Complicated Family Dynamics, Old Wounds Can Often Turn Decisions About Loved Ones With Dementia Contentious
A few recent celebrity cases have highlighted how making decisions over a loved one with dementia can be emotionally fraught. "We find there’s a lot of conflict,” said Ruth Drew, director of information and support services for the Alzheimer’s Association. “Often times, there are old family dynamics that are emerging. Old stressors and old wounds that people thought were put to rest a long time ago.” In other public health news: decoding genomes, herbicide, violence against Native American women, the cerebellum, breast-feeding, and more.
USA Today:
Dementia And Alzheimer’s Leave Families Grappling With Elder Guardianship
Casey Kasem’s widow battled his children to maintain medical control of the radio legend as he faded with a form of dementia. The wife and daughter of actor and comedian Tim Conway are sparring in court over the care of the former Carol Burnett Show star. Similar disputes divided the families of country music icon Glen Campbell and R&B singer Etta James. Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols is the subject of a court action brought by her son. The high-profile legal battles around celebrities incapacitated by dementia are drawing attention to a phenomenon dividing many more families across the country. (Alltucker, 10/25)
San Jose Mercury News:
Color To Help NIH Decode Genomes Of 1 Million Americans
Color Genomics will be working with the prestigious Broad Institute in Massachusetts to help in the five-year effort, which the NIH calls “one of the country’s most ambitious biomedical research efforts ever undertaken.” The NIH announced in late September that it had awarded $28.6 million to establish three genome centers around the nation, including the Broad-Color team, as part of its All of Us program. (Sumagaysay, 10/25)
Bloomberg:
How Much Herbicide Can You Tolerate In Your Food?
By now, many consumers have heard of glyphosate, the active ingredient in the herbicide known as Roundup, and warnings about its presence in many of their favorite foods. From oatmeal to granola bars, ice cream to even orange juice, trace amounts of the chemical can be found throughout your local supermarket. It’s the world’s most widely used weedkiller—a blockbuster for Monsanto Co. since it was introduced in the 1970s. The vast majority of U.S. corn and soybeans have been genetically modified to withstand it, making it a critical component of modern farming. But in 2015, the International Agency for Research on Cancer—an arm of the World Health Organization—labeled it a probable carcinogen. Since then, it’s become a legal headache for Monsanto, and now Bayer AG, which bought the company in June for $66 billion. (Shanker and Mulvany, 10/26)
Wyoming Public Radio:
Efforts Stalled To Renew A Law Reducing Violence Against Native Women
The 2013 Violence Against Women Act is due for a reauthorization by Congress so it can be funded to continue lifesaving services for shelter programs and coalitions nationwide, especially on reservations. A recent bill that would have done so only received Democratic votes and is now stalled. But Republicans did step in at the last minute to keep the act funded by including it in an appropriations bill called the Continuing Resolution or CR. (Edwards, 10/25)
NPR:
Cerebellum Plays Bigger Role In Human Thought Than Previously Suspected
An ancient part of the brain long ignored by the scientific world appears to play a critical role in everything from language and emotions to daily planning. It's the cerebellum, which is found in fish and lizards as well as people. But in the human brain, this structure is wired to areas involved in higher-order thinking, a team led by researchers from Washington University in St. Louis reports Thursday in the journal Neuron. (Hamilton, 10/25)
Stat:
A History Of Science And Biotech, Told Through Words Added To The Dictionary
How old were you when CRISPR got added to the dictionary? And what were your grandparents doing when DNA made its first appearance?Now you can find out. Merriam-Webster has been promoting a search tool that lets you look up the words that got added to dictionary in the year you were born, or any other year dating all the way back to 1500. ...We at STAT decided to scour Merriam-Webster’s trove for some of the most important words that have shaped science in the past century. Taken a whole, the list is a revealing lens through which to understand the history of science and biotech. (Robbins, 10/26)
The New York Times:
Breast-Feeding Is Good For The Mother, And Not Just The Baby
Most women know breast-feeding is good for their babies’ health. But doctors and midwives rarely tell moms-to-be that it’s also good for nursing mothers. Nursing mothers reduce their relative risk of breast cancer by 4.3 percent for every 12 months they breast-feed, in addition to a relative decrease of 7 percent for each birth. Breast-feeding is particularly protective against some of the most aggressive tumors, called hormone receptor-negative or triple-negative tumors, which are more common among African-American women, studies show. It also lowers the risk by one-third for women who are prone to cancer because of an inherited BRCA1 mutation. (Rabin, 10/26)
The Wall Street Journal:
When It Comes To Sleep, One Size Fits All
I’d always thought that our need for sleep, like our appetite for food, drink or social contact, was a personal matter: Some people need more, some need less. Age, lifestyle, work and metabolism combine to determine how much sleep a person needs to function, and if some people thrive on five hours a night and others require seven, chalk it up to different strokes for different folks, right? Wrong. A new study of the sleep habits of more than 10,000 people around the world suggests that the amount of sleep adults need is universal. The massive survey, published in the journal Sleep, demonstrates that adults everywhere need 7-8 hours a night—no more and no less—in order to be mentally limber. (Pinker, 10/25)
