Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Today's Globe: billion-dollar biotech question, "After the Fall" award, fathers and breast cancer gene

Six weeks after Governor Deval L. Patrick captured national attention with a proposal to spend $1 billion on biomedical research, one sticky question still hangs over the plan: Who will actually get the money? Tomorrow morning Patrick (left, at the BIO International Convention) will bring together a group of about 70 state life-science leaders to help start writing the rules for how the state's $1 billion would be spent.

Boston Globe reporter Alice Dembner is among the recipients of the 2007 National Press Club Awards, the Washington-based organization announced yesterday. Dembner won the Joseph D. Ryle Award for Excellence in Writing on the Problems of Geriatrics for her three-day series "After the Fall," which was published in December. The series examined the deadly and disabling outcomes of hip fractures in the elderly.

A deadly gene's path can hide in a family tree when a woman has few aunts and older sisters, making it appear that her breast cancer struck out of nowhere when it really came from her father.

Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 06:21 AM

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