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  • California Insurance Commissioner Urges Federal Government to Withdraw Proposed Health Care Rule: A Race to the Bottom Rather Than Providing A Meaningful Alternative

    Trumpcare sign

     
    Short-Term, Limited-Duration Insurance will provide skimpy, unreliable coverage 
     Today the California Insurance Commissioner Dave Jones sent a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in opposition to the proposed rule, Short-Term, Limited-Duration Insurance. In part Jones’ letter reads: 

    “The proposed rule, Short-Term, Limited-Duration Insurance,  a race to the bottom rather than providing a meaningful alternative. , is yet another attack on the integrity of the nation’s health insurance markets. This rule attempts to replace comprehensive coverage compliant with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with skimpy health insurance that had previously driven some consumers to bankruptcy. 

    Short-term limited-duration insurance is not individual health insurance under federal law and, therefore, does not have to comply with the ACA. These policies typically lack the consumer protections available in the ACA market by utilizing underwriting based upon health status, denying coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions, or pricing those individuals out of these products. As such, under federal law, an insurer could deny coverage or charge higher premiums based on any factor the insurer deems relevant, including pre-existing conditions, gender, gender identity, or age, unless prohibited by state law. Although touted as being an affordable alternative to ACA-compliant coverage, these policies return us to a race to the bottom rather than providing a meaningful alternative. 

    I strongly oppose the proposed rule, Short-Term, Limited-Duration Insurance (proposed Rule), because it further erodes the protections provided under the ACA, poses significant risk to health insurance markets in California and the nation, and offers consumers skimpy health insurance policies that cannot be relied upon to cover necessary health services when they need them most.”

    Secretary of Labor’s Order 1-2011, 77 FR 1088 (Jan. 9, 2012).

    5.Section 2590.701-2 is amended by revising the definition of “Short-term, limited-duration insurance” to read as follows:

    Definitions.
    *****

    Short-term, limited-duration insurance means health insurance coverage provided pursuant to a contract with an issuer that:

    (1) Has an expiration date specified in the contract (taking into account any extensions that may be elected by the policyholder without the issuer’s consent) that is less than 12 months after the original effective date of the contract;

    (2) With respect to policies having a coverage start date before January 1, 2019, displays prominently in the contract and in any application materials provided in connection with enrollment in such coverage in at least 14 point type the following: 

    THIS COVERAGE IS NOT REQUIRED TO COMPLY WITH FEDERAL REQUIREMENTS FOR HEALTH INSURANCE, PRINCIPALLY THOSE CONTAINED IN THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT. BE SURE TO CHECK YOUR POLICY CAREFULLY TO MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THE POLICY DOES AND DOESN’T COVER. IF THIS COVERAGE EXPIRES OR YOU LOSE ELIGIBILITY FOR THIS COVERAGE, YOU MIGHT HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL AN OPEN ENROLLMENT PERIOD TO GET OTHER HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE. ALSO, THIS COVERAGE IS NOT “MINIMUM ESSENTIAL COVERAGE”. IF YOU DON’T HAVE MINIMUM ESSENTIAL COVERAGE FOR ANY MONTH IN 2018, YOU MAY HAVE TO MAKE A PAYMENT WHEN YOU FILE YOUR TAX RETURN UNLESS YOU QUALIFY FOR AN EXEMPTION FROM THE REQUIREMENT THAT YOU HAVE HEALTH COVERAGE FOR THAT MONTH.; 

    and

    (3) With respect to policies having a coverage start date on or after January 1, 2019, displays prominently in the contract and in any application materials provided in connection with enrollment in such coverage in at least 14 point type the following:

    THIS COVERAGE IS NOT REQUIRED TO COMPLY WITH FEDERAL REQUIREMENTS FOR HEALTH INSURANCE, PRINCIPALLY THOSE CONTAINED IN THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT. BE SURE TO CHECK YOUR POLICY CAREFULLY TO MAKE SURE YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT THE POLICY DOES AND DOESN’T COVER. IF THIS COVERAGE EXPIRES OR YOU LOSE ELIGIBILITY FOR THIS COVERAGE, YOU MIGHT HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL AN OPEN ENROLLMENT PERIOD TO GET OTHER HEALTH INSURANCE COVERAGE.

    *****

  • Congressional Hearings: Abusive Robocalls, Protecting Unaccompanied Alien Children; Mark-Ups: SNAP and WIC (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance)

    Content supplied by the Women’s Congressional Policy Institute

    This Week:

    Mark-Ups:Congresswoman Julia Brownley w/veterans

    On Tuesday, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee will mark up several bills, including S. 2680, the Opioid Crisis Response Act.

    On Thursday, the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel will mark up its portion of H.R. 5515, the FY2019 National Defense Authorization Act.

    Congresswoman Julia Brownley (D-CA) with veterans, April 2018

    Hearings:
     
    On Thursday,  the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will hold a hearing,”Oversight of HHS and DHS Efforts to Protect Unaccompanied Alien Children from Human Trafficking and Abuse.”

    Mark-Ups:

    Family Support— On April 18, the House Committee on Agriculture passed, 26-20, H.R. 2, the Agriculture and Nutrition Act. The bill contains provisions to authorize several nutrition assistance programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Special Supplemental Assistance for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the Child Nutrition Program.

    H.R. 2  Agriculture and Nutrition Act. The bill contains provisions to authorize several nutrition assistance programs, including the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Special Supplemental Assistance for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and the Child Nutrition Program.

     
    International— On April 17, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs approved several bills by voice vote, including H.R. 5129, the Global Food Security Reauthorization Act of 2018, and H.R. 5480, the Women’s Entrepreneurship and Economic Empowerment Act.
     
    STEM— On April 17, the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology passed several bills by voice vote, including H.R. 5509, the Innovations in Mentoring, Training, and Apprenticeships Act. The measure includes provisions to provide grants for women to promote their participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).
     
    Hearings: 
     
     
    Veterans —  On April 17, the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Health held a hearing on several bills, including H.R. 4334, the Improving Oversight of Women Veterans’ Care Act, and H.R. 4635, a bill to increase peer-to-peer counseling for women veterans.
     
     

    April 18, 2018

    Thune Leads Commerce Committee Hearing Examining the Problem of Abusive Robocalls

    “We’re here to address an issue that I’m sure we can all agree on: unwanted, abusive, and illegal robocalls have got to stop.”

     US Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, held a hearing entitled, “Abusive Robocalls and How We Can Stop Them.” The hearing examined the problem of malicious spoofing and abusive robocalls designed to defraud consumers, as well as measures being taken by government and industry professionals to protect consumers.

    “We’re here to address an issue that I’m sure we can all agree on: unwanted, abusive, and illegal robocalls have got to stop,” said Thune. “Unsolicited robocalls consistently rank among the top consumer complaints to the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission. Beyond just being annoying, many of those who send out unwanted robocalls do so with the intent to defraud consumers. As more phone systems move from copper wires to the internet, it has become easier and cheaper for bad actors to make illegal robocalls from anywhere in the world. These new technologies have also made it easier for scammers to hide from law enforcement and seek to gain their victims’ trust by displaying fake caller ID information.”

    During the hearing, Thune questioned Adrian Abramovich, who testified under subpoena and faces $120 million in FCC penalties for allegedly making nearly 100 million robocalls nationwide.

    “Mr. Abramovich, your participation at today’s hearing is important,” said Thune. “According to the FCC, you allegedly made nearly 100 million robocalls to American consumers purporting to be a well-known travel or hospitality company such as TripAdvisor, Expedia, Marriott, or Hilton … Mr. Abramovich, I expect that today you will shed some light on your past conduct and provide the Committee with your unique perspective on the technologies and practices behind abusive robocalls.”

  • High Society from Cranach to Velázquez and from Rembrandt to Manet at the Rijksmuseum

     

     

    luisa

    Giovanni Boldini, Marchesa Luisa Casati with a Greyhound, 1908. Private collection

    Over the centuries, many powerful monarchs, eccentric aristocrats and fabulously wealthy burghers have commissioned portraits of themselves, arrayed in all their finery, from the best painters in the world. Preferably standing, life-size and full-length. The young Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit are the only couple that Rembrandt ever painted life-size, standing and full-length (1634). This prestigious format was primarily reserved for monarchs and members of the aristocracy. It was not until some time later that it was used for high society in general. 

    In the exhibition, Rembrandt’s Marten and Oopjen are in very exclusive company. The others include mighty rulers, such as Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, ruler of the largest domain since the Roman Empire. There are also eccentric aristocrats like the Marchesa Luisa Casati, a femme fatale who was widely known for her extravagant parties. Or Jane Fleming, who, at that time, was considered to be one of the most beautiful women in England. Prominent burghers, such as the German politician Walther Rathenau (by Edvard Munch) and Dr Pozzi, a dandy, gynecologist and notorious womanizer (by John Singer Sargent), also feature among the guests of honor in High Society.

    Most of the subjects are very elegantly or extravagantly dressed, so the exhibition presents a snapshot of four centuries of international fashion: from the slashed breeches and doublet of 1514 to the haute couture of the late nineteenth century.

    While the glamorous portraits present high society at its very best, there are more than 80 prints and drawings depicting – in explicit detail – events that often took place behind closed doors, such as parties, drinking, gambling and surreptitious visits to brothels and boudoirs. These drawings and prints are from the Rijksmuseum’s own collection.

    Rarely have so many paintings by world-famous artists been displayed at a Rijksmuseum exhibition. The paintings range from the early sixteenth century to the early twentieth century. The finest works include impressive portraits by Cranach the Elder, Veronese, Velázquez, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Sargent, Manet, Munch and, of course, Rembrandt van Rijn.

    menoPortret van Marten Soolmans / Portret van Oopjen Coppit, Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn, 1634

    High Society celebrates the acquisition of Rembrandt’s spectacular wedding portraits of Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit by the Netherlands (Rijksmuseum) and by France (Musée du Louvre) in 2016, from a private collection. Following the completion of restoration work in early 2018, this is the first time the public will see these paintings in their full glory. The High Society exhibition is the prelude to the Year of Rembrandt in 2019, when the 350th anniversary of this great artist’s death will be extensively commemorated.

    veronesePaolo Veronese, Count Iseppo da Porto / Countess Livia da Porto Thiene, c. 1552. Baltimore, Walters Art Museum and Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Contini Bonacossi Collection

    Editor’s Note: The Rijksmuseum shop is marvelous; we bought back a number of items including embroidered pillow covers, puzzles, a globe-like ball depicting the skating scene by Dutch painter Hendrik Avercamp (which we have in puzzle form, too); a paper British fighter plane, wall hangings and other art-related objects.  Don’t overlook the Vermeer gilded silver pendant and matching earrings of gilded silver, pearls, lapis lazuli and citrine stone. The Rijks owns four Vermeers.Avercamp's famous painting described

  • Outdoor Recreation Driving Population Boom in Rural Areas; Land is Cheaper and Recreation is Right Out the Back Door

    Dan McAllister climbs a hill in Lone Pine State Park in Montana. McAllister is one of many who have moved to Flathead County, Montana, recently to take advantage of year-round recreational opportunities. The Pew Charitable Trusts

     It’s a Monday evening and Dan McAllister is charging up a mountain in Lone Pine State Park under a canopy of Douglas fir.

    He keeps his head down and his bike tires whizzing until he gets to the top, where he can see across the Flathead Valley in northwest Montana. To the north are the snowcapped vistas of Glacier National Park and to the south is the glimmering head of Flathead Lake, one of the largest natural freshwater lakes west of the Mississippi.

    McAllister, 33, moved here two years ago from Missouri so these could be his everyday views.

    He’s not the only one. Every year, more people are moving to small towns tucked in the Flathead Valley so they can choose from a range of outdoor activities — camping, hiking, riding their bikes, even kayaking or skiing — throughout the year. Flathead County first hit 100,000 residents last year, after growing by about 10 percent since 2010, according to U.S. census estimates. It’s the state’s second-fastest growing county, after Gallatin County, home of Montana State University, and one of the fastest-growing rural counties with populations over 25,000 in the United States.

    While many rural counties have been shrinking for years, others with strong recreational industries, such as mountainous western towns where people can take a quick hike or southern states with year-round golfing weather, have been growing rapidly. These populations are growing as it becomes easier to work from anywhere, and as more people retire and move away from the city.

    The trend is part of what drove the overall slight growth of the rural population in the United States from 2016 to 2017, for the first time since 2010, according to a Stateline analysis of census data. (Rural counties are those defined by the US Office of Management and Budget as outside cities and their suburbs.) The population in rural counties grew by only about 33,000 during that time, to about 46 million. While counties with large mining and farming industries shrank, counties with large recreation industries grew the most, by about 42,000, to about 6.3 million.

    This includes Flathead County, Montana, and other counties with or near mountains, such as Teton County, Idaho, near Grand Teton National Park, which have seen double-digit population growth; and Eagle County, Colorado, home of ski towns Avon and Vail, which has grown 5 percent since 2010. Rural counties on the edges of suburbs, where land is cheaper and recreation is right out the back door, such as Wasatch and Summit counties in Utah, have also seen double-digit growth.

    Recreation is driving their economies. Outdoor recreation generates about $124.5 billion in federal, state and local tax revenue each year, according to a 2017 report by the Outdoor Industry Association. That’s up from about $79.6 billion in 2012. Western rural counties with more protected public land have higher income levels and faster economic growth, according to a 2012 study by Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research organization based in Bozeman, Montana.

    Each summer, a few million people visit Glacier National Park, which is about 30 miles from the hub of Flathead County, Kalispell. With more visitors and residents, those who manage the public land — federal, state and local officials and volunteers — say it’s been challenging to ensure the upkeep of campgrounds, trails and other amenities, and to expand in a way that won’t harm the surroundings.

    “We don’t want to love it to death,” said Janette Turk, a spokeswoman with Flathead National Forest.

    ‘Consumption Junction’

    Many people who live here say it still feels rural, and they like it that way. The county is about the same size in square miles as Connecticut, with about 3 percent as many people. Residents are clustered in several small towns that are miles apart, such as two tourist towns — Bigfork, on Flathead Lake, and Whitefish, near the base of a popular ski resort.

    Kalispell houses nearly a quarter of the county’s residents, and its mile-long Main Street resembles that of a small town, with locally owned stores and diners.

  • Journey to a Profession: The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Women

    “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men

    Gang aft agley”

    From: To a Mouse, Robert Burns, 1785

    My decision to become a scientist started with mice. In high school, after reading novels by C. P. Snow describing academic life at Cambridge University in England, I decided that I wanted to be a professor (little did I know that this vision of academic life was nothing like reality, at least in the United States). In sophomore year, my inner-city high school biology teacher taught us about the experiments of Jan Baptist van Helmont (1579–1644) showing that a piece of soiled cloth mixed with wheat yielded mouse pups after a 21-day incubation. When I asked why there was no mother, since mice are mammals and nurse their young, she replied, “Mice are rodents, not mammals.” I looked it up at the library, in those days without an online search engine, and found out that mice were indeed mammals.

    This sealed the deal — I wanted to be a biologist. While an undergrad, I was fortunate to find a summer research position in Bernard Goldstein’s lab at NYU. The Goldstein lab studied how air pollutants affected blood oxidation, and I was tasked with determining whether melanin conferred protection against ozone toxicity, using inbred mouse strains, including Himalayan mice. These mice have a thermolabile tyrosinase gene, so when raised in the cold, they have higher levels of melanin. My job was to take cold- and warm-exposed Himalayan mice and see if mice with more melanin were less susceptible to ozone toxicity (they weren’t).

    Little did I know that this was the start of a career in mouse genetics. After my PhD work on adenovirus tumor antigens with Arnold Levine, I moved to do postdoctoral research in the new field of transcription in Keith Yamamoto’s lab. Keith’s lab used mouse mammary tumor virus (MMTV) as a “model gene” to understand glucocorticoid regulation of gene expression. MMTV is a milk-borne transmitted virus, but there are also endogenous, inherited copies of the retrovirus in the mouse genome, and this got me interested in the virus itself — why did it cause breast cancer in mice, and why were only some inbred strains of mice susceptible to infection? Why did mice retain endogenous viruses in their genome? I decided to make this the focus of my research.

    At the time, the very new technique of transgenic mice was being pioneered, and it seemed that this might be useful for figuring out the virus’s biology. I was able to simultaneously accept a faculty position and to delay starting this position for a year while I did a short postdoctoral stint with Davor Solter at the Wistar Institute, learning mouse embryology and the technique of making transgenic mice. I was fortunate because an external fellowship from the Leukemia Society gave me the freedom to change postdoctoral mentors. More importantly, Davor was happy to let me work on my own project. This year of training was not only practical but exposed me to the mouse genetics community. Together with Davor, I published what I think was the first paper to study retrovirus biology using transgenic mice.

    This began my journey of studying host–virus interactions using genetics. This journey has taken me from studies on the regulation of MMTV transcription to using mice to understand the genetics of susceptibility to infection to various viruses. For example, using transgenic mice, we showed that mice retain copies of endogenous MMTV in their genome as protection from exogenous infection. We also figured out why MMTV encoded a viral superantigen. Superantigens are presented by major histocompatibility class II proteins to CD4 T helper cells by interacting only with the T cell receptor (TCR) β chain, which causes massive stimulation of T cells. Tatyana Golovkina, then a postdoc in my lab, showed that transgenic mice expressing viral superantigens as endogenous genes were protected against infection. This is because superantigen-specific T cells are deleted during neonatal shaping of the immune repertoire, resulting in the loss of a reservoir of actively dividing, infection-competent cells. These studies showed the power of using genetically manipulated mice to study virus biology. However, while we know that there are endogenous retroviruses in all species, many of which play important roles in the biology of their hosts, it has not yet been demonstrated that these viruses directly protect against exogenous infection in humans, an area yet to be explored.

    Since that time, we have gone on to identify many other genes that determine susceptibility to infection, including those involved in immune responses and virus entry. The identification of entry receptors has also helped us understand species-specific virus tropism, including why MMTV likely doesn’t infect humans. Through these studies, we have expanded our virus portfolio to include both human and mouse retroviruses as well as New World hemorrhagic fever arenaviruses, and we have gone into research areas I never thought I would be involved in, including drug discovery and recently even neurology. While my lab now uses a variety of approaches to identify the genes that confer resistance and susceptibility, we always end up in the mouse. The mouse has sometimes led us from our best-laid plans, but more often than not, it has led us to new, exciting avenues of exploration.

  • Congressional Hearings, Bills Passed and Introduced: Combat Online Predators Act, End Banking for Human Traffickers Act, Developing Maternity Care Quality

    With permission from The Source for Women’s Issues in Congress, Women’s Congressional Policy Institute
    Senator Debbie Stabenow

    Cindy Hyde-Smith Sworn into Senate:  On April 9, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) was sworn in to replace former Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS), who resigned last month.
     
    Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), right

    Floor Action

    Child Protection— On April 10, the House passed, 409-2, H.R. 4203, the Combat Online Predators Act.

    Human Trafficking— On April 10, the House passed, 408-2, H.R. 2219, the End Banking for Human Traffickers Act.

    International— On April 9, the Senate passed, by unanimous consent, H.R. 3445, the African Growth and Opportunity and Millennium Challenge Act Modernization Act. The House passed the bill in January; the Senate vote clears the measure for the president’s signature.

    Mark-Ups

    Employment— On April 12, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee passed, by voice vote, H.R. 4673, the Promoting Women in the Aviation Workforce Act, as amended.

    Hearings

    Health— On April 11, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee held a hearing on the Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018.

    Small Business— On April 12, the House Small Business Subcommittee on Investigations, Oversight, and Regulations held a hearing, “Community Support: Entrepreneurial Development and Beyond.”

    Bills Introduced

    Education

    H.R. 5416—Rep. Alma Adams (D-NC)/Education and the Workforce; Ways and Means (3/29/18)—A bill to establish a student loan forgiveness program for women who are small business owners.

    Employment

    H. Con. Res. 117—Rep. Lois Frankel (D-FL)/Oversight and Government Reform (4/10/18)—A concurrent resolution recognizing the significance of Equal Pay Day to illustrate the disparity between wages paid to men and women.

    Family Support

    H.R. 5489—Rep. Ron Estes (R-KS)/Ways and Means; Agriculture (4/12/18)—A bill to institute reforms to the program of block grants to states for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

    Right, new Senator from the state of Mississippi, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Republican, replacing Thad Cochran

    HealthCindy Hyde-Smith

    H.R. 5423—Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY)/Energy and Commerce (4/2/18)—A bill to provide grants to better understand and reduce gestational diabetes, and for other purposes.

    S. 2367—Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)/Finance (4/10/18)—A bill to improve the quality, health outcomes, and value of maternity care under the Medicaid and CHIP programs by developing maternity care quality measures and supporting maternity care quality collaboratives.

    H.R. 5457—Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY)/Energy and Commerce; Ways and Means (4/10/18)—A bill to improve the quality, health outcomes, and value of maternity care under the Medicaid and CHIP programs by developing maternity care quality measures and supporting maternity care quality collaboratives.

  • Liberal Arts and Empathy in Medicine Reprised

    Joan L. Cannon wrote:Medical Records in England

    Patient records at an English Health Center; Wikipedia 

    ” Most people are uncomfortable in the presence of what they see as authority. That’s the way most patients see their doctors. Subtleties like the relative position of the authority figure who sits on a stool a little below the level of the patient’s chair help to alleviate this artificial distance, but a common understanding of human behavior based on a lot more than one person can acquire through direct experience can be the biggest help of all. Once in practice, few doctors will have time for artistic or literary excursions, so it probably would be a good idea to give them as much of that experience as possible as early as possible.”

    Read the rest at http://www.seniorwomen.com/news/index.php/liberal-arts-needed-in-medicine

  • Jo Freeman Reviews Hope’s Kids, A Voting Rights Summer

    Reviewed by Jo Freeman

     

    Hope’s Kids: A Voting Rights Summer

    By Alan Venable

    Published by One Monkey Books San Francisco 2017

    218 pp with many photographs

    Everyone’s heard of Freedom Summer. Virtually no one knows that there was a second freedom summer in 1965, despite the publication of several memoirs by people who went South for civil rights in 1965. This book is the latest.

    After the Selma-to-Montgomery march in 1965 the major civil rights organizations expected the Voting Rights Act to pass in June. Wanting to register as many new voters as possible, but knowing that they couldn’t work together, they carved up the South and ran separate projects. SCOPE was the summer project run by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, otherwise known as Dr. King’s organization.Its director was Hosea Williams, another major civil rights figure who has been overlooked by historians. 

    Hope Williams (no relation to Hosea) was a civil rights leader in Calhoun County, South Carolina. He farmed his own land, raised 14 children with his wife, chaired Calhoun County’s NAACP and was SCLC’s local contact. He asked SCLC to send him some kids. 

    Alan Venable was one of Hope’s kids. A junior at Harvard, he joined 18 students from Brandeis University and four from other Boston area schools to go to Columbia S.C. for ten weeks. After two weeks, six of them moved to Calhoun County. When they started canvassing only 490 blacks were registered to vote in that county. They registered 114 in July, under the very restrictive registration rules typical of the Southern states, which were generally applied to blacks but not to whites. When the VRA became law on August 6, it removed the literacy test. Another 500 registered in the next two months.

    While most of the Brandeis group stayed in Richland County (Columbia), five others went to Kershaw County and a couple ended up in Orangeburg County working with a SCOPE group from New York City.  

    People lined up for voter registration

    South Carolina prospective voters lined up for registration; Brandeis University, Lynn Goldsmith papers;  Calhoun County, South Carolina, 1965

    Hope’s Kids is about all of the Brandeis group and the counties they worked in. Venable was able to locate all but one of the other 22 students who came from Boston. Their diaries, letters and photographs allowed him to capture some of what they experienced without relying solely on memories. Venable returned to South Carolina a couple times, initially to visit the people they worked and lived with, later to do research for this book.

  • A Better Understanding of How, Where, and Why Cancer Develops: Genomic Analysis of 33 Cancer Types Completed

    Squamous cell carcinoma, a type of skin cancerThis image shows the uncontrolled growth of cells in squamous cell carcinoma, a common form of skin cancer; Markus Schober and Elaine Fuchs, The Rockefeller University

    Cancer is caused by changes to DNA that affect the way cells grow and divide. There are at least 200 forms of cancer, with many subtypes. Identifying the changes in each cancer’s complete set of DNA — its genome — and understanding how these changes interact to drive the disease will lay the foundation for improving cancer prevention, early detection, and tailored treatments.

    The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) was launched in 2005 by NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) and National Cancer Institute (NCI) to map the key genomic changes in 33 types of cancer. The multi-institution collaboration focused not only on cancer genome sequencing, but also on different types of molecular data collection and analysis, such as investigating gene and protein expression profiles (when they are turned on or off) and associating them with clinical and imaging data. With over $300 million in total funding, the project involved more than 150 researchers at more than two dozen institutions.

    The PanCancer Atlas sums up the work accomplished by TCGA in a collection of 27 papers across a suite of Cell journals. Three summary papers published on April 5, 2018, recap the core findings, and companion papers report more in-depth explorations.

    The first summary paper describes a technique called molecular clustering that groups cancers based on their molecular characteristics rather than their tissue of origin. The scientists analyzed gene expression, DNA modifications, protein expression, and other data from about 10,000 tissue samples representing 33 different types of cancer. The team identified 28 distinct clusters based on molecular similarities. Although most of these clusters could be linked to tissue of origin, many contained different cancer types. The most diverse group had 25 cancer types. These findings could help guide the treatment of many cancer patients whose tumors are of unknown origin.

    The second paper presents findings on oncogenesis, the processes that lead to cancer development and progression. The authors focused on three critical oncogenic processes: the DNA mutations that drive cancers; the influence of DNA alterations on gene and protein expression; and the interplay of tumors with their surroundings, particularly immune cells. The results will help in the development of new treatments for a wide range of cancers.

    The final paper details genomic alterations in 10 key signaling pathways that control the stages of the cell’s life cycle, growth, and death. The researchers found that 89% of tumors had at least one significant alteration in these pathways. About 57% of tumors had at least one alteration that could be targeted with currently known drugs and 30% had multiple targetable alterations. These findings will help researchers explore treatments with more tailored approaches, such as using a combination of drugs to target multiple pathways at the same time.

    “TCGA was the first project of its scale to characterize — at the molecular level — cancer across a breadth of cancer types,” says Dr. Carolyn Hutter, NHGRI team lead for TCGA. “At the project’s infancy 10 years ago, it wasn’t even possible, much less on such a scale, to do the types of characterization and analysis that were being proposed. It was a hugely ambitious project.”

    “The PanCancer Atlas effort complements the over 30 tumor-specific papers that have been published by TCGA in the last decade and expands upon earlier pan-cancer work that was published in 2013,” says Dr. Jean Claude Zenklusen, director of the TCGA Program Office at NCI.

  • Faithless Pictures; The Complex Relationship Between Image and Reality

    Situation Room by Pete Souza, White House Photographer

    One of the photos which will be seen in the exhibition in The National Gallery. The exhibition opened on 9 February.

    Until the new Norwegian National Museum opens in 2020, the National Gallery will also be showing contemporary art. The “Faithless Pictures” exhibition, opened on 9 February. (Editor’s Note: Time magazine identifies the individuals in the photograph. Taken by White House photographer Pete Souza in its namesake, the White House Situation Room, at 4:06 pm on May 1, 2011.)

    From Vibeke Tandberg and her staged portraits of herself as a young bride, Hito Steverts search for the past as brothel model, to Alfred Jaar’s non-photo about Osama Bin Laden’s death and Mike Bouchet’s porno fragments. 

    “The number of pictures increases, but what we see decrease”, says Sean Snyder, one of the artists. Society is in the midst of a technological revolution. The stream of images and the balance of power are now changing because of the ubiquity of the smartphone camera and the immediacy and reach of social media. These are new times, and art is posing new questions. In each their own way, the works presented at the “Faithless Pictures” exhibition address the vast amount of imagery that surrounds us, the visual torrent that seemingly represents our lives, our times, our world – the news clips, holiday photos, and flickers from the depths of the internet that meet us in a fragmented world of half illusion and half reality.

    To new worlds and unseen connections  “While previous generations wanted to lay bare the cultural codes underpinning society, the current generation relates to visual culture in a lighter vein,” says the exhibition’s curator Andrea Kroksnes. “It’s no longer about the problems of depicting the world, but about creating new worlds, about imagining unseen connections or changing the order of things. And where will this journey continue? Perhaps some of the works at the exhibition can point out the direction.”

    The power of the image over reality  In the “Faithless Pictures” exhibition, the featured artists comment on how image influences both reality and our own self-understanding. The techniques span from appropriation, bricolage, interventions, to visual activism within photo and video. 

    The exhibition features the following artists: John Baldessari, Mike Bouchet, Bernadette Corporation, Thomas Demand, Stan Douglas, Gardar Eide Einarsson, Ida Ekblad, Matias Faldbakken, Harun Farocki, Jan Freuchen, Cyprien Gaillard, Isa Genzken, Rachel Harrison, Jenny Holzer, Alfredo Jaar, Barbara Kruger, Michel Majerus, Helen Marten, Allan McCollum, Josephine Meckseper, Katja Novitskova, Trevor Paglen, Maria Pasenau, Richard Prince, Josephine Pryde, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, Sean Snyder, Hito Steyerl, Sturtevant, and Vibeke Tandberg.

    In addition to the entire ground floor of the National Gallery being filled with contemporary art, the museum’s permanent exhibition on the first floor will include works by the contemporary artists Andrea Fraser, Louise Lawler, Torbjørn Rødland, and Fredrik Værslev. The exhibition will run until 13 May.