Ingredient in Liquid Handwash Could Trigger Cancer

Researchers from the University of California recently found that a common ingredient in many liquid hand soaps, shampoos and even toothpastes can trigger liver cancer. The ingredient researchers are worried about is called triclosan.

According to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, triclosan is classified as "an antibacterial agent added to products to reduce or prevent bacterial contamination."

Researchers found that mice exposed to the chemical for six months, equivalent to about 18 human years, became more susceptible to liver tumors than the control group. Others say triclosan becomes even more harmful when combined with other compounds.

The FDA says it doesn't have enough evidence to recommend an end to the use of triclosan in consumer products. The U.S. state of Minnesota, however, is currently looking into legislation that would ban products containing the chemical.

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Actor Pierce Brosnan's daughter dies of ovarian cancer

LONDON (Reuters) - Irish actor Pierce Brosnan said on Tuesday that his 41-year-old daughter Charlotte had died after a three year battle with ovarian cancer, the same disease that killed his first wife more than 20 years ago.

Brosnan, 60, who was the fifth actor to take on the role of the fictional British spy 007 in the James Bond movies, said his daughter died last Friday, leaving behind her husband and two children.

Charlotte's mother was Brosnan's first wife, Australian actress Cassandra Harris, who died from the same type of cancer at the age of 43 in 1991.

"Charlotte fought her cancer with grace and humanity, courage and dignity. Our hearts are heavy with the loss of our beautiful dear girl," Brosnan said in a statement.

"We pray for her and that the cure for this wretched disease will be close at hand soon."

Brosnan adopted Charlotte and her brother Christopher in the 1980s after their father died and they took his surname. He went on to have another son, Sean, with Harris.

Brosnan married Keely Shaye Smith in 2001 and the couple has two children.

Angelina Jolie revealed in May that she underwent a double mastectomy after discovering she carried a gene that increased her risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer, the same disease that killed her mother Marcheline Bertrand age 56.

(Reporting by Belinda Goldsmith, editing by Paul Casciato)

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Devo drummer Alan Myers dies from cancer

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Alan Myers, the drummer for U.S. new wave band, Devo, on their most popular songs, including the 1980 mainstream hit "Whip It," has died, the band said on its website.

Myers died on Monday from cancer in Los Angeles, the band said.

"I think he probably influenced a lot of drummers that are out there now because he was really great at being very precise and minimalist," Mark Mothersbaugh, the singer and founder of Devo and now a TV and film composer, told Reuters.

"His minimalist style really suited what we were doing well," said Mothersbaugh, a founder of the band famous for their eccentric flower-pot hats and bright jump suits. "We always regretted it when he left."

Mothersbaugh said he did not know Myers exact age but thought he was about 60.

Myers joined Devo in 1976 but left after their 1984 album, "Shout," to pursue jazz and music "off the beaten path," Mothersbaugh said.

The drummer was part of the band when they crossed over from avant-garde art school rock to mainstream success with the 1980 hit "Whip It," which was helped by heavy play during the early days of MTV.

He was the drummer on the band's influential 1978 debut album "Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!" that was produced by British recording pioneer Brian Eno.

When Devo reformed in 2009, Myers was working in Los Angeles as an electrician and playing music in various groups.

Devo, whose name is a contraction of "de-evolution," formed in 1972 in Akron, Ohio, and moved to Los Angeles later in the decade.

Besides "Whip It," Devo also recorded off-beat covers of the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and Allen Toussaint's "Working in the Coal Mine."

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Sandra Maler)

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Emmys: Monica Potter's 'Parenthood' cancer battle began with her own real-life scare

By Jethro Nededog

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Monica Potter's journey through the experiences of a mom with cancer on NBC's "Parenthood" actually began with her own medical scare. "When I went in last year for a mammogram, my first one, they said they found something," Potter told TheWrap.

On the heels of the discovery, the 41-year-old mother of three went home and emailed executive producer Jason Katims, pitching a cancer storyline in the show's fourth season for her character Christina. "He emailed me back and said, ‘I have the chills, because we just broke that in the writers room,'" she remembered. "We were able to go on the journey together." (For his part, Katims also had a personal connection to the subject - his wife is a breast cancer survivor who is more than two years cancer-free.)

Luckily, Potter's scare ended up with the diagnosis of a benign cyst and a clean bill of health. But instead of delving into research on the subject of cancer, Potter said she went into the season with very little preparation for a storyline that took her character through diagnosis, chemotherapy and then remission. "I didn't want to know anything about what goes on with breast cancer and the treatments for it, because I wanted to experience it with the character along the way."

That's actually very strange for the Cleveland-born actress, who considers herself very "Type A" when it comes to preparation and who has gotten ribbing from colleagues for her methods. "I'll take a script, I'll rip it apart, I'll highlight, I'll staple each scene.

Sometimes, we shoot two at the same time, so I'll put them in categories," she said. "This year, I decided that I wasn't going to do that. I wasn't going to sit there and pull the scripts apart, and I wasn't going to have to know everything."

Not only did viewers react favorably to Christina's battle with cancer, but critics did, too. Potter recently won a Critics Choice Television Award for the portrayal and is getting a lot of Emmy buzz as well.

"I'm so excited and I'm so thrilled," she said. "And it's cool, because my boys are older, and they've seen me work at this since I was in my early 20s." Her career began, she said, when Danny, who was born in 1990 and is the oldest of her three children, was about 3.

"We'd travel all over and live in hotels, and I'd work and try to get paid. And the Critics Choice was the first award I'd ever been nominated for. To me, that's the best part of it all, to see the kids and their excitement. It shows hard work and dedication and loving what you do can be celebrated. And it's kind of awesome."

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Devo drummer Alan Myers dies from cancer

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Alan Myers, the drummer for U.S. new wave band, Devo, on their most popular songs, including the 1980 mainstream hit "Whip It," has died, the band said on its website.

Myers died on Monday from cancer in Los Angeles, the band said.

"I think he probably influenced a lot of drummers that are out there now because he was really great at being very precise and minimalist," Mark Mothersbaugh, the singer and founder of Devo and now a TV and film composer, told Reuters.

"His minimalist style really suited what we were doing well," said Mothersbaugh, a founder of the band famous for their eccentric flower-pot hats and bright jump suits. "We always regretted it when he left."

Mothersbaugh said he did not know Myers exact age but thought he was about 60.

Myers joined Devo in 1976 but left after their 1984 album, "Shout," to pursue jazz and music "off the beaten path," Mothersbaugh said.

The drummer was part of the band when they crossed over from avant-garde art school rock to mainstream success with the 1980 hit "Whip It," which was helped by heavy play during the early days of MTV.

He was the drummer on the band's influential 1978 debut album "Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!" that was produced by British recording pioneer Brian Eno.

When Devo reformed in 2009, Myers was working in Los Angeles as an electrician and playing music in various groups.

Devo, whose name is a contraction of "de-evolution," formed in 1972 in Akron, Ohio, and moved to Los Angeles later in the decade.

Besides "Whip It," Devo also recorded off-beat covers of the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and Allen Toussaint's "Working in the Coal Mine."

(Reporting by Eric Kelsey; Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Sandra Maler)

View the original article here

Emmys: Monica Potter's 'Parenthood' cancer battle began with her own real-life scare

By Jethro Nededog

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - Monica Potter's journey through the experiences of a mom with cancer on NBC's "Parenthood" actually began with her own medical scare. "When I went in last year for a mammogram, my first one, they said they found something," Potter told TheWrap.

On the heels of the discovery, the 41-year-old mother of three went home and emailed executive producer Jason Katims, pitching a cancer storyline in the show's fourth season for her character Christina. "He emailed me back and said, ‘I have the chills, because we just broke that in the writers room,'" she remembered. "We were able to go on the journey together." (For his part, Katims also had a personal connection to the subject - his wife is a breast cancer survivor who is more than two years cancer-free.)

Luckily, Potter's scare ended up with the diagnosis of a benign cyst and a clean bill of health. But instead of delving into research on the subject of cancer, Potter said she went into the season with very little preparation for a storyline that took her character through diagnosis, chemotherapy and then remission. "I didn't want to know anything about what goes on with breast cancer and the treatments for it, because I wanted to experience it with the character along the way."

That's actually very strange for the Cleveland-born actress, who considers herself very "Type A" when it comes to preparation and who has gotten ribbing from colleagues for her methods. "I'll take a script, I'll rip it apart, I'll highlight, I'll staple each scene.

Sometimes, we shoot two at the same time, so I'll put them in categories," she said. "This year, I decided that I wasn't going to do that. I wasn't going to sit there and pull the scripts apart, and I wasn't going to have to know everything."

Not only did viewers react favorably to Christina's battle with cancer, but critics did, too. Potter recently won a Critics Choice Television Award for the portrayal and is getting a lot of Emmy buzz as well.

"I'm so excited and I'm so thrilled," she said. "And it's cool, because my boys are older, and they've seen me work at this since I was in my early 20s." Her career began, she said, when Danny, who was born in 1990 and is the oldest of her three children, was about 3.

"We'd travel all over and live in hotels, and I'd work and try to get paid. And the Critics Choice was the first award I'd ever been nominated for. To me, that's the best part of it all, to see the kids and their excitement. It shows hard work and dedication and loving what you do can be celebrated. And it's kind of awesome."

View the original article here

Vince Flynn, author of Mitch Rapp thriller series, dead from cancer

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Vince Flynn, the best-selling author of the Mitch Rapp series of political thrillers that includes "American Assassin" and "The Last Man," died on Wednesday at age 47 after a battle with prostate cancer, his representatives said.

Flynn, who turned to writing as a way of fighting his dyslexia, died at a hospital in his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, said David Brown, spokesman for Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster that publishes the author's novels.

Flynn's most recently published book was "The Last Man" in 2012. Atria will put out "The Survivor" in October.

All but one of Flynn's 14 novels center on fictional character Mitch Rapp, an operative for the Central Intelligence Agency who targets Islamic militants and often takes extreme measures to achieve his goals.

Flynn regularly made the New York Times best-seller list, and after the publication of his 2007 novel "Protect and Defend" he began topping the list.

Flynn self-published his first novel, "Term Limits," which became a runaway success in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota and led to a deal with an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc. It published the book for wider release in 1997 and saw the work become a New York Times best seller in paperback.

Like the books that would follow, "Term Limits" was a political thriller. But it did not feature Rapp, who would make his first appearance in Flynn's next book, "Transfer of Power," in 1999.

Among Flynn's best-known books is "American Assassin," which was published in 2010 and chronicled Rapp's first assignment as a CIA operative after losing his high school sweetheart in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

"It has been our distinct honor to publish Vince Flynn for the entire length of his career," Carolyn Reidy, president and CEO of Simon & Schuster Inc, said in a statement. "As good as Vince was on the page - and he gave millions of readers countless hours of pleasure - he was even more engaging in person."

Flynn was a frequent guest on cable television news programs such as "The O'Reilly Factor" on the Fox network.

Before becoming a writer, Flynn worked in sales and marketing at Kraft General Foods before leaving in 1990 to join the U.S. Marine Corps as an aviation candidate. He had to leave the program due to medical problems stemming from concussions and seizures suffered as a child, according to his publisher.

Flynn announced in 2011 that he had Stage III metastatic prostate cancer.

He is survived by his wife, Lysa Flynn, and three children.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Bill Trott)

View the original article here

Vince Flynn, author of Mitch Rapp thriller series, dead from cancer

By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Vince Flynn, the best-selling author of the Mitch Rapp series of political thrillers that includes "American Assassin" and "The Last Man," died on Wednesday at age 47 after a battle with prostate cancer, his representatives said.

Flynn, who turned to writing as a way of fighting his dyslexia, died at a hospital in his hometown of St. Paul, Minnesota, said David Brown, spokesman for Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster that publishes the author's novels.

Flynn's most recently published book was "The Last Man" in 2012. Atria will put out "The Survivor" in October.

All but one of Flynn's 14 novels center on fictional character Mitch Rapp, an operative for the Central Intelligence Agency who targets Islamic militants and often takes extreme measures to achieve his goals.

Flynn regularly made the New York Times best-seller list, and after the publication of his 2007 novel "Protect and Defend" he began topping the list.

Flynn self-published his first novel, "Term Limits," which became a runaway success in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota and led to a deal with an imprint of Simon & Schuster Inc. It published the book for wider release in 1997 and saw the work become a New York Times best seller in paperback.

Like the books that would follow, "Term Limits" was a political thriller. But it did not feature Rapp, who would make his first appearance in Flynn's next book, "Transfer of Power," in 1999.

Among Flynn's best-known books is "American Assassin," which was published in 2010 and chronicled Rapp's first assignment as a CIA operative after losing his high school sweetheart in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

"It has been our distinct honor to publish Vince Flynn for the entire length of his career," Carolyn Reidy, president and CEO of Simon & Schuster Inc, said in a statement. "As good as Vince was on the page - and he gave millions of readers countless hours of pleasure - he was even more engaging in person."

Flynn was a frequent guest on cable television news programs such as "The O'Reilly Factor" on the Fox network.

Before becoming a writer, Flynn worked in sales and marketing at Kraft General Foods before leaving in 1990 to join the U.S. Marine Corps as an aviation candidate. He had to leave the program due to medical problems stemming from concussions and seizures suffered as a child, according to his publisher.

Flynn announced in 2011 that he had Stage III metastatic prostate cancer.

He is survived by his wife, Lysa Flynn, and three children.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Bill Trott)

View the original article here