Cancer

The federal government Friday called for all baby boomers to be tested for hepatitis C, which kills more Americans each year than AIDS and is the leading reason for liver transplants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made the recommendation to find hundreds of thousands of people who don't realize that they have the infection, which greatly increases their chances of developing cirrhosis and liver cancer. The hepatitis C virus is transmitted by blood, usually through intravenous drug use or transfusions.

In rejecting PSA screening for prostate cancer, an influential federal panel has chipped a cornerstone of preventive medicine, declaring that it's not always best to catch cancer as early as possible. "At best, PSA screening may help only 1 man in 1,000 avoid death from prostate cancer," the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force said Monday. "Most prostate cancers found by PSA screening are slow growing, not life threatening, and will not cause a man any harm during his lifetime.

Donna Summer's family says the singer died of lung cancer even though she wasn't a smoker. TMZ says the diva believed she contracted the disease by breathing in toxic air after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York. Summer, who died Thursday at 63 in Naples, Fla., lived near ground zero. Summer's family rep, Brian Edwards, also said on Friday that the singer's funeral would be private and declined to disclose a time or place for the event. J-Lo: I'm undecided Jennifer Lopez denies she's already quit American Idol.

Just downstream from an industrial recycling operation and a stone's throw from a sewage treatment plant, a fisherman casts his line toward the passing barge traffic and watches it drop into the Delaware River. A couple eating lunch watch curiously. "No way would I ever eat anything from there," the woman says. The fishers who frequent the pier in Camden's Waterfront South neighborhood have heard it all before. That they're crazy, that they're going to grow an extra head or get sick from eating what they catch.

JIM JOHNSON: 1941-2009

Jim Marshall, the former Minnesota Vikings star who Tuesday revealed his battle with cancer, told a local television station that it is prostate cancer. He initially had requested that the form of cancer remain confidential. Marshall, 62, said he will go to the Mayo Clinic to consider treatment options.

RE THE "Beating Cancer" section: It's not going to happen. There is too much money to be made in the business of cancer. Pharmaceutical companies don't want you to be healthy. If you were, they'd be putting themselves out of business. Cancer, like polio and many other ailments, could be cured next month, but at the expense of closing hospitals, getting rid of doctors, closing so-called research hospitals, etc. Pharmaceutical companies seem to almost cure everything, but in reality they don't cure anything - on purpose.

LONDON - A respected international panel of scientists says cellphones are possible cancer-causing agents, putting them in the same category as the pesticide DDT, gasoline-engine exhaust and coffee. The classification was issued yesterday in Lyon, France, by the International Agency for Research on Cancer after a review of dozens of published studies. The agency is an arm of the World Health Organization, and its assessment now goes to WHO for possible guidance on cellphone use. Classifying agents as "possibly carcinogenic" doesn't mean they automatically cause cancer, and some experts said the ruling shouldn't change people's cellphone habits.

Claude Lewis' Op-ed Page column of July 7 on drug users being just plain stupid is one of the most realistic assessments of this horrendous, cancer- like problem that is destroying our youth and our nation from within. The bottom line is that only when we as a nation demand the death penalty for drug pushers on the first offense regardless of age or economic status; and only when our elected leaders get up the guts to heed such demands, and only when drug users are held accountable regardless of their station in life, will this cancer begin to be destroyed.

Houston Astros hitting coach Tom McCraw was diagnosed with prostate cancer the team said yesterday, and he will leave the team at the end of its current homestand on Sunday. McCraw, 58, is in his third season with the Astros and has helped Houston to a National League-best .295 team batting average this year. McCraw learned he might have cancer during a physical exam during spring training. A blood test revealed a high prostate-specific antigen level, which can indicate cancer.

Amid the many messages you will hear about screening for prostate cancer in the coming days, I hope these stand out: There is at best a small potential benefit from prostate cancer screening, and there are substantial known harms. We need a better test, and we need better treatment options. The panel I chair, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, has just issued a recommendation against screening men of any age for prostate cancer using the prostate-specific antigen, or PSA, blood test.

Donna Summer's family says the singer died of lung cancer even though she wasn't a smoker. TMZ says the diva believed she contracted the disease by breathing in toxic air after the Sept. 11 attacks in New York. Summer, who died Thursday at 63 in Naples, Fla., lived near ground zero. Summer's family rep, Brian Edwards, also said on Friday that the singer's funeral would be private and declined to disclose a time or place for the event. J-Lo: I'm undecided Jennifer Lopez denies she's already quit American Idol.

Janet Knowles and Kimberly Fisher are breast cancer survivors. The importance of effective treatment is a subject they know intimately, and it's what brought them out Tuesday with Gov. Christie and other political and community leaders to mark the formal groundbreaking for the Cooper Cancer Institute in downtown Camden. The two attribute their survival to Cooper and hope that more patients with all types of cancer will get care with the expansion of the institute to Martin Luther King Boulevard and Haddon Avenue, where work is under way. "It's a special day ... long overdue," said Knowles, a Moorestown resident who contributed $5 million in 2006 to fund the Janet Knowles Breast Cancer Center, headquartered at Cooper University Hospital's Voorhees facility.

Five years ago, as soon as her breast cancer treatment ended, Mindy Saifer Cohen put on the pink. She e-mailed everyone she knew, asking if they'd walk in her name at the annual Race for the Cure. By that first race day, Team Mindy was already a juggernaut. About 120 people marched by her side to raise money for the cause — so many that they won an award from the race's organizer, the Susan G. Komen foundation, for assembling the largest entrant in the event's friends and family division.

Nicholas Celenza was a fifth grader when his mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and told to get her affairs in order. But Elaine Celenza was a strong woman who "wouldn't let go of life, or let cancer bring her down," he says. For five years, until her death in February at age 48, she helped patients with the same challenges she faced and raised money to help find a cure. Her tenacity and selflessness deeply affected Nicholas, now a sophomore at Haddonfield Memorial High School, who spent weeks looking for a way to honor her. Finally, he presented his father, Anthony Celenza Jr., with an idea.

The University of Pennsylvania has received a gift of $25 million to start a research center focused on the treatment and prevention of cancers linked to certain hereditary gene mutations, the Philadelphia institution said Tuesday. The donors behind the Basser Research Center are Jon and Mindy Gray, 1992 Penn graduates. Jon Gray, 42, is global head of real estate and a member of the board at New York investment and advisory firm Blackstone Group The center, to be housed at Penn's Abramson Cancer Center in University City, is named in honor of Mindy Gray's sister, Faith Basser, who died at 44 of ovarian cancer caused by a gene mutation.

Time again for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure®, the annual Mother's Day run for the pretty cancer, the shopping cancer, the insistently Barbie pink cancer. Komen was the eminence rose in the bustling breast cancer business until the behemoth got into a major kerfuffle in February when headquarters cut off funding to Planned Parenthood, which was eventually reinstated. This year marks the 20th anniversary of Komen's pink ribbon campaign, but the charity still finds itself tied in a rather ugly knot.

Edward Williamson was no sun worshipper. In fact, most of his life he diligently avoided it. "I never saw my father with his shirt off," recalls his daughter Tara Coates. "He didn't enjoy being out in the sun and on the beach. " Adds his son Greg: "He worked indoors all life; his skin was the color of milk. " The one thing that drew him outdoors was golf, a favorite pastime. He wore a hat and covered his arms. The only part of his body that was exposed was the small area of his neck where his golf shirt parted to form a V. And it was there in 2005, when Williamson was 59, that his wife, Adell, noticed a suspicious-looking flat brown patch.

On Sunday, Ivonne Mosquera-Schmidt swam 450 meters, biked 10 miles, and ran five kilometers in the Upper Main Line YMCA's triathlon. All without seeing a thing. Yet the completely blind, pint-size Center City woman is so sure-footed, so fast, that after one recent race a referee checked her blackout glasses — which all vision-impaired runners must wear to level the playing field — to make sure she wasn't cheating. "For me, it's not a big deal," she said about competing against world-class athletes without even a sliver of light or shadow to guide her. Instead, she uses a human guide and, as she demonstrated during a training session at the Y four days before the race, her fingers.

Maybe not enough administrators at Chestnut Hill College know what it's like to fight cancer. If they did, how could they deny a student named B. Elizabeth Furey? In July, Furey, 28, will finish the final three credits required for her master's degree in clinical and counseling psychology. She had hoped the school would allow her to hear her name called as she strode across the graduation stage on May 12, to the cheers of her family and friends. However, Chestnut Hill has a policy that no student may cross the stage until his or her courses are complete.