Reports indicate that in his State of the Union addres on January 31 Pres. George Bush will focus on cutting healthcare costs. Kaiser Health, in a summary of these news reports, says:

“Bush administration officials have indicated that the president’s Jan. 31 State of the Union address will focus on curbing rising health care costs, among other health care issues, the AP/Long Island Newsday reports.

“Bush officials — ‘echoing hints Bush has provided in recent speeches’ — have outlined the president’s health care agenda to be presented in the address, according to AP/Newsday.”

One trend is toward more privatization:

“Issues include raising the amount allowed to accumulate in existing health savings accounts; offering additional tax breaks for those who purchase private insurance on their own….”

In addition, AP/Newsday reports that Bush will talk about “establishing more portability for health insurance when people change jobs; and providing easier access to information regarding physician pricing and quality. In addition, Bush also will propose increased efforts to adopt electronic medical records, a cap on noneconomic damages in malpractice verdicts and the ability for small businesses to pool the purchasing of health coverage across state lines, AP/Newsday reports.”

Source:
President Bush’s State of the Union Speech To Focus on Strategies for Reducing Health Care Costs - Kaisernetwork.org Jan 19, 2006

Thalidomide is making a subsidized comeback in Australia to treat multiple myeloma. In the USA thalidomide is already available to treat prostate cancer. It has not been too effective on its own. Giving it in combination with other chemotherapy may increase side effects. But a team of oncologists has found that giving a blood-thinner to prevent clots from thalidomide plus taxane chemotherapy “could provide a therapeutic and survival advantage for patients….”
(full story…)

LAURAN NEERGAARD
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The dog hopped on three legs, pain from bone cancer so bad that he wouldn’t let his afflicted fourth paw touch the floor. His owner was bracing for euthanasia when scientists offered a novel experiment: They injected a fiery sap from a Moroccan plant into Scooter’s spinal column - and the dog frolicked on all fours again for several months.

The chemical destroyed nerve cells that sensed pain from Scooter’s cancer, not helping the tumor but apparently making him no longer really feel it.

The dramatic effect in dogs has researchers from the National Institutes of Health preparing to test the chemical in people whose pain from advanced cancer is unrelieved by even the strongest narcotics.

The first human study could begin by next year, at the NIH’s Bethesda, Md., hospital. A second study in pain-ridden dogs is slated for this summer at the University of Pennsylvania.
Full story available from these sources:
Plant could hold secret for new pain medication Seattle Times

Sap from `hot’ plant treats pain, Good results on dogs with cancer
Researchers eye future use on humans Toronto Star, Jan. 17,

Supreme Court Upholds Oregon Suicide Law
Brocktown News, Nevada
17 January, 2006
By GINA HOLLAND

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court, with Chief Justice John Roberts dissenting, upheld Oregon‘s one-of-a-kind physician-assisted suicide law Tuesday, rejecting a Bush administration attempt to punish doctors who help terminally ill patients die.

That means the administration improperly tried to use a federal drug law to prosecute Oregon doctors who prescribe overdoses. Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft vowed to do that in 2001, saying that doctor-assisted suicide is not a “legitimate medical purpose.”

Justice Anthony Kennedy , writing for the majority, said the federal government does, indeed, have the authority to go after drug dealers and pass rules for health and safety.

Tuesday‘s decision is a reprimand of sorts for Ashcroft. Kennedy said the “authority claimed by the attorney general is both beyond his expertise and incongruous with the statutory purposes and design.”

“The authority desired by the government is inconsistent with the design of the statute in other fundamental respects. The attorney general does not have the sole delegated authority under the (law),” Kennedy wrote for himself, retiring Justice Sandra Day O‘Connor Sandra Day O‘Connor and Justices John Paul Stevens , David Souter , and Ruth Bader Ginsburg , and Stephen Breyer .

Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissented.

“If the term

legitimate medical purpose‘ has any meaning, it surely excludes the prescription of drugs to produce death,” he wrote.

Ashcroft had brought the case to the Supreme Court on the day his resignation was announced by the White House in 2004. The Justice Department has continued the case, under the leadership of his successor, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

More reports:
(full story…)

Follow up to the Oslo fabrication. Dr. Sudbø is not in hiding, but he is “on sick leave” and cannot be reached. His wife and his twin brother, who are both scientists, worked with him on the The Lancet study, according to the Guardian, but were unaware of his fraud.

No way of knowing as yet if any statements about the effect of NSAIDs on oral cancer in his article are true. It’s plain though that Dr. Sudbø assembled no genuine evidence for anything that he claimed in this study. He created a simulated reality, a database of pretend patients.
(full story…)

Monday January 16 2006

by Patricia Campbell

The National Stroke Association (NSA) has begun a programme of education and screening for prostate cancer, ahead of its implementation, for the first time in Antigua & Barbuda, of a non-surgical treatment for prostate cancer called brachytherapy.

The programme is part of the NSA’s long-term plan to become a full service medical clinic, offering a variety of innovative treatments to Antigua & Barbuda and neighbouring islands.

A team from a Canada-based corporation called Brachy4u Inc. was on island last week to make preliminary arrangements for the introduction of the NSA’s brachytherapy programme. Part of these preparations involved meeting with government officials, including Minister of Health John Maginley.
Source:Antigua Sun

Last week in the ATM machine in the Chase Bank I chatted with an older gentleman who had a trike parked outside. A home made, unmotorized non-recumbant trike with a wire shopping basket on the back. A simple means of self-transporation for someone without an automobile in a town with no bus service.

He was tall and slim and at first glance looked like an athlete. You must be pretty healthy, I said, with all that triking.

No he said, heading for the glass doors with a white-faced glare. Won’t be triking much no more.
(full story…)

Last April PSA Rising ran a brief report of a Norwegian study that claimed that “Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) prevent some cancers but . . . the advantage from NSAID protection against oral cancer was wiped out by double the rate of heart attack or stroke.”

This weekend it was evident that this study of the effects of ibuprofen and naproxen on oral cancer was fabricated from A to Z.

Norwegian hospital officials stated last week that the study was faked. Today, according to Reuters, the hospital in Oslo said: “A Norwegian cancer expert made up fictitious patients for an article about treatment of oral cancer published in a leading medical journal. . . .”

“The material was fabricated,” said Trine Lind, spokeswoman of the Norwegian Radium Hospital where Jon Sudbo has worked as a doctor and a researcher. “We are shocked. This is the worst thing that could happen in a research institution like ours.”

The hospital spokeswoman said Sudbo, 44, “invented patients and case histories for a study of oral cancer that was published in the British medical journal the Lancet in October 2005.”

The Lancet is Britain’s leading medical journal.

ANNE MARTE BLINDHEIM in the Norwegian daily Dagbladet reported Friday Frykter norsk lege har jukset før that “250 of his sample of 908 people in the study all shared the same birthday,” Reuters said.

Stein Vaaler [photographed below], strategy director for the Oslo cancer center, said: “A colleague raised questions about the article when it was published,” and (according to reports by Canadian CTV and Associated Press ( Cancer researcher admits to fabricating data) “when the researcher was confronted this week about the data, he acknowledged the fabrication, Vaaler said.”

Norwegian media are calling the situation “a personal tragedy.”

“All of it was fabricated,” Vaaler said. “It was not manipulation of real data — it was just complete fabrication.”
(full story…)

by Teresa Moua-Her

A new study just released by Yale University shows that the Prostate Antigen blood test or PSA is not effective in saving lives.

The study examined a thousand men at various hospitals in New England but many doctors are saying it does work.

One local man says the PSA test saved his life despite what the study claims.
(full story…)

Russian scientist Anna Prokhorchuck working with UK and US scientists has found that mice lacking a protein called Kaiso show resistance to intestinal cancer. Kaiso, which this study showed is upregulated in intestinal tumors in mice and is expressed in human colon cancers, seems to play “an essential role in mammalian synapse-specific transcription.” they say in a study published this month in Molecular and Cellular Biology.

Mice bred to lack the Kaiso protein were healthy and fertile, with no detectable abnormalities of development or gene expression. “However, when crossed with mice bred to develop intestinal tumors, Kaiso-null mice showed a delayed onset of intestinal tumorigenesis,” the researchers say. “Our data suggest that Kaiso plays a role in intestinal cancer and may therefore represent a potential target for therapeutic intervention.”
(full story…)

Jan. 13 (Bloomberg) — Cancer patients in the U.K. risk relapses and even death because they do not have enough access to radiation therapy, according to an article published in tomorrow’s issue of the British Medical Journal.

“Radiotherapy services in the U.K. are inferior to those in most developed countries and indeed in many poorer countries,” researcher David Dodwell from the Cookridge Hospital in Leeds wrote in the paper.
(full story…)

Company stays away from forum
Posted by the Asbury Park Press [New Jersey] on 01/13/06
BY JEAN MIKLE
TOMS RIVER BUREAU

TOMS RIVER — Angered that a representative of Ciba Specialty Chemicals Corp. did not attend the Jan. 9 meeting of the Citizens Action Committee on Childhood Cancer Cluster, Dover Township Council members said Tuesday that they will adopt a resolution demanding that the company send someone to future citizens committee meetings.
(full story…)

BBC NEWS | Health : Prostate cancer action plan urged

The [UK] government has been urged to draw up an action plan to improve prostate cancer services across the NHS.

Patients with the disease, which kills 10,000 men in England annually, are a low priority and treated unfairly, the Commons Public Accounts Committee said.

MPs also said that while there had been improvements, many patients in England with suspected cancer were still waiting too long to see a specialist……

Committee chairman Edward Leigh said: “Prostate cancer… is regarded as a lower priority than other common cancer when it comes to the provision of specialist care.

“The inequitable treatment of this group of NHS patients is entirely unacceptable.”
(full story…)

Citizens in Berkley, MA, population 6,200 citizens in southeastern Massachusetts (source: Berkely fire chief) , say a local dump site is causing cancer.

In a story subtitled “What if where one chose to live dictated whether or not they died of cancer?,” the Taunton Gazette reports:

A group of neighbors on Burt Street claims this may be the case, because they say a toxic waste cleanup site may not have been properly purified.

The site is part of a North Main Street property, known as Cranberry Crossing, that was used from the mid-1930s to the 1960s as a tannery waste dumping ground.”

A developer plans to build on this land and residents are upset.
(full story…)

Chennai is the new name for Madras, a city on the east coast of southern India. Situated on the shores of the Bay of Bengal, this capital of the state of Tamil Nadu is India’s fourth largest metropolitan city and one of the 35 largest metropolitan areas in the world. Today’s news from Chennai includes this about early detection for prostate cancer, a prostate cancer conference with Australian input, and a push towards brachytherapy:

Apollo chief for prostate cancer checkup

Chennai, Jan 7: People above the age of 40 years should undergo check up for prostate cancer, which is on the increase in the country, Apollo Hospitals Group chairman Dr Pratap C Reddy said here today.

“I firmly believe that those in the age group between 40 and 50 years be checked periodically depending on the results of the first check up while for those above this age, I suggest an annual check up. It can be controlled and even cured if diagnosed in the early stages,” he said.
(full story…)

2 Adverse Cancer Studies - New York Times
In one report, researchers analyzed 26 randomized studies involving more than 73,000 patients and concluded that statins like Lipitor and Zocor had no effect on the risk of developing or dying from any form of cancer. Those findings appear Wednesday in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association.

The other study, in the current Journal of the National Cancer Institute, found that cholesterol-lowering drugs, including statins, were of no benefit in preventing colorectal cancer.

When local treatments for prostate cancer have failed, and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) rises in the absence of symptoms, there is little consensus as to the best management strategy.

Calcitriol has been shown to prolong the doubling time of PSA in this context, but near-toxic doses are required.

We investigated the effect of the nutrient vitamin D (cholecalciferol), a biochemical precursor of calcitriol, on PSA levels and the rate of rise of PSA in these patients.

Fifteen patients were given 2,000 IU (50 microg) of cholecalciferol daily and monitored prospectively every 2-3 months.

In 9 patients, PSA levels decreased or remained unchanged after the commencement of cholecalciferol. This was sustained for as long as 21 months.
(full story…)

January 1, 2006 — A trio of innovations may enable physicians to plan prostate cancer patients’ treatment in real time and to implant cancer-killing radioactive “seeds” more accurately and efficiently, according to University of Wisconsin physicists.

Directional radiation system for brachytherapy under development in Wisconsin

Among the other major advances recognized by American Society of Clinical Oncology (American Society of Clinical Oncology) in 2005:

• The drug Herceptin was found to reduce the recurrence of HER-2-positive early-stage breast cancer by half when added to standard chemotherapy; the risk of death was cut by one-third compared with standard chemotherapy alone.
• Chemotherapy after surgery was found to reduce the risk of colorectal cancer recurrence. The drug oxaliplatin cut recurrence risk by up to 24 per cent.
• A large trial showed the drug Avastin - which starves tumours of the blood supply they need to grow - in combination with chemotherapy can significantly extend survival in patients with advanced lung cancer
• Avastin was also found to significantly improve survival for advanced colorectal cancer when used in conjunction with standard chemotherapy.
• Two different vaccines were effective at preventing 90 to 100 per cent of infections with human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus linked to cervical cancer.
• Canadian researchers found that people with an early form of the most common type of lung cancer lived longer if they were treated with chemotherapy after surgery to remove their tumor.

“This report demonstrates the important progress being made in all areas of clinical cancer research,” society president Dr. Sandra Horning said in a release Friday. “The message is one of hope - the advances identified by this report underscore the essential role of cancer research in finding solutions for a disease” that strikes millions of people each year.

Based on reports by SHERYL UBELACKER in Macleans and Cnews

ASCO - Reuters News - Professional
Low serum testosterone levels associated with worse prostate cancer outcome

Reuters reports that “Low serum testosterone levels are associated with a greater likelihood of positive surgical margins in radical retropubic prostatectomy for prostate cancer, according to a report, subtitled “Hypogonadism Represents Bad Prognosis in Prostate Cancer,” in the December issue of The Journal of Urology….

“We have to study more and more to understand the real meaning between low testosterone and prostate cancer,” Dr. Carlos Teodosio Da Rosa from Santa Casa Hospital, Porto Alegre, Brazil told Reuters Health.

Dr. Da Rosa and colleagues investigated the association between serum total testosterone levels and prognostic factors in 64 patients with localized prostate cancer who underwent radical retropubic prostatectomy.

Nearly 40% of men with low testosterone had positive margins in their surgical specimens, the authors report, compared with 14.6% of patients with normal testosterone.

Mean serum testosterone levels were significantly lower in men with positive margins (284.7 ng/dL) than in men with negative margins (385.7 ng/dL), the report indicates.

In contrast, Gleason scores, pathological stage, capsular perforation, and seminal vesicle involvement did not differ in men with normal or low testosterone.

“Since low testosterone may predict positive surgical margins, it is reasonable to suppose that it would represent a different prognosis in patients who undergo radical retropubic prostatectomy,” the investigators conclude. “As a consequence, these patients are more prone to present with prostate cancer recurrence and to require adjuvant treatment.”