The Daily Nightly began on May 31, 2005. As Brian wrote in his first post it aims to provide a narrative of the broadcast day and a window into the editorial process at NBC Nightly News. Brian weighs in every weekday and NBC News correspondents and producers post regularly.
Brian Williams became the seventh anchor and managing editor in the history of NBC Nightly News on December 2, 2004. Read his full biography.
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On tonight’s broadcast we continue the series called Wounds of War. We are following some of the troops we first saw treated in combat hospitals in Iraq earlier in the year as they undergo treatment in the United States. I want to add a personal note here. The opportunity to cover this story in the detail I’ve been allowed has been, and I look forward to it continuing to be, one of the greatest privileges of my career. The bravery and sense of duty of our troops as well as the dedication and compassion of the doctors, nurses and medics who care for them far exceeds anything I could have imagined before I witnessed it all personally.
Of course know there are problems. In today's dispatch of my regular column appearing on MSNBC'com's health page, I detail the twin curses of the enormous numbers of brain injuries and the lack of preparedness for the long-term care of all sorts of wounds that so many veterans will require. The system is simply overwhelmed. I also point out why former Senator Bob Dole, who is co-chair of the commission set up to address these problems, should have the motivation to make things right. We’ll be watching. I look forward to following these soldier’s and medic’s stories for the duration of the war and long afterward
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Link to thisWe have the very exciting news tonight about progress in the embryonic stem cell field. This work holds the chance of creating these amazing building blocks of life without destroying embryos. It is important to note that hasn't happened yet. This work is in mice only. The step to humans could be easy or difficult, but the scientists won't know until they try it.
Discuss (65 comments) Email this | Link to thisMany of you have been seeking further information after our broadcast story Monday night on the implication of new research that suggests up to 100,000 breast cancer patients received drugs that did nothing to combat their cancer, but put them at risk for heart failure and leukemia.
Here is an analysis piece I have written for MSNBC.com that delves further into the subject.
Click to read
Discuss (2 comments) Email this | Link to thisTonight, as we continue our series the "Wounds of War" about U.S. medical care in Iraq, we'll tell the amazing story of a 5-year-old Iraqi girl who came close to death and got a second chance at life due to the efforts of some very dedicated Americans. Two organizations played a big role in helping her -- the National Iraqi Assistance Center and the Shriners Hospitals. The Iraqi Assistance Center was set up and is run by the U.S. military to provide charity care to a few of the many in that nation who need it. For more than 85 years the Shriners have been providing care for needy children from around the world with orthopedic, burn or spinal cord problems. I urge anyone who wants to help to contact those organizations via their Web sites above.
Many will watch tonight's story and ask why the girl could not be transferred to an Iraqi hospital. Simply put, the Iraqi medical system is in shambles. In most places there is no such thing as rehabilitation, so in the overcrowded and understaffed hospitals it is, as one American doctor put it to me, "survival of the fittest." Many Iraqi doctors, because of sectarian killings and kidnappings or threats of them, have fled the country. U.S. efforts to help set up a functioning health care system have been plagued by corruption and mismanagement. In fact, earlier this month Deputy Health Minister Hakim al- Zamili was arrested and charged with funneling millions of dollars given for health care to insurgents. So as we share this one girl’s story tonight, I hope we remember the thousands of children injured in this war who get no second chance.
Discuss (28 comments) Email this | Link to thisTonight we begin a series on the treatment of the U.S. troops wounded in the Iraq war. In addition to the broadcast report, I wrote an article for the Health Section of MSNBC.com describing the overall medical care system in Iraq, and I blogged while on assignment and shooting this material. So I won’t write much more here today. But I want to take a little space to thank the people who traveled with me to Iraq. They take the risks and don’t get the credit I do. Craig White was the photographer, Susan Becerra did the sound and engineering, and Kevin Monahan was the field producer. Jane Derenowski and Maggie Kassner did not go to Iraq, but did a terrific job of editing in New York, as did M.L. Flynn, the senior producer. Thanks to these colleagues for helping me tell the story of the brave men and women who are so dedicated to treating the wounded soldiers of this war.
Discuss (4 comments) Email this | Link to thisWe flew in to Germany this morning on the C-17 that regularly shuttles the U.S. wounded from the battlefields of Iraq to the Army's regional medical center here in Landstuhl. Injured soldiers rest in gurneys stacked two or three high while teams of doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists offer care at 37,000 feet as good as most hospital intensive care units. It is quite a sight. The cargo bay of the huge jet is configured so that the medical teams can care for someone on a ventilator, give continuous oxygen, monitor vital signs and intervene when necessary. Last night as the plane hit choppy air, some of the wounded who were conscious groaned loudly in pain. The nurse gave them additional sedating drugs. A man with intestinal damage was continuing to bleed internally, so he got a blood transfusion in the sky.
Discuss (5 comments) Email this | Link to thisHe's a 21-year-old soldier and amazingly upbeat considering that the right side of his face is peppered with shrapnel and there is a slit in his right eyelid. His vision is blurred, but fortunately he is not blind. His other injuries include a fracture of the bone in his right forearm so bad that the bone was sticking out of the skin and there is possible damage to his carotid arteries.
His story is, sadly, a very common one here at the Air Force’s hospital in Balad, the hub for transporting wounded U.S. soldiers to the Army hospital in Germany and then back home for treatment in the states.
Discuss (24 comments) Email this | Link to thisWe're at a U.S. Air Force base in Balad, Iraq, 50 miles north of Baghdad and a world away. The 332d Air Expeditionary Wing has assembled here an enormous force of people and machines that looks to me anything but temporary.
One of the unit’s many missions is the transport of injured U.S. troops “out of theater” to Germany and then on to hospitals at home. Tonight alone, the five beds in the emergency room and the two operating rooms have turned over again and again as waves of wounded U.S. troops and Iraqis arrive by helicopter or airplane. I’ll have lots more to say about the amazing care here online and on Nightly News soon, but back to Balad.
Discuss (4 comments) Email this | Link to thisWe’ve just visited Camp Speicher near Tikrit -- Sadam Hussein’s hometown -- as we continue reporting on medical care by the U.S. military. The tent hospital here is now staffed by the 399th Combat Support Hospital (CSH – or “cash” in military speak.) This is a reserve unit out of Boston, mostly Massachusetts folks, followed by many from Ohio and several other states. They tend to be older and less military in their bearing than their full-time Armed Forces colleagues, but they are certainly no different in their fierce dedication to patient care.
We heard this Sunni area was quiet now. It certainly was not during our visit. Many Medivac helicopters landed — some with warning, others with none.
Discuss (43 comments) Email this | Link to thisIn this past week I have seen a lot of horrific wounds and heroic attempts to save lives. I've been with the 28th Combat Support Hospital, the military's trauma center in Baghdad's Green Zone. But yesterday a case almost overwhelmed me emotionally. In the afternoon, two mortar rounds fell a few hundred yards away near the U.S. embassy. Loud speakers and sirens announce "a lockdown" of the heavily fortified area. People are not allowed to leave buildings. It proved a good call; a third round came in minutes later. Then a huge car bomb exploded just outside the Green Zone's gates. The tension level in the hospital rises immediately. Will there be casualties arriving? Within minutes a U.S. Army Humvee speeds to the gate and soldiers carry in a bloody and mangled Iraqi girl. I would guess her age to be 6 or 7 years. The doctors, nurses and technicians immediately start working on her with the same furious intensity they summon when a U.S. soldier arrives. "Two amputations and chest perforations," one of the doctors shouts. They rush her immediately from the emergency room to surgery.
Discuss (20 comments) Email this | Link to thisI have been in Iraq only two days and this is my first visit, so my impressions can only be those of a new set of eyes looking at a very well-examined place and situation.
Still, two things stand out to me immediately: One is that at the hospital in the Green Zone where the 28th Combat Support Hospital (CASH in military speak) receives massive numbers of wounded soldiers, there is a sense of it all being so routine. And it is not just the medical staff that does such a sensational job; the troops I spoke with who woke up with missing limbs and other severe injuries seemed so stoic and calm. It is as though they know that their patrols here have such a high chance of encountering life-threatening trouble that they almost expect it to happen.
People can talk about bravery and dedication, but when a young woman who just lost her leg tells me she is still glad to just see the sun rise and be in the Army, I'm so moved I start to cry. Another impression: the Green Zone -- the international American-guarded sector -- Saddam's old palaces, where massively armed U.S. soldiers and a few Iraqis walk around in a calm atmosphere. One can see and feel huge explosions only hundreds of yards away, but it seems thoroughly incongruous. But today, seeing the mangled soldiers in the Green Zone made me know -- it is real.
Editor's note: If you missed Robert's report on Tuesday's broadcast, click here to watch.
Discuss (11 comments) Email this | Link to thisWhenever we discuss a story about Alzheimer's, a lot of people around the room ask whether their forgetfulness is the beginning of this horrible disease. This is especially true concerning our story tonight, which is about younger people with the disease, and features a man who was diagnosed at age 45.
There is no simple answer to the question, but the Alzheimer's Association does offer a guide to the warning signs. The association's report on the prevalence of the disease in younger people can be seen here. In fact, the association's general Web site is an enormously helpful resource as is the Web site of the National Institute on Aging.
Editor's note: We also have an extensive collection of Alzheimer's coverage on MSNBC.com, including a special look at "Maintaining your Memory" as you age.
Discuss (36 comments) Email this | Link to thisTonight we report on the discovery of what may be the biological basis for sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS. Researchers at Children's Hospital in Boston have found that the brain receptors for serotonin are greatly reduced in children who die of SIDS. You can read an abstract of the research here.
This is nowhere near a cure. But someday it could become a means of identifying the children who are at high risk from dying and intervening to reduce the chances of death. SIDS, which is as old as humanity, has a long, sad history of parents being blamed -- and at times even charged as murderers -- for the deaths of infants six months and under.
Researchers say SIDS requires three conditions: a child six months or younger, an environmental factor such as a lack of oxygen from a bad infection or from a child sleeping face down, and a change in the brain. This research is a giant step because it identifies that brain abnormality and shows there is a biological basis for the condition. We'll tell you more on tonight's broadcast.
Discuss (6 comments) Email this | Link to thisTonight we report on an amazing movement of research -- not from animals to humans but the other way around.
Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City had been working on a vaccine to lessen the chances of melanoma recurring after surgical removal. Down the street at the Animal Medical Center, veterinarians heard of the studies and asked if they could try it in dogs. It turns out dogs naturally get melanoma and it can be fatal to them just as it can be for humans. In many of the dogs the vaccine actually cured the cancer, and the vaccine is about to be licensed. But for now, all this work remains experimental.
We'll tell you all about it on tonight's broadcast.
In the meantime, you can find more information on the dog studies at the Animal Medical Center Web site. You can make an appointment at the Animal Medical Center by calling (212) 838-7053. For information on the human trials led by Dr. Jed Wolchok at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York, call 1-800-525-2225 or visit their Web site.
Discuss (2 comments) Email this | Link to thisTonight we report on a potential advance in the treatment of lung cancer — a test to see who can benefit from chemotherapy immediately after surgery to remove early stage lung cancer. I say potential advance because this is about a test that is not yet on the market. It requires a large trial to prove its true worth, and that won’t be finished for a few years. You can read an abstract of the actual research from the New England Journal of Medicine.
We chose to publicize this early finding because lung cancer is by far the leading cancer killer and treatment advances have lagged far behind other cancers. This is about to change. A screening test that finds cancer at its earliest stages has just completed a 10-year trial. Those results have not been published, but many experts widely expect they will show that former and current smokers can benefit from screening to find early, small cancers that can be removed easily with surgery.
Discuss (17 comments) Email this | Link to thisAs we will report tonight, a recent study of more than 10,000 adult survivors of childhood cancer found that three-quarters have a chronic health condition. And in more than 40 percent, the conditions can be disabling or life threating.
It's a tough life as one woman we'll talk to can attest. But, as she quickly points out, it's better than the alternative.
You can learn more by viewing PDFs from the New England Journal of Medicine article: Study.pdf | Perspective.pdf
Discuss (4 comments) Email this | Link to thisIn tonight's "Making a Difference" segment we profile an amazing woman, Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, a native of Tasmania, Australia, who is now a professor at the University of California, San Francisco. Today she shared with two others the Lasker Award, America’s premier recognition for biomedical science. Dr. Blackburn’s research focuses on an enzyme called telomerase that helps determine how long cells live and whether or not they become cancerous. It is basic, but it has enormous potential to lead to new cancer drugs as well as diseases associated with aging and stress. You can read a lot more about her, the other winners and the science behind the discoveries on the Lasker Foundation’s Web site.
I would especially recommend the introduction by Dr. Joseph Goldstein, the chairman of the jury and one of the most witty and erudite scientists I know.
Discuss (2 comments) Email this | Link to thisWe are reporting on medical stories tonight and as always when possible we want to provide you the original sources so you can study them in detail if you wish.
The first is the discovery of two chemicals that appear in a pregnant woman’s body months before the condition called preeclampsia, or toxemia, sets in. The condition is a major cause of premature births and the finding should soon give doctors a test so they can initiate treatment as early as possible. You can read the study here.
We also make reference to what is called the "Annual Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer." This is a joint effort of the American Cancer Society and the federal government to show the trends in the incidence and death rates for all sorts of cancer. The big news this year is that the breast cancer rate, which has been increasing steadily, seems to have leveled off. There is an enormous amount of data in this report. You can read summaries and find links to the full report and related sites here.
Discuss (0 comments) Email this | Link to thisTonight, we report on the latest study of what has become one of the most complex choices many men face: what to do after a prostate cancer diagnosis. Because of the widespread use of the PSA blood test, 234,000 men in the U.S. will be diagnosed this year with prostate cancer. Huge numbers get surgery or radiation even though most leading doctors in the field think a lot of them can get by with either no treatment (so called “watchful waiting”) or hormone therapy whose side effects, unlike surgery or radiation, are reversible.
You can see a summary of the study we report on.
For men and their loved ones facing the wrenching decisions involved with prostate cancer there are now a wealth of support groups. I think one of the best is Us Too.
I would also point to the American Cancer Society’s information section on the disease.
Prostate cancer is clearly an area where many men and their families, armed with the best information, have to make their own decisions.
Read Robert's complete report and find more helpful links here.
Discuss (5 comments) Email this | Link to thisTonight we report on a potential advance in the treatment of lung cancer — a test to see who can benefit from chemotherapy immediately after surgery to remove early stage lung cancer. I say potential advance because this is about a test that is not yet on the market. It requires a large trial to prove its true worth, and that won’t be finished for a few years. You can read an abstract of the actual research.
We chose to publicize this early finding because lung cancer is by far the major cancer killer and treatment advances have lagged far behind other cancers. This is about to change. A screening test that finds cancer at its earliest stages has just completed a 10 year trial. Those results have not been published, but many experts widely expect they will show that former and current smokers can benefit from screening to find early, small cancer that can be removed easily with surgery.
But even when a tiny tumor is removed there is still a big problem. In half of the patients the cancer will still recur, threatening the patients' life. The new test based on an analysis of 2,100 genes distinguished between the tumors that are cured by surgery alone and those that require preventative or so-called adjuvant chemotherapy. The scientists estimate the test has the potential to save tens of thousands of lives a year.
This is the latest discovery in what is called “personalized medicine” –- using tests to individualize therapy so that only those who need the treatment get it while others can be spared the cost and side effects
Discuss (3 comments) Email this | Link to thisWe reported tonight on the latest study to look at a drug to reduce the risk of breast cancer. These days most medical studies have acronyms and this one is called the RUTH trial (Raloxifene Use for the Heart). It was designed originally to see if the drug called raloxifene, sold under the trade name Evista, would reduce the risk of heart disease. It did not. But this study of more than 10,000 women for 10 years turns out to be the third large trial demonstrating that raloxifene reduces the risk of breast cancer by about 44 percent –- albeit with some significant side effects, including an increased risk for stroke and blood clots.
Discuss (4 comments) Email this | Link to thisOne of the frustrations of reporting for television news is the scarcity of time. Now that we have our link to this Web site, it is giving us a great opportunity to convey a lot more information.
Tonight, we report on research looking at the association of fires in the Western U.S. and global warming. Like many of my reports, this one is based on research published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal – in this case Science.
With the cooperation of journal editors, we are now, whenever possible, giving viewers access to the original research publication so they can see all the details.
To see the paper behind tonight's report go to www.sciencexpress.org.
And thank you to the journals for sharing the information.
Discuss (3 comments) Email this | Link to thisIn my report tonight, we tell the amazing story of Terry Wallis of Mountain View, Ark., a man who had been unconscious for 19 years following a severe head injury until he awoke suddenly and unexpectedly in 2003. Although he remains severely disabled, he has continued to improve -- especially under a rigorous physical therapy program with his daughter Amber who was six weeks old when he lapsed into a coma and whom he still does not remember as his child.
Discuss (14 comments) Email this | Link to thisWe received a large number of e-mails in response to my report [VIDEO LINK] and blog post about the National Research Council’s latest report on global warming. Many of the e-mails were thoughtful and detailed, and we are always grateful for that sort of feedback, whether you agree with what we reported or not. It is also clear that while this is a technical topic, it touches all our lives, and many people hold strong opinions.
There was one notion voiced in several of the e-mails which was not what I reported and not what the report said. Several people asked why we should be concerned about global warming if the Earth was even warmer 400 years ago. I have not heard any scientist say that. If you look at the pdf of the report’s summary and pay particular attention to figure S-1 you can see why the panel concluded that is it far hotter on average now than it was 400 years ago –- and probably hotter than in the past 1,000 years.
Still, this question cuts to the key issue about global warming: How much of any trend that is observed can be accounted for by natural variability in the Earth’s temperature? And make no mistake, there is natural variability. 18,000 years ago the Earth was so cold that the arctic ice cap extended over what is now Boston and Seattle with ice 1/2 mile thick. Since then, the Earth has warmed considerably and clearly without human intervention. The big question is how much of the huge spike in temperatures in the past few decades could be natural variation and how much of it is human-produced greenhouse gases. My reporting tells me that a consensus of science says that most of the heat comes from human activity.
Discuss (8 comments) Email this | Link to thisI used to be a global warming doubter. When the theories of greenhouse gas build up began appearing in the late 1960s and early 1970s, they were hypothetical speculations with little evidence to back them up.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, many prominent environmentalists were saying that the world would run out of oil with supplies peaking in 1990. When we were still awash in oil, the same environmentalists embraced the threat of global warming as the reason to cut back on our use of fossil fuels. There are plenty of good reasons for eliminating our carbon habit. But when people embrace the same end for different reasons it raises my level of suspicion.
Discuss (88 comments) Email this | Link to thisA lot of people think the obesity epidemic is about how people look. That is wrong. The startling number of Americans with Type 2 diabetes tell us that the epidemic has real and severe health consequences.
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that usually strikes in childhood. It is a genetic disease that has nothing to do with body weight. It accounts for about 5 percent of diabetes cases and the incidence rate has not changed.
Type 2 diabetes is caused by obesity and genetic susceptibility. Our genes haven’t changed but the numbers of Americans known to have Type 2 diabetes doubled over the last decade to more than 14 million.
Discuss (12 comments) Email this | Link to thisMany troops in Iraq with brain injuries may be returning to duty. That’s right -– they’re not getting treatment –- not even getting a break –- but going right back into the field. We've been reporting on the enormous numbers of brain injuries among Iraq vets for the past two nights. (Read part one here; part two here.) I'll reiterate the numbers and the reasons below. We could not fit this aspect of the story in these two reports, so I want to point it out here.
According to the VA doctors who run the rehabilitation programs for brain injuries, when troops are wounded in the field they are evacuated immediately if they have any obvious wounds. But the signature enemy weapon of this war has been the roadside bomb – the IED. The human brain is the consistency of gelatin and the force from the explosion shakes it ferociously. Many thousands of troops in Iraq have felt the blast of an IED. If they are knocked unconscious, according the VA docs, they too are evacuated to a field hospital for evaluation. But if they are not and if they do not complain of a problem, they remain on duty.
Discuss (26 comments) Email this | Link to thisTonight we are reporting on what could be a major advance in the battle against breast cancer. But how much of advance will depend on how women and their doctors respond to the latest findings. You can see details of the latest study here.
In 1998, breast cancer experts were ecstatic, and newspaper headlines proclaimed a great advance in “preventing” breast cancer. The reason: a five year study of the estrogen blocking drug tamoxifen, long used to treat certain kinds of breast cancers, could reduce the incidence of breast cancer in healthy women at high risk for the disease.
Discuss (11 comments) Email this | Link to thisTonight we report on the latest development in a topic that has come to symbolize flip-flopping medical research -- hormone replacement therapy for treating menopause. A new study finds that one form of hormone therapy is not as dangerous as many people thought. Estrogen alone (Premarin is the most widely sold brand) does not increase the risk of breast cancer, according to the latest results from the huge study called the Women’s Health Initative (WHI). You can read the study itself in The Journal of the American Medical Association. You can also find more information from the National Institutes of Health and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
The reason this result appears surprising is that another form of hormone replacement therapy, estrogen combined with progestin (PremPro is the most common brand), increased the risk for breast cancer by 26 percent. That finding, announced in 2002, led to the sudden suspension of that arm of the study. It also led millions of women to abandon hormone replacement therapy, including those who were taking estrogen alone.
Discuss (17 comments) Email this | Link to thisEditor's note: Thanks to the hundreds of readers who pointed out a typo in the second-to-last paragraph. Sorry it took me so long to correct. Naturally Robert meant you can get enough daily vitamin "D" and not "C" if you spend 10 minutes in the sun.
One of the refrains I hear most often covering the health and science beat is: “You tell me one day something is bad for me and then it is good.” There are many legitimate reasons for this perception, and the story we have on tonight’s Nightly News is a fine example.
About three decades ago, dermatologists alarmed at the rising incidence of skin cancer began a campaign to get people to stop spending so much time in the sun, or at least to cover up with strong sunblock lotion if they did. The effort was enormously successful.
Now there is a big problem with it. When the sun’s rays (unfiltered by lotion) strike our skin, our bodies produce vitamin D. Scientists always knew vitamin D is critical for good health. Children not exposed enough to the sun can get a terrible disease called rickets. But around 1989 scientists began to discover that vitamin D played an important critical role in all the cells in the body, and they hypothesized that a lack of vitamin D could increase the risks for cancer.
Discuss (46 comments) Email this | Link to thisWe report a story tonight that is going to turn a lot of heads. The Veterans Administration Health Care System, once famously known for horrendous medical care, now offers what many consider the best health care in the nation. I am sure we will hear from many of you who have had difficult times with care at the VA. That is understandable, because the improvement in the VA has occurred relatively recently and inevitably many people will be dissatisfied with their treatment at the hands of any medical provider.
Discuss (82 comments) Email this | Link to thisWe have a report tonight on three important stories concerning treatments for people at high risk for heart disease and stroke. Taken together, those conditions kill more than 830,000 Americans a year -- far more than anything else -- so it is important to know what works and what doesn’t to lower the risk.
One study is part of a trend. Scientists have been finding that lowering blood cholesterol further and further is amazingly effective at combating the disease. In this latest study, researchers managed to get 500 people who had already suffered heart disease to take high doses of one of the cholesterol lowering drugs called statins -- in this case Crestor, made by Astra Zeneca. The average level of LDL, the so called "bad cholesterol," dropped from 130 to 60 in the study, an unheard of drop. Using a technique that measures artery-clogging plague inside the blood vessels, the researchers found that after two years the amount of plaque receded by up to nine percent. In other words, the heart disease seemed to reverse.
Discuss (28 comments) Email this | Link to thisTonight we tell a small part of the enormous tragedy that is Alzheimer’s disease by interviewing Jim Ruppert and his wife Vicky, who live in Rochester, New York. They are amazingly warm, friendly and generous people. It was an honor for me and my colleagues to be invited into their home.
According to a Gallup poll commissioned by the Alzheimer’s Association, 1 in 10 Americans said that they had a family member with Alzheimer’s and 1 in 3 knew someone with the disease. But for even greater numbers to understand this disease, the cooperation of courageous people like Jim and Vicky in sharing their story is invaluable. We decided to do the reports that aired last night and tonight both as part of our ongoing effort to shed light on this huge public health problem and specifically because it is becoming apparent that more and more Americans are learning they have Alzheimer’s disease at a stage where they can discuss it.
You can watch longer portions of the interview with Jim and Vicky Ruppert here. Several viewers have written to ask why we did not mention the drugs that are approved to treat Alzheimer’s with the trade names Aricpcept, Razadyne, Excelon and Cognex. For some people, these drugs can bring an improvement in memory and awareness for a period of months. But they are certainly not cures and they do not stop the inevitable progression of the disease. Newer drugs are in the early stages of testing that could have more lasting effects. But those results are still years away.
Discuss (40 comments) Email this | Link to thisThe study about dietary fat in women which we covered for Nightly News Tuesday night (video link; full story) and followed up again Wednesday night (link) has a fascinating political history. The Women's Health Imitative, conceived during the 1980s, was designed to reverse the biases that had led many medical studies to concentrate mostly on men – and often on white men. The $2 billion effort recruited more than 48,000 women aged 55 to 79. The biggest achievement of the study was that it cast doubt on the safety of hormone replacement, a finding that brought a sea change to women's health.
Discuss (9 comments) Email this | Link to thisI’ve been watching two stories today – the condition of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and surviving West Virginia coal miner Randal McCloy, Jr. – that both center on the question of recovery from severe brain injury.
Unfortunately, treatment of brain injury, whether it results from trauma, a stroke in Sharon’s case, or oxygen deprivation, from carbon monoxide poisoning in McCloy’s case, offers far less than other aspects of medicine. Often the best doctors can do is to induce a coma to slow down the metabolism in the brain and give it the best chance to heal itself. Sharon’s doctors have operated twice to drain fluids and McCloy is getting treatments in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, where the hope is high concentrations of pure oxygen will help his brain recover. Still, whatever recovery occurs depends primarily on the brain’s ability to fix itself.
Discuss (1 comments) Email this | Link to thisWe have gotten a lot of e-mails from viewers since we began our four-part series "The Mystery of Pain" Tuesday night. Most begin by simply thanking us for paying attention to a subject that many believe has been vastly neglected.
Pain is such a common part of medicine. It is, after all, one of the major reasons why people seek medical attention, and usually the problem is fixed quickly. But when doctors can find no obvious cause for pain that persists, the patient can slip into what can be a horrible odyssey where chronic pain destroys the ability to work or even to have normal family and social interactions. Frequently people become dependent on narcotic pain-killing medications, making the already depressing situation even worse.
How common is chronic pain? The best estimate from the American Pain Foundation is about one in five Americans, around 50 million people, making it one of the nation’s biggest public health problems.
"It's the giant elephant under the rug in the middle of medicine," says Dr. Ann Oaklander, a pain specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital.
Discuss (65 comments) Email this | Link to thisHARRISBURG, Pa. -- Judge John Jones III, presiding over the U.S. District Court in Harrisburg, Pa., ruled today (.PDF link) that teaching intelligent design as science violates the Establishment clause of the First Amendment of the Constitution. Judge Jones agreed with plaintiffs that intelligent design is basically religion -- a recasting of "creation science" that was banned from science classrooms by a 1989 Supreme Court decision.
Today's case only prohibits the teaching of intelligent design as science in Dover, Pa., but this is the latest battle in the ongoing war over the teaching of evolution in public high schools that goes back to the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925. The School Board of Dover passed a requirement that biology teachers must read a statement saying that there is an alternative to evolution called "intelligent design." A group of parents sued the board, claiming that was an attempt to bring religion into the science classroom. They were backed by the American Civil Liberties Union and others. The Board had support from several Christian Evangelical organizations.
Discuss (22 comments) Email this | Link to this