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Smithsonian: Nova Scotians are hardy 100-year-olds
The high number of Nova Scotia centenarians has researchers wondering if their long life is in their genes or is the result of the laid-back lifestyle in some of the area’s small sea harbor towns. In parts of Nova Scotia, says the January 2003 Smithsonian magazine, centenarians are 3 times more common than in the United States and up to 16 times more common than they are in the rest of the world. Thomas Perls, a MED associate professor, who directs the New England Centenarian Study at Boston Medical Center, which is the largest study of its kind in the world, notes that people in his study often spoke of very old relatives in Nova Scotia. At a gerontology conference, he talked with a colleague of a geriatrician at Dalhousie University in Halifax, who told him that the local newspaper runs a centenarian’s obituary nearly every week. “That was amazing,” says Perls. “Down here, I see obituaries for centenarians maybe once every five or six weeks.” He became convinced that “Nova Scotians had something up their sleeve” that enabled them to reach such advanced ages.
Boston Herald: The true meaning of “axis of evil”
Was the phrase “axis of evil,” which President Bush used in his 2002 State of the Union address, intended as mere rhetoric or as a warning? The words have been echoed repeatedly in the media as the United States appears to be on the verge of war with one of the so-called evil nations and a nuclear crisis with another. “My impression is that this was a glittering phrase invented by a speechwriter and inserted into a speech to make a rhetorical point,” says Andrew Bacevich, a CAS professor and director of the Center for International Relations, in the January 5 Boston Herald. He and others question the term axis, which implies a level of coordination that is not apparent, particularly when applied to Iran and Iraq, two feuding countries. “Our current flap with North Korea shows the extent to which they [Bush officials] don’t want to be imprisoned by this concept of an axis . . . they need to deal with each differently,” Bacevich adds. “Bush’s critics will not let him forget it. I suspect they [administration officials] wish he hadn’t said it. . . . Nations don’t make policy based on just a moral calculus.”
Boston Globe: Frist politician first, doctor second
Even though incoming Senate majority leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) is a transplant surgeon, few health specialists feel that a physician-led U.S. Senate will help fix what is now being called “an industry in crisis,” reports the January 5 Boston Globe. The U.S. health-care system is fraught with skyrocketing medical costs and malpractice lawsuit costs, in addition to a recent West Virginia hospital surgeons strike over the high cost of malpractice insurance. “In his role, he’s a politician, not a doctor,” says Alan Sager, an SPH professor of health services. “Besides, his training is to slice and sew and delay death. . . . That does not endow him with any more knowledge than other citizens on how to contain skyrocketing health-care costs or other policy issues.”
Boston Globe: Welcome to the Hotel Commonwealth
The Hotel Commonwealth, which is slated to open in Kenmore Square in two months, will recall a bygone era of stately hotels on Commonwealth Avenue as well as embrace technology by providing guests with wireless access at any location within the hotel’s six floors, reports the January 3 Boston Globe. Boston University owned 8 of the 12 adjoining buildings on the south side of Commonwealth at Kenmore Street where the four-star, 150-room hotel is located. The University has “worked for 30 years to revitalize Kenmore Square,” says Frank Keefe, a partner with Great Bays Holdings, which worked with BU as a limited partner in developing a hotel to attract parents of students and other campus visitors. Joseph Mercurio, BU executive vice president, says the universities that invest in their neighborhoods get along better in general than those that don’t. “This has been an effort to bring some urban renewal to an area adjacent to our urban campus,” he says.
Montreal Gazette: Some heart irregularity is okay
Doctors have long assumed that the way to treat heart irregularity,
or atrial fibrillation, is through electric shock, strong drugs, or if
such methods prove ineffective, by slowing down the heart with medication
and then prescribing long-term use of blood thinners to prevent blood
clots. But two studies reported in the New England Journal of Medicine
concluded that a rhythm-control group had more hospitalizations, more
serious side effects, and only a hint of better survival than a group
without heart-rate control. These studies have doctors questioning whether
restoring a normal rhythm is really necessary, says the January 4 Montreal
Gazette. Rodney Falk, a MED professor of medicine, says he has changed
his method of treatment because of the studies and expects other physicians
will follow suit, particularly in older patients. “I think they’ll
think twice before using antiarrhythmics,” he says.
If slowing down their heart rate makes patients feel better, “we
shouldn’t get too uptight as physicians and say, ‘But I want
to make your electrocardiogram look nice and stable.’” However,
he adds that restoring rhythm may be appropriate for some patients, particularly
those who are young.
10
January 2003
Boston University
Office of University Relations