Welcome to Let Kids Be Kids, Inc., advocacy blog "We All Deserve Better." Our goal is to post relevant information that will spark action,discussion and interaction, creating a catalyst for solutions and ideas to impact the challenges we face in our society. We welcome comments, suggestions and submissions in support of those seeking a voice. "...Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear..."
Friday, February 27, 2015
Housing Seattle's Homeless Veterans
At Let Kids Be Kids...
"...At Let Kids Be Kids we advocate for those that are poor,
homeless, sick, displaced or looking for assistance with
making their lives slightly better. We also add our voice for those that cannot speak, those in the animal kingdom that are at risk due to environmental challenges etc.
When we say "kids" we mean all of us. We believe if we all honored that special place in kids, that joy and enthusiasm, we'd be able to work miracles--
Our videos, articles and photographs serve to honor and highlight those that are willing to share their struggles, as well as honoring those that are reaching out a helping hand.
homeless, sick, displaced or looking for assistance with
making their lives slightly better. We also add our voice for those that cannot speak, those in the animal kingdom that are at risk due to environmental challenges etc.
When we say "kids" we mean all of us. We believe if we all honored that special place in kids, that joy and enthusiasm, we'd be able to work miracles--
Our videos, articles and photographs serve to honor and highlight those that are willing to share their struggles, as well as honoring those that are reaching out a helping hand.
"Let Kids Be Kids was more about making me into a capable and passionate, educated and inspired citizen. Teaching me how to help my community, and educating me on the different issues people work hard for."
(University of Washington Graduate)..."
(University of Washington Graduate)..."
Thursday, February 26, 2015
Let Kids Be Kids & Christian Science Monitor
At the foot of the main story on Public Defenders the following three organizations were mentioned.
HOW TO TAKE ACTION
•Let Kids Be Kids,Inc™ Inc. is dedicated to helping people who have a desire to be heard and who may not have a voice. Take action: Support legal aid for indigenous peoples.
• Benetech develops innovative and effective technologies for unmet social needs. Take action: Help human rights groups keep their data secure.
• Children of the Night is dedicated to rescuing America’s children from prostitution. Take action: Provide case managers and legal aid to homeless and disabled people.(cover/Bing)
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Leukemia Advances
Clinical Cancer Advances 2015: Annual Report on Progress Against Cancer From the American Society of Clinical Oncology
- Gregory A. Masters*,
- Lada Krilov⇑,
- Howard H. Bailey†,
- Marcia S. Brose†,
- Harold Burstein†,
- Lisa R. Diller†,
- Don S. Dizon†,
- Howard A. Fine†,
- Gregory P. Kalemkerian†,
- Mark Moasser†,
- Michael N. Neuss†,
- Steven J. O'Day†,
- Olatoyosi Odenike†,
- Charles J. Ryan†,
- Richard L. Schilsky‡,
- Gary K. Schwartz†,
- Alan P. Venook†,
- Sandra L. Wong† and
- Jyoti D. Patel*
+Author Affiliations
- Corresponding author: Lada Krilov, PhD, American Society of Clinical Oncology, 2318 Mill Rd, Suite 800, Alexandria, VA 22314; e-mail: lada.krilov@asco.org.
A MESSAGE FROM ASCO'S PRESIDENT
Ten years ago, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) first announced the year's biggest cancer research advances in the inaugural issue of Clinical Cancer Advances. Looking back at a decade of reports, it is exciting to see how transformative those years have been. Clinical Cancer Advances has documented the dawn of precision cancer medicine, the advent of effective new cancer prevention strategies, major improvements in the management of treatment adverse effects, and many other critical advances.
Although all research achievements in this annual report are important, it often seems that one rises above the rest, whether because of its tremendous impact on patient care, its pioneering science, or its cross-cutting significance. So, as Clinical Cancer Advances enters its second decade, we are highlighting the year's standout achievement with a new feature: ASCO's Advance of the Year.
For 2015, ASCO's Advance of the Year is the transformation of treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).
CLL is the most common adult leukemia, and it disproportionately affects the elderly. Yet, until the past year, many older patients were without treatment options, because existing therapies caused severe, even life-threatening, adverse effects for those who were frail or had other major health problems. But 2014 brought stunning new possibilities with the introduction of four new drugs that are both highly effective and far easier on patients. These therapies have filled a major unmet need for those with newly diagnosed or resistant disease, making treatment—and remission—possible for more patients than ever.
This advance also speaks to the importance of value in cancer care. Value is a major focus for ASCO, because clinical benefit, toxicity, and cost must all be factored into shared decision making to determine the best treatment options for patients. ASCO is working to develop a physician-guided tool that will help patients evaluate new treatment options such as those highlighted in this report.
Another big change with this year's report is that clinical research advances are ordered thematically, rather than by disease area. And within each thematic section, the report not only highlights recent advances, but identifies emerging trends as well.
Clinical Cancer Advances also continues its emphasis on the unique and vital role of federally funded cancer research. In this year's report, almost a third of the studies featured were supported by federal research dollars. One featured study revealed one of the biggest survival gains ever observed in men with advanced prostate cancer. Another found a simple, affordable new way to preserve fertility for women with early-stage breast cancer, while others helped deliver new therapies for hard-to-treat diseases like brain cancer. For more than 40 years, the National Cancer Institute has funded many more clinical studies like these, answering critical cancer care questions that might otherwise have been ignored.
Despite these achievements, federal investment in research has stagnated over the past 10 years, resulting in a 23% loss in purchasing power for the National Institutes of Health. In practical terms, this means promising research is going unfunded, new studies are being scaled back, fewer patients have the opportunity to participate in clinical trials, and future meaningful advances against cancer may be few and far between—unless our nation renews its commitment to fighting cancer.
Advances in health information technology (IT)—including projects like ASCO's CancerLinQ—can help overcome some of these challenges. Such technologies will enable us to capture data and learn from every patient, ultimately helping make clinical trials faster and smarter. But we cannot count on health IT alone.
As with any major anniversary, we are reminded that history judges us by our achievements. In oncology, Clinical Cancer Advances documents a decade of remarkable research advances, with progress building on progress over time. Now is the time to increase our nation's investment to ensure we can build on these advances well into the future.
Peter Paul Yu, MD, FACP, FASCO
President
American Society of Clinical Oncology
*******************************************************************************
Reach out to death row inmates
As you can imagine the prisoners are disappointed that the Washington State Judicial Committee, in the state legislature, last week decided NOT TO VOTE on the ending of the death penalty in Washington state. That dodge is under review by everyone interested in eliminating execution as an option in Washington.
Please read the following and help us if you so choose-
Sister Helen Prejean,"There are no more marginalized, thrown-away, and leprous people in our society than death-row inmates."
We are advocating for more humane treatment of prisoners who will spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
This campaign is to help fund telephone calls for death row prisoners.
Prisoners on death row have little ability to pay for calls to family. They are often in solitary confinement without physical interaction with anyone. The guards, for the most part, do not speak with them.
Prisoners can only make telephone calls to an approved list of people.
Without donations some prisoners will never hear the voice of their loved ones.
Donations will be given to accredited, sanctioned, state approved representatives who manage prisoner funds for phone calls.
Thanks you so much-
http://tinyurl.com/owcnatk
Kids showing love...
Please, please watch this encounter with some young people I introduced to a man suffering with AIDS.
Mimi Jung, KING TV, did an awesome job capturing the relationships, learning, openness, love these kids show…
http://www.king5.com/videos/news/features/2015/02/24/23943203/
Please take a look at Let Kids Be Kids, Inc. website to get a better understanding of our contributions...
Please take a look at Let Kids Be Kids, Inc. website to get a better understanding of our contributions...
Monday, February 23, 2015
Bonobos
In "Ape House" Sara Gruen writes about Bonobos Chimps and their ability to communicate with each other, and with us - the humans. I was fortunate to have met, and speak to for a few minutes, Roger Fouts when he was lecturing about Washoe and her ability to sign. I went over to Central Washington University, in Ellensburg, twice to watch interactions, from a distance, with chimps and the humans who cared for for them. Roger Fouts's book "Next of Kin" is one of my all time favorite books about Chimps, language, love, identity and our role in all of it. For more info on Bonobos and other Apes see: http://greatapetrust.org
All good people cracking the codes that tend to separate us-
Let Kids Be Kids advocates for the rights of all those in the animal kingdom. Yep, humans too-----
And, in particular, all those Bonobos out there...
Sunday, February 22, 2015
Pangolin
"The Pangolin is the most highly-traded mammal in the world, with more than a million a year being poached from the wild. It may be a difficult thing to understand; why anyone would want to consume a creature covered in hard, keratin scales but there are plenty of willing customers in China and Vietnam who believe that pangolin meat is a delicacy, and that their shiny, outer casing is best used for human ailments, like rheumatism, skin diseases, to reduce swelling, and to promote lactation in breast-feeding mothers." Paul Hilton.
Don't let it happen - speak up!
Let Kids Be Kids advocates for the rights of all those in the animal kingdom. Yep, humans too-----
And, in particular, all those Pangolins out there...
Monday, February 9, 2015
Fighting Cancer
Let Kids Be Kids,Inc™ advocates for many who are suffering. One way we do that is by sharing interesting information that may be of value...
"A way to eradicate cancer stem cells, using the side-effects of commonly used antibiotics, has been discovered by a University of Manchester researcher following a conversation with his young daughter.
Professor Michael P. Lisanti, Director of the Breakthrough Breast Cancer Unit, led the research. He was inspired to look at the effects of antibiotics on the mitochondria of cancer stem cells by a conversation with his daughter Camilla about his work at the University's Institute of Cancer Sciences.
His new paper, published in Oncotarget, opens up the possibility of a treatment for cancer, which is highly effective and repurposes drugs which have been safely used for decades.
Mitochondria are the 'engine' parts of the cells and are the source of energy for the stem cells as they mutate and divide to cause tumours. Cancer stem cells are strongly associated with the growth and recurrence of all cancers and are especially difficult to eradicate with normal treatment, which also leads to tumours developing resistance to other types of therapy.
Professor Lisanti said: "I was having a conversation with Camilla about how to cure cancer and she asked why don't we just use antibiotics like we do for other illnesses. I knew that antibiotics can affect mitochondria and I've been doing a lot of work recently on how important they are to the growth of tumours, but this conversation helped me to make a direct link."
Professor Lisanti worked with colleagues from The Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York and the Kimmel Cancer Centre, Philadelphia. The team used five types of antibiotics - including one used to treat acne (doxycycline) - on cell lines of eight different types of tumour and found that four of them eradicated the cancer stem cells in every test. This included glioblastoma, the most aggressive of brain tumours, as well as lung, prostate, ovarian, breast, pancreatic and skin cancer.
Mitochondria are believed to be descended from bacteria which joined with cells early on in the evolution of life. This is why some of the antibiotics which are used to destroy bacteria also affect mitochondria, though not to an extent which is dangerous to people. When they are present in stem cells, mitochondria provide energy for growth and, crucially, for division, and it is this process going wrong which leads to cancer.
In the lab, the antibiotics had no harmful effect on normal cells, and since they are already approved for use in humans, trials of new treatments should be simpler than with new drugs - saving time and money.
Professor Lisanti said: "This research makes a strong case for opening new trials in humans for using antibiotics to fight cancer. Many of the drugs we used were extremely effective, there was little or no damage to normal cells and these antibiotics have been in use for decades and are already approved by the FDA for use in humans. However, of course, further studies are needed to validate their efficacy, especially in combination with more conventional therapies."
Dr Matthew Lam, Senior Research Officer at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: "The conclusions that the researchers have drawn, whilst just hypotheses at this stage, are certainly interesting. Antibiotics are cheap and readily available and if in time the link between their use and the eradication of cancer stem cells can be proved, this work may be the first step towards a new avenue for cancer treatment.
"This is a perfect example of why it is so important to continue to invest in scientific research. Sometimes there are answers to some of the biggest questions right in front of us but without ongoing commitment to the search for these answers, we'd never find them."
Importantly, previous clinical trials with antibiotics - intended to treat cancer-associated infections, but not cancer cells - have already shown positive therapeutic effects in cancer patients. These trials were performed on advanced or treatment-resistant patients.
In the lung cancer patients, azithromycin, the antibiotic used, increased one-year patient survival from 45% to 75%. Even lymphoma patients who were 'bacteria-free' benefited from a three-week course of doxycycline therapy, and showed complete remission of the disease. These results suggest that the antibiotic's therapeutic effects were actually infection-independent.
"As these drugs are considerably cheaper than current therapies, they can improve treatment in the developing world where the number of deaths from cancer is predicted to increase significantly over the next ten years," said Dr Federica Sotgia, another leader of the study."
*EurekAlert! is an online, global news service operated by AAAS, the science society. EurekAlert! provides a central place through which universities, medical centers, journals, government agencies, corporations and other organizations engaged in research can bring their news to the media. EurekAlert! also offers its news and resources to the public. EurekAlert! features news and resources focused on all areas of science, medicine and technology.
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Can You Help?
It's shocking to realize that Polar Bears are at risk throughout their habitat. The warming of the sea in the Arctic has greatly reduced the range, and opportunities for hunting, that the bears rely on-
Imagine a world without Polar Bears!
Let Kids Be Kids advocates for the rights of all those in the animal kingdom. Yep, humans too-----
And of course, Polar Bears....
A Mighty Girl - Andrée Peel
Today in Mighty Girl history, Andrée Peel, the World War II heroine known as "Agent Rose," was born in 1905. The most highly decorated woman to survive the war, Peel was a major figure in the French Resistance who helped save countless lives, including over 100 British and American pilots shot down over France.
When France was occupied in 1940, Andrée Virot, as she was known then, was running a beauty salon in Brest and joined the resistance movement after the city was occupied. In her role as Agent Rose, she began circulating an underground newspaper, passed on information to the Allies on German shipping and troop movements, and guided Allied planes to secret nighttime landing strips by torchlight. She is most famously remembered for running an under-section of the resistance that rescued 102 Allied pilots over a three year period, ferrying them through a series of safe houses to isolated Brest beaches for transport to England.
When the Gestapo learned of her involvement with the resistance, she fled to Paris but was arrested shortly after D-Day on June 6, 1944. She was sent to the Ravensbrück and Buchenwald concentration camps where she was tortured (she is pictured here with camp uniform -- the red triangle signifies enemy spy or POW). In her most harrowing moment, she narrowly escaped death when American troops arrived to liberate Buchenwald just as Peel was being lined up to be shot by a Nazi firing squad.
In discussing her wartime experience, Peel stated, "I was born with courage. I did not allow cruel people to find in me a person they could torture. I saved 102 pilots before being arrested, interrogated and tortured. I suffer still from that. I still have the pain... At that time we were all putting our lives in danger but we did it because we were fighting for freedom... It was a terrible time but looking back I am so proud of what I did and I'm glad to have helped defend the freedom of our future generations."
Following the war, Peel received many commendations including the Croix de Guerre (with palm), the Croix de Guerre (silver star), the Cross of the Voluntary Fighter, the Medal of the Resistance, the Liberation Cross – all French awards, as well as the Medal of Freedom by the United States and the King’s Commendation for Brave Conduct by Britain. At age 99, she was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur, France's highest honor. She eventually married Englishman, John Peel, and settled in Bristol, England. In 2010, the heroic "Agent Rose" passed away at the age of 105.
Andrée Peel is one of 26 incredible women featured in the excellent book for ages 13 and up, "Women Heroes of World War II: 26 Stories of Espionage, Sabotage, Resistance, and Rescue" at http://www.amightygirl.com/women-heroes-of-world-war-ii
A complementary book telling the stories of heroic women of WWI was also just released: "Women Heroes of World War I: 16 Remarkable Resisters, Soldiers, Spies, and Medics" at http://www.amightygirl.com/women-heroes-of-world-war-i
To learn about another real-life WWII resistance fighter, British special agent Pearl Witherington, check out "Code Name Pauline," for ages 12 and up at http://www.amightygirl.com/code-name-pauline
For two highly recommended novels, both for ages 13 and up, about women resistance fighters of WWII, check out "Code Name Verity" (http://www.amightygirl.com/code-name-verity) and "Rose Under Fire" (http://www.amightygirl.com/rose-under-fire).
For many books for young readers about girls and women who lived during the Holocaust period, including stories of other heroic resisters and rescuers, visit our blog post for Holocaust Remembrance Week at http://www.amightygirl.com/blog/?p=2726
To browse our entire collection of stories of girls and women living through the WWII period, including numerous stories related to the Holocaust, visit our "WWII & Holocaust" section at http://www.amightygirl.com/…/history-biograp…/history-world…
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