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Spring 2024

Health Sciences

Winter 2005

Peru: In the middle of the jungle with no Walgreens

In summer 2004 my husband, Stuart, and I made our first trip to Peru. We traveled with a charitable organization that hoped to build an orphanage and medical clinic there. Having completed my second semester of nursing studies at the Washington State University Intercollegiate College of Nursing, I was the most medical-savvy person on the trip. But that didn’t stop us from doing a lot of good work. We set up clinics in Iquitos, a port city of about 400,000 residents near the headwaters of the Amazon River, and worked farther downriver in less populated areas with the Yahua and Bora Indian tribes. We were … » More …

Winter 2005

Honduras: What Patients We Saw!

During those long, hot, humid, and exhausting days, we saw, experienced, and accomplished things we had never before imagined possible.

We were a team, 24 strong, who came together for 10 days in the early spring of 2005 to travel to Honduras. We were nurses, physicians, dentists, dental hygienists and assistants, optometrists, and support personnel on a mission to provide medical, dental, and eye care to people who were otherwise unable to obtain it.

Our way was carefully prepared for us by an advance team of in-country personnel who work with Worldwide Heart-to-Heart Ministries, our mission sponsors. We flew into the city of San Pedro … » More …

Summer 2005

Portland pharmacist uses chemistry to duplicate natural human hormones

Forget about over-the-counter pills and creams to reduce hot flashes, insomnia, and other symptoms of perimenopause. Don’t bother with prescriptions for mass-produced synthetic hormones, either.

Instead, why not use chemistry-or bio-identical hormone replacement-to duplicate natural human hormones, and then concoct the right dosage for each individual woman? Pharmacists call this individualized procedure “compounding.”

Alison Johnston (’84 Pharm.) started doing just that in January 2003 in Portland, Oregon. She reports it seems to be working.

Johnston is the only pharmacist in a compounding-only pharmacy, Marquis Compounding Pharmacy in Portland. She has her own patients and writes prescription recommendations for their doctors to sign. A few of … » More …

Summer 2005

This man might save your life–or teach your class

Clint Cole (’87 B.S. Comp. Sci., ’00 M.S. Elec. Engr.) vividly remembers the drama of trying to save lives as a paramedic in the 1980s.

He and his fellow paramedics typically responded to emergency calls by driving as fast as possible to their destination. If they arrived in fewer than seven minutes, they were doing well. Usually, though, they weren’t fast enough.

Only about 10 of the 250 people he tried to save survived.

But as one the developers of the world’s most popular portable defibrillator, Cole has since contributed to saving tens of thousands of lives.

More than six feet tall and a little … » More …

Fall 2007

Jim Torina: Playing well with others

Nothing short of the opportunity to make the world a better place while making a lot of money could have lured Jim Torina ’84 out of his retirement. He’d already made a fortune building high-end homes around the Puget Sound and was happily surfing in Mexico.

Torina wasn’t about to give up his hard-earned surfing for just any tantalizing deal.

But this was different.

First, here was this clear need: According to a report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies, medication errors harm at least 1.5 million people a year. The medical costs of treating drug-related injuries occurring at hospitals alone amount … » More …

Spring 2006

Eat more garlic

If there’s just one thing you plant in your garden, make it garlic.

For one thing, it’s extraordinarily easy to grow. Plant it around Columbus Day. Cover it with mulch. Or don’t. Water it now and then when it starts growing again in the spring. And that’s about it.

You can start eating it at any stage, though obviously you don’t want to eat it all up before it develops heads. Thus, you need to plant a lot. You can chop the young shoots and add to a stir-fry. Pull the developing young heads and slice, using it for a mild flavoring. In early summer, … » More …

Fall 2002

Spokane Health Sciences Building enhances research, medical partnerships

Linda Massey swings open the doors of large kitchen cabinets that store portions of the $10,000 worth of groceries needed over eight weeks for people in a kidney-stone- and low-salt-diet study. Nearby are industrial-sized freezers to keep perishables. The Washington State University Spokane professor of human nutrition is studying the role salt plays in the formation of calcium kidney stones under a grant from the National Institutes of Health.

Next door in another lab is a white contraption that might have come straight out of NASA, a six-foot long container with a window. Large enough to hold one person, the “Bod Pod” has instruments to … » More …

Fall 2002

Keeping our food safe

If you’re worried that our food supply might be the next target of international terrorists, you probably needn’t be, says Barbara Rasco, associate professor of food science and human nutrition. Rasco’s research centers on bioterrorism and the safety of our food and water supply.

“I don’t think the events of September 11 mean there’s any increased risk to our food supply,” she says. Domestic ecoterrorists and bioterrorists are more likely to target our food supply than are foreign entities, she says. “The risk from them hasn’t changed.”

A lawyer as well as a food scientist, Rasco has worked on the prevention of international terrorist incidents. … » More …