What are #Harvard docs and #medical school students reading? Countway tweets tell all #library

The Countway Library at Harvard Medical School has a twitter account listing the books Harvard students, docs and profs return. Here are a few samples.  “Cooper:Therapy dog” seems popular, as do books by Paul Farmer of Partners in Health. For more see @HMSreturns.

History, memoir and colons

Medieval technology and social change by  Lynn Townsend White http://bit.ly/cuu1A8

Alfalfa to ivy : Memoir of a Harvard Medical School dean by  Joseph B. Martin http://bit.ly/wh12DD

Alice Hamilton: Pioneer doctor in industrial medicine by  Madeleine P. (Madeleine Parker) Grant http://bit.ly/IorK5q

The puzzle people : Memoirs of a transplant surgeon by  Thomas E. (Thomas Earl) Starzl http://bit.ly/v7zyjw

The mentally ill in America : A history of their care and treatment from colonial times by  Albert Deutsch http://bit.ly/IpxTlb

Power, sex, suicide : Mitochondria and the meaning of life by  Nick Lane http://bit.ly/iMoUZh

On the pill : A social history of oral contraceptives, 1950-1970 by  Elizabeth Siegel Watkins http://bit.ly/mJgZpX

Subjected to science : Human experimentation in America before the Second World War by  Susan E Lederer http://bit.ly/GWc9jq

Secrets?

Ophthalmology secrets in color http://bit.ly/ioWQHk

Trauma secrets http://bit.ly/Iqm91S

Dental secrets http://bit.ly/qlDxjJ

Med School

Assessment measures in medical school, residency, and practice : the connections http://bit.ly/Iqaikk

So you want to be a brain surgeon? http://bit.ly/ItC6oo

The Washington manual internship survival guide by  Grace A Lin http://bit.ly/A2JnkM

Iserson’s getting into a residency : a guide for medical students by  Kenneth V Iserson http://bit.ly/z47UNY

Diversity

Shattering culture : American medicine responds to cultural diversity http://bit.ly/GDhmrq

Health issues in Latino males : a social and structural approach http://bit.ly/zBRdWe

Race, ethnicity, and health : a public health reader http://bit.ly/dbx8jT

Not too medical

Gold: recovery, properties, and applications by  Edmund M. (Edmund Merriman) Wise http://bit.ly/JeDPM7

Hair transplantation http://bit.ly/JdZoiA

Etc

[Cooper : therapy dog] http://bit.ly/k7raF1

Better than well : American medicine meets the American dream by  Carl Elliott http://bit.ly/rGjxBK

How to

Electroconvulsive therapy : a guide for professionals and their patients by  Max Fink http://bit.ly/IofP7E

Schmidek & Sweet operative neurosurgical techniques : indications, methods, and results http://bit.ly/Io6L2C

Fundamentals of clinical trials by  Lawrence M. Friedman http://bit.ly/xGnSoF

Pocket medicine http://bit.ly/Io5DMl

Introduction to anesthesia; the principles of safe practice by  Robert Dunning Dripps http://bit.ly/HZwUXf

Janeway’s immunobiology by  Kenneth (Kenneth M.) Murphy http://bit.ly/rumf5h

Good general practice http://bit.ly/z56Nuq

Next generation microarray bioinformatics : methods and protocols http://bit.ly/HtuRsP

Bethesda handbook of clinical oncology http://bit.ly/qjBZ8M

The breath, and the diseases which give it a fetid odor : with directions for treatment by  Joseph W. (Joseph William)  http://bit.ly/ItDmrD

Sapira’s art & science of bedside diagnosis by  Jane M Orient http://bit.ly/tMxL9g

Outdated?

Callous disregard : autism and vaccines — the truth behind a tragedy by  Andrew J Wakefield http://bit.ly/HWH0vw

Two April events: #Crowd-sourced #health care, #science and the lay #press

Your scribe here, Tinker Ready, appears at the second event on science and the media.

Deleterious Me: Whole Genome Sequencing, 23andMe, and the Crowd-Sourced Health Care Revolution

Anne Wojcicki

With panel discussion by Archon Fung, Jeremy Greene, Sanford Kwinter, and Jonathan Zittrain. Moderated by Sheila Jasanoff.

April 17, 2012, 5:00pm–7:00pm

Emerson Hall, Room 105

Co-sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment, the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

———————————————————————-

 

 

 

Standing Up for Science Media Workshop

Part of the Cambridge Science Festival

Broad Institute | 7 Cambridge Center

Cambridge, MA 02142, United States

Tuesday April 24, 2012

10.00 am Registration

Map of the location: http://g.co/maps/fn2uh

10.30 – 12.00 pm Science and the media

What happens when research announcements go wrong, statistics are

manipulated, risk factors are distorted, or the discussions become polarised?

Panellists: Dr Shawn Douglas, Fellow at the Wyss Institute for Biologically

Inspired Engineering; Professor Lorna Gibson, Professor of Materials Science

and Engineering, MIT; Dr Willy Lensch, Principal Faculty and Faculty Director of

Education, Harvard Stem Cell Institute.

12.00 – 1.10 pm Group work and lunch. Lunch will be provided.

1.10 – 2.30 pm What are journalists looking for?

How do journalists approach stories, balance the need for news and

entertainment with reporting science, and deal with accusations of polarising

debates and misrepresenting facts?

Panellists: Gino del Guercio, documentary filmmaker, Adjunct Professor, Boston

University’s College of Communication; Tinker Ready, freelance health and

science writer, Boston Health News & Nature Boston; Stephen Smith, City

Editor, Boston Globe.

2.30 – 3.10 pm Group work

3.10 – 4.15 pm Standing up for science – the nuts and bolts

Practical guidance for early career researchers to get their voices heard in

debates about science, how to respond to bad science when you see it, and top

tips for if you come face-to-face with a journalist.

Panellists: B. D. Colen, Sr. Communications Officer for University Science,

Harvard University; Leonor Sierra, Science and Policy Manager, Sense About

Science; Luke Stoeckel, Director of Clinical Neuroscience and Staff Training,

MGH-Harvard Center for Addiction Medicine, & VoYS US Representative.

4.15pm Close and informal feedback

End of Day Please join us for a drink

Nature Boston: Who in town is getting funded to do biomedical? #research #NIH

Nature Boston takes a trip through the NIH grants database and finds that the number of new grants dropped quite a bit last year.

While the agency funded 403 new projects in Massachusetts in 2010, that number dropped to 335 in 2011.

Does that make the grant winners super superstars? Or was the research in the labs at the right place at the right time? So many variables go into NIH funding, it can be hard to tell. Still it’s worth looking at where the money is going.

The 11 new winners so far for 2012 are looking into influenza, herpes, DNA replication timing, structural vaccinology for malaria and the search for biologically active antitumor and anti-infective agents in natural products. Our data is current as of this morning, but the numbers change constantly as NIH adds new grants to the database.  Grants went to Boston University, UMass med school and Brandeis University. But, Harvard-linked researchers – and infectious disease — dominate the list.

For more, head over to NB. While you are there, check out the site’s well-curated list of science events.

 

New Yorker: Former NEJM editor dismisses placebo claims

Arnold Relman writes in this week’s New Yorker.  He argues that researchers claiming placebos can cure are driven by ”substantial financial support for their anti-establishment views”  from NIH and private donors. From the letter’s page:

There is simply no evidence that physical diseases, such as cancer,  atherosclerosis, or organ disorders, can be cured or measurably improved by  placebos. Experienced physicians know that sympathetic concern and reassurance  can often allay subjective symptoms—at least temporarily—but only appropriate  medical treatment has a chance of curing physical disease. I suspect that the  main reason advocates of “alternative medicine” like Kaptchuk are receiving such  a friendly reception in many leading medical schools these days is that there is  substantial financial support for their anti-establishment views from one part  of the National Institutes of Health and from a few very wealthy private donors.

NYTimes starts its TBI / PTSD series in Maine

DEXTER, Me. — The roadside bomb that separated Sgt. Matthew Pennington from his left leg in 2006 also shattered his right leg and scorched his lungs. Those injuries he understood. But then came the ones he did not, the ones inside his head…

Like Mr. Pennington, many veterans injured in combat are finding that their invisible psychological and neurological wounds are proving more debilitating than their obvious physical ones.

About 1,700 American service members have lost limbs in Iraq and Afghanistan, most in roadside bombings that seared skin, shattered bones and damaged internal organs as well. Most of those troops also came home with traumatic brain injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder, which in many cases were not recognized for months.

Click here for the National Center for PTSD .

Story from The Nation on the misdiagnosis of head injuries. Cites Harvard study.

Here for Operation Recovery:

Service members who experience PTSD, TBI, MST, and combat stress have the right to exit the traumatic situation and receive immediate support, and compensation. Too often, service members are forced to redeploy back into dangerous combat, or train in situations that re-traumatize them. 

New look and new name for Nature Boston

So, the renamed Nature Boston is up and running. Check out this week’s calendar of event and a “Storify” post on last weeks visits by science journalist Carl Zimmer   He  was t the Coolidge Corner Theatre on talking about viruses at a screening of the film 12 Monkeys.

He also spoke at Harvard about his  book on science tattoos.

Also see a post on an event at Catalyst, a trendy new restaurant in Kendall Square with a back room named for Watson and Crick. The idea is to offer meeting space for the biotech and tech companies that have set up shop in the square.

Globe, WBUR on Alzheimer’s disease

Both The Globe and WBUR have had recent series on Alzheimer’s disease.

On Sunday, the Globe ran the last of a four-part, year-long series on a family coping losing their patriarch to early stage Alzheimer’s.

Bruce Vincent sits at a table in a stark room at Massachusetts General Hospital’s Charlestown research center, just a few minutes into what will be an hourlong test of his fading memory.

“Next, I will read you a list of words,’’ says research assistant Natacha Lorius, who sits across the table from him. “I need you to repeat the words back to me, in any order.

Suds, noose, spree, proxy, simile, nectar,’’ she says, reading slowly from a list of about 15 words.

When she finishes, Vincent, still raven haired and nearly wrinkle free at 49, stares at her for several seconds.

“I don’t remember any of them,’’ he says.

Alzheimer’s has recently quickened its devastating pace, snatching from Vincent more social skills and abilities than it had since his diagnosis three years earlier. He has a form of the disease that strikes at a young age.

Gone in the latest slide is the easy back and forth of conversation, the ability to sort and price products at the family’s Westminster grocery store that he once ran, and his recall of words, and sometimes entire conversations, from a few minutes earlier. Often he hovers, almost childlike, looking for direction in everyday tasks such as serving salad from a bowl to a dinner plate.

When Vincent shoveled his driveway after the snowstorm last month, he inexplicably walked dozens of yards to the backyard to empty each scoop, instead of simply tossing the snow to the side.

As the disease accelerates, Vincent’s family treasures all the more the bedrock pieces of his personality that remain — his optimism, his gentle nature, and especially his boyish humor.

“If I didn’t have Alzheimer’s,’’ Vincent confided after completing the memory-testing session, “that would have been a blast.’’ 

Another reason to root for the BoSox: Help for returning soldiers

On Veteran’s Day, consider these numbers from a Rand Corporation study: More than 300,000 U.S. soldiers will return from Iraq with concussions and head injuries. That doesn’t account for civilians.

So check out the Red Sox “Home Base” program, launched after players visited injured vets. To promote research, Home Base works with The Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology. CIMIT, a cross-disciplinary, cross- town collaboration that includes researchers from Harvard, MIT and local hospitals. The group applies technology – from electronic records to medical devices –to health problems.

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) has long challenged caregivers, who have limited options for determining prognosis and providing treatment. Recent prevalence of severe, moderate and mild TBI from military combat has increased the visibility of these issues. TBI and spinal cord trauma are major causes of morbidity and mortality throughout the world. Associated bio-physical changes are difficult to directly measure. The pathophysiology of TBI occurs in stages over prolonged periods of time. Better methods for characterization can aid in tailoring interventions to achieve better outcomes. CIMIT encourages novel approaches to treatment through functional and metabolic imaging and electromagnetic stimuli to localize treatment sites, measure progress, and identify the stages of recovery. CIMIT’s TBI & Neurotrauma Program seeks to explore novel techniques, including systemic and focal pharmacologic regimens, applied energy from lasers and ultrasound, and neuro-technological techniques, as methods to determine the stages at which they may be best applied. This program leverages the innovations of CIMIT Neurotechnology, Traumatic Stress Disorders, and Trauma & Casualty Care Programs, recognizing that many patients suffer from combinations of conditions that require clinicians to draw on a range of specialty resources. http://www.cimit.org/programs-traumatic-brain-injury.html

Tweets from Boston meeting on health, the Internet and mobile communication

Check out #chs11 f for tweet from the Connected Health Symposium in Boston. Each year, Partners sponsors this meeting to look at how the Internet and mobile communication are changing the health care system.  Here’s a link to the Tweetstream and a few samples below from a session on social networking and health.

“	RT @MGHDiabetesEd: “online patient communities can increase engagement, decrease isolation.” #chs11
	jillplev October 20, 2011

“	@taracousphd at #SoMe panel at #chs11: 35% of young people search for #healthcare informaton online
	sonnyvu October 20, 2011

“	Giving patients the choice to use an alias-based identity on social networks is a key way to address privacy concerns #chs11
	dsgold October 20, 2011

“	@dsgold How so? Alias identity does not equal unidentifiable, does it? I’d be concerned this is a false sense of security. #chs11
	Dermdoc October 20, 2011

“	Facebooking health @taracousphd facebook campaigns have huge opportunity for reaching teens, can use it for health literacy #chs11
	connectedhealth October 20, 2011

“	@lisagualtieri : There are credit #literacy programs for teenagers, why not more health literacy ones? #chs11
	sonnyvu October 20, 2011

“	We need to be inter-generational in our social media “prescription” including seniors as well as youth #chs11
	pamressler October 20, 2011

“	Social media can help make a disease more than just a disease for teens @drjosephkim #chs11
	connectedhealth October 20, 2011

“	@drdannysands telling about how he prescribed acor to @epatientdave & it save his life #chs11 #s4pm
	pjmachado October 20, 2011

“	Next up, Facebooking Health moderated by my wonderful #TUSM colleague @lisagualtieri #chs11
	pamressler October 20, 2011

“	@meyouhealth Chris Catter shows first ever social graph to visually render well-being among participants in social networks #chs11
	dsgold October 20, 2011

“	CDC traditional data tracked same as social media during H1N1 #chs11
	pamressler October 20, 2011

“	should MDs, nurses, etc recommend online pt communities? -yes! #chs11
	ICherryBlsm October 20, 2011

Boston Globe editorial: Prostate screening limits “too sweeping”

A staff editorial in today’s Globe echoes comment made by prominent docs in town: The US Preventative Services Task Force went too far in calling for limits on prostate screening.

A better course would be for physicians to talk with their patients about both the uncertainties inherent in the PSA test and the relative innocuousness of most prostate cancers. Some patients may find the panel’s recommendation reason enough to forgo the test. Others patients might prefer to have it done, but to monitor their PSA levels rather than seek immediate treatment when the results are borderline.

Insurance companies often use the panel’s recommendations as their criterion for whether to cover a test. But until there’s a better test to detect prostate cancer or a broader consensus about skipping this one, insurers should continue to cover it.

Note that The New York Times editorial staff supports the limits and notes that the USPSTF guidelines allow for doctor patient conversations:

Critics, including urologists, who diagnose and treat prostate cancer, charge that the task force’s recommendations are misguided and will hurt patients. They have already been held up for two years lest they ignite charges of government rationing. That’s absurd. The recommendations are intended as guidance to help men and their doctors decide whether to use the test and how to react if it is positive. This is information patients need to know.