Study shows- Forget Mammograms, ‘Oophorectomy’ can reduce chances of breast cancer death by 62%

Stephan:  As you read this promising story about breast cancer research bear in mind — as I published recently — that research suggests we are going to see a 50 per cent increase in breast cancer in the next two decades. This approach is pretty drastic but, for a woman who has already had the children she chooses to bear, perhaps less drastic than cancer.

OophorectomyAccording to National Cancer Institute, the detection of breast cancer with the help of mammograms among women with dense tissue is relatively complex as they have high amount of glandular and connecting tissue.

Researchers have been studying BRCA1 gene mutation and recently have conducted a study which makes it evident that the removal of ovaries can assist in cutting down number of breast cancer deaths. The study has revealed that the removal of ovaries actually assist in countering 62% of issues that is pertinent with breast cancer, especially when it comes to the cure of BRCA1 gene mutation cases. (Emphasis added)

A panel of researchers from Women’s College Research Institute from Toronto, Canada has chosen to carry out this research and came up with detailed observations. When diagnosed with BRCA1 or BRCA2, women have much higher odds of having chances of breast cancer during the later stage of their life. It is also very likely that their second breast will also be affected and may develop ovarian cancer eventually.

The researchers have closely studied 676 women who have been diagnosed with BRCA1 and BRCA2 […]

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94 percent of Americans don’t know the budget deficit is getting smaller

Stephan:  I was at a small social event this evening and in conversation with someone was surprised to learn that they thought the deficit was going up. It left me wondering how many people believe this to be the case. Here is the answer. People think as they do because of an active disinformation campaign put on by the Right. It is a classic example of Joesph Goebbel's Big Lie tactic.
Credit: money.cnn.com

Credit: money.cnn.com

It’s an indisputable fact: The budget deficit is getting smaller.

In fiscal year 2010, which was President Obama’s first full fiscal year in office, the budget deficit was $1.3 trillion. In fiscal year 2013, the Congressional Budget Office projects it will be $845 billion. That’s a 35 percent decrease in terms of dollars, and it’s even bigger—41 percent—if you’re tracking the deficit as a share of the GDP. The percentage drop is even bigger—roughly 50 percent—if you start from fiscal year 2009, which overlapped the final year of the Bush presidency and the first year of Obama’s.

But when Bloomberg News commissioned a survey asking Americans whether they believed the budget deficit was growing or shrinking, just six percent answered the question correctly. Ninety-four percent had no clue. And 62 percent actually thought it was getting bigger.

So the next time you hear a poll about how Americans think it’s important to shrink the budget deficit, keep in mind that 94 percent of us don’t even know that it’s getting smaller.

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Here’s What the Social Science Says About Countering Violent Extremism

Stephan:  This is one of the most intelligent commentaries on the Arab-Persian world I have read. Scott Atran's view of youth and militant Islam agrees with my own, as does his proposed alternative strategy.  This talk is right on target, and worth your attention.
Militant Islamic young men

Militant Islamic young men

This post is adapted from an address in the UN Security Council’s Ministerial Debate on “The Role of Youth in Countering Violent Extremism and Promoting Peace.”

I am an anthropologist. Anthropologists, as a group, study the diversity of human cultures to understand our commonalities and differences, and to use the knowledge of what is common to us all to help us bridge our differences. My research aims to help reduce violence between peoples, by first trying to understand thoughts and behaviors as different from my own as any I can imagine: such as suicide actions that kill masses of people innocent of direct harm to others. The key, as Margaret Mead taught me long ago, when I worked as her assistant at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, was to empathize with people, without always sympathizing: to participate in their lives to the extent you feel is morally possible. And then report.

I’ve spent much time observing, interviewing and carrying out systematic studies among people on six […]

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Lawsuits Show Gov. Contractors Intentionally Jailing The Poor For Profit

Stephan:  There was a time when the American legal system was considered the benchmark for the world. Those days are long gone. The American gulag today and the courts and law enforcement agencies that service it constitute an octopus of the state that could have been described by Kafka on acid.  In the United States if you are an ivy league graduate and work for the right financial institution you can weasel billions from fixed income grandmothers with no fear of being held accountable.  If you are Black or Hispanic, and particularly if you are poor, however, any touch by one of the suckers of the octopus, and you are doomed. We manufacture criminals in the United States. Like cars they are created in the factories of the prison system. And they are needed, like terrorists, because they justify the expenditure of billions upon billions, producing profits made by a tiny faction of the population. There is a reason we have five per cent of the world's population, but twenty five per cent of the world's prisoners.
In this July 31, 2014 file photo, inmates line up at Rikers Island juvenile detention facility. Credit: Julie Jacobson/AP

In this July 31, 2014 file photo, inmates line up at Rikers Island juvenile detention facility.
Credit: Julie Jacobson/AP

SOUTHWEST, GEORGIA — Twice in the past fifteen days, two separate class action lawsuits, one in U.S. District Court, one in Grady County Superior Court, were filed naming Red Hills Community Probation (RHCP) LLC, its CEO Margaret B. Crutchfield, and the cities of Cairo, Pelham and Bainbridge, GA, that hired the private probation company, as defendants.

The Federal case, Edwards, et al, v Red Hills Community Probation LLC, et al, filed by the Atlanta-based Southern Center for Human Rights, also names probation officers and members of various police departments, including Pelham Police Chief Nealie McCormick and Bainbridge Public Safety Director Eric Miller. The state case, filed by K. Todd Butler of Cairo, Green v Red Hills, et al, filed in Grady County Georgia Superior Court, alleges the defendants violated a number of state statutes […]

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We Still Don’t Know Where to Bury Our Nuclear Waste

Stephan:  You will remember the comment I wrote the other day about the challenges posed by nuclear waste. This essay presents a good picture of where this issue stands today.
Temporary nuclease waste storage facility

Temporary nuclease waste storage facility

When US Senate minority leader Harry Reid announced his imminent retirement last month, all eyes looked to Yucca Mountain. The long-time Senator from Nevada has spent much of his career opposing a long-term nuclear waste storage facility proposed at the desert site. With his sizeable influence set to disappear in 2017, many hope—or fear—that a Republican congress could reverse President Obama’s 2010 decision to defund the project for good.

In Canada, the Nuclear Waste Management Organization (NWMO) has viewed such drama with great interest. While America’s national nuclear waste repository has been hamstrung by decades of infighting and scientific controversy, mostly over its site selection failures, the NWMO is determined not to make the same mistakes up north.

NWMO’s plan has been dubbed the Adaptive Phased Management (APM) program, and if completed it will store all of Canada’s spent nuclear fuel in a single, enormous underground repository. Only nine northern Ontario communities remain on the list of candidates that the NWMO hopes will be both willing and able […]

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