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By Elaine Schattner, MD, on June 30th, 2011
 My cousin testified before the FDA oncology advisory board on Tuesday about her experience taking Avastin. This is a tragedy, to deny the only drug that is keeping a 51 year old woman alive.
image from p.3 of today’s NYTimes business section
You have to wonder, are the advisory panel members so rational in all their behavior and choices? Are they always so razor-like in their oncology decisions?
Unlikely.
These experts have an agenda, here: It’s to be perceived as scientists, even when their knowledge is imperfect and exceptions to the rule stand right in front of their eyes.
But clinical medicine, as I know it, calls for flexibility, and tailoring of treatment to each case, and caring about each person, including those who fall at the tail, or in this case better end, of any Kaplan-Meier survival curve.
What would Larry Kramer do about this, I’ve been thinking: He’d scream, really
See more No Room For Emotion or Exceptions to the Rule (on Avastin)
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on May 27th, 2011
 Dear Readers,
Today my younger son will graduate from high school. We’ve got a slew of festivities lined up. I’m happy and excited, and think it wise to sign off for a few days.
Enjoy the weekend!
ES
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By Elaine Schattner, MD, on April 28th, 2011
This post, on my research in cancer immunology, is strangely personal.
At one level, what follows is nothing more than a list, a narrative if you will, a sketch of a formative chunk of my career and personal history. I’ve wanted to put this out there (here) for quite a while, but couldn’t: It’s been hard for me, harder in some ways than was the breast cancer and spine surgery and all the other unpleasant illnesses I haven’t mentioned yet, to come to grips with my near-hit academic medial research career that stopped, which until today has been for the most part disconnected from this blog and my new on-line life.
So here goes, a partial list of my publications, selected from ~30:
—
On a novel mechanism for B-cell death, my first first-author article based on my research in lymphoma immunology, in The Journal of Experimental Medicine, 1995:
CD40 ligation induces Apo-1/Fas expression on human B lymphocytes and facilitates
See more Some Articles I Authored A While Ago
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on April 1st, 2011
Dear Readers,
For April I’ve decided to blog less often because I need to focus intensely on a book proposal and some other writing projects. I’ll write sporadically and probably, still.
Enjoy the weekend,
ES
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By Elaine Schattner, MD, on January 14th, 2011
 The other day I wrote on advances in artificial red blood cells and developing platelets from stem cells. But those methods are in early research phases. Meanwhile, many patients need blood donated by adult humans, now.
I have personally benefited from the generosity of blood donors. Some were strangers: In 1974 I received seven units during and after surgery. I cannot thank those kind people directly, because I don’t know who they are, but I am surely grateful, besides forever fortunate that those units didn’t harbor hepatitis or other now-known viruses. In 2003, friends and acquaintances – a college friend’s wife, who over time has become as a cousin; a generous and strong physical therapist who worked with me then, whom I’ve never thanked sufficiently, among others; and family — stepped in and helped me get through another tough procedure by offering those vital pints.
If you’re healthy and without anemia, please consider donating blood through one of
See more On the Importance of Giving Blood
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on November 17th, 2010
Today Medical Lessons is one year old. That’s an important milestone in any blog’s life, as I suppose it is in this author’s.
Why blog, a mother in medicine might ask me. I’m having fun with this project, for starters. Since November 17, 2009, I’ve taught myself how to use WordPress, learned the ins and outs of website hosting companies and faulty servers, experimented with Twitter – on which I’m now hooked and, best of all, engaged a growing on-line group of interesting people.
What I like best, I think, is the freedom of modern penmanship in this strange, new mode. “It’s my blog and I’ll write what I want” is my motto in this ongoing real life-segment. How cool is that?
Where ML is headed, I’m not entirely sure. It’s been picked up by the ACP Internist blog and, as of today, the Get Better Health network. I’m a firm believer in the concept that anything
See more Medical Lessons is One Year Old!
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on October 29th, 2010
Today the author fears she is suffering from breast cancer fatigue syndrome, an unofficial and possibly infectious condition that she named this morning, that comes from too much thinking about breast cancer and the incidence of which peaks in October, and/or that she may be suffering from writing-about-breast-cancer fatigue syndrome, an affliction of some bloggers.
So she will take the rest of the afternoon and evening off, and do some reading and enjoy the weekend with her family.
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By Elaine Schattner M.D., on October 9th, 2010
Today marks exactly eight years since Dr. L., the fine radiologist who may have saved my life, called to let me know about my breast cancer diagnosis.
With deep-felt thanks to my doctors, my friends, my family,
ES
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By Elaine Schattner, MD, on August 15th, 2010
Dear Readers,
You may have noticed that I’ve changed the ML format. Recently I switched web-hosts (a lesson and a half! for this mother-doctor who didn’t exactly know what a blog was a year ago), which seems already to have improved the site’s loading and up-time.
Over the next few days I’ll be experimenting with this new theme. My goal is to streamline the look without forfeiting content. We’ll see how it goes -
I welcome suggestions from my readers.
Have a great day!
ES
Related Posts:No Related Posts
By Elaine Schattner M.D., on August 1st, 2010
Today is the start of this year’s Shark Week on the Discovery Channel.
—-
Dialog from NBC’s 30 Rock, Season 1, Episode 4 “Jack the Writer” (2006)*:
Tracy Jordan: But I want you to know something… You and me, it’s not gonna be a one-way street. Cos I don’t believe in one-way streets. Not between people, and not while I’m driving.
Kenneth: Oh, okay.
Tracy Jordan: So here’s some advice I wish I would have got when I was your age… Live every week, like it’s shark week.
(No further explanation is given. In the next scene the comedy writers take a one-minute dance break and then Jack provides an intro to GE’s six sigma program.)
shark (adapted image from Wikimedia Commons)
*The 30 Rock episode is copyright-protected, but for a small fee or through a service like Netflix you can access it here. The relevant clip starts at ~1 min, 20 seconds and ends at ~1 min, 54 seconds.
—– ADVERTISEMENTS:
See more Living Like It’s Shark Week!
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on June 27th, 2010
My thoughts on the sale of a legend’s medical films, on HuffPo:
The X-rays of Others
(Yes, it’s a reference to the movie.)
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By Elaine Schattner, on February 1st, 2010
Well, the blog’s in some sort of transitional state between web hosts. (No one taught me about FTPs in med school, and blogs didn’t exist then. The “web” didn’t either, in fact.) It seems we need wait until tomorrow which, it happens, is Groundhog’s Day. It should be sunny, right? –ES
See more Feb 1, 2010
By Elaine Schattner M.D., on December 31st, 2009
One of the things I liked best about practicing medicine is that I was constantly learning. Making rounds at seven in the morning on an oncology floor would be a chore if you didn’t get to examine and think and figure out what’s happening to a man with leukemia whose platelets are dangerously low, or whose lymphoma is responding to treatment but can’t take anymore medicine because of an intense, burn-like rash. You’d have to look stuff up, sort among clues
See more Why Medical Lessons?
By Elaine Schattner M.D., on December 30th, 2009
First, a definition* — False positives happen in screening mammography when the images suggest the presence of a malignancy in a woman who doesn’t have cancer in her breast. Here’s my proposed model — False positives can arise during any of three conceptual segments of the testing process…
See more Proposed Model for Evaluating False Positives in Screening Mammography
By Elaine Schattner, MD, on December 4th, 2009
Dear Readers,
The idea of this blog is to consider how people — patients and doctors both — find and interpret medical information, communicate and make informed decisions.
There’s a lot to cover -
Some upcoming topics: health on-line, white coats, dealing with disability, opting for palliative care and more.
Thanks everyone, for your support and interest!
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By Elaine Schattner, MD, on November 18th, 2009
Well, I went ahead and started this blog without a proper introduction. Why was I in such a hurry? Because I think the media’s getting — and giving — the wrong message on breast cancer screening. When it comes to long, boring medical publications like those published this week in the Annals of Internal Medicine, perhaps it’s not the devil that’s in the details so much as are the facts. More on that tomorrow –
See more Hello Readers!
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