Many sex ed teachers may lack training
NEW YORK - (Reuters Health) - A sizable minority of sex education teachers does not cover all of the basics, and many lack training to teach sex ed at all, a survey of teachers in one state suggests.
In a study of sex ed teachers at 201 Illinois schools, researchers found that one-third of teachers did not give comprehensive instruction — defined as covering the four basic topics of abstinence, birth control, HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases.
In addition, 30 percent said they had no special training in teaching sex education, and these teachers were less likely to teach a comprehensive course.
“For this study, we set the bar for comprehensiveness fairly low relative to what most medical and public health organizations recommend,” lead researcher Dr. Stacy Tessler Lindau said in a statement, “and one out of three programs failed to clear it.”
The findings suggest that doctors caring for teenagers may need to “fill gaps” in their knowledge of sexual health, according to Lindau and her colleagues at the University of Chicago.
They report the study results in the journal Obstetrics & Gynecology.
The study involved 335 sex ed teachers at Illinois middle schools and high schools. Lindau and her colleagues defined “comprehensive sex education” as courses teaching both abstinence and contraception, as well as information on HIV and other STDs.
They left out a fifth, more controversial topic often recommended by public health experts: giving students information on where to go for sexual health services, condoms and birth control.
Overall, two-thirds of teachers met this more relaxed definition of comprehensive education. In general, the most frequently covered topics were HIV and STDs, which about 96 percent of teachers said they addressed. Eighty-nine percent of teachers covered the topic of abstinence-until-marriage.
Among the least frequently taught subjects were homosexuality, abortion and information on how to use condoms or birth control properly.
“Most parents support school-based sex education and teens regard it as an important source of information,” Lindau said, “yet we found that several important health topics and skills are omitted, more often than not, from most Illinois public school sex-education criteria.”
When it came to discussing condoms and birth control, teachers who omitted the topic generally did so because it was not in the official curriculum or because of “school or district policy.” About half of teachers also lacked confidence in their ability to teach the topic — rating their ability as anywhere from “average” to “very poor.”
“Our study provides important new data from the teachers’ perspective,” Dr. Melissa Gilliam, another researcher on the study, said in a statement. “It supports other recent studies showing that large numbers of teens, especially low-income and youth of color, received no instruction about birth control methods before they first had sex.”
Is this for real? Have any of the school districts, health education teachers, parents not taken their heads out of the sand? This has got to be one of the most idiotic, looking the other way stories that has come down the pike in a long time. These ‘teachers’, ‘administrators’, ‘governing bodies’ better get their act together - not for themselves to ‘look’ good, but for the good of the children. Shame, shame, shame.
HPV causing more oral cancer in men
Experts say a primary reason for male vaccinations would be to prevent men from spreading the virus and help reduce the nearly 12,000 cases of cervical cancer diagnosed in U.S. women each year. But the new study should add to the argument that there may be a direct benefit for men, too.
“We need to start having a discussion about those cancers other than cervical cancer that may be affected in a positive way by the vaccine,” said study co-author Dr. Maura Gillison of Johns Hopkins University.
The study was published Friday in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Human papillomavirus, or HPV, is the leading cause of cervical cancer in women. It also can cause genital warts, penile and anal cancer — risks for males that generally don’t get the same attention as cervical cancer.
Previous research by Gillison and others established HPV as a primary cause of the estimated 5,600 cancers that occur each year in the tonsils, lower tongue and upper throat. It’s also been known that the virus’ role in such cancers has been rising.
The new study looked at more than 30 years of National Cancer Institute data on oral cancers. Researchers categorized about 46,000 cases, using a formula to divide them into those caused by HPV and those not connected to the virus.
They concluded the incidence rates for HPV-related oral cancers rose steadily in men from 1973 to 2004, becoming about as common as those from tobacco and alcohol.
The good news is that survival rates for the cancer are also increasing. That’s because tumors caused by HPV respond better to chemotherapy and radiation, Gillison said.
“If current trends continue, within the next 10 years there may be more oral cancers in the United States caused by HPV than tobacco or alcohol,” Gillison said.
Studies suggest oral sex is associated with HPV-related oral cancers, but a cause-effect relationship has not been proved. Other researchers have suggested that even unwashed hands can spread it to the mouth as well.
Gillison pointed toward sex as an explanation for the increase in male upper throat cancers. However, HPV-related upper throat cancers declined significantly in women from 1973 to 2004.
Merck’s vaccine, approved for girls in 2006, is a three-dose series priced at about $360. It is designed to protect against four types of HPV, including one associated with oral cancer.
Merck has been testing the vaccine in an international study, but it is focused on anal and penile cancer and genital warts, not oral cancers, said Kelley Dougherty, a Merck spokeswoman.
“We are continuing to consider additional areas of study that focus on both female and male HPV diseases and cancers,” Dougherty said.
Merck officials praised Gillison’s research, saying it will elevate the importance of HPV-related oral cancers.
Government officials and the American Cancer Society say they don’t know yet whether Merck’s vaccine will be successful at preventing disease in men. No data from the company’s study are available yet.
Indeed, it’s not clear yet that the vaccine even prevents the HPV infection in males, let alone cancer or any other illness, said Debbie Saslow of the American Cancer Society.
Merck plans to seek U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval for the vaccine in men later this year, meaning a government decision would be likely in 2009.
I’ve nothing to say. You make the comments.
Killer murders five then kills himself.
DeKALB, Ill. - (AP) - A former student dressed in black opened fire with a shotgun and two handguns from the stage of a lecture hall at Northern Illinois University on Thursday, killing five students and injuring 16 others before committing suicide, authorities said.
Rescue workers transport student shot at Northern Illinois University.
The gunman fatally shot four women and a man in a “brief, rapid-fire assault” that sent terrified students running for cover, university President John Peters said. Four died at the scene, including the gunman, and the other two died at a hospital, he said.
Witnesses in the geology class said “someone dressed in black came out from behind a screen in front of the classroom and opened fire with a shotgun,” Peters said.
Lauren Carr said she was sitting in the third row of the lecture hall around 3 p.m. when she saw the shooter walk through a door on the right-hand side of the stage, pointing a gun straight ahead.
“I personally Army-crawled halfway up the aisle,” said Carr, a 20-year-old sophomore. “I said I could get up and run or I could die here.”
She said a student in front of her was bleeding, “but he just kept running.”
“I heard this girl scream, ‘Run, he’s reloading the gun.’”
Student Jerry Santoni was in a back row when he saw the gunman enter a service door to the stage.
“I saw him shoot one round at the teacher,” he said. “After that, I proceeded to get down as fast as I could.”
Santoni dived down, hitting his head the seat in front of him, leaving a knot about half the size of a pingpong ball on his forehead.
The teacher, a graduate student, was wounded but was expected to recover, the school president said. He did not give details of the injuries.
Peters said the gunman was a former graduate student in sociology at NIU, but was not currently enrolled at the 25,000-student campus about 65 miles west of Chicago.
“It appears he may have been a student somewhere else,” University Police Chief Donald Grady said, adding that police had no apparent motive.
Seventeen victims were brought to Kishwaukee Community Hospital in DeKalb, according to spokeswoman Theresa Komitas. One died, two were admitted and three were discharged; five are being evaluated and six others were transferred to other hospitals in critical condition. At least one male died at OSF St. Anthony Medical Center in Rockford, an official said.
Michael Gentile was meeting with two of his students directly beneath the lecture hall when the shootings happened. He could hear the chaos a few feet above his head.
“The shotgun blast must have been so loud,” said Gentile, a 27-year-old media studies instructor. “It sounded like something was dropping down the stairs… We had no idea what this was.”
Then, shorter, sharper noises he recognized as handgun shots.
“There was a pretty quick succession … just pow, pow, pow,” said Gentile, who didn’t leave his office for about 90 minutes. He used a surveillance camera just outside his office to confirm that the people knocking on his door were police.
George Gaynor, a senior geography student, who was in Cole Hall when the shooting happened, told the student newspaper the Northern Star that the shooter was “a skinny white guy with a stocking cap on.”
He described the scene immediately following the incident as terrifying and chaotic.
“Some girl got hit in the eye, a guy got hit in the leg,” Gaynor said outside just minutes after the shooting occurred. “It was like five minutes before class ended too.”
Witnesses said the young man carried a shotgun and a pistol. Student Edward Robinson told WLS that the gunman appeared to target students in one part of the lecture hall.
“It was almost like he knew who he wanted to shoot,” Robinson said. “He knew who and where he wanted to be firing at.”
The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms sent 15 agents to the scene, according to spokesman Thomas Ahern. He said information about the weapons involved would be sent to the ATF’s national database in Washington and given urgent priority. The FBI also was assisting.
All classes were canceled Thursday night and the campus was closed on Friday. Students were urged to call their parents “as soon as possible” and were offered counseling at any residence hall, according to the school Web site.
The school was closed for one day during final exam week in December after campus police found threats, including racial slurs and references to shootings earlier in the year at Virginia Tech, scrawled on a bathroom wall in a dormitory. Police determined after an investigation that there was no imminent threat and the campus was reopened. Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and Thursday’s attack. Peters said he knew of no connection between that incident and Thursday’s attack.
The shooting was the fourth at a U.S. school within a week.
On Feb. 8, a woman shot two fellow students to death before committing suicide at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge. In Memphis, Tenn., a 17-year-old is accused of shooting and critically wounding a fellow student Monday during a high school gym class, and the 15-year-old victim of a shooting at an Oxnard, Calif., junior high school has been declared brain dead.
Happy Valentines Day. What a shame, what a waste, what a horrid time in which we’re living.
Hanoi Jane uses vulgar language on the “Today Show”
NEW YORK - (AP) - NBC News is apologizing again — this time for Jane Fonda.
The 70-year-old actress used a vulgar slang term on the “Today” show Thursday while talking about the play “The Vagina Monologues.” Fonda is appearing in a 10th-anniversary performance and was on “Today” with author Eve Ensler.
Fonda told co-host Meredith Vieira that she was asked to perform a monologue with a slang term for vagina as the title — and Fonda used the term itself on the air in explaining why she said “no.”
“I said, `I don’t think so, I’ve got enough problems,’” Fonda said.
About 10 minutes later, Vieira told viewers that Fonda had used a word from the play that normally isn’t used on television.
“It was a slip and obviously she apologizes and so do we,” Vieira said. “We would do nothing to offend the audience, so please accept that apology.”
“Today” moved quickly to silence the word and cover up Fonda’s face with a still photo when the show was aired in the Midwest, Mountain and West Coast feeds.
It’s been a month’s worth of apologies for NBC News, owned by General Electric Co. MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews said he was sorry for suggesting that the reason Hillary Clinton was a presidential candidate was because of her husband’s infidelities. MSNBC correspondent David Shuster was suspended for two weeks for saying the Clintons had “pimped out” daughter Chelsea for presidential campaigning.
Let’s just see how many of you know why Jane Fonda got the nickname of “Hanoi Jane” - and if you Google “Hanoi Jane” - start at the top and work your way down.
Climate change may kill thousands in UK by 2017
LONDON (Reuters) - There is a 25 percent chance that a severe heat wave will strike England and kill more than 6,000 people before 2017 if no action is taken to deal with the health effects of climate change, a report said on Tuesday.
The report for Britain’s Department of Health estimated more than 3,000 people could die in an intense summer hot spell in southeast England, with just as many more dying from heat-related deaths over the summer.
Until 2012, when London stages the summer Olympic Games, the odds of thousands dying in summer heat each year will be 1 in 40, the report said, and thousands more could die each year as a result of other effects of global warming and air pollution.
“In terms of conventional thinking about risks to health, a risk of 1 in 40 is high,” the report said.
Tens of thousands died across Europe in a heat wave during the summer of 2003, including over 14,000 people in France, but so far people living in Britain have coped with rising temperatures.
Although more summer deaths are expected, fewer people will die in Britain as a result of cold winter weather, as the world warms up because of rising carbon emissions from human activity.
The report, an update of a 2002 study, was re-issued on the same day London’s mayor said owners of the most polluting cars will have to pay 25 pounds ($48.77) a day to drive them in the city center in a measure to cut down on carbon emissions.
Britain has a population of 60,760,000 people. The 6,000 figure above equates to 0.000098% of the population. How many Brits die from lung cancer, heart attack, diabetes, stroke, etc. Should we really be concerned about this - I’m not trying to be heartless, but if the same thing were happening in the US then I’d be making the same remarks. Oh, they also die from cold as well.
