Word: leukemias
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...should be recorded-not in the spirit of sneering at misfortune-that books about slow expiration from leukemia have become something of a literary genre. In his best novel, Blood of the Lamb, Peter DeVries wrote obliquely about his daughter's leukemia. Stewart Alsop collected nerve and wits long enough during a remission to write Stay of Execution about his own plight before he died. Football Player Brian Piccolo's death became first a fond memoir by his friend Gale Sayers, then a TV film called Brian's Song. Now Freelance Writer Doris Lund offers Eric...
These are good, loving, honest books, resonant with the best that the human spirit can bring to life and death. But books, like people, provoke shabby reactions when they run in packs. To this confusion of responses must be added a bit of professional cynicism: that leukemia, like tuberculosis and unlike, say, cancer of the bowel, is a good literary disease. It offers a succession of intensifying crises, separated by weeks or months of remission during which the sufferer appears to be totally healthy and timid hopes of a permanent cure are raised. Surefire theater, in short. Such thoughts cannot...
...even organ transplants have become relatively commonplace. Machines routinely supplement the function of failing kidneys. There are new methods of detecting and treating genetic defects. Hypertension is becoming more manageable; the coronary-bypass operation has made productive citizens of invalids. Even certain cancers, notably Hodgkin's disease and leukemia, have shown remarkable remissions under treatment. Infant mortality is less than 19 per thousand, and the contemporary child can expect to live four years longer than his parents. This may be a mixed blessing, considering our bafflement about how to use those bonus years, but it is still impressive that...
...Lasker Foundation also handed out $5,000 awards for basic research to four of the country's leading cancer investigators. Dr. Ludwik Gross of The Bronx Veterans Administration Hospital was cited for his discovery of animal leukemia viruses. Dr. Sol Spiegelman of Columbia University was honored for the first successful synthesis of an infectious virus-like particle. Dr. Howard Temin of the University of Wisconsin was recognized for his studies of how viruses reproduce. Dr. Howard Skipper of Birmingham's Southern Research Institute was cited for his work in biochemistry and cell biology. Medicine is still far from...
...last year, doctors used some 8.8 million units of blood to give transfusions to patients undergoing extensive surgery, suffering from injuries, hemophilia or such diseases as leukemia and aplastic anemia. Because voluntary donations fall short of the amount that hospitals need, much of the blood used for transfusions came from Skid Row derelicts or drug addicts who sold it for the price of a bottle or a fix. Many of those blood peddlers had hepatitis. Thus every year an estimated 17,000 cases of hepatitis result from transfused blood. One in twenty of these patients eventually dies from the debilitating...