I’d happily set aside further discussion of cancer screening, if I could. But the story won’t die.

In recent days, experts have suggested that doctors should do fewer pap smears and mammograms. I’ve posted on coverage of the pap-smear story and mammography.

Laura Newman now calls my attention to an item she posted on her Urology Blog at About.com. She reports that last April, in a development that deserves new attention now, the American Urological Association recommended that doctors do less when confronted with early-stage kidney cancer. Until recently, Newman reports, many of these folks had a kidney removed, even if the cancer was confined to only a small part of the kidney. Now, the urologists recommend that doctors remove only part of the kidney, or use heat to treat the cancer, or simply watch the situation closely before deciding what to do.

That should be good news for patients, as Newman points out. But will it generate the same reaction as the suggested rollbacks in pap smear screening and mammography? Will patients worry that the new guidelines are about saving money rather than saving lives? Will they demand that their kidneys be removed even if doctors recommend otherwise?

“I think that it is going to take awhile for the American public to get used to thinking that less imaging, less screening, and less treatment in certain cases could possibly be better than more,” Newman writes.

Newman puts the recent news in the context of health care more broadly. That’s something we should all keep in mind as we continue to cover this story.

We should also think about why Americans reacted so harshly to the suggestion that some screening be reduced.

Perhaps the problem is that every aspect of medical care–every minute in a doctor’s office, every pill, every palpation–now has a dollar sign attached to it. Less care and less screening might often be better for us. And it costs less.

But does that mean we’re saving money? Or does it mean the insurance company is saving money, and we’re being shortchanged? Newman is right; we need to understand that less is more. But until Americans can be sure that health-care decisions are being made for their welfare, not for somebody else’s bottom line, they will continue to be suspicious.

Our coverage should take note of that and, without taking sides, explain as clearly as possible the scientific basis for these decisions, and the financial implications. To ignore one or the other would do our readers, listeners and viewers a disservice.

- Paul Raeburn

My first question was about the timing. Why was the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) releasing its new guidelines on pap smears for cervical cancer this week, when politicians and the public were still seething over new recommendations for breast cancer screening?

Denise Grady, in the lead story in The New York Times, had the best answer I saw. Dr. Cheryl B. Iglesia, the chair of the ACOG panel that developed the pap smear guidelines, “called the timing crazy, uncanny, and ‘an unfortunate perfect storm,’” Grady wrote.

The recommendations are scheduled to be published in the December issue of Obstetrics &  Gynecology, so ACOG could not delay their release. The timing, Iglesia told Grady, was incidental, and the work on the guidelines had been under way long before the debate over health reform.

Part of what made it a perfect storm was that both sets of recommendations reduced the amount of screening recommended. That led to Republican charges that the new guidelines were an example of the rationing of care to be expected under the Obama health plan, which was not true. But the guidelines did play into concern among the public about possible health-care cutbacks under the bills being considered by Congress.

Presumably that is why Grady’s story led the paper, beating out a story on the first complete examination of Pentagon air defense since 9/11.

Really? Delaying pap smears by a few years is more significant than a major review of U.S. defense policy? Of course not. It was a silly call by the Times–an indication that Times editors might have escaped swine flu infections but are clearly infected with Washington health-reform hysteria.

Grady also beat out the announcement that Oprah Winfrey’s show is ending some time in the next decade. Now there’s where we could have a healthy debate. Too bad Oprah’s announcement isn’t a science story; I would have had a lot to say about that coverage.

In her On Women blog for U.S. News and World Report, Deborah Kotz writes a thoughtful analysis, a strong follow-up to the piece she wrote on mammograms, which I praised in a previous post. She notes a report that found that gynecologists have not done a good job of following the current guidelines, so it’s unclear whether they will follow the new ones.

Lauran Neergaard of the AP writes, “First mammograms. Now — in an apparent coincidence — Pap smears.” In the second graf she summarizes the new guidelines. It’s not bad, except for the unfortunate use of the word “apparent.” All the reporting suggests it was a coincidence. The use of “apparent” raises a question.

It appears to be a coincidence, Neergaard’s lede suggests, but is it? It is. Drop “apparent.”

Neergaard does do a deft job, however, of explaining the implications of the news for the Washington health-reform debate. A mark of a Washington pro.

Others:

AFP: US backs new start date for cervical cancer tests.

Jacob Goldstein on the Wall Street Journal Health Blog: Balancing Risks and Benefits of Pap Smears.

Rob Stein at the The Washington Post: Cervical Cancer screening can wait till 21, group says.

Grist for the mill: ACOG press release.

- Paul Raeburn

According to a study presented Monday at the American Heart Association’s annual meeting, “heart disease patients who practice TM [Transcendental Meditation] have almost 50% lower rates of heart attacks, stroke and deaths compared to similar patients who don’t practice meditation.” That’s from Shari Roan on the Los Angeles Times blog, Booster Shots.

I bet you can guess where I’m going with this. That 50 percent drop represents what–100 heart attacks in the control group and 50 in the meditators? Or two in the control group, and one in the meditators? Roan doesn’t say.

I wasn’t at the heart association meeting this year, so I went to the press release from the Medical College of Wisconsin. There I found the following bullet point: “A 47 percent reduction in the combination of death, heart attacks, and strokes in the participants.” But no actual numbers. (While I’m at it, why say “almost 50%,” as Roan did, when 47% is more accurate–and shorter?)

Roan also backs into her story, beginning by telling us that TM is one of the most studied meditation techniques, and the new work adds to the evidence that it’s helpful. But she never tells us what those earlier studies said. She does include a few words on a separate study that found TM-associated reductions in blood pressure in college students.

There is no evidence that she interviewed anyone from either study. She evidently rewrote the releases. That might be excusable for a blogger who lives on 50-cent refills and free wireless at Starbuck’s, but it’s hard to justify from the LA Times.

Jue Wang of the AAAS news service ScienceNow provided more detail on the study, but still did not say how many heart attacks and strokes occurred in the experimental group and control group. Wang did helpfully include comment from others who were apparently not involved in the research.

Most other news outlets ignored it. The story has only scattered presence on Google health news. I’m not terribly surprised by that. I suspect fewer news organizations are sending reporters to the heart association in these difficult financial times. And perhaps many science and medical reporters were too cynical and skeptical to spend time on this, especially while they are swamped with mammography this week.

But this study was done with a $3.8 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. That’s a lot of money, and we should be paying attention to how it’s spent. Besides, this seems to be a legit study, and it offers hope of a relatively easy and inexpensive way to prevent a lot of heart disease. At this moment, the Congressional Budget Office is calculating the costs of health reform. Shouldn’t we be reporting on research that could potentially affect those costs?

- Paul Raeburn

Grist: Medical College of Wisconsin press release; Maharishi University of Management release.

(English intro to Spanish lang. post) Many Spanish language newspapers have mentioned controversy in US about guidelines proposing to postpone mammograms from 40 to 50 years old. Only a few have included data about the situation in their own countries. One exception is found in Spain, where recommendations have already been to start screening at 50 (for the low risk population), and do it every 2 years.

Ayer todos los medios estadounidenses discutían la polémica recomendación de que las mujeres sin antecedentes familiares de cáncer de mama, retrasen el inicio de sus mamografías a los 50 años. El papel de expertos que realizó el informe aseguró empezar a los 40 años es innecesario, y puede ser contraproducente. La sociedad americana del cáncer se ha posicionado en contra de esta recomendación, argumentando que la detección temprana es la mejor arma contra el cáncer. En Infobae se puede leer un buen resumen, y algunos otros medios han tomado notas de agencias o realizado traducciones. ¿Traducciones? ¿No merece una noticia como ésta incluir, al menos, unas líneas sobre la situación específica en el país? Obvio que sí, y algunos periódicos lo han hecho, pero muchos menos de lo que sería deseable .

La mejor pieza la firma MJ Pérez – Barco “El dilema de las mamografías”, en ABC (Esp). Explica la polémica en EEUU, y que en España las autoridades sanitarias ya aconsejaban empezar los controles a partir de los 50 años, salvo que se detecten antes problemas. Para no confundir al lector, el artículo muy bien empieza con un tajante “Entre los oncólogos y autoridades sanitarias españolas no hay lugar a dudas: la mamografía es la prueba diagnóstica más eficaz para detectar precozmente la aparición de un cáncer de mama”. Luego se puntualiza que quizás o es necesario empezar tan pronto como a los 40 años, y que la verdadera preocupación en España es que el 30% de las mujeres mayores de 50 años no se hacen mamografías, a pesar de ser el tumor más frecuente en España. Muy buena reacción de MJ Pérez a la noticia de EEUU, incluyendo declaraciones de expertos españoles.

La Voz de Galicia titula “El último informe sobre las mamografías da la razón a España respecto a la selección de edad”, en un artículo que concluye: “Antes de los 50 años, el pecho de la mujer es más denso y por tanto la mamografía resulta menos útil en estos casos, pues da muchos falsos positivos que solo se aclaran a través de las estresantes biopsias”.

El Mundo (Esp), por medio de Laura Tardío ofrece muy completo artículo en el que recomienda las mamografías cada dos años, también para evitar falsos positivos que conduzcan a biopsias innecesarias.

La Nación (Argentina) traduce el artículo del New York Times, y añade una nota diciendo que en Argentina se recomiendo empezar las mamografías a los 40 años, y los expertos locales opinan que debe continuar así, para evitar que la detección llegue tarde.

La Nación (Paraguay) da un buen resumen del estudio y la polémica. No ofrece demasiados detalles sobre su país, pero transmite que su Ministerio de Salud apuesta por la detección precoz.

En El Periódico (Guatemala) Diana Choc preguntó a un experto local cuya opinión difiere de las estadounidenses, y una radióloga que incluso aconseja empezarlas a los 35 años.

El Espectador (Colombia) se salta la controversia y titula directamente “Recomiendan hacer menos mamografías” en su espacio “Vivir”. Ni siquiera cita las voces contrarias a la recomendación de retrasar las mamografías, y transmite a sus lectoras un peligroso mensaje.

El Nacional (Venezuela) también utiliza sólo agencias, pero por lo menos incluye las opiniones contrarias, balancea muy bien la información, y cita una frase que El Espectador debería haber considerado, (y que sin duda hizo MJ Pérez de ABC a tenor del inicio de su artículo): “Lo que nos preocupa es que, como resultado de esa confusión, las mujeres opten por no someterse nunca a las mamografías. Y eso, para mí, sería un problema grave”

– Pere Estupinyà

A month ago, Gina Kolata had an exclusive front-page story in The New York Times saying that the American Cancer Society was secretly revising its guidelines on screening for breast and prostate cancer. As I noted in a post at the time, the American Cancer Society denied any such stealth plan.

Kolata’s exclusive, at least regarding breast cancer, now looks misguided. The government’s announcement this week that women in their 40s should no longer get mammograms has provoked widespread controversy and argument.

But contrary to what Kolata predicted, the American Cancer Society has not changed its guidelines. It has vigorously defended them.

Meanwhile, the news is full of predictable reaction stories this morning–nobody much likes the new guidelines. The Washington Post instead produced a very nice piece putting the controversy in context. Who remembered that the same recommendation was proposed in 1997, with similar consequences? Kudos to Dan Eggen and Rob Stein.

- Paul Raeburn

Reading along through Denise Grady’s section lead on experimental, direct-application of drugs to glioblastoma tumors – threaded there by microcatheter via the femoral artery and subsequent branchings – one is pleased to read that the key drug is Avastin which in turn is an angiogenesis inhibitor. This is reassuring because, while such things hardly have been the revolutionary drugs that were briefly expected after Dr. Judah Folkman gained immense publicity while proclaiming their potential some ten years ago, they are finding application. Grady does not dwell at all on that. But she attempts the near- impossible: to not unduly raise hopes – not quite false hopes, but very slim ones – while writing in a positive tone about one front where some progress is being made against this devastating brain tumor. Her story again and again says it’s too soon to know if the doctors are on to something big – but it also says more than once that in early trials the scary bright spots in brain scans tend, at least for awhile, to vanish. But what she does say of Avastin is that what is needed are even better drugs.

Below the fold on the front page John Tierney in his Findings column sifts through the international antiquities theft and trade industry. The story’s axis is that Egyptian swashbuckler in the cowboy hat, Zahi Hawass, head of his nation’s Supreme Council of Antiquities. The story raises vital issues about why and whether nations, on whose territory somebody who belonged to a very different culture  made something nice thousands of years ago, still have locked-tight legal right to said relics no matter where they are housed now or pretty much regardless of how they got there. But it’s also largely about Hawass. Alert readers will know what’s coming next – for even more on this smart and smooth operator, check out the superb New Yorker article on him by Ian Parker, entitled The Pharoah (and from which this little thumbnail was lifted). You may have to pay to get that full article, or go borrow an issue from a friend or head to the library.

Other notable headlines:

• Kenneth Chang: Scientist at Work – Nathan Myhrvold: After Microsoft, Bringing a High-Tech Eye to Professional Kitchens ; Holy Crepe! Chang totally buries the lede, or else like a dessert he saved the best for last. Which is confit cooking is utter overkill, baseless in rationale, and its effect can be achieved much more simply. This is the one story in the section which The Tracker found a complete surprise. Didn’t know what sous vide or confit meant before reading this, and not what molecular gastronomy is either. But if you want to know and to see what happens when a lot of brains combines with a lot of money to pursue a complex hobby while employing vastly entertaining gadgetry – this is the thing to read.
• Dennis Overbye : Is Doomsday Coming? Perhaps, but Not in 2012 ; Overbye eschews condescending outrage that anybody would mistake movies and Maya calendars for prophecy, and just has a good time.
• Guy Gugliotta: An Air-Traffic Upgrade to Improve Travel by Plane ; Another gadget and technology lover’s kind of story.

As usual, lots more, whole section;

- Charlie Petit

Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina (photo) likes biotech. “One of the reasons I have long supported the U.S. biotechnology industry is that it is a homegrown success story that has been an engine of job creation in this country.”

Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri likes it, too. I needn’t bore you with her quote, because it matches Wilson’s word for word.

According to Robert Pear of The New York Times, they were both using “language suggested by the lobbyists.” In a front-page story in Sunday’s Times, Pear reports that 42 members of the House–22 Republicans and 20 Democrats–repeated talking points suggested by Genentech.

It’s a remarkable political achievement: Genentech found the bipartisan consensus on health care that has so far eluded President Obama.

I guess we all knew this sort of thing goes on, but it’s still striking to see it spelled out, as Pear does in this excellent piece of reporting.

In our business, the sanctions for using somebody else’s language can be severe. Not so in politics, apparently. Pear doesn’t address the question of what the gentlemen and gentle ladies in Congress might have received in return for parroting Genentech.

Polly want a cracker?

- Paul Raeburn

The fight over regulating Bisphenol A and perhaps its estrogen-mimicking co-suspects, phthalates, is sure to heat up now. A U.S. federally-funded study reports this week in the journal Human Reproduction that at a factory in China where workers get unusually high exposure to BPA, male workers have strikingly high rates of erectile disfunction and impairment of ejaculation.

At the Washington Post, Lyndsey Layton runs through those findings fast and gets immediately to the point: such compounds are in thousands of consumer products and BPA is “so ubiquitous it has been detected in the urine of 93 percent of the U.S. population.” Deeper she reports a source reflecting on doubters unimpressed by previous studies of animals where effects including impaired sexual development in the young seem apparent. The source observes that they said, “Show us the human studies…Now we have a human study, and this can’t be dismissed.”

It’s just the latest in a saga of enviro worriers v. industry reassurances that, at its beginning a few years ago, was hard to pick as something that would rise above other such fade-outs as fear of cancer from power lines or (among the sane) suspicion that autism’s rise is due to vaccinations. This one looks like it’s not going to fade any time soon. Not only is it in a refereed journal, but the authors are with the Kaiser Foundation Research Institute, a place well-regarded for its epidemiological savvy. Some news outfits have pursued the issue stubbornly. Their diligence looks closer now to vindication.

Exposures were high – much higher than what American’s typically endure. But high exposures are the mother lode of epidemiologists looking for a way to peg some hard points in a plot of sensitivity to a compound or other environmental factor.

Other stories:

• Web MD – Salynn Boyles: Study: High BPA Linked to Sex Problems in Men ; Includes a segment from an industry man who calls the data “interesting…but of little relevance to the average consumer using products with trace levels…” Perhaps true, one supposes. But the EPA, OSHA, etc. may find it more than interesting.
• NPR – Scott Hensley: BPA at Work Raises Risk of Impotence, Sexual Problems ;
• Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Meg Kissinger: BPA, sexual problems may be linked. This paper may have investigated BPA and phthalates more aggressively than any other as part of its Chemical Fallout special report.
• AP – Malcolm Ritter: Chemical BPA in workers linked to sex problems ;
• SF Chronicle – Victoria Colliver: Bisphenol A linked to sexual disfunction ;
• *UPDATE addition: US News – Ford Vox: Sex and BPA Don’t Mix, Say Researchers ; Rather complete, balanced, and well-reported review of why this is a good study but perhaps not yet ready to be declared highly pertinent to men generally, by a physician-journalist.

Much more, but in the On-the-Other-Hand Dept:

• Toronto Globe and Mail (Opinion) Margaret Wente: Does BPA give you the willies? It shouldn’t. This ran a few days ago. Too bad it didn’t wait a week so she could re-tune her skepticism – perhaps there’s a way to pooh pooh the new study too. She writes that BPA and Phthalate worries are not shared in other countries and that they are “driven by a few North American environmental groups and a small number of scientists.” She could get the last laugh. But again, this right now is unfortunate timing.

Grist for the Mill: Journal study full text ; Kaiser Permanente Press Release ;

- Charlie Petit

The Tracker handled the lead item, on solar sailing,  a few posts down.

There is plenty more, plenty of it is worth a read, but the most refreshing and eye-opening, to these eyes, is well inside. Gardiner Harris has a terrific Q&A with Holland’s Minister of Health, a man who has taken more than a casual look at the US health system and provides a needed, outside, fairly friendly but nonetheless critical look at what Americans get from US doctors and hospitals and how that stacks up against other nations. It cuts across the grain – it won’t sit so well with all those worrying about Obamacare as a path toward socialized tyranny, nor with those who say a public option is utterly necessary to corral the greed of capitalists in a noncompetitive, seller’s market. Every Hollander gets insurance, it’s all private (albeit in a heavily structured, regulated environment), and there is more choice than here. Not perfect, but in this (yes, self-serving) telling,  it’s a kind of universal health care that should scare nobody who’s not making lots of money from the system we have right now.

Running short on time, so: Other notable headlines:

• Natalie Angier – Basics/ Pigs Prove to Be Smart, if Not Vain ; The stylistic roller coaster we expect from Angier, riffing off a new study showing that pigs are smart (as many already regard them) but catch on unusually fast to what a mirror does, and have amazing memories for life’s lessons and the location of food.
• Henry Fountain: Stateside Home Is Proposed for South Pole Dome ; The old South Pole Station geodesic is obsolete, due for demolition (except for its top, to be a SeaBee souvenir), but some Old Antarctic Hands hope to bring the whole thing back stateside.
• Perri Klass, M.D.: Fearing a Flu Vaccine, and Wanting More of It: Fine inside essay on the contrary emotions of the US public ;
• Anne Raver: A Hunt for Seeds to Save Species, Perhaps by Helping Them Move ;
• Lindsey Hoshaw: Afloat in the Ocean, Expanding Islands of Trash ; Many reporters covered a recent expedition to sample the Pacific garbage patch. Ms. Hoshaw spent a month on board. Of interest – she’s a freelancer whose travel costs were paid, not or at least not entirely by NYTimes (as divulged in a note with the sotry), but by a public donation-fueled program called Spot.Us. Some of that program’s money came recently from the Knight Foundation, which also celebrates that the story landed in the NYTimes. This piece is illustration of the ferment in news delivery – a story in a traditional, big paper  by a freelancer reliant in part on grants to do the reporting. The article is not particularly long or sweeping . One suspects Hoshaw will be writing more on the expedition.
• LATE ADDENDUM TO PREVIOUS BULLET: I have just learned, as this day’s track ends, that NYT’s Andrew C. Revkin at his DotEarth has more to say about this sample of what he calls “cloud funded: journalism.

- Charlie Petit

The closest I came to practicing medicine in my career as a medical reporter was during countless lunches with colleagues in the AP cafeteria, an activity we used to refer to delicately as “tying on the feed bag.” Newspaper people are classy; I’m pretty sure that’s well known.

I covered a lot of stories on diet and nutrition, and my lunch pals were all over me about what they should or shouldn’t be eating. I gave them the best unlicensed medical advice I could muster. It was a good reality check–I got a preview of the reactions that readers might have when the stories went out on the wire.

The point is that these stories can be tricky. A study this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine is a good example.

According to a release from the AMA, which publishes the journal, “a low-calorie, low-fat diet appears more beneficial to dieters’ mood than a low-carbohydrate plan with the same number of calories.” The reasons were unclear.

Simeon Bennett of Bloomberg.com writes, “Dieters eating food high in carbohydrates and low on fat improved their mood longer than those on a low-carb, high-fat regime similar to the Atkins diet, researchers say.”

It’s not bad, if a little clumsy: Dieters didn’t improve their mood; it was the diet that did it. And Bennett might have done better to leave Atkins out of it. A lot of people already love or hate that diet, and we could do without the emotional baggage. This was low-fat versus low-carb; Atkins wasn’t involved.

The headline, for which we won’t blame Bennett, is a little less successful: “Low-Fat Diet Makes People Less Angry Than Low-Carb, Study Says.” The diet was associated with multiple mood changes, not simply anger. And the headline sounds more conclusive than the study did.

Miranda Hitti of WebMD backs into the story: “If you’re looking to lose extra pounds and weighing the options of a low-fat diet vs. a low-carbohydrate diet, you might want to consider the moody findings of a new diet study,” she writes. In the second graf, she notes that the mood of both groups improved briefly. And in the third graf she says that improvement didn’t last in the low-carb group. It almost becomes a story about mood improvements fading in the low-carb group, rather than a story about mood improvements persisting in the low-fat group.

She wasn’t the only one to bury the lede. Note the following:

Amanda Gardner of HealthDay: “Both a high-fat, low-carbohydrate diet such as the popular Atkins program and a low-fat, high-carb diet appear to help people lose pounds over the course of a year.”

Jeannine Stein of the Los Angeles Times Booster Shots blog: “The high-protein versus high-carb diet debate continues with the release of a new study that looked at something usually left out of the weight loss equation: mood.”

John Fauber of the Health and Science Today blog on the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website did it nicely, short and sweet: “You can lose a lot of weight on either a low-carb or low-fat diet, but after a year your mood is likely to be better on the low-fat regimen, a study found.”

- Paul Raeburn

MAJOR CORRECTION: The Tracker apologizes to Jane Kay for the post below, but not so much to the SF Chronicle. Jane was laid off in August, and wrote this for Environmental Health News. As such,. she’s bears no responsibility for my confusion. The Chronicle might have – given the familiarity by readers with her byline – made it clearer that Kay is no longer on staff. But the credit line did say EHN. I’m leaving  the rest of the post as it was. But there is no objective way to varnish this – I was careless in not seeing the credit line under her byline.

Furthermore, Environmental Health News is a foundation-supported and, by its assertion, non partisan service. That makes my suspicion it is an advocacy organization perhaps too strong. It has a number of well-respected journalists on board including former LA Times reporter Marla Cone as chief editor. It may have crusading zeal, but so do many legit news outlets.)- CP

Original post follows.

_________________________________

The SF Chronicle’s Jane Kay is a crusading environmental writer who punches industry and regulators hard, regularly, for any spill of any toxin or contamination of food with pesticides, preservatives, plasticizers, or most anything else that might be carcinogenic, teratogenic, or otherwise sickening to people or wildlife.  The Tracker has remarked before on her tendency to lead with the worst case scenario.

Today on the local news section’s front page she has Lead in red wine vinegars could hurt kids. Well-aged balsamics are most often the potential culprits, she writes. It is, we read right off the bat, so toxic and persistent that there is no known safe level, it causes neurological systems especially in children, and in adults can also damage hearts, kidneys, and immune systems.

Her primary source, she writes – and provides a link – is an organization called Environmental Health News. Her story provides reactions from attorneys and one lead toxicology specialist in Canada, but nothing that resembles work in a peer reviewed journal. That’s not necessarily a flaw – some things are found out and are worrisome before the professors can do their academic thing.

But here’s the twist. When one checks at Environmental Health News’s site there is indeed a long report on lead hazards in some red wine vinegars – and the author is Jane Kay. She wrote the report on which she is reporting. The newspaper piece attributes it all the Environmental Health News but it appears that Kay was the one who gathered the sample vinegars, sent them out for test, and is now putting it in the Chronicle. One, that is quite enterprising, doing an investigation first hand. But if she was doing it for what is, as far as I can tell, an advocacy organization her connection and in fact authorship of her own primary source …. gad, must one spell it out? It should be spelled out in the newspaper. It wouldn’t hurt the piece to say, “Based on reporting Jane Kay also did (under fellowship to, contract with, or maybe pro bono or whatever) for Environmental Health News.”

The absence of any rigorous epidemiology takes some of the edge of this as news. But if the numbers are correct then it merits reporting that, in principle, some vinegars in the market might pose a risk, same as mercury in tuna or swordfish. But the odd provenance of the reporting is…. more than odd.

Grist for the Mill: Environmental Health News Special Report ;

- Charlie Petit

Leber’s congenital amaurosis. Say that five times fast. Or try this one: adrenoleukodystrophy. If you’re a movie fan, you might be able the manage the second one: It was the disease in the movie Lorenzo’s Oil. These are among the diseases for which gene therapy has recently shown progress, according to a story by Gina Kolata in today’s New York Times.

Kolata begins her story this way: “Not long ago, gene therapy seemed troubled by insurmountable difficulties. After decades of dashed hopes, many who once embraced the idea of correcting genetic disorders by givine people new genes all but gave up the idea.”

That’s a nice historical tidbit, but I’d rather she had started with the news, which she doesn’t get to until the eighth graf. There she reports that researchers have successfully treated two children with adrenoleukodystrophy, or ALD. The children were not cured, but their disease–in which nerve cell insulation deteriorates, leading to brain damage and death–was arrested. It comes from a report in this week’s Science magazine.

Not sure why she structured the story that way. Granted, the name of the disease is a mouthful, but Thomas H. Maugh II of the Los Angeles Times had no problem putting the news in the lede. “In the third gene-therapy success of recent weeks,” he writes, “French researchers have arrested the progression of the rare and fatal degenerative disorder adrenoleukodystrophy, which was at the heart of the popular movie ‘Lorenzo’s Oil.’”

Both reporters say this is the third success in recent weeks, but they each counted different diseases. Kolata mentions previous successful treatments of Leber’s congenital amaurosis, an eye disease, and a “rare immunological disorder,” which I couldn’t find identified in the print version of the story (apologies if I missed it). A link on the web pointed to a scientific paper on severe combined immunodeficiency, or SCID.

Maugh, who likewise called this the third recent success, mentions three others, which would make this the fourth: the eye disease, SCID, and gene therapy to rejuvenate human lungs before transplantation. I was delighted to see that Maugh apparently got room in the paper to write this story; the last few times I’ve mentioned his work, it’s been in blog items, not in the paper.

Neither of them, however, mentioned a salient fact that could have been shoe-horned into the lede, or maybe tucked in the second graf: The researchers used a modified version of the AIDS virus (HIV) to treat these kids. That’s a nice example of turning an enemy to our advantage, and neither of them highlighted it.

Tom Avril at The Philadelphia Inquirer does a local take on the research, focusing on two sisters who started the Stop ALD Foundation, and who happen to live up the Main Line from Philadelphia. The two of them arranged a meeting between a researcher studying ALD and one developing HIV as a tool for gene therapy. It’s a nice approach, but I felt a little adrift in the early paragraphs. We hear about a busy scientist on an airplane; Amber Salzman, a distressed parent; and a researcher in France. Then we’re told that their interactions led to the research published today. And only then do we get fuller identifications on these folks.

For me, it was a little top heavy; I had a bit of trouble keeping the characters straight until I knew who they were and how they fit into the story. Nevertheless, once I got my footing, I found it an interesting tale of how activist parents can encourage research and even help set research agendas.

Others:

Lauran Neergaard of the Associated Press gets HIV in the lede: “French scientists mixed gene therapy and bone marrow transplants in two boys to seemingly halt a brain disease that can kill by adolescence. The surprise ingredient: They disabled the HIV virus so it couldn’t cause AIDS, and then used it to carry in the healthy new gene.” I like that, although I was slightly confused about the mixing of gene therapy and bone-marrow transplants until I read Neergaard’s explanation further down.

AFP: A breakthrough mix of stem cell and gene therapy halted a lethal brain-wasting illness in two young boys, and could prove effective against other genetic disorders, researchers reported Thursday.

From the NPR website, with an accompanying audio story by Joe Palca: Researchers in France have successfully treated two young boys with a rare but fatal genetic disease. This marks a high point for the field of gene therapy after several well-publicized setbacks.

Brandon Keim at Wired: Scientists have used gene therapy to halt the progression of adrenoleukodystrophy, a fatal neurodegenerative disease caused by a single defective gene, in two seven-year-old boys.

Grist for the Mill: The Science press release; Stop ALD Foundation’s press release.

- Paul Raeburn