10/19/2003 Cleveland PRNewswire Eszterhas Takes Aim at Smoking in Movies: 'Don't Let People Like Me Kill You' U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona Commends 'Join Joe' Campaign -- Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas has written and filmed a 30-second public service announcement to be shown in movie theaters which warns audiences "not to get suckered into smoking byHollywood." "I glamorized smoking in my movies," Eszterhas says on screen to moviegoers. "Then I got throat cancer. Maybe that's my punishment. Please, don't let people like me kill you." The announcement, filmed on a Hollywood soundstage, funded by The Cleveland Clinic and directed by American History X director, Tony Kaye, will be shown on more than 30 screens in the Cleveland area, where Eszterhas lives. Jonathan Forman, president of Cleveland Cinemas, said, "I only hope other exhibitors nationwide will have the courage to take this vital message to the masses of people who are killing themselves with tobacco." "We're working around the clock with Joe and Jon Forman to get this message into as many theaters as possible across America," said Angela Calman, chief communications officer for The Cleveland Clinic Foundation. "Smoking is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, resulting in more than 440,000 deaths each year. When it comes to smoking, quitters are winners," said U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona. "I commend the American Cancer Society's Great American Smokeout and the 'Join Joe' Eszterhas campaign for helping people to quit smoking and begin living longer, healthier lives." "Hollywood [...]

10/7/2003 New York Robert Dominguez New York Daily News Playing Berra Off-B'way: Ben Gazzara Fifty years after dazzling Broadway audiences with a series of intense leading roles - he played Brick in the original production of Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" in 1955 - Ben Gazzara is coming back to the stage this month. It's like dèjá vu all over again in more ways than one - he's playing New York Yankees great Yogi Berra in a one-man show, "Nobody Don't Like Yogi." Gazzara, four years removed from a bout with oral cancer, won his first Emmy last month for a supporting role in the HBO film "Hysterical Blindness." After years of toiling in obscure foreign films and TV movies, the award capped a period of steady work as a character actor in which he was "rediscovered" by independent-film directors - including David Mamet, Vincent Gallo, Todd Solondz, Spike Lee and the Coen brothers - who were familiar with Gazzara's collaborations with indie icon John Cassavetes in the 1970s. "Yogi" is set on opening day at Yankee Stadium in 1999, when Berra ended his self-imposed exile following his dismissal as manager by team owner George Steinbrenner. "It's a personal portrait of Berra that's funny, but it's also very touching," says Gazzara. "It doesn't depend on 'Yogi-isms' like 'It ain't over 'til it's over' or that kind of nonsense to fill an evening." Berra does not plan to see the show, a spokesman tells The News. Gazzara, who [...]

10/5/2003 New Zeland New Zeland Herald Cigarette packs will soon carry graphic horror stories but, asks CATHERINE MASTERS, will smokers take any notice? Every smoker knows what to do when confronted with the hard evidence of why they should not. Justify - might get run over tomorrow, got to die one day. Defend - it's my choice. Turn the pack over. Put the lighter on top of the warning. They have all seen the warnings on the packs and managed to ignore them. But soon the warnings are going to get bigger and nastier. The Smoke-free Environments Amendment Bill, likely to be passed before Christmas, does not stop with banning smoking in bars and clubs. It includes other measures to get rid of the cigarette. No longer will you be able to light up while you watch your child play sport within the school grounds, for instance. Then there are the warnings, likely to take up half the pack and be much more graphic: images of rotting lungs and hearts, brains with blood clots, infected teeth - unavoidable, graphic and nasty. But will they make a blind bit of difference to smokers already immune to warnings of impending doom? Walk into any pub and ask. So, John May, a burly Scottish cop working in Auckland, drinking a beer and smoking Marlboro Lights in a pub in central Auckland, what do you think when you see the warning already on your pack? May, 41, from Torbay, glances at the pack, which [...]

10/4/2003 Boston MIT The George R. Harrison Spectroscopy Laboratory in the School of Science at MIT has been awarded a Bioengineering Research Partnership grant to develop and implement spectroscopic techniques for imaging and diagnosing dysplasia -the precursor to cancer - in the uterine cervix and the oral cavity. Cervical and oral cancer account for approximately 11,000 deaths in the United States each year. Detection of the precancerous state of human tissue is crucial for ease of treatment and greatly improved survival, but it is often invisible and difficult to diagnose. The new techniques are said to provide a method for visualisation and accurate diagnosis based on spectroscopic detection and imaging. Clinical screening for cervical and oral precancer are multibillion-dollar industries which currently rely on visual detection of suspicious areas followed by invasive biopsy and microscopic examination. Given that visually identified suspicious areas do not always correspond to clinically significant lesions; spectroscopic imaging and diagnosis could prevent unnecessary invasive biopsies and potential delays in diagnosis. Michael S. Feld, professor of physics and director of the Spectroscopy Lab, says the laboratory has developed a portable instrument that delivers weak pulses of laser light and ordinary white light from a thin optical fibre probe onto the patient's tissue through an endoscope. This device analyses tissue over a region around 1 millimetre in diameter and has shown promising results in clinical studies. It accurately identified invisible precancerous changes in the colon, bladder and oesophagus, as well as the cervix and oral cavity. The second [...]

10/3/2003 Florida Ed Susman American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation Identifying and locating the sentinel node in head–and-neck cancer surgery is feasible, and the results of careful dissection of the nodes appears to correlate with full neck dissection, researchers said here September 21st at the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery Foundation. In describing findings from a recent study, lead author Peter Zbaeren, MD, department of otorhinolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, University of Bern–Inselspital, Switzerland, said, "Accurate localisation of the sentinel nodes was possible in all cases by using lymphoscintigraphy and by use of a gamma probe." Dr. Zbaeren and colleagues found 82 sentinel nodes in 36 patients -- about 2.2 nodes per patient. Using a radionuclide-labeled colloid, preoperative lymphoscintigraphy and intraoperative sentinel lymph-node identification by a gamma probe, doctors located the sentinel lymph node, excised the node or nodes and performed frozen section analysis. The study sought to assess the accuracy of sentinel lymph node identification in patients with a Stage NO neck in squamous-cell carcinoma of the oral cavity and oropharynx. Dr. Zbaeren said the pathology analysis located one occult cancer in a sentinel lymph node. To correlate these findings, the surgeons carried out a complete neck dissection in the patients, removing an average of 36 nodes from each patient. In the 1,295 nodes analysed, just one positive node was found. Dr. Zbaeren said the sensitivity of sentinel lymph-node biopsy in the series was 93%, and the negative predictive value was 94%. [...]