A friend was recently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Stand up 2 Cancer is a “pop” research funding enterprise (is it cool to be a scientist yet?) – Link: WELCOME TO SUTV | SU2C. Dream team? Sure sounds like they are having fun.
Also noteworthy is the CPRIT, recently approved by the Texas Legislature ($3 billion over the next 10 years). This will be huge for Texas in developing a cure for cancer and expanding our biotech and life sciences industry. The Chief Scientific Officer is former University of Texas Southwestern Medical School dean and nobel laurete (2004) Alfred G. Gilman, MD, PhD.
Check out their site. – Link: http://www.cprit.state.tx.us/
This is one of the best documented cohort-based studies showing that coffee drinking provides protection from dementia in midlife and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in late life.
via George Perry: Faculty of 1000 Biology, 16 Feb 2009 http://www.f1000biology.com/article/id/1147566/evaluation
Richard Smith surveys contemporary futurology of physicians in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. He finds the new roles of physicians are expanding and will require the management of ideas, patients, and a sense of “citizenship” like never before. One must wonder how changes in public policy and health care managers’ desire to specialize their services will effect an even different physician’s role.
Capacity to change: one of the few things we can know with confidence about healthcare 40 years from now, when many current medical students will still be practising, is that it will be very different from now. Future doctors will probably need more than a capacity for change: they will need an enthusiasm for change;
via Thoughts on future doctors — Smith 102 (3): 89 — JRSM.
Shenk doesn’t exclude Vaillant himself from his ruminations on happiness. While Vaillant’s approach to all of this has been optimistic – constantly seeking new sources of funding to continue and expand the study, out of faith that it would reveal factors that predict healthy aging and happiness – Shenk paints a picture of a man every bit as complex as his subjects. Vailant is a professional success, apparently happy, but he has several failed marriages and troubled relationships with his children. Vaillant calls himself “a disconnected, narcissistic father,” yet when asked “What have you learned from the Grant Study men?” Vaillant answered, “That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people.” Vaillant symbolizes one of Shenk’s main points: that self-knowledge doesn’t necessarily bring either happiness or power. Recognizing and studying the dysfunctions in one’s own life doesn’t give one the power to fix them.
via The pathos of studying happiness : bioephemera.
This is a great introduction to an article by Joshua Shenk on happiness.
A subsequent review of the economic implications of the study concluded that “a series of six lessons in Alexander technique combined with an exercise prescription seems the most effective and cost effective option for the treatment of back pain in primary care.
via Alexander Technique – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Sandra Hollinghurst et al.,Randomised controlled trial of Alexander technique lessons, exercise, and massage (ATEAM) for chronic and recurrent back pain: economic evaluation,British Medical Journal, 11 December 2008.
Aldous Huxley was a fan. May be worth checking out.
