About Insight

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is committed to providing expert, compassionate care to children and adults with cancer, while advancing the understanding, treatment, cure, and prevention of cancer and related diseases. The Institute is internationally renowned for its innovative research and clinical excellence. Our expertise in these two aspects of the fight against cancer uniquely position us to develop and test the next generation of cancer therapies in both the laboratory and the clinic. Learn more about Dana-Farber, our research, and how to make an appointment.

The Dana-Farber blog, Insight, is a source of information and news about cancer, covering topics such as cancer research and treatment, cancer genetics and prevention, and inspiring patient stories.

About our fact-checking and editorial process

Insight is committed to bringing you information about cancer that you can trust and that meets the highest editorial and scientific standards. We employ a strict editorial process to ensure that what you read is factually correct. Here is how we do that:

  • An experienced content team: Our content producers, contributors, and editors are seasoned professionals with decades of experience in writing about health care and science. We are committed to ensuring the information we present is accurate, clear, and up-to-date.
  • Medical reviews and fact-checking from Dana-Farber experts: We work with Dana-Farber clinicians, researchers, and other Institute staff to develop content. Our experts give final approval of each piece of content before publication to ensure it is it is factually and medically correct. Dana-Farber has experienced clinicians, researchers, and teams across all cancer types who review blog information that falls in their respective areas of expertise.
  • Regular updates: We update our content as frequently as possible to reflect the latest cancer research and information. Each post has a “Published” and “Updated” (if applicable) date to clearly indicate when our team developed the content or updated it with the input of Dana-Farber experts.
  • Reputable outside sources: If and when we obtain information from sources outside of Dana-Farber, we only quote other accredited hospitals and reputable sources.

About our editorial team

Michael Buller is Senior Director of Branded Content & Creative Services for Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He has been a writer and editor for more than 30 years, the last 14 of those focused on cancer research, care, risk, prevention, and survivorship. Prior to joining Dana-Farber, he had a 20-year-career as a magazine writer and editor, beginning his career as a staff writer, covering the medical device and diagnostics industry. He also worked as the chief editor of publications covering the medical imaging and biomedical equipment fields, and for more than 12 years, at The Pohly Company, a Boston-based custom publishing agency. Over that time, Michael’s planned, edited, and created content for topics as esoteric as debt collecting and as mainstream as travel and consumer health. He earned a BS in marketing from the University at Albany (NY), and an MA in English and American Literature from New York University. 

Beth Dougherty has been writing about science and medicine since 2006. Before becoming a science writer, she was a software engineer and a teacher. She has an MS in science journalism from Boston University and BA in mathematics from Cornell University.

Lukas Harnisch-Weidauer is a Digital Content Producer at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute with four years of experience working in the healthcare field. His freelance work has been published in the Boston Globe, SPIN Magazine, and WBUR. He is also currently a master’s candidate in the Nonfiction Creative Writing program at Emerson College.

Robert Levy has written about the medical field for more than 30 years and has covered advances in cancer research and patient care at Dana-Farber for more than 25 years.

Megan Riesz is Content Strategy Manager at Dana-Farber and has been editor of Insight since 2016. Since Megan’s tenure began, Insight has won multiple awards including the first-ever ‘Best in Show’ award from the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Group on Institutional Advancement, an award reserved for the most impactful submission of the year. Previously, she was a senior digital content strategist as well as a digital content producer at Dana-Farber, as well as a reporter for the Brooklyn Paper and was a social media manager at Boston University. She was also a speaker at a recent AAMC Conference for Institutional Advancement. Megan graduated from the College of Communication at Boston University in 2013 with a BS in journalism.

Saul Wisnia has been a Senior Publications Writer-Editor at Dana-Farber since 1999. He was longtime editor of Dana-Farber’s award-winning research magazine, Paths of Progress, and has contributed articles on the cancer center to the Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated, Boston Red Sox Magazine, and other publicationsPreviously a staff writer for the Boston Herald and a sports and news correspondent for the Washington Post, he is also the author of numerous books including Miracle at Fenway, Fenway Park: The Centennial, The Jimmy Fund of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and (with Michelle J. Alpert, MD) Spinal Cord Injury and the Family. Wisnia has a degree in Newspaper Journalism from Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. 

About our patient stories

Dana-Farber shares patient stories which may include descriptions of actual medical results. Dana-Farber provides personalized care for each patient based on their unique needs; their experiences and results will vary.

Commenting guidelines

All postings to Dana-Farber’s Insight blog are publicly available and accessible on the Internet. Always consider how much personal information to share.

If you have questions about conditions, treatment options, or medications, please talk to your doctor. If you have a medical emergency, you should seek immediate medical help or call 911. We cannot provide any medical advice on these pages.

To make this blog safe and welcoming for everyone, we moderate all comments. If you engage in debate, please be respectful of the opinions of others. 

We reserve the right to delete comments that:

  • Contain profane, abusive, defamatory, or threatening, or otherwise offensive language;
  • Sell or promote a commercial product;
  • Contain spam;
  • Contain material that is unlawful, hateful, threatening, harassing, abusive, or slanderous;
  • Contain material that is misleading or factually inaccurate;
  • Contain copyrighted material or material that belongs to someone else; or
  • Contain private health information or other confidential information that is not your own.
  • Are not relevant to the original post or ensuing discussions.
  • Are otherwise inappropriate in this forum.

Republishing our content

Interested in sharing one of our stories on your blog? Feel free. We ask that you credit Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, link to the original article, and refrain from making edits that change the original context. Questions? Email the editors at insight_blog@dfci.harvard.edu.

Patient/family blogs

Patients and families of patients at Dana-Farber often chronicle their own experiences with cancer. Below are some blogs that you can follow.

All content in these blogs is provided by independent writers, and unless specifically indicated, is not reviewed in any way by Dana-Farber staff. It does not represent the opinions or advice of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute or its partners.