Concluding Blog Post

Writing a blog for a semester has been a completely new experience for me. English classes so far have consisted of three papers and a final, however this class had me constantly engaged in news articles and writing profusely. My topic “science and medical breakthroughs” was at times a very difficult topic to write about. For most of the semester I had difficulty finding a community I could fit into and or relate too. However I chose to broaden my search for a community and found that there is a large amount of material reported in the newspapers. My blogging community is small but my reporting community is quite large. An article that I was writing about—“The baby in Mississippi that was cured of HIV” made the front page of The Huffington Post as well as written about in many other newspapers.

As for anyone looking to write a scientific based blog, I can’t urge enough the importance of having numerous sources when writing a post. Reading multiple sources is always essential for finding accurate and extensive information on a topic.

I am very grateful that I have been able to be apart of this class. Maintaining a blog has been a difficult but very rewarding assignment. Writing weekly and getting feedback really did improve not only the way I wrote but also the way I read and asked questions while reading articles. It has given me new interest in the field of biology, assisting me in finding a path in psychology I would want to study. After writing and reading about brain mapping and tissue engineering; I plan to get a minor in neuroscience or biology.

I’ve realized that my blog is an “island” community, for that reason I hope to continue to cover any discoveries that make headlines and catch my attention.  Ending my semester with 300 page views and multiple views in numerous countries shows me I have opened up a potential community of readers and potential writers themselves. 

Courage Through Adversity

Cancer. It’s the most feared word that a doctor could ever utter. It is one thing most people believe will never happen to them or their families. Unfortunately, this disease does not discriminate and can affect anyone despite their age, sex, or ethnicity. For anyone that receives this heart-stopping diagnosis numerous life changes will be required for proper treatment and care.  This disease has devastating effects on more than just those who are diagnosed; loved ones are also profoundly impacted.

I was fortunate to get to speak with someone who was hard hit by this disease and has stood by her mother during her diagnosis and treatment.
Her mother worked for years as a nurse even though she had a pre-existing condition of Fibromyalgia; a disease that causes severe and debilitating pain, she still continued to sustain a job and attempted to maintain a normal life.  She began to complain of odd pains but as any woman in her late 60’s and also a person living with fibromyalgia, pain is a part of every day life. However, when she began to forget segments of her day that affected her work, she promptly resigned and made an appointment with an oncologist.

The doctor used an ultrasound to examine the site of her pain and the results came back problematic.   The doctor had noticed several dark spots as well as an infection in her lymph nodes. A further biopsy and endoscopy were administered diagnosing her with stomach cancer and started her on gastric chemotherapy. During this treatment she suffered a severe allergic reaction and the doctors were forced to stop treatment. With this close call with death and an obvious misdiagnosis she sought out advice from a different physician.

This new doctor conducted a third biopsy revealing the correct diagnosis. The patient was suffering from stage IV terminal cancer, a melanoma in the stomach and lymph nodes. The prognosis for this is a 47% survival rate for two years. However, the fact that the treatment is so new is showing a good chance for years to come and gives hope to the family about years to come instead of the uncertainty of the future.

She is currently going under immunotherapy and responding to treatment well.

What has happened to this family and many others is tragic, however this story and many alike have a lot to offer to others. Don’t ignore symptoms, err on the side of caution, and go to the doctor to seek advice and care. The earlier cancer is detected the better chance a person has at responding to treatment and being sent into remission.

Tragic events unfold around us every day. The future is unpredictable and inevitable; no one knows what tomorrow is going to be.  I had the opportunity to speak with a family member who was experiencing this tragedy first hand, but despite the adversity she had witnessed and gone through she has been to show the courage to be able to maintain a job and teach. She has been able to inspire me to persevere through the most difficult of times by her example.

No Answer for Cancer?

For decades the war on cancer has showed the public extensive research with little glimpses of hope for a cure. In this post I hope to explain the complexities that are involved in the research of curing cancer.

Cancer is very, very difficult to understand. The idea of one cure for cancer is naïve. There are over 200 different types of cancers, all with their own characteristics making one case different from the next. These tiny differences in our genetic make-up not only effect the progression of the disease but the treatment and medication required as well.

Cancer cells grow and divide picking up different adaptations along the way requiring doctors and researchers to be one step ahead at all times. As Darwin’s theory of “survival of the fittest” explains the adaptations needed to survive in the animal kingdom, it is a fitting analogy to explain how these cancer cells are adapting within the human body to survive the progression of treatments. Not being bound by genetic coding these cells seem to take up a mind of their own. Multiplying irrationally, these cells even duplicate chromosomes in ways never seen before varying vastly from one another.

Charles Swanton from the Cancer Research UK’s London Research Institute made a puzzling discovery when looking at four samples of kidney cancers from a patient. The cells in the cancer at the base of the tumor had genetically mutated as it spread to different parts of the body. As the cancer spread throughout the patient’s body it had genetically mutated into completely different forms of cancer with their own unique traits. This means that this complex diversity of cells will require multiple different treatments to put the cancer into remission. This discovery may have answered the question of why some treatments work at first but some become treatment resistant.

Swanton discovered over 128 different mutations throughout the four different samples. One third of the mutations were common to all of the samples yet one fourth were unique to a single sample. In addition the different samples although taken from a same mass shared some similar genes but had adapted into two different evolutionary paths. By focusing on the similarities within the genetic code of the samples researchers can find the originating tumor and start treatment there. This has shown promising results in patients with kidney cancer who have had the main tumor removed; researchers think that by taking the base of the evolutionary path will cause environmental strain on the remaining tumor cells. These remaining cells are no longer “fit” for the environment and have less chance of survival.

“It seems tumors depend upon these special changes to keep living and growing and we need to be smart about targeting these key changes,” said Dr. Lisa Diller of Harvard Medical School in Boston. “ We need to define the beating heart of a tumor and figure out how to aim our drugs straight at it.” (Shukla, 2012)

As research progresses other innovative techniques has been developed to aid in this ongoing battle. As I have previously discussed in my post “customized medicine” the idea of personalizing medicine, testing, as well as diagnostics seems to be in synch with developing research. Carla Leslie is one example of a success story of personalized medicine treatment. Doctors at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Huston treated her stage 3C breast cancer with chemotherapy and a drug called Herceptin.  The stage at which the cancer was in has mortality rate of up to 60 percent over five years. They chose Herceptin out of many potential drugs due to her specific genetic composition. As of today Carla’s cancer is still in remission. This case is laying an important foundation in this research. With more use technique more success stories like Carla’s are possible.

Researchers are starting to understand that taking a single biopsy of a tumor is not as effective as they once thought. Taking multiple samples from different locations from the tumor shows the cancers progression and further mutation. Looking for similarities within the genetic code researchers can pinpoint the origin of the tumor and begin the treatment at the source. Personalized medicine will come into play to help effectively target remaining mutations that chemotherapy by itself falls short.  The old ideology that a “one size fits all” treatment for cancer is being replaced with newer thinking. Specialized medicine targeting individuals and their specific genetic requirements shows promise for the successful treatment of cancer in the future.

Shukla, R. (2012) Moving Target: Why a Cancer “Cure” is So Elusive. ABC News.

Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/Health/CancerPreventionAndTreatment/moving-target-cancer-cure-elusive/story?id=15862910#.UWYLuCvwJ5k

Young, E. (2012) World within a tumor – study shows how complex cancer can be.

National Geographic. Retrieved from http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2012/03/07/a-world-within-a-tumour-new-study-shows-just-how-complex-cancer-can-be/

Potential Sources

When I picked my topic I was positive that finding information on new medical discoveries would be easy. However, after writing this blog for the past few months finding a blogging community of writers with a similar topic has been difficult. This constant search for interesting articles has me in a waiting game until the next big discovery.

One reason may be because research takes time, not every day are new groundbreaking discoveries being made. So finding interesting, relative, and creditable articles are often one in a dozen. I would declare my blog as an island topic. Sure I have some neighboring writers in the newspapers but they write on a much larger scale when it comes to a particular topic.

However, I myself have had to broaden my range of sources and include articles and online databases for my final analysis paper.

Scientific American has a blogging community but, I have found it difficult to find information that caught my attention. The New York Times however has had numerous articles that I have used as sources in my blog this semester.  News stations such as BBC and ABC have had many amazing stories covered in their papers such as the quadruple amputee that I covered as well earlier this semester. Im still in the search to find a blog similar to mine and hope to include that as well in my paper.