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posts about #breastcancer more →
Shaniya Davis' Aunt Speaks Out • Teacher Sues After Slipping On Condoms
The New, Looming Battle Over American Womens' Breast Health
Hospital Workers Do "Pink Glove Dance" For Breast Cancer Awareness
Dugard Family Responds To Film Proposal • Runners World Didn't OK Use Of Palin Picture
New Breast Cancer Screening Guidelines Spark Confusion, Criticism
Task Force To Under-50s: Don't Bother Screening For Breast Cancer
Breast Intentions
Company Offers Tour Of FLDS Enclave • Bigoted Churchgoers Protest Outside Obama Girls' School
Teens Sue Over Fallout From Sexy Pics • Harvard To Offer Class On The Wire
Local News Starts Sweeps Month With Topless Breast Self-Exam

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ArtfulSlinger
11/24/09

In reply to Shaniya Davis' Aunt Speaks Out • Teacher Sues After Slipping On Condoms
I feel so bad for this woman and can completely understand her pain, and more than sympathize with her. The justice system can never really repair the damage these criminals have caused in their victims' lives, as well as their own families.

If there was any time better than now to take a deep dark look at what we are doing with our penal/judicial system, its now.
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Flackette Goes Retro
11/24/09

In reply to Shaniya Davis' Aunt Speaks Out • Teacher Sues After Slipping On Condoms
I realize she's just speaking out of pain, and I respect that (heaven knows that if I were in her shoes, I'd be saying a whole lot worse, and probably be plotting to kill the suspect myself), but I just wanted to point out that many local jails now do charge prisoners a daily fee - about $10 most places - for their food and lodging. Not that that at all helps the horrible situation this family is in - just being servicey.
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Edited by Flackette Goes Retro at 11/24/09 9:34 AM

MIXED
11/23/09

In reply to Shaniya Davis' Aunt Speaks Out • Teacher Sues After Slipping On Condoms
I wish I were a Rhodes Scholar with a Rhodes Scholar boyfriend! Pshh overachievers!

//congrats to both of them, what an achievement!
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curiousgeorgiana
11/23/09

@MIXED: Yeah, seriously people. Leave some good stuff for the rest of us! Hoarders.

Awesome for them. Hooray!!!
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eibhinn
11/23/09

@MIXED: The only Rhodes scholar I've ever met had an adorable burnout hippy boyfriend who was more interested in camping than studying. She detested Oxford and didn't finish her degree.
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Pizza!Pizza!Pizza!
11/23/09

@eibhinn: It's got to be bittersweet winning an amazing, prestigious award and getting an incredible opportunity... all tied to a guy who was a bigot, colonialist zealot who thought white Brits should rule the world (and especially diamond-rich South Africa – Rhodes was co-founder of DeBeers).
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Alohamaid
11/23/09

@curiousgeorgiana: um as someone who practically majored in dating Rhodes while at oxford I'd say you don't want most of them [/insecurity]
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curiousgeorgiana
11/23/09

@Alohamaid: I didn't mean the boyfriend LOL-- I meant the scholarship!!!

#tips
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Alohamaid
11/23/09

@curiousgeorgiana: whoops! Feminism fail

#tips
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curiousgeorgiana
11/23/09

@Alohamaid: LOL, no I wasn't specific ;o).
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Penny
11/23/09

In reply to Shaniya Davis' Aunt Speaks Out • Teacher Sues After Slipping On Condoms
I can't imagine having to reconcile Justice and justice for one you've lost. I don't care how much someone wants to wax poetic about the law/system and how government guarantees human treatment of all its citizens (which it doesn't really anyhow), that will be of little solace to someone in Lockhart-Davis' position.
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curiousgeorgiana
11/23/09

@Penny: Yes. I once had this conversation with my dad. He said that if someone murdered me, he would want them to get the death penalty. I argued with him that he doesn't support the death penalty, doesn't believe the state should kill etc etc.

He just said: "There's a reason fathers of murdered children aren't allowed in sentencing hearings."
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curiousgeorgiana
11/23/09

In reply to Shaniya Davis' Aunt Speaks Out • Teacher Sues After Slipping On Condoms
Once again, screw you VMI.

They recruited me; heavily recruited me. And I made the mistake of visiting the school. They harassed me for 3 months with constant calls/ letters--even after I told them I had accepted elsewhere. It took my dad getting on the phone and in his best commanding officer voice, telling them to fuck off before they stopped.

I'm sure some women have a fine experience there-- the women I talked to did not recommend it.
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daradoodle
11/23/09

@curiousgeorgiana: A sister of a friend of mine went there and had a really awful time. Last I heard she was spending her sophomore year abroad at a military academy in France just to get away.
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curiousgeorgiana
11/23/09

@daradoodle: I dealt with my share of sexist attitudes in NROTC. But those individuals were exceptions to the general rule. Not to mention guys would get slammed pretty hard by superior officers if they caught wind of comments etc. or witnessed any harassment.

It seems to be a culture at VMI, and I'm shocked that women survive it. Good for your friend for getting a break!
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daradoodle
11/23/09

@curiousgeorgiana: Yeah, I read a bunch about the school for a class (we were focusing on military academies for a couple of weeks), and I have to say, I don't really understand why a woman would choose to go there, knowing what I found out. It seems as though the culture is almost a reaction (a very bitter, nasty one) to being forced to admit women, and its just scary.
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Edited by daradoodle at 11/23/09 6:19 PM daradoodle was starred daradoodle was unstarred

Her Grace
11/23/09

@curiousgeorgiana: Many women from my university, Mary Baldwin College, are and were in the military program hosted on our campus, the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership. VWIL is the only all-female cadet corps in the world, but we're a small school (around 900 students, with about 150 in VWIL at any time) and couldn't offer all of the officer training on campus. Upperclassmen would go down to VMI (about half an hour) and be part of their training; my friends who did so said it was horrible and sexist.
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Ailatan
11/23/09

In reply to Shaniya Davis' Aunt Speaks Out • Teacher Sues After Slipping On Condoms
"They caused, allowed and permitted condoms to be distributed by school personnel to the students, many of which were opened during the school lunch period and thrown on the floor"

I'm sorry this lady fell and all, but I have a sneaky suspicion that she's just annoyed at students having had some real sex education at school.
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Gavagirl
11/23/09

@Ailatan: When I read that a teacher had "slipped on a condom", I thought maybe it had gotten a little too real. Hooray for linguistic ambiguity and its many amusements!
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I, Zombie Normal
11/23/09

@Ailatan: That's what I first thought, and I hope I'm just a damnable cynic, but I honestly thought it was a ruse to ban sex ed and the condom handouts.
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limber
11/23/09

@Ailatan: Sounds a lot like it, eh? She'd have a better case if they were still doing the condoms-on-bananas bit, and she'd slipped on one of those...
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whats_in_a_name
11/23/09

@Ailatan: Comprehensive sex ed: it's all fun and games till somebody slips and pokes an eye out.
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TimFritz
11/23/09

@Ailatan: Alas! We see why sex ed in public schools isn't working. If it were, they would know that the condoms go on your penis and not on the floor!

I blame the system!
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Ailatan promoted this comment Edited by TimFritz at 11/23/09 6:41 PM TimFritz was starred TimFritz was unstarred

PipPipCheerio
11/23/09

@Ailatan: They're passing out condoms in schools??!! Everyone will be falling all over the place!!

Won't someone think of the children??!! [that these children won't be having because they're being given condoms in school]
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maggiethecat
11/23/09

@Ailatan: How the F do you not see garbage on the floor? How do you slip on a used condom? It's not like those things need a decoder pen- they're not made invisible. Maybe her arms were full of promise keeper pamphlets.
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tacotico
11/23/09

@Ailatan: The good news is that the school is handing out lubricated condoms for the ladies.
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quisbella
11/23/09

@Ailatan: I'm afraid of the consequences this could have on the sex education of NYC students. Could the BofE then argue that they can't hand out condoms because they don't want this lawsuit to happen again?
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Red-headed bookworm
11/24/09

@Gavagirl: Haha, that was my thought too. Who says grammar and language aren't fun?
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BytheSea
11/25/09

@Ailatan: Agree. A normal person would just be embarrassed she slipped. She wouldn't go to the media to try to disgrace the school for passing out condoms.
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BytheSea
11/25/09

@tacotico: And statistically 5-10% of the gentlemen.
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Elaken
11/23/09

In reply to Shaniya Davis' Aunt Speaks Out • Teacher Sues After Slipping On Condoms
How amazing to be with someone who is just as intelligent/driven/capable as you. Very cool for Longino.
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AndPreciousLittleofThat
11/23/09

In reply to Shaniya Davis' Aunt Speaks Out • Teacher Sues After Slipping On Condoms
Boy, that's far and away the most creative argument against condoms in schools I've ever heard.

Never mind kids having unprotected sex, because we have to worry about the real menace: SLIPPAGE.
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MalinaMango
11/23/09

@AndPreciousLittleofThat: Yeah, by her logic the school cafeterias should also ban bananas, butter, and Jell-O. Oh, and all liquids.
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I, Zombie Normal
11/23/09

@MalinaMango: I slipped on a pencil in school once, so let's get rid of those. They're practically weapons!
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Jack_Burton
11/23/09

@I, Zombie Normal: OMG! My seatbelt gave me a welt when I ran my car into that concrete pylon and it saved my li- ... oh never mind.
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midwesternmom
11/19/09

In reply to The New, Looming Battle Over American Womens' Breast Health
I will say to them what I said to my sister's lazy gyno, "If our aunts had waited til they were 40 for their first mammograms, they would have died of breast cancer. Oh yeah, they did and they died. So shut up and give her the damn test."
Don't make me have to go back for every appointment until she's 50. I only have the one sister, and I am lucky to have such a sweet one. She, on the other hand, is happy that I am a loud bitch when it comes to our health.
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Rooo sez BISH PLZ
11/19/09

@midwesternmom: Word. With Word sauce. And a side order of Word greens.
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la.donna.pietra
11/19/09

@Rooo sez BISH PLZ: And a slice of Word pie for dessert.
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BetteD
11/19/09

@midwesternmom: You, mi'lady, are the SHIT. Be my sister?
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midwesternmom
11/19/09

@BetteD: Gladly. Thanks to breast cancer, I am down to a sister and a mom for close female relatives, and it is chipping away at my cousins. I am adamant that I NEED my sister to get old with me.
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badmutha
11/19/09

In reply to The New, Looming Battle Over American Womens' Breast Health
I worked for a natl. cancer org, and I knew plenty of women who got cancer before 40, found lumps themselves, and others who found cancers through mammograms. What ever happened to the old adage "Better safe than sorry?" There are no "harms" to having a biopsy done or having regular mammograms.
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eedlebeedle
11/19/09

@badmutha: All medical procedures, including biopsies and mammograms, have risks. This group's findings indicate that for a certain group, 40-49 with no increased risk of breast cancer due to genetic mutation or chest radiation, the risks outweigh the benefits.
It's not as simple as "better safe than sorry;" more medicine isn't always better. I don't have the expertise to dig into their methodology completely, but they seem to have been pretty specific in their findings about who this applies to and who it doesn't.
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Lymed
11/19/09

In reply to The New, Looming Battle Over American Womens' Breast Health
I had a conversation with my nurse practitioner, who works with cancer patients, about these guidelines today. She doesn't know how she feels about them yet. But she said some interesting things, amongst them, that it is believed that there are certain cancerous cells that may begin to grow in women's breasts in their 40's that actually would go away on their own without treatment. In those cases, treatment is unnecessary. And the treatment we are talking about, a mastectomy, chemotherapy and radiation, is life changing. In fact, chemotherapy and radiation may actually shorten your life. In those cases, it would actually be better for a woman to never know she has the cancerous cells.

She also said that when you look at survival rates after detection and treatment, there is some evidence suggesting that the reason the number of years of survival is higher for women in their 40's is because they are in their 40's and therefore there are all those years of recovery between when it was discovered and when it would have been discovered if they didn't have a mammogram until their 50's. This is because many cancers detected when women are in their 40's grow so slow that they are still treatable 5 or more years later.

Of course, she also said there are women whose lives have been saved or extended by early detection of aggressive cancers.

To me, this is what you have to balance. It is not just money and there are health risks either way.
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boobookitt
11/19/09

@Lymed: I'm in the same boat as your NP which is why I haven't said too much on the issue. I will say that I have decided not to get screened until I'm 50 because I have read the studies and I don't believe that in my case mammograms are warranted. Mammograms are also an imperfect tool (although the technology is improved) - especially on younger, denser breasts. That said, they are fairly inexpensive and the radiation exposure is minimal, so it's all about the risk and benefit for each patient.

Medicine is a science, but also an art - the art is taking the science and applying it to the community you serve and the individual in front of you.
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Lymed
11/19/09

@boobookitt: Your last sentence is perfect. Guidelines can be phenomenal tools. But every patient is different and there are even different types of breast cancers. The problem is not in the guidelines themselves, they are in insurance companies misusing guidelines to deny treatments and tests.

The bottom line to me is we need more research. If there are some breast cancers that actually reverse and go away on their own, perhaps we can learn from them less harmful ways to eradicate the cancer.
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boobookitt
11/19/09

@Lymed: More research and a Single Payer system that takes the profit motive out of health care.

#tips
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MakeMeSmile
11/20/09

@Lymed: I work at the National Cancer Institute, and you're absolutely correct. I had a discussion with a colleague who's a foremost expert on breast cancer, and she said the same thing.
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Trulymadlyme
11/19/09

In reply to The New, Looming Battle Over American Womens' Breast Health
What about improving the affordability and access to MRI's that are (1) less prone to false positives; and (2) more nuanced in the size of tumor it detects?

Also, this is going to be the nail in the coffin for health care insurance reform, from what it seems. It's only a matter of time before this gets truncated into a right wing talking point. I mean, don't we recall what they did about the "old people" killing meme?

[www.rightactionforwomen.org]
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serreca
11/19/09

@Trulymadlyme: This.

On NPR yesterday there was a story about how in Japan, MRIs cost about $160.00. Here? 10 times that, if not more. It's ridiculous.
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CynicalPink
11/19/09

@Trulymadlyme: The MRI thing confuses the hell out of me. They sent my mom for one of those after a red flag on the mammogram, but I always wondered why they didn't just do that in the first place if they were going to need to do one anyway on the off chance something showed up.
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Trulymadlyme
11/19/09

@CynicalPink: Insurance rarely covers breast MRI's which make it insanely expensive (hello the whole purpose for insurance reform).

The breast cancer fuck up will be the end of the health care mess. It'll fizzle or die because the president and Congress are taking way too long and continue to make stupid, unnecessary findings like this commission. The timing of this whole mess just seems...opportune?
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PilgrimSoul
11/19/09

In reply to The New, Looming Battle Over American Womens' Breast Health
Okay you're going to get mad but, you know what? Why is the Obama administration CONSISTENTLY letting health care discussions veer off in this direction, issuing only the occasional milquetoast denial? I realize this is probably faith that people can see through the crazy; but if Lou Dobb's interview with Jon Stewart was any evidence last night, far too many of them can't, AND THAT'S A PROBLEM.
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Hooplehead
11/19/09

@PilgrimSoul: I'm not mad, I'm agreeing. They had an effective infrastructure in place to deal with this crap during the election. I'm boggled as to why they would not continue to use it now, when they apparently need it most. Letting the other side control the conversation is not the way to get your bill passed, or indeed, anything else done. You have to be out there every day pushing your own message and shooting theirs down. The GOP, which ostensibly understands nothing else, understands that. And that is why they win. Obama needs to understand it if he wants to get anything done.
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fancypantsftw
11/19/09

@Hooplehead: Thank you for saying this so well. I supported teh administration, and continue to support it, but letting the GOP hijack media taglines and define what gets placed in front of people's eyes is a sure fire way to fail on every initiative. Way to let them define the scope of the problem - scare tactics work and unless there is a strong statement of confident opposition, they are going to continue working. I felt the same way with the lack of correction or strong stance to counter the whole "offing Granny" fiasco. I helped fund the stimulus package, can't I step in and hire better PR for the White House? It's the effing WHITE HOUSE, someone out there should be up to the task, no?
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Hooplehead
11/19/09

@fancypantsftw: You'd like to think that people aren't stupid enough to fall for obvious garbage like the "death panels" meme. But the GOP has shown us clearly that we can't take for granted that the American public has any sort of critical thinking skills or healthy skepticism towards the pronouncements of politicians anymore.

Unless they're Democrats, in which case, hard proof isn't remotely enough.
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Snowbunny
11/19/09

In reply to Dugard Family Responds To Film Proposal • Runners World Didn't OK Use Of Palin Picture
Fuck that, California, if my cat had claws my house would be in shambles. Maybe you should ban tasers instead. Just a thought.
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frecklegirl
11/19/09

@Snowbunny: Glad to hear the state of your house is more important to you than the pain your cat experienced as a part of its body was being ripped from it forever. Declawing is a brutal practice. Pretty sure you wouldn't want anyone removing your fingernails, hm? Why should it be any different for an animal?
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Sputnik_Sweetheart
11/18/09

In reply to Hospital Workers Do "Pink Glove Dance" For Breast Cancer Awareness
I was having a terrible day and this just made it all seem a little bit better :)
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