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January 26, 2007
Research money isn't what it used to be. Neither is the leadership of the Joslin Diabetes Center.
But Ranch C. Kimball, Joslin's first non-physician president and CEO, won "surprisingly positive" reviews from scientists when he made the rounds at the Harvard affiliate before being named. A memo summarizing the scientists' impressions of Kimball also said he had "obvious intellectual gifts and understood researchers' needs."
Kimball comes from the Romney administration, where he was secretary of economic development. He takes over from Dr. C. Ronald Kahn, who returned to full-time research in September.
"We realize this is probably an unusual choice of a president," said Dr. Steven E. Shoelson, a Joslin researcher and clinician. "I think it relates to the specific demands of the time. With NIH funding going down and more and more competition for research dollars, the board felt a specific need to strengthen our ability to compete for development dollars."
Joslin's outpatient clinic, run jointly with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, loses money because that kind of primary care -- unlike surgery -- isn't reimbursed very well.
Total revenues and expenses both grew a little over 1 percent from fiscal 2004 to 2005. Its surplus was about $4.6 million both years. Philanthropy has averaged about $12 million over the last four years.
Paul Levy, president and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess, was on the search committee that nominated Kimball for the Joslin job. Business leaders bubbled to the top, he said.
Joslin holds its own getting NIH funds, said Shoelson, who is associate director of research. Grant support was about the same from 2004 to 2005, but belt-tightening has chilled Joslin and other research centers as fewer proposals survive.
One researcher who asked not to be named said he's getting only 80 percent of the money he used to pull in from NIH.
"I wake up and think, my God, with a 20 percent cut, how can I manage the salaries of my post-docs or my fellows? How do I manage my funds for experiments?"
Kahn did well to combine fund-raising with research, the scientist said, but a single focus on money will be better.
"I think the critical thing for us is to have a happy marriage between the business side and the research side."
Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 10:08 PM
January 26, 2007
Ousted Massachusetts Hospital Association head Ron Hollander was warmly applauded at a forum Friday on affordable health care. MHA chairman Daniel P. Moen thanked him for his 12 years as president. Hollander was forced to resign because of perceived weakness on Beacon Hill, board members told the Globe two weeks ago.
Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 10:08 PM
January 26, 2007
Dr. John Abramson argued in his 2004 book "Overdosed America" that pharmaceutical companies are distorting medical knowledge. Now he writes in a medical journal that too many people -- healthy women of any age and men over 65 -- are taking statins without proof they need them.
A clinical instructor at Harvard Medical School and former chair of family practice at Lahey Clinic, he questions National Cholesterol Education Program guidelines recommending the blockbuster drugs for people who may have high cholesterol but don't have clogged arteries.
Commenting with Dr. Jim Wright of the University of British Columbia in the Jan. 20 Lancet, he says there's no proof that statins prevent heart attacks or strokes in healthy people, yet high cholesterol numbers are enough to prompt a prescription. We called him, and here's some of what he said:
Q. Where did the NCEP recommendations come from?
A: The full report is 284 pages. Near the back, talking about women, it says "the rationale for therapy is based on extrapolation of benefit from men of similar risk." We know you cannot extrapolate from men to women. ... And there are no gold-standard clinical trials that show benefit for older men without a history of heart disease.
Q. What about people who do have heart disease?
A. There is good evidence that statins are beneficial for secondary prevention but there's even better evidence that living a healthy lifestyle is even more effective than taking a statin, though they are not mutually exclusive. Don't think that by taking your statin you are doing everything you can do to reduce your risk of heart disease.
Everyone is focused on cholesterol, not on real epidemiological facts of what the risks are.
Q. Why?
A. The guidelines that create the clinical imperative for physicians are done by experts who have financial ties to drug companies that make the drugs being considered in the process. Fifty-nine percent of the experts who formulate the guidelines have financial ties.
In a meta-analysis of statins in the October Lancet, 13 out of 14 studies were commercially sponsored. The one that was not commercially sponsored showed distinctly less benefit from statins.
Q. What about you? The Lancet says you are an expert consultant to plaintiff's attorneys on litigation involving the drug industry, including Pfizer for its marketing of atorvastatin.
A. That's right.
Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 10:06 PM
January 26, 2007
Think choosing a name for the new baby is hard enough?
At least Boston parents-to-be can relax about the city their baby will be born in.
According to Fit Pregnancy magazine, Boston comes in first in the nation for having a baby because of its high-ranked hospitals, insurance-covered fertility services and wealth of pediatricians, among other categories.
That may be no surprise in this medical hub, but how many people think about "stroller friendliness"?
Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 10:03 PM
January 26, 2007
If you live in one of the 27 communities surrounding Boston, your regional public health agency has been singled out for its readiness to face bioterrorism events, new epidemics, natural disasters and other public health emergencies. Local health departments in Boston, Needham and Wellesley were also honored.
Massachusetts Emergency Preparedness Region 4B - Cambridge and the Boston Public Health Commission, the Needham Health Department and the Wellesley Health Department were recognized by the National Association of County and City Health Officials.
Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 10:00 PM
January 26, 2007
Lahey Clinic's ties to Tufts University School of Medicine just got stronger through the appointments of two new deans.
Dr. David J. Schoetz, a colon and rectal surgeon, is the first Tufts academic dean at Lahey in Burlington. Dr. David A. Neumeyer is the new dean of admissions at Tufts, chairing the admissions committee he has been on for five years. At Lahey he is co-director of the Sleep Disorders Center.
The relationship between Tufts and Lahey began only about six years ago, said Schoetz, who looks for Lahey's 200 doctors with Tufts faculty appointments to become more closely integrated with the medical school and increase Lahey's research projects.
Tufts has similar posts at its other major academic affiliates, including New England Medical Center, Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Center and Baystate Medical Center.
"These appointments more formally reflect a long-standing and important relationship with Lahey Clinic," Dr. Jeffrey Glassroth, vice dean for academic and clinical affairs at Tufts School of Medicine, wrote in an email.
Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 09:58 PM
January 26, 2007
Longtime Boston television health reporter and producer Rhonda L. Mann is Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center's new director of marketing communications.
Rhonda L. Mann
Mann previously managed the health news division at WCVB-Channel 5, doing on-air reporting and producing segments for medical editor Dr. Timothy Johnson.
The hospital said her appointment to fill an open position recognized her gifts as a storyteller. Another television figure turned hospital marketing professional is Peter R. Brown, vice president of public affairs and communications at Brigham and Women's Hospital, who two years ago left a 22-year career at WBZ-Channel 4.
Zineb Marchoudi, who was a writer and producer for Channel 5's 11 p.m. news, will join Mann's department at Beth Israel Deaconess as a media relations specialist. Senior editor Michael Keating is the third member of the department. He had been managing editor/features for Seacoast Media Group in Portsmouth, N.H., which publishes the Portsmouth Herald and Seacoastonline.com.
Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 09:41 PM
January 26, 2007
Winning the Nobel Prize can add almost a year and a half to a laureate's life, two British economists say. But though he's 81,
Harvard physicist Roy J. Glauber, a 2005 Nobelist, isn't buying it.
"It strikes me as remarkably doubtful," he said.
The University of Warwick researchers, testing the idea that social status can influence quality of life and longevity, looked at nominees for the Nobel Prize in chemistry and physics from 1901 to 1950. They thought sudden success would tell them the effect of social status on the winners when compared to their nominated peers.
Winners lived to an average age of 77.2 years, 1.4 years longer than those who were simply nominated for the prize, who died at an average age of 75.8 years old. Varying amounts of prize money over the years didn't budge those averages, the researchers said.
But Glauber said the study might have been biased by the fact that many laureates aren't selected until they're quite old. Glauber won his Nobel 40 years after publishing his work on how light behaves.
"Needless to say, if you wait a long time in selecting any group of people, you've eliminated the people who have a short lifespan," he said in an interview. "That does load the dice in favor of longevity."
We won't know about Glauber's class of laureates for about another 50 years, when nominees' names are unsealed.
"You never know," he said. "Maybe a Nobel winner will live to be 150."
-- Elizabeth Cooney
Posted by Gideon Gil at 08:44 PM
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