Faculty Bibliography

As much as the author loves new vaccine technology, he also hates getting too excited about studies that take place in mice. But he thinks the new first-of-its-kind preventive vaccine against breast cancer is going to prove to be an exception to the rule. Most breast cancers produce alpha lactalbumin, a milk protein, which is only produced at one other time, when a woman is breast feeding. The new vaccine targets this protein, and in the study it was 100% successful at preventing breast cancer in highly susceptible mice who otherwise developed breast cancer 100% of the time

Three Rivers: Every Breath You Take [Television Program] -- The reality Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disease that can cause skin rashes, joint inflammation and pericardial inflammation (affecting the sac around the heart), says Dr. Frank Adams, a pulmonologist and police surgeon experienced in treating smoke inhalation for the New York Police Department

Royal Pains [Television Program] -- The reality Ativan is an anti-anxiety medication that is not often chosen as a treatment for insomnia, says Dr. Fredric Weinbaum, executive vice president and chief medical officer at Southampton Hospital on Long Island, the hospital on which the show is based. Muscle spasms can sometimes be felt as a 'knotted muscle,' Morocco says, but it is also a 'garbage-can diagnosis' that is too easily assumed in a patient with back pain and normal results (including normal deep tendon reflexes) in a basic neurological exam

House, M.D. [Television Program] -- The reality Compartment syndrome results from the compression of muscle inside a closed space, says Dr. D.J. Green, assistant professor of trauma surgery at the USC Medical Center Naval Trauma Training Center

Nurse Jackie [Television Program] -- [...] studies show no difference in infection rates when comparing sterile water with tap water, and non-sterile gloves with sterile gloves, Morocco says

The April Food and Drug Administration investigative report that led to the current recalls is simply shocking, citing the plant for not only using raw materials contaminated with bacteria but also lacking 'process control procedures,' proper labeling, and 'test procedures designed to assure that components and drug products conform to appropriate standards of identity, strength, quality, and purity.'

You Don't Know Jack [Television Program] -- Voluntary euthanasia (the process of directly helping a terminally ill patient die by delivering a lethal medicine at the patient's request) is still illegal in all but those two states, says Dr. Timothy E. Quill, professor of medicine and psychiatry at the Center for Ethics, Humanities and Palliative Care at the University of Rochester School of Medicine in New York

The problem with media headlines on pharma is that they are rarely subtle or nuanced, instead they smear and cripple some of the best medications. The latest pronouncement involves some of the best anticonvulsant drugs, which have now raised alarms because they have significantly increased suicide risk. Patients have been led to believe by the media that either a drug will kill them or it will save them. The media is a powerful force for doctors to have to contend with

Miami Medical [Television Program] -- Zambrano suggests treating the patient for 48 hours with beta and alpha blockers (blood pressure medications that will blunt the effects of the hormones) prior to removing the tumor, but Deleo points out that the patient's kidney could rupture from the laceration that extends all the way to the kidney hilum (where the main artery enters the kidney and the veins leave)

Grey's Anatomy [Television Program] -- Sedation, pain medication and hospice care can make such a patient comfortable, but shortness of breath can be a particularly difficult symptom to treat, says Dr. Timothy E. Quill, professor of medicine and psychiatry at the Center for Ethics, Humanities, and Palliative Care at the University of Rochester School of Medicine in New York