Media monitor
"The bottom line for us as physicians is that it's our duty—and moral obligation—to ensure that these vulnerable teenage girls have the best and most appropriate health care for their diagnosis."—Harvey Cohen, MD, chair of the Department of Pediatrics, and Jonathan Berek, MD, chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, on why Proposition 85's plan to require minors to notify their parents before an abortion could place physicians in a position in which obeying the law could harm the best interests of their patients. Op-ed in San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 20
"It's not just vaccines. We need face masks, food, hospital beds, oxygen, general medicine." —Lucy Shapiro, MD, the Virginia and D.K. Ludwig Professor, on the health- care system's ability to respond to an emergency, such as a flu pandemic. Shapiro was part of a panel discussion on major crises facing the United States. San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 15.
"You can do so much more with that kind of funding." —Stefan Heller, PhD, associate professor of otolaryngology, on how many stem cell researchers have moved to California to do their work thanks to funding made available through the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine. Heller, who came to Stanford from Harvard in 2005, was interviewed with Robert Jackler, the Edward C. and Amy H. Sewall Professor in Otorhinolaryngology. KCBS-AM, Oct. 14.
"One of the fears that I am sure many doctors' offices have is that the doctors will be left with the complicated patients who may not bring in much revenue but take an extraordinary amount of time." —Alan Garber, MD, PhD, the Henry J. Kaiser Jr. Professor, on how an increasing amount of Americans are going to store-based medical clinics, such as Wal-Mart, for doctor's appointments. Nightline (ABC), Oct. 17.
"The Internet can be both helpful and isolating. It becomes a problem when it isolates, substituting for a real social life.'' —Elias Aboujaoude, MD, clinical assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences and director of Stanford's Impulse Control Disorders Clinic, on problematic Internet use. San Jose Mercury News, Oct. 19
"This study confirms what people have been suspecting—that there is a subpopulation of stem cells that is the mother of all evils." —Paul Fisher, MD, associate professor of neurology and neurological sciences and of pediatrics, commenting on a study from Duke University that found a small number of tumor cells, including cancer and neural stem cells, help make tumors resistant to radiation treatment. HealthDay, Oct. 18.