Walter Willett, chair of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health and HMS professor of medicine, was recently a guest on Boston Public Radio to discuss his new book, Thinfluence, an examination of all the environmental factors — friends, family, advertisements, entertainment — that influence our weight.
A Cambridge-based biotech company that has developed an experimental treatment for the Ebola virus is urging federal officials to consider allowing the unproven medication to be used on patients who have been infected in Africa’s deadly outbreak and brought to the United States for treatment. Research by Sean P. J. Whelan, professor of microbiology and immunobiology, is cited.
As the death toll from Ebola nears 900 in West Africa, medical ethicists warn that US medical facilities and states have few plans in place to allocate limited supplies of life-saving medications and equipment such as ventilators if such a deadly outbreak were to occur here. Robert Truog, professor of anaesthesia (pediatrics) at Boston Children’s Hospital and director of the HMS Center for Bioethics, and Paul Biddinger, assistant professor of surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital, are quoted.
In the search for powerful anticancer and antifungal drugs, scientists are looking somewhere new — fungus-farming ants. A new collaborative research program has received funding from the U.S. National Institutes of Health and the State of São Paulo Research Foundation in Brazil. Jon Clardy, a professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at HMS and one of the leaders of the project, is quoted.
New research suggests surprising reasons why men are more likely to get skin cancer. An editorial on the research, co-authored by Harvard Medical School dermatologist David Fisher, HMS Edward Wigglesworth Professor of Dermatology and head of the Department of Dermatology at the Massachusetts General Hospital is mentioned.
The recall of a medical tool commonly used in hysterectomies means more than 50,000 women who get the procedures each year will face more painful options. Isaac Schiff, the Joe Vincent Meigs Professor of Gynecology and chief of the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Biology at Massachusetts General Hospital, is quoted.
July represents the yearly introduction of medical students into residency programs, and the influx of new hands and minds into the hospital is thought to result in poor-quality care, hence the fear. Haider Javed Warraich, clinical fellow in medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, authored this piece about his perspective on the “July effect.”
A provision in the health care reform law allowing parents to keep their adult children on their health-insurance plans has led to millions more young people with mental-health and substance-abuse problems getting treatment, according to a new study. Benjamin Le Cook, assistant professor of psychiatry at Cambridge Health Alliance, is one of the authors on the study.
Technology is enabling more people to get mental health counseling, even if they can’t get to a therapist’s office. Janet Wozniak, associate professor of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, is quoted.
Research by JoAnn Manson, Michael and Lee Bell Professor of Women’s Health at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is featured in this piece about studies that examine the health benefits of fish oil.
Through a series of videos, photographs and archival materials, filmmaker Irene Lusztig charts changing mores of birth, pregnancy and motherhood. Neel Shah, assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, is quoted.
