After successful treatment for pancreatic cancer this summer, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she’s 'cancer free.' Read the rest

Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of the iconic Generation X memoir "Prozac Nation" (1994), died today of metastatic breast cancer. She was 52. Wurtzel was also the author of Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women (1999) and More, Now, Again (2002), about her stimulant addiction. Several years ago, she wrote in the New York Times about the BRCA genetic mutation that can result in breast cancer and her own treatment for the disease. From today's New York Times obituary:

Writing about her final illness was a natural choice for Ms. Wurtzel, who had for a quarter-century scrutinized her life in relentless detail, becoming a hero to some, especially to many women of her generation and younger, but also drawing scorn. “Prozac Nation,” her first book, published when she was 27, was unvarnished in its accounts of her student days at Harvard, her drug use, her extensive sex life and more...

The book became a cultural reference point and part of a new wave of confessional writing.

“Lizzie’s literary genius rests not just in her acres of quotable one-liners,” (Wurtzel's lifelong friend, author David) Samuels said by email, “but in her invention of what was really a new form, which has more or less replaced literary fiction — the memoir by a young person no one has ever heard of before. It was a form that Lizzie fashioned in her own image, because she always needed to be both the character and the author.”

photo: detail of Prozac Nation book cover Read the rest

I can only imagine what the hospice nurse must have been thinking.



It was an early October evening in 2017, and I was camped in the gigantic, overstuffed leather recliner that I had delivered the previous week.

One of the problems with buying furniture online is you don't truly get a sense of the dimensions in relation to your space. I don't know what made me think ordering a piece of furniture this way was a good idea. Read the rest

Juul is the cash-flush e-cigarette company whose billions (invested by Marlboro's parent company) have allowed it to create a massive market of addicted children, wiping out decades of progress in weaning children off of nicotine. Read the rest

The host of 'Jeopardy,' Alex Trebek, says he has completed chemotherapy treatment for cancer, and is 'on the mend' as he films a new season of the long-running and popular TV game show. Read the rest

• RBG was treated for cancer at Sloan-Kettering. • Disease activity found on her pancreas. • Further tests showed no evidence of disease elsewhere in her body.

The U.S. Supreme Court disclosed on Friday that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, lovingly known to fans as “RBG,” has just completed three weeks of radiation treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York. Read the rest

Monsanto ran a "fusion center" (a term borrowed from law-enforcement counter-terrorism operations) that spied on activists and journalists who were investigating the safety of its products, notably the link between its "Round Up" pesticides and cancers. Read the rest

San Francisco-based Juul and other e-cigarette companies were given a swift kick in the stones today by the Golden Gate City as San Francisco became the first city in the United States to ban the sale of electronic cigarettes within its borders. Read the rest

The Council for Education and Research on Toxics (CERT) is a nonprofit that kicked off its mysterious existence by filing a string of lawsuits against restaurant chains and coffee roasters for not posting California Proposition 65 notices (the notices are mandatory warnings about the presence of "chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer and reproductive toxicity") despite the disputed science behind their demands. Read the rest

Phenomenal maker Simone Giertz shares some of her battle with her brain tumor and makes a great lamp out of her radiation mask.

Read the rest

Back in 2018, evil got a shot in the arm when Nazi collaborators Bayer were allowed to buy Big Ag monopolists Monsanto, celebrating the marriage by getting rid of the Monsanto name (on the grounds that Monsanto's tactics had tarnished their reputation even worse than Bayer's use of concentration camp slaves and fatal medical experiments on Jews and others imprisoned by the Nazis, to say nothing of their notorious product Zyklon B). Read the rest

The host of a popular American television tabloid show will undergo surgery to remove thyroid cancer, spotted for the first time not by a doctor but by one of her regular viewers. Read the rest

The United States Food and Drug Administration issued a warning Thursday about the use of surgical robots in breast cancer surgery. FDA says that use of the robotic medical devices in mastectomy, lumpectomy, and related surgery because of "preliminary" evidence that it may be linked to lower long-term survival. . Read the rest

Frazzled American nerves should be calmed by Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathleen L. Arberg's statement that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg is cancer free. The beloved justice is recovering and will return to hear oral arguments next week.

The Trump Administration was reportedly chomping at the bit to replace this well-loved member of the Supreme Court.

NPR:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has no remaining signs of cancer after her surgery last month, requires no additional treatment, but will miss oral arguments at the court next week to rest, the Supreme Court said Friday.

While odds for a recovery from the surgery she had are good, they go way up if the subsequent pathology report shows no cancer in the lymph nodes. On Friday, the court released a written statement saying there is no additional evidence of cancer.

"Her recovery from surgery is on track," court spokeswoman Kathleen L. Arberg said of the 85-year-old justice. "Post-surgery evaluation indicates no evidence of remaining disease, and no further treatment is required."

In Patients' crowdfunding campaigns for alternative cancer treatments, published by researchers from Simon Fraser University in The Lancet Oncology (Sci-Hub mirror) we learn that thanks to Gofundme, 13,000 people have raised $1.4 million to help 200 desperate cancer patients pay for ineffective homeopathic "treatments." Read the rest

Today I learned that using cannabis can lower a fella's sperm count: those looking to partake in parenthood should take note. But that's not the only thing that cannabis can do to your swimmers. According to scientists from Duke University, using marijuana can cause genetic changes to sperm cells--something that could have far-reaching consequences for any baby a dude might father.

From The Verge:

For a study published today in the journal Epigenetics, scientists at Duke University compared the sperm of two groups of rats: those who had been given tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, and those who had not. Then they compared the sperm of 24 human men who smoked marijuana weekly versus a control group who used marijuana no more than 10 times in their life and not at all in the past half-year. In both cases — rats and humans — marijuana changed how genes work in sperm cells.

In both rats and humans, the cannabis affected many different genes involved in two different pathways. (Think of pathways as another set of instructions, this time for regulating various bodily functions.) One is important for organs to reach full size, and one plays a role in cancer and suppressing tumors.

Before anyone loses their shit, this doesn't mean that any kid you conceive while THC is coursing through your body will be more likely to get cancer. A lot more research needs to be conducted before any firm conclusions can be drawn. As The Verge points out, there were no laboratory controls on how much THC was consumed by the test subjects. Read the rest