'Black women should be screened for breast cancer earlier': study

 Black women should be screened for breast cancer eight years earlier than guidelines recommend, new research suggests.

Published in the JAMA Network Open journal on Wednesday, the study explored whether 50 was actually the best time to start undergoing mammograms.

The international team of researchers found black women are at a disproportionately higher risk of dying from breast cancer, so they are advising this demographic start breast cancer screening at 42.

“The current one-size-fits-all policy to screen the entire female population from a certain age may be neither fair and equitable nor optimal,” the study authors wrote.

The current guidance, set forth by the US Preventive Services Task Force, is based on the risk of developing breast cancer, which is the second leading cause of cancer death in American women.

Women 40 to 49 are encouraged to discuss their options with their physician and develop an individualized plan.

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer
among black women, with the American Cancer Society predicting 36,260 new cases in 2022.

Black women have the highest rate of breast cancer mortality and have nearly a three-fold increased risk of being diagnosed with an invasive and fast-growing type of cancer called triple-negative breast cancer.

The new study analyzed data from more than 415,000 American women who died of breast cancer from 2011 to 2020, grouping patients by race and ethnicity.

Researchers discovered that for every 100,000 black women in their 40s, there were 27 deaths. In the same number of white women in their 40s, there were 15 deaths.

They advised black women be screened at 42, while the same risk for white women doesn’t come until 51. American Indian, Alaska native and Hispanic women could be screened at 57, while Asian and Pacific Islander women could hold off until 61.

“This may be an important step toward a more optimized, equitable, and personalized [breast cancer] screening and may help mitigate the current long-standing disparity of early-onset [breast cancer] mortality in populations, especially black females, at increased risk,” the study authors wrote.

Experts believe implicit bias in the medical industry prevents black women from receiving adequate care compared to their white counterparts.

“There are systemic issues, access to care issues that really go beyond biology,” Dr. Arif Kamal, the chief patient officer for the American Cancer Society, told CNN.

“The reality is cancer affects everybody and it does not discriminate. Where the discrimination sometimes occurs is after the diagnosis, and that’s really what we need to focus on.”

Dr. Rachel Freedman, a breast oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute who was not involved in the study, told the outlet that while current guidelines do account for cancer risk, “race and ethnicity have not been traditional factors that go into these decisions.”

“This study confirms that the age of breast cancer-mortality is younger for black women, but it doesn’t confirm why and if screening is even the main reason,” she added, pointing to the lack of access to the patients’ screening history.

“We have no information about the types of cancers women developed and what treatment they had either, both of which impact mortality from breast cancer.”

While screening can catch breast cancer earlier — saving lives — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also warns of the risks, which include over-diagnosis, over-treatment and radiation exposure.

The agency named false positives as a potential harm, which not only cause patient stress, but also result in further tests that can be invasive and costly.

“While some may argue that earlier screening may lead to increased recalls and unnecessary biopsies, women get recalled for additional imaging about 10% of the time and biopsies are needed in 1-2% of cases, which is quite low,” Dr. Kathie-Ann Joseph, a surgical oncologist at the Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone, told CNN.

“This has to be compared to the lives saved from earlier screening mammography,” continued the surgery and population health professor. “I would also like to point out that while we certainly want to prevent deaths, earlier screening can have other benefits by allowing women of all racial and ethnic groups to have less extensive surgery and less chemotherapy which impacts quality of life.”

https://nypost.com/2023/04/20/black-women-should-be-screened-for-breast-cancer-earlier-study/

Coverup over naming hospitals where kids are getting a deadly fungus

 Moms and dads, listen up.

Three infants at a Nevada hospital were infected with a deadly fungus — Candida auris — because echocardiogram equipment used on the babies had been inadequately cleaned and was still contaminated from previous patients.

One of the infants died.

A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention investigator reported the tragic details at the annual Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America conference last week. 

But the CDC omitted one fact — the name of the hospital.

Expectant mothers would want to know which hospital, to avoid exposing their newborns.

The CDC, though, keeps a stranglehold on the information patients and parents need.

It refers to a hospital with an outbreak as “Hospital A,” hiding the name.

In New York, a Candida auris hot spot, state health officials also keep mum about which hospitals are most affected.

These public-health officials are paid by us, but they cater to the hospital industry and keep us in the dark.

Between 30% and 60% of patients who get infected with Candida auris die. 

The fungus is spreading at what the CDC warned March 20 is “an alarming rate.”

Scientists speculate that global warming is to blame for this fungus suddenly attacking human beings.

Maybe so. But the real environmental issue is the hospital environment.

The fungus is spreading at what the CDC warned on March 20 as “an alarming rate” as between 30% to 60% of patients who get infected with Candida auris die. 

Shutterstock

Hospitals aren’t clean enough.

CDC investigators traced a 2020 Candida auris outbreak at a Florida hospital — disguised as “Hospital A” — to medical equipment not being disinfected between patients. Yuck.

Workers also failed to clean their hands before touching patients.

When the hospital corrected these failures, the outbreak ended.

Similarly, a New York state Department of Health researcher found that at health facilities struggling with Candida auris, equipment to take vital signs was reused without cleaning, spreading the fungus from one patient to the next.

Why shield these lax hospitals from accountability?

The public wouldn’t tolerate officials concealing which restaurants have food-poisoning outbreaks or covering up which carrier is involved in a plane crash.

To find out which Nevada hospital allowed Candida auris to attack the infants, the Las Vegas Review-Journal had to file a public-records request, something ordinary citizens should not have to do. 

The outbreak happened at Sunrise Hospital and Medical Center.

Sunrise’s chief medical officer rejected any suggestion that lax disinfection is to blame, telling the paper that patients likely came into the hospital with the fungus.

That doesn’t pass the smell test.

Two of the infected babies were born there and had never left.

The CDC’s unwillingness to name hospitals is causing the fungus to spread faster.

In 2016, New York and New Jersey were ground zero.

Now it has spread to 28 states.

Once patients are exposed to the fungus, it grows on their skin indefinitely.

Only 5% to 10% of these “colonized” patients develop infections, but all become silent carriers.

If they are later treated at another hospital, they unintentionally introduce the fungus there.

That’s how it has spread from state to state.

In 2016, the CDC reported a case in a Maryland hospital, brought there by a patient treated six months earlier in a New Jersey hospital that had the fungus.

It clings to nurses’ uniforms, privacy curtains, mattresses, blood-pressure cuffs, walls and even ceilings for weeks, ready to sicken patients.

You don’t want to be treated in a hospital overwhelmed with this fungus.

But health bureaucrats have made it hard to find out.

New York’s Department of Health kept mum in 2016 when the first cases were found in hospitals here.

Had the state publicly identified those hospitals, other institutions everywhere could have taken special precautions to screen and isolate patients coming from these affected facilities and curbed the spread.

Last week, DOH reported an 86% increase in Candida auris cases in New York over the past three years. State health officials are largely to blame.

If you have health problems or you’re planning to give birth, you need to know where the hospital risks are.

Demand that public-health officials deal honestly with us and stop covering for the hospitals. 

Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and chairman of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/20/why-the-coverup-over-naming-hospitals-where-kids-are-dying-from-fungus/

House GOP to hold hearing on consequences of Biden admin forced pandemic school closures

 Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, announced Thursday that the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will hold the second part of a hearing looking into the Biden administration’s forced closure of schools and the consequences it had on students.

In a press release, Wenstrup, also the subcommittee’s chair, announced a hearing titled “The Consequences of School Closures, Part 2” with American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten serving as the key witness.

According to a description from the subcommittee, the hearing will look into whether Weingarten and the AFT played any role in “editing the CDC’s COVID-19 school reopening guidance and keeping schools closed longer than necessary.” It will take place on Wednesday, April 26, at 2 p.m. ET.

“The influence of Randi Weingarten, President of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), may have jeopardized the well-being of our nation’s children during the COVID-19 pandemic. If so, she should be held accountable,” said Chairman Wenstrup.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, announced Thursday that the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic will hold the second part of a hearing looking into the Biden administration’s forced closure of schools.

AP

The subcommittee will also inquire about the decision to keep schools closed despite various vaccines being approved and made freely available to most Americans.

“Even when healthy and successful learning environments were possible, Ms. Weingarten and the AFT advocated against school reopenings. Safely returning our children to school as soon as possible should have been our top priority,” Chairman Wenstrup continued.

“I look forward to hearing Ms. Weingarten’s testimony and learning about the role AFT played in promoting school closures that ultimately harmed the academic, mental, physical, and social development of our youth,” he also said.

the hearing will look into whether Randi Weingarten and the AFT played any role in “editing the CDC’s COVID-19 school reopening guidance and keeping schools closed longer than necessary.”

STEFAN JEREMIAH

The hearing will be a continuation of a discussion from last month when witnesses testified evidence did not support keeping schools closed.

“At the Select Subcommittee’s first hearing on pandemic-era school closures in March, expert witnesses testified that the ‘science’ never justified the prolonged closing of schools. Chairman Wenstrup sent a letter to Randi Weingarten last month requesting documents and information related to AFT’s impact on the CDC’s scientific school reopening guidance,” the subcommittee said in a statement.

President Biden officially ended the COVID national emergency declaration earlier this month and House Republicans have begun to immediately look back at the federal response and its consequences.

The subcommittee will also inquire about the decision to keep schools closed despite various vaccines being approved and made freely available to most Americans.

MediaNews Group via Getty Images
Children of all ages — and across the country — were left without any other option than to stay home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Education and psychological experts have argued students that were kept out of school for months or years may have suffered a tremendous loss to their academic and social development.

https://nypost.com/2023/04/21/house-gop-to-hold-hearing-on-biden-admins-pandemic-school-closures/

Audrey Hale manifesto ‘blueprint on total destruction’ say pols, claim FBI stalling its release

 Nashville shooter Audrey Hale’s manifesto is a “blueprint on total destruction” which the FBI are stalling releasing, according to local politicians, who describe its contents as “astronomically dangerous”.

Almost a month after Audrey Hale, who identified as transgender, killed six at the city’s Covenant elementary school before being shot by police authorities have yet to release a motive or any of the writings seized from her home, despite growing pressure.

Rep. Tim Burchett, (R-Tenn.) told The Post he knew the FBI was behind the delay, saying the news was “disappointing” and calling for documents to be released to grieving loved ones as well as members of Congress.

The manifesto “could maybe tell us a little bit about what’s going on inside of her head,” he added. “I think that would answer a lot of questions.”

Twenty journals, five laptops, a suicide note and various other notes written by Hale were seized from the house she shared with her parents as well as two memoirs, five Covenant School yearbooks and seven cellphones, according to a search warrant.

Metro Nashville Council Member Courtney Johnston confirmed to The Post the FBI has already ruled the manifesto would not be released in its entirety.

“What I was told is, her manifesto was a blueprint on total destruction, and it was so, so detailed at the level of what she had planned,” she said, when reached by phone.

“That document in the wrong person’s hands would be astronomically dangerous,” she added.

Audrey Hale’s manifesto has been described as a “blueprint on total destruction.”

via REUTERS

Johnston said “parts” of Hale’s writings would eventually come out, but added she feels “the vast, overwhelming majority of it,” presented too much of a danger to the public.

She added: “I personally don’t want to know the depths to which her psychosis reached … When I’m told by an MNPD high-ranking official that it keeps him up at night, I’m going to defer to that person in that agency that I don’t need to read that.”

The two agencies handling the investigation, Metro Nashville Police Department and the FBI, each deferred The Post to the other agency when contacted by The Post. Although MNPD is leading the investigation, spokesperson Don Aaron said material related to Hale is still “under analysis” by the FBI.

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David Rausch described the writings he had seen during a meeting with the Tennessee Sheriffs’ Association, reportedly saying: “The documents that we have, and I have viewed those, you know, one is specifically a plan and the other is some journal-type rantings.”

Former police officer-turned author and adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice Joseph Giacalone said the public “has a right to know” what’s in the manifesto “even if it’s heavily redacted,” but believes authorities are worried about the effect releasing it could have.

“I think what the FBI is really concerned here with, and I think law enforcement, is that if there is something in there that is truly damaging for the transgender community, I think they are hesitant to do it because they are afraid of a violent backlash against that protected class of people.”

An illustration made by Hale, seen in her website portfolio, that depicts Jack Nicholson in “The Shining.”

AH Illustrations

However, Giacalone also warned if authorities did release a heavily redacted version of the manifesto, “you run the risk of letting speculation run the day.”

Hale unleashed a hail of 152 bullets during her 14 minute killing spree killing nine-year-olds Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs and William Kinney as well as school janitor Mike Hill, substitute teacher Cynthia Peak and headmistress Katherine Koonce, who reportedly ran toward the shooter to try to protect the school.

Rasmussen Reports surveyed 971 people in the aftermath and found that 68 percent believed Hale’s alleged manifesto should be released.

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) said if the writings are not ultimately released, “then we need to investigate why.”

If released, a large part of the manifesto will be redacted for the specificity of the plans.

ZUMAPRESS.com

Rep. Walter Hudson (R-Minn.) has also pushed for their release. He recalled to The Post conversations with citizens who have expressed “increasing distrust with the FBI and with government agencies generally.”

“One of the greatest threats to democracy or, as I would say, threats to the Constitutional Republic, is the erosion of trust in institutions. The FBI is one of those institutions,” he said, adding he thinks public trust in the intelligence agency has wavered. He added: “If you’re going to wield power in a free country, then you have a responsibility to maintain the public’s trust in that power – and the FBI needs to figure out how to do that.”

https://nypost.com/2023/04/20/audrey-hale-manifesto-blueprint-on-destruction-say-pols-who-claim-fbi-stalling-release/