Edward Van Dyk threw his two sons, aged four and eight, and himself off a 15-story balcony of the Loews Miami Beach Hotel Sunday morning. Van Dyk, a 43-year-old oncologist from Illinois, worked his first position as radiation oncology specialist at the Norris Cotton Cancer Center at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
Although an investigation has not turned up a suicide note, he appeared to have been suffering from a mental breakdown before he left for South Beach to celebrate his and his wife's 10th wedding anniversary. According to a report by the Miami Herald, Van Dyk made a distraught phone call to his parents on Thursday, a day before he left to join his family in Florida.
Director of the thoracic oncology program at DHMC James R. Rigas, described Van Dyk as a "respectful colleague" but also admitted to the Herald that, "some of the staff had voiced that they had difficulty working with him."
According to his wife, Qinuo Van Dyk, the couple had also suffered from marital problems for six months prior to their vacation.
Dartmouth students, through the support of the Tucker Foundation, went in vans to see the performance "Telling My Story" at the Windsor Prison for Women on Thursday and Friday evening. The performance was directed by actor and activist Pati Hernandez.
As in Hernandez's previous prisoner performance production in the Newport Prison, stories from this event were brainstormed, written and performed by the inmates themselves. Inmates also collaborated with Dartmouth students in a women's and gender studies class on this project.
In conjunction with the University of Arizona's Department of Natural Resources in Sonora, Mexico, Dartmouth researchers from the Dartmouth Medical School published an article in the Environmental Health Perspectives Journal outlining their discovery that the existence of arsenic in drinking water is correlated with a decrease in the body's ability to repair DNA and exacerbates the effects of carcinogens. If left damaged, DNA can lead to an increase in mutant genes which can cause cancer.
According to Angeline Andrew, research assistant professor of community and family medicine at Dartmouth Medical School and lead author on of the paper, "this work supports the idea that arsenic in drinking water can promote the carcinogenic effect of other chemicals."
The study sheds light on the heightened dangers from high arsenic levels found in wells in rural regions of the country such as New Hampshire. Unlike municipal waters, where arsenic levels are regularly monitored, testing of private wells is not currently required.
