Faculty Bibliography

In an action that reopens the question of how much responsibility nurses have to question doctors' orders, a Massachusetts licensing board said yesterday that it had started disciplinary proceedings against 18 nurses in the chemotherapy overdoses of two women in 1994 at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. The Board of Registration in Nursing said the patients, who died after the overdoses, were given a four-day dosage of intravenous chemotherapy on each of four days. One nurse hung the infusion bag and connected it to the patient. Nurses in following shifts monitored the flow. Dana-Farber's president, Dr. David G. Nathan, vigorously defended the nurses, saying they had been exonerated by three groups that investigated the incidents: the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and Dana-Farber

Is AIDS a disaster inadvertently brought on by humans during early testing of a polio vaccine in Africa in the 1950s? This provocative theory seemed far-fetched when it came to public attention in an article in Rolling Stone in 1992. Most AIDS experts dismissed it after a scientific committee reviewed the theory and deemed the probability very low. In 'The River,' Edward Hooper suggests that an experimental oral polio vaccine might have been made with chimpanzee tissue contaminated with a simian ancestor of the virus that causes AIDS. Although he has no medical expertise, Hooper, 48, has done a prodigious amount of research since 1990. In 1,070 pages, he builds a case entirely on circumstantial evidence that he accumulated in hundreds of interviews and exhaustive library research. He finds close coincidence in both time and place between the earliest cases of AIDS and the testing of an oral vaccine developed at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia and, later, in two laboratories in Belgium. From 1957 to 1960, the vaccine was given to a million people in what are now Rwanda, Burundi and Congo

At Babe Ruth Day at Yankee Stadium in 1947, the baseball hero of the generation stood before an admiring crowd, deep in pain and emaciated from advancing cancer, not yet aware of what ailed him. In the dugout moments before, clad in a topcoat and golf hat, he suffered a coughing spell, then, pulling himself together, walked to home plate, mentally recalling the day Lou Gehrig had made the same trip. In fact, he was among the first patients anywhere to receive experimental chemotherapy, and some researchers say he was the first ever to receive a combination treatment of chemotherapy and radiation for his type of cancer. For Ruth, the chemotherapy worked dramatically -- but only temporarily. Nevertheless, knowledge gained from his case helped shape the combination therapy that is now standard for his disease. But the images of a hoarse Ruth, perpetuated in audio and videotapes on the Internet, in movies and in sports broadcasts, in addition to his well-known smoking and drinking proclivities, have contributed to the myth that Ruth had throat cancer, which is generally taken to mean cancer of the larynx, or voice box

Dr. (Selim) Aractingi's team at the Tenon Hospital may have solved a mystery of why many women itch from a rash in the last weeks of pregnancy. The rash apparently is caused by fetal cells that escape from the mother's womb and lodge in the skin, Dr. Aractingi's team reported on Dec. 12 in Lancet, a journal published in London. It is the newest evidence of chimerism's role in human disorders. Last year, Dr. J. Lee Nelson and her colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle reported the first evidence linking cells that escaped from a fetus into the mother's bloodstream to development of a disease in the mother years after pregnancy. The disease, known as scleroderma, affects the skin and other organs. It is an autoimmune disorder in which the body mysteriously attacks its own healthy tissues. The condition strikes women four times as often as men. And in 1992, Dr. Thomas E. Starzl's team at the University of Pittsburgh showed that, in patients with transplanted organs, cells that escaped from donor tissue migrated to the skin and persisted up to 29 years after transplantation. The traffic is two way: The patient's own cells migrate to the transplanted organs where they continue to exist with donors cells. At the same time, donor cells move into the recipient's tissues

Then the clues come from following the tubes that blow air into the baby's tiny nostrils. Another tube carries nutrients into a vein. The boy has black hair. He is barely a foot long. He is curled up on a pillow and strapped in a cloth bumper, dotted with hearts, to keep his arms and legs in the same flexed position they were in the womb. As he sleeps beneath a radiant warmer in the dark, quiet room, machines track his skin temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen level and other vital measurements. Two Beanie Babies lie nearby. One toy serves an extra function: The Beanie's weight holds the air tubes in place. Above, a cardboard sign identifies him as Baby F, or Ikem. At 1 pound 7 ounces, he is the smallest of the seven surviving octuplets born last month in Houston. On Friday night, when Ikem developed signs of an infection, doctors began administering antibiotics and stopped his feeding. When the infection subsides, in two to three days, feeding will resume. The births made the octuplets an immediate media sensation and renewed the debate about fertility drugs and their enormous medical and human costs, but in the neonatal intensive care unit on the fourth floor of Texas Children's Hospital, the glare of world attention fades away next to the blip of the infant monitors. Now, although two babies still weigh less than a pound and a half, all are gaining weight, ounce by ounce

The boy has black hair. He is barely a foot long. He is curled up on a pillow and strapped in a cloth bumper dotted with hearts, to keep his arms and legs in the same flexed position they were in in the womb. As he sleeps beneath a radiant warmer in the dark and quiet room, machines track his skin temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen level and other vital measurements. Two Beanie Babies lie nearby. One toy serves an extra function: the Beanie's weight holds the air tubes in place. Above, a cardboard sign identifies him as Baby F, or Ikem. At 1 pound, 7 ounces, he is the smallest of the seven surviving octuplets born here last month. The strongest and largest, at 2 pounds 10 ounces, is his only brother, Jioke. He rests in a similar warmer in the same room. The first of the eight babies, Ebuka, a girl, was born on Dec. 8, almost four months earlier than the mother's due date of April 1. The mother, Nkem Chukwu, had been treated at the MacGregor Fertility Clinic in Houston and, because of religious beliefs, had rejected the idea of destroying any of the fetuses to give the others a greater chance of survival. The seven others were born on Dec. 20, making them the world's first set of octuplets to be born alive. The largest weighed less than 2 pounds. The smallest, a girl named Odera, weighed 10.3 ounces and died on Dec. 26

The births made the octuplets an immediate sensation in the news and renewed the debate about fertility drugs and their enormous medical and human costs, but here in the neonatal intensive care unit on the fourth floor of Texas Children's Hospital, the glare of world attention fades away next to the blip of the infant monitors. Now, although two babies remain under a pound and a half, all are gaining weight, ounce by ounce. The babies have a 95 percent chance of surviving to their expected discharge in late March, said Dr. Leonard Weisman, the head of the neonatal unit. As he led a visiting doctor through the unit, Weisman said he was 'cautiously optimistic' that the babies, all listed in critical condition, would turn out normal. Initially, all the babies breathed with the aid of mechanical ventilators. Now the surviving octuplets breathe on their own. A pump blows air through the tubing to help keep their chest walls from collapsing. The babies also receive caffeine to prevent apnea and stimulate their breathing

Then he is found by following the tubes that blow air into his tiny nostrils. Another tube carries nutrients into a vein. The boy has black hair. He is barely a foot long. He is curled up on a pillow and strapped in a cloth bumper, dotted with hearts, to keep his arms and legs in the same flexed position they were in in the womb. As he sleeps beneath a radiant warmer in the dark and quiet room, machines track his skin temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen level and other vital measurements. Two Beanie Babies lie nearby. One toy serves a function: Its weight holds the air tubes in place. Above, a cardboard sign identifies him as Baby F, or Ikem. At 1 pound, 7 ounces, he is the smallest of the seven surviving octuplets born here last month. On Friday night, when Ikem developed signs of an infection, doctors began administering antibiotics and stopped his feeding. When the infection subsides, in two to three days, feeding will resume. The first of the eight babies, Ebuka, a girl, was born Dec. 8, almost four months before the mother's due date of April 1. The mother, Nkem Chukwu, had been treated at the MacGregor Fertility Clinic in Houston, and because of religious beliefs, had rejected the idea of destroying any of the fetuses to give the others a greater chance of survival. The seven others were born Dec. 20, making them the world's first set of octuplets to be born alive. The largest weighed less than 2 pounds. The smallest, a girl named Odera, weighed 10.3 ounces and died Dec. 26

Then the clues come from following the tubes that blow air into the baby's tiny nostrils. Another tube carries nutrients into a vein. The boy has a crop of black hair. He is barely a foot long. He is curled up on a soft pillow and strapped in a cloth bumper, dotted with hearts, to keep his arms and legs in the same flexed position they were in in the womb. As he sleeps beneath a radiant warmer in the dark and quiet room, machines track his skin temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen level and other vital measurements. Two Beanie Babies lie nearby. One toy serves an extra function: the Beanie's weight holds the air tubes in place. The first of the eight babies, Ebuka, a girl, was born on Dec. 8, nearly four months earlier than the mother's due date of April 1. The mother, Nkem Chukwu had been treated at the MacGregor Fertility Clinic in Houston and because of religious beliefs had rejected the idea of destroying any of the fetuses to give the others a greater chance of survival. The seven others were born on Dec. 20, making them the world's first set of octuplets to be born alive. The largest weighed less than 2 pounds. The smallest, a girl named Odera, weighed 10.3 ounces and died on Dec. 26. The babies have a 95 percent chance of surviving to their expected discharge in late March, said Dr. Leonard E. Weisman, the head of the neonatal unit. As he led a visiting doctor through the unit, Dr. Weisman said he was ''cautiously optimistic'' that the babies, all listed in critical condition, would turn out normal

Scientists hope their findings closely linking the AIDS virus to a virus that a type of African chimpanzee is able to live with and not become ill will eventually lead to a vaccine for human use CHICAGO -- The riddle of the origin of the AIDS virus has been solved, according to an international team of scientists who reported Sunday that they had traced its roots to a related virus in a subspecies of chimpanzee in Africa. The researchers, who reported their findings at the opening session of a scientific meeting here, said the simian virus was closely related to HIV-1, the type of AIDS virus that has caused the overwhelming majority of cases in the world. Since the virus jumped to humans, perhaps through exposure to blood in hunting or handling the meat of chimpanzees, it has been transmitted among humans to infect an estimated 30 million people in the world