Monday, November 12, 2007

Today's Globe: Carney: contagious cancers; friends and health; pigs, people and MRSA; artificial corneas; stent risks

In an e-mail to Caritas Christi Health Care System staff and physicians, Cardinal Sean P. O'Malley said Caritas Carney Hospital is straining finances and putting at risk the entire six-hospital chain, which is owned by the Archdiocese of Boston.

Viruses such as human papilloma may be the most overlooked bad guys in the war on cancer, silent invaders that contribute to more than a dozen malignancies and may cause 15 percent of the cancer cases worldwide each year.

For Nicholas Christakis (left), this is what it has come to. After an MD and a master's degree in public health from Harvard Medical School, a doctorate in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania, and a distinguished career as a physician, professor, and researcher, Christakis laughs to think that, at age 45, the first line of his obituary has already been written: "Nicholas Christakis, a Harvard University professor who co-authored a study that said you can get fat from your friends . . . " This is the sexy, heavily condensed, and mostly inaccurate way to look at his study.

The past couple of decades have yielded repeated - and lethal - reminders of how animals can make people sick. Think apes and AIDS, mosquitoes and West Nile virus. The latest example: pigs and MRSA, the bacterium that in recent weeks has infected schoolchildren and caused custodians to scour emptied classrooms, dousing any trace of the germ.

Dr. Claes Dohlman (left, with Dr. Ana Fernandez-Hortelano) considered the "founder of modern corneal science," recently received the Laureate Recognition Award from the American Academy of Ophthalmology for his contributions in restoring sight worldwide.

Also in Health|Science, how to maximize three workouts per week and could the space shuttle return to earth slowly and skip heat shields?

In Business & Innovation, a year after safety questions about drug-coated heart stents prompted doctors to change treatment for hundreds of thousands of cardiac patients, many physicians say the medical community overreacted and should reverse course.

Posted by Elizabeth Cooney at 06:57 AM

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