Word: systemic
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...dream seems about to come true, thanks to a pioneering medical treatment. Exactly a year ago last week, Keone, now 13, became the first sickle-cell patient to receive a transplant of blood cells from the umbilical cord of a newborn infant. In effect, he got a new bloodmaking system. Other young sickle-cell patients have undergone transplants, but these involved bone-marrow cells and had to be matched precisely with the recipients' own blood. In Keone's case, though, his half-sister could not offer matching marrow. So his doctors decided to turn to more easily available cord blood...
...prepare for the transplant, Keone had to undergo nine days of chemotherapy. The object was to kill his bone marrow, the source of his sickled blood cells, as well as to neutralize his immune system so it would accept the new cells. These came from an anonymous donor at the New York Blood Center and were fed intravenously into Keone on Dec. 11 last year by Yeager and his colleagues at the AFLAC Cancer Center of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta (formerly Egleston Children's Hospital...
...Keone the aftermath of the expensive ($200,000) treatment was like a death-defying roller-coaster ride. Again and again, he was readmitted to the hospital with fevers, diarrhea and loss of appetite, once for a six-week stay. Nine months after the transplant, his new immune system began attacking his own cells, inflaming his liver and intestines. Strong immunosuppressive drugs brought that emergency under control before any permanent damage occurred. Still, no one was breathing easy, least of all the physicians...
Educators who help their students cheat are a tiny minority. Teachers' union leaders disputed the cheating charges in New York City last week, claiming they were based on the unproved allegations of children and, in any event, do not constitute a "sweeping indictment of the entire system." Still, the temptation to cheat seems to be growing among teachers, who are being held accountable if their students don't measure up. "Anytime you have this kind of mounting pressure about getting children to a standard," says New York City's school chancellor, Rudy Crew, "it shouldn't come as any wonder...
...found a way out, by going undercover and taking part in a 17-month probe that has exposed a shameful side of New York City's public school system. A special investigator, Edward Stancik, alleges that two principals and 50 other educators at 32 elementary and middle schools helped students cheat on standardized tests. Some hinted broadly at correct answers while students were taking the test; others used the scrap-paper method to avoid the multiple erasures that often indicate cheating; a few even changed answers after their students turned in the exams. The motive is not hard to discern...