Funny

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Other

While I sat in the reception area of my doctor's office, a woman rolled an elderly man in a wheelchair into the room. As she went to the receptionist's desk, the man sat there, alone and silent. Just as I was thinking I should make small talk with him, a little boy slipped off his mother's lap and walked over to the wheelchair. Placing his hand on the man's, he said, 'I know how you feel. My mom makes me ride in the stroller too.'.

* * *

As I was nursing my baby, my cousin's six-year-old daughter, Krissy, came into the room. Never having seen anyone breast feed before, she was intrigued and full of all kinds of questions about what I was doing. After mulling over my answers, she remarked, 'My mom has some of those, but I don't think she knows how to use them.'

* * *

Out bicycling one day with my eight-year-old granddaughter, Carolyn, I got a little wistful. 'In ten years,' I said, 'you'll want to be with your friends and you won't go walking, biking, and swimming with me like you do now. Carolyn shrugged. 'In ten years you'll be too old to do all those things anyway.'

* * *

Working as a pediatric nurse, I had the difficult assignment of giving immunization shots to children. One day I entered the examining room to give four-year-old Lizzie her needle. 'No, no, no!' she screamed. 'Lizzie,' scolded her mother, 'that's not polite behavior.' With that, the girl yelled even louder, 'No, thank you! No, thank you!

* * *

On the way back from a Cub Scout meeting, my grandson asked my son the question. 'Dad, I know that babies come from mommies' tummies, but how do they get there in the first place?' he asked innocently. After my son hemmed and hawed awhile, my grandson finally spoke up in disgust. 'You don't have to make something up, Dad. It's OK if you don't know the answer.'

* * *

Just before I was deployed to Iraq , I sat my eight-year-old son down and broke the news to him. 'I'm going to be away for a long time,' I told him. 'I'm going to Iraq .' 'Why?' he asked. 'Don't you know there's a war going on over there?'

* * *

Paul Newman founded the Hole in the Wall Gang Camp for children stricken with cancer, AIDS and blood diseases. One afternoon he and his wife, Joanne Woodward, stopped by to have lunch with the kids. A counselor at a nearby table, suspecting the young patients wouldn't know that Newman was a famous movie star, explained, 'That's the man who made this camp possible. Maybe you've seen his picture on his salad dressing bottle?' Blank stares. 'Well, you've probably seen his face on his lemonade carton.' An eight-year-old girl perked up. 'How long was he missing?'

* * *

His wife's grave side service was just barely finished, when there was a massive clap of thunder, followed by a tremendous bolt of lightning, accompanied by even more thunder rumbling in the distance. The little old man looked at the pastor and calmly said, 'Well, she's there.

* * *

May happiness smile on your world and in your heart...

Thank You to my Aunt Marlene!

XOXO
Me

Risk of Pancreatic Cancer Linked to Variation in Gene that Determines Blood Type,

http://www.nih.gov/news/health/aug2009/nci-02.htm
August 2, 2009
News Release -
National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Common variants of the gene that determines human blood type are associated with an increased risk of pancreatic cancer, according to a study by scientists at the National Cancer Institute (NCI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and colleagues from many universities and research institutions. The study, published online Aug. 2, 2009, in Nature Genetics, is consistent with an observation first made more than 50 years ago.

In the study, the researchers discovered that genetic variation in a region of chromosome 9 that contains the gene for ABO blood type was associated with pancreatic cancer risk. Individuals with the variant that results in blood types A, B, or AB were at an increased risk of pancreatic cancer, compared to those with the variant for blood type O. This finding is consistent with previous research, some of it dating back to the 1950s and 1960s, that had shown increased risks of gastric and pancreatic cancer among individuals of the A and B blood groups (i.e., blood types A, B, and AB). The latest results provide a genetic basis for those earlier observations.

A person's blood type depends on which form or forms of the ABO gene they inherit from their parents. The protein produced by the ABO gene determines the type of carbohydrates (complex sugars) that are present on the surface of red blood cells and other cells, including cells of the pancreas. The proteins encoded by the A and B forms of the gene transfer different carbohydrates onto the cell surfaces to make A and B blood types. The O form encodes a protein that is unable to transfer carbohydrates. Studies by other researchers have shown that ABO protein encoding in pancreatic tumor cells is different than in normal pancreatic cells.

To discover genetic variations that contribute to pancreatic cancer risk, the research team conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS). In a GWAS, researchers analyze common variants, called single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), in the genomes of people with a disease and people without the disease. Initially, the research team studied the genomes of 1,896 patients with pancreatic cancer and 1,939 control subjects to identify SNPs with a strong association with pancreatic cancer. The team then verified its findings by studying the genomes of another 2,457 people with pancreatic cancer and 2,654 people without the disease. In the end, they identified several SNPs on the long arm of chromosome 9 that were associated with pancreatic cancer risk and mapped to the ABO gene.

"Only by working across disciplines and with more than a dozen research groups were we able to make this important discovery of the potential role of the ABO gene in pancreatic cancer risk," said co-author Patricia Hartge, Sc.D., of NCI's Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics (DCEG). "Although it will take much more work, this finding may lead to improved diagnostic and therapeutic interventions that are so desperately needed."

Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States. It is difficult to detect, and in many people it is not diagnosed until after the disease has spread to other parts of the body. Less than five percent of Americans with pancreatic cancer survive five years past diagnosis. Risk factors include smoking, diabetes, race, and a family history of the disease.

"Pancreatic cancer is the newest beneficiary of so-called high-throughput genotyping that, over the past two years, has yielded scores of genetic hot-spots linked to risk for cancer and other diseases," said co-author Stephen J. Chanock, M.D., chief of NCI's Laboratory of Translational Genomics in DCEG. "As more variants are discovered and follow-up studies are conducted to examine the biological effects of these variants, a better understanding will emerge of the inherited risk factors and mechanisms that lead to the development of pancreatic cancer."

The study was part of PanScan, a GWAS of pancreatic cancer conducted by the Pancreatic Cancer Cohort Consortium, composed of 14 academic centers. The investigators are conducting whole-genome scans to identify common genetic variants that may be markers of susceptibility to pancreatic cancer.

Analyses and data from PanScan will be available through NCI's caBIG (Cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid). The summary results for similar data on breast and prostate cancer are already freely available to other researchers at this Web site.

For more information on Dr. Hartge's research, please go to http://dceg.cancer.gov/about/staff-bios/hartge-patricia.

For more information on Dr. Chanock's research, please go to http://dceg.cancer.gov/about/staff-bios/chanock-stephen.

For more information about PanScan, please go to http://epi.grants.cancer.gov/PanScan.

NCI leads the National Cancer Program and the NIH effort to dramatically reduce the burden of cancer and improve the lives of cancer patients and their families, through research into prevention and cancer biology, the development of new interventions, and the training and mentoring of new researchers.
For more information about cancer, please visit the NCI Web site at http://www.cancer.gov or call NCI's Cancer Information Service at 1-800-4-CANCER (1-800-422-6237).

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) — The Nation's Medical Research Agency — includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical and translational medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and its programs, visit www.nih.gov.

Reference: Amundadottir L., et al.
Genome-wide association study identifies ABO Blood Group Susceptibility Variants for Pancreatic Cancer.
Nature Genetics.