Salon.com > Cancer http://www.salon.com Fri, 03 May 2013 03:47:40 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 The ultimate cancer taboo: Sometimes it kills you http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/the_ultimate_cancer_taboo_sometimes_it_kills_you/ http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/the_ultimate_cancer_taboo_sometimes_it_kills_you/#comments Thu, 02 May 2013 15:11:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13286917 Contemporary cancer gets couched in the language of cheerleaders. Even a generation ago, the mere word "cancer" seemed a certain death sentence; today, in contrast, it's an opportunity to talk about battles and fights and hope. It's something to be bravely dealt with – having cancer automatically designates a person a "warrior." The disease is then referred to only at occasional "awareness" opportunities, preferably with a tasteful ribbon.

But people with metastatic cancer don't follow the tidy, cheerful narrative. They don't necessarily fit the inspirational survivor mold. And so they're ignored.

In the middle of her righteous New York Times Magazine story on breast cancer this past weekend, writer Peggy Orenstein dropped the bombshell statistic that "only an estimated 0.5 percent of all National Cancer Institute grants since 1972 focus on metastasis." As University of Kansas Cancer Center chairman Danny Welch explained to her, "A lot of people are under the notion that metastatic work is a waste of time." Orenstein went on to reveal that last year, for the first time in its history, the Komen Foundation featured a woman with Stage 4 cancer in its ads. And the author herself described meeting a different woman with metastatic breast cancer by admitting, "It isn't easy to face someone with metastatic disease," calling the woman's condition her own "worst fear."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/05/02/the_ultimate_cancer_taboo_sometimes_it_kills_you/feed/ 18 Breast cancer awareness is big business http://www.salon.com/2013/04/30/the_business_of_breast_cancer_awareness_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/30/the_business_of_breast_cancer_awareness_partner/#comments Tue, 30 Apr 2013 17:49:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13285720 FeministingEd. note: This is a guest post from Verónica Bayetti Flores. Verónica is the Assistant Director of the Civil Liberties and Public Policy program (CLPP) at Hampshire College. She has worked to increase access to contraception and abortion, fought for paid sick leave, demanded access to safe public space for queer youth of color, and helped to lead social justice efforts in Wisconsin, New York City, and Texas.

Yesterday the New York Times featured an article in its Sunday magazine about breast cancer awareness initiatives, and what the real effects these initiatives have had on the lives of women. It’s on the longer side, but one that’s framed around the personal narrative of the author – a breast cancer survivor herself – and well worth a read:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/30/the_business_of_breast_cancer_awareness_partner/feed/ 1 Is there too much breast cancer “awareness”? http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/is_there_too_much_breast_cancer_awareness/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/is_there_too_much_breast_cancer_awareness/#comments Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:59:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13282037 Facing the helplessness of disease – especially a disease that has a penchant for women, for our mothers and our friends and daughters – it feels good to go on the offensive. It feels good to believe we are somehow collectively "battling" it. It feels good enough, in fact, to have turned breast cancer into a big, Pepto Bismol-colored business, and to have driven unprecedented droves of women into prophylactic mastectomies.

Yet reality is far more complicated than a jaunty ribbon on a lapel or the hopeful promise of "early detection." And the key to unlocking the secrets of a pernicious disease will not be found in a pink bottle of nail polish -- or even, very likely, in radical defensive surgery.

That point is well-illustrated in author Peggy Orenstein's blisteringly sensible cover story for the New York Times Magazine on "Our Feel-Good War on Breast Cancer." (It will appear in print this weekend, but is on the Times' site now.) Orenstein knows well the nightmare of breast cancer. She was diagnosed in 1996, at age 35. A decade and a half later, she was diagnosed again. And that span of time represents a massive shift in our cultural relationship with breast cancer – and a surprising new concern: what she calls "the dangers of overtreatment."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/is_there_too_much_breast_cancer_awareness/feed/ 38 The spaceship poetry of Iain M. Banks http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/the_spaceship_poetry_of_iain_m_banks/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/the_spaceship_poetry_of_iain_m_banks/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 16:54:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13260101 If the Scottish writer Iain M. Banks was a character in one of his own "Culture" science fiction novels, the shocking news that he had contracted terminal gall bladder cancer would be greeted with a shrug. In the Culture, medicine has advanced to the point where boredom is a far trickier challenge than mortality. In the incredibly gracious note revealing his plight Banks posted to his own website, he noted that "the speed with which the resources of the [National Health Service] in Scotland have been deployed - has been exemplary, and the standard of care deeply impressive." But in the Culture, healthcare has been solved.

Also solved: the economy. No one has to worry about making a living in the Culture. If one wanted, like Banks, to spend one's time producing (at a prodigious rate) science fiction romps (as Iain M. Banks) and straight-ahead non-sf novels (as Iain Banks), one could do so as long as one wished, without ever having to worry about whether there was a market for them.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/the_spaceship_poetry_of_iain_m_banks/feed/ 6 Roger Ebert scales back to review “only the movies I want to” due to cancer http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/roger_ebert_scales_back_to_review_only_the_movies_i_want_to_due_to_cancer/ http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/roger_ebert_scales_back_to_review_only_the_movies_i_want_to_due_to_cancer/#comments Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:02:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13259850 Preeminent film critic Roger Ebert announced late last night that he is cutting back from his work due to his ongoing struggle with cancer.

Ebert, the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize, has been penning reviews for 46 years to the day, and writes over 200 reviews a year. Last year, Ebert wrote a career-high of 306.

Now, the prolific reviewer is taking what he refers to as a "leave of presence":

"What in the world is a leave of presence? It means I am not going away. My intent is to continue to write selected reviews but to leave the rest to a talented team of writers handpicked and greatly admired by me. What's more, I'll be able at last to do what I've always fantasized about doing: reviewing only the movies I want to review."

Though narrowing his writing focus, Ebert will expand his reach in other ways, including starting a Kickstarter campaign to bring back his PBS program, "At the Movies," attempting to turn a video game or app into a movie, collaborating with Martin Scorsese over an Ebert biopic and managing the relaunch of his Web site, Rogerebert.com.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/04/03/roger_ebert_scales_back_to_review_only_the_movies_i_want_to_due_to_cancer/feed/ 2 A crowd-funding role model dies http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/a_crowdfunding_role_model_dies/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/a_crowdfunding_role_model_dies/#comments Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:42:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13252084 "The lesson here isn't, 'Social media to the rescue.'" That's what Arijit Guha told me last summer, when I spoke to him about his public battle with Aetna insurance and his efforts to crowd-fund his way through his colon cancer treatment. And when Guha died in his home in Arizona on Saturday at age 32, he had not, in the end, been rescued by social media. But social media was changed for the better by him, in ways that will long continue to embolden and unite other patients dealing with the random viciousness of disease, and the capriciousness of our healthcare system.

In what has become an increasingly necessary strategy, the Arizona State graduate student quickly went into entrepreneur mode when he learned he had Stage 4 cancer. Guha created the cheeky, self-aware Poop Strong site to collect donations and sell merchandise to cover his medical bills and then, later, to support local wellness initiatives. When Aetna informed him he'd reached his insurance cap, he called out the company in an articulate, impassioned Twitter conversation that ultimately brought its CEO Mark T. Bertolini into the fray – and got him results. 

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/26/a_crowdfunding_role_model_dies/feed/ 0 Could cancer be contagious? http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/could_cancer_be_contagious_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/could_cancer_be_contagious_partner/#comments Tue, 19 Mar 2013 21:33:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13246192 Venezuelan officials announced this week that they would investigate whether enemies could have deliberately infected late President Hugo Chávez with cancer. Chávez died on March 5, apparently of a heart attack, after battling cancer for two years.
Scientific American

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/could_cancer_be_contagious_partner/feed/ 3 “Rhoda” gives lessons in life — and death http://www.salon.com/2013/03/13/rhoda_gives_lessons_in_life_%e2%80%94_and_death/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/13/rhoda_gives_lessons_in_life_%e2%80%94_and_death/#comments Wed, 13 Mar 2013 18:46:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13227960 You know what you do when you find out you're likely going to die soon? You keep on living.

Since actress Valerie Harper went public with her terminal brain cancer diagnosis last week, she's presented a remarkably upbeat – and distinctively clear-eyed – example of how to face the inevitable with moxie and grace. The 73-year-old "Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "Rhoda" star says her doctors have given her as little as three months to live, but that "I don't think of dying. I think of being here now."

It's a valuable perspective, one that seems to fly in the face of our perception of the end of life as being one long slog through Tragedy Town. As Harper, who learned of her diagnosis in January, explained this week on "Good Morning America," "Let’s discuss it because we are all terminal. We really are. We have a lot of fear around death and I thought maybe I can help somebody … I want people to be less scared."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/13/rhoda_gives_lessons_in_life_%e2%80%94_and_death/feed/ 9 How Toms River cracked a cancer cluster http://www.salon.com/2013/03/12/how_toms_river_cracked_a_cancer_cluster/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/12/how_toms_river_cracked_a_cancer_cluster/#comments Tue, 12 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13225437 By the spring of 1995, when Steve Jones called to ask him to look into a possible cluster of childhood cancer in Toms River, Michael Berry had been New Jersey’s chief cluster investigator for almost nine years. It was still just a part-time responsibility — Berry spent most of his time on other tasks at the state health department — but it was now the least enjoyable part of his job. One of the first “incidence analyses” Berry ever attempted was the 1986 study of childhood cancer in Toms River. Its ambiguous results turned out to be a harbinger of dozens of similarly unsatisfying cluster studies he undertook around the state—including another one about Toms River kids in 1991. “After a while, it got frustrating,” he recalled many years later. “I mean, what were we accomplishing?”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/12/how_toms_river_cracked_a_cancer_cluster/feed/ 1 Valerie Harper diagnosed with terminal brain cancer http://www.salon.com/2013/03/06/valerie_harper_diagnosed_with_terminal_brain_cancer/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/06/valerie_harper_diagnosed_with_terminal_brain_cancer/#comments Wed, 06 Mar 2013 21:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13220838 Valerie Harper, the 73-year-old actress known to fans as the brazen upstairs neighbor, Rhoda Morgenstern, on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and spinoff, "Rhoda," revealed to People Magazine that she has been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. According to her doctors, she may only have three months to live.

Harper, who battled lung cancer in 2009, said she now has eptomeningeal carcinomatosis, a rare condition in which cancer cells spread in the membrane surrounding the brain. She was diagnosed in January, after complained of a numbness in her jaw. “(I) was rehearsing away, and then it was as if I had Novocaine,” she told ABC’s “Good Morning America."

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/06/valerie_harper_diagnosed_with_terminal_brain_cancer/feed/ 3 Hugo Chavez is dead http://www.salon.com/2013/03/05/breaking_hugo_chavez_dead/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/05/breaking_hugo_chavez_dead/#comments Tue, 05 Mar 2013 22:00:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13219999 CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Hugo Chavez, the fiery populist who declared a socialist revolution in Venezuela, crusaded against U.S. influence and championed a leftist revival across Latin America, died Tuesday at age 58 after a nearly two-year bout with cancer.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro, surrounded by other government officials, announced the death in a national television broadcast. He said Chavez died at 4:25 p.m. local time.

During more than 14 years in office, Chavez routinely challenged the status quo at home and internationally. He polarized Venezuelans with his confrontational and domineering style, yet was also a masterful communicator and strategist who tapped into Venezuelan nationalism to win broad support, particularly among the poor.

Chavez repeatedly proved himself a political survivor. As an army paratroop commander, he led a failed coup in 1992, then was pardoned and elected president in 1998. He survived a coup against his own presidency in 2002 and won re-election two more times.

The burly president electrified crowds with his booming voice, often wearing the bright red of his United Socialist Party of Venezuela or the fatigues and red beret of his army days. Before his struggle with cancer, he appeared on television almost daily, talking for hours at a time and often breaking into song of philosophical discourse.

Chavez used his country's vast oil wealth to launch social programs that include state-run food markets, new public housing, free health clinics and education programs. Poverty declined during Chavez's presidency amid a historic boom in oil earnings, but critics said he failed to use the windfall of hundreds of billions of dollars to develop the country's economy.

Inflation soared and the homicide rate rose to among the highest in the world.

Chavez underwent surgery in Cuba in June 2011 to remove what he said was a baseball-size tumor from his pelvic region, and the cancer returned repeatedly over the next 18 months despite more surgery, chemotherapy and radiation treatments. He kept secret key details of his illness, including the type of cancer and the precise location of the tumors.

"El Comandante," as he was known, stayed in touch with the Venezuelan people during his treatment via Twitter and phone calls broadcast on television, but even those messages dropped off as his health deteriorated.

Two months after his last re-election in October, Chavez returned to Cuba again for cancer surgery, blowing a kiss to his country as he boarded the plane. He was never seen again in public.

After a 10-week absence marked by opposition protests over the lack of information about the president's health and growing unease among the president's "Chavista" supporters, the government released photographs of Chavez on Feb. 15 and three days later announced that the president had returned to Venezuela to be treated at a military hospital in Caracas.

Throughout his presidency, Chavez said he hoped to fulfill Bolivar's unrealized dream of uniting South America.

He was also inspired by Cuban leader Fidel Castro and took on the aging revolutionary's role as Washington's chief antagonist in the Western Hemisphere after Castro relinquished the presidency to his brother Raul in 2006.

Supporters saw Chavez as the latest in a colorful line of revolutionary legends, from Castro to Argentine-born Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Chavez nurtured that cult of personality, and even as he stayed out of sight for long stretches fighting cancer, his out-sized image appeared on buildings and billboard throughout Venezuela. The airwaves boomed with his baritone mantra: "I am a nation." Supporters carried posters and wore masks of his eyes, chanting, "I am Chavez."

Chavez saw himself as a revolutionary and savior of the poor.

"A revolution has arrived here," he declared in a 2009 speech. "No one can stop this revolution."

Chavez's social programs won him enduring support: Poverty rates declined from 50 percent at the beginning of his term in 1999 to 32 percent in the second half of 2011. But he also charmed his audience with sheer charisma and a flair for drama that played well for the cameras.

He ordered the sword of South American independence leader Simon Bolivar removed from Argentina's Central Bank to unsheathe at key moments. On television, he would lambast his opponents as "oligarchs," announce expropriations of companies and lecture Venezuelans about the glories of socialism. His performances included renditions of folk songs and impromptu odes to Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong and 19th century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Chavez carried his in-your-face style to the world stage as well. In a 2006 speech to the U.N. General Assembly, he called President George W. Bush the devil, saying the podium reeked of sulfur after Bush's address.

Critics saw Chavez as a typical Latin American caudillo, a strongman who ruled through force of personality and showed disdain for democratic rules. Chavez concentrated power in his hands with allies who dominated the congress and justices who controlled the Supreme Court.

He insisted all the while that Venezuela remained a vibrant democracy and denied trying to restrict free speech. But some opponents faced criminal charges and were driven into exile.

While Chavez trumpeted plans for communes and an egalitarian society, his soaring rhetoric regularly conflicted with reality. Despite government seizures of companies and farmland, the balance between Venezuela's public and private sectors changed little during his presidency.

And even as the poor saw their incomes rise, those gains were blunted while the country's currency weakened amid economic controls.

Nonetheless, Chavez maintained a core of supporters who stayed loyal to their "comandante" until the end.

"Chavez masterfully exploits the disenchantment of people who feel excluded ... and he feeds on controversy whenever he can," Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka wrote in their book "Hugo Chavez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela's Controversial President."

Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias was born on July 28, 1954, in the rural town of Sabaneta in Venezuela's western plains. He was the son of schoolteacher parents and the second of six brothers.

Chavez was a fine baseball player and hoped he might one day pitch in the U.S. major leagues. When he joined the military at age 17, he aimed to keep honing his baseball skills in the capital.

But the young soldier immersed himself in the history of Bolivar and other Venezuelan heroes who had overthrown Spanish rule, and his political ideas began to take shape.

Chavez burst into public view in 1992 as a paratroop commander leading a military rebellion that brought tanks to the presidential palace. When the coup collapsed, Chavez was allowed to make a televised statement in which he declared that his movement had failed "for now." The speech, and those two defiant words, launched his career, searing his image into the memory of Venezuelans.

He and other coup prisoners were released in 1994, and President Rafael Caldera dropped the charges against them.

Chavez then organized a new political party and ran for president four years later, vowing to shatter Venezuela's traditional two-party system. At age 44, he became the country's youngest president in four decades of democracy with 56 percent of the vote.

Chavez was re-elected in 2000 in an election called under a new constitution drafted by his allies. His increasingly confrontational style and close ties to Cuba, however, disenchanted many of the middle-class supporters who had voted for him. The next several years saw bold but failed attempts by opponents to dislodge him from power.

In 2002, he survived a short-lived coup, which began after a large anti-Chavez street protest ended in deadly shootings. Dissident military officers detained the president and announced he had resigned. But within two days, he returned to power with the help of military loyalists while his supporters rallied in the streets.

Chavez emerged a stronger president. He defeated a subsequent opposition-led strike that paralyzed the country's oil industry, and he fired thousands of state oil company employees.

The coup also turned Chavez more decidedly against the U.S. government, which had swiftly recognized the provisional leader who had briefly replaced him. He created political and trade alliances that excluded the U.S., and he cozied up to Iran and Syria in large part, it seemed, due to their shared antagonism toward the U.S. government.

Despite the souring relationship, Chavez sold the bulk of Venezuela's oil to the United States.

He easily won re-election in 2006, and then said it was his destiny to lead Venezuela until 2021 or even 2031.

"I'm still a subversive," Chavez said in a 2007 interview with The Associated Press. "I think the entire world has to be subverted."

Playing such a larger-than-life public figure ultimately left little time for a personal life.

His second marriage, to journalist Marisabel Rodriguez, deteriorated in the early years of his presidency, and they divorced in 2004. In addition to their one daughter, Rosines, Chavez had three children from his first marriage, which ended before Chavez ran for office.

Chavez acknowledged after he was diagnosed with cancer that he had been recklessly neglecting his health. He had taken to staying up late and drinking as many as 40 cups of coffee a day. He regularly summoned his Cabinet ministers to the presidential palace late at night.

He often said he believed Venezuela was on its way down a long road toward socialism, and that there was no turning back. After winning re-election in 2012, he vowed to deepen his push to transform Venezuela.

His political movement, however, was mostly a one-man show. Only three days before his final surgery, Chavez named Maduro as his chosen successor.

Now, it will be up to Venezuelans to determine whether the Chavismo movement can survive, and how it will evolve, without the leader who inspired it.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/05/breaking_hugo_chavez_dead/feed/ 75 When I parented my father http://www.salon.com/2013/03/04/when_i_parented_my_father_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/04/when_i_parented_my_father_partner/#comments Mon, 04 Mar 2013 23:57:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13218696 The Nervous Breakdown My father’s urologist projected the CAT scan on his computer screen, pointing out the major organs like battle sites on a Civil War map. My father’s body, my homeland. Bladder. Liver. Intestine. Spleen. “Here’s the right kidney,” he said, using his pen to mark the perimeter. “You can see its recognizable shape, a healthy shape and size.” We nodded, my mother, my father, and me. We knew pointing out normalities meant an abnormality was coming. Dr. Petroski inhaled. “And now here’s the left kidney,” he said, moving his pen to a dark area that did not mirror its right-hand counterpart. It was as large as my father’s liver, but misshapen, a bulge in the center like a football. “You see the difference in the shape? That’s a tumor. That’s the problem.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/04/when_i_parented_my_father_partner/feed/ 5 Study finds more breast cancer among young women http://www.salon.com/2013/02/27/study_finds_more_breast_cancer_among_young_women/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/27/study_finds_more_breast_cancer_among_young_women/#comments Wed, 27 Feb 2013 14:05:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13213474 CHICAGO (AP) — Advanced breast cancer has increased slightly among young women, a 34-year analysis suggests. The disease is still uncommon among women younger than 40, and the small change has experts scratching their heads about possible reasons.

The results are potentially worrisome because young women's tumors tend to be more aggressive than older women's, and they're much less likely to get routine screening for the disease.

Still, that doesn't explain why there'd be an increase in advanced cases and the researchers and other experts say more work is needed to find answers.

It's likely that the increase has more than one cause, said Dr. Rebecca Johnson, the study's lead author and medical director of a teen and young adult cancer program at Seattle Children's Hospital.

"The change might be due to some sort of modifiable risk factor, like a lifestyle change" or exposure to some sort of cancer-linked substance, she said.

Johnson said the results translate to about 250 advanced cases diagnosed in women younger than 40 in the mid-1970s versus more than 800 in 2009. During those years, the number of women nationwide in that age range went from about 22 million to closer to 30 million — an increase that explains part of the study trend "but definitely not all of it," Johnson said.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/27/study_finds_more_breast_cancer_among_young_women/feed/ 0 Ailing Chavez returns to Venezuela http://www.salon.com/2013/02/18/ailing_chavez_returns_to_venezuela/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/18/ailing_chavez_returns_to_venezuela/#comments Mon, 18 Feb 2013 20:39:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13205094 CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- President Hugo Chavez returned to Venezuela early Monday after more than two months of treatment in Cuba following cancer surgery, his government said, triggering street celebrations by supporters who welcomed him home while he remained out of sight at Caracas' military hospital.

Chavez's return was announced in a series of three messages on his Twitter account, the first of them reading: "We've arrived once again in our Venezuelan homeland. Thank you, my God!! Thank you, beloved nation!! We will continue our treatment here."

They were the first messages to appear on Chavez's Twitter account since Nov. 1.

"I'm clinging to Christ and trusting in my doctors and nurses," another tweet on Chavez's account said. "Onward toward victory always!! We will live and we will triumph!!"

Vice President Nicolas Maduro said on television that Chavez arrived at 2:30 a.m. and was taken to the Dr. Carlos Arvelo Military Hospital in Caracas, where he will continue his treatment.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/18/ailing_chavez_returns_to_venezuela/feed/ 0 Bill O’Reilly speaks for the babies http://www.salon.com/2013/02/05/bill_oreilly_speaks_for_the_babies/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/05/bill_oreilly_speaks_for_the_babies/#comments Tue, 05 Feb 2013 16:09:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13191246 When I wrote last month of my conviction that life begins at conception — and my unshakable belief in the need for reproductive choice — I knew that I was risking attracting the attention of the trolls. And attract them I did, setting off a surge of blistering articles, emails and tweets, many to the effect that I’m worse than Hitler and that my mother should have aborted me. Thanks, "Christians!" I did, however, also get supportive messages from fellow pro-choicers, and exactly one email from a self-described “Imperfect Christ-follower” who invited a conversation on the “difficult, potentially contradictory ramifications” of abortion. What I hadn’t expected was that I’d land on the radar of loofah enthusiast and JFK-assassination-hogwash-dealer Papa Bear himself, Bill O’Reilly.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/05/bill_oreilly_speaks_for_the_babies/feed/ 100 FDA allows generic version of scarce cancer drug http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/fda_allows_generic_version_of_scarce_cancer_drug/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/fda_allows_generic_version_of_scarce_cancer_drug/#comments Mon, 04 Feb 2013 23:19:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13190908 WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal regulators say approval of the first generic version of cancer drug Doxil will help resolve a lingering shortage triggered by manufacturing deficiencies.

The shortage of the Johnson & Johnson injectable medication, made under contract by Ben Venue Laboratories, has continued on and off for a few years. It's resulted in rationing, with some patients with ovarian and other cancers getting less-effective care, and disrupted studies testing Doxil against possible new treatments.

The Food and Drug Administration says it's approved a generic version, called doxorubicin, made by Sun Pharma Global FZE. Last February, the FDA authorized temporary importation from India of a brand-name version, called Lipodox, also made by Sun Pharma. It's a subsidiary of an Indian drugmaker.

Meanwhile, J&J continues to seek a contract manufacturer to replace Ben Venue.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/fda_allows_generic_version_of_scarce_cancer_drug/feed/ 2 Can magic mushrooms help cancer patients? http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/can_magic_mushrooms_help_cancer_patients_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/can_magic_mushrooms_help_cancer_patients_partner/#comments Mon, 04 Feb 2013 21:21:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13190728 the fix
 Psilocybin, the hallucinogen found in “magic” mushrooms, may have the power to help cancer patients deal with the psychological suffering associated with cancer, claims new research from the New York University College of Dentistry (NYUCD). Previous studies have suggested that psilocybin may help ease depression and increase "openness." And according to Anthony Bossis, PhD, a clinical assistant professor at NYUCD and Langone Medical Center, it may also relieve cancer patients of some of the "existential distress" that can accompany a life-threatening diagnosis. "The emotional, spiritual and existential distress that can often accompany a diagnosis of cancer often goes unidentified and untreated," says Bossis. He notes that cancer sufferers often experience side effects from the physical pain of illness and chemotherapy—such as anxiety, depression, anger, denial, social isolation, hopelessness, and loss of independence—which the hallucinogenic drug could help alleviate.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/can_magic_mushrooms_help_cancer_patients_partner/feed/ 6 iPhones make lousy dermatologists http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/iphones_are_not_dermatologists_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/iphones_are_not_dermatologists_partner/#comments Mon, 04 Feb 2013 19:08:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13190466 Pacific Standard

Smartphones, like Swiss Army knives and SkyMall watches, have a few nifty features and plenty of useless ones. Who needs a checkbook when you’ve got Square, a toolkit when you’ve got iHandy Level, or a baby sitter when you’ve got Fruit Ninja? Encyclopedias, gazetteers, even boredom itself now seems obsolete.

Are dermatologists next? A slew of skin cancer-detection apps — with names like SkinVision, SpotCheck, and Mole Detective 2 — allow smartphone users to photograph and “analyze” their worrisome blemishes, offering diagnoses such as “problematic,” “high risk,” and “looks okay.” The free or low-cost apps base their findings on algorithms, rather than human expertise, and return results instantly. “Costs far less than an insurance copay, won’t leave a scar, and may save your life!” promises one advertisement. “The survival rate of melanoma is a dismal 15% at stage four,” warns another.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/04/iphones_are_not_dermatologists_partner/feed/ 0 Welcome to the age of cancer rehab http://www.salon.com/2013/01/29/welcome_to_the_age_of_cancer_rehab/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/29/welcome_to_the_age_of_cancer_rehab/#comments Tue, 29 Jan 2013 20:57:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13185234 We talk about preventing cancer. We talk about treating cancer. And we talk, endlessly, about "the cure." Yet what is rarely addressed in all of our conversations about cancer is what happens after cancer. As a Wall Street Journal story this week explains, cancer, for all the damn attention we give it, is in many ways a still vastly ignored and underestimated experience. That's why a new movement in medicine is afoot, with the goal of helping patients deal with the side effects and long-term physical and emotional aftereffects as they transition back to health. Commission on Cancer Chairman Dan McKellar calls this next step "an absolutely essential part of cancer care." Call it cancer rehab — a notion that's been far too long a time in coming.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/29/welcome_to_the_age_of_cancer_rehab/feed/ 10 What he said before he died http://www.salon.com/2013/01/29/what_he_said_before_he_died/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/29/what_he_said_before_he_died/#comments Tue, 29 Jan 2013 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13184220 “I’m a mangy gray dog with its ribs showing named van Gogh,” my husband told me not long before he died. “I have soulful brown eyes.” In real life, his name was Kevin, and he had blue eyes. But my husband was always a writer. Words were his tool, employed skillfully to explain, to invent, even to protect. Many years ago, defusing a self-loathing comment I made, he told me, “No, you’re a silk undershirt named Simone.”

There was a lot of living between the silky Simone and the mangy mutt. It was mostly delicious, beaches and beds, reading out loud, laughter unspooling through the days. Even a shared stint of unemployment we spent traveling through Italy, slowing down in Florence so we could cook from the markets. Fava beans were in season. When we met, on a junket for journalists in the Bahamas, we were magazine editors living a continent apart. Kevin had read a feature I had written quoting one of his favorite Berkeley professors. He thought I was smart. So we began our relationship via email, Los Angeles to Vermont. It was always built on words. It wasn’t until he sent me a poem, the one about eating the plums, that I understood he was at least flirting with flirting.

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