Cancer

Channel 45 has pulled an ad promoting mammograms after a breast-cancer survivor protested that the spot torments cancer patients and children who have lost mothers to the disease.The advertisement, part of the state's three-year, $3 million anti-cancer campaign, portrays a boy being taunted by a bully, who shouts: "You don't have a mom.""Get a mammogram. Once a year for a lifetime. If you won't do it for yourself, do it for him," the ad says."Unbelievably callous," said Georgia Groth, 40, who was treated for breast cancer three years ago. The Baltimore woman has sons 6 and 9 years old.Mrs.

WASHINGTON -- The doctor for Judge Richard S. Arnold, whom President Clinton said he dropped from consideration for a Supreme Court nomination because the judge has cancer, said yesterday that Mr. Clinton made the judge's condition sound "more grave" than it is.In his announcement Friday appointing to the high court Stephen G. Breyer, a federal appellate judge from Boston, Mr. Clinton said he had considered but ultimately ruled out the 58-year-old Judge...

Cardinal Gibbons football coach Frank Trcka is retiring after 16 seasons after being diagnosed with lung cancer in early January.Trcka, 57, is the school's second coach in less than a year to be stricken with cancer.Longtime basketball coach Ray Mullis, died at age 60 on Dec. 28 from pancreatic cancer."It's been kind of a difficult adjustment, losing a basketball coach, and then finding out about Frank for the last few months," said assistant basketball coach Mike Dahlem, who will be among those who plan to honor Trcka at the school's sports banquet Tuesday night at Michael's Eighth Avenue in Glen Burnie.

On Wednesday, Eric Davis took two hours of chemotherapy treatment at Johns Hopkins Hospital.Yesterday, he took three rounds of swings during batting practice at Camden Yards.Now there's a comeback."And he looks great, too," Orioles hitting coach Rick Down said after watching Davis before last night's game against the Yankees. "He's got his power, he's got his quickness. It's like he never missed a day."Has cancer ever looked like this before?Not often enough, that's for sure.Davis is a walking contradiction to the sallow faces, broken spirits and other depressing images so often conjured by the disease and its long, painful recoveries.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Former North Carolina State basketball coach Jim Valvano has been diagnosed as having cancer in his back.Valvano, now a television analyst with ABC and ESPN, has not felt well for more than a month and has been undergoing tests in Raleigh, said his agent, Art Kaminsky.Kaminsky said that Valvano was given the diagnosis this week but that the extent of the illness had not been determined."It's serious, I won't deny that, but there are many details we don't know yet," Kaminsky said.

Orioles Hall of Famer Brooks Robinson, perhaps the greatest third baseman in baseball history, revealed Tuesday that he has undergone successful treatment for prostate cancer. "It was diagnosed very early, and I underwent 39 radiation treatments," Robinson said during a downtown luncheon for the American Cancer Society. "I feel healthy and fine, and I'm grateful that I was vigilant about my health." Robinson, 71, chose Tuesday's luncheon - which honored patrons of the American Cancer Society's Patient Resource Navigation Program - to reveal his illness publicly for the first time.

An unusual attempt to compare the effectiveness of an unorthodox cancer treatment to that of conventional chemotherapy has found that both were equally ineffectual in extending the lives of men and women with terminal cancer.The study, published in today's New England Journal of Medicine, found no difference in the length of survival between patients treated at the University of Pennsylvania Cancer Center and patients at an alternative-treatment clinic in San Diego.The researchers did, however, find that the conventionally treated patients reported a higher "quality of life" than patients at the Livingston-Wheeler Clinic -- despite many claims made for alternative therapies and despite the toxicity of chemotherapy.

The more than $1,000 in proceeds for last weekend's Coaches for Cancer game, during which Cardinal Gibbons defeated Calvert Hall, went to the American Cancer Society, according to Gibbons coach Bob Flynn. Proceeds from tomorrow's Dulaney at Dundalk boys basketball game will go toward the Children's Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins Hospital on behalf of Alice Peiser, Tom Shaekel and police trooper Edward Toatley. Peiser, the mother of Dundalk head coach Kevin Peiser, and Shaekel, Peiser's assistant, both died of cancer.

The American Cancer Society in Annapolis is sponsoring a tribute to the late Aris Allen that it hopes will spread the word about early cancer prevention among low-income people in the county.Guest speaker Marilyn Quayle, Vice President Dan Quayle's wife, has been affected by the disease."Breast cancer is an issue for which she gives a great deal of time," said her chief of staff, Marguerite Sullivan, explaining that Marilyn Quayle's mother died of cancer.At the dinner, which will beheld Jan. 23 at the Annapolis Ramada Inn, the cancer society will announce the formation of a lecture series designed to promote cancer detection and early protection among people who may not see doctors regularly.

The Miami Herald said in an editorial yesterday: DARE we hope for a cure for cancer? Yes, a thousand times yes -- in the name of all who have died, suffered or comforted those stricken.It is hardly surprising that doctors and hospitals around the country have been flooded with calls from people wanting to take part in the human trials of two promising new anti-cancer drugs. Cancer, which now trails only heart disease as the leading cause of death in this country, saps not only its victims' strength but also that of their families.