Archive for April 24th, 2010
Links to Interviews….
Here are some links to our live television appearances, radio and blog interviews, and video tapings:
Today Show: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/26184891/#36686214
iVillage: http://www.ivillage.com/three-wishes-carey-goldberg-pamela-ferdinand-beth-jones/153264
The Takeaway with John Hockenberry: http://www.thetakeaway.org/2010/apr/26/three-wishes-and-back-plan/
WGN TV Midday Show: http://www.wgntv.com/news/middaynews/wgntv-author-three-wishes,0,2964553.story
WGBH Greater Boston: http://www.wgbh.org/greater_boston/index.cfm
INSPIREme Chicago: http://www.inspiremechicago.com/2010/04/three-wishes.html
Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/irene-s-levine/friendship-by-the-book_b_564197.html
Psychology Today: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-friendship-doctor/201005/friendship-the-book-three-wishes-true-story-good-friends
Word of Mouth – New Hampshire Public Radio: http://www.nhpr.org/node/32323
Blog Talk Radio: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/littlebrown/2010/05/06/interview-w-authors-of-three-wishes
Double X blog on Slate.com
Published on Double X (http://www.doublex.com)
What Hollywood Gets Wrong About Sperm Donors
By Pamela Ferdinand, the author of Three Wishes: A True Story of Good Friends, Crushing Heartbreak, and Astonishing Luck on Our Way to Love and Motherhood, responds to the J. Lo movie The Back-up Plan and other Hollywood portrayals of women who choose sperm donors.
Posted: April 22, 2010 at 2:34 PM
When my co-authors and I wrote our memoir about the astonishing things that happened after we decided to become fortysomething single mothers with anonymous donor sperm, everyone told us we should call it “The Lucky Sperm.” We didn’t. We figured, who wants to sit on the subway with the word “sperm” on their book cover?
Well, maybe not last year. But this year, donor sperm is all the rage. Three romantic comedies are on deck featuring A-list stars as women who have taken motherhood into their own hands: The Switch, with Jennifer Aniston, based on Jeffrey Eugenides’ somber short story for The New Yorker [2];The Back-up Plan, with Jennifer Lopez; and The Kids Are All Right, starring Julianne Moore and Annette Bening.
I should be thrilled. As a first-time author, this could be merchandising magic, right? Wrong. I can’t help but be annoyed and at times infuriated by movies that could portray the true grit and modern independence of women choosing to have children on their own. And don’t.
Jennifer Aniston’s sperm donor falls in love with her (in the short story, the sperm donor is a married friend), and the drunken best friend who secretly substitutes his own sperm for the donor’s falls for the child years later. The same day Jennifer Lopez is inseminated, she meets Stan, the man of her dreams, and their Ricky Ricardo/Lucille Ball courtship antics carry them together through the pregnancy. And even in an award-winning film about a lesbian couple inseminated by the same donor, the children track down their biological father—and one of the women gets involved with him. Seriously?
Social consciousness is a hard sell in Hollywood. There has to be a Prince Charming and a Cinderella. And while that would be nice, it’s not reality. Births by unmarried have reached an all-time high of 40 percent of the total, and women over 40 are more likely than ever to be first-time mothers. Finding the love of your life when you decide to go it alone is not a common trajectory for most of us. Nor do women who opt for single motherhood later in life—or have it imposed upon them—suddenly find Mr. Right and Mr. Ready-To-Be-A-Dad rolled into one on the way to the fertility clinic.
For me to criticize these films is a bit like the pot calling the kettle black. Soon after I committed to having a child on my own (I even had vials of donor sperm ready), I met and fell in love with a man who would become the father. But I know that my experience is the exception, not the rule.
I was prepared to be a single mother, and I would appreciate a good film with talented actresses that didn’t suggest I was a failure if I did become one. Who says you have to get the man (or woman) in the end to be happy if you’ve decided that having a child is where your fulfillment lies? Being a strong woman and being a mother who makes liberated choices in the 21st century should be enough of a story to tell—on the big screen, on the small screen, and in real life.
Our 15 minutes…and slightly more?
The whirlwind begins with an appearance on The Today Show this Wednesday, April 21, sometime between 8 and 9 a.m. (wherever you live, that’s all time zones).
The next day, the 22nd, we are doing a satellite TV tour, which means a flurry of interviews for several hours from a New York studio. Here’s what we’ve got coming on, with more to come:
WSFL-TV, Miami, FL 6:20 a.m. EST
WPMT-TV, Harrisburg, PA 7:10 a.m.
KCEN-TV, Waco, TX 7:20 a.m.
WHAM-TV, Rochester, NY 8:15 a.m.
WJXT-TV, Jacksonville, FL 8:30 a.m.
BEEBE Network, KKVI FM 9:00 a.m.
Early mornings will be a challenge for me, as many of you know. But this week, I’m up for it! Thanks for checking us out, if you can.
The Proust Questionnaire
I’ve never answered this before, partly because I didn’t think I could ever come up with replies so profound and witty and deeply held that they could stand the test of time and that I wouldn’t want to constantly alter. I still don’t. But the beauty of the blog is that I can change them, and I likely will. (This fear of “setting in stone” makes it hard to write sometimes and is one of the same reasons I don’t have a tattoo; I never found a design I could live with for the rest of my life. Fortunately, I am less fearful of committing to people than tattoos or questionnaires.)
Here’s some background from Wikipedia, with the proviso that I have no idea if it’s been fact-checked:
“The Proust Questionnaire 
is a questionnaire about one’s personality. Its name and modern popularity as a form of interview is owed to the responses given by the French writer Marcel Proust. At the end of the nineteenth century, when Proust was still in his teens, he answered a questionnaire in an English-language confession album belonging to his friend Antoinette, daughter of future French President Félix Faure, entitled ‘An Album to Record Thoughts, Feelings, etc. 
At that time, it was a fad among English families to answer such a list of questions that revealed the tastes and aspirations of the taker. Proust answered the questionnaire several times in his life, always with enthusiasm. The original manuscript of his answers of 1890, at the time of his volunteer internship or some little time afterwards, titled ‘by Marcel Proust himself,’ was found in 1924. It was auctioned on May 27, 2003 for the sum of €102,000.”
And here we go…..
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Being with my family, happy at home or exploring the great outdoors.
What is your current state of mind?
Overwhelmed and grateful.
What is your greatest fear?
Losing someone I love. Or being lost to them.
What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
Impatience, impatience, impatience.
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Mean-spiritedness. Lack of empathy.
What is your greatest extravagance?
Traveling in comfort when we’d be just as happy camping in a tent.
What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Productivity.
What is it that you most dislike?
Violence, disease, and poverty.
On what occasion do you lie?
To avoid hurting someone’s feelings.
What do you dislike most about your appearance?
That I don’t look to others how I picture myself.
What are the qualities you most like in a man?
Kindness, intelligence, integrity, humor, creativity, depth.
What are the qualities you most like in a woman?
Ditto.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
“What?”
What or who is the greatest love of your life?
My big sweetheart. And my little sweetheart.
When and where were you happiest?
Just when I think I can’t be happier, I find I am.
Which talent would you most like to have?
To be able to sing.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
My daughter.
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
One thing: My vision. Plus two things: Higher energy, lower anxiety.
If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you think it would be?
If dying is an “if,” then I’d prefer not to.
What is your most treasured possession?
Love letters from Mark and photos, but I am not attached to most objects.
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Losing a child.
What is your most marked characteristic?
My laugh has been compared to a pig hunting for truffles.
What do you most value in your friends?
Honesty, trust, and acceptance.
Who are your favorite writers?
I can’t play favorites. Whoever wrote a book I didn’t want to finish.
Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
Curious George, at the moment
Who is your favorite heroine?
Jo in “Little Women”
Who are your heroes in real life?
Those who help others in need without being asked.
What is your motto?
If you do what you love, everything else follows.
What is your greatest regret?
That I didn’t find Mark earlier.
How would you like to die?
When I’m ready.
Great review from LifeofaModernMom.com
Debbie blogs:
“This book was a true sisterhood tale of friendship, love, and family. I was personally drawn into each women’s life as they searched for love and motherhood. I read Three Wishes in about three days, it kept me captivated through the authors unfolding friendships, and the trials in the pursuit of happiness and childbirth. The book was made even more touching by how the women were so open and candid that you felt as if you were listening to your best friend talk about the intimate details of her life. Each chapter opens with a bit of dialogue between the three friends, and then goes deeper into each story of their work, trying to find love, and of course their quest for motherhood. This book brought back the joy and love you felt when your child was first born, and how much love a family and friendship can bring to your life.”
Celebrity Treatment for Non-Celebrities
Longtime Globe photographer Bill Brett, the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet and someone who’s seen it all, photographed us for the Party pages of Boston.com, which (to me) is truly hilarious:
And the next day we were photographed by Tracy Powell, a talented shooter and good friend, for SHE magazine in the UK. Take a gander:
All in two days’ work for three authors. Wild.
Book signing and more….
Our first book signing took place April 5, with all 200 books sold out in a couple of hours. Quite remarkable, and remarkably humbling.
And as if that wasn’t enough, here comes Howard Blue of memoirreviews.blogpost.com with his thoughtful and lovely review of the book. Blue, with a daughter of his own, said our book was akin to a mystery. “But this time,” he writes, “the mystery is not who done it — but who (as in which guy) will [get the woman pregnant]? And who will stick around?” Read more at http://memoirreviews.blogspot.com/
Close to Home: A young woman searches for answers about the disease that took her parents’ lives
By Pamela Ferdinand | Summer 2008 for CR Magazine
Stephanie Kinkel moved across the country last year from California to pursue biology research as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Peers and faculty members ask her, like other newcomers, the usual questions: Do her parents still live in San Diego? When are they going to visit? And will she spend the holidays with them?
Depending on the person, she either smiles and politely changes the subject or tells them the truth. The truth is that Kinkel, 27, is an orphan. But more than that, she is an aspiring cancer researcher orphaned by that very disease: Her father died in 1993 from liver cancer. Less than three years later, metastatic breast cancer took her mother’s life.
“There was nothing she could do about her parents, but there was something she could do about other peoples’ parents,” says Wahl, a past president of the AACR.
Thinking back to her childhood, Kinkel recalls an idyllic time: A nice home in a suburban community. A stay-at-home mom. A father who worked at home as a mechanical engineer and took karate lessons with her on Saturdays. Television was restricted to PBS, and video games were off-limits for Kinkel and her older sister, Jennifer. Instead, Kinkel’s father gave her a microscope, which she used to analyze houseplants and leaves from the backyard. “I was very convinced that there was a specific tree … that had a disease, and I was going to cure it,” she says.
Had it been only the tree that needed curing, things might have turned out very differently. In 1989, Kinkel’s mother, Carolyn, was diagnosed with breast cancer and recovered well after chemotherapy and a mastectomy. Cancer, it seemed to her and her sister, was not life-threatening.
But two years later, it became clear something was wrong with her father, who returned from a business trip looking jaundiced and worn down. He was diagnosed with liver cancer and began chemotherapy. After he had an experimental treatment on the day he was supposed to be discharged from the hospital, a blood clot traveled to his brain and killed him. Kinkel and her sister suspected the worst when their mother returned home alone. It was June 1993, and John Kinkel was 64.
Six months later, the girls learned their mother’s cancer had metastasized to her brain and bones. After months of therapy, and a difficult emotional time at home, she died at age 54—a week before Kinkel’s 15th birthday. Kinkel and her sister stayed with their aunt in Los Angeles, then briefly moved back into their own home. The drama of their childhood made it difficult for the sisters to remain consistently close as they embarked on their own paths, Kinkel says. Her sister lived with a cousin until her early 20s, earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology and a master’s in child development. Meanwhile, after graduating from Irvine High School, Kinkel moved into her own apartment at age 18, ready for independence.
“I was a little bit young and a little bit stubborn,” she says. “The one adjective to describe me is ‘determined.’ ”
Her father had emphasized the importance of higher education, but Kinkel faltered and failed out of a first semester at Orange Coast College, a community college in Costa Mesa. Without her parents, she lacked focus and self-confidence, she says. She eventually returned to the school a year and a half later, excited about the challenge of unraveling scientific mysteries and making an impact on the world—particularly in cancer research. Encouraged by several professors and the dean, she worked as a teaching assistant, tutoring, lecturing for anatomy and physiology classes, and running labs. She also won scholarships, edited textbooks and took leadership roles in science-associated organizations, including chapter president of the Association for Women in Science.
“When you don’t have the unconditional love of parents, when people really believe in you no matter what you do, you don’t want to lose that,” Kinkel says, explaining how motivated she became. “There are times in science when things don’t give you the answers you expect or want, and you go through periods where you just rely on your drive, so it’s important to have those people.”
“Even as a 14-year-old, I knew these events were likely to shape my life, but I could not predict how they would shape my academic career,” wrote Kinkel in her application to MIT.
Months later in Cambridge, Mass., Kinkel reflects on her career during a break from research in the lab of biologist Tyler Jacks, the president-elect of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR), whose team is examining the genetic events that contribute to cancer. On a campus notable for its unfashionable overachievers, she appears poised and stylish with a diamond stud in her pierced nose and silver hoop earrings dangling below short brown hair, long bangs brushed to the side. She seems warm, approachable, and well-rounded, passionate about cutting loose on the dance floor one moment and enthralled with her scientific research the next.
“I am very focused on cancer because I feel the most invested in it,” Kinkel says. “But really the problem solving … is what drives me, because I’m not sure if it was just the emotional component that I would make it very far.”
That thoughtfulness and determination, coupled with her intellectual prowess, led to a remarkable transition for Kinkel in the years since her parents’ deaths. From a high school cheerleader who floundered scholastically and worked as a Sizzler restaurant waitress, Kinkel went on to become a research associate at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif. She was accepted everywhere she applied to graduate school, including Princeton and Harvard universities.
Her upward trajectory comes as no surprise to mentor Geoffrey M. Wahl of the Salk Institute. Articulate and mature, she listens and quietly figures out ways around research problems that others consider insurmountable obstacles, he says, adding that her personal losses have given her an “incredible motivation” to succeed.
She transferred from the community college to the University of California–San Diego in 2003 and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in molecular biology two years later. A summer internship at the pharmaceutical company Merck was followed by a two-year stint in Wahl’s lab, which focuses on the genetic basis of cancer and drug-resistant tumors. Kinkel says she could not resist the opportunity to work with Wahl when she learned his research included studying the disease that took her mother.
“When I was really young, I thought [cancer] was one disease that could just be cured with one single medication, and I was going to find it,” says Kinkel, whose work in the lab focused on identifying and characterizing mammary stem cells. “As I got older, I realized it wasn’t going to be so simple, but I still had that desire to find more beneficial medications.”
Now at MIT, she’s one of 30 students in her biology graduate program. It wasn’t an easy move to Cambridge: She was diagnosed with pancreatitis soon after her arrival and had her gall bladder removed. Immersing herself in the college environment, she lives on campus with a roommate for the first time and studies in coffee shops over soy vanilla lattes, listening to music like Dave Matthews and David Gray (“Stuff that’s sort of mellow and heart-wrenching,” she says).
Despite hours stooped over a microscope, she retains the graceful posture of a longtime dancer—who even now does hip-hop at the Cambridge Dance Complex as part of an effort to keep a well-balanced life outside the lab. In fact, she is such a talented dancer that it could have been an alternate career, says her childhood friend, Kesila Childers.
“Dancing with Stephanie is ridiculous. People form circles around her,” says Childers, 28, who lives in Los Angeles and works for the company that produces MTV’s reality show Real World. “People say, ‘You dance next to Stephanie, you don’t dance with Stephanie.’ ”
Those like Childers who know Kinkel best think it must be very difficult for her to work in cancer research, Kinkel says, and she acknowledges that sometimes they are right. One time, she had to walk out of a conference session on inheritable breast cancer because it hit too close to home: Her mother, her mother’s cousin, and her mother’s mother all had the disease. Even now, she says she’s going to wait a few years to undergo screening for BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene abnormalities, which are associated with an increased risk of developing breast cancer. So is her sister, now 28 and a preschool teacher who recently wrote a master’s thesis on bereavement.
Looking at where they are now, it feels like there was a reason for what happened in the sisters’ lives, and they are proud of each other’s accomplishments, Kinkel says.
“It’s funny how different our directions are, but how similar: One more brain heavy,” she says, and “one more heart heavy.”
Taking the Needles out of TB Vaccination
By Pamela Ferdinand | April 19, 2007 for Nature.com
Nearly two million people around the world die of tuberculosis each year, most of whom live in the developing world. A vaccine exists but is difficult to distribute and administer in countries lacking an advanced health care system. A Cambridge-based nonprofit, Medicine in Need (MEND), led by Harvard University bioengineering professor David Edwards, aims to change that.
Edwards has developed a new method of vaccination using a powdered, inhalable form of the TB vaccine. Patients could essentially vaccinate themselves using a simple handheld inhaler instead of relying on trained personnel to give needle injections. And the powdered form would not require refrigeration, in contrast to the current Bacillus Calmette-Guerin, or BCG,vaccine.
“The idea of having a new approach that broadens therapy and increases the likelihood of success is important,” Edwards says.
Not for profit
Rather than struggle to find investors for a company devoted to problems of the developing world, Edwards decided to create a nonprofit in 2003 with colleagues and students to bring technology from his lab into the field. Harvard licensed Edward’s technology to MEND but has pledged to forego royalties earned from the technology in developing countries and a major share of royalties earned elsewhere.
MEND manages a $10 million grant that Edwards received in 2005 from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and is working with the Aeras Global TB Vaccine Foundation to develop the new form of the BCG vaccine. It is also planning a manufacturing facility in Cape Town, South Africa, which aims to begin producing powdered forms of standard and recombinant BCG vaccine by late 2008.
To convert the BCG vaccine into an inhalable powder, Edwards and his colleagues developed a spray-drying method that does not kill the live bacterial cells in the vaccine but creates particles tiny enough to be inhaled.
In a paper published in February, the researchers showed that the spray-dried vaccine maintained its activity at room temperature for up to four months.
And preliminary animal data show that vaccination with aerosolized BCG is more protective than injections, likely because it’s delivered directly to the lungs, the main site of TB infection. Tests in humans could begin in late 2008, Edwards says.
Spray drug
MEND also plans to begin clinical testing of an inhalable form of the antibiotic capreomycin used to treat drug-resistant forms of the disease, which kills 500,000 people worldwide each year. Although effective, this drug is expensive, with treatment costing $3,000 per person and requiring daily injections and oral medications.
Sending powdered capreomycin directly into the lungs via an inhaler could reduce doses by up to 50 percent, potentially lowering the cost and lessening severe and painful side effects for patients, many of whom also have HIV, says Alexis Wallace, executive director ofMEND.
The FDA last year approved inhaled insulin for diabetes, but sales have reportedly lagged due to questions about its safety, cost, and convenience. Whether an inhaled TB vaccine or antibiotic proves effective compared to existing treatments remains to be seen, but an aerosolized drug that achieves the desired effect would be “fantastic,” says Kenneth Castro, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s Division of Tuberculosis Elimination.
“The big question is, ‘Will a drug delivered by the lungs act better than [injected drugs]?” he says. “We would need to see evidence. The facts should speak for themselves.”
When The Brain Goes Under
By Pamela Ferdinand | November 15, 2006 for Nature.com
If you have ever experienced general anesthesia, you may recall feeling as if your brain was temporarily switched off. You plunged into unconsciousness and woke up, seemingly seconds later, without any memories of having undergone a painful procedure.
What changes happen in the brain during general anesthesia have long been a mystery. But preliminary results from an ongoing study at Massachusetts General Hospital—where anesthesia was first successfully demonstrated 160 years ago—suggest that the neurophysiological process of “going under” is more nuanced than simply a shutdown of the brain.
Emery Brown, a professor of computational neuroscience and anesthesia at Harvard and MITand director of MGH’s neuroscience statistics research laboratory, is using electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to capture how a commonly used general anesthetic called propofol produces loss of consciousness in the human brain.
Other researchers have studied the brains of patients after the drug has taken effect and have suggested various mechanisms of anesthesia across multiple brain regions.
Brown and his multidisciplinary team, however, are watching the human brain as it transitions from the awake, conscious state to the anesthetized, unconsciousness state. With this approach, “we can look to see when we have a certain drug level, what patterns we see on the EEG, and how the activity in the relevant brain regions change,” says Brown.
This way, researchers may be able to correlate drug levels with brain activity, which could lead to the development of target-specific anesthetic agents and more fine-tuned delivery methods that minimize the side effects and lower the risk of complications of general anesthesia. While it’s a routine and generally safe procedure, general anesthesia can have side effects, from nausea and anxiety to rare complications such as cardiac arrthymias and brain damage.
The study of anesthesia could also help researchers learn more about pain processing, memory formation, and the neuroscience of sleep, not to mention the larger question of consciousness itself.
“By studying anesthesia, we’ll learn as much about how the brain works as we will about how to make better anesthetics,” says Bruce MacIver, a professor of anesthesia at the Stanford University School of Medicine.
Selective effects
So far, four subjects have undergone Brown’s experiment. The researchers obtain EEGrecordings and do fMRI scans on the subjects as they are slowly injected with increasing doses of propofol. As the drug takes effect, the researchers monitor the subjects’ level of consciousness by asking them to perform simple tasks in response to auditory sounds. They continue to probe for activity in the brain’s auditory pathways even after the subject has stopped responding to the sounds.
According to Brown, his early results suggest that propofol is selective in stopping, dampening, or scrambling specific signals in certain parts of the brain. The findings so far are consistent with previous positron emission tomography (PET) studies of human subjects under general anesthesia, he says. These studies showed that the subjects had less communication between the cerebral cortex and thalamocortical systems in the brain, which are considered critical to maintaining consciousness.
“We don’t have to necessarily have things shut down. All you have to do is just change the way regions [of the brain] communicate,” Brown says. “And it doesn’t have to be the same way all the time. It may be just altering pathways and turning off some key areas that have to do with the integration of information.”
If that’s the case, anesthetic agents could be designed to disconnect only specific regions of the brain that allow you to, for example, sense pain or to be aware, says Warren Zapol, chief of anesthesia and critical care at MGH. “Why treat the whole body if you could focus on the place in the brain where the key wires for consciousness are?”
