Tagged: cancer

Gilda's Club is an organization that consists of groups across the country which provide laughter and support to cancer patients.

The organization is named after Gilda Radner. She was one of the brightest faces in comedy. The University of Michigan alum was in the original cast of Saturday Night Live. She passed away from ovarian cancer in 1989. 

One of her close friends and partner in comedy, Allen Zweibel, spoke with Michigan Radio's Cynthia Canty about Radner.

State lawmakers are grappling with an issue that pits Michigan’s firefighters against insurance companies.

A bill before the Senate Judiciary committee would expand workers compensation coverage to Michigan’s five thousand paid firefighters to include ten types of cancer, including respiratory tract, bladder, skin, and brain.

The change would ‘presume’ fighting fires caused the cancers and not require firefighters to prove exposure on the job is responsible.

University of Michigan researchers are developing a new use for an old drug.

Small doses of medicine already used to treat cancer may reduce inflammation in patients after a bone marrow transplant.

These transplants can save a cancer patient's life, but many recipients suffer from a life-threatening side effect called Graft-versus-host disease. It occurs when the donated cells attack their new host's tissues.

The drug Vorinostat could help reduce that risk. For the first time, researchers at U-of-M's Comprehensive Cancer Center are testing that possibility on human patients.

The National Cancer Institute has chosen the Van Andel Institute in Grand Rapids to lead a new study on pancreatic cancer.

The NCI estimates 43,000 people in the U.S. will get pancreatic cancer in 2012; leading to 37,000 deaths.

Brian Haab Ph.D., Head of Van Andel Institute’s Laboratory of Cancer Immunodiagnostics, will head the research team.

Many times pancreatic cancer spreads to internal organs before people realize they have it and by then the prognosis is usually not so good. "It’s an aggressive disease. It doesn’t respond well to almost anything we’ve tried. Though there are individual cases that have worked out well,” Haab said.

He says pancreatic cancer is still hard to detect.

“It can be a long, expensive, and sometimes invasive process to do that and we want blood tests that can make it quick and inexpensive process,” Haab said.

Yesterday, we hosted a live web chat that coincided with the airing of our one-hour documentary, "Living with Cancer."

People who logged on could ask our cancer experts, Dr. Anthony Shields and Dr. Michael Harbut from the Karmanos Cancer Institute, their questions about cancer and the environment. Some weighed in via Facebook and our blog, as well.

Here is a recap of the chat:

Welcome to our live Web chat with the producers of our documentary, Living with Cancer: Rebecca Williams, Meg Cramer and Sarah Alvarez.

The show is airing now on Michigan Radio, 91.7 FM/91.1 FM/104.1 FM, or you can listen to the live stream above.

It’s something we don’t like to talk about, but cancer is all around us. It would be hard to find someone who hasn’t been touched by cancer - not just someone you know - but someone you love.

In Living with Cancer, a special one-hour documentary from Michigan Radio, we'll explore how much we really know about the connections between cancer and the chemicals in our environment.

We’ll meet both regular people and scientists trying to figure out if certain towns around Michigan are struggling with more cancer cases than other places because of current or past pollution. You'll hear about whether or not turning to the courts makes sense when it seems a company might to be blame for putting people at risk of cancer or other illnesses. Finally, we'll look at where we go from here. What do researchers know, and where are they looking next?

Listen live at 3pm on air on Michigan Radio or you can listen to the show at the audio links below:

WASHINGTON (AP) - The chairman of the House's tax-writing committee says he's been diagnosed with a "very early, highly treatable and curable type" of cancer.

GOP Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan says in a statement that doctors found non-Hodgkin lymphoma during a recent physical. Camp says he'll continue in Congress and retain his committee chairmanship during chemotherapy.

Non-Hodgkin lymphoma is a cancer that begins in the cells of the immune system. The 59-year-old Camp says he has large B-cell lymphoma. B-cells are a type of white blood cell that helps fight infections.