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By Lauren Pecorino

There is a tendency to complain about policies when writing blogs, but I think it is time to commend the British campaigns and innovations in treatment. They have proven to be some of the best in the world and have had a major impact in the fight against cancer.

One of the best British campaigns is against cervical cancer. Getting personally posted invitations to attend your next PAP screening, supported by pamphlets of information, is something few women ignore. Those who try to ignore these invitations are rightly and relentlessly bombarded with regular reminders.

And, with the knowledge that a sexually transmitted virus, Human Papilloma Virus (HPV), is responsible for all cases of cervical cancer, the UK implemented a national school-based HPV vaccination programme that has proven to yield high uptake. By 2009, 70 percent of 12-13 year olds in the UK were fully vaccinated. These results are admirable compared to the results of alternative on-demand provisions offered by other countries including the USA. Note that the vaccine is recommended for early teens as it is a preventative vaccine and not a therapeutic vaccine, and must be administered before the initiation of sexual activity for it to be effective. The vaccine prevents about 70% of cervical cancers caused by two specific strains of HPV. PAP screening is still important to catch cases that are not prevented by the vaccine. An added bonus of this campaign is that the same vaccine also protects against some head, neck, and anal cancers caused by HPV infections.

Another great British effort is towards the prevention of lung cancer. The anti-smoking adverts have been haunting, especially the most recent one released by the UK Department of Health that shows a tumor growing on a cigarette. It is brilliant. I wish I had designed it. The advert strikingly conveys the message that if you saw the damage smoking causes, you would not smoke. The percentage of male cigarette smokers have fallen from 55% in 1970 to 21% in 2010 and a decreasing number of deaths due to lung cancer has followed this trend.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The UK is also a model of good practice in that it is the only country in the world which has a network of free ‘stop-smoking’ services, recently supported by specialized training for National Health Service Stop Smoking practitioners.

We can help the national campaign at a personal level by being more opinionated and outspoken when it comes to letting those around us know that smoking is harmful and “uncool”- especially among the young. We must ensure the message is passed down to new generations.

Finally, the UK is at the leading edge in using stem cells to help replace organs damaged by cancer. Tracheal transplants using tracheal scaffolds from cadavers seeded with the patient’s own stem cells have been used to replace damaged tissue for patients with tracheal cancer. Currently scientists at University College London are developing very similar procedures to grow a new nose for a patient who had lost their nose to cancer. These innovative approaches are the result of a continuously open, well-supported but regulated stem cell research policy, not yet seen in the USA.

Well done Great Britain!

Lauren Pecorino received her PhD from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in Cell and Developmental Biology. She crossed the Atlantic to carry out a postdoctoral tenure at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, London. She is a Principal Lecturer at the University of Greenwich where teaches Cancer Biology and Therapeutics. The teaching of this course motivated her to write The Molecular Biology of Cancer: Mechanisms, Targets, and Therapeutics, now in its second edition. Feedback on the textbook posted on Amazon from a cancer patient drove her to write a book on cancer for a wider audience: Why Millions Survive Cancer: the Successes of Science.

Read a World Cancer Day Q&A with Lauren Pecorino.
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The post World Cancer Day 2013: The Best of British appeared first on OUPblog.

On World Cancer Day 2012, we speak with Dr Lauren Pecorino, author of Why Millions Survive Cancer: the Successes of Science, to learn the latest in the field of cancer research. – Nicola

There are so many myths about cancer that it is sometimes difficult to understand exactly what it is. Can you briefly explain how cancer develops?

Cancer is a disease of the human genome. Many agents that cause cancer cause permanent changes to your genes. These permanent changes are called mutations. Cancer is usually caused by the accumulation of mutations over time. This is why cancer risk increases with age. The altered genes may produce faulty proteins that lead to abnormal cell growth and this appears as a tumour. Cancer is characterized by abnormal cell growth and the ability of tumour cells to spread throughout the body. It is this second characteristic, called metastasis that is the most difficult aspect to treat.

It is said that cancer now affects one in three people over a lifetime. What’s the latest progress in the field of cancer research?

There has been tremendous progress in the field of cancer management. The good news is that trends in death rates are decreasing for many cancers though that is not to say for all cancers. There are millions of cancer survivors who have had their diagnosis ten or more years ago. Many people are now living with cancer. Conventional treatments such as surgical procedures have been refined and new drugs that target tumour-specific molecules have proved efficient and promises less side effects.

In addition, we are learning to make lifestyle choices that science has shown reduces cancer risk — the most obvious being not smoking. We also have cancer screening programmes that can catch cancer early and even prevent cancer by treating pre-cancerous growths. The latest means for preventing a specific type of cancer is a cancer vaccine. Interestingly the vaccine designed to prevent cervical cancer vaccine also prevents several other cancers caused by the human papilloma virus such as some head and neck cancers.

What do you see as the priorities for future cancer research? Where will the next great advances be?

I see four main priorites for future cancer research.

1 –  To develop better and less invasive diagnostics so that we can detect cancer earlier. It is well-known that catching cancer earlier gives a better outcome or prognosis.

2 –  To expand our understanding of the individual molecular differences between tumors and to be able to fully practice personalized medicine which allows a better match between a patient and a drug. This understanding will need to be supported by technology that allows a patient’s tumour DNA to be sequenced (similar to the methods used for the Human Genome Project).

3 –  To understand if we can turn a cancer cell back into a normal cell. This may sound strange but lessons from stem cells and cloning tell us that changing one cell type into another is possible.

4 –  To better understand metastasis and how we can better treat it. The spreading of cancer cells throughout the body is the most difficult aspect of treating

I am so excited about Mickey Edwards and Judith Luna’s articles today that I almost don’t want to post my links of the week. I want you to stay on the blog and read all the great content we had this week. Seriously, how often do I get to post Philip Pullman, John L. Esposito and Patricia Aufderheide in one week! Okay, enough gloating. Links are below but please think twice before clicking away.

Can you help the New Yorker redesign Eustace Tilley?

Will you watch the Golden Globes press conference?

Gloria Steinem’s now famous Hillary crying op-ed. Slate’s snarky response. (more…)

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Every once in a while I get a blog piece from an author that I am so excited about I am compelled to post it immediately, today’s piece fits that bill. Philip Pullman, best known as the author of The Golden Compass, which is in theaters now, also wrote the introduction to the Oxford edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost.  Today, it is my great honor to post Pullman’s thoughts on Milton in 2008.  Enjoy!

Four hundred years after the birth of John Milton, he still lives, his example still inspires, his words still echo. Paradise Lost is played on the stage, is sung to music, is choreographed for a ballet; it is an audiobook, it is the subject of countless theses and dissertations, and on the very morning that I’m writing this, an invitation arrives to the private view of an exhibition of paintings and prints called The Fall of the Rebel Angels, whose iconography is unmistakable. (more…)

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My wonder twin buddy Andy has an article in the inaugural issue of The Code4Lib Journal, a publication that arose out of the Code4Lib conference and community. Andy does a lot of work to digitize and make information about the historic Pullman district in Chicago available online, almost entirely as a labor of love and with no real financial or administrative support. To me, he is an unsung hero of the digital world, and I am proud to call him my friend.

Connecting the Real to the Representational: Historical Demographic Data in the Town of Pullman, 1880-1940

“The Pullman House History Project is a part of the Pullman State Historic Site’s virtual museum and web site (http://www.pullman-museum.org/) which links together census, city directory, and telephone directory information to describe the people who lived in the town of Pullman, Illinois between 1881 and 1940. This demographic data is linked through a database/XML record system to online maps and Perl programs that allow the data to be represented in various useful combinations. This article describes the structure of the database and XML records, as well as the methods and code used to link the parts together and display the data.”

It's Sunday, and you know what that means: time for a bit of quoteskimming.

On Poetry:

"Poetry began when somebody walked off a savanna or out of a cave and looked up at the sky with wonder and said, 'Ah-h-h!' That was the first poem. The urge towards 'Ah-h-h!' is very human, it's in everybody." ~Lucille Clifton

"Don't shackle poetry with your definitions. Poetry is not a frail and cerebral old woman, you know. Poetry is stronger than you think. Poetry is imagination and will break those chains faster than you can say 'Harlem Renaissance.'" ~Mark Flanagan

On Writing Poetry:

"One of the most definable characteristics of the poetic form is economy of language. Poets are miserly and unrelentingly critical in the way they dole out words to a page. Carefully selecting words for conciseness and clarity is standard, even for writers of prose, but poets go well beyond this, considering a word's emotive qualities, its musical value, its spacing, and yes, even its spacial relationship to the page." ~Mark Flanagan

"The imagery gets richer as I write. 'I walk the dog and it’s there' is fine for a rough draft, but I made it more specific in the final draft: 'I walk the dog and plot how it gets stamped on my ankle bone.' . . . I find this to be true of nearly all my rough drafts---the triggering words are mundane, the ending words, much richer. I get more 'live hits' the deeper in I go." ~Sara Lewis Holmes, in her notes about the construction of her poem, "Inked: On Memorizing Gerard Manley Hopkins". You can read Sara's poem, hear Sara read her own poem, and check out the rough draft and notes (from whence came this quote) at Sara's podcast site, A Cast of One.

"Writing a poem is like conducting an argument between your unconscious mind and your conscious self. You have to get unconsciousness and consciousness lined up in some way. I suspect that's why working to a form, achieving a stanza, and keeping to it—deciding that the first and third and fifth lines will have to rhyme, and that you're going to insist on so many stresses per line—oddly helps the poem to be born. That is, to free itself from you and your attentions to it and become a piece of art in itself. Heaven only knows where it comes from! I suppose working out a form diminishes the thousands of possibilities you face when you begin. And once you've cut down the possibilities, you can't swim off into the deep and drown." ~Anne Stevenson

On revision and critique:

This week, the lovely and talented Jennifer Hubbard spoke to a college class about the art of revising. "One interesting question that came up was what to do with criticism that seems to be based on a misunderstanding of your intent. I could think of 3 reasons for such criticism: 1) the person didn't read the work closely enough; 2) the person read into the work something from his/her own mind; 3) whatever was in your head didn't actually make it down on paper. Talking to the critiquer can help establish which one it is." You can check out Jenn's post and the comments here.

"Take a break. Let the story sit a week or two before you go back to revise. After all, 'revise' means 'see again.' You can't take a second look at something unless you first look away." ~David Lubar, quoted by Kate Messner in her speech to the NYS English Council. You can read more revision tips from others (including, well, me) in Kate's blog post.

On characters

What makes a memorable character, particularly in a children's book?

"'It has to do with an intensity of presence,' [Philip] Pullman says. 'Just as some people are so much there that you can sense when they come into the house, so some characters in fiction have the same authority or charisma. Some personal quality makes them more alive than their fellow characters. It has nothing to do with how good or friendly a characters is. They can be horrible, and you can still not lift your eyes from the page when they appear.'" From an article by Amanda Craig that appeared in The Times, called Creating Characters.

On character motivation, again from Jenn Hubbard (and if you aren't reading her yet, really, why aren't you?):

Some things that help me get in touch with the motivations of my characters--the secret and the not-so-secret motivations:

Asking myself, 'What does this character really, really want, more than anything?' (sounds obvious, but I can't believe how far into a first draft I can get before I remember to ask this!)
Writing some scenes from different characters' points of view
Writing scenes that don't appear in the final manuscript, but that help me see how characters interact in other situations
Rewriting scenes with different endings (I thought the scene went this-a-way, but what if it went that-a-way instead? What if the character said this, not that? Then where does the scene go? What am I learning about everyone?)

THE FIRST AUCTION STARTS TOMORROW! You can see precisely which flakes will be on the block this week at The Robert's Snow page. While there, you can find information on how to register to be a bidder, and can check out the bidding rules.

To check out the snowflakes featured in today's blogosphere, click on the Robert's Snow button. Jules at 7-Imp has posted two new 2007 snowflakes: an astonishing winged snowflake featuring "Cupid and Psyche" from Rebecca Guay, and Kathy Jakobsen's DC-inspired "Jefferson Memorial/Washington Monument". In addition, Jules and Eisha have also been keeping an ongoing list of blog posts thus far featuring snowflakes and the artists who created them.

Last night, a dozen or so child_lit contributors gathered at long-time list member Monica Edinger's apartment -- one floor above the festivities of a New York City "neighborhood" Halloween Party (read: in the lobby for the kids in the huge apartment building on West 111th Street.)

Philip Pullman and wife Jude were the honored guests for the night. We chatted about the "lineage" of our child_lit involvement.. from the creation of the list by Michael Joseph, who was there with Constance Vidor, his lovely partner, and Head Librarian at Friends' Seminary. We thanked Michael for creating a space in the cyber world for us to exchange ideas and forge otherwise unlikely friendship. GraceAnne DiCandido, Kirkus reviewer and my Library School teacher, was responsible for the two reviews of His Dark Materials' 2nd and 3rd installments. Other child_lit pals who came to help celebrate the occasion were Waller Hastings, English/Children's Lit. professor from South Dakota, now visiting professor at Rutgers this year, Pooja Makhijani, writer at Children's Television Workshop/Sesame Street International, Cheryl Klein, editor at Arthur Levine Books/Scholastic, John Peters, Supervising Librarian of NYPL's Donnell children's library, past Newbery Chair, and prolific reviewer, Uli Knoepflmacher, English Professor at Princeton University and expert on Victorian and children's literature who just recently joined child_lit, and Kerry Mockler, 4th-year PhD student and teacher of children's literature and baker of a host of His Dark Materials inspired butter cookies. They were incredibly yummy. My students in the sci-fi/fantasy club thanked her for this gift (the next day, while sharing the story Mimsy Were the Borogoves)!

Our dinner was 3 pizzas from, some salad, wine and champagne -- but the main ingredient was the non-stop conversation around the room: all about children's books and once in a while some weird child_lit history surfaced.

Here are just three pictures to mark the evening for me:

This is me talking to Philip. (I didn't quite wash off all my zombie make-up from the day and had to do a little photoshop-doctoring before posting it on the Journal. Haha.)



This is the tray of cookies waiting to be revealed...



This is a picture of Kerry and Philip. We were all so pleased with this perfect ending for a perfect evening. Yeah for Kerry!