Tick-tock on Q&A on AS with uropathology guru, Dr. Jonathan Epstein--Still time to attend on Saturday
Be there, or be square.
By Howard Wolinsky
In a last-minute addition, Johns Hopkins uropathologist Jonathan Epstein will answer questions on active surveillance, biopsies and second opinions at the meeting of Active Surveillance Patients International (ASPI) on Saturday, April 29.
There’s still time to register and attend. Register: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYtdeqsrDorGt0ujT6Ifo0Jx0FU30yoAt3L
If you sign up and can’t make it, you’ll get a link to the recording.
Originally, the meeting at 12 p.m. Eastern April 29 was only going to premiere the latest episode of the Active Surveillance 101 video series: "Second Opinions and Biopsies," featuring our intrepid researchers, PCa patient Larry White and his savvy wife Nancy White, interviewing uropathology legend Epstein.
But thanks to some schedule changes, Epstein will join a Q&A session after the video is aired.
If you have questions, send them to me at howard.wolinsky@gmail.com
Dr. Epstein is prepared to handle all comers.
(Thanks to Meyer Quaynor from Prostate Cancer Support Canada for designing the flyer.)
Co-sponsors of the AS 101 series under the Active Surveillance Coalition include AnCan Foundation, Prostate Cancer Support Canada, Prostate Cancer Research Institute, and TheActiveSurveillor.com newsletter.
To view the full AS 101 series to date, covering PSAs, diagnosis, and Active Surveillance, go to https://aspatients.org/a-s-101/https://aspatients.org/a-s-101/
More about me per an enquiring reader
By. Howard Wolinsky
As the National Enquirer used to say in the 1980s: “Enquiring minds want to know.”
A reader wrote me: “I am catching up on your background slowly.. I was wondering about the Pulitzer nomination for your work. I appreciate what you have done and what you are doing today for us with PCa.”
Thanks.
He wanted to know I had written about as a newsman and freelance reporter over the past 50 years.
I have written a lot, mainly about science , technology, and medicine. I covered AIDS before it was called AIDS and covered the early days of the World Wide Web. My first story as the new medical writer at the Chicago Sun-Times in March 1981 was on the assassination attempt on President Reagan. The White House got pissed at me for asking hard questions.
Back in the 1970s, the American Public Health Associate invited a panel of the top science writers in the U.S.—from the Associated Press, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc.—to pick “the best young science writer in the U.S..”
They picked me, I was a young reporter at what is now known as Florida Today, where I did exposes on the mistreatment of children in state mental hospitals, wrote about picking oranges with migrants, and the like.
Florida was a great place for young reporters to find their way because people there read newspapers, and there was loads of competition.
I attended an APHA awards ceremony in Chicago when Gene McDaniels, a pioneering science writer for AP, introduced himself to me: “Hey kid, are you going after my job?” I hadn’t thought about it, but I wheeled around and pointed at Art Snider, another pioneer at the Chicago Daily News and later the Chicago Sun-Times. I said, “No, I am going after his.”
In fact, I got it. Snider became ill a few years later. He was a newsman’s newsman. He continued reporting on news in the hospital where he eventually died.
I wrote his obituary.
Over the years, I have written maybe 10,000 articles with several million—well-chosen (really?)—words. I have written five books. Two were exposes on the American Medical Association. Most recently, “Contain and Eliminate: The American Medical Association’s Conspiracy to Destroy Chiropractic,” which covers the Scientology infiltration of the AMA, the biggest FBI raid in history, and two of the biggest trials of the last century.
My wife Judi, one of the first librarians on the internet, and I co-authored “Healthcare Online For Dummies,” a best-selling Dummies book. We didn’t consider our readers Dummies. We had a spot-on tip in 2001—check out this new thing called Google.
Over the years, the Chicago Sun-Times nominated mretwice for the Pulitzer Prize for exposes on the AMA, I lost, but I keep trying. The National Press Club, the American Bar Association, the Chicago Headline Club, the American Mental Health Association, and others have honored my reporting.
I also have had fellowships at the University of Michigan (Mike Wallace Fellowship) and the National Cancer Institute.
I have done a lot of freelance work. I even submitted ideas to the aforementioned National Enquirer.
At my suggestion, they sent a British reporter posing as a down-and-out tourist to check out Southern hospitality in Carter Country,” President Carter’s hometown in Plains, Georgia. He mooched a meal from Cousin Hugh Carter’s restaurant but was turned away at the gas pump by brother Billy Carter’s at gas station.
I won an award from the American Bar Association for my exposes on the mistreatment of mental health patients in Illinois. Fanmed Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall presented an award for the same work to my boss at the Bar Association of the Seventh Federal District of Illinois. I couldn’t make it. Marshall told my boss: “Go ahead and brag. You’re not under oath.”
As a rare career journalist, I have had a good life. I continue reporting today. But I expect to announce some big news soon about a major change coming.
I referred the reader to a couple favorite stories of mine. That was hard to do. It’s like picking a favorite child.
Here we go:
—My wife Judi and I co-authored this piece for the Chicago Tribune about staying in Frank Lloyd Wright houses: https://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/ct-frank-lloyd-wright-houses-travel-0619-20160606-story.html We have visited about 200 properties Wright designed around the country. I hope to see more.
Architecture is like a sport in Chicago. And we are super-fans.
—I have done a lot over the years for a molecular biology journal in Europe. Here’s a favorite about DNA extracted from hair and fur from extinct species like mammoths squirreled away in musuems that’s giving up their secrets: https://www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.1038/embor.2010.70
—Here’s my personal prostate cancer story in STAT News: https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/11/active-surveillance-for-prostate-cancer-the-gift-that-keeps-on-giving/
—Family history is another fascination of mine. I was among the first people more than 20 years ago to have my own DNA analyzed in the interest of family history. I found I was related to Abraham Zacuto, a rabbi who was the royal astronomer and astrology in the court of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain. Zacuto invented the astrolabe and instructed explorers on how to use it as they “discovered” India and Brazil. He also advised Columbus.
Columbus left on his journey to the New World on the same day in 1492 that Jews like Zacuto were kicked out and the Spanish Inquisition began. As Monty Python said in 1971, “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.” Fear and surprise. Almost fanatical devotion to the Pope. Etc.
Zacuto left for Portugal. Then, he got caught up in the Portuguese Inquisition. Nobody expected that one, either.
I have found long-lost relatives and even tracked my genes back to ancient Hebrews 2,000 years ago and to their enemies, the Canaanites, based on DNA found in ancient cemeteries. Rape and pillaging? Hanky-panky? Don’t know.
I also have East Asian and Scandinavian roots.
I wrote this family history/mystery story on a family photo, finally giving up its secrets going back to the Holocaust: https://howardwolinsky.medium.com/the-photo-how-a-family-portrait-finally-unlocked-long-buried-family-secrets-from-the-holocaust-316b44976814.
It’s long. But my brother, niece and I wanted to explain how we did what we did. We even found who likely took the photo.
Also, read about the Chinese branch of my family and the Stalin purge: https://bit.ly/2JNUnTF
Enough about me. Please share your own stories—pre- and post prostate cancer. Comment in the bubble or send me an email.