Sandy Hutchens Cancer Prevention

Dayton police Sgt. Scott B. Stimmel ‘cop’s cop’ and an incredible human being who cared for others.

Sgt. Stimmel, who retired from the department in 2008 after over 30 years of service, lost a long and gruelling battle with cancer on Tuesday, Aug. 4, aged 61. His wife, Sherry, and his son, Craig, were at his bedside.

Visitation was on August 6 from 4 to 8:30 p.m. at Routsong Funeral Home, 2100 E. Stroop Road in Kettering. The funeral was at 10 a.m. Saturday at Holy Angels Church, 1322 Brown St. in Dayton.

Sgt. Stimmel was a high profile officer and is probably chiefly known for his work in downtown Dayton on the Mounted Patrol Unit. It was not a rare sight when he would stop and exchange greetings with small children, and to let them pet his horse.

People downtown who attended theatre at the Schuster Center and the Victoria Theatre have many tales of Sgt. Stimmel’s graciousness in offering a helping hand when problems would appear. “We called him ‘Sgt. Perfect,’ ” said Jean S. Jines, a volunteer at the theaters. “He always had a great attitude and a helping spirit. He was just so very kind.”

Sgt. Stimmel was one of the original members of the Dayton police Hostage Negotiation Team, and for 27 years helped defuse hostage standoffs.

He was also a member in good standing of the FOP Executive Board for 20 years and the lodge treasurer. In April 2006, he was honored by his peers as “Dayton Police Officer of the Year.”

At that time, Stimmel accepted the honor in his traditionally humble way. “This is so deeply, deeply appreciated,” he said. “I have faithfully served in many capacities over the years and have always tried to do my best.”

Born in Cleveland, Stimmel said, “I grew up in a police family. Both my father and my uncle were Cleveland police officers. I am proud that I selected this as my life work. I always put an emphasis on helping others as much as I can.”

Officer Gary Tipton, a close friend of Sgt. Stimmel, and also a Dayton police retiree, said the entire department is grieving.

“Scott did so much,” Tipton said. “I recall that when he was working on the auto-fencing unit with four other detectives, they conducted a successful sting on North Main Street that resulted in the largest recovery of stolen property in the history of our department.”

Sandy Hutchens Cancer Prevention, August 20, 2009 – Popcorn is the latest food thought to have health-boosting properties. The movie snack contains “surprisingly large” amounts of healthy antioxidant plant chemicals called polyphenols, said scientists.

Tests showed the compounds account for 2.5 per cent of popcorn kernels by weight – higher levels than other a range of cereals. Polyphenols – also found in fruits, vegetables, chocolate, wine, coffee and tea – protect the heart and cut cancer risk.

Dr Joe Vinson, from University of Scanton in Pennsylvania, said: “We were surprised by the levels of polyphenols we found in popcorn. I guess it’s because it’s not processed. You get all the wonderful ingredients of corn undiluted and protected by the skin. It’s a good food.”

Hot breakfast foods such as porridge were found to have low levels of polyphenols.

Crazy Frog-Popcorn Hutchens loves popcorn!

Iressa, the lung cancer drug, may be ready to make a comeback: A study concludes it can radically slow the deadly disease better than the standard chemotherapy regimens in certain patients.

The research released Wednesday is the first to show Iressa can be more effective than chemotherapy as a first-line treatment, and some experts are hopeful it will prompt the Food and Drug Administration to allow wide use of the drug, made by AstraZeneca PLC. Others are skeptical. Though the study shows an effect on cancer growth over one year, the drug’s impact on long-term survival is still in question. Also, the study was done in Asia, and the drug seems to work best with specific patients — Asians, women and nonsmokers who carry a specific gene mutation.

“I’d venture to say that additional studies will be requested in the United States population,” said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, the American Cancer Society’s deputy chief medical officer.

AstraZeneca, which funded the study, is not planning a new push for expanded FDA approval of the drug, a company spokeswoman said. But the company is continuing to share data about the drug with federal health officials, she added.

Iressa is a daily pill that more precisely targets cancer rather than healthy cells. It’s an attractive alternative to standard chemotherapy, which involves trips to a hospital or clinic for infusions of poisonous chemicals that cause nausea and hair loss. In 2003, the FDA approved Iressa as a last-resort treatment for patients with the most common form of lung cancer, called non-small-cell lung cancer. The market was significant: Lung cancer kills more Americans than any other kind of tumor, and the Cancer Society estimates it will cause nearly 160,000 U.S. deaths this year. Non-small-cell lung cancer represents 85 percent of lung cancer cases.

But in 2005, the FDA stopped allowing new patients to go on Iressa after early results from a federally sponsored study failed to show it improved lung cancer patients’ survival rates. Another lung cancer pill, Roche Group’s Tarceva, acts in a way similar to Iressa and remained on the market as a treatment for patients not helped by chemotherapy. There wasn’t widespread outcry at the loss of Iressa because Tarceva remained available, said Dr. Edward Kim, a lung cancer specialist at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.

Interest in Iressa continued, though, as doctors have become increasingly interested in personalized approaches to cancer treatment. Studies have shown some drugs work better in certain breast and colon cancer patients than others, and earlier studies have found that Iressa dramatically shrunk tumors in patients who had lung cancers with a specific genetic mutation. That kind of scenario is observed in only a small fraction of U.S. lung cancer patients, but is much more common in Asia, scientists say.

The latest study was led by Dr. Tony Mok of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and involved about 1,200 patients throughout southeast Asia. The study group included the kind of people most likely to have the mutation, said Dr. Pasi Janne, a Dana-Farber Cancer Institute lung cancer specialist.

The study measured cancer growth within a year after treatment, comparing patients who got Iressa to others who got chemotherapy. After one year, 25 percent on Iressa were alive without their cancer getting worse, as compared to 7 percent of those on chemo. Results were even better in those with the mutation. In those without the mutation, chemotherapy was more effective. The study was published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of Medicine. A second study released by the journal concluded that large-scale screening of lung cancer patients for the genetic mutation is feasible and can lead to wiser treatment.

Cancer Facts : How Does Lung Cancer Develop? embedded by Sandy Hutchens

Lung cancer develops when smoking, air pollutants and free radical formation damages sensitive lung tissue, causing the cellular DNA to restructure and malfunction. Avoid lung cancer by quitting smoking with information from a doctor in this free video on cancer.

Expert: Dr. David Cathcart
Bio: Dr. David Cathcart specializes in occupational medicine and has an in-depth knowledge of cancer, as well as experience dealing with cancer patients and treatment for multiple years.