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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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…
The Latest
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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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How a Mother Overcame a Malady
Kathryn Goldstein* of Monroe, N.Y., has no medical background, but this proud Orthodox mother of 11 has become an expert on one Jewish genetic disease. Three of her children were diagnosed with the genetic disorder, congenital hyperinsulinism. In 1978, after a healthy full-term pregnancy, Kathryn gave birth to Amanda, her seventh child. Two hours after…
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Usher Gene Discovered
Scientists have pinpointed the gene mutation responsible for most cases of Usher syndrome type 1 in Ashkenazi Jews. The syndrome is a genetic disorder that causes deafness from birth and progressive blindness beginning before age 10. The discovery, first reported in The New England Journal of Medicine in April, will allow doctors to more easily…
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Treatment Seen for Familial Dysautonomia
Two New York doctors have discovered a treatment that is raising hope for sufferers of one of the Jewish genetic diseases. Sylvia Anderson and Berish Rubin, both of the Laboratory for Familial Dysautonomia Research at Fordham University, announced in May that a variant of vitamin E, tocotrienols, is effective as a treatment for familial dysautonomia…
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August 15, 2003
100 YEARS AGO • When Police officer Murphy pushed Isaac Isaacs down at the corner of Forsyth and Division Streets, he probably didn’t think much of it. And when Isaacs’ nephew, David, came running up and demanded Murphy’s badge number, Murphy grabbed him and started dragging him to the precinct. David Isaacs, in Murphy’s grip,…
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Stem Cell Exports to Germany Causing Controversy in Israel
Two Israeli institutions, Haifa’s Technion Israel Institute of Technology and Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, began exporting stem cells culled from human embryos to Germany this year, arousing a storm of controversy within both countries’ scientific and medical communities. Because stem cells have enormous medical potential, many scientists, doctors and ethicists favor the move, saying…
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