This is the Forward’s coverage of Jewish culture where you’ll learn about the latest (and sometimes earliest) in Jewish art, music (including of course Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen), film, theater, books as well as the secret Jewish history of…
Culture
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‘Daylight Breaks’ for Canavan Boy
Jordana Holovach is tenacious. In the first few minutes of “As Daylight Breaks,” a documentary about Holovach, 33, and her 7-year-old son, Jacob Sontag, Holovach reads aloud the first page of her journal. “November 19, 2002,” the pretty, blond-haired Holovach says, without betraying any emotion. “My Jacob — my beautiful 6-year-and-9-month-old son — [was] diagnosed…
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Models Open Door for Gaucher Cure
A team of scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, recently solved the three-dimensional structure of glucocerebrosidase, the enzyme whose deficiency causes Gaucher disease. As a result of this development, new therapies for Gaucher patients may become available soon. The development was reported in July in Biotech Week. “This now gives us…
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Gene Therapy Holds Hope for Disease
In the budding field of gene-therapy, a number of diseases and areas of the body have undergone tests and treatment — but not, until recently, the brain. Canavan patients are the first human beings to receive gene therapy in the brain, and not only has this new form of gene therapy greatly surpassed past efforts…
The Latest
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‘Movement for Life’: One Woman Strives Against Gaucher
Suzanne Krupskas’s patients say that she is the best physical therapist they’ve ever seen. She’s better than most, they say, because she has a unique perspective that helps her empathize with her patients. After all, Krupskas has been coping with her own physical pain for more than 20 years. Krupskas has Type 1 Gaucher disease,…
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Where to find support and assistance
CANAVAN FOUNDATION 110 Riverside Dr., #4F New York, NY 10024 (212) 873-4640 (877) 4-canavan fax: (212) 873-7892 www.canavanfoundation.org [email protected] A volunteer, nonprofit foundation, whose goals are to support research and to educate the medical community and at-risk populations. FANCONI ANEMIA RESEARCH FUND 1801 Willamette St., Suite 200 Eugene, OR 97401 (541) 687-4658 (800) 828-4891 fax:…
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Two Young Women, One Bad Leukemia
In a small auditorium in the basement of the 369th Regiment Armory in Harlem, Jackie Donahue is chatting with a co-worker. A bright orange head-wrap covers her bald head and gold hoop dangle from her ear lobes. She looks happy, almost ebullient — characteristics that seem incongruous with someone in her condition. Elsewhere, in St….
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Advances and News in Brief
Cancer Screening The National Prostate Cancer Coalition plans to screen more than 10,000 men across the country this year in its “Drive Against Prostate Cancer” with a mobile screening unit that will enable local physicians to administer a prostate-specific antigen blood test and a physical examination. “Studies show early detection of prostate cancer saves lives,”…
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‘Orphan Drugs’ Orphaned by Budget Cuts
Advocates for sufferers of rare diseases are working to ensure passage of newly introduced legislation that would counteract a recent administrative action they say deprives those with such maladies of vital medicines. The Medicare Patient Access to Drugs for Rare Diseases Act of 2003, introduced in the House of Representatives July 10, is intended to…
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Annual Guide to Jewish Genetic Diseases
The Forward presents this section to provide information on some of the more serious Jewish genetic diseases. There are about 20 “Ashkenazic diseases,” not counting the higher rates of at least four cancer-related genes. The diseases are more prevalent in the Eastern European Jewish population because of centuries of endogamy, literally, “marrying within.” ———– FAMILIAL…
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LOTS Sufferers Combat Ignorance as Well as Symptoms
When people find out Shirley Webb has late onset Tay-Sachs disease (LOTS), their reactions have ranged from “But you’re older than 5 years old!” to “Why are you alive?” Once, at work, someone saw her pull away from her desk in her wheelchair and exclaimed, “I didn’t know you were crippled!” At 66, Webb, a…
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Drug Trial Brings Hope to Late Onset Tay-Sachs Patients
Doctors are experimenting with an oral medication known as Zavesca as a possible treatment for late onset Tay-Sachs (LOTS) disease, it was reported at a conference in Philadelphia last month. New York University School of Medicine and Cleveland University Hospital both launched trials using the drug, whose chemical name is OGT918 or miglustat, on 15…
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