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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Who Gets Tested for BRCA, and Why?
Many Jewish women of Ashkenazi origin face an increased risk of inherited breast and ovarian cancers, the result of mutations in two genes that became relatively common to Eastern Europeans. Women with bad copies of either gene, called BRCA1 and BRCA2, have a lifetime risk of breast cancer that approaches 85%. Their overall risk of…
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Surgery Promises Relief for Dystonia
When Peter Cohen entered a public swimming pool recently, he was greeted with several rounds of applause. Cohen is not a person whom one would normally expect to be met with such a reception; he has never been an Olympian, nor has he ever held public office. Merely attempting to move about freely in a…
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DNA Bank Dilemma: Who Owns the Data?
Two years ago, the Israeli company Genomica embarked on a comprehensive and unprecedented study in which DNA samples were collected from thousands of patients to build a private DNA bank for the purpose of finding new disease-causing genes. The establishment of the private DNA bank caught the Health Ministry off guard; no public debate had…
The Latest
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Oncologist Seeks To Develop Vaccine Against Pancreatic Cancer
When Elizabeth Jaffee was studying to become a doctor, back in the 1980s, her uncle was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Yet even with her medical knowledge, “there was nothing I could even suggest,” said Jaffee, whose uncle passed away three months later. “The fact that there’s no hope bothers me more than anything.” Now Jaffee…
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Little Girl’s Affliction Sparks Flowering of Creativity
In the close-knit community of Greenmeadow, Calif., a 2-year-old girl diagnosed with a rare Jewish genetic disease cannot talk, but her spirit speaks loudly enough to touch many people beyond her neighborhood. There is no cure for the disease afflicting Sophia Herzog-Sachs, who was diagnosed with Niemann-Pick Type A in early 2002 and whose life…
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Doctors Find Fanconi Link to Pancreatic Cancer
There is some bad news for those carrying genes that can lead to Fanconi anemia, a rare blood disorder. Recently, a team of scientists at Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center found that three genes linked to Fanconi anemia play a role in pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal forms of the malignancy. The study,…
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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…
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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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