The Academy Awards for Liver Movies

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This year's Oscar Nominations for Best Liver Picture are:

• Liver of Pi – A movie about a man's search for a new liver
• Lincoln's Liver – A movie about a President's liver
• Les Miserable – A movie about the hard times of livers that survive alcohol and foie gras  
• Silver Livers Playbook  - A movie about the livers of silver miners

 See you at the Oscars!

The Perfect Birthday Gift

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This President's Day weekend celebrates the birthdays of Washington and Lincoln. Although I miss not having two separate holidays like we did when I was a kid, I like the idea of combining two birthdays into one. One birthday means one birthday present.

So many of the celebrations I've been to recently have been Baby Boomer birthdays. I've discovered the perfect birthday gift for that Baby Boomer in your life—offer to pay for hepatitis C screening. If the test comes out negative, next year you can buy them a bottle of champagne. If the test is positive, how about a model of the liver?

A Valentine for Liver Lovers

Courtesy of Ed Porter

Before Cupid Took Archery Lessons

Happy Valentine's Day

The Super Bowl is All about the Liver

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According to an article in the Smithsonian, guacamole is the official Super Bowl food. Since avocados may be beneficial to the liver, I want to make the argument that Super Bowl Sunday is a liver holiday. The football is the perfect icon for the liver (the average liver is about the size of a liver) and the liver is sort of the shape and color of a football. Granted, the liver would be a lousy substitute for a football, since it weighs 3 pounds and is not very aerodynamic.

So this Super Bowl, think about your liver as that football is making its way down the field. Enjoy the guacamole, skip the beer, and don't forget to get in a little exercise before the game.

Liver Trivia or Triver Livia

Things I think about:

Did you know that every vertebrate has a liver? This means that if you have a backbone, then you have a liver. So, when someone says, "He has no backbone," meaning that the person doesn't have courage to stand up for themselves, then they can also say, "He has no liver,"  since if you don't have a backbone, you don't have a liver either.

Vertebrates include fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, primates, rodents and marsupials. 

• Do marsupial livers have pouches?
• Are fish livers buoyant?
• Do bird livers have wings?
• How do rodent livers deal with that horrible diet?
• If a reptile eats a rodent, does that mean the snake's liver has to deal with whatever the rodent's liver was processing?

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Queen of What?

It's official—I have reached the pinnacle of my success. C.D. Mazoff, PhD declared that I am the Queen of Hepatic Hilarity. He even sent me a virtual crown.

Here is the background story. While writing an article about the recent Partner's Study for the HCV Advocate, Dr. Mazoff ask my husband and I for some statistical analysis of the data. (Click here to read the article.)

This is my reply: "If HCV (hepatitis C)  risk is ~1 per 190,000 sexual contacts, then you would have to have sex 6.5 times a day for 80 years, and assuming that you were an early-starter at age 10, you would be having sex until age 90. I think this is way more than Magic Johnson had sex. 

• Your odds are 10x greater of getting murdered in the U.S. 18,000 to 1 
• Odds are greater that you would die in an explosion: 1 in 107,787 
• 100 x greater of dying from any kind of injury during the next year: 1 in 1,820"

"Dr. Mazoff wrote,  "PS: don’t blame me; remember this is from the Queen of Hepatic Hilarity!"

I wear this crown with pride. The jaundiced color goes well with my hair. 

Liver Games

Alan Franciscus, the director of the Hepatitis C Support Project invented Hepardy – a liver-related version of Jeopardy. he and I play it at all the hepatitis C trainings and it is quite fun. Now there is a game show on the HCV Advocate website, so anyone can test their knowledge about hepatitis C and related issues.

Click here to play. Have fun!

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