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Detecting, treating bladder cancer early
Four years ago, Ellen Pinzur, a Cambridge woman who had been a lifetime smoker, got a most unwelcome surprise. When she went to her gynecologist for a routine exam, he suspected she had a fibroid, a benign growth in the uterus. He sent her for an ultrasound. Sure enough, she did have a fibroid. But…
E-therapy is hardly a bargain
We’ve got e-commerce, e-banking, e-pharmacy and of course, e-mail. So why not e-therapy? Actually, there are lots of reasons why not. But that’s not stopping the latest trend in electronic medicine – virtual therapists, some 150 to 200 of them, who offer assessments, generic advice and even ongoing individual psychotherapy online. The mere idea of…
Trendy pill should be taken with a grain of salt
She’s a young woman from the South Shore, finally able both to work and to study for an advanced degree. But for years, she’s been plagued by severe depression that stems, she says, from physical abuse she suffered as a child, and from sexual abuse when she was 17. She tried Prozac and, by her…
The unhealthy side of health concerns
It’s been years now, but I can still picture the articulate young woman with the mysterious disease who came to the Globe to see me. She was armed with a stack of medical papers and spoke with the ease of a scientist about possible causes, symptoms, and tests. But what was most striking was how…
Thalidomide, once a pariah drug, finds a new life in cancer therapy
The drug thalidomide, which was banned in the United States after it caused serious birth defects in 10,000 babies worldwide four decades ago, can produce dramatic improvements in people with a cancer of the bone marrow, according to a study being published today.The study is a “significant advance” in treatment for myeloma, Dr. Kenneth Anderson,…
Here’s to your health: the benefits of drinking outweigh the risks, but only within limits
On Thursday, the French will go nuts. We know this because they go nuts every year on the third Thursday of November, the day the latest crop of just-off-the-vine wines hit the market. Wine-lovers will swarm to those cute little bistros, swell with Gallic pride, swill a glass of this fairly flimsy red stuff, and…
Cutting-edge drugs a must in treating rare cancer
With any serious disease, it’s obviously a good idea to find the best doctor – and the best hospital – you can. But with ovarian cancer, a rare disease that strikes 25,000 women a year, kills nearly 15,000, and is almost impossible to detect early – it’s absolutely essential. That’s because there are often no…
Site has all the research that fits
In the elite world of medical research, Dr. Harold Varmus is at the top of the heap. He runs the government’s biggest health research engine, the National Institutes of Health, and won the 1989 Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on cancer genes. Yet Varmus, 59, has proposed such a radical, power-to-the-people idea involving Internet…
Chocolate’s not so dark secret
I slip it reverentially into my mouth. Luscious, gooey, it melts on my taste buds, caresses my tongue. I stop talking, thinking, even breathing. I have but one sense: Taste. I have but one love: Chocolate. Nanoseconds later, the guilt sets in. I imagine my arteries seizing, my weight soaring. Yet I am powerless: I…
Treatments improve, but hepatitis C still a threat
For decades, hepatitis C, a potentially fatal liver virus harbored by 3 million Americans, was a virtual black box. Scientists knew there was some kind of nasty virus afoot in the land – and in the nation’s blood supply. In fact, they knew that one in five people who got a blood transfusion came down…
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