Faculty Bibliography

Dr. [Burton J. Lee] said the President was not depressed or under too much stress. He said Mr. [Bush] 'handles stress far better than the rest of us.' Nevertheless, he said, 'the stress of the job has to get to him, and it is my job to see that it does not get to him in a way that it is bothersome to him in his functioning.' In speaking out, Dr. Lee raised more openly an issue he has spoken about since he became Mr. Bush's doctor: getting his patient to relax. Dr. Lee said he was becoming increasingly aware that Mr. Bush could not get away and cannot decompress. 'It's a major problem,' he said. 'If the stress level builds up too high you start not becoming as effective as you were. It is at that point that most of us go on vacation for awhile.' Mr. Bush told reporters that his check-up at Bethesda Naval Medical Center was 'perfect' and 'everything was normal.'

Shortly after the Mayor left for City Hall, microbiologists turned up a vital clue: Clostridia bacteria were growing in his blood cultures. The particular species of Clostridia had yet to be identified, but the doctors told the Mayor to come back to the hospital and moved into high gear. The genus Clostridia includes more than 60 species that produce a range of infections that few other bacteria families can rival. Unlike the opportunistic infections that attack people whose immune systems are damaged from AIDS, Clostridia strike people with competent immune systems. Clostridium septicum, left, is a bacterium that can cause a rapidly fatal infection and is sometimes linked to bowel cancer. Another member of the Clostridium family, C. perfringens, right, was found in Mayor [David N. Dinkins]'s blood during his illness. He was treated with three antibiotics. (Dr. Gilda Jones (left); Don Stalons)

Of all the criticism, it is the prescriptions of the controversial sleeping pill Halcion for [George Bush] that seems to rankle [Burton J. Lee III] most. Although Lee insists he was correct in prescribing Halcion, he has said he will try to avoid it for public-relations, not medical, reasons. Lee has repeatedly said Halcion had nothing to do with Bush's collapse at the Japanese dinner. Lee said recently that Bush had not taken a Halcion for at least a week before he collapsed. Any time a president is suddenly taken ill, as Bush was in Japan, confusion follows. However, the White House has been criticized for adding to the confusion by not issuing a statement from Lee or having him answer questions about Bush's condition

Diverticulitis, the intestinal inflammation that has struck New York City Mayor David Dinkins, and the treatment for the infection are discussed

Several lymphoma experts interviewed agreed that Mr. [Paul E. Tsongas]'s prognosis is favorable and one said he was cured. But others said that because Mr. Tsongas's type of lymphoma cpi;d return unpredictably after many years, five and a half years was not long enough to know whether Mr. Tsongas is cured and data are not available to know whether, if a relapse occurred, he could serve out his term. Although five years is a statistic that is often cited for cancer cures, some experts said it was not applicable to Mr. Tsongas's type of lymphoma. Dr. [Tak Takvorian] stopped short of pronouncing Mr. Tsongas cured or assuring that he would not suffer a relapse in the next five years because insufficient time has elapsed to evaluate the findings from the lymphoma treatment study in which Mr. Tsongas is a continuing participant. But projections from preliminary statistical calculations, he said, indicate that Mr. Tsongas has about a 90 percent chance of remaining free of cancer. He added that no one can be sure that the findings will continue at that level. 'It is a matter of 'Can you perform?' ' Mr. Tsongas said. 'I don't believe even if it came back it would kill me in a four-year period.'

'There was no hint of a problem. At the moment, it would appear to be clear sailing,' said Dr. Tak Takvorian, a lymphoma expert at Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, a leading cancer center. Takvorian is [Paul Tsongas]' doctor and spoke in an extensive interview with his patient's permission. The nature of his type of lymphoma might allow Tsongas to continue working as president, the candidate said, an assessment with which Takvorian and Dr. George P. Canellos, who was Tsongas' first doctor at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, agreed. Tsongas and his doctors said he now takes no medication on a regular basis. The treatment in 1986 left Tsongas with about a 70 percent hearing loss in his left ear and a cough when he speaks often

President Bush's personal doctor, Burton J. Lee 3d, knows the phenomenon well. In news reports and in an avalanche of mail to his office in the White House, Dr. Lee has been attacked for prescribing the sleeping pill Halcion for Mr. Bush. Dr. Lee was also criticized for the way he handled Mr. Bush's collapse at a state dinner in Japan last month. And last year he was harshly criticized for not ordering a thyroid test as part of Mr. Bush's annual checkup that might have detected Graves' disease before it caused an erratic heart beat. 'Most doctors feel I should have brought him to a hospital, or should have done this or that,' Dr. Lee said. But to him, the diagnosis was a straightforward case of gastroenteritis, or intestinal flu, striking Mr. Bush after hitting others in the Bush entourage. 'I had been living with President Bush for 12 days,' he said. 'I know when he is having a serious problem and not having one.' 'It bothers me to see doctors driving around in expensive Mercedes-Benzes,' he said. 'It is not that they don't deserve them, or they should not have them, but can't they understand that every person who sees them drive knows that every cent paid for the Mercedes came out of somebody's pocket who was sick.'

Anthony S. Fauci, the top federal AIDS scientist, on Feb 10, 1992 raised the possibility that the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis might become as serious a public health threat as AIDS unless a major new research effort was begun against TB

The top federal AIDS scientist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, raised the possibility yesterday that, without major new research, the spread of drug-resistant tuberculosis may become as serious a public health threat as AIDS. Although the immediate tuberculosis threat is mostly to people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS, participants at a Bethesda meeting expressed alarm that the spread of tuberculosis from such patients also threatens the health workers who care for them and ultimately healthy people who are not infected with HIV. Many health-care workers are infected with the virus