This is Joe Larner. He thought he had made a major breakthrough on Alzheimer’s. He died before he could find out. Dr. Larner was an eminent scientist and longtime fixture at the School of Medicine who influenced generations of researchers, including two future Nobel winners he recruited to UVA. I…
It strikes me that I should state, for the record, that the opinions on this blog are mine and mine alone and in no way represent the official views of my employer, the University of Virginia Health System, or the University of Virginia School of Medicine (which contributes to my…
Healthnewsreview.org is a watchdog website that rates and reviews press releases and news coverage of medical matters, including research. They’ve even reviewed one of my releases. I don’t always agree with their conclusions, and some of their expectations are unrealistic (e.g., they insist that news releases disclose pricing for treatments…
Gary Owens, PhD, the head of our Robert M. Berne Cardiovascular Research Center, and research scientist Olga Cherepanova may have found a "fountain of youth" gene that could help prevent heart attacks and stroke. This is the sort of complex science that takes a lot of heavy lifting to explain…
One of the things my department does is try to make it easy for folks to find information about the UVA Health System online. That’s quite a challenge, considering the tremendous volume of information and the huge number of people with stuff they want to share. For a long time,…
If you read enough of my releases on new research discoveries, you’ll notice they’re somewhat similar. That’s because I have an unofficial template. My goal with these is to make complex science accessible to laypeople and reporters alike. Reporters often have short attention spans and a lot of stuff competing…