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Minerva

Minerva

BMJ 2003; 327 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.327.7418.818 (Published 02 October 2003) Cite this as: BMJ 2003;327:818

Speaking at the 2003 meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago, which highlighted tobacco control as one of this year's themes, the society's president said “As an American, I am horrified we are exporting this substance of death around the world.” He called on the US government to support all efforts to eliminate this “true weapon of mass destruction” (European Journal of Cancer 2003;39: 1814).

The pool of hearts available for donation might expand if hearts with coronary heart disease were used, which might mean the recipient undergoing bypass surgery at the time of transplantation. When 22 people who received diseased hearts were followed up one and two years later, the results were really pretty good. There had been four early deaths, largely due to the poor health of the recipient, but selective use of donor hearts with blocked arteries can work. In this study, all the hearts had preserved left ventricular function on echocardiography (Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery 2003;126: 821–5).

Analysis of a UK cohort of 1848 patients treated with human pituitary growth hormone from 1959 to 1985 revealed 38 cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The risk seems to be higher in …

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