A breast cancer cell dividing
A new form of drug drastically improves survival rates of pre-menopausal women with the most common type of breast cancer, researchers said on Saturday, citing the results of an international clinical trial.
The findings, presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago, showed that the addition of cell-cycle inhibitor ribociclib increased survival rates to 70 percent after three and a half years.
The mortality rate was 29 percent less than when patients were randomly assigned a placebo.
Lead author Sara Hurvitz told AFP the study focused on hormone receptor-positive breast cancer, which accounts for two-thirds of all breast cancer cases among younger women and is generally treated by therapies that block estrogen production.
“You actually can get synergy, or a better response, better cancer kill, by adding one of these cell-cycle inhibitors” on top of the hormone suppression, Hurvitz said.
The drug works by inhibiting the activity of cancer-cell promoting enzymes known as cyclin-dependent 4/6 kinases.
The treatment is less toxic than traditional chemotherapy because […]
Atheist teen
Credit: Shutterstock
Even most atheists can’t entirely shake their belief in the supernatural, says a new study.
According to recent research, even those who purport not to believe in any organized religion accepted at least some supernatural sentiments.
The study comes from the Understanding Unbelief project, which is sponsored through the University of Kent in the U.K. and was based on thousands of atheist or agnostic respondents.
‘Unbelief in God doesn’t necessarily entail unbelief in other supernatural phenomena,’ write the report’s authors.
‘Atheists and (less so) agnostics exhibit lower levels of supernatural belief than do the wider populations.
‘However, only minorities of atheists or agnostics in each of our countries appear to be thoroughgoing naturalists.’
Just what exactly those beliefs are vary, according to the experts’ research.
In the U.S., a little under 20 percent of Americans reported believing in ‘supernatural beings,’ while about 50 percent of self-described atheists in China reported believing in ‘underlying forces of good and evil.’
Relatively speaking, among general populations U.S. […]
Former Republican strategist Thomas Hofeller.
What follows is a conversation between Executive Director of Common Cause North Carolina Bob Phillips and Marc Steiner Peries of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.
MARC STEINER Welcome to The Real News Network. I’m Marc Steiner. It’s great to have you all with us.
Voting rights goes to the heart of our very democracy. Using race to abridge those rights was commonplace in our country and gerrymandering districtsto disenfranchise another political party is as old as the republic itself. Now, North Carolina Republicans have gerrymandered their legislative and congressional districts to ensure that Democrats cannot control the state’s political future, despite the fact that Democrats are in the majority. Common Cause took them to court in Common Cause v. Lewis to challenge the gerrymandering of those districts. In the course of their case, they’ve discovered documents that clearly show that Trump’s administration lied when pushing for a citizenship question on the 2020 census. It may seem […]
Grosvenor Arch, Grand Staircase, Escalante, Utah, Credit: /REX/Shutterstock
The Trump Administration is responsible for causing the largest reduction of protected public lands in U.S. history, according to a comprehensive study published this week in the journal Science.
In 2017, the study noted, President Trump enacted two of the largest reductions of federally protected lands, shrinking Bears Ears by 85 percent and Grand-Staircase Escalante National Monument in southern Utah by 51 percent. Also in 2017, Congress voted to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and natural gas development.
By removing federal protections, the study said, Trump is opening up these lands to oil and natural gas companies. And while the 2017 reductions are now being argued in federal court, the study said, the government already has plans to downgrade or downsize nine more land and marine national monuments.
The study was conducted by 21 international scientists analyzing 200 years of data about protected areas. The scientists found that vast reduction of federal lands is a […]
Pro-choice demonstrators
Credit: ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/GETTY
As a slew of predominantly Republican states take steps to ban or limit access to abortion, several other states governed by Democratic leaders are attempting to strengthen reproductive rights and bolster their record with pro-choice advocacy groups.
In the last week, Illinois and Nevada have passed new legislation protecting abortion access, while leaders in California, Oregon and Washington made efforts to signal their support of pro-choice policies.
On Friday, Illinois Governor JB Pritzker indicated that he would sign into law the Reproductive Health Act, a piece of legislation designed to protect and enshrine the “fundamental rights of individuals to make autonomous decisions about one’s own reproductive health.”
The law, which would replace an outdated and unenforced edict criminalizing abortion providers, would also establish that a “fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent rights.”
That same day, Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak signed the Trust Nevada Women Act, which also removes criminal penalties for abortion providers. In addition to easing restrictions regarding abortion drugs, the law removes a requirement that forced […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
