front cover of Network Medicine
Network Medicine
Complex Systems in Human Disease and Therapeutics
Joseph Loscalzo
Harvard University Press, 2017

Big data, genomics, and quantitative approaches to network-based analysis are combining to advance the frontiers of medicine as never before. Network Medicine introduces this rapidly evolving field of medical research, which promises to revolutionize the diagnosis and treatment of human diseases. With contributions from leading experts that highlight the necessity of a team-based approach in network medicine, this definitive volume provides readers with a state-of-the-art synthesis of the progress being made and the challenges that remain.

Medical researchers have long sought to identify single molecular defects that cause diseases, with the goal of developing silver-bullet therapies to treat them. But this paradigm overlooks the inherent complexity of human diseases and has often led to treatments that are inadequate or fraught with adverse side effects. Rather than trying to force disease pathogenesis into a reductionist model, network medicine embraces the complexity of multiple influences on disease and relies on many different types of networks: from the cellular-molecular level of protein-protein interactions to correlational studies of gene expression in biological samples. The authors offer a systematic approach to understanding complex diseases while explaining network medicine’s unique features, including the application of modern genomics technologies, biostatistics and bioinformatics, and dynamic systems analysis of complex molecular networks in an integrative context.

By developing techniques and technologies that comprehensively assess genetic variation, cellular metabolism, and protein function, network medicine is opening up new vistas for uncovering causes and identifying cures of disease.

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front cover of The New Harvard Guide to Women’s Health
The New Harvard Guide to Women’s Health
Karen J. Carlson, M.D., Stephanie A. Eisenstat, M.D., and Terra Ziporyn, Ph.D.
Harvard University Press, 2004

With the publication in 1996 of The Harvard Guide to Women's Health, women seeking answers to questions about their health had access to the combined expertise of physicians from three of the world's most prestigious medical institutions: Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Brigham and Women's Hospital. With complete information on women's health concerns, physical and behavioral, this A to Z reference quickly became a definitive resource, praised especially for its coverage of topics not previously considered under the umbrella of women's health. The New Harvard Guide to Women's Health reunites the authors to bring a valued health reference up to date for a new generation--and for those women who have come to rely on the Harvard Guide and are now wondering what to do about their health as they enter a new stage of life, asking questions like the following: I've been on hormone replacement therapy. Should I stop? How?
Could this rash be lupus?
I've been on the Pill. What is my risk for stroke?
Fat is bad, fat is good: What should I believe? And what's left to eat?
When does ordinary worry become chronic anxiety?
What screening tests do I need now?
In addition to revised recommendations reflecting the current medical thinking on menopause and hormone replacement therapy, the New Harvard Guide includes updated recommendations about cardiac health and heart disease--the #1 killer of women in the United States
entries reflecting recent advances in the understanding and treatment of autoimmune diseases
better coverage of health concerns throughout a woman's life span, from her first period to menopause and beyond, with a new entry on perimenopause
expanded nutritional recommendations, including a unique chart of the U.S. government's Daily Reference Intakes for micronutrients, broken down for teens and women whose needs may differ because they are pregnant, breastfeeding, or postmenopausal
updated information on over-the-counter medications, prescription drugs, procedures, screenings, and diagnostic tests

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front cover of Notorious H.I.V.
Notorious H.I.V.
The Media Spectacle Of Nushawn Williams
Thomas Shevory
University of Minnesota Press, 2004

The real story behind the Nushawn Williams case: media distortions, judicial contortions, ruined lives

In the fall of 1997, public authorities in Chautauqua County, New York, were granted an exception to the state’s HIV confidentiality law—and released Nushawn Williams’s name and picture to the press, deeming him a “public health threat,” the source of a “near epidemic” of HIV transmission. Williams, who is HIV-positive, had unprotected sex with many young women and girls and infected at least nine of them.

In Notorious H.I.V. Thomas Shevory sorts through the ensuing media panic and legal imbroglio to tell the story behind the Nushawn Williams case. Through media reports, legal documents, and interviews with many of the participants—including Williams, who eventually pled guilty to reckless endangerment and statutory rape charges and is currently serving time in a maximum security prison in New York—Shevory exposes the significant exaggerations, misunderstandings, and distortions that riddled the Williams case from the start. He contends that Williams’s portrayal as an “AIDS monster” served political purposes; specifically, representations of Williams helped to foster the passage of HIV-transmission statutes, resulting in criminalizing a public health problem in a virtually unprecedented fashion.Notorious H.I.V. also traces the impact of such high-profile cases on communities. Shevory provides a nuanced portrait of the hard economic and cultural realities of Jamestown, New York, and, drawing on Williams’s narratives, of the life of a lower-level drug dealer in a small upstate city. His work shows how media coverage robs individuals like Williams of their humanity, creating a pervasive atmosphere of threat that warps the integrity and fairness of the criminal justice and penal system.
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