuroregeneration Research at McLean Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and the Brain Repair Centre at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, will join forces on research, education, and clinical care programs.

The partnership will develop clinical services, such as robotic surgery, neural transplantation, and deep-brain stimulation, as well as commercial applications for new technologies, the announcement said. An exchange program for scientists will also be set up between the two centers.

Regulations to protect patient privacy make it more difficult to conduct medical research, a national study reports, findings that don't surprise Boston researchers who say the rules slow the pace of their work, place a burden on the patients they seek to protect and may discourage them from participating in clinical trials.

Two-thirds of the scientists who answered a survey on privacy rules imposed under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act said the law had a "substantial negative influence" on human health research, according to the article in tomorrow's Journal of the American Medical Association.

"HIPAA regulations have hindered more than they have helped," Dr. JoAnn Manson, chief of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, said in an interview. She was not involved in the study. "They have had a chilling effect on researchers and epidemiologists."

For those of you who will be keeping score at home tonight, and especially you lucky ones who will be in the boxes or bleachers, McLean Hospital sports psychologist Dr. Jeff Brown has some advice for you to combat stress:

Stay in the moment
Control only the factors that you can control
Respect the Opponent; if they aren’t good, neither are you
Release emotion in healthy ways
Expect your team to compete again.

Back in 2004, when the Red Sox were clawing their way back against the Yankees and into the World Series, Brown developed a plan to help fans keep their equilibrium during that post-season roller-coaster ride. The Rockies aren’t exactly ancient rivals, but that doesn’t mean our stress is any less, he said in an interview.

A Boston group is sharing genetic information from families affected by autism with other researchers to promote understanding of the developmental disorder.

The Autism Consortium, whose members include hospitals, medical schools and universities in the Boston area, will transfer profiles of 500,000 genetic variations found across the genomes of 700 families with two or more children who have autism. The data will be held by the Autism Genetic Resource Exchange, a program of the advocacy organization Autism Speaks. Scientists can apply to the exchange, which gathered DNA from the families. The samples have been scanned for sequences where there are deletions or extra copies of DNA segments. The consortium is sharing the genetic variations it found.

"We returned all of the raw data to AGRE so they can distribute it to any other investigtors who want to begin exploring what may be the genetic underpinnings of autism," Mark Daly, a consortium member from Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, said in an interview. "Understanding the genetics underlying a complex disease is not an easy problem to solve. So there's no excuse for hoarding your data when much more can be learned by sharing."

By Scott Allen, Globe Staff

Former McLean Hospital President Jack M. Gorman permanently surrendered his right to practice medicine in Massachusetts today, ending a state investigation that began last year when officials at the renowned psychiatric hospital in Belmont reported allegations that he engaged in an inappropriate sexual relationship with a patient.

The 55-year-old psychiatrist abruptly resigned from the Harvard-affiliated hospital in May 2006, just four months into his tenure as president, after the woman -- a patient at his practice in New York City -- threatened to expose the relationship and he attempted suicide. Gorman reported the improper relationship to the state of New York, which earlier this month suspended his medical license indefinitely.

Gorman allowed his medical license in Massachusetts to expire last year after leaving McLean, but his agreement never to seek renewal of the license ensures that he cannot legally practice medicine in Masachusetts again.

"When you resign your right to renew, you can never even attempt to get your license back," said Russ Aims, spokesman for the Board of Registration in Medicine. He said Gorman's resignation would be entered into national databases that allow potential medical employers to check doctors' backgrounds.

Cambridge Health Alliance will accept an award today from the National Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems for its role in medical school curriculum change.

CHA developed a program for third-year Harvard Medical School students to follow patients for a year at one hospital instead of traditional rotations in different settings. The hospital was chosen for the 2007 Chair Award from 64 submissions, NAPH said in a statement.

Dr. Samantha L. Rosman, a third-year resident in pediatrics in Boston, has been re-elected to the American Medical Association's board of trustees. She is a 2004 graduate of Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. After completing her residency, she will begin a fellowship in pediatric emergency medicine at Boston Medical Center.

Dr. Karen Shedlack (left), medical adviser for the mental retardation division of Vinfen, has won a 2007 Distinguished Fellowship from the American Psychiatric Association.

Before joining Vinfen, a private, nonprofit human services organization based in Cambridge, Shedlack was medical director for the adult developmental disabilities program at McLean Hospital and worked in the department of psychology and brain science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Virgin Life Care has named three Boston academics to its science advisory board.

A subsidiary of the Virgin group headed by Sir Richard Branson, the Boston company develops activity-based health rewards programs.

The board members are Dr. I-Min Lee of Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, Kyle McInnis of UMass-Boston and Jessica Whitely of UMass-Boston and Brown Medical School.

Children's Hospital Boston has honored five doctors with Community Physician Awards for the care they give in pediatric practices and community health centers.

They are Dr. Anthony Compagnone of Hyde Park Pediatrics, Dr. Debra Ann Gfeller of Holliston Pediatrics, Dr. David Holder of the Martha Eliot Health Center, Dr. Richard Marshall of Harvard Vanguard Associates at Copley and Dr. Robert Michaels of Longwood Pediatrics.

This week's Science includes a special section on germ cells -- the reproductive cells of an organism.

George Q. Daley of Children's Hospital Boston, Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard Stem Cell Institute asks whether the cup is half empty or half full for embryonic stem cells.

David C. Page of the Whitehead Institute and MIT considers the mysteries of sexual identity from the germ cell's perspective.

Alexander F. Schier of the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT writes about the death and birth of RNAs during the maternal-zygotic transition.

Also in Science, Rachael L. Neve of Harvard and McLean Hospital is an author of a new study in mice about neurons competing to encode a memory in the brain.

By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff

In a new paper, Dr. Harrison Pope of Harvard’s McLean Hospital is accusing federal researchers of causing undue alarm by greatly overestimating the number of teenage girls who take anabolic steroids.

A 2003 federal survey found that 7.3 percent of 9th-grade girls had used "illegal steroids." But Pope says that a confusing question may have prompted girls to report taking steroids even if they had actually only taken asthma medication, health-food supplements and the like.

The survey question asked teenagers if they had ever taken “steroid pills or shots without a doctor’s prescription.” It would have been better if the question had been more specific, naming steroids like testosterone and Dianabol, Pope says. His paper appears in the new issue of the journal “Drug and Alcohol Dependence.”

US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official Laura Kann defends the survey, and says that its findings on steroids were “not inconsistent with what some surveys have shown.” Was there a glitch in the data? “I don’t have any reason to think that, no,” she said.

Pope estimates that perhaps only one-tenth of 1 percent of teenaged girls take anabolic steroids; the drugs can have masculinizing effects such as increased body hair.

By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff

If today’s coroner’s report is correct, Anna Nicole Smith fell victim to what some researchers consider a growing epidemic of drug poisoning deaths, says Dr. James Wines, an overdose expert at Harvard’s McLean Hospital.

The latest figures show that in 2004, poisoning, which includes drug overdoses, claimed the lives of 30,000 Americans, according to the CDC, he said. Another 800,000 suffered through non-fatal poisonings.

Opioids, which include prescription painkillers, appear to be fueling some of the recent surge in deaths caused by legal drugs, Wines said.

The coroner's report said that Smith was taking several different sedatives and sleeping medications along with other drugs.

Researchers need to gain a better understanding of the circumstances surrounding drug-related deaths in order to prevent them, Wines said.

And consumers should be sure to check with their doctors and pharmacists about whether the various drugs they’re taking could be dangerous in combination.

McLean Hospital in Belmont will lead the first large-scale study of a treatment for people addicted to pain medications such as Vicodin and OxyContin, the National Institute on Drug Abuse announced today.

Researchers will recruit 648 participants at 11 sites, hoping to enroll both people who have taken prescription medications for pain relief but later became addicted, as well as people who take the drugs illicitly for nonmedical reasons. People interested in participating can call (617) 855-2588.

Study subjects will receive a drug called buprenorphine naloxone, sold as Suboxone, which was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2002 as an alternative to methadone treatment for people addicted to opiates such as heroin.

"The major contribution of this study is that it’s focusing on this specific problem of prescription opiate dependence," Dr. Roger Weiss, clinical director of McLean Hospital’s Alcohol and Drug Abuse Treatment Center and lead investigator for the study, said in an interview. "Most studies that have looked at opiate dependence have been done on heroin addicts with a sprinkling of people with prescription opiate dependence."