Fixing for Your Life

Decatenation: fixing your knots.

How tumor cells gain resistance to drugs is critically important to elucidate for developing better cancer therapy. In this issue of Blood, Wray and colleagues have identified a mechanism whereby acute leukemia cells use a stimulator of topoisomerase II activity to allow proliferation despite drug inhibition of this essential enzyme.

Formulas for fixing serum sodium: curb your enthusiasm

A variety of formulas have been proposed to predict changes in serum sodium concentration. All are based on an experiment done over 50 years ago by Edelman, who derived a formula relating the plasma sodium concentration to isotopically measured body sodium, potassium, and water. Some of these formulas fail because they do not include urinary losses of electrolytes and water. Even those that inc...

Economic credentialing: your money or your life!

The economic overhaul of health care in America is restructuring the business of medicine, and with it the relationship between physician and patient. Previously accustomed to thinking primarily about the best interests of each patient, the physician now finds this traditional loyalty in conflict with competing concerns, including those of government, business, and insurers who watch with alarm...

Could Your Pet Save Your Life?

Escaping with your life

Of the many horrors of September 11, 2001, the sight of people falling and jumping to their deaths from the Towers of the World Trade Center will not be soon forgotten by anyone watching. The sight brutally expressed the desperation of those trapped above the raging fires, unable or unwilling to descend through the wounded structures. Even in light of the eventual collapse of the structures, th...