of these adverse events seems to be only about 1.9%, however, and only with long-term use. Nevertheless, there has been a huge decrease in the use of COX-2 inhibitors and a return to more basic treatments.

It was also known as early as 2002 that there was a family of bioactive products, resolvins, produced from omega-3 fatty acids by aspirin. These compounds, which are involved in anti-inflammation signaling, were thus of interest in the treatment of inflammation. New evidence about aspirin's role in triggering potent anti-inflammatory actions was reported in 2004; this article also speculated that COX-2 inhibitors could block the synthesis of resolvin. Once again, the law of unintended consequences is at work, for anti-COX-2 drugs appear to inhibit this natural anti-inflammatory mechanism.

Further work is being done on resolvin, and it's likely to lead to well-controlled clinical trials and perhaps commercial production of synthetic human resolvin. However, until that time, patients suffering from inflammation can take advantage of the knowledge that if your diet is high in omega-3 fatty acids, you can add aspirin and produce resolvin to treat inflammation. How much aspirin must be taken to get the desired anti-inflammatory response? No one knows, yet. However, I myself take two tablespoons of flax oil morning, noon, and night at the time of major meals, plus one regular (325 mg.) aspirin tablet at these same times. This routine controls my joint discomfort due to arthritis just as effectively as Vioxx or Celebrex. This is only an uncontrolled, one-person result, but it may be worth others' consideration. I would also caution that aspirin at these dosages can have adverse gastrointestinal effects, so preventive measures against that problem must be taken.

This small saga shows that the mechanisms of this machine we live in—

Be sure to tell us when you move! If your address changes and you want to keep getting Dartmouth Medicine, just tear off the address panel from the back of a recent issue, write your new address next to the old one, and mail it to: Dartmouth Medicine, 1 Medical Center Drive (HB 7070), Lebanon, NH 03756. It helps us greatly—since our mailing list is drawn from six separate databases—if you send the actual cover or a copy of it. If that's not possible, please include both your old and new addresses. Note, too, that if you receive more than one copy of the magazine, it's because of those six databases (which are in different formats, so they can't be automatically "de-duped"). We're happy to eliminate duplications, but it's a help to have the address panel on all the copies you get, not just the one(s) you'd like deleted.

the human body—are very complex, and the introduction of any chemical to treat a medical condition can have unintended consequences.

Michael J. McKeown, M.D.
DC '58, DMS '59
Hillsboro, Ore.

Author! Author!
I very much enjoyed John Morton's excellent article about his open-heart surgery ["Heart Of An Olympian," Fall 2003].

In 1970, I had the good fortune to serve in Vietnam with then-Captain Morton, who was our team leader. I will always be

grateful for the opportunity to meet, serve with, and learn from this gifted, dynamic, and inspirational man. He led by example, and one of the most valuable examples he set for me was the value of sustaining a positive attitude and sense of humor, even under the austere and sometimes scary conditions under which we operated in Vietnam. Over the subsequent years, whenever I have faced the various challenging situations that life brings, I have instinctively thought back to Captain Morton and his incredible spirit, confidence, and optimism to bolster my own courage and will to succeed.

John Morton is a great human being. I was not surprised to read of his spectacular achievements since his army service.

CSM (Ret.) Gary Boone
Fayetteville, N.C.

Touched by Tanzer story
I read with melancholy the article in your Summer 2003 issue about Dr. Radford Tanzer, a member of the DMS faculty who was for the last year of his life the holder of the Boston Post cane. [The article explains a tradition dating back to 1909, when Edwin Grozier, the publisher of the Boston Post, distributed goldtopped ebony canes to 700 towns in New England, to be presented to each town's oldest citizen.]

I was especially touched by the story because I am Edwin Grozier's great-grandson.

Theodore G. Grozier
Hanover, N.H.

Grozier is, as it happens, a student at Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business and Thayer School of Engineering. And there's a further "rest of the story": Tanzer's widow, Sheila Harvey Tanzer, wrote a feature for the Winter 2004 issue of Dartmouth Medicine, eloquently detailing her husband's choices at the end of his life.