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After a Leukemia doctor and researcher develops the disease himself, he finds an effective treatment when his colleagues sequence his cancer genome:

Dr. Wartman’s doctors realized then that their last best hope for saving him was to use all the genetic know-how and technology at their disposal.

After their month of frantic work to beat cancer’s relentless clock, the group, led by Richard Wilson and Elaine Mardis, directors of the university’s genome institute, had the data. It was Aug. 31.

The cancer’s DNA had, as expected, many mutations, but there was nothing to be done about them. There were no drugs to attack them.

But the other analysis, of the cancer’s RNA, was different. There was something there, something unexpected.

“Genetic Gamble: New Approaches to Fighting Cancer.” — A three-part series by The New York Times on the new frontier of cancer treatment.

• Part One: “In Treatment for Leukemia, Glimpses of the Future”

• Part Two: “A New Treatment’s Tantalizing Promise Brings Heartbreaking Ups and Downs”

• Part Three: “A Life-Death Predictor Adds to a Cancer’s Strain”

[Not single-page] The origins and consequences of the Obama administration’s focus on drone strikes to kill enemy combatants:

Of course, the danger of the Lethal Presidency is that the precedent you establish is hardly ever the precedent you think you are establishing, and whenever you seem to be describing a program that is limited and temporary, you are really describing a program that is expansive and permanent. You are a very controlled man, and as Lethal President, it’s natural for you to think that you can control the Lethal Presidency. It’s even natural for you to think that you can control the Lethal Presidencies of other countries, simply by the power of your example. But the Lethal Presidency incorporates not just drone technology but a way ofthinking about drone technology, and this way of thinking will be your ultimate export. You have anticipated the problem of proliferation. But an arms race involving drones would be very different from an arms race involving nuclear arms, because the message that spread with nuclear arms was that these weapons must never be used. The message that you are spreading with drones is that they must be — that using them amounts to nothing less than our moral duty.

“The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama.” — Tom Junod, Esquire

More from Tom Junod

A minute-by-minute account of the Supreme Court’s ruling on the American Care Act, and how some news organizations initially got it wrong:

Into his conference call, the CNN producer says (correctly) that the Court has held that the individual mandate cannot be sustained under the Commerce Clause, and (incorrectly) that it therefore ‘looks like’ the mandate has been struck down.  The control room asks whether they can ‘go with’ it, and after a pause, he says yes.

The Fox producer reads the syllabus exactly the same way, and reports that the mandate has been invalidated.  Asked to confirm that the mandate has been struck down, he responds: ‘100%.’

The Bloomberg team finishes its review, having read the Commerce Clause holding and then turned the page to see that the Court accepted the government’s alternative argument that the individual mandate is constitutional under Congress’s tax power.  At 10:07:32 – 52 seconds after the Chief Justice began speaking – Bloomberg issues an alert:  ’OBAMA’S HEALTH-CARE OVERHAUL UPHELD BY U.S.SUPREME COURT.’  Bloomberg is first, and it is right.

“We’re Getting Wildly Differing Assessments.” — Tom Goldstein, SCOTUSblog

More #longreads on health care

[Fiction] A run-in with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer after a rodeo:

Victor saw Nachee and Billy Cosa looking toward the entrance and turned his head to see a Riverside County deputy talking to the manager. Some more law was outside. They’d go around to the kitchen and check on Mexicans without any papers. Victor saw the Riverside deputy look his way. No, he was looking at the white guy at the next table, the guy wearing a straw Stetson he’d fool with, raising the curled brim and setting it close on his eyes again. Never changed his expression. He had size, but looked ten years past herding cows. It was the man’s U.S. Government jacket told Victor he was none of their business.

“Ice Man.” — Elmore Leonard, The Atlantic

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A percussionist’s nerve-wracking audition for the Boston Symphony Orchestra:

The classical audition ranks among the world’s toughest job interviews. Each applicant has 10 minutes at most to play in a way so memorable that he stands out among a lineup of other world-class musicians. Tetreault has prestigious degrees from the University of Rochester’s Eastman School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music in London, and he’s studied under the world-renowned performer Christopher Lamb, but at his audition, the only thing that will matter is how he performs in the most pressure-packed few minutes of his life. If he squeezes his glockenspiel mallet too hard, choking the sound, or if he overthinks the dotted rhythm or fails to adjust to the BSO’s oddly scaled xylophone bars and misses a few notes, the whole thing will be over. Mark Volpe, managing director of the Boston Symphony, sums up the audition process this way: ‘I want someone to be so brilliant that there’s no question.’

“The Audition.” — Jennie Dorris, Boston magazine

More from Boston mag

[Fiction] A young girl encounters an older group of students:

The morning of the abduction, Mrs. Allsop—dishevelled in a limp linen shirtdress—was wielding her secateurs up a ladder, pruning the climbing roses. She was immensely capable; tall and big-boned with a pink, pleasant face and dry yellow hair chopped sensibly short. Jane admired her mother greatly, especially when she transformed herself at night, for a concert in London or a Rotary Club dinner, with clip-on pearl earrings and lipstick and scent, a frilled taupe satin stole. Jane coveted this stole and tried it on when her mother was at the shops, making sultry faces at herself in the mirror—although sultry was the last thing her mother was, and everyone told Jane that she looked just like her. She certainly seemed to have her mother’s figure, with not much bust, no waist to speak of, and a broad flat behind.

‘Why don’t you call up some of your old friends?’ Mrs. Allsop suggested from the ladder top. ‘Invite them round to play Ping-Pong.’

“An Abduction.” — Tessa Hadley, The New Yorker

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A marriage of convenience between two socialites in D.C. leads to murder:

Drath’s murder seized the front page of The Washington Post, which was as awkwardly tangled in the story as the rest of the city’s elite. One of The Post’s columnists attended the couple’s dinners, as did the reporter who covered the case for The Wall Street Journal. Over the years, Muth flooded the in-boxes of his media contacts with messages containing his thoughts on the day’s events and knowing tidbits of insider gossip — speculations about covert operations gone awry or rumors about fights between top generals — a habit that didn’t end with his wife’s death. Four days after he supposedly found Drath’s body, Muth forwarded a note that he originally sent to officials in the Pentagon. He intimated that the police considered Drath to be the unfortunate victim of an assassin who was hunting for him. ’ have to take a slain wife out to Arlington,’ he wrote, ‘mourn her, then find her killer.’

“The Worst Marriage in Georgetown.” Franklin Foer, New York Times Magazine

Inside 19th Century London’s sewers with “toshers,” who made a living by scouring for trash and waste to be resold:

They were mostly celebrated, nonetheless, for the living that the sewers gave them, which was enough to support a tribe of around 200 men–each of them known only by his nickname: Lanky Bill, Long Tom, One-eyed George, Short-armed Jack. The toshers earned a decent living; according to Mayhew’s informants, an average of six shillings a day–an amount equivalent to about $50 today. It was sufficient to rank them among the aristocracy of the working class–and, as the astonished writer noted, ‘at this rate, the property recovered from the sewers of London would have amounted to no less than £20,000 [today $3.3 million] per annum.’

Quite Likely the Worst Job Ever.” — Mike Dash, Smithsonian

More from Dash

Top 5 Longreads of the Week: The New York Times Magazine, GQ, Stanford Magazine, The New Yorker, Smithsonian Magazine, fiction from The Atlantic, plus a guest pick from Damien Joyce.

Now that LeBron James has his first championship ring, his narrative is complete. A brief history:

Finally, after several drama-clogged months, LeBron James announced his intentions. He called a public meeting in the Roman Forum, at the very spot from which Marc Antony had addressed his countrymen after the death of Julius Caesar. (Some found this choice of venue distasteful.) ‘I have decided,’ James declared, ‘to take my tridents to Sicily.’

“This came as a surprise to many: the gladiatorial scene in Sicily was rather provincial, its arena small and poorly attended. There were, however, other dominant fighters in Sicily with whom James was eager to team — a lion named Jade and a dancing bear named Squash. From then on, they fought exclusively as a trio, doing well sometimes and not so well at other times. Spectators around the empire found this all to be rather anticlimactic. Interest in gladiator fighting dwindled, and many scholars believe it is no coincidence that the sport was officially banned, without public outcry, just a few decades later.

“LeBron James Is a Sack of Melons.” — Sam Anderson, New York Times Magazine

More from Anderson