Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Personalized Cancer Treatments From Just a Blood Sample
The article that I read was “Personalized Cancer Treatment From Just a Blood Sample,” written by Lauren Gravitz. In this article the overall idea of curing cancer is expressed. Many people do not realize that before a patient needs a treatment to hopefully help stop their cancer, they need a diagnosis. For most cancer patients this can be the hardest part of the process. Cancer cells most normally break off and flow through the person’s bloodstream, therefore the best way to catch these cells would be through closer looks at a patient’s blood. However, blood samples have mainly been used for small medical tests in mostly healthy patients because the samples can be so hard to glean specific information from. Recently however, scientists have conducted experiments in which blood samples can become filtered to separate cells, then cells with abnormalities can be marked and targeted. Doctors can then spot the abnormal cells much faster and more deeply research those cells for a quicker, and more accurate diagnosis.
Cancer is unfortunately one of todays most common diseases and a major causes of tragic death in people ranging in age from babies, to fully grown adults. In this article a new research about the treatment of cancer is expressed and explained. The information within this article is very important to humanity especially today. Everyday people are battling cancer and it is amazing to know that people are actually making progress to help those in need. The research in this article can help save lives and this makes it extremely relevant to humanity.
I personally really liked this article, and found it not only informative but enjoyable to read and write about. Lauren Gravitz, the author of this article really wrote this well, I think, she had the article sectioned for easier comprehension. I think she did a good job summarizing a really difficult topic and making it understandable. Although this was a relatively easy article to read, some of the medical terminology I was not really aware of. This is probably just because I am not really informed as much in this field. Overall I thought this was a great article.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/crux/2014/02/21/personalized-cancer-treament-from-just-a-blood-sample/#.UwwWXiis2FI
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Estelle did an excellent job at summarizing the article, Personalized Cancer Treatments From Just a Blood Sample. I liked how she described thoroughly how doctors use the blood samples to spot abnormal cells and research further on them, for a faster and more accurate diagnosis. In addition, I liked how she mentioned that cancer is one of today's most common diseases, causing death and heartbreak towards many people. Finally, Estelle did a good job at mentioning her likes and dislikes about the article.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I think she could have done better was organizing her thoughts in a clearer way. For instance, she could have rearranged the second sentence in the last paragraph to make it sound better. Another thing I think she could have improved on was actually giving examples of how using people's blood to get to a diagnosis worked in real life and what would happen if they didn't use people's blood for a diagnosis.
From reading this summary on this article, I learned what steps scientists are taking on cancer. This is extremely relevant because more and more people are getting diagnosed with cancer every day so it's good to know that little by little scientists are making advances into trying to help people with the disease.
Estelle did a great job on summarizing the article she read. I liked how she started by writing some of the general ideas of the article and then went into more specific ideas from the article. I also thought it was great how mentioned cancer is one of the most common diseases and a major cause of death today. Lastly, I think Estelle did a great job giving her own feedback on her likes and dislikes on the article.
ReplyDeleteI thought Estelle could have started out with the background information about cancer to make the review flow a little better. Also, the beginning of the first paragraph of how taking blood could have been made more clear so the reader could understand the process a little better.
Something that really impressed me was Estelle's able to understand how cancer cells break off and flow through a person's bloodstream. Something I learned was how cancer cells break off and a better way to check for these cancer cells is to look at a patient's blood.
Estelle did a really good job in this article summary. There are many positive aspects of it. One is that Estelle did a great job of piecing her sentences together. All of the sentences flowed really well and I made the summary easy to read. Also, Estelle did a great job of explaining her article. Everything was really clear and this meant that none of the article was a struggle to understand or read. In addition to that, she had a really good connection to our lives. This article is one that most if not all people can relate to, and Estelle was really good at making that connection.
ReplyDeleteThere were a couple things in the summary that could have been better. One is that Estelle sort of jumps right into the article, whereas it would have been better to start with some broader information than to jump right into the specifics. Also, she could have done a bit better job explaining the whole diagnosis part, because I think that that’s really important to include in the summary and the word itself is only mentioned twice.
I like this article summary a lot because it has a direct impact on pretty much everyone. In addition to that, I learned many new things from this article about how cancer works and about how treating cancer works. I know a lot more about it after reading this summary than before I read it.
Estelle did a good job on this current event. The review was well detailed and explained the article well. The information was very informative and I was left with no questions. The analysis was well detailed and well described. Also, I thought the review flowed well and there were nice transitions. This was a well detailed and informative review that transitioned well.
ReplyDeleteAlthough it was good overall, there were a few things that could be fixed. Estelle could have done a better job of providing background info on cancer as oppose to starting the article on cancer treatment without giving background info. Also, there were a few run-on sentences. Overall this was a good summary, but there were some mistakes.
By reading this article, I learned a lot about cancer and cancer treatment. I did not know that the diagnosis was a difficult part of the process. I did not know much about cancer before reading this, but now I know a lot more.
Estelle did a wonderful job writing this current event! It was very easy to understand and well written. It had a lot of good facts yet it also was not to long. I also believe Estelle was able to personalize this current event well because she also talked about how cancer effected people today.
ReplyDeleteI felt the article was very good but Estelle could have transitioned the first few sentences into the article better. She also could have added more details when she talked about cancer itself because understanding what cancer is is key to understanding the article.
I really enjoyed Estelle's summary because she was able to keep it short yet very descriptive. This made it a very interesting read especially because I did an article on cancer as well last week. This summary helped me learn more about how cancer treatments worked.
I thought Estelle did a good job in writing this current events summary. She does a good job of getting the information in the article across to the reader in an easy to understand way. Another thing that she does particularly well is explaining why the article is relevant to science and the effect the article’s information has on society. Finally, all of the information that Estelle included in the article was important; she did not include any unneeded details.
ReplyDeleteSomething that Estelle could have done better is to make her sentences flow better. For example, in the second and third paragraphs, some sentences are listed without any transition. In addition, some of the sentences could have been worded differently, as they are sometimes confusing to read.
One thing I learned from this article was that the diagnosis of cancer is very difficult. I would have thought that it is very easy to diagnose cancer, but from this current event report, it is clear that diagnosing cancer can sometimes be very challenging. I found this current event very interesting.
I loved the article that Estelle did! The article name was Personalized Cancer Treatment From Just a Blood Sample, which immediately caught my attention. Cancer is one of the worst problems in hospitals around the world and hopefully in the future we can use this process to cure it once and for all. That’s right, I understood everything that she said and it made sense. Even though the article is written about cancer, a topic that I expected to be challenging to understand, she explained it in such a way that caused me not to have any questions.
ReplyDeleteEven though giving the information was excellent in this article, I found something that she could improve on. The topic sentence of the first paragraph did not seem unique. It was as like every other post that people do, “The article I read was.” At the time it didn’t really bother me, however looking back at it I realize that the only thing that drew me into reading what she had to say was the title of the post. This is something that she could fix in the future.
I give my compliments to Estelle. It is difficult to condense information on a topic as complicated as cancer and turning it into a comprehensible response with only 3 little paragraphs. Very impressive! This topic however is an issue. Cancer has been taking peoples lives and turning it for the worse. I hope that this process that scientists have discovered can increase the chances of finding a cure.
Estelle’s summary was great. She took all the necessary information out of the article and explained it very well. She used information from the text instead of making broad statements without explinations. For example she explained how cells work and how the new technology worked relative to the older technology. At the end of her summary she connected the article to our every day lives which is important to do.
ReplyDeleteI think that Estelle could have not been so repetitive in her second paragraph. Instead of saying that the article was important to today, she could of used more examples proving that statement. Estelle could have also made her writing flow better at times it was choppy. She could use more transition words next time, but overall her review was well written.
I find it fascinating after all these years scientists have not found a cure to a disease that has been around for so long. I think it is good to know what achievements are being made in science even small ones. These small achievements mean were closer to finding the cure of a disease that effects millions of people. I found it very impressive that Estelle was able to write about such a complicated topic so easily, and make it easy for readers to understand.
Estelle did great writing this article. She explained the content better than the article did. She explained how doctors can locate the diagnosis. Also, she explained what they did to achieve this. She mentioned things about cancer that I did not know before.
ReplyDeleteShe did a great job on reviewing this article, but there are ways it can be fixed. For example, she could explain some instances when the blood diagnosis worked. Also, I think she could have used transition words in the first paragraph. She should add some, or more, transition words in the future.
It was very interesting to read about something people thought was impossible. These achievements that were made took us a step closer to finding the cure to cancer. These are good things to keep in mind, that progress was made to finding a cure for cancer. I found that this review Estelle wrote was very interesting, especially because she took a not so simple topic and put it into the form of an understandable review.
First off Estelle, I thought this was a great, but now lets get down to business. You started off with a couple lines leading into your diagnosis comment, which was something like before you get cured you need a diagnosis. Most people probably know this, but fail to think of it. This is a great reminder of that idea. After that you led into the way you identify cancer, which was very well presented. Lastly, great job in telling us that cancer is the most common disease to die from. That really caught my attention and made me want to read more.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I did think you could work on was explaining the filtration process with the cells. I’m curious what took them so long to think of this process. I’m also wondering are any of the methods suggested in this article actually used. Have they already saved a bunch of lives? How many?
I didn’t know the only way you can do a diagnosis of cancer is by studying the blood cells. I did know that that was a way, but I didn’t know it was the route you take every time. Thanks for educating me.