Recently Paul Goldberg of The Cancer Letterreported on an investigation into Duke cancer researcher Anil Potti, M.D., and claims made that he was a Rhodes Scholar in Australia. The misrepresentation was made on grant applications to National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the American Cancer Society (ACS).
The Cancer Letter, a $375 per year go-to newsletter on cancer research, funding, and drug development, has made this issue free at this PDF link.
News & Observer higher education reporter Eric Ferreri has a nice overview of the situation. Potti has been placed on administrative leave by Duke, and the ACS has suspended payments on his grant and initiated their own investigation. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Terra Sigillata*
Talk about a cruel trick of nature! A study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) shows that physical activity prevents weight gain in middle-aged and older women ONLY IF THEY ARE ALREADY AT IDEAL WEIGHT.Did you read that? It means that the recommended guidelines advocating 150 minutes of exercise a week isn’t sufficient to prevent weight gain in most middle-aged women.
The Harvard-associated researchers assessed weight changes associated with various levels of physical activity on 34,079 women who had been followed since 1992 in the Women’s Health Study. They stratified women as “inactive” (less than 150 minutes a week of moderate level physical activity), “intermediately active,” or “highly active” if they performed a high, strenuous level of activity. All three groups showed similar weight gain over a mean of 13 years of follow up. Read more »
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the world’s biggest sponsor of research in the life sciences. Today’s biologists, clinical researchers, and many others rely on the NIH for their funding.
To help people better understand how the peer review process happens within the NIH, the agency’s Center for Scientific Review created the following video that includes samples of research being openly discussed by a number of scientists:
Click here to view another video of tips for NIH grant applicants.
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
How much would a heart attack cost you? Quite a bit, according to CBS MoneyWatch.com:
According to an article from the National Business Group on Health, the average total [editor’s note: lifetime] cost of a severe heart attack -– including direct and indirect costs -– is about $1 million. Direct [lifetime] costs include charges for hospitals, doctors and prescription drugs, while indirect costs include lost productivity and time away from work. The average [lifetime] cost of a less-severe heart attack is about $760,000. Amortized over 20 years, that’s $50,000 per year for a severe heart attack and $38,000 per year for a less-severe heart attack.
I’m all for maintaining a healthy lifestyle, but before we get all hot and bothered about performing more testing to “prevent” a heart attack as a means to save healthcare costs going forward, remember the lessons we learned from the Tim Russert fallout. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr. Wes*
A little over two years ago, I confessed that I was “just a little scared of genetic testing.” I have two young children and almost every day I see traits in them that I’m pretty sure they inherited from me whether via genes or behavior. If you’re a parent, I’m sure you can imagine that there’s a lot of self-blame going on in our house.
So when it comes to genetic testing, I should want to know but I don’t. At least not right this minute. Haven’t I got enough to worry about?
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How much would a heart attack cost you? Quite a bit, according to 
A little over two years ago, I confessed that I was “
