Media Mentions : DMS & DHMC in the News
Among the people and programs coming in for
prominent media coverage in recent months
was Dr. John Modlin, chair of pediatrics at DMS and
head of a national panel on immunization policy
a group very involved in preparing for the possibility
of bioterrorism. Modlin
has discussed immunization issues
everywhere from the New
York Times to National Public
Radio's All Things Considered. In
a People magazine Q&A, for example,
he said, "We're in a
much better position to respond
to smallpox than we were a couple of months
ago." (See page 10 for more on this topic.)
The Wall Street Journal carried a report recently on
"a study that shows promise in the fight against
cervical cancer. If the final
round of trials goes as expected,
the vaccine could receive federal
approval for marketing in
several years, said Diane Harper,
the director of the colposcopy
clinic at Dartmouth-Hitchcock
Medical Center. 'We are very,
very excited,' Harper said. 'I think cervical cancer
can go the way of smallpox.'"
A pair of young DHMC patients appeared recently
on both Good Morning America (GMA)
and the Oprah Winfrey Show. Harrison Colegrove,
11, and his sister Gracie, 9, had been confined to
wheelchairs for several years. "Doctor after doctor
saw the Colegroves," reported GMA, "but none
had a name for the disease. . . .
After five years of searching, the
family would discover the sort of
medical miracle you find only in
movies." The Colegroves also
shared their story on Oprah.
There, Winfrey explained that
"their ordeal finally came to an
end when the family met Dr. James Filiano of Dartmouth-
Hitchcock Medical Center. [He] believed
the children were suffering from something called
dopa-responsive dystonia." Happily, the rare disease
is treatable with medication, and the Colegrove
children now do karate and gymnastics.
A Dartmouth neurosurgeon was quoted on both
coasts in recent months. The New York Times, reporting
on a Lancet study of cerebral aneurysms,
wrote: "Some American neurosurgeons are unhappy
with aspects of the study. Dr. Robert Harbaugh,
director of cerebrovascular surgery at Dartmouth-
Hitchcock Medical Center, agreed that the sevenpercentage-
point difference in good outcomes after
one year was significant, but
he said he wanted to see longer
studies." And the Los Angeles
Times turned to Harbaugh for
commentary on a study showing
no support for allegations that
roller coasters cause brain injury.
" 'It's more likely that these
things happen by chance and that the roller coaster
isn't causing the problem,' said Robert Harbaugh,
a neurosurgeon at Dartmouth."
A few days before Thanksgiving, the New York Times editorialized on the fact that "surgery to treat severe obesity is expanding at a rapid rate." The paper said "an analysis by researchers at Dartmouth Medical School found that the gastric bypass operation could increase life expectancy by two to three years on average" but rued "the failure of medical science to find a less drastic approach to the nation's bulging weight problem."
"If cancer is an iceberg, a detectable tumor is just
the tip, says Michael Sporn, a cancer researcher at
Dartmouth Medical School": So
read the opening sentence of a
feature in U.S. News & World
Report on a field called chemoprevention,
a term that Sporn
coined. "Ever since the government-
sponsored war on cancer
began in the 1970s," the article
went on, "doctors have focused on treating those
tips. But now, says Sporn, 'the goal is to melt the
iceberg before it surfaces.'" (See page 6 for other
recent news about Sporn.)
Scientific American, calling arsenic a "mysterious carcinogen," noted that "although toxicologists aren't sure how [it] attacks the body's cells, a new study by scientists at Dartmouth Medical School indicates that the substance disrupts the activity of hormones called glucocorticoids, which help to regulate blood sugar and suppress tumors."
The New York Times turned to a Dartmouth expert in outcomes research for commentary on a study showing lumpectomy to be as effective as radical mastectomy in the treatment of breast cancer. "'I think this is great,' said Dr. H. Gilbert Welch of Dartmouth Medical School. 'This is Cadillac data, just what we want.'"
Another outcomes expert was quoted in connection
with a study suggesting that men who undergo
surgery for prostate cancer
can reduce their chance of dying
of that diseasebut not
their overall risk of dying. Reported
the Associated Press:
"What the study doesn't show is
which patients would benefit
most and least from the operation,
said Dr. John Wasson of Dartmouth, who believes
prostate cancer is an overtreated disease."
"A virtual volley of conflicting advice and studies"
about health practicessuch as "today's medical
bulletin: drink red wine; tomorrow's:
don't drink red wine"
was the subject of a story in the
Miami Herald. One key, says
DMS's Lisa Schwartz, M.D., "is presenting
scientific information in
a way patients can understand.
. . . 'You hear all these numbers
and you have no way of knowing are they big or
small. We want to do a better job of giving people
context for those numbers,' says Schwartz."
When the FBI began investigating an unusually high rate of heart surgery at a hospital in Redding, Calif., the mediafrom the New York Times to NPR's Morning Editionbegan beating a path to the door of a Dartmouth expert in health-care utilization. Wrote the San Francisco Chronicle, for example: " 'We've been aware of Redding for a number of years,' said Dr. John Wennberg, whose research at Dartmouth looks at wide regional differences in the use of costly medical services."
The complexities of ensuring the safety of donated
blood was the subject of an article in the St. Petersburg
Times. "Blood banks would like to test
each sample individually. . . .
But experts say they lack the
technology to do it, with some
14 million units of blood processed
each year in the U.S.
'That is the best way of testing,
but it's just not feasible at this
time,' said Dr. James AuBuchon, medical
director of the transfusion service at Dartmouth.
'It's going to take a few more steps, analytical
equipment steps, before we can implement
single-donor testing routinely.'"
An increase in the number of college students nationwide
who take prescription psychoactive
drugs was the subject of a recent Boston Globe story.
"'The Internet makes a huge difference,' said
Dr. Mark Reed, one of Dartmouth's
two full-time [student health
service] psychiatrists. 'When
they come into my office, they
tell me they've been studying
the signs of obsessive-compulsive
disorder, and they say: 'I
need cognitive behavior therapy,
and I need an SSRI [selective serotonin reuptake
inhibitor, an antidepressant].' My jaw drops
to the floor, and I say, 'Okay, humor me. Can you
take me through the evaluation?'"
The lack of any scientific underpinning for the
ubiquitous advice to drink eight 8-ounce glasses of
water a day has made the news in a big way ever
since the release in mid-summer of a review article
for the American Journal of
Physiology by Dartmouth faculty
member Heinz Valtin, M.D. Now
Valtin has really made the bigtime
pressthe funny pages.
The nationally syndicated comic
strip "Sylvia" recently depicted
a TV host proclaiming, "Dr.
Valtin, a kidney specialist, says that drinking eight
glasses of water a day leads not to better health but
more trips to the bathroom." (See page 10 of the
Fall 2002 issue for details about his article.)
If you would like to offer any feedback about this article, we would welcome getting your comments at DartMed@Dartmouth.edu.