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ABC is signing up for awareness month with its series The Fight Against Breast Cancer. Barbara Pinto told us about a screening test for a cancer-related gene. A woman who does not have the gene has a 12% lifetime chance of finding a tumor in her breast; the odds for those testing positive range from 35% to 80%. Pinto found a pair of St Louis sisters who both tested positive: Karen Switzer had both breasts surgically removed by radical mastectomy while she was still healthy; Donata Earley waited six months, contracted the disease and has just finished a course of chemotherapy. Pinto should have told us, but did not, what proportion of the population has that troublesome gene.

Strokes was the condition that NBC picked. Robert Bazell wanted us to watch out for Transient Ischemic Attacks: TIAs are painless momentary episodes involving "numbness on one side, blurry vision, dizziness and garbled speech" that disappear after a few minutes. If we have a TIA and get immediate treatment to thin our blood, lower our cholesterol and reduce our blood pressure, our risk of suffering a stroke in the following three months is 80% less than if we go untreated. Bazell should have told us, but did not, what proportion of the population experiences those TIAs.

CBS picked arthritis. Anchor Katie Couric had CNN's in-house surgeon Sanjay Gupta kick off a series Boomer Bodies about the aches and pains of her aging demographic. Gupta zeroed in on women's knees: of the 500,000 artificial replacement joints implanted each year, 70% are fitted for women because their knees are less muscular than men's, "more prone to injuries." Gupta showed us new $30,000-per-procedure ceramic implants that bend and rotate easily. Do not undergo arthroscopic knee surgery for arthritis, he advised "it is no better than just a placebo." Couric told us, as she should have, that arthritis afflicts one American adult in five.

Andrew Tyndall 10/9/07 8:25:59 pm

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