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  • Breast cancer vaccine shows promise in study

    Breast cancer vaccine shows promise in study

    Houston researchers on Wednesday reported positive results with an experimental breast cancer vaccine, a promising development in an emerging field in cancer care.

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  • Abby: Women take control of their health by learning all they can

    Abby: Women take control of their health by learning all they can
    Between juggling the joys and challenges of home life and staying productive at work, it's easy for women to make quick decisions now that could affect their health later on, or to miss early signs of medical problems altogether. To help women take control of their health, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's Office of Women's Health and the General Services Administration's Federal Citizen Information Center have created the free Healthy Women's Action Kit. The topics include: buying contact lenses online, mammograms, hypertension, cholesterol, Pap tests, menopause and hormones, and more. Readers, among the topics Marsha didn't mention that are also included are a guide to help you quit smoking and facts about tattoos, osteoporosis, diabetes and health scams.
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  • Letter spell out concerns over cancer initiative

    High-level concerns have surfaced in the past week over the integrity of the process through which Texas’ $3 billion anti-cancer initiative awards grants. Last week, the chief scientific officer for the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, Alfred Gilman, resigned, citing concerns about the review process that allocated $20 million of taxpayer money to two Houstoninstitutions. His resignation letter is posted below. Gillman Letter On Monday, CPRIT’s scientific review committee expressed similar concerns in a letter to the organization’s leadership. Here is that letter: Sharp CIPRIT Letter William Gimson, CPRIT’s executive director, called the matter “a learning experience” and pledged to “fix the issues.”
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  • Scientific review panel joins criticism of cancer institute

    Scientific review panel joins criticism of cancer institute
    A panel of eminent scientists that evaluates grant applications for Texas' $3 billion, taxpayer-funded assault on cancer added to criticism of the initiative Monday, accusing it of breaking its own rules in awarding two Houston institutions its largest-ever grant. In a letter to the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas' governing board, the panel's leadership said its input wasn't sought in the review of a one-year, $20 million grant given to the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center and Rice University and was ignored in other cases. Phillip Sharp, a Nobel Prize-winning molecular biologist and geneticist and the panel's chairman, told the Houston Chronicle that the letter didn't include threats to resign because he doesn't believe in "doing business that way." The letter adds that although the council would characterize the proposal's activities and intent - to discover anti-cancer drugs - as scientific research, the apparent "lack of a specific research plan was taken by CPRIT leadership as justification" for bypassing the council's review. The letter also expresses concern about seven multi-investigator proposals not brought before the governing board in March, after the scientific panel had approved them, because of certain governing board members' concerns that a substantial part of the funding would go to UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, where Gilman's office is located.
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  • HBO film takes aim at nation's growing obesity epidemic

    HBO film takes aim at nation's growing obesity epidemic
    Produced by Sheila Nevins and John Hoffman, "Weight" pulls no punches, spares neither the multibillion-dollar food and advertising industries nor public officials for not only failing to fix the problem but actually making it worse. The category not only includes all kinds of packaged, processed foods, but, of course, fast-food offerings, which have become the plaque-building lifeblood of the American diet. A landmark study in Bogalusa, La., launched 40 years ago, followed overweight kids through adulthood to monitor their health. The situation only is exacerbated by the increasing lack of activity in American lives, and especially in kids, who become hooked at an early age on TV, computers and social media. Combs engineered a grant program called Texas Fitness Now, and a three-year survey of schools that added its fitness programs show an overall improvement in fitness, as well as "a strong correlation" to better math and reading skills. To lose weight, set realistic goals for yourself, get support from others who are trying to lose, plan your meals and exercise portion control, and monitor your caloric intake. Recently, an Interagency Working Group on Food Marketing to Children, comprising the Department of Agriculture, Food and Drug Administration, Federal Trade Commission and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, proposed voluntary nutritional guidelines for the food industry, which would have been put forth by the FTC. To some of the participants in the HBO documentary, the battle for a healthier diet and an increase in public awareness of the physical and financial costs of our national weight crisis isn't dissimilar to the decades-long battle against the tobacco industry.
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  • Leader quits Texas cancer initiative over grant-review concerns

    Leader quits Texas cancer initiative over grant-review concerns

    The top scientific officer of Texas' $3 billion cancer-fighting initiative is resigning, citing concerns about the review process that allocated $20 million of taxpayer money to two Houston institutions.

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  • Hospital can perform baby's surgery that parents declined

    Hospital can perform baby's surgery that parents declined

    A judge ruled Wednesday that Texas Children's Hospital could perform potentially life-saving heart surgery on a baby whose parents declined to consent on religious grounds.

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  • Follow a live brain surgery via Twitter

    Beginning at 7:30 a.m. Wednesday, Memorial Hermann Hospital-Texas Medical Center will Twittercast a live brain surgery. The procedure will be performed by Dr. Dong Kim, the neurosurgeon who treated former U.S. Rep. Gabriel Giffords, and will feature a live video feed from the microscope camera he’ll be using as he works in the patient’s brain. Expect to see Twitter updates, photos, video uploads in the CoverItLive module below. You can also ask questions and Dr. Scott Shepard, also a neurosurgeon, will respond. In addition, you can follow along on Twitter at the #MHBrain hashtag. Earlier this year, the hospital live-tweeted an open-heart surgery. The patient, a 21-year-old female, will be [...]
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  • Memorial Hermann to 'Twittercast' brain surgery

    Memorial Hermann to 'Twittercast' brain surgery

    The live event, featuring tweeting and delayed photos and video footage of the procedure, will look in as renowned neurosurgeon Dr. Dong Kim removes a benign brain tumor from a 21-year-old woman who recently began suffering seizures. Online broadcasts of medical procedures date to the late 1990s - one of the first involved Dr. Denton Cooley performing coronary artery bypass surgery at the Texas Heart Institute. Art Caplan, a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist, called such webcasts the contemporary equivalent of famous 19th-century paintings of surgical amphitheaters, where doctors and students watch from far above the operating room. Kim, head of neurosurgery at Memorial Hermann and the University of Texas Medical School at Houston, will use computer-assisted technology to identify the precise location of the tumor, then remove a portion of the skull bone and the tumor from the patient's right brain.

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  • M.D. Anderson finally gets NAS member: President DePinho

    Dr. Ronald DePinho The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, top ranked for its clinical care but not its scientific discovery, finally has a scientist in the nation’s most august body of scientists. Dr. Ronald DePinho, who became M.D. Anderson’s fourth president last summer and immediately announced plans to improve the research hospital’s basic sciences, this week was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. The center’s previous lack of an NAS member had been considered a symbol of M.D. Anderson’s undistinguished standing in basic sciences. DePinho’s labratory research “uncovered the mechanism for the increasing risk that advancing age confers on the development” of certain cancers, says the NAS [...]
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