Oncology: Mosaic Blood Vessels Could Provide Portal for Metastasis Neurology: Right Brain Appears Quicker than Left at Spotting Self Cell Biology: Protein May Play Double Role in Issuing Genetic Gag Order Neurovirology: New Society Unites Continents, Disciplines in Exploring Viruses Research Resources: Technology Engineering Center Speeds Research Automation at Harvard New Books: The Winter Bookshelf Note on Focus Distribution Study Quantifies Toll of Power Plant Pollution, Benefits from Control Gene for Familial Dysautonomia Discovered Fish May Reduce Risk of Stroke in Women Veterans Hospital Care Matches Quality at Other Hospitals HMS Faculty Council Nominations Being Sought for Society Masters Honors and Advances News Briefs Pain: Our Children Are Not Immune Front Page

NEW BOOKS The Winter Bookshelf Recent Books by Faculty from Harvard Medical, Dental, and Public Health Schools Jody Heymann The Widening Gap Basic Books Subtitled "Why America's Working Families Are in Jeopardy—and What Can Be Done About It," this book explores the growing divide between the needs and resources families have for taking care of children and elders. The great majority of households with children have no stay-at-home adults, says author Jody Heymann, HSPH associate professor of health and social behavior and HMS associate professor of social medicine, yet programs to care for children outside of school do not meet the demand. Nor do resources for elder care. "At the beginning of the 21st century, the United States has few community supports or social services designed to address anything other than preschoolers' routine daytime needs," Heymann writes. "But Americans often have evening, night, or weekend work and are caring for schoolchildren, the elderly, and the disabled as well." Among Heymann's principal sources of data are her Urban Working Families Study and national Daily Diaries Study, the Labor Department's National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, and the Survey of Midlife in the United States. Heymann concludes that the responsibility to care for those in need cannot continue to rest with corporations but must be accepted by the nation as a whole. And that national responsibility must include a safety net for working Americans with urgent care needs. Heymann says that "developing comprehensive, fair, universally available solutions is in fact essential to the fate of our country." Joseph D. Bloom, Carol C. Nadelson, and Malkah T. Notman, Editors Physician Sexual Misconduct American Psychiatric Press, Inc. Throughout the 1990s, health services researchers and well-documented legal cases moved the issue of physician sexual misconduct from a largely unacknowledged, underground problem to an issue that demanded attention. From years of work with physicians guilty of sexual misconduct and the patients they treated, and by chronicling the research of others, Joseph Bloom, medical dean at Oregon Health Sciences University; Carol Nadelson, HMS clinical professor of psychiatry at Brigham and Women's Hospital; and Malkah Notman, HMS clinical professor of psychiatry at Cambridge Hospital, have developed a text that examines the many dimensions of this behavior: legal, ethical, administrative, educational, and rehabilitative. The book offers guidance and insight to all members of the medical profession. W. Michael Byrd and Linda A. Clayton An American Health Dilemma: A Medical History of African Americans and the Problem of Race, Vol. 1 Routledge W. Michael Byrd and Linda Clayton, HSPH alumni and now senior research scientists in the Division of Public Health Practice, have written a history of the American medical establishment's relationship with the African-American community. This first volume in a two volume series details the disparities in health care delivery based on race and class in America through the 19th century, starting with a historical perspective of its basis in the rise of Western medicine in Egypt, Greece, and Rome and continuing through the time of the slave trade; it gives the history of the Black medical profession, including biographical portraits of pioneers like James McCune Smith; and tells the story of two separate and unequal health care systems: one for African Americans and the poor and the other "mainstream" system for nonpoor whites.The authors of this comprehensive and exhaustively researched volume outline four objectives for writing the book in their introduction: to expand the health experience knowledge base, to analyze the U.S. health system from the perspective of African Americans and health-disadvantaged people, to describe the African-American health experience in quantitative public health terms, and to reach some conclusions about the "American health dilemma" based on the African-American health experience and offer suggestions for corrective actions and meaningful health reform. "If this book sheds new light on the race and class dilemmas plaguing America's health delivery system, the struggle and sacrifice will have been worthwhile," the authors write. The second volume, which has not yet been published, will continue with the 20th century. Shiv Pillai Lymphocyte Development: Cell Selection Events and Signals During Immune Ontogeny Birkhäuser Aimed at graduate students and those with a basic knowledge of genetics and molecular biology, this text, written by Shiv Pillai, HMS associate professor of medicine in the molecular genetics laboratory at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, describes the molecular processes of lymphocyte development. "Today development involves the most complex areas of molecular biology—receptors, intracellular signaling, transcriptional responses, and cellular reprogramming," writes David Baltimore in the foreword. "Shiv is able to integrate the advances in these areas into comprehensive stories." Subjects covered include the transcriptional regulation of lymphoid ontogeny, the selection process in lymphocyte maturation, signaling pathways involved in cell cycle progression and apoptosis, and immune receptor gene regulation. Pillai includes several tables with the phenotypes of knockout mice relevant to lymphocyte development and maintains a regularly updated list online at www.mgh.harvard.edu/ depts/cancercenter/tables.html. The text is useful as a supplement in graduate level immunology courses and will be of interest to immunologists. Alex N. Sabo and Leston Havens, Editors The Real World Guide to Psychotherapy Practice Harvard University Press Where have all the practitioners of psychotherapy gone? It's a question that may be asked sometime in the future, since cost-cutting in health care threatens the long-term therapeutic relationship, once the mainstay of mental health practice. In The Real World Guide to Psychotherapy Practice, Cambridge Hospital physicians Alex Sabo, HMS lecturer on psychiatry, and Leston Havens, HMS professor of psychiatry, and the book's other contributors, make a case against the corporatization of mental health care and a one-size-fits-all approach. They offer practical advice and encouragement to the reader through narratives about how to practice beneficial and meaningful psychotherapy within today's administrative constraints. Tamara L. Callahan, Aaron B. Caughey, and Linda J. Heffner Blueprints in Obstetrics & Gynecology, 2nd Edition Seth J. Karp, James P.G. Morris, and David I. Soybel Blueprints in Surgery, 2nd Edition Michael J. Murphy, Ronald L. Cowan, and Lloyd I. Sederer Blueprints in Psychiatry, 2nd Edition Vincent B. Young, William A. Kormos, and Allan H. Goroll Blueprints in Medicine, 2nd Edition Blackwell Science The Blueprints series is geared toward medical students and residents who are reviewing for the United States Medical Licensing Examination steps 2 and 3. Not meant to be comprehensive, the books address "high-yield" topics that recur year after year on the boards. These revised editions include important abbreviations, key areas of clinical focus, and practice questions and answers. The formats of the books are similar. The chapters each cover one clinical focus, defining it and breaking it down into major components. Explanations are reinforced with tables and boxes listing key points. The Q & A's, in addition to readying students and residents for the USMLE, may also prepare them for questions that come up on the wards. HMS authors of the OB/GYN text include clinical fellow Tamara Callahan and associate professor Linda Heffner, both in obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Brigham and Women's Hospital. The surgery authors are clinical fellow Seth Karp and associate professor David Soybel at BWH and James Morris, former instructor at Massachusetts General Hospital. The HMS authors in medicine are instructor William Kormos and associate professor Allan Goroll, both at MGH. And the authors in psychiatry, all based at McLean Hospital, are instructors Michael Murphy and Ronald Cowan, and associate clinical professor Lloyd Sederer. Mark A. Goldstein and Myrna Chandler Goldstein Boys into Men: Staying Healthy Through the Teen Years Greenwood Press While several books have been published in the last few years aimed at parents raising boys, Mark Goldstein, an HMS assistant clinical professor of pediatrics at Children's Hospital, has written a guidebook for health directed at adolescent males themselves. Drawing on his 23 years of experience practicing adolescent medicine, Goldstein addresses issues and concerns that he has encountered with his male patients over the years. The book is written as a practical health guide for adolescents who may feel uncomfortable discussing questions about their health with parents and physicians. Topics cover both physical and mental health, including chapters on physical and emotional growth and development; sports injuries and sports medicine; alcohol, tobacco, and drugs; behavioral, mental, and emotional health issues; and sexuality, as well as one on issues for gay adolescents. At the end of several chapters, Goldstein includes website addresses and contact information of organizations from which readers may get more information. Rudolph E. Tanzi and Ann B. Parson Decoding Darkness: The Search for the Genetic Causes of Alzheimer's Disease Perseus Publishing "Few real nightmares on earth compare to the terror wrought by Alzheimer's disease," the authors write in the introduction to this book. Most insidious is the way the disease slowly extinguishes a person's mind years before it takes one's life. Already 14 million people worldwide are affected, and the number will skyrocket as the world's population grows and people live longer. In the face of this threat, scientists have been racing to find the causes—and possible cures—for this devastating disease. Decoding Darkness tells the story of this medical gambit from the point of view of one of the researchers, Rudolph Tanzi, an HMS professor of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital. Fresh out of college and moonlighting as a rock musician in the early 1980s, Tanzi took a job in the lab of James Gusella, the Bullard professor of neurogenetics, where he helped to identify one of the first disease genes. Enthralled by the experience, he plunged into the world of molecular genetics—Alzheimer's being his main quarry. Working from the hypothesis that Alzheimer's is the result of an excess of the protein beta-amyloid, Tanzi and others set out to find the gene responsible for its production. Tanzi and science writer Ann Parson take the reader into the far-flung labs of many Alzheimer's researchers. In the process, they offer an intimate view of the high stakes of molecular genetics, the revolution that propels it, and the families whose lives depend on it.