by the University of Michigan

ANN ARBOR, Michigan.— About three-quarters of women newly diagnosed with breast cancer have a friend or family member with them at their first visit with a surgeon. And that person plays a significant role in the patient’s decision of what type of surgery to have, according to a new study from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center.

The study looked at the factors affecting a woman’s choice between a mastectomy to remove the entire breast or breast-conserving surgery, which involves removing only the tumor and is followed by radiation treatments. It found that when the patient, rather than the doctor, drives the surgery decision, she is more likely to choose a mastectomy. This proved to be the case among all racial and ethnic groups studied.

The paper appears in the next issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Further, the study found that women who had a friend or family member accompany them to the surgical consultation were more likely to receive a mastectomy, compared to women who attended the appointment alone. Latinas who speak little English were most influenced by family in their decision-making: 75 percent, compared to 34 percent of white women.

“Family and friends have a potentially important role in treatment discussions. More than 70 percent of women brought someone with them to the appointment, providing a chance for surgeons to convey information to both the patient and her support person. Clearly, others help with and contribute to decision making, and may do so differently for different racial or ethnic groups,” says lead study author Sarah Hawley, Ph.D., M.P.H., research associate professor of internal Storymedicine at the U-M Medical School.

The researchers also found that factors such as concern about cancer recurrence, body image and the effects of radiation impacted a woman’s surgery decision. Women who said that concerns about recurrence or radiation were very important in their surgical treatment decision-making were more likely to choose mastectomy, while women very concerned about body image were more likely to have breast conserving surgery.

“We want to ensure a woman’s decision is high quality, which means it’s based on accurate knowledge about treatment risks and benefits and is consistent with the underlying values of the patient,” Hawley says.

The researchers plan to develop a decision tool to help women and their families understand the surgical decision, and future studies will look at the issues important to patients and their spouses around decision making.

Methodology: The researchers analyzed survey responses from 1,651 women ­diagnosed with early stage breast cancer in the Detroit and Los Angeles metropolitan

areas. Patients were selected from each city’s Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results database, which collects information about cancer incidence, treatment and mortality.

Patients were asked about their surgical treatment decision, including how involved they were in the decision making, whether a family member or friend accompanied them to the appointment and their attitudes toward surgery. Higher numbers of African Americans and Latinas were included.

Breast cancer statistics: 194,280 Americans will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year and 40,610 will die from the disease, according to the American Cancer Society.

by the El Reportero’s staff

Protesters fake war prisoners being tortured in Iraq during a protest in UC campus.: (phot courtesy of WORLD CAN’T WAIT)

For the time being there will not be peace for John Yoo, as long as activists from World Can’t Wait, continue haunting the torture professor.

According to members for World Can’t Wait, they will not rest until Yoo is kicked out of his law-teaching job at UC Berkeley, a non-deserving position, for master minding the design of torturing tactics against Iraqi prisoners. They want the professor ­disbarred and prosecuted for war crimes as “the architect of the Bus-Cheney torture state.”

And to make sure that the debate over the recently released CIA Inspector General’s report from Dick Cheney and the halls of Congress to the radio talk shows, doesn’t die, The group, which has been protesting for several months, staged another protest on Sept. 3 to challenge UC’s employment of John Yoo, a former Bush administration lawyer.

According to Frances Tobin, who wrote Torture Memo’s John Yoo Welcomed Back to Berkeley by Protesters, in the online publication Politics Daily, the controversial memos he composed – the more infamous of which dealt with the curtailing of Geneva Conventions as applied to suspected Al-Qaida and Taliban leaders, narrowing the definition of torture, and justifi cations for warrantless wiretapping – were written during the time he served as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice, where, according to his university profi le, “he worked on issues involving foreign affairs, national security and the separation of powers.”

In August on the first day of classes at UC Berkeley Law, a press conference and protest drew over 60 people to the steps of Boalt Hall, where Yoo currently teaches Civil Procedures.

At that press conference, prominent lawyers and psychologists representing four generations of alumni of UC and its law schools denounced the presence of John Yoo on the UC faculty, announced World Can’t Wait.

Four protesters were arrested; including Stephanie Tang, a leader of World Can’t Wait. All were cited for two charges of trespassing and disturbing the peace, banned from the UC Berkeley Campus for seven days, and released.

In her article, Tobin cites the following responses to an email campaign launched against Yoo by American Freedom Campaign.

In response to the demands for Yoo’s firing — and some also think he should be disbarred — Edley released a statement in April of 2008. Edley cited Yoo’s First Amendment and due process protections, saying further, “My sense is that the vast majority of legal academics with a view of the matter disagree with substantial portions of Professor Yoo’s analyses, including a great many of his colleagues at Berkeley.

If, however, this strong consensus were enough to fi re or sanction someone, then academic freedom would be meaningless.”

According to a 2008 Inside Higher Ed article dealing with this topic, some within the academic legal realm supported Yoo even though they didn’t agree with his politics or positions. Brian Leiter, a professor of law and philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, called the emails by American Freedom Campaign a “disgraceful attack on the academy,” claiming that “tenure, and academic freedom, would mean nothing if every professor with views deemed morally reprehensible or every professor who produced a shoddy piece of work — while inside or outside the academy — could be fired.”

In his 2008 statement, Dean Edley noted, “We press our students to grapple with these matters, and in the legal literature Professor Yoo and his critics do battl­e. One can oppose and even condemn an idea, but I do not believe that in a university we can fearfully refuse to look at it. That would not be the best way to educate, nor a promising way to seek deeper understanding in a world of continual, strange revolutions.” Edley suggested that the controversy could be a proverbial “teachable moment,” though it seems that then, as today, no consensus has emerged as to whether Boalt Hall has accurately assessed such a decision and its reverberating effect. (Politics Daily’s Frances Tobin and press announcements contributed to this article.

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by the El Reportero’s news services

Hugo Chávez

Caracas, Aug 30 (Prensa Latina) The coup in Honduras was a test for a military escalation, which is continuously increased and boosted, with the new US military bases in Colombia, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez warned on Sunday.

Chavez expressed concern about the situation, which could start to cool off internationally and the pressure on the putschists could ease up, and he called on the international community to continue doing their best so that the Honduran people can retake their democratic path.

In his Sunday column, entitled “Chavez’ Lines”, he insisted that the coup was staged in open complicity with the US military base in Palmerola, where the plane that took President Manuel Zelaya away from Honduras landed.

“These have been two months of lessons: first, the openly interventionist power of important US sectors that are striving to change the people’s fate and secondly, the powerlessness of international bodies to enforce their own decisions,” said Chavez.

According to him, it is a terrible sign to the rest of the continent, “which may start to see that dishonor and injustice have become its daily bread.”

He said that to speak about an imminent threat to the entire region, mainly to neighbors in Colombia, is no overstatement. “We all risk a military intervention if we do not dance to the tune of the empire.”

Columbia squares up for Unasur showdown

The presidents from the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) held an extraordinary, and brief, summit in Bariloche, Argentina on Aug. 28, to discuss the proposed U.S.-Colombia deal allowing the U.S. enhanced access to military bases in Colombia.

The summit, which opens at 10 a.m. and ends with an offi cial photo and lunch at 13.30, will be a major test of Brazil’s dip  lomatic clout and regional authority.

Despite Brazil’s steady efforts to engineer an agreement, the summit looks on course for at least a row, if not failure. What Brazil wants is for the newly created Unasur, or its defense council (composed of the region’s defense ministers), to vet, or monitor, all foreign military alliances entered into by Unasur members.

250 Mexicans killed trying to emigrate to U.S.A.

At least 250 Mexicans have died while trying to cross the border with the United States in the first seven months of 2009, according to Foreign Department figures revealed on Sunday.

Most deaths have taken place in Arizona, with dehydration as the main cause in people from 18 to 45 years of age.

A slight downward trend in the number of deaths has been experienced since 2005 in the mentioned area, where 443 cases were reported that year and 344 were registered in 2008, the Foreign Department ­said.

At least 500,000 Mexicans try to cross the border every year and die where the US authorities are building the long “wall of shame,” Many of them die in the desert or are killed by the organized crime, according to experts.

Fidel Castro looking good at 83

Fidel Castro just celebrated his 83rd birthday, as Hugo Chavez made a surprise visit for the occasion of Fidel’s birthday. No major events were held in Cuba to commemorate Fidel Castro’s birthday but he published a column in Granma about the global economic crisis that is hitting the country, vowing to “carry on.” Western corporate media strangely decided to announce a picture of a “healthy looking” Fidel Castro during his recent meeting with the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa Delgado.

At that visit, an extensive dialogue took place on economic matters, education and health. The two presidents also discussed international affairs, spoke of cultural and historical topics and the continued close friendship between both countries.

by Erick Galindo

While the United States prepares for theworst, Latin America is mired in “swine flu” cases, with Costa Rica’s Nobel Prize-winning President Oscar Arias as one of its more notable new victims.

The deaths of 1,274 persons in the Americas have been attributed to the H1N1 pandemic as of Aug. 7, according to the Pan American Health Organization.

In Argentina, fatalities have more than doubled to 337 in the last month, reported the country’s health ministry, further damaging that country’s faltering economy with its impact on tourism. Deputy health minister, Máximo Diosque stated he expects to confirm another 400 deaths. Argentina has a total of 5,710 confirmed cases.

If the projection is correct, the Argentine death toll will surpass the U.S. total of 335 as the world’s highest. Other hemisphere counts include Mexico at 146, Chile at 96 and Brazil at 92.

The Americas account for 87 percent of H1N1- related deaths and 60 percent (102,905) of all confirmed cases. Twenty of the 35 countries that report to the PAHO have confirmed cases.

Health ministries including the PAHO and World Health Organization, are warning that children and pregnant women are the most susceptible.

Mexico, where the first outbreak occurred, reported no new deaths but a sharp increase in new cases. As Canada, Mexico and the United States prepare for flu season, there has been a shift in the policy of closing schools, churches and other areas of large public occupancy.

The WHO is combating news that the anticipated vaccine may be dangerous because of the rapid approval being sought.

“The public needs to be reassured that regulatory procedures in place for the licensing of pandemic vaccines, including procedures for expediting regulatory approval, are rigorous and do not compromise safety or quality controls,” WHO said.

Education and vaccine development are being stressed as fall school openings coincide with flu season. President Obama and his top advisers spent part of last week discussing the matter.

“We have been monitoring what’s been happening in the Southern Hemisphere and, although it has not received as much publicity as it did in the spring, the possibility of a very severe flu that kills a lot of people or makes a lot of people sick still exists,” the president said. TV programs such as Sesame Street — Plaza Sésamo in Latin America — are being used to educate children with the basic health tips.

In this country, there is a special focus on Hispanics. The Latino community and others that tend to be lower income and don’t have health insurance are much more vulnerable, President Obama noted on release of the White House’s comprehensive website www.flu.gov. “We want to make sure that information is getting out as systematically as possible over the next several weeks.”

Latino, Black Unemployment Rates Remain Highest

The overall monthly unemployment rate dropped in July for the first time in more than a year, prompting a glimmer of optimism for recession’s end. It dipped from 9.5 percent in June to 9.4 percent in July.

The rates for blacks, at 14.5 percent, and Hispanics at 12.3 percent, showed little change and continue well above the national rate. Payroll job losses were reduced by 247,000 following a 443,000 loss in June, according to the Department of Labor’s monthly report.

­Secretary Hilda Solís stressed that the unexpected reduction was insufficient, and more needs to be done to help the workforce.

Another economic stimulus package is not in the offing, she reported to Weekly Report and other media by teleconference.

President Obama has repeatedly preached public patience when pressed as to whether another influx of money is needed.

While the job-loss slowdown is a welcome sign, Solís stated, she would not be satisfied until there was “robust” growth.

Obama has often said that job growth is one of the last things likely to happen in the nation’s economic recovery. But the positive news did prompt the president to state that “the worse may be behind us.”

He called it a positive sign that the stimulus was working, “While we’ve rescued our economy from catastrophe, we’ve also begun to build a new foundation for growth.” Hispanic Link.