Lung Cancer

John Thomas "Dick" Burda, a retired asbestos worker and former Howard County resident, died Sunday of lung cancer at Gilchrist Hospice in Towson. He was 83. Born in Baltimore and raised in Edmondson Village, Mr. Burda attended city public schools. He served with the Marine Corps in Korea during the Korean War, where he was wounded. He was later awarded the Purple Heart. For 35 years until retiring in 1989, Mr. Burda worked out of Pipe Coverers' Union 11, which is now Local 24. The longtime Ellicott City resident moved to Ocean Pines 15 years ago. He was an avid golfer and enjoyed fishing and crabbing with his family.

The first words that Bryan McMillan's best friend said to him when McMillan visited him in the hospital in March 2010 were, "How are you doing?" What would otherwise be an ordinary question shocked McMillan. His friend of 32 years, who was just diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma and lying in a hospital bed adjacent to a healthy McMillan, was more interested in the other's well-being than his own. "That was one of those pivotal moments you don't forget," McMillan, 48, of Columbia, said.

North County High School freshman Jack Andraka stood on the auditorium stage, speaking about the invention that earned him the $75,000 grand prize at the recent Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Behind him stood Dr. Anirban Maitra, a professor in the Johns Hopkins University's department of pathology who gave Jack use of his lab to craft his invention, a cheap and effective "dipstick-sensor" method of testing blood or urine to identify early-stage pancreatic cancer and other diseases.

Alan Gross, the Potomac man serving 15 years in Cuba after carrying communications equipment into the communist island nation, continues to communicate with supporters from the military hospital where he is held. The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington said Monday that Gross called to express his gratitude for the efforts of the Jewish community to push for his release. "I worked many years to reinforce the concept of community and I really feel it," Gross, 63, said during the telephone call last week, according to the council.

It is irresponsible to claim, as the letter writer from Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) does, that eating meat is equivalent to smoking cigarettes ("Unhealthful foods kill more Americans every year than tobacco," May 13). In moderation, eating meat is perfectly fine. Studies of the supposed link between meat and cancer regularly find statistically weak or no associations. That's nowhere approaching the level of risk from cigarettes on lung cancer, which range upward of 20-fold.

Alan Gross, the Maryland man who is serving 15 years in a Cuban prison after taking communications equipment into the communist nation, is asking authorities there to let him return to the United States to visit his ailing mother before she dies. Gross, who grew up in the Baltimore area and lived in Potomac, told CNN that he and his lawyer had written to the Cuban government "on more than one occasion" to request permission to see Evelyn Gross. "I have a 90-year-old mother who has inoperable lung cancer.

The da Vinci robotic technology allows doctors to perform more precise surgeries. The technique also enables patients to recover more quickly with fewer complications in many cases. The technique is used to perform many different types of surgeries. Dr. Gavin Henry, program director of the surgical residency at Saint Agnes Hospital in Baltimore, uses it over traditional lobectomy surgery to treat patients with lung cancer. The hospital said Henry is poised to outpace every surgeon in Maryland in the use of robotic technology for this operation.

Regarding the letter to the editor published Dec. 9 in the Open Forum, "Steaming over smoking ban:" I find all of your arguments faulty.  First let me speak to "how would enforcement work?" It's simple, when someone, who is not a smoker, sees a person smoking where they should not be smoking, they simply ask the person to put it out. If the smoker refuses then a call to police is the next step. If the smoker is the only person on the prohibited ground, then I guess there is no problem because the stinky dangerous smoke from your cigarette is not bothering anyone.  Hopefully you would take the butt with you, but more often than not it ends up on the ground.

Taken from the pages of The Aegis dated Thursday, Dec. 7, 1961: Harford County officials were up in arms over the Maryland State Roads Commission's decision a half century ago this week to eliminate the interchanges at Routes 155 in Havre de Grace and Route 152 in Joppa from their plans for a Northeastern Expressway. Harford County had a strong supporter in then Comptroller Louis M. Goldstein. Mr. Gold stein stated, "Are you working for the taxpayers of Maryland or the investment houses of New York?"

Robert Rokuro Omata, a retired U.S. Public Health Service captain and National Institutes of Health administrator, died of lung cancer May 10 at the Baltimore Washington Medical Center. He was 90 and lived in Millersville. Born and raised in Hanford, Calif., he was the son of a grocer and a homemaker who had immigrated from Japan many years earlier. When World War II began, he was in his senior year as a biology major at the University of California at Berkeley. "He and his family were among 120,000 loyal American citizens of Japanese ancestry who were forced to evacuate their homes in several Western states and live in relocation camps," said his daughter, Donna R. Omata of Baltimore.