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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We 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.
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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.
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