Frederick P. Li, professor of medicine emeritus at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, who helped prove to a doubting medical establishment that heredity and genetics play a major role in some forms of cancer, died on June 12.
Summer is the season of food, food and more food. Is there a way to binge and still stay healthy? For answers, look far underground, say scientists, to the denizens of darkness: blind cavefish. Clifford Tabin, George Jacob and Jacqueline Hazel Leder Professor of Genetics and head of the Department of Genetics, is quoted.
Five undiagnosed patients are the focus of a documentary and new contest run by Boston Children’s Hospital. Aiming to advance the field of genomic medicine — using a patient’s gene information in the clinic — it offers a $25,000 prize to the research team that best solves the patients’ diagnostic mysteries. Isaac Kohane, chair of the Department of Biomedical Informatics and Lawrence J. Henderson Professor of Pediatrics at Boston Children’s Hospital, is quoted.
Wellness programs are getting a workout these days. Organizations are shifting the emphasis away from a preoccupation with blood pressure readings and body mass index scores to efforts that now address an employee’s emotional welfare, stress level and fulfillment on the job. Jeff Levin-Scherz, assistant professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is quoted.
The homeless sometimes can’t, sometimes won’t get to mainstream hospitals, so for nearly two decades, Ernesto Gonzalez, professor of dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital, has taken his black bag to them at the Barbara McInnis House on Albany Street, where Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP) runs a treatment center.
Researchers in the United States say they have developed a vaccine that can protect against chlamydia – the most common sexually transmitted infection in the world. Ulrich von Andrian, Edward Mallinckrodt Jr. Professor of Immunopathology, is senior author of the research.
Smoking rates among high-school students in Needham have plummeted since the town implemented its first-in-the-nation restrictions limiting tobacco sales to people over 21, according to a survey published this month. The Education Development Center, a Waltham nonprofit, and specialists from Brown University and Harvard Medical School collaborated on the study.
Neel Shah, assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, participated in a radio interview about giving birth at home, or in a midwife-led unit rather than in a hospital under the supervision of an obstetrician.
