Tamoxifen, the pill that prevents breast cancer in high-risk women, does not appear in the long run to save many lives, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. Women at the highest risk of breast cancer do appear to live longer if they take tamoxifen, the researchers report in the latest issue of the journal Cancer. But for women at the low end of the high risk group, the sometimes serious side effects of tamoxifen outweigh the benefits, Dr. Joy Melnikow of the University of California, Davis, and colleagues reported. Tamoxifen can cause blood clots and uterine cancer. ‘We found that for women at the lower end of the high-risk range for developing breast cancer, there is a very small likelihood that taking tamoxifen will reduce mortality,’ Melnikow said in a statement. Melnikow and her colleagues calculated that tamoxifen can extend life expectancy only when a woman’s five-year risk of developing breast cancer is 3 percent or higher. This is especially true for women who have not had a hysterectomy, and thus risk endometrial cancer from taking tamoxifen. Many women are in any case switching to a newer class of drugs known as aromatase inhibitors to […]
FARALLON NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE – On these craggy, remote islands west of San Francisco, the largest seabird colony in the contiguous United States throbs with life. Seagulls swarm so thick that visitors must yell to be heard above their cries. Pelicans glide. But the steep decline of one bird species for the second straight year has rekindled scientists’ fears that global warming could be undermining the coastal food supply, threatening not just the Farallones but entire marine ecosystems. Tiny Cassin’s auklets live much of their lives on the open ocean. But in spring, these gray-and-white relatives of the puffin venture to isolated Pacific outposts such as the Farallones to dig deep burrows and lay their eggs. Adult auklets usually feed their chicks with krill, the minuscule shrimplike crustaceans that anchor the ocean’s complex food web. But not this year. Almost none of the 20,000 pairs of Cassin’s auklets nesting in the Farallones will raise a chick that lives more than a few days, a repeat of last year’s ‘unprecedented’ breeding failure, according to Russ Bradley, a seabird biologist with the Point Reyes Bird Observatory who monitors the birds on the islands. Scientists blame changes in […]
When Hamas and then Hezbollah kidnapped Israeli soldiers a few weeks ago, the Israeli government could have held its fire and avoided a major confrontation in which dozens of Israelis - and many more Palestinians and Lebanese - have died. There might have been a strategic rationale for such a policy, since starving kidnappers of attention may be the best way to deter them. But Israel’s leaders could not consider this option: they are responsible to an electorate that will tolerate war deaths but will not tolerate the neglect of kidnapped soldiers. In the past, Israel was the only democracy in the region, and its enemies, whether autocratic states or free-floating terrorist groups, were not similarly accountable to a voting public. This time, however, things are different. With the Iraq war, the United States introduced to the Middle East a bold new policy of democratization by destabilization. That policy encouraged elections in Lebanon and Palestine, opening the door to entities like Hezbollah and Hamas that are now experimenting with a potent cocktail of electoral politics, radical Islamist ideology and violence. Destabilizing the old order really has changed the rules of the game. We are now witnessing the most serious […]
A new study conducted at Sonoma State University shows widespread bias in Associate Press news reports in favor of the US government positions. On October 25, 2005 the American Civil Liberties (ACLU) posted to their website 44 autopsy reports, acquired from American military sources, covering the deaths of civilians who died while in US military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2002-2004. The autopsy reports provided proof of widespread torture by US forces. A press release by ACLU announcing the deaths was immediately picked up by AP wire service making the story available to US corporate media nationwide. A thorough check of Nexus-Lexus and Proquest library data bases showed that at least 98 percent of the daily papers in the US did not to pick up the story, nor did AP ever conduct follow up coverage on the issue. The Associated Press is a non-profit cooperative news wire service. The AP with 3,700 employees has 242 bureaus worldwide that deliver news reports 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to 121 countries in 5 languages including English, German, Dutch, French, and Spanish. In the US alone, AP reaches 1,700 daily, weekly, non-English, college newspapers, and 5,000 radio […]
ST. LOUIS — Another day of severe storms knocked out electricity for tens of thousands of additional residents, but brought along a cold front that was welcome relief for those waiting for power to be restored. A strong thunderstorm rolled through the region Friday, two days after one of the worst storms in recent memory caused more than 500,000 Ameren Corp. customers to lose power. Utility crews had trimmed that number significantly by Saturday morning, but the total rose again after the storms, adding another twist to a week that has seen at least 29 heat-related deaths across the nation. About 440,000 homes and businesses in the St. Louis area were still without electricity Saturday morning, but about 130,000 had been restored over the previous 24 hours. Ameren spokeswoman Susan Gallagher said it still could be early next week before all outages are resolved. Late Friday, a 36-inch water main broke near the St. Louis Science Center, flooding Interstate 64. By 8 a.m. Saturday, eastbound lanes of I-64 were still shut down, and many residents and businesses were without water. As the weather improved, there was hope the outages were becoming more of an inconvenience […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
