A senior Health Ministry official confirmed Monday that a higher incidence of cancer and asthma has been found in Haifa.

The data emerged from a study by a research team at the University of Haifa, using data from 2012 up to the present.

The specific affected residential areas are primarily the side of Mount Carmel facing the industrial zone, the southeastern part of Kiryat Tivon, Kiryat Haim, and Kiryat Bialik.

The data show the incidence of lung cancer and lymphoma is up to five times higher than the national average among adult residents in the city.

In addition, babies born to residents in these areas have birth weights and head sizes 20 to 30 percent lower than those in other parts of the city.

Moreover, a study of children in Haifa ages 6 to 14 show the incidence of asthma was 2.5 times higher in the port city than in other less polluted areas.

Of growing concern is the damage to the developing fetus that is also becoming clearer, and which has implications for other health problems later in life as well.

It is believed by researchers at the University of Haifa that chemicals emitted by factories in the city are responsible for at least some of the problem.

The current research study by the University of Haifa team is nearing the end of the first year of a five-year project led by Prof. Boris Portnov and Dr. Jonathan Dubnov. The team is culling its data from the health maintenance organizations (HMO/kupat holims), hospitals, the IDF and cancer databases).

The initial findings, to be published in March, so far have also indicated that air pollution has not declined in recent years. The interim conclusions will be submitted at the end of the month to the relevant authorities, including the Health and Environmental Protection Ministries.

(JNi.media) Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics last week released its report on Causes of Death in Israel in 2013, which includes a few positive notes about the state of health of Israelis.

The report’s highlights were:

Mortality rates from cardiovascular (heart) and cerebrovascular (brain) diseases have gone down by more than 80% since the mid-1970s.

The most common cause of death in Israel in 2013 was malignant neoplasms (cancer), followed by heart disease.

The Death rates from malignant neoplasms (cancer), ischemic heart disease and cerebrovascular diseases in Israel are lower than in most Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

The mortality rate from trachea, bronchus and lung cancer, which is the most common cancer type in Israeli men, is very low relative to the OECD countries. However, the mortality rate from breast cancer, which is the most common type in Israeli women, is very high relative to the OECD.

Also, mortality rates from diabetes, infectious diseases and kidney diseases are very high in Israel compared with OECD countries.

In 2013, 41,479 residents died in Israel, half a percent of Israel’s population that year. 49.4% of the deceased were male, 50.6% female.

6% of the deceased were under age 45. 80% of the deceased were over age 65 (of which 65% were older than 75 and 36% – were over the age of 85).

1.3% of the deceased (539) were infants under one year old.

The ten most common causes of death led to 75% of all deaths in 2013. The two most common causes of death were malignant neoplasms (cancer) and heart disease — 41% of all deaths in Israel resulted from these two causes. As in all recent years, malignant neoplasms were the most common cause of death in 2013, making up about a quarter of all deaths.

External causes constituted one third of men’s deaths and one eighth of women’s. Of all the external causes of death, the biggest gender gap was in incidents of suicides, traffic accidents and murder. The adjusted mortality rate from suicide by age among men was four times higher than among women (6.8% vs. 1.7%, respectively). Death from road accidents was 3.8 higher among men than women (6.6% vs. 1.8%, respectively). The murder rate among men was 2.8 times higher than among women (2.3% versus 0.8%, respectively).

(JNi.media) “The terrorist attack saved my life,” Daniel Cohen, 31, who was injured on Monday, Nov. 2, in a stabbing attack in Rishon Lezion, told NRG. Cohen, a kashrut supervisor, was stabbed several times in his upper body and was rushed to the hospital, where doctors discovered a dangerous tumor in his colon, and saved his life.

“I was in the middle of work in Rishon Letzion,” Cohen recalled on Wednesday. “I was at the central bus station and waited for a local bus to take me to my next appointment. I waited for the bus and did not see anything suspicious. Then I moved a little and suddenly the terrorist attacked me and choked me.”

I felt my wrist almost being dislodged,” Cohen continued. “He pulled out his knife and tried to cut off my head. I tried with my hand to push it away and then he tried to stick the knife in my throat. I tilted my head and then he hit me in the jaw, near the ear. He knocked me down to the floor and then stabbed me several times, puncturing along the left side of my body, in the chest, the abdomen and the shoulder.”

“I grabbed his leg and tried to get up,” Cohen related. “I hit him, but couldn’t take away his knife. A passerby tried to throw a trash can in our direction and then the terrorist ran and I ran, too. I was in very serious condition. I knocked for the driver to open the bus door for me. The driver quickly let me into the bus. I reclined in the back seat. They tried to stop the bleeding. They asked me what happened and I groaned in pain. I started to say Shema Israel (which religious Jews say before going to sleep and before giving up the ghost).”

Except that later on it turned out that the attack was very lucky for Daniel Cohen. “When MDA arrived I was still conscious, we reached Assaf Harofeh Hospital — there they put me to sleep,” he said. “I went into a four hour surgery. The surgery went well, they removed the spleen and a piece of liver. My intestines were damaged.”

Then, “as they were treating these organs, they discovered over my colon a tumor I did not know I had. They cut this growth and stitched me and everything,” Cohen said. “Thank God I’ve reached the point within a week that I’m in good shape. They told me they discovered the tumor during the operation. If they hadn’t cut it, it could have gotten worse.”

A resident of Bnei Brak, Cohen is married and the father of five girls. “My wife took it very hard,” he said. “I’m staying in my parents’ home now for rehabilitation, for rest. There’s some pain, but there’s simple faith, especially in the situation we’re in. A person does not understand where a stabbing can lead him. I’m getting stronger, little by little.”

The student team from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev has won the Best Health and Medicine Project category in the prestigious 12th annual iGEM 2015 Giant Jamboree competition with their cutting-edge biological cancer therapy called “Boomerang.”

IGEM is considered one of the most important ventures in the global sphere of science. Nearly 4,600 students competed in this year’s event in Boston.

The BGU project Boomerang is based on advanced methods of genetic engineering and synthetic biology. It has many applications that rely on the special characteristics of cancer cells to identify and alter cells as well as treat the disease at the molecular level.

The name “Boomerang” mirrors the actions in which the synthetic system uses cancer cells’ own genetic alterations against them.

As a cancer therapy, Boomerang works as a modular system. It can cause disruption of genes essential for cancer survival or activate suicide genes so that the cancer or tumor kills itself. Boomerang can also produce color proteins for cancer cell detection so that the edges of a tumor are visible to ensure complete surgical removal.

In addition to winning the grand prize in the Best Health and Medicine Project in the “Overgraduate” category (graduate level), the BGU team was a first runner-up in the overall competition, the first Israeli team to reach this level in iGEM.

The BGU team also won the Best New Basic Part Award for developing and submitting the best new functional DNA sequence to this year’s competition.

Dr. Oliver Sacks, one if whose books was turned into an Academy Award-winning movie, died on Sunday in New York City at the age of 82.

He never married. Among his cousins are Nobel Prize Winner Robert Aumann of Israel and the late Abba Eban, former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations.

Sacks – a professor, writer and neurologist – authored more than a dozen books, including “Awakenings.” His book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” helped demystify Tourette’s, Alzheimer’s.

He was professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University between 2007 and 2012 and was on the clinical faculty of Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Dr. Sacks was born in London, from where he was evacuated during the Blitz. His best-selling books included case studies of people with neurological disorders.

After the war, he learned physiology and biology and later earned his medical degree at The Queen’s College, Oxford.

He later moved to Canada and then to the United States, where he learned neurology] and experimented with various recreational drugs, which he described in an article in The New Yorker three years ago and in his book “Hallucinations.”

Dr. Sacks was diagnosed with cancer this past January and wrote in The New York Times in February that he had “months” left in his life and wrote that he hoped the time he had left would be spent “in in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can”.

(JNi.media) A genetic analysis laboratory in Katzrin, in the Golan Heights, has announced a new development allowing the identification of an inherited predisposition to prostate and other cancers in families with a history of cancer—a full 10 to 15 years before any symptoms of early cancer are presented.

Galil Genetic Analysis (GGA) says it is leading the revolution in genetic diagnostic testing in Israel, and is the largest private genetics laboratory in the country, dealing, among other areas, in Oncogenetics predisposition testing.

The company’s stated goal is that its genetic testing be used to provide all patients with a confirmed diagnosis of their chances to have cancer in the next 10 to 15 years, so that they can receive the most appropriate medical and pharmaceutical treatment.

According to GGA’s website, each patient can become aware of potential medical risks according to his or her genetic background, as well as family members’, and be able to reduce the risk for biological relatives.

These promises are apparently already being fulfilled today, according to a Monday report in Ynet. The patient is referred to the GGA lab by an oncologist, and the exam is done privately, since Israel’s HMOs do not yet provide for it.

The patient gives a blood or saliva sample which is sent to GGA in Katzrin. The test device scans 12 to 66 genes, and is capable of detecting risk for prostate, colon, breast, ovarian, pancreatic and skin cancers, to name a few.

The cost of the test ranges from $1,600 to $2,000. The genetic analysis takes five to seven weeks, and the results are sent to the referring oncologist, who then deciphers the results and invites the patient for consultation.

The test detects mutations in genes, allowing the attending physician to better understand the characteristics of the disease and tailor an optimal treatment for it. The patient would typically also be at a high risk to develop other cancers, and would benefit from the increased surveillance efforts to get early detection of additional tumors. This patient may receive preventive treatments and be warned about exposure to cancer causing factors.

The company’s most ambitious goal is to get to a place where, in each individual medical record, the predicted reactions to drugs will be listed, so that, when necessary, the patient will be treated accordingly.

Their website promises emphatically: “Pharmaceutical treatment will no longer be provided by the method of trial and error.”

According to the Israel Cancer Association, in 2012, 28,709 individuals were diagnosed with malignant tumors in Israel and 10,640 succumbed to the disease.

The main cancers that account for 50% of overall cancer morbidity among men are prostate, lung, and colorectal cancers, and cancer of the urethral diverticulum, as well as non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma (NHL). Among women the reigning causes are breast, colorectal, and uterine cancers, as well as NHL.

The main cancers that account for over 50% of overall mortality are similar among the Jewish and Arab populations, in men: lung, colorectal and pancreatic cancers, in women: breast, colorectal and lung cancers.

However, Israel ranks relatively low among the top 20 countries with the highest incidence and mortality rates in the world. Israeli men rank 19th highest and Israeli women 15th highest, both in incidence and mortality.

Compared with cancer mortality in OECD countries, as of 2011, Israel ranks below average, with a relatively low mortality rate (8th lowest).

Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, 90, announced Wednesday that he has been diagnosed with cancer that has spread throughout his body.

The announcement came nine days after elective surgery at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta to remove a “small mass” from his liver.

“I will be rearranging my schedule as necessary so I can undergo treatment,” Carter said in a statement. “A more complete public statement will be made when facts are known, possibly next week.”

The disease is one that is prevalent in the former president’s family of origin; his father and three siblings all died of pancreatic cancer, which his mother also had.

In a phone call on Wednesday, President Barack Obama wished Carter a quick recovery.

“Our thoughts and prayers are with Rosalynn and the entire Carter family as they face this challenge with the same grace and determination that they have shown so many times before,” Obama said in a statement. “Jimmy, you’re as resilient as they come, and along with the rest of America, we are rooting for you.”

Carter left the White House in 1981 but has remained extremely active in American foreign policy regardless of who occupied the Oval Office following his own administration.

In 1982 the former president helped found the nonprofit Carter Center, a human rights organization that furthers his activity as a global mediator, among other things.

Carter has been particularly active in advocating for the establishment of a new Arab country comprised of the Palestinian Authority regardless of its cost in blood to Israelis. In the past he has also been particularly fierce in his criticism of the State of Israel in advocating for Arab residents of Gaza as well.