Science Tuesday - Squirrels, Cancer, Genetic Testing, Plague, and Global Warming

Findings: Love at First Sniff: How to Tell a Squirrel by Her Singular Bouquet
By JOHN SCHWARTZ, The New York Times, January 17, 2006


For Belding's ground squirrels, it's a smell world, after all. New research reveals at least five sources of body scent that the squirrels, Spermophilus beldingi, use as a symphony of smell to identify one another.
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A Therapy Fell Out of Favor, but Didn't Stop Saving Lives
By DENISE GRADY, The New York Times, January 17, 2006


Two months ago, when her surgeon recommended a series of treatments that would pump drugs directly into her abdominal cavity to fight advanced ovarian cancer, Gail Hilvers called her chemotherapy doctor to request it. He flatly refused.

"He said no research showed it was effective," said Ms. Hilvers, who is 51.

But she trusted her surgeon, so she decided to have the abdominal treatments, even though it would mean repeated 92-mile trips from her home in Ripon, Calif., to Stanford University Hospital.

Now, she is feeling especially lucky that she took the surgeon's advice. On Jan. 5, a large study was published showing that abdominal treatment, combined with the usual intravenous chemotherapy, could add 16 months or more to the lives of many women with advanced ovarian cancer - a survival increase so large that it would be considered a major advance in any type of cancer.
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Cases: Genetic Testing Creates New Versions of Ancient Dilemmas
By ROBERT KLITZMAN, M.D., The New York Times, January 17, 2006


"I pleaded with my sister, Susan, to get genetic testing, but she refused," a woman recently told me in my office.

Susan, the woman said, already had breast cancer, so her health insurance company would have paid for the testing.

"I am at high risk for developing breast cancer," she said. If she knew that Susan was gene positive, she would consider having her own breasts removed.

The woman in my office couldn't afford the genetic testing herself: it costs over $3,000. Her insurance wouldn't pay for the testing because she had not yet had cancer. Yet she had had multiple calcifications in her breasts. Tumors could be hiding there, undetected. The woman's mother and aunt had died of the disease.

Genetic tests for the breast cancer genes known as BRCA1 and BRCA2 account for only 40 to 80 percent of all breast cancers. Researchers are still trying to identify BRCA3 and BRCA4 genes that may account for the rest.

In the meantime, Susan's refusal to be tested affected this woman's life, as well. In the new genetic age, the notion that family members are "bound by ties of blood" takes on new meaning.
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Vital Signs: Prevention: New Plague Vaccine: It Works on Guinea Pigs
By ERIC NAGOURNEY, The New York Times, January 17, 2006


Researchers say they have taken a step toward developing a reliable vaccine against plague.
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Frog Killer Is Linked to Global Warming
By ANDREW C. REVKIN, The New York Times, January 12, 2006


Scientists studying a fast-dwindling genus of colorful harlequin frogs on misty mountainsides in Central and South America are reporting today that global warming is combining with a spreading fungus to kill off many species.

The researchers implicate global warming, as opposed to local variations in temperature or other conditions. Their conclusion is based on their finding that patterns of fungus outbreaks and extinctions in widely dispersed patches of habitat were synchronized in a way that could not be explained by chance.

If the analysis holds up, it will be the first to link recent climate changes to the spread of a fungus lethal to frogs and salamanders and their kin. The chytrid fungus, Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, has devastated amphibian communities in many parts of the world over the last several decades.
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