Search results matching tags 'Cancer' and 'father'

Best of FameCrawler - Week of May 29th

Whit — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Mike Tyson's 4-Year-Old Daughter Dies

Madonna Dishes on A-Rod and Kate Hudson

Confirmed - Gisele is Pregnant With Tom Brady's Baby!

Nicole Richie, Dad Lionel & Daughter Harlow (PHOTOS)

Sneak Peek! Jon & Kate Plus 8 Season Premiere

Kelly Rutherford, Lies and Videotape

Amy Mickelson's Breast Cancer Battle

Michelle Williams and Daughter Matilda Support Their Local Coffee House

Angelina Jolie: Madonna Adopts For Fame

Jon & Kate - Who Are The Kids Happier With? (Photos)

Slumdog Kids Finally Get A Home!

Brian Grazer's Prenup Still Makes Wife Rich

Best of FameCrawler - Week of May 29th

Whit — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Designer Baby Born Without Cancer Gene

brettsinger — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 20:00:00 GMT

Pop quiz: you have a history of cancer in your family. You want to have children. Science has progressed to the point where you can alter your unborn child's genetics so that they will be born without the particular gene that causes the particular type of cancer in your bloodline. What do you do?

This is no longer a hypothetical question. A baby girl was just born in Britain without the defective BRCA1 gene, which causes cancer in 50 to 85 percent of girls, according to London's Daily Mail. That gene is rampant in this particular London family, who wisely chose to remain anonymous. (No reality TV show for those two.)

When the unborn are mucked with, controversy follows. Various Pro-Life/Anti-Choice advocates, such as James Dowson of LifeLeague, are against the practice, calling it a "slippery slope…It is designer babies. Screening for cancer is an emotive issue - my own father and grandfather both had cancer, so I know - but it is a dangerous road to go down. Today it is cancer, next year it will be IQ, and the year after that blue eyes and blonde hair."

I don't like the term "designer baby". It sounds like something you create in a lab. But isn't that what doctors are doing? I realize that I'm not offering a good analysis of the science involved here. The Daily Mail article is decent, and there is lots of information online if you want to read up on it. I'm going to stick with the more parenting-related issues that come up with this story.

I'm somewhat ambivalent about the idea of genetic screening, and even more hesitant to agree with genetic manipulation. Although I'm not a scientist (I even graduated college without passing a single science class, for what that's worth) I feel strongly that doctors can't possibly know what the long-term effects are of adding and removing genes from anyone, in utero or fully-grown. Like most Jewish parents, my wife and I went through the genetic screening process when she was pregnant, but declined to know all of the information that they found. It's one thing to check and see if you are a carrier for a horrible and incurable disease such as Tay-Sachs. It's something else to find out what the chances are that your child will contract various types of cancers. We decided that we'd rather not know.

And therein lies the core of the issue – choice. If a technique is available and medically possible, it shouldn't be up to me or anyone else to decide whether or not it can be used.

My ambivalence comes from the idea of trying to create a baby with traits that you pick off of a menu of human characteristics – "I'll have the blue eyes with a hint of hazel, and a boy with a strong right leg so he can grow up to be an NFL punter like Jeff Feagles." (Hey, Jeff Feagles is one of the best punters in football. And punters can play longer than any other position in the game because they don't get hit much.) This may sound silly, but I've read enough comic books and seen enough movies to know that messing around with genetics rarely ends well. Eventually some lunatic – Hitler, perhaps – decides to create a Master Race of Super Soldiers and starts World War III. Hm, maybe it's not just a comic book thing.

As with abortion, this is a religious issue. Conservative British politician Ann Widdecombe said, "'A lot of embryos have genes in them that could lead to nothing but them turning into perfectly healthy humans. Once again this shows a worrying precedent that man wants to play God."

This is the argument that nobody ever makes when it comes to the death penalty. But that's a different story.

What do you think? Is this just another issue of personal choice and women's reproductive freedom? Or is it more dangerous? And even if it is more dangerous, does anyone have the right to tell someone not to do it?

Source: Daily Mail

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Dying Dad Gets Extra Time Thanks to Mystery Donor

JeanneSager — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:27:00 GMT

Finally, a bit of news that reminds us hedge fund managers are people too (the NASDAQ be darned). A mystery manager here in the states has ponied up the cash to fund the cancer treatments for a British father denied care by that country's National Health System.

Jack Rosser knows he will die, but thanks to the mystery donor, he may have as much as several extra years to spend with his toddler daughter.

OK, commence weeping. I know I shed a tear or two at this story, not least because the Rosser's diagnosis with an aggressive cancer of his kidneys came just days after little Emma was born. The Rossers should have been celebrating new life; but they were staring death in the eyes.

Rosser was told he probably had two years left, unless he began treatments with Sutent, a cancer drug which costs three thousand pounds a month (currently about $4,450). The medicine would give him extra time, but it couldn't save his life. It wasn't enough of a benefit for the British National Health System. The government told Rosser the treatment was off the table. Attempts to get him into a clinical trial were out too - he was told his cancer wasn't advanced enough. He'd have to accept death . . . and leaving his wife and daughter sooner rather than later.

When his story was highlighted by a group working to fight for cancer patients denied life-lengthening care (and highlighted by Bloomberg late last month), the man identified only as a hedge fund manager from the states stepped forward. He'll pay for the fifty-seven-year-old Rosser's treatments, he said, as long as he needs them.

"It's been such a fight and all I can say is thank you. He's given my daughter the opportunity to get to know her dad," Jenny Rosser told Sky News this week.

Perhaps someone could remind the National Health System - and nasty American HMOs - that sometimes the decisions they're making aren't about that one patient, but the lives around them too. A few extra months for a little girl to get to know her father can make a world of difference in her life.

Oh, and while you're at it, could someone pass me a Kleenex?

Image: Sky News

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Father and Daughter Battle Breast Cancer Together

JeanneSager — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:01:00 GMT

Usually the doc wants to know about mom and grandma when they ask for any history of breast cancer in the family. But men can get breast cancer too - a statistic that's rare, but not rare enough for Arnaldo Silva. The 58-year-old New Yorker found a lump in late 2006. A few months later, his daughter got the news that she, too, had breast cancer.

Vanessa Silva and her dad went through masectomies together after a blood test showed he had the breast cancer "gene." That's when Vanessa went for her own tests, which came back positive. They went through chemotherapy together. In late 2007, Vanessa, 32, was finished with treatment and declared "in remission." Her father got similar news in early 2008.

Like most of the nearly 1,800 men diagnosed with breast cancer every year, Arnaldo didn't think he could get breast cancer - because he doesn't have breasts. "That's the way I took it, I have no breasts," he told ABC News. But as one popular 2005 book reminded us, men have nipples . . . and that means they have breasts too.

And as the ABC News doc points out, man boobs have nothing to do with it (although if you have them, we have one solution). "It doesn't matter how skinny you are. It doesn't matter how heavy you are," Dr. Sharon Rosenbaum Smith said. "All men have breast tissue and can develop a breast cancer."

So Dads, it's time to join your partners in feeling yourself up once a month. Do it for your daughters. And your sons.

Image: ABC News

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