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Despite the extraordinary long-distance diagnostic skills of Sen. Jim Bunning, R. Ky., who predicted at a Saturday Republican fundraising dinner that she’ll be dead in nine months, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg took the bench for oral argument this morning, just as she’d promised. Ginsburg underwent surgery for pancreatic cancer earlier this month. Her doctors are optimistic about her prognosis. As her clerks will tell you, Ginsburg doesn’t do drama. She also doesn’t miss court.
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I haven’t been on our blog much of late because I recently became one of the millions of Americans who lost someone to cancer: On Christmas Day, my mother died after a two-and-a-half year “battle,” as the locution goes, with colorectal cancer. As many of you know, cancer affects nearly all of us in one way or another. New 2008 figures from the American Cancer Society show that men have an approximately 1 in 2 chance of developing some form cancer over the course of their life (44.92 percent) and women have an approximately 1 in 3 chance (37.52 percent). One of my New Year’s resolutions involves urging everyone I know near the age of 50—including you, dear readers—to get a colonoscopy. Really. It’s not that bad. And colon cancer, unlike many other cancers, is detectable in its early stages, before it has spread to other organs and lymph nodes.
Early detection is notoriously difficult, so I was particularly eager to read Wired’s provocative January cover story about the flaws in our “war on cancer.” It profiles a number of scientists and doctors who believe that America should spend less money on developing treatment on late-stage patients and more on developing tests to detect cancer before it metastasizes. The idea is that we can actually make headway in identifying cancer early on—though we have done a bad job of it so far. This proposition is tantalizing, and the Canary Foundation, a newish research group devoted to “the new science of early detection,” appears to be doing good work. But the piece (by Thomas Goetz) also manifested, I thought, a slightly breathless embrace of science that still seems to be iffy. To take one small example, the test for ovarian cancer Goetz mentions—measuring levels of the protein CA-125—can also be indicative of underlying conditions that have nothing to do with cancer—including endometrial cysts. This doesn’t help someone figure out whether to have reproductive- or cancer-based surgery. Now, as Goetz points out later, researchers are working on developing an ancillary test that will work with the CA-125 tumor marker to pinpoint ovarian cancer more specifically. But I wonder if any of our other science-minded bloggers read the article, and, if so, what light you might be able to shed. Should we be making a more concerted effort to develop tests for early detection rather than new treatments? Is it really an either/or option?
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Are we really preparing to underwrite private insurance companies? I'm sorry, but when did they ever do that for us? In fact, I'd say their current symptoms involve a pre-existing condition, wouldn't you? If we're gonna nationalize this bunch of heartless scammers, mightn't this be an excellent moment to think seriously at last about a single-payer health care system? You gotta give John McCain and Sarah Palin credit for chutzpah, running around squawking that Barack Obama's health care plan is booga-booga scary socialist. But the idea that we should reserve our largesse for bean-counters looking for reasons to cut off benefits mid-chemo makes me feel Sicko.
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Just a couple of questions are clouding my understanding of all this, counselor, and stuff I'd still like to know includes:
Was all this going on when you renewed your wedding vows last summer at that intimate backyard ceremony where you wrote your own vows and there was not a dry eye in the house? (The one your wife of 30 years lost weight for, because she wanted to look pretty for you and fit into her wedding dress?)
Is this why you keep losing your wedding ring?
When Elizabeth waited to tell you that she had a lump in her breast the size of a golf ball because she swore to God after Wade died she'd never give you any bad news ever again ... your way of repaying her was with the news you'd betrayed her, Cate, Wade's memory, and the babies she gladly took dangerous hormones to conceive? Got it.
Oh, and just one more: Remember all those holier-than-Bill Clinton remarks? So do I. If you think anyone in the universe believes your beyond Clinton-esque "I was standing on one foot when we did it so it doesn't count'' nonsense, or cares whether you used the L-word, or trusts for a single segundo that you're not the baby daddy? I think you're about to find out how cold it can get in summer, senator.
And as for you, Miss Hunter? Even if all your dreams one day come true, life as the second Mrs. de Winter is going to look pleasant by comparison.
P.S. post interview: So sue me—anybody know a good lawyer?—but I can't help feeling just a little bit sorry for the whole human race when I see just one more ninny who threw it all away for five minutes with an 80s coke—nope, not gonna fall into that blame-the-woman trap. I don't know why Edwards kept repeating, "This is my fault and no one else's.' (Duh.) Nerves, I guess.
The most unbelievable part of the interview was when he said his buddy Fred Baron, formerly of Baron & Budd, had been paying his former mistress $15,000 a month behind his back; dude, you can lie better than that! Baron is a big Dallas lawyer who made his $$ suing people for asbestos exposure, even when there were no damages. I was in his house once a million years ago, for a party he threw when a friend of mine married one of his law partners, and asbestos has been very good to him, even if I do recall my fellow working stiffs from the paper standing around the pool making fun of his ugly art; that's what happens when you invite a bunch of reporters into chi-chi Preston Hollow. A little while back, Baron even sued his own law firm, so the idea that this total shark would lay out 15 large a month just for grins and all on his own is the lamest load of hooey I've heard outside a campaign ad.
But—yes, Mickey, this is the moment you've been waiting for—there is also no getting around the fact that Elizabeth was flat wrong, too, after she found out about the affair, not to tell him in no uncertain terms that he would not be running in '08 after all, for the good of the party if nothing else. I'm sure they convinced themselves that what he had to offer the country was worth the risk, but it wasn't, and that is some major enabling she was involved in; the Democrats are darn lucky they got No Drama Obama instead.
Melinda Henneberger will be chatting on Washingtonpost.com about the Edwards affair at 2 p.m. today. Send her a question!
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About a minute into overreacting to Bonnie's completely hypothetical scenario—hello, Elizabeth Edwards is still very much alive!—I see that I may be identifying with her a little too closely, as an oversharing cancer survivor and all. (Plus, my husband has a nice head of hair! OK, I made that part up. Good thing he never reads this blog.) Still, I can't bear to see her written off when there's always the chance of an alternate ending.
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