After last November and December’s adventures in cancer world, it isn’t surprising that I get a lot of questions about my health and emails wishing me well, often based on incomplete information. Of course since I have incomplete information, that’s no wonder. So here’s some slightly more complete information. We’re back to watch and wait. Ideally, …
Category Archives: Cancer
More on Cancer, Luck, and Behavioural causes
A day later, I’ve been pointed to some nice writings but scientists and statisticians. See here: http://pb204.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/science-by-press-release.html A few things become clear: 1) the coverage is of the press release, not the actual paper but 2) there are still major problems in the assumptions of the paper. The “luck” appears to be mostly an artifact of …
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Medical Research as Ideology: Cancer is Luck
A new Johns Hopkins study finds “luck” as a major cause of cancer. This is a great example of how medical research turns social conditions into inevitability and writes ideology (the order of things is given and unchangeable) as if it were science. While there is talk of personal responsibility as a possible cause for …
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2014 in Review
It’s been a really complicated year–some major highs and lows. We’ve spent the last couple days on unfinished business: seeing Laura Poitras’ gripping CITIZEN FOUR (highly recommended), doing our donations for the year, and it looks like I am actually going to get an article revised that I thought I might not be able to …
I got what I wanted, sort of
So after having three (yes 3) of my doctoral students defend their dissertations Monday and Tuesday, my reward was to spend yesterday and today getting tests and doctoring. The good news is that they have decided to go back to watchful waiting for now. I will have another full body scan in three months (this time …
Thanksgiving update
It’s American thanksgiving! I’m thankful for my wonderful family and friends (some of whom I will see tonight at a potluck), KITTENS and CARRIE, great colleagues and students, as well as for the kindness of strangers. Since I last posted, I got a little information on Inspire.com but the ThyCa people managed to manually add …
Well, that didn’t work out as hoped
So the radioactive iodine didn’t work. Of course “didn’t work” is a bit of an abstract concept. You will recall that the possible outcomes ranged from complete annihilation of the metastatic thyroid cancer cells in my lungs to, well, nothing. It definitely didn’t get rid of the cells. If it slowed or stopped the growth, …