Intimate scenes of Farrah Fawcett's fight against cancer have been released. The images show her journey over the last 18 months of a battle against what has become terminal cancer. She was happy to film the moving footage of her lying in her hospital bed and dressed in a hospital gown as she undergoes treatment.
The pictures are taken from a documentary, Farrah's Story, which is due to be screened in the U.S. on Friday.... on NBC
A Brown County judge is weighing whether to force a 13-year-old boy who claims to be a medicine man in his church to get chemotherapy for his cancer — a treatment the boy and his parents have resisted for religious reasons.
Daniel Hauser, of Sleepy Eye, has Hodgkin's lymphoma, and county authorities are accusing his parents of medical neglect for not following through with the chemotherapy and radiation treatment doctors have recommended.
Doctors testified in court last week that Daniel could have a 90 percent chance of being cured through chemotherapy and radiation. But they said there's a 95 percent chance of death if the family decides to forgo the treatment.
In written final arguments filed today, County Attorney James Olson asked the Judge John Rodenberg to order chemotherapy for the boy, who he says isn't mature enough to make his own medical decisions. Olson wrote that Daniel has a learning disability and cannot read, and he cited testimony from doctors who said it doesn't appear the boy understands the severity of his diagnosis.
Olson also raised questions about the Hausers' testimony that Daniel is a medicine man and elder in the Nemenhah church, a religious organization that advocates natural healing methods used by some Native Americans. Those titles are given to every member of the church over 13 years of age, Olson said.
"Daniel's testimony indicated that he does not have a complete understanding of what it means to be a medicine man or an elder," he wrote.
If the family doesn't comply with a potential court-ordered treatment regimen, the county attorney and the boy's guardian ad litem wrote, Daniel should be put in foster care to get the treatment.
But attorneys for Daniel and his family said the judge must decide whether Daniel's parents had a "rational basis" for their decision to stop chemotherapy — not whether they made the decision a "reasonable person" would have made.
Philip Elbert, an attorney for Daniel, wrote that the Hausers' faced an "unfair choice of two bad scenarios" for treatment and weighed all options for his care in deciding on an alternative that fit better with their religious beliefs.
"The parents in this case did not fail to act nor did they rely solely on spiritual treatment methods for Daniel's medical care," Elbert wrote.
Daniel's mother, Colleen, has said she approved of using Western medicine during a life-threatening emergency but says her son isn't in medical danger. The family has also said their religious convictions say the body shouldn't be harmed, and they said chemotherapy and radiation were poisons.
Daniel's parents emphasized through their attorney the risks of chemotherapy, questioning its effectiveness. And they said the action by county authorities was violating their rights.
"The path advocated by the State is one of torture and criminal action," wrote their attorney, Calvin Johnson.
Daniel's lymphoma was diagnosed in January, and he was given one round of chemotherapy in February. But instead of returning for a second round of the treatment in March, the Hausers opted for an alternative treatment involving a nutritious diet, drinking ionized water, and taking vitamins and herbal supplements. His mother testified the regimen was based mostly on information she found on the Internet.
An attorney for Shiree Oliver, the boy's guardian ad litem, wrote in final arguments that the state has not recognized complementary and alternative health care as a substitute for medical treatment.
"Even if Mr. and Mrs. Hauser are providing Daniel with complementary and alternative care, they are still medically neglecting Daniel," the attorney, Tom Sinas, wrote.
Rodenberg could issue a decision later this week.
Surgical removal of a tissue sample is now the standard for diagnosing cancer. Such procedures, known as biopsies, are accurate but only offer a snapshot of the tumor at a single moment in time.
Monitoring a tumor for weeks or months after the biopsy, tracking its growth and how it responds to treatment, would be much more valuable, says Michael Cima, MIT professor of materials science and engineering, who has developed the first implantable device that can do just that.
Cima and his colleagues recently reported that their device successfully tracked a tumor marker in mice for one month. The work is described in a paper published online in the journal Biosensors & Bioelectronics in April.
Such implants could one day provide up-to-the-minute information about what a tumor is doing -- whether it is growing or shrinking, how it's responding to treatment, and whether it has metastasized or is about to do so.
"What this does is basically take the lab and put it in the patient," said Cima, who is also an investigator at the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT.
The devices, which could be implanted at the time of biopsy, could also be tailored to monitor chemotherapy agents, allowing doctors to determine whether cancer drugs are reaching the tumors. They can also be designed to measure pH (acidity) or oxygen levels, which reveal tumor metabolism and how it is responding to therapy.
With current tools for detecting whether a tumor has spread, such as biopsy, by the time you have test results it's too late to prevent metastasis, said Cima.
"This is one of the tools we're going to need if we're going to turn cancer from a death sentence to a manageable disease," he said.
In the Biosensors & Bioelectronics study, human tumors were transplanted into the mice, and the researchers then used the implants to track levels of human chorionic gonadotropin, a hormone produced by human tumor cells.
The cylindrical, 5-millimeter implant contains magnetic nanoparticles coated with antibodies specific to the target molecules. Target molecules enter the implant through a semipermeable membrane, bind to the particles and cause them to clump together. That clumping can be detected by MRI (magnetic resonance imaging).
The device is made of a polymer called polyethylene, which is commonly used in orthopedic implants. The semipermeable membrane, which allows target molecules to enter but keeps the magnetic nanoparticles trapped inside, is made of polycarbonate, a compound used in many plastics.
Cima said he believes an implant to test for pH levels could be commercially available in a few years, followed by devices to test for complex chemicals such as hormones and drugs.
Lead author of the paper is Karen Daniel, a recent MIT PhD recipient. Other authors are recent PhD recipients Grace Kim and Christophoros Vassiliou; Marilyn Galindo, research affiliate in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology; Alexander Guimares, a radiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital; Ralph Weissleder, a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School; Al Charest, visiting assistant professor of biology at MIT; and Institute Professor Robert Langer.
The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute Centers of Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence and the National Science Foundation.
First of all, chemo IS approved by the FDA and has been a standard treatment for decades. Second, chemo makes you sick before it makes you … read more better. That he got sick on chemo does not mean it was the wrong treatment. Third, diet and nutrition is NOT going to cure him at this point. And lastly, shame on you for thinking the only thing that motivates the doctor is money. Any responsible doctor would recommend the exact course of action this doctor has. In fact, the family would have been able to sue him for malpractice if he hadn't. Educate yourself before you start throwing around accusations.