Today the Army Corps of Engineers were found guilty (in court!) of failure to maintain the levees in the lower 9th ward of New Orleans. According to reports, “The judge ruled that New Orleans' Lower 9th Ward and nearby St. Bernard Parish were flooded due to engineers' “negligent failure” to maintain the shipping channel Mississippi River-Gulf Outlet.”
The Lower 9th Ward is poor and non-white, and St. Bernard Parish is largely working-class. Not demographics that politicians and town managers fall over themselves for. This guilty outcome was determined by the New Orleans Times-Picayune two years ago, but it took a lawsuit that ended today to actually render justice. So you do win some.
On the other hand, the idea that women shouldn’t get annual mammographies, and wait until age 50 to start getting them regularly, is a LOSER of monster proportions. I was in my mid-40s when my annual mammography looked suspicious but a biopsy disclosed nothing of concern. My sister was in her late 40s when her annual mammography looked suspicious and cancer was disclosed. I survived a cancer scare; but my sister survived cancer.
What would her outcome have been if her first mammogram had been at age 50? A doctor was interviewed this afternoon on NPR’s All Things Considered and when asked his opinion on a similar case he said (with absolute seriousness) “That woman would have received the same appropriate treatment and care as she would have received in her 40s.”
Oh how disingenuous. Like care of a cancer diagnosed later is the same, and is as bearable, and costs the same, and takes the same length of time, as a cancer diagnosed early. Give me a break, doctor. Every cancer survivor, and every cancer victim’s family, knows the difference between treatment of an early stage cancer and a later stage cancer.
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