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Today is Thursday, November 20, 2008 |
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When this edition of Words To Live By was originally published, the links below opened active web pages. |
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News Headlines
Imatinib Use
During Pregnancy May Cause Serious Fetal Abnormalities Cancerpage news is updated daily, Monday through Friday, and on the weekends as warranted. Twenty-five new articles have been added to cancerpage news since the last newsletter. To see ALL the latest stories, go to the cancerpage.com search page and click on Submit (but leave search field black.) March
is Colon Cancer Awareness Month
According to the American Cancer Society, 108,070 Americans are likely to be
diagnosed with colon cancer this year, an additional 40,740 with rectal cancer. Nearly 50 thousand will
perish from those diseases.
As devastating as those statistics are, the numbers are getting improving. Partly because of screening,
not as many Americans are developing
colon cancer because colon polyps are being discovered before they can develop into
cancer.
But it turns out we could be doing better. Researchers reported this week that colonoscopies
are probably
overlooking an entire class of growths in the colon
that often develop into cancer - flat growths. Read more about it
here.
New colon cancer screening guidelines were announced this week and the buzzword
was OPTIONS.
You can read more about that here. Oregon
Health Insurance Lottery To a few, a happy few goes health care.
Since it can't afford to provide health care to everyone who can't
afford to provide it for themselves, Oregon has decided to hold a lottery.
State residents who qualify for state assistance can sign up for
the lottery. Said one 61 year old woman interviewed by the Associated
Press: "It's better than nothing, at least it's hope." She hasn't
regularly taken the
insulin she needs in 6 months. Read more about it
here.
Surviving
Survivorship The MD Anderson Cancer Center has launched a new
cancer survivorship web site with everything you might want to know
about the clinical challenges facing the survivor community - the most likely
long term side effects of the cancer and the treatments, etc. For
instance, check out this page:
The Physical Impacts by Cancer Type.
Evaluating
the Media's Reporting on Medical Breakthroughs The University of British Columbia's Therapeutics Letter does a great job of
dissecting a "medical breakthrough" news story about reducing the risk of colon
cancer by taking Calcium+vitaminD . You can read it here. This is a
.pdf document which requires adobe acrobat on your computer to open. FDA
Warnings U.S. consumers are warned about some products being promoted on the internet
that claim to prevent or treat a variety of sexually transmitted diseases
including Herpes, Chlamydia, Human Papilloma Virus, cervical dysplasia, and
HIV/AIDS. Furthermore, some of these products claim to have FDA approval.
According to a release from the FDA, some claim to be more effective than
conventionally available medicines. Dr. Janet Woodcock of the FDA said
" These products give consumers a false sense of security that they are
protected from STDs." The products covered by the warnings include: Aviralex (herpes) , Tetrasil and Genisil (genital herpes),
Beta-mannan (HPV), Qina (HIV/AIDS, MULUX (herpes), SlicPlus (unspecified STDs), OXi-MED (chlamydia). See the FDA notice, and links to offending websites here. |
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The weekly cancerpage.com newsletter,
Words To Live By, is intended for educational purposes only.
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