Daily Rounds: The High Cost Of Reform; No X-Ray For Lung Cancer; Weight-Loss Wars; Another Death At MIT

Mitt Romney may be haunted by Massachusetts health care costs - Jennifer Haberkorn - POLITICO.com (The Politico) "Mitt Romney’s health care albatross isn’t just the similarity between his Massachusetts health care overhaul and President Barack Obama’s health reform law. It’s also the fact that Massachusetts still has the highest health costs in the country — even after the reforms Romney signed into law as governor.It’s a problem his Republican challengers are beginning to use against him, and it’s yet another health care issue that could keep him on the defensive in the primaries."

Looking For Lung Cancer With A Yearly X-Ray Doesn't Reduce Deaths | WBUR & NPR "Now, a big federally funded study finds that yearly chest X-rays to look for lung cancer aren't worth doing because they don't save lives. The findings were just published online by JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association. Some previous studies of regular chest X-rays for screening suggested they weren't very helpful, though the evidence wasn't conclusive. Now there's an answer: Don't bother." (WBUR | 90.9 FM)

Study Shows Why It’s Hard To Keep Weight Off - NYTimes.com "They recruited healthy people who were either overweight or obese and put them on a highly restricted diet that led them to lose at least 10 percent of their body weight. They then kept them on a diet to maintain that weight loss. A year later, the researchers found that the participants’ metabolism and hormone levels had not returned to the levels before the study started. The study, being published Thursday in The New England Journal of Medicine, is small and far from perfect, but confirms their convictions about why it is so hard to lose weight and keep it off, say obesity researchers who were not involved the study." (nytimes.com)

Freshman Satto Tonegawa, MIT professor's son, found dead yesterday - The Tech "Tonegawa, the son of MIT professor and Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa, was discovered shortly after 5 p.m. by MIT police in his J-entry room. Tonegawa had not been seen for a week and an odor was noticed near his room. Tonegawa lived in Chestnut Hill, MA, about 6 miles from MIT. There is no reason to suspect foul play, the MIT News Office has reported. Tonegawa is the second MIT student to have died in less than two months. Nicolas E. Del Castillo, a sophomore, was found dead in his East Campus dormitory room on Sept. 4 in an apparent suicide." (The MIT News)