Chris Hadfield, the Canadian astronaut whose tweets and videos from space have captured the public imagination, landed back on Earth this week. Overthinking It has an interesting post about his success at communicating science, which includes links to the great stuff Hadfield has been sharing from space.
Andrew Revkin of the NY Times wrote about his Stroke of Luck, which highlights how telemedicine can help in cases where specialists aren’t available.
Angelina Jolie’s editorial Tuesday created an opportunity for people to learn about BRCA genes and discuss risk, genetic testing and treatment options. Here are three posts from medical and science bloggers I recommend checking out:
In Angelina, BRCA, Mastectomies, etc…, Dr. Margaret Polaneczky hopes the star’s disclosure will help high-risk women decide to get tested and discusses what women need to know, saying:
For the overwhelming majority… of the women I see, and for almost all of you reading this, the most important thing you need to know is buried within Jolie’s editorial, and it is this – ‘Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation.’ About 2% of women have a family history that suggests the possibility of BRCA mutation, and only about 1/10 of one percent of women carry a BRCA gene mutation. Thus, Jolie’s story, while compelling, is medically irrelevant to almost all women. But for a very few, it may be lifesaving.
The post goes on to clearly explain which women should consider genetic testing, discuss prophylactic mastectomy and ovarian cancer protection, and it provides links to further reading about BRCA mutations and mastectomy.
In a post on Medical Lessons, Dr. Elaine Schattner focuses on the difficulty of medical choices, and ultimately zeros in on the fact that Jolie’s choice “demonstrates that we need better…research, to understand what causes cancer in people who have BRCA mutations and otherwise. My hope is that future women…needn’t resort to, nor even contemplate, such drastic procedures to avoid a potentially lethal condition as is breast cancer today.”
Carl Zimmer discusses the BRCA gene, what the normal gene does, the mutation’s mysterious effect on fertility and frequency in the population.