Cancer Research

A study of more than 25,000 Norwegian women suggests that regular exercise protects against breast cancer.Compared with sedentary women, those who exercised at least four hours a week had a 37 percent lower risk of developing the disease, the investigators found.And the more women exercised, the less likely they were to get breast cancer.The study follows more than a dozen smaller studies that found a similar effect, none of which, taken alone, was conclusive.So, with the weight of other evidence pointing in the same direction, several leading researchers said they would advise women to exercise even though the latest study was not definitive.

Even as Lance Armstrong races for another yellow jersey in the grueling Tour de France, the five-time winner is doing for jewelry what his soaring popularity has already done for cycling and cancer awareness. Millions of his fans are sporting bright yellow rubber wristbands inscribed with Armstrong's "LIVE STRONG" motto as they wildly cheer the Texas-born cancer survivor, who is in position to win his sixth consecutive title this weekend. The bracelet, which sells for $1 at cycling shops and sporting goods stores, is the brainchild of the Lance Armstrong Foundation to collect money for cancer research.

Johns Hopkins Medicine will break ground today on an $80 million research tower that will bring together scientists from many different disciplines who are working to fight cancer. The 10-story building is a key element in a $1 billion construction campaign that is expected to transform Hopkins' 52-acre East Baltimore medical campus and create up to 1,000 jobs over the next decade. When complete in May 2005, it will provide laboratory and office space for several hundred scientists and their support staff.

Bernie O'Brien is a big burly guy with a crop of red hair. But sometime after noon Sunday, he'll be sporting a shiny bald head. So too will at least 80 other people milling about Fado Irish Pub, the Annapolis bar that O'Brien manages. It's for a good cause. Charitable events usually conjure up images of adults in evening attire attending a gala, or of running a few miles and going home with a tee shirt as a memento — not a something as personal as a shaved head. But for the past 10 years, O'Brien has been a member of the "baldtenders team," a local group of bartenders who shave their heads as participants in an annual St. Baldrick's Foundation event that raises money for pediatric cancer research.

Researchers from the Johns Hopkins University slogged through thigh-deep water to rescue tissue samples and evacuate lab animals when a flood crippled a cancer research building after Hurricane Sandy last month. "It was really an extraordinary community effort," said Landon King, vice dean for research at the university's medical school, who worked to save precious samples stored in large freezers after the power went out. "It could have been an absolute disaster. " In the darkened basement of the Koch Cancer Research Building, water rose until it stood more than three feet in places.

MARYLAND CANNOT afford to delay the implementation or to dilute the impact of this comprehensive anti-cancer and anti-smoking plan..." The words are those of Gov. Parris N. Glendening, uttered via press release last February when he announced a $1 billion spending plan for Maryland's share of the national tobacco settlement. Now, though, a critical portion of that money has been delayed -- by Governor Glendening. As a result, despite the urgency expressed last February, the anti-cancer research effort will be delayed and diluted.

Gov. Parris N. Glendening is expected to announce today that Maryland will use its share of the tobacco settlement to greatly expand the battle against smoking, funnel millions to cancer research and help tobacco farmers convert to other crops.Dr. Martin P. Wasserman, who resigned in April as Maryland health secretary, has been tapped as a sort of anti-tobacco czar to oversee efforts to prevent young people from starting to smoke and to help adults quit, sources said yesterday.The announcement, scheduled for this morning at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore, will reveal the governor's plans for the $4.4 billion that the state will receive over 25 years to settle its lawsuit against the tobacco industry.

As the chair for the eighth annual Ride for Life — an equestrian event benefiting the Johns Hopkins Avon Foundation Breast Center — Michele Wellman was tasked with a variety of responsibilities that kept the 32-year-old hopping as she tried to balance her full-time job with Northrop Grumman in Sykesville, her horse boarding company in Union Bridge, and her personal life. Days before this weekend's event, Wellman was already amazed at the experience … and willing to tackle it again.

As she chugs through the water, Annie Applegarth will never be mistaken for Olympic medalist Katie Hoff. Barbara Thompson will never be in a split-screen comparison to Michael Phelps . The triumph here is that 15 weeks ago, neither woman could swim a lick. Water was to be feared and being in over their heads was almost certain death. "I was terrified," recalls Thompson of her first lesson. "I was climbing down the ladder and clinging to the wall. " But these two middle-aged women and several of their swimming-challenged friends known as the Mermaids will join hundreds of others next Sunday jumping in the open waters off Gibson Island or the Meadowbrook Aquatic Center pool to swim a mile or three for cancer research.

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton, after a day off to celebrate his wife's birthday, launched his final week of campaigning yesterday hoping to shore up his formidable lead among women.Appearing in the Rose Garden, the president told a group of breast cancer survivors that he was directing that $30 million in federal money be earmarked for research into a genetic basis for fighting breast cancer. Clinton also drew attention to the impending opening of a new government office of cancer survivorship, as well as a new breast cancer Web page on the Internet (address: http: //www.