Entries by Janet

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Surviving Cancer and Beyond

I had the privilege of meeting Paul Calobrisi through my work with the Prostate Cancer Foundation.   He is a prostate cancer survivor, and also a bladder cancer survivor. Basically, he is someone who has seen way, way too much cancer – in himself and in his family. He is also a remarkable person who has […]

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Gout Hates Your Joints

If an illness can have a stereotype, gout has one: its poster boy is a portly, wealthy gentleman who drinks too much red wine and eats too much rich food. In literature, gout is an Epicurean affliction, the runoff of opulence and “disease of kings.” In fact, gout attacks the poor as well as the […]

How RA Begins: A Detective Story

What causes rheumatoid arthritis? The search, by scientists around the world, has been exhaustive, and the prey surprisingly elusive – but in breakthrough Johns Hopkins research, scientists Maximilian Konig, M.D., and Felipe Andrade, M.D., Ph.D., believe they have pinpointed one culprit: a kind of bacteria that lives in the mouth and is present in gum […]

Hope for the Future:  An Engineered Bladder 

“Tissue engineering is the ultimate in reconstruction,” says David McConkey, Ph.D., Director of the Greenberg Bladder Cancer Institute at Johns Hopkins, “and we have a fantastic team” working to create a new bladder out of a patient’s own cells. Using a scaffold to layer stem cells and similarly “plastic” cells called progenitor cells – kind […]

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New Marijuana Studies: Pot Hurts Your Brain

Before we start this discussion, please hear these words:  this is not about your right to smoke marijuana.  I don’t care if you spend every waking moment high as a kite, as long as you don’t operate heavy machinery or endanger anyone else.  I do not care.  That’s not my business. However, I’m worried about […]