Entries for July 2008

There's been plenty of outrage directed at Michael Savage since the talk radio host recently made his controversial remarks about autism. Parent groups of children with autism are calling for his head, and some advertisers have started dropping Savage as a result of his comments. Talk Radio Network, which syndicates Savage's show to more than 350 affiliates, is standing behind Savage. Here's what Savage, who's known for his incendiary style, said during the show:

Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is.... What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.' Autism—everybody has an illness. If I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, 'Don't behave like a fool.' The worst thing he said—'Don't behave like a fool. Don't be anybody's dummy. Don't sound like an idiot. Don't act like a girl. Don't cry.' That's what I was raised with. That's what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You're turning your son into a girl, and you're turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men.

Hearing about varicoceles, or dilated veins in the scrotum, may make you cringe. But as many as 16 percent of men—even young men—have this type of varicose vein, a common cause of low sperm count. The condition can cause testicles to shrink and soften, and can feel, as the Mayo Clinic so delicately puts it, "like a bag of worms" above the testicle.

Pleasant, right?

While the enlarged veins are harmless in most cases, they can cause real trouble if you're aiming to become a father. Doctors have noticed that about 40 percent of men who are infertile have varicoceles. It's still a bit murky as to how exactly the condition damages sperm, but researchers speculate that the enlarged veins hamper the circulation of properly oxygenated blood.

The spate of knife crime across the pond that has thrown the British press into quite a tizzy got me wondering about similar U.S. stats. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, knives were used in 14 percent of the homicides that occurred in 2005 (the most recent year for which data was posted). Handguns were used in about 55 percent. No surprises there.

What I didn't anticipate, however, was that my online search for information about knife violence would keep turning up sites about domestic violence against men. This post from the website batteredmen.com, for example, kept appearing, making the case that domestic violence against men—which not infrequently involves knives—is too often overlooked. That site looks a little rough around the edges, so I checked further into the peer-reviewed research.

Al Gore is going to love this one. A new study, released yesterday, suggests that it's not just polar bears, ice caps, and farmers who ought to be on edge about global warming. Rising temperatures may leave Americans with a deluge of kidney stones as well.

That might sound like voodoo scare science, but it's actually well accepted that kidney stone formation accelerates in warm climates. Sweating removes fluid from the body, which increases the salt concentration of the urine and the rate at which stones develop.

Obese Men Produce Less Semen
Hundreds of stories appeared in the media this week reporting on a study that found that being obese negatively affects a man's fertility. Fat men had a 60 percent higher chance of having a low volume of semen and also a 40 percent higher chance of having sperm abnormalities, the Associated Press reported. Different levels of hormones in obese men, overheating of the testicles, and diet all may contribute to lower sperm quality, researchers told Bloomberg. My colleague, Deborah Kotz, last year offered advice on ways that men can reduce a couple's risk of infertility. Stay slim, temporarily avoid soy, and steer clear of performance-enhancing drugs, she advised.

Hormone Therapy May Not Help Elderly Men With Prostate Cancer
In a surprise finding, researchers reported this week that receiving surgical or medical castration—called hormone therapy—does not prolong survival for some men with prostate cancer. As the Los Angeles Times reports, hormone therapy is a powerful tool when used in conjunction with surgery or radiation for treating aggressive prostate tumors that have spread beyond the prostate. But for localized, less-aggressive tumors, the benefit disappears, particularly for older men who have other chronic illnesses. That's why it's crucial, I reported in this blog earlier this week, that men consider the downsides of hormone treatment before plunging forward. For more on prostate cancer, see these stories about proton beam therapy and how to weigh treatment options. The U.S. News Prostate Cancer Channel, developed with Johns Hopkins, offers additional information on the disease.

If your partner had terminal cancer, would you want to know? And would you want it to be the doctor—or your wife—breaking the bad news?

These are the sorts of questions that Swedish researchers tackled in a recent survey that found a surprisingly high number of men get left out of the loop until the very last moment when their spouses have incurable cancer. Some 40 percent of Swedish men, the researchers found, were either never told that their wife had terminal cancer or first heard this information during the last week of her life. However, the majority of widowers—86 percent—who responded to the survey believed that the next of kin should be told immediately. Seventy-nine percent of men were told by a physician instead of their spouse.

Medical researchers have known for some time that the prevalence of dementia doubles every five years among people over 65. It hasn't been clear, however, whether that trend continues into the 90s and beyond. This week, after surveying more than 900 people over the age of 90, researchers have offered an answer: yes for women, no for men.

The news for men isn't as encouraging as it seems. Fewer men in their 90s were found to suffer from dementia: 28 percent, compared to 45 percent of women. But the difference wasn't because men were less likely to get dementia; rather, it seems to be because they died more quickly with it. "Men and women get dementia at the same rate. Since women live longer with dementia, we find more women at any given age with the disease," says Maria Corrada, an epidemiologist from the University of California-Irvine who led the study.