Word: lungful
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Shower stalls are particularly suspect. Some doctors believe that mycobacteria from the pipes are becoming aerosolized in water spray. The more enclosed a shower stall, the greater the buildup of germ-infested spray. (A variant of the illness--sometimes called hot-tub lung--occurs when people develop an allergic reaction to the mycobacteria in indoor hot tubs.) Making matters worse, says Dr. Michael Iseman of National Jewish, "we have changed the way we treat our water." Since the 1970s, the temperature of most hot-water heaters has been reduced to 120[degrees] to save energy and prevent scalding--perfect conditions...
Fern Leitman, 56, a longtime Florida resident, thought her repeated bouts of pneumonia were just bad luck. Doctors told Suzan King-Carr, 58, of Hobe Sound, Fla., that the spots on her lungs were probably cancer. Ida Mae Williams, 76, of Bogalusa, La., was informed that she had tuberculosis. Three women, three different diagnoses--all of them wrong. After years of ineffectual treatment, each woman learned that she, like thousands of other Americans, had developed a mysterious lung infection that mimics TB, seems to strike thin, white women in particular and can be permanently debilitating. Most unsettling of all, they...
That can't be the whole answer, of course, since plenty of Americans take showers without getting sick. Studies show that nearly half of NTM patients are also genetically predisposed to lung infections. Some have inherited one of the genes for cystic fibrosis. Others have a defective alpha-1 anti-trypsin gene, a condition that has been linked to a high risk of emphysema. Perhaps it is a combination of bad genes and bad luck that is making people sick...
Most cancer specialists, though, believe that while Erbitux and the science behind its development are radical, both are solid. Erbitux can home in on a protein beacon found on 80% of tumors, making it a promising candidate for treating a range of cancers, from breast to lung to colon. "Nobody has ever questioned the value or the trustworthiness of the science," says Dr. Larry Norton, head of solid tumor oncology at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City...
DIED. CAROLINE KNAPP, 42, humorist, whose readers learned about the darker side of her life--her 20-year struggle with alcoholism--in her 1996 best seller, Drinking: A Love Story; of lung cancer; in Cambridge, Mass...