Posts Tagged ‘cancer’
Singer Eartha Kitt dies at 81
Posted on: December 29, 2008
Eartha Kitt, who rose from the Southern cotton fields to captivate audiences around the world with sultry performances as a singer, dancer and actress, died on Thursday at the age of 81.
Kitt died of colon cancer for which she was recently treated at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York.The cancer was detected about two years ago and treated but recurred after a period of remission.”She came back strongly. She had been performing until two months ago.
Slinky, sensuous and cat-like, Kitt described herself as a “sex kitten” and used her seductive purr to charm audiences across the world.Actor-director Orson Welles once called Kitt “the most exciting woman alive” and, along with Lena Horne, she was one of the first African-American sex symbols.
Kitt picked up a string of awards during her long career, winning two Emmys and being nominated for a third, as well as a Grammy. She also had two Tony nominations.Her hit songs included “C’est Si Bon,” “Let’s Do It” and “Just an Old Fashioned Girl.” She also was widely associated with Christmas because of her hit “Santa Baby.” The song, recorded in 1953, went gold this year and she received the gold record before she died.
Despite those accolades, Kitt may have been at her best in her nightclub act, which allowed her to use her feline, seductive manner to its fullest.”She loved cabaret performances,” Freedman said. “If there was ever an opportunity to do a small intimate venue with about 150 people, that was always her preference.”
Kitt was blackballed in America for speaking out against the Vietnam War in the 1960s — most notoriously at a White House luncheon in the company of first lady Lady Bird Johnson. Kitt then began performing in Europe, where she had been popular early in her career, and eventually returned to the United States to great acclaim.
“She was never one to look back on her life,”. “She was a true individual who believed that if you had a true belief in yourself, your talent was authentic.”
“My greatest challenge was to be able to survive in the business and to be able to survive according to what I was doing. Not what other people were doing,”.”I just stuck to my own guns and I think that was one of the way’s I have survived. The audience is not supposed to know that I’m scared, the shyest person in the world.”
Kitt was born to a black-Indian mother and a white father on a plantation in South Carolina in 1927. She once described herself as “that little urchin cotton picker from the South, Eartha Mae” and often spoke of a tough childhood in the impoverished segregated South. She was often harassed for being light-skinned before being sent to live with an aunt in New York City.
But Kitt’s life in New York also was marred by abuse and poverty until she got her start as a member of the Katherine Dunham Company and made her film debut in “Casbah” in 1948.
In April Kitt described her approach to performing by saying: “I do not have an act. I just do Eartha Kitt I want to be whoever Eartha Kitt is until the gods take me wherever they take me.”
She was married in the 1960s to real estate developer Bill McDonald and they had a daughter, named Kitt. She also was known for her relationships with Welles, cosmetics mogul Charles Revson and Arthur Leows Jr. of the U.S. movie theater chain.
Cancer
Posted on: December 11, 2008
Vitamins C and E do not appear to reduce the risk of cancer, according to a pair of new studies which debunk earlier research suggesting supplements might provide some protection against the often deadly ailment.
Some 15,000 men aged 50 and older participated in the study, which included an eight-year follow-up period, but neither vitamin appeared to appreciably reduce their cancer risk, according to the studies appearing in the January 7 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).
The findings are disappointing news for the more than half of American adults take vitamin supplements — many in the hope of warding off illness.
They appear to refute earlier observational studies that linked use of vitamins E and C with reduced risk of certain forms of cancers, including cancer of the prostate.
One of the two studies — the Selenium and Vitamin E Cancer Prevention Trial (SELECT) — found that vitamin E or selenium supplements, whether taken alone or in combination, appear not to reduce the risk of prostate cancer, which is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States.
“It may be time to give up the idea that the protective influence of diet on prostate cancer risk can be emulated by isolated dietary molecules given alone or in combination to middle-aged and older men,” Peter Gann of the University of Illinois at Chicago reflected in a JAMA editorial.
SELECT researchers studied the supplements’ effects over seven years on some 35,533 men, aged 50 years or older.
The researchers said that “large-scale, randomised trials” still must be conducted on the use of vitamin supplements and cancer.
Anti-doping authority Don Catlin and cancer detection expert Lance Liotta say they’re progressing toward a urine test for human growth hormone that could close a major drug-testing loophole.
The man described as the “guru of sports doping” and an East Coast cancer detection expert said they’re on the way to establishing a urine test for human growth hormone that could close a drug-testing loophole experts described Monday as a “widespread” problem in sports.
Don Catlin, a Los Angeles-based worldwide doping expert who oversaw blood testing for HGH at the Beijing Olympics, and Dr. Lance Liotta, a former pathology lab chief at the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Cancer Research, have launched a study to build upon Liotta’s ability to identify isolated markers of HGH in urine.
Catlin’s anti-doping research is entering the third year of work on a three-year, $450,000 grant by Major League Baseball to establish whether an HGH urine test is possible.Baseball officials who weren’t allowed to discuss the situation publicly told The Times the Catlin-Liotta partnership now is poised to be “at the front of the line” when the Partnership for Clean Competition — consisting of MLB, NFL and the U.S. Olympic Committee — begins to distribute funds from a pool of $10 million later this year.
Liotta, a professor at George Mason University, said he has arranged a study of students there that will analyze their natural HGH levels in blood and urine. The study will seek to establish a baseline standard that can be compared for instances when an abundance of synthetic HGH, prescribed mostly for AIDS patients and individuals with dwarfism, is found in the system.
Cautioning that such research is conducted “in fits and starts,” UCLA professor Gary Green, the summit director who serves as MLB’s consultant on performance-enhancing drugs, said a realistic timeline for HGH urine testing would be the 2012 Summer Games in London.The clock will tick amid abuses, summit attendees warned.
“Growth hormone promotes muscle mass and reduces fat mass . . . and is widely used by athletes,” Dr. Richard I.G. Holt of England’s University of Southampton said.World Anti-Doping Agency senior manager Osquel Barroso said that in light of the current situation, when synthetic HGH leaves the system in 36 hours or less, WADA will advise its worldwide Olympic partners to conduct increased out-of-competition testing.
Summit expert Dr. Thomas Perls, a Boston University associate professor of medicine who has worked with the Drug Enforcement Agency and Department of Justice, said the use of HGH for anti-aging purposes and athletic enhancement by a reported 200,000 in this country has emerged as “a big public health threat.” He described the public distribution of HGH as “a mafia-like drug-trafficking ring,” and said it’s “setting [users] up for cardiovascular disasters.”
But Gene Orza, the baseball union’s chief operating officer, repeated that players aren’t prepared to join the Olympians who submitted to blood tests.
“No one should have complete faith in a test that has not produced a positive result in 8,500 tests,” Orza said at the summit. “If there is a scientifically valid test for HGH, the players will get together and decide how they want to respond. My suspicion is they will adopt it. But they won’t be pushed into accepting something as scientifically valid before it is.”
Catlin admitted that although International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said last week that he expected more positive doping results to emerge in re-testing of samples provided by Beijing athletes, he does not expect an HGH positive to occur.Green had earlier reinforced to attendees that a positive drug test isn’t confirmed until it clears arbitration.
Southland attorney Howard Jacobs, who defended cyclist Floyd Landis in his doping case after Landis was stripped of his 2006 Tour de France title, said the summit raised “a lot of questions” that he would likely explore if he ever represents an HGH-positive client. “They haven’t validated any positive athlete samples,” Jacobs said. “You have to wonder how many studies they’ve conducted, plus there’s collection and transport issues.”
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