New documentary on addiction

On Thursday March 15 from 8:00 - 9:30 Central time (other air times), HBO will be airing a documentary, Addiction, produced in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). It's part of an HBO free preview weekend and also will be streamed on the web and available through "on demand" cable services too.

"The documentary will explore many elements of drug and alcohol addiction, through the eyes of those who are addicted and those of the scientific experts working to better understand and treat this devastating disease....

Bringing together the nation's leading experts with award-winning filmmakers, it consists of nine separate segments, including: "Saturday Night in a Dallas ER," by Jon Alpert; "A Mother's Desperation," by Susan Froemke and Albert Maysles; "The Science of Relapse," by Eugene Jarecki and Susan Froemke; "The Adolescent Addict," by Kate Davis and David Heilbroner; "Brain Imaging," by Liz Garbus and
Rory Kennedy; "Opiate Addiction: A New Medication," by D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus; "Topiramate: A Clinical Trial for Alcoholism," by Alan and Susan Raymond; "Steamfitters Local Union 638," by Barbara Kopple; and "Insurance Woes," by Susan Froemke. ADDICTION is produced by John Hoffman and Susan Froemke; executive produced by Sheila Nevins."

The project also includes a community outreach component, with activities currently scheduled in ~40 cites so far (also includes a PDF viewer's guide to help facilitate discussion).

Related links:
NIH press release
Companion materials from the National Institute on Drug Abuse
Drugs, Brain, and Behavior: The Science of Addiction (booklet)
MedlinePlus: Substance abuse problems

Personalized medicine and popular media coverage

Recent items about advances in establishing individualized strategies for diagnoses and interventions based on individual expression profiles etc:

- National Geographic News: "Personalized Medicine Promises Tailor-Made Diagnoses, Treatments," by Stefan Lovgren

Commenting on this study published in Nature Medicine by a group of Duke researchers, using gene chips to guide chemotherapeutic intervention against several cancer cell lines:

- BBC: "'Personalised' cancer drug test"
- Reuters Health: "Test helps guide cancer treatment, U.S. study shows

And James Hrynyshyn a blog posting about science coverage by the popular media (related (and providing some counterpoint) to items in this previous post - "In defence of science journalists."

Update:
More on science journalism by David Dobbs of Smooth Pebbles, considering the current lack of media attention directed toward avian flu - "A Hush About Bird Flu; Noise About Science Journalism"

Medicine and the popular media this week

Related to this previous post about the NPT series, "Remaking American Medicine", other popular media outlets are scrutinizing how healthcare is changing, and positive potential directions for the future of medicine in the US:

- USA Today: "In medicine, evidence can be confusing" - the challenges faced by clinicians and by patients in understanding how the evidence from clinical research should be applied to a given care decision (plus additional stories linked at the top of the USA Today page under the feature "Prescription for change: fixing American healthcare")

- Newsweek: "Fixing America's hospitals" - case studies from 10 healthcare organizations that have developed innovative strategies for reducing medical error and improving the quality of healthcare delivered to their patients (plus more stories, including an article by David Bates about EMRs and paperless medicine, via Newsweek's "Health for Life section).

Open access and peer review

A few periodicals with fairly different takes on a recent Associated Press story about open access, PLoS and PLoS One, and Nature's new open review experiment --

Wired News: Web journals take on peer review

Boston Herald: Online journals threaten traditional scientific peer-review system

Washington Times: Internet journals offer researchers quick publishing

Looking at the results of a Google News search seems to indicate that most of the media titles that have picked up this story have focused on the confrontation aspect.

Update:
Chris Surridge of PLoS One discusses the AP article on the PLoS One blog.

And thanks to Mark for pointing out these two links:
Peter Suber of Open Access News caught this too.

Seed went with a more subtle take on the confrontation aspect: "Free, For All: How will the open access movement affect global science?