Just who the hell does New Orleans Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell think she is?

Pulled over by State Police after barreling down the shoulder of Interstate 10 at close to 100 miles per hour with a blue light flashing, New Orleans Councilwoman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell yelled at a state trooper: “Do you know who I am? … What the hell are you stopping me for?”

Just who the hell does she think she is?

Personally, I wouldn’t know her if she came up to me and bit me on the ass, and secondly, I could care less.

With all of the problems this city and its residents are grappling with, we have a city councilwoman who is showing us exactly what she is – a self-righteous, ignorant AND stupid BITCH, who has represented herself and our city more than badly.

This is sickening for so many reasons, not the least of which is that she feels entitled to do what she has done [and not for the first time, mind you]; that she has blue flashing lights – emergency lights which are restricted to law enforcement vehicles, on her taxpayer supplied vehicle; and that she [usually] has a law-enforcement driver to tote her to where she needs to be, among other things. This latter is an appalling reality of a waste of law-enfocement resources in a city with the nation’s highest murder rate, don’t you think?

In this case she was ‘late for a meeting’. OMG! Big deal. This does not give her the right to violate the laws and/or to put others lives in danger. If she wants to commit suicide, more power to her, but to use that multi-ton SUV as a weapon is criminal. Yet, SHE DID NOT EVEN RECEIVE A TICKET!

This disgusts us all, as it should.

Although state law prohibits anyone but law enforcement officers from speeding and using flashing lights, State Police did not issue Hedge-Morrell a citation. According to State Police, a trooper has discretion over writing tickets. On Wednesday, Morrell said she still believes troopers should not have detained her.

“I was trying to get to the meeting, and he [the state trooper] couldn’t explain to me why he was detaining me any further,” she said. “To this day, I don’t know why he gave me the warning. I was late for a meeting.”

Awww… stupid, poor little city councilwoman. Bite me… Get the hell out of our city. We don’t need you and we don’t want you.

I expect far better from our elected officials. You should, too.

Ladies…

Computer-Aided Reading of Mammograms Crashes

[The more we can get this information out, the better it will be.]

SACRAMENTO, April 4 — Computer-aided detection degrades the performance of screening mammography, reported a multicenter team.

In a study of more than 429,000 mammogram results, there was a significant drop in diagnostic specificity after computer-aided detection was introduced to various centers, reported Joshua J. Fenton, M.D., M.P.H., of the University of California at Davis, and colleagues, in the April 5 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

There was a significant increase in false-positive results and unnecessary biopsies, they added.

“In our observational study of large numbers of community-based mammography facilities and patients, the use of computer-aided detection was associated with increases in potential harms of screening mammography, including higher recall and biopsy rates, and was of uncertain clinical benefit,” they wrote.

Dr. Fenton and colleagues evaluated the association between the use of computer-aided detection and the performance of screening mammography from 1998 through 2002 at 43 facilities in three states. They evaluated data on a total of 429,345 mammograms in 222,135 women, of whom 2,351 had received a diagnosis of breast cancer within a year of screening.

The authors calculated the specificity, sensitivity, and positive predictive value of screening mammography with and without computer-aided detection. They also calculated the rates of biopsy and breast-cancer detection, and at the overall accuracy of screening, which they determined by the area under the receiver-operating-characteristic curve.

In all, seven of the 43 facilities started using computer-aided detection during the study period, and the remainder of facilities served as controls.

Among the computer-using centers, the diagnostic specificity of screening mammography declined significantly from 90.2% before computers, to 87.2% after. In addition, the positive predictive value decreased from 4.1% pre-computer to 3.2% with computer assistance (P=0.01).

Although computer-assisted detection increased the sensitivity of screening mammography compared with human-only review (from 80.4% before to 84.0% after), this difference was not statistically significant (P=0.32).

Adjusting for patient, facility, and radiologist characteristics also did not substantially change the outcome. Specificity and positive predictive value still significantly declined after computer aided detection was introduced, and sensitivity went up, but not significantly, the authors noted.

Biopsy rates among the seven facilities that implemented computer-aided detection went up by 20% after introduction of the technology, from 14.7 biopsies per 1,000 screening mammograms before to 17.6/1,000 after. But while there was a slight increase in the rate of cancer detection, including invasive breast cancers and ductal carcinoma in situ (from 4.15 cases per 1,000 screening mammograms before implementation, to 4.20 cases per 1,000 after), this difference was not significant (P=0.90).

“Analyses of data from all 43 facilities showed that the use of computer-aided detection was associated with significantly lower overall accuracy than was non-use (area under the ROC curve, 0.871 vs. 0.919; P=0.005),” the authors wrote.

The results add weight to the arguments in favor of a combination of different ascendant technologies: genetic risk profiling and breast MRI, suggested Ferris M. Hall, M.D., a diagnostic radiologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Boston, in an accompanying editorial.

“Mammography is an inherently poor, two-dimensional projectional method being used to diagnose small, three-dimensional cancers,” he wrote. “It is least effective in the screening of dense breasts, which, as emphasized in another recent study, are a substantial risk factor for breast cancer.”

In contrast, MRI does not expose women to radiation, and it has a high sensitivity, although lower specificity than mammography for breast cancer, he noted.

“The major problems with MRI of the breast and related magnetic resonance spectroscopy are cost and interpretive expertise,” Dr. Hall wrote. “These same problems were involved with the acceptance of mammography as a screening method three decades ago. Here we go again.”

Additional Breast Cancer Coverage

The stuff we’re fed…

Eggs will raise your cholesterol, and other myths

Avoid eggs. Drink 8 glasses of water a day. Eating carbs will make you fat. Nutritional advice such as this has been touted for years — but is it accurate?

Not necessarily, according to Wendy Repovich, an exercise physiologist at Eastern Washington University in Cheyenne, Washington, who did her best to dispel several common nutrition misconceptions during an American College of Sports Medicine-sponsored health and fitness summit held recently in Dallas.”Eating eggs will raise your cholesterol.” This myth started because egg yolks have the most concentrated amount of cholesterol in any food, Repovich told Reuters Health. However, when eaten in moderation, eggs do not contain enough cholesterol to pose health risks, she said. “Most people avoid eggs and probably if they have any kind of cardiovascular risk their physicians tell them to avoid eggs,” Repovich said. “But really, there aren’t a whole lot of studies that show that one or two eggs a day really make a difference to cholesterol levels.””Eating carbohydrates makes you fat” is another myth. Cutting carbs from the diet may help a person shed pounds due to water loss from a decrease in carbohydrate stores, Repovich said, but eating carbs in moderation does not directly lead to weight gain.Here’s another myth. “Drink 8 glasses of water a day.” Repovich said people need to replace water lost through breathing, urinating, sweating each day — but that doesn’t necessarily total 64 ounces of water.”I see an awful lot of people carrying bottled water around,” Repovich said. “I think people are still under the impression that they have to drink 8 glasses of water a day, but most people don’t realize they get water from other sources in the diet.”And too much water can be harmful, Repovich warned, leading possibly to an imbalance in the body of sodium, a condition called hyponatremia. It’s also a myth, Repovich said, that everyone needs vitamin supplements, although she admits to popping a multivitamin each morning. People who eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, along with moderate amounts of a variety of low-fat dairy and protein and the right quantity of calories, probably don’t need a vitamin supplement, she said. “But for the most part, we don’t eat the way we should so probably a simple multivitamin is good for most people,” Repovich said.

My Hero…

Knut is the polar cub that was abandoned by his mother, that animal rights activists wanted put to death because it would be ‘humiliating’ to raise him until he is capable of taking care of himself. The mother ignored Knut and his brother, who later died.

Go Knut!

 

Royal Grocery will be sorely missed…

 Robert Buras & Royal Grocery, we are so sorry to see you close.

Royal Grocery was an institution in New Orleans’ French Quarter [the Vieux Carre]. Robert’s Grandfather opened the store like 60 years ago, and it has now so sadly joined the scores of French Quarter shops that have been forced to close as a result of The Thing [Katrina, Army Corps, FEMA, George Bush, Ray Nagin, Governor Blanco, et al.]; Now over 100 are closed and gone…

This is another devastating blow to the soul of New Orleans and our French Quarter. We are forever changed.

Thank you, Robert. You will be missed.

Levees

Estimated weekly cost of war in Iraq: $2 billion
Estimated cost to build Cat 5 levees in NOLA: $2.5 billion

I guess we know our government’s priorities…