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Showing posts with label Organizations. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Organizations. Show all posts

Monday, January 6, 2014

Why Everyone Seems to Have Cancer

EVERY New Year when the government publishes its Report to the Nation on the Status of Cancer, it is followed by a familiar lament. We are losing the war against cancer.
Half a century ago, the story goes, a person was far more likely to die from heart disease. Now cancer is on the verge of overtaking it as the No. 1 cause of death.
Troubling as this sounds, the comparison is unfair. Cancer is, by far, the harder problem — a condition deeply ingrained in the nature of evolution and multicellular life. Given that obstacle, cancer researchers are fighting and even winning smaller battles: reducing the death toll from childhood cancers and preventing — and sometimes curing — cancers that strike people in their prime. But when it comes to diseases of the elderly, there can be no decisive victory. This is, in the end, a zero-sum game.
The rhetoric about the war on cancer implies that with enough money and determination, science might reduce cancer mortality as dramatically as it has with other leading killers — one more notch in medicine’s belt. But what, then, would we die from? Heart disease and cancer are primarily diseases of aging. Fewer people succumbing to one means more people living long enough to die from the other.
The newest cancer report, which came out in mid-December, put the best possible face on things. If one accounts for the advancing age of the population — with the graying of the baby boomers, death itself is on the rise...
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Friday, November 1, 2013

Delivering High-Quality Cancer Care: Charting a New Course for a System in Crisis

Today's post was shared by CDC Cancer and comes from iom.edu 

In the United States, approximately 14 million people have had cancer and more than 1.6 million new cases are diagnosed each year. By 2022, it is projected that there will be 18 million cancer survivors and, by 2030, cancer incidence is expected to rise to 2.3 million new diagnoses per year. However, more than a decade after the IOM first studied the quality of cancer care, the barriers to achieving excellent care for all cancer patients remain daunting. Therefore, the IOM convened a committee of experts to examine the quality of cancer care in the United States and formulate recommendations for improvement. Delivering High-Quality Cancer Care: Charting a New Course for a System in Crisis presents the committee’s findings and recommendations.


The committee concluded that the cancer care delivery system is in crisis due to a growing demand for cancer care, increasing complexity of treatment, a shrinking workforce, and rising costs. Changes across the board are urgently needed to improve the quality of cancer care. All stakeholders – including cancer care teams, patients and their families, researchers, quality metrics developers, and payers, as well as HHS, other federal agencies, and industries – must reevaluate their current roles and responsibilities in cancer care and work together to develop a higher quality cancer care delivery system. Working toward the recommendations outlined in this report, the cancer care community can improve the quality...


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Related articles

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Leaked documents reveal the secret finances of a pro-industry science group

As the judicial system is bombarded with evidential scientific research in order to ascertain the truth, the research process itself is subject to being influenced. Today's post is shared from MotherJones.org and describes what happens when so-called "independent research" becomes tainted.

The American Council on Science and Health bills itself as an independent research and advocacy organization devoted to debunking "junk science." It's a controversial outfit—a "group of scientists…concerned that many important public policies related to health and the environment did not have a sound scientific basis," it says—that often does battle with environmentalists and consumer safety advocates, wading into public health debates to defend fracking, to fight New York City's attempt to ban big sugary sodas, and to dismiss concerns about the potential harms of the chemical bisphenol-A (better known at BPA) and the pesticide atrazine.

The group insists that its conclusions are driven purely by science. It acknowledges that it receives some financial support from corporations and industry groups, but ACSH, which reportedly stopped disclosing its corporate donors two decades ago, maintains that these contributions don't influence its work and agenda.

corporate researchYet internal financial documents (read them here) provided to Mother Jones show that ACSH depends heavily on funding from corporations that have a financial stake in the scientific debates it aims to shape.

The group also directly solicits donations from these industry sources around specific issues. ACSH's financial links to corporations involved in hot-button health and safety controversies have been highlighted in the past, but these documents offer a more extensive...
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Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Kansas SC suspends former AG’s law license indefinitely | Legal Newsline

Today's post was shared by Legal Newsline and comes from legalnewsline.com

The Kansas Supreme Court has suspended former state Attorney General Phill Kline’s law license indefinitely.
The high court released its decision Friday.
Kline
“As fully detailed below, after reviewing each instance of misconduct found by the panel, we find clear and convincing evidence that Kline committed 11 (Kansas Rules of Professional Conduct) violations,” according to the court’s per curiam opinion.
“In assessing discipline, we have considered the facts and circumstances of each violation; the ethical duties violated by Kline to the public, the legal system, and the legal profession; the knowing nature of his misconduct; the injury that resulted from the misconduct; the existence of aggravating and mitigating factors; and the applicable advisory American Bar Association Standards for imposing discipline.
“Ultimately, after applying that framework, we reject the Disciplinary Administrator’s suggestion of disbarment and conclude Kline’s misconduct warrants indefinite suspension, the discipline recommended by the panel.”
In October 2011, a panel for the Kansas Board for Discipline of Attorneys recommended that Kline should have his state law license suspended indefinitely.
Kline served as the state’s top lawyer from 2003 to 2007, and as Johnson County District Attorney from 2007 to 2009.
The three-member panel pointed to Kline’s actions during investigations of abortion...
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Friday, February 3, 2012

Stand Up To Cancer - World Cancer Day is Saturday, February 4, 2012

Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C) is a non-profit organization dedicated to curing the world of this devastating disease. SU2C hastens the pace of groundbreaking cancer research by funding and uniting scientists through Dream Teams and Innovative Research Grants. Learn more at www.standup2cancer.org.