Era of Personalized Prevention Comes with Challenges by Rich Mcmanus
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JUNE 13, 2008 The Second Best Thing About Payday VOL. LX, NO. 12 Era of Personalized Prevention Comes with Challenges By Rich McManus ABOVE · NIAMS cuts ribbon on new home lthough the era of personalized cancer prevention for four laboratories. See story on p. 15. Ais already under way, the decisions people will have to make regarding their own risk of disease are features likely to get no easier. Epidemiologists are getting better at predicting who 1 will come down with which ailment when—which is Sophisticated Medicine Will Require Savvy Patients an undoubted benefit. But their studies, while offering a clearer picture of what is likely to occur, will require 3 patients to exhibit the wisdom of Solomon in making Stanford’s Weissman To Give Mahoney Lecture health care choices. That was the take-home message of Stanford epi- 5 demiologist Dr. Alice Whittemore’s recent Wednesday Dr. Alice Whittemore Children’s Inn Gets Endowment Afternoon Lecture. Her talk, “Personalized Cancer Pre- 7 vention,” was the 14th Robert S. Gordon, Jr. Lecture, held annually to commemorate Former Diplomat Laments Response the late Dr. Gordon, an esteemed NIH scientist. To AIDS in Africa In a series of vignettes involving three hypothetical patients, Whittemore illustrated 16 just how savvy patients will have to be when confronted with their own matrix of risks. NIH Launches Undiagnosed see prevention, page 4 Diseases Program NIH Bike to NIH Marks Work Day First Annual Succeeds, Yoga Week departments Despite Rain By Jenny Haliski In May, NIH cel- ebrated its first Briefs 2 annual Yoga Milestones 12 The NIH Bicycle Commuter Club Week. High- Digest 14 drew 465 regis- lighting the sci- tered riders—the ence and prac- strongest show- tice of yoga, the Margarita Valencia (NIMH), ing yet—to its 5-day series of commuted for the first time Yogiraj Alan Finger, founder pit stop for the events provided from Mt. Pleasant with the of ISHTA Yoga, presents Washington Area employees and help of friend and colleague the public with “The Sciences of Hatha Yoga, Jerry Overman (CC). Bicyclists Associ- Tantra and Ayurveda.” ation’s 2008 Bike an opportunity to to Work Day. NIH had 324 registered partici- learn about the pants in the 2007 event and won the Metropoli- benefits of yoga and experience them through tan Washington Council of Governments award stretching and practice. for the area employer with the highest regis- The event was presented in partnership tered BTWD participation in 2006 and 2007. with R&W, the Office of Research Services, Confirmation of NIH’s third win in a row will the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Insti- come in mid-June. tute, the National Cancer Institute and the Regionally, 7,000 people registered for the National Center for Complementary and The NIH Record is recyclable as office 2008 event, making it one of the largest Alternative Medicine. Á white paper. see bike to work, page 8 see yoga week, page 6 interested in attending one of the 18 classes can sign up online. Anniversary IntraMall Showcase Set, June 18-19 briefs The 10th anniversary NIH IntraMall Summer Show- case will be held Wednesday and Thursday, June 18- 19 from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Clinical Research Imaging of Organ Development Is Topic of Center on the 3rd- and 5th-fl. pedestrian bridges. Seminar, June 18 The event will display the award-winning IntraMall Dr. Scott E. Fraser will deliver the third lecture electronic purchasing system designed exclusively in NIDCR’s seminar series on Wednesday, June for NIH to simplify purchasing and now featuring 18 at 2 p.m. in Lipsett Amphitheater, Bldg. 10. “Smart Match” tools to speed monthly credit card He will speak on “Advances in High-Resolu- reconciliation in the NIH Business System. tion Imaging of Complex Biological Systems.” Since opening in June 1998, the IntraMall has be- Fraser will describe his recent work using come a leading NIH web site for using government novel imaging approaches to study mammalian purchase cards to locate, buy and track purchases development and organ function in real time. from 240 of its most frequently used vendors, These approaches have allowed him to create offering more than 10 million laboratory, office high-resolution temporal and spatial images of and computer items. New online inventory and the embryonic heart and to model and analyze convenient IntraMalls EXPRESS delivery options will heart function in vivo. Such “live imaging” also be demonstrated at the showcase. Learn how techniques could be used to analyze a broad purchasing through the IntraMall can save your IC range of organs and tissues. money and ease your workload. Register for the Fraser is the Anna L. Rosen professor of biology, event and the free lunch online at www.intramalls. professor of bioengineering and director of the com/showcase. View a list of IntraMall vendors Biological Imaging Center at the California Insti- today at www.intramalls.com/livevendors.html. For tute of Technology Beckman Institute. He earned reasonable accommodation, call 1-888-644-6255 The NIH Record is published biweekly at his bachelor’s degree in physics at Harvey Mudd between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. at least 7 days prior Bethesda, MD by the Editorial Operations College and his doctorate in biophysics from to the event. Branch, Office of Communications and Public Liaison, for the information of employees of Johns Hopkins University. the National Institutes of Health, Department NIH Tennis Team Recruits of Health and Human Services. The content is The lecture is part of the NIDCR Seminar Series reprintable without permission. Pictures may “From Basic Research to Therapy—The Latest The NIH/HHS interagency tennis team is looking be available upon request. Use of funds for Frontier,” which focuses on research topics of for advanced (NTRP of 4.0 or higher) players for printing this periodical has been approved by the director of the Office of Management and broad interest to the NIH community. If you wish the 2008 season, which runs through July. The Budget through September 30, 2008. to meet the speaker during his visit, contact Dr. doubles-only matches are played on Har-Tru (green Nadya Lumelsky at (301) 594-7703 or nadyal@ clay) courts. You need not sign up with a partner To receive alerts to our latest issue, send an email to [email protected] with the words nidcr.nih.gov. and do not need a season-long commitment—play “Subscribe NIHRECORD” in the message body. The lecture is open to all employees. Sign only as often as your schedule allows. The cost NIH Record Office Bldg. 31, Rm. 5B41 language interpretation will be provided. Those for each match is about $10/player, which covers Phone (301) 496-2125 Fax (301) 402-1485 who need reasonable accommodation to par- court rental and balls. Matches are on Thursdays at the Fitzgerald Tennis Center in Rock Creek Park, Web address http://nihrecord.od.nih.gov ticipate in this event should contact Mary Daum, [email protected], (301) 594-7559 and/or the Washington, D.C., starting at 6 p.m. For more infor- Editor Federal Relay (1-800-877-8339). mation, contact Jenny Strasburger, (301) 594-8901, Richard McManus [email protected] or Jerry McLaughlin, (301) [email protected] 402-6626, [email protected]. Training on New NED Offered in June Assistant Editor Carla Garnett NIH has begun offering a series of town-hall China Earthquake Emergency Relief [email protected] style training programs to the NIH Enterprise Directory (NED)-user community in preparation One of the worst earthquakes in decades struck Staff Writers central China on May 12, killing many thousands Jan Ehrman for the switchover to the new NED system this [email protected] July. ORS and CIT teamed up to develop the of people and causing heavy damage. The Chinese training programs and are offering the 3-hour Students and Scholars Association of NIH is calling Sarah Schmelling upon the community for donations for disaster [email protected] sessions at locations across campus and at off- site facilities. The presentations will familiarize relief. A web page (www.dccssa.org/earthquaker- Belle Waring NED users with Homeland Security Presidential elief.html) has been established so that donations [email protected] Directive (HSPD)-12 and the impact it will have can be accepted from the Greater D.C. Chinese The NIH Record reserves the right to make on administrative staff. The sessions will include Students and Scholars Associations. All donations corrections, changes or deletions in submitted background information, common misconcep- and proceeds will be sent directly to the Red Cross copy in conformity with the policies of the Society of China. paper and HHS. tions and an introduction of the changes to NED that will support employee efforts with regard to the new HSPD-12 badging process. The training schedule is posted on the CIT training web site at http://training.cit.nih.gov?702-08G. Those 2 NIH RECORD JUNE 13, 2008 2 JUNE 13, 2008 JUNE 13, 2008 VOL. LX, NO. 12 Weissman To Give As for his love of fishing, Weissman comes by it Florence Mahoney naturally having been born and raised in Mon- Lecture, June 18 tana. Awarded a B.S. degree in pre-med stud- ies from Montana State College, now Montana What do you get State University, in 1960, Weissman received when you combine his M.D. from Stanford in 1965. a renowned medical Weissman is a member of the National Acade- researcher, an entre- my of Sciences where he chaired the panel on the preneur and an avid scientific and medical aspects of human cloning.