HARVARD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH
Department of Nutrition
Meat and Cancer
Rashmi Sinha, Ph.D.
Senior Investigator, Deputy Branch Chief Nutritional Epidemiology Branch Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics National Cancer Institute, NIH
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
12:30-1:20 p.m.
Harvard School of Public Health
Kresge Building, Room 502
651 Huntington Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts
Contact Colleen Bertrand for more information (617-432-1851, cbertran@hsph.harvard.edu)
Showing posts with label Harvard. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Harvard. Show all posts
Monday, November 16, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
www.mocamobile.org AND www.dossia.org
Today at lunchtime I attended an HSPH presentation on www.mocamobile.org (MIT and HSPH developers for global health applications by cellphone/wireless devices that transmit photos and patient info to secure servers) and www.dossia.org (employer-insured systems that collaborated with MIT and HSPH developers - builds in patient incentives to personal responsibility for maintaining and developing personal wellness).
Very promising!
Very promising!
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Dr. Leon Eisenberg, Pioneer in Autism Studies, Dies at 87
Dr. Leon Eisenberg, who conducted some of the first rigorous studies of autism, attention deficit disorder and learning delays and became a prominent advocate for children struggling with disabilities, died on Sept. 15 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 87.
The cause was prostate cancer, said his wife, Dr. Carola Eisenberg.
The field of child psychiatry was dominated by Freudian psychoanalysis when, in the late 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Eisenberg began conducting medical studies of children with developmental problems. Working at Johns Hopkins University with Dr. Leo Kanner, who first described autistic behavior, Dr. Eisenberg completed the first detailed, long-term study of children with autism, demonstrating among other things that language problems predicted its severity.
In a similar study among children who were developing normally, Dr. Eisenberg showed that reading difficulties early in school predicted behavior problems later on.
In the 1960s, he performed the first scientific drug trials in child psychiatry, testing stimulants like Dexedrine and Ritalin to soothe the behavior of children identified as “delinquent” or “hyperkinetic.” These studies, which became the basis for drug treatment of what is now called attention deficit disorder, ran counter to psychoanalytic theories on the most effective treatments.
“Leon took a very courageous stand and denounced the way psychiatry treated children, this whole system in which we had a few rich kids and their parents getting psychoanalysis five days a week and still not being cured,” said C. Keith Conners, a professor emeritus in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. “No one even knew what a cure looked like. He had this conviction that nothing was being done for the bulk of children who needed help, and that we had very little scientific data to guide us.”
Dr. James Harris, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Johns Hopkins University, said that Dr. Eisenberg was “the pivotal person in 20th-century child psychiatry who moved the field from simple descriptions of childhood disorders to actually looking at the science behind both the diagnosis and treatment.”
Leon Eisenberg was born in Philadelphia on Aug. 8, 1922, the eldest child of immigrants from Russia. He earned his undergraduate degree and, in 1946, his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, before taking an internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where he developed an interest in psychiatry. He completed his psychiatric residency at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Towson, Md.
After two years in the Army teaching physiology (Carey incorrectly said psychology), in 1952 he began a residency at Johns Hopkins and his collaboration with Dr. Kanner. In 1967, he took over as chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he continued to publish and, among many other projects, helped formulate and carry out affirmative action policies at Harvard Medical School.
In 1980, he established the medical school’s department of social medicine, with the aim of applying the tools of social science to improving access to and practice of medicine worldwide.
In addition to his wife, a co-founder of Physicians for Human Rights, Dr. Eisenberg is survived by two children from a previous marriage, Kathy and Mark Eisenberg; two stepchildren, Alan and Larry Guttmacher; two sisters, Essie Ellis and Libby Wickler; and six grandchildren.
In his later years, Dr. Eisenberg became increasingly alarmed at trends in the field he helped establish, criticizing what he saw as a cozy relationships between drug makers and doctors and the expanding popularity of the attention deficit diagnosis.
The diagnosis “has morphed from a relative uncommon condition 40 years ago to one whose current prevalence is 8 percent,” he wrote. “Correspondingly, the prescription of stimulant drugs has gone up enormously. The reasons are not self-evident.”
Dr. Leon Eisenberg, Pioneer in Autism Studies, Dies at 87
Dr. Leon Eisenberg, who conducted some of the first rigorous studies of autism, attention deficit disorder and learning delays and became a prominent advocate for children struggling with disabilities, died on Sept. 15 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 87.
Dr. Leon Eisenberg
The cause was prostate cancer, said his wife, Dr. Carola Eisenberg.
The field of child psychiatry was dominated by Freudian psychoanalysis when, in the late 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Eisenberg began conducting medical studies of children with developmental problems. Working at Johns Hopkins University with Dr. Leo Kanner, who first described autistic behavior, Dr. Eisenberg completed the first detailed, long-term study of children with autism, demonstrating among other things that language problems predicted its severity.
In a similar study among children who were developing normally, Dr. Eisenberg showed that reading difficulties early in school predicted behavior problems later on.
In the 1960s, he performed the first scientific drug trials in child psychiatry, testing stimulants like Dexedrine and Ritalin to soothe the behavior of children identified as “delinquent” or “hyperkinetic.” These studies, which became the basis for drug treatment of what is now called attention deficit disorder, ran counter to psychoanalytic theories on the most effective treatments.
“Leon took a very courageous stand and denounced the way psychiatry treated children, this whole system in which we had a few rich kids and their parents getting psychoanalysis five days a week and still not being cured,” said C. Keith Conners, a professor emeritus in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University. “No one even knew what a cure looked like. He had this conviction that nothing was being done for the bulk of children who needed help, and that we had very little scientific data to guide us.”
Dr. James Harris, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at Johns Hopkins University, said that Dr. Eisenberg was “the pivotal person in 20th-century child psychiatry who moved the field from simple descriptions of childhood disorders to actually looking at the science behind both the diagnosis and treatment.”
Leon Eisenberg was born in Philadelphia on Aug. 8, 1922, the eldest child of immigrants from Russia. He earned his undergraduate degree and, in 1946, his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania, before taking an internship at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, where he developed an interest in psychiatry. He completed his psychiatric residency at Sheppard Pratt Hospital in Towson, Md.
After two years in the Army teaching physiology (Carey incorrectly said psychology), in 1952 he began a residency at Johns Hopkins and his collaboration with Dr. Kanner. In 1967, he took over as chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, where he continued to publish and, among many other projects, helped formulate and carry out affirmative action policies at Harvard Medical School.
In 1980, he established the medical school’s department of social medicine, with the aim of applying the tools of social science to improving access to and practice of medicine worldwide.
In addition to his wife, a co-founder of Physicians for Human Rights, Dr. Eisenberg is survived by two children from a previous marriage, Kathy and Mark Eisenberg; two stepchildren, Alan and Larry Guttmacher; two sisters, Essie Ellis and Libby Wickler; and six grandchildren.
In his later years, Dr. Eisenberg became increasingly alarmed at trends in the field he helped establish, criticizing what he saw as a cozy relationships between drug makers and doctors and the expanding popularity of the attention deficit diagnosis.
The diagnosis “has morphed from a relative uncommon condition 40 years ago to one whose current prevalence is 8 percent,” he wrote. “Correspondingly, the prescription of stimulant drugs has gone up enormously. The reasons are not self-evident.”
Sunday, September 13, 2009
09/13/2009 Harvard Crimson: 09/12/2009 "Is Eating Animals Ethical?" debate
Why not just email me at Maynard.Clark@GMail.com?
The Harvard Crimson's blog article on yesterday's "Is Eating Animals Ethical?" debate
http://www.flybyblog.com/2009/09/12/peta-debate-on-tolstoy-and-bonzai-trees/#more-4137
Most Harvard students eat meat. And most Americans probably think of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals as an extremist group.
You wouldn’t have known it at the debate the Harvard College Vegetarian Society organized this afternoon between Wesley N. Hopkin ’11, a social studies concentrator and member of the Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society, and Bruce G. Friedrich, vice president of policy and government affairs for PETA.
The most heated dispute concerned our own Harvard University Dining Services. Hopkin praised HUDS: “They are moving in the right direction,” he said. “We can, generally speaking, eat meat or eat meat products with a relatively clear conscience even now.”
Friedrich responded sharply. He noted that HUDS buys eggs from cage-free farms, but said that is the only bright spot. “Eating meat in HUDS when they are doing nothing for farmed animals, and eating meat in the real world, in any restaurant around here,” he said, “for people here who said you do eat meat: that is unethical.” Get the skivvy on Hopkin’s response and more after the jump.
Throughout most of the debate, though a slim majority of the packed Science Center audience admitted to eating meat, Hopkin conceded Friedrich’s arguments about the immorality of being a carnivore in today’s world. PETA seemed downright reasonable.
Hopkin and questioners from the audience rarely presented compelling reasons to dispute the main thrust of Friedrich’s well-supported argument. The PETA leader argued that facts overwhelmingly show that eating meat is bad for the environment, for the world’s poorest, and for the conscious experiences of animals. Instead of disputing Friedrich’s figures, Hopkin and others raised abstract intellectual questions heard in Social Studies 10 and “Justice”: How can we compare animal pain with human pain? And can animals be a part of the social contract?
Friedrich’s argument, by contrast, was direct and sure of its moral clarity. Throughout the event, he peppered his arguments with colorful quotations from celebs and intellectuals alike:
From Paul McCartney: “It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty.”
From Leo Tolstoy: “Vegetarianism is the root of humanitarianism.”
And from Cameron Diaz, on eating bacon: “It’s like eating my niece.”
Hopkin, the subtle debater, conceded that today’s factory farming practices are “unconscionable, and should not be permitted.” Instead, he wondered whether better farming techniques could ever create a world in which eating meat was ethical. He advocated an approach to animal rights that focused on the social contract instead of utilitarianism, and on leveraging consumer power to work for better farming practices instead of abstaining from eating meat.
During the question and answer session, Harvard’s lofty minds posed provocative questions:
Is it ethically permissible to eat the meat leftovers of your friend sitting across the table at dinner?
How anthropocentric is the social contract, after all?
Cuteness aside, can we kill kangaroos in the barren outback of Australia?
And: is it morally responsible to own a pet—or should you buy a bonzai tree?
Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons
The Harvard Crimson's blog article on yesterday's "Is Eating Animals Ethical?" debate
http://www.flybyblog.com/2009/09/12/peta-debate-on-tolstoy-and-bonzai-trees/#more-4137
PETA Debate: On Tolstoy and Bonzai Trees
Published by amcleese on Saturday, September 12, 2009, at 9:07PM
There's a lot of irony here. Bullhorns. Resemblances. Soak it in.
You wouldn’t have known it at the debate the Harvard College Vegetarian Society organized this afternoon between Wesley N. Hopkin ’11, a social studies concentrator and member of the Harvard Speech and Parliamentary Debate Society, and Bruce G. Friedrich, vice president of policy and government affairs for PETA.
The most heated dispute concerned our own Harvard University Dining Services. Hopkin praised HUDS: “They are moving in the right direction,” he said. “We can, generally speaking, eat meat or eat meat products with a relatively clear conscience even now.”
Friedrich responded sharply. He noted that HUDS buys eggs from cage-free farms, but said that is the only bright spot. “Eating meat in HUDS when they are doing nothing for farmed animals, and eating meat in the real world, in any restaurant around here,” he said, “for people here who said you do eat meat: that is unethical.” Get the skivvy on Hopkin’s response and more after the jump.
Throughout most of the debate, though a slim majority of the packed Science Center audience admitted to eating meat, Hopkin conceded Friedrich’s arguments about the immorality of being a carnivore in today’s world. PETA seemed downright reasonable.
Hopkin and questioners from the audience rarely presented compelling reasons to dispute the main thrust of Friedrich’s well-supported argument. The PETA leader argued that facts overwhelmingly show that eating meat is bad for the environment, for the world’s poorest, and for the conscious experiences of animals. Instead of disputing Friedrich’s figures, Hopkin and others raised abstract intellectual questions heard in Social Studies 10 and “Justice”: How can we compare animal pain with human pain? And can animals be a part of the social contract?
Friedrich’s argument, by contrast, was direct and sure of its moral clarity. Throughout the event, he peppered his arguments with colorful quotations from celebs and intellectuals alike:
From Paul McCartney: “It’s staggering when you think about it. Vegetarianism takes care of so many things in one shot: ecology, famine, cruelty.”
From Leo Tolstoy: “Vegetarianism is the root of humanitarianism.”
And from Cameron Diaz, on eating bacon: “It’s like eating my niece.”
Hopkin, the subtle debater, conceded that today’s factory farming practices are “unconscionable, and should not be permitted.” Instead, he wondered whether better farming techniques could ever create a world in which eating meat was ethical. He advocated an approach to animal rights that focused on the social contract instead of utilitarianism, and on leveraging consumer power to work for better farming practices instead of abstaining from eating meat.
During the question and answer session, Harvard’s lofty minds posed provocative questions:
Is it ethically permissible to eat the meat leftovers of your friend sitting across the table at dinner?
How anthropocentric is the social contract, after all?
Cuteness aside, can we kill kangaroos in the barren outback of Australia?
And: is it morally responsible to own a pet—or should you buy a bonzai tree?
Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons
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Friday, August 14, 2009
FORMER US PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON APPOINTS Harvard's Dr. Paul farmer as DEPUTY SPECIAL ENVOY FOR HAITI
“Paul’s selfless commitment to building health systems in the poor Haitian communities over the last 20 years has given millions of people hope for a brighter future for
The Office of the UN Special Envoy for
“I am honored to serve as the UN’s Deputy Special Envoy for
“In
Medical anthropologist and physician Paul Farmer has dedicated his life to improving health care for the world's poorest people and has pioneered novel community-based treatment strategies and successfully shown that quality health care can be delivered in resource-poor settings. He is a founding director of Partners In Health (1987), an international non-profit organization that provides direct health care services and undertakes research and advocacy activities on behalf of those who are sick and living in poverty. Dr. Farmer began his lifelong commitment to
Dr Farmer holds an M.D. and Ph.D. from
Dr. Farmer is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the Margaret Mead Award from the American Anthropological Association, the Outstanding International Physician (Nathan Davis) Award from the American Medical Association and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "genius award." He is a member of the
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Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Wednesday in Longwood
I'm in the middle of a highly productive day in Longwood Medical Area, working in HMS Social Medicine but is very tired
Wednesday in Longwood
I'm in the middle of a highly productive day in Longwood Medical Area, working in HMS Social Medicine but is very tired
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And leave the kangaroos alone.
“No, it is NOT ethical to eat animals!”