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Cancer, Radiation Therapy, and the Market

2017-08-16
Cancer, Radiation Therapy, and the Market

Author: Barbara Bridgman Perkins

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781351978125

Category: History

Page: 244

View: 579

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Appraising cancer as a major medical market in the 2010s, Wall Street investors placed their bets on single-technology treatment facilities costing $100-$300 million each. Critics inside medicine called the widely-publicized proton-center boom "crazy medicine and unsustainable public policy." There was no valid evidence, they claimed, that proton beams were more effective than less costly alternatives. But developers expected insurance to cover their centers’ staggeringly high costs and debts. Was speculation like this new to health care? Cancer, Radiation Therapy, and the Market shows how the radiation therapy specialty in the United States (later called radiation oncology) coevolved with its device industry throughout the twentieth-century. Academic engineers and physicians acquired financing to develop increasingly powerful radiation devices, initiated companies to manufacture the devices competitively, and designed hospital and freestanding procedure units to utilize them. In the process, they incorporated market strategies into medical organization and practice. Although palliative benefits and striking tumor reductions fueled hopes of curing cancer, scientific research all too often found serious patient harm and disappointing beneficial impact on cancer survival. This thoroughly documented and provocative inquiry concludes that public health policy needs to re-evaluate market-driven high-tech medicine and build evidence-based health care systems.

Cobalt Blues

2012-11-02
Cobalt Blues

Author: Peter R. Almond

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

ISBN: 9781461449249

Category: Science

Page: 158

View: 347

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For the last half of the 20th century cobalt-60 units were the mainstay of radiation treatments for cancer. This book describes the development of the first cobalt -60 unit in the United States and the man behind it, Leonard Grimmett. Conceptually conceived before World War II it only became possible because of the development of nuclear reactors during the war. The initial idea was to replace the radium in the contemporary units of the time with cobalt-60, but with the realization that the reactors could produce much more cobalt-60 than originally thought the design of the cobalt-60 unit was drastically changed to take advantage that the application of the inverse square law to cancer radiation treatments would make. Although Grimmett conceived of and published his ideas first, the Canadians built the first units because of the capability of their reactor to produce more suitable cobalt-60 sources. The story tells how Grimmett and the other people involved came together at the time that the U S Atomic Energy Agency was pushing the use of radioactivity in medicine. But Grimmett died suddenly before his unit could be built and very little information about him was known until recently when various documents have come to light, allowing the full story to be told.

60 Years of Survival Outcomes at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

2012-11-27
60 Years of Survival Outcomes at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center

Author: M. Alma Rodriguez

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

ISBN: 9781461451976

Category: Medical

Page: 346

View: 455

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This unique book provides a retrospective analysis of the changes in survival outcomes at the University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center over the past six decades. Since opening its doors in 1944, M.D. Anderson has kept a continuous, uninterrupted data repository of the treatment and outcomes of each of its patients. It is this visionary database from the center’s tumor registry which makes this groundbreaking book possible. Tracking results across time, this book shows radical shifts in outcomes trends, where great progress has been made, and where there is still a long way to go, and offers a snapshot into the parallel history of developments in care. Such data is crucial to informing how patients are counseled, how treatment decisions are determined, and how prognoses are made. 60 Years of Survival Outcomes at the University of Texas, M.D. Anderson Cancer Center is the only book to concurrently present longitudinal data on survival outcomes across the spectrum of rare and common cancers. Each chapter deals with a specific disease site, discussing current management approaches and presenting key data replete with illustrative charts, graphs, and tables. With the resources available only to the practitioners at this inimitable institution, this book heralds a cornerstone moment in the study of survival outcomes and the depth of our knowledge of cancer care.

Enduring Legacy

2014-04-04
Enduring Legacy

Author: William Henry Kellar

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

ISBN: 9781623491314

Category: History

Page: 282

View: 140

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At the heart of Houston stands the Texas Medical Center. This dense complex of educational, clinical, and hospital facilities offers state-of-the-art patient care, basic science, and applied research in more than fifty medicine-related institutions. Three medical schools, four schools of nursing, and schools of dentistry, public health, and pharmacology occupy the thousand-acre campus. But none of this would exist if not for the generosity and vision of Monroe Dunaway Anderson, who, in 1936, established the foundation that bears his name. The M. D. Anderson Foundation ultimately became the driving force behind creating and shaping this leading-edge medical complex into what it is today. Enduring Legacy: The M. D. Anderson Foundation and the Texas Medical Center provides a unique perspective on the indispensable role the foundation played in the creation of the Texas Medical Center. It also offers a case study of how public and private institutions worked together to create this veritable city of health that has since become the largest medical complex in human history. Historian William Henry Kellar caps off a decade of research on institutions and characters associated with the Texas Medical Center. He draws on oral histories, extensive archival work, and a growing secondary literature to provide an absorbing account of this leading institution of modern medicine and the philanthropy that made it possible.

John P. McGovern, MD

2014-02-28
John P. McGovern, MD

Author: Bryant Boutwell

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

ISBN: 9781623491642

Category: Biography & Autobiography

Page: 280

View: 376

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John P. McGovern held seventeen professorships, received twenty-nine honorary doctorates, and established the nation’s largest privately owned allergy and immunology clinic. He authored 252 professional publications including twenty-six books in the medical sciences and humanities, and served as president or chief elected officer of fifteen professional societies in medicine. In addition, the McGovern Foundation has given millions of dollars to various local and national health charities, and many Houston landmarks bear the McGovern name, including the McGovern Lake and McGovern Children’s Zoo (at Houston’s Hermann Park), the McGovern Health and Science Museum, and the McGovern Campus of the Texas Medical Center. Bryant Boutwell, a long-time friend and colleague, has captured the influential life of this visionary Texas physician in John P. McGovern, MD: A Lifetime of Stories. In captivating narrative, interlaced with revealing personal and family stories, Boutwell chronicles McGovern’s holistic approach to medicine, which transcended the traditional boundaries of institutional identities and medical specialties. McGovern worked tirelessly to bring together big institutions, the health professions, bold interdisciplinary ideas, and a team approach to healthcare that, though prescient at the time, is recognized today as imperative. This commitment led to his founding role in the American Osler Society, which promotes humanistic and ethical dimensions of the practice of medicine, and his establishment of humanities programs at the UT Health Science Center at Houston and the UT Medical Branch at Galveston.

The History of Cancer

1989-01-01
The History of Cancer

Author: James Stuart Olson

Publisher: ABC-CLIO

ISBN: 9780313258893

Category: Health & Fitness

Page: 426

View: 694

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Olson has prepared a comprehensive, annotated bibliography of the history of cancer. The emphasis of this work is not so much on the purely medical aspects of cancer as on the historical documentation of increasing knowledge about its etiology, pathology, epidemiology, forms and manifestations, and the men and women who have distinguished themselves in the study and treatment of the disease. The citations include books, articles in scholarly and general periodicals, medical and general publications, and primary and secondary sources.

Making Cancer History

2009-04-13
Making Cancer History

Author: James S. Olson

Publisher: JHU Press

ISBN: 9780801890567

Category: Health & Fitness

Page: 408

View: 892

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The history of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center vividly reveals how cancer treatment in America -- and our attitudes toward the disease -- has changed since the middle of the twentieth century. One of the preeminent cancer centers in the world, M. D. Anderson is also one of the first medical institutions devoted exclusively to caring for people with cancer and researching treatments and cures for the disease. Historian James S. Olson's narrative relates the story of the center's founding and of the surgeons, radiologists, radiotherapists, nurses, medical oncologists, scientists, administrators, and patients who built M. D. Anderson into the world-class institution it is today. Through interviews with M. D. Anderson's leaders and patients, Olson brings to life the struggle to understand and treat cancer in America. A cancer survivor who has himself been treated at the center, Olson imbues this history with humor, passion, and humanity. -- Helen Valier

Under the Radar

2009
Under the Radar

Author: Ellen Leopold

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

ISBN: 9780813544045

Category: History

Page: 302

View: 223

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In Under the Radar, Ellen Leopold shows how nearly every aspect of our understanding and discussion of cancer bears the imprint of its Cold War entanglement. The current biases toward individual rather than corporate responsibility for rising incidence rates, research that promotes treatment rather than prevention, and therapies that can be patented and marketed all reflect a largely hidden history shaped by the Cold War. Even the language we use to describe the disease, such as the guiding metaphor for treatment, "fight fire with fire," can be traced back to the middle of the twentieth century.