August 20, 2009
Newsmakers
DUST OF DESTINY: For space enthusiasts, the lede of the recent Los Angeles Times story was pretty exciting: “Showing that the ingredients for life in the universe may be distributed far more widely than previously thought, scientists have found traces of a key building block of biology in dust snatched from the tail of a comet.”
The story went on to quote Donald Brownlee, UW professor of astronomy, who served as chief scientist of the Stardust mission, which carried home the important dust. Brownlee called the work “a real tour de force technologically to make these measurements in such small samples.”
He said the exciting result represents a second, very large source of life-giving material. Brownlee, the article stated, estimated that there are as many as a trillion comets in and around the solar system. “There has been a huge question of where the prebiotic compounds came from on Earth. Did they come from space? Or were they made here? Or maybe they came from both places.”
The article continued, “Just having the right materials is no guarantee that life will begin, of course, any more than leaving a hammer, nails and planks lying around will cause a barn to rise.” Brownlee noted that many of the 30,000 or so meteorites found on Earth have traces of organic compounds, yet none show evidence of life itself. “They are all failed places where life could have arisen,” he said
BECOMING FREE: Jaycee Dugard suffered physical and emotional abuse for 18 years as the captive of a California couple, but a big challenge for her now, according to a recent New York Times article, is returning to her natural family.
The article quoted Lucy Berliner, director of the Harborview Center for Sexual Assault & Traumatic Stress. “The way I think about this case is that it is an extreme version of a phenomenon that is really not that uncommon: a child engaged in an abusive relationship when young and, not knowing any better, coming to accept it as their life, adapting as best they can,” Berliner said. “Certainly every case is different, but we now have some proven interventions we can use.”
With trauma-focused cognitive therapy, former captives can be helped to refute assumptions made about their ordeal, such as thinking that they share blame for not trying hard enough to be rescued. The transition can take years, though.
“Of course it is not their fault, and we communicate that,” Berliner said. “But at the same time, in many cases they did go along, they did make decisions not to fight or run, and we help people examine why they made those decisions — to understand that judging themselves harshly in retrospect might not be fair to the child they were in that moment.”
RECESSION HEALTH: Think the population’s general health declines during a recession? Think again. An article in Time magazine quoted Dr. Stephen Bezruchka, senior lecturer in Global Health, also affiliated with the UW Masters in Public Health program, as it reported on research showing that as unemployment rises, mortality drops.
Turns out, people drink, smoke and overeat less when such indulgences are harder to afford. And they have more time to socialize. The article quoted Bezruchka, who studied research on the matter, saying, “The idea that hard work never killed anyone is one of those maxims that turns out not to be true. One of the characteristics of a rapidly expanding economy is that people try to garner as much income as they can, working long hours and even multiple jobs. Spending time with friends and family is good for your health.”
NO BENEFIT: In vertebroplasty, usually performed by a radiologist, bone cement is injected into a fractured vertebra to shore it up. It’s a popular procedure, according to a recent Wall Street Journal online story, and there were 100,000 such operations in the U.S. last year alone. But new research on the procedure shows no benefit when compared to a group of patients who received a sham procedure that mimicked the real one.
The article quoted Jeffrey Jarvik, a UW professor of radiology and neurosurgery, who was senior author on one of the studies. “Vertebroplasty should not be done any longer, unless it’s in the setting of a study,” Jarvik said. Though some members of the Society of Interventional Radiology, which recommends the procedure, insist it is effective. Jarvik said, “If we’re going to institute health care reform, this is an example of what can and should be done. There’s rigorous evidence that (vertebroplasty) doesn’t work any better than a control intervention, and we should stop paying for it.”
