A. Organ Donations Rise, but Allocation Issues
Persist
Narrator:
This is Science Today. The Federal
Department of Health and Human Services has announced
that organ donations have increased during the first
half of this year by almost four percent. But Dr.
John Roberts, chief of transplant services at the
University of California, San Francisco, says one
of the biggest issues surrounding organ transplantation
is still allocation.
Roberts:
As
the demand for transplantation increases, we're
really left with these issues about how do we get
organs distributed fairly or with justice?
Narrator:
With limited resources, Roberts says
a philosophy called triage often comes into play.
Roberts:
Peacetime triage generally occurs in situations
where you have enough of a resource, you just have
to figure out who needs to go first. Where, wartime
triage is you just say, I can't take care of this
guy - let him die. That's sort of the battlefield
triage kind of system and one that transplantation,
particularly of the life-saving organs, heart and
liver is sort of been moving toward.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
B.
More Fuel for Anti-smoking Campaigns
Narrator:This
is Science Today. New research on the effects of
cigarettes may add fuel to anti-smoking campaigns
targeting children. One Massachusetts study found
symptoms of nicotine addiction can begin within
a few days of smoking just a few cigarettes. And
University of California, San Francisco epidemiologist,
John Weincke found a crucial link between the age
a person starts smoking and how much DNA damage
is present in the lungs.
Weincke:
Our evidence strongly indicates that if a person
starts smoking very early in life, before adolescence,
the damage that accumulates persists much longer
than if a person starts smoking, say when they're
20 years or so. It may actually take many years
for it to clear out of the lungs and of course,
once mutations are induced, theoretically, they're
around forever.
Narrator:
Weincke says there's been controversy over
whether when a person starts smoking is an independent
risk factor for lung cancer, as opposed to how much
a person smokes.
Weincke:
Because people that start smoking very early in
life tend to smoke more cigarettes per day and they
tend to be heavier smokers.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
C.
An Environmentally Friendly Alternative to Dry Cleaning
Narrator:
This is Science Today. An environmentally
friendly dry cleaning process using liquid carbon
dioxide may provide a non-toxic solution to cleaning
clothes. Researcher Craig Taylor of the Los Alamos
National Laboratory says liquid CO2 can eliminate
the current use of perchloroethylene, which is a
suspect carcinogen.
Taylor:
Wearing suspect carcinogens against
your skin is a scary thought for most people and
that's why most people, when they take their dry
cleaning home, they hang it in the closet for a
couple weeks to let the rest of the perchloroethylene
evaporate off before they wear it.
Narrator:Taylor
says clothes treated with CO2 emerge dry, cool and
wrinkled - within minutes, however, the clothes
reabsorb moisture from the air and become wrinkle-free.
Taylor:For
the dry cleaner, it also eliminates a lot of the
treatment that they have to do after a lot of the
pressing steps. And things like that are going to
be much easier for them.
Narrator:
Such solutions are currently available, but not
yet widely used. For Science Today, I'm Larissa
Branin.
D.
How Social Support Helps the Elderly
Narrator:
This is Science Today. A National
Institute on Aging study has found that frequent
visits from family and friends, helped elderly people
who have recently been hospitalized and live alone,
improve their functional status. Aging expert, Dr.
Kathryn Borgenicht of the University of California,
San Francisco, says factors that keep the elderly
at home are not just based on medical condition
or functional status.
Borgenicht:
A lot of it depends on what your
social support system is, what your financial support
is, that it may have very little to do with an actual
medical system. It may have more to do with some
of the other support systems in the community.
Narrator:
Borgenicht says those who may need long-term
health care should discuss with their family and
doctors what their needs and goals are.
Borgenicht:
We are constantly working with people about
the issue of how much help does somebody need versus
how much help caregivers think they need. And sometimes
that can be dissparent. What is the goal for this
individual person? Is it to stay at home? Then what
are the pieces that may help that person stay at
home? You've got to work on it this way.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
E.
Cigar Smoking Deemed a Serious Public Health Risk
Narrator:
This is Science Today. The American
Cancer Society has reported that cigar smoking poses
as serious a public health risk as cigarette smoking.
But unlike cigarette marketing, promotions for cigars
are not required to mention potential health risks.
Lisa Bero, a researcher at the University of California,
San Francisco, has been conducting a study on how
cigar smoking is portrayed in the media.
Bero:
We
looked at who's quoted in the articles, who talks
at all in the articles and we have celebrities and
we have a lot of people from the cigar industry.
But less than a third of the articles mention anyone
from the public health community so that view of
cigars isn't getting out in these lay press articles.
Narrator:
Bero says these articles also miss
another important health risk found in the American
Cancer Society's report.
Bero:
The other big health effect is the passive smoking
effects, because the toxic substances in cigar smoke
are actually greater than in cigarette smoke. And
that hasn't cropped up in any of the sample of articles
that we've looked at so far.
Narrator:
For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.
