African-American News and Commentary: 2011-07-10

Friday, July 15, 2011

Pills prevent HIV in straight men and women

http://www.usatoday.com/

ATLANTA – Two new studies found that daily pills prevented infection with the AIDS virus in heterosexual men and women in Africa, bringing new hope for someday offering a medical shield against HIV infection.

"This is good news. This is a good day for HIV prevention," said Dr. Lynn Paxton of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who has coordinated the agency's research into HIV prevention.

Earlier this year, another study found the same pills did not prevent the AIDS virus among women in Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa. But researchers now say that study may have been flawed based on the success of the two studies announced Wednesday.

The first of the new studies, run by the CDC, involved more than 1,200 men and women in Botswana. About half got a daily pill, Truvada, an HIV treatment made by Gilead Sciences Inc. The other half got a fake pill.

An analysis of people who were believed to be regularly taking the pills found four of those on Truvada became infected with HIV, compared to 19 on the dummy pill. That means the real drug lowered the risk of infection by roughly 78 percent, researchers said.

The second study was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and run by theUniversity of Washington. It involved more than 4,700 heterosexual couples in Kenya and Uganda. In each couple, one partner had HIV and the other did not. The uninfected were given either daily placebos, Truvada pills, or another Gilead treatment, Viread.

The study found 13 HIV infections among those on Truvada, 18 in those on Viread, and 47 of those on dummy pills. So the medications reduced the risk of HIV infection by 62 percent to 73 percent, the researchers said.

An independent review panel on Sunday said the benefit was clear-cut and stopped giving placebos, instead offering the preventive pills. Essentially, they deemed it unethical to withhold the medications from people who had been on placebo, said Dr. Jared Baeten, the University of Washington researcher who co-chaired the study.

"Our results provide clear evidence that this works in heterosexuals," he said.

In both studies, participants also were offered counseling and free condoms, which may help explain the relatively low overall infection rate.

The studies were to be announced at an AIDS conference in Rome next week. But following the recommendation of the review panel to the University of Washington study, both the CDC and the Washington team made hasty decisions to release the results.

These are the third and fourth widely reported studies of AIDS prevention medications.

The first was announced last year. It was a study of Truvada in gay men in Peru, Ecuador, Brazil, South Africa, Thailand and the United States (San Francisco and Boston). The drug lowered the chances of infection by 44 percent, and by 73 percent or more among men who took their pills most faithfully.

Experts celebrated. The CDC gave advice to doctors on prescribing Truvada along with other prevention services for gay men, based on those encouraging results.

But momentum seemed to stall in April, when an interim analysis of the study of 3,900 women in Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa did not show a benefit from taking Truvada.

Scientists are still piecing together why that study pointed to failure and the two latest indicate success. One theory is that the women in the earlier study did not take the medication as often as they should have, Paxton said.

Gilead Sciences of Foster City, Calif., is a major producer of AIDS drugs. On Tuesday,United Nations health officials announced the company had agreed to allow some of its drugs to be made by generic manufacturers, potentially increasing their availability in poor countries.

Black officers' group assails assault charge against African-American cop

A black law-enforcement advocacy group is criticizing prosecutors for filing an assault charge against an African-American Seattle police officer involved in an off-duty brawl while not charging two white Seattle officers who stomped on a prone Latino suspect in another incident.

By Steve Miletich

Seattle Times staff reporter

Seattle Officer Shandy Cobane was not charged in "Mexican piss" case.

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Seattle Officer Shandy Cobane was not charged in "Mexican piss" case.

Dash cam video: Stomping incident

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Video of SPD officer kicking prone man

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The decision by the City Attorney's Office to charge Officer Garth Haynes "is demonstrative of the disparate treatment" that African Americans routinely encounter in the criminal-justice system, the Black Law Enforcement Association of Washington said in a statement issued Monday.

Haynes was charged last week with fourth-degree misdemeanor assault for stomping on the head of a man who had been handcuffed by officers responding to the brawl outside a Ballard bar in December. While not condoning Haynes' actions, the association accused the City Attorney's Office of not "approaching these type of cases in a fair and consistent manner."

Kimberly Mills, spokeswoman for City Attorney Pete Holmes, said Tuesday that her office was ethically bound under professional rules of conduct from "trying this case" in the media.

"That said, race is not a factor in our charging decisions," Mills said in a written statement.

Carlos Bratcher, the association's president and a King County sheriff's deputy, said assault charges also should have been brought against Seattle police officers Shandy Cobane and Mary Woollum over their use of force against the Latino suspect while conducting a robbery investigation in South Lake Union in April 2010.

Cobane sparked a public outcry when he was captured on video threatening to beat the "Mexican piss" out of the suspect, who was released when officers determined he was not involved in a crime.

But neither Cobane nor Woollum, who both stomped on the man, was criminally charged after the City Attorney's Office determined late last year they had used reasonable force under state law to gain compliance from a suspect who wasn't handcuffed and ignored police commands.

A Los Angeles police detective who advised city attorneys reached the same conclusion about the officers' actions, although he faulted the department for what he deemed tactical and investigative lapses during the incident.

In May, Cobane was suspended for 30 days without pay for the remark after an internal investigation by the Police Department, along with other discipline that included being demoted from gang detective to patrol officer. Woollum also was to be disciplined for failing to report what she observed, although details have yet to be released.

Bratcher, whose association represents more than 100 law-enforcement and corrections officers in Washington and is a chapter of the National Black Police Association, said the "totality of everything" that occurred in the South Lake Union incident should have been considered by prosecutors.

As in the case involving Haynes, officers had "control and custody" when force was used, Bratcher said.

Haynes was captured on the dashboard video of a patrol car stomping on the head of the handcuffed man, one of three young men said to have attacked Haynes during a brawl over the alleged theft of coats belonging to Haynes and a friend while they were in the bar.

"Yeah, he should be charged, but don't charge the black guy and not charge the white guy who did the exact same thing," Bratcher said.

In their statement, Bratcher's organization called the South Lake Union incident "far more egregious due to the racial overtones" and also criticized the King County Prosecutor's Office for not bringing a hate-crime charge against Cobane.

In reply, the Prosecutor's Office reiterated Tuesday its previous statement that while Cobane's remark was "offensive and unprofessional," it did not rise to the level of felony malicious harassment because he did not intentionally target the suspect because of race or national origin.

Bratcher also cited the decision by the City Attorney's Office to file an assault charge in April against an Asian-American Seattle police officer, James J. Lee, over his repeated kicking of a robbery suspect last year during an incident captured on video inside a convenience store.

Lee also should be held accountable, Bratcher said, emphasizing that he wasn't saying the city attorney had acted in a "racially discriminatory" fashion by charging two minority officers.

"But it gives the appearance," Bratcher said.

The Seattle Police Officers' Guild also has raised race issues in Haynes' case, saying he shouldn't have been charged because he was the victim of a racially motivated assault by three white men. Charges against those men have been dropped. It also has denounced the City Attorney's Office for charging Lee, saying he was using accepted control tactics.

Mills, the city attorney's spokeswoman, responded last week by saying her office has conducted a case-by-case review of each incident involving officers.

Information from Seattle Times archives is included in this story.

Steve Miletich: 206-464-3302 or smiletich@seattletimes.com

Should parents lose custody of super obese kids?

In a July 11, 2011 photo, Stormy Bradley, right, and her daughter Maya, 14, walk their dog Bubbles in their neighborhood in Atlanta. Maya, who is 5'4" tall and weighs about 200 lbs., is part of an anti-obesity ad campaign in Georgia. A provocative article in a prominent medical journal argues parents of extremely obese children should lose custody because they can't control their kids' weight. (AP Photo/Erik S. Lesser)

By LINDSEY TANNER

The Associated Press

CHICAGO — Should parents of extremely obese children lose custody for not controlling their kids' weight? A provocative commentary in one of the nation's most distinguished medical journals argues yes, and its authors are joining a quiet chorus of advocates who say the government should be allowed to intervene in extreme cases.

It has happened a few times in the U.S., and the opinion piece in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association says putting children temporarily in foster care is in some cases more ethical than obesity surgery.

Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity specialist at Harvard-affiliated Children's Hospital Boston, said the point isn't to blame parents, but rather to act in children's best interest and get them help that for whatever reason their parents can't provide.

State intervention "ideally will support not just the child but the whole family, with the goal of reuniting child and family as soon as possible. That may require instruction on parenting," said Ludwig, who wrote the article with Lindsey Murtagh, a lawyer and a researcher at Harvard's School of Public Health.

"Despite the discomfort posed by state intervention, it may sometimes be necessary to protect a child," Murtagh said.

But University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Art Caplan said he worries that the debate risks putting too much blame on parents. Obese children are victims of advertising, marketing, peer pressure and bullying — things a parent can't control, he said.

"If you're going to change a child's weight, you're going to have to change all of them," Caplan said.

Roughly 2 million U.S. children are extremely obese. Most are not in imminent danger, Ludwig said. But some have obesity-related conditions such as Type 2 diabetes, breathing difficulties and liver problems that could kill them by age 30. It is these kids for whom state intervention, including education, parent training, and temporary protective custody in the most extreme cases, should be considered, Ludwig said.

While some doctors promote weight-loss surgery for severely obese teens, Ludwig said it hasn't been used for very long in adolescents and can have serious, sometimes life-threatening complications.

"We don't know the long-term safety and effectiveness of these procedures done at an early age," he said.

Ludwig said he starting thinking about the issue after a 90-pound 3-year-old girl came to his obesity clinic several years ago. Her parents had physical disabilities, little money and difficulty controlling her weight. Last year, at age 12, she weighed 400 pounds and had developed diabetes, cholesterol problems, high blood pressure and sleep apnea.

"Out of medical concern, the state placed this girl in foster care, where she simply received three balanced meals a day and a snack or two and moderate physical activity," he said. After a year, she lost 130 pounds. Though she is still obese, her diabetes and apnea disappeared; she remains in foster care, he said.

In a commentary in the medical journal BMJ last year, London pediatrician Dr. Russell Viner and colleagues said obesity was a factor in several child protection cases in Britain. They argued that child protection services should be considered if parents are neglectful or actively reject efforts to control an extremely obese child's weight.

A 2009 opinion article in Pediatrics made similar arguments. Its authors said temporary removal from the home would be warranted "when all reasonable alternative options have been exhausted."

That piece discussed a 440-pound 16-year-old girl who developed breathing problems from excess weight and nearly died at a University of Wisconsin hospital. Doctors discussed whether to report her family for neglect. But they didn't need to, because her medical crisis "was a wake-up call" for her family, and the girl ended up losing about 100 pounds, said co-author Dr. Norman Fost, a medical ethicist at the university's Madison campus.

State intervention in obesity "doesn't necessarily involve new legal requirements," Ludwig said. Health care providers are required to report children who are at immediate risk, and that can be for a variety of reasons, including neglect, abuse and what doctors call "failure to thrive." That's when children are severely underweight.

Jerri Gray, a Greenville, S.C., single mother who lost custody of her 555-pound 14-year-old son two years ago, said authorities don't understand the challenges families may face in trying to control their kids' weight.

"I was always working two jobs so we wouldn't end up living in ghettos," Gray said. She said she often didn't have time to cook, so she would buy her son fast food. She said she asked doctors for help for her son's big appetite but was accused of neglect.

Her sister has custody of the boy, now 16. The sister has the money to help him with a specialdiet and exercise, and the boy has lost more than 200 pounds, Gray said.

"Even though good has come out of this as far as him losing weight, he told me just last week, 'Mommy, I want to be back with you so bad.' They've done damage by pulling us apart," Gray said.

Stormy Bradley, an Atlanta mother whose overweight 14-year-old daughter is participating in a Georgia advocacy group's "Stop Childhood Obesity" campaign, said she sympathizes with families facing legal action because of their kids' weight.

Healthier food often costs more, and trying to monitor kids' weight can be difficult, especially when they reach their teens and shun parental control, Bradley said. But taking youngsters away from their parents "definitely seems too extreme," she said.

Dr. Lainie Ross, a medical ethicist at the University of Chicago, said: "There's a stigma with state intervention. We just have to do it with caution and humility and make sure we really can say that our interventions are going to do more good than harm."

The disappearing black middle class

http://www.suntimes.com

Millions of Americans endured financial calamities in the recession. But for many in the black community, job loss has knocked them out of the middle class and back into poverty. And some experts warn of a historic reversal of hard-won economic gains that took black people decades to achieve.

“History is going to say the black middle class was decimated” over the past few years, said Maya Wiley, director of the Center for Social Inclusion. “But we’re not done writing history.”

Adds Algernon Austin, director of the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy: “The recession is not over for black folks.”

In 2004, the median net worth of white households was $134,280, compared with $13,450 for black households, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Economic Policy Institute. By 2009, the median net worth for white households had fallen 24 percent to $97,860; the median net worth for black households had fallen 83 percent to $2,170, according to the institute.

Austin described the wealth gap this way: “In 2009, for every dollar of wealth the average white household had, black households only had two cents.”

Austin thinks more black people than ever before could fall out of the middle class because the unemployment rate for college-educated blacks recently peaked and blacks are overrepresented in state and local government jobs. Those are jobs that are being eliminated because of massive budget shortfalls.

Since the end of the recession, which lasted from 2007 to 2009, the overall unemployment rate has fallen from 9.4 to 9.1 percent, while the black unemployment rate has risen from 14.7 to 16.2 percent, according to the Department of Labor. Last April, black male unemployment hit the highest rate since the government began keeping track in 1972. Only 56.9 percent of black men over 20 were working, compared with 68.1 percent of white men.

Even college-educated blacks fared worse than their white counterparts in the recession. In 2007, unemployment for college-educated whites was 1.8 percent; for college-educated blacks it was 2.7 percent. Now, the college-educated unemployment rate is 3.9 percent for whites and 7 percent for blacks.

Nearly 8 percent of African Americans who bought homes from 2005 to 2008 have lost them to foreclosure, compared with 4.5 percent of whites, according to an estimate by the Center for Responsible Lending.

Some see a bitter irony in soaring black unemployment and the decline of the black middle class on the watch of the first black president.

“I thought Barack Obama could have provided some way out. But he lacks backbone,” Princeton Professor Cornel West told truthdig.com recently.

West said Obama sold out the poor to become “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats. . . . I don’t think in good conscience I could tell anybody to vote for Obama.”

Wiley said Obama should be applauded for several initiatives that have helped the black middle class, such as programs to modify certain mortgages and prevent foreclosure because of job loss. But she would like Obama to aggressively counter the suggestion that first black president would be showing favoritism if he specifically helped black people.

“It’s the right thing to do for the nation,” she said. “Black people are a huge segment of the population, they’re especially hard-hit, and the country cannot recover if the black community — as well as the white community and others — does not recover.”

Six Atlanta Officials Replaced Amid Cheating Scandal

ATLANTA -- The fallout from the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal continued to spread as four area superintendents were replaced and a school district in Texas put the superintendent it recently hired from Georgia on paid leave.

Interim Superintendent Erroll Davis replaced the four superintendents late Monday, hours before trustees of the DeSoto Independent School District near Dallas placed Superintendent Kathy Augustine on leave as they re-examine her previous post. Augustine has denied having any knowledge of test cheating as Atlanta's deputy superintendent.

The four removed from their area superintendent jobs – Sharon Davis-Williams, Michael Pitts, Robin Hall and Tamara Cotman – were implicated in the scandal. Interim Superintendent Erroll Davis did not say whether they will stay with the school district.

Georgia investigators say 178 educators in 44 schools cheated on standardized tests used to meet federal benchmarks. Educators told state investigators they were pressured by administrators to improve test scores. The testing problems first came to light after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that some scores were statistically improbable.

Davis also said two year-round elementary schools named in the state investigative report made public last week will get new principals before classes start Wednesday.

In Texas, trustees of the DeSoto Independent School District held a lengthy closed-door meeting that lasted late into the night before Augustine read a statement announcing she was taking the leave of absence effective Tuesday.

"Please know that I understand your need for thoughtful deliberations about my appointment," Augustine told the trustees after announcing the decision, which she said was reached after "mutual consideration."

After Augustine announced she was taking leave, the trustees took no immediate action on a proposal to terminate her employment. DeSoto schools hired Augustine in April to the $188,000-a-year job in the district, which has some 9,000 students in the Dallas area.

Also Monday, Atlanta Public Schools board member Khaatim El announced he was resigning from the board.

"I just concluded in the end it just shouldn't be this hard to do the right things for kids," El said as he fought back tears. "I failed to protect thousands of children who come from homes like mine. It remains to be seen, no matter how deep this thing goes, whether the soul of Atlanta has been stirred."

The state investigation revealed the nation's largest cheating scandal yet on standardized tests, with nearly half of Atlanta's 100 schools involved, and highlighted the immense pressure put on educators to produce better scores. Criminal charges are likely for some of the educators who confessed and the rest who were implicated by colleagues.

Ex-NFL Bengal killed by Calif. deputy in scuffle

This handout provided by NFL photos shows Cincinnati Bengals running back David Lee "Deacon" Turner in 1979. After at least two dozen run-ins with the law, Turner, 56, was shot and killed in front of a convenience store Sunday, July 10, 2011 in Bakersfield, Calif., by a Kern County deputy after he allegedly hit an officer with a bag holding two cans of beer. As a student-athlete, Turner thrived, shredding defenses at Shafter High School, Bakersfield College and San Diego State University. But as an adult, after playing in the NFL from 1978 to 1980, he had trouble finding his place in civilian life. (AP Photo/NFL Photos)

The Associated Press

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. — A California deputy shot and killed a former running back for the Cincinnati Bengals in front of a convenience store after he allegedly hit an officer with a bag holding two cans of beer.

David Lee "Deacon" Turner, 56, played with the Bengals from 1978 to 1980 and had long arrest history after his playing career was finished.

Deputies who were investigating reports of teenagers asking adults to buy alcohol and cigarettes approached Turner on Sunday as he left the convenience store with his 19-year-old son and a 16-year-old juvenile.

The deputies detained Turner while they investigated. The sheriff's office said Turner initially complied but then decided to leave, and the scuffle occurred when deputies tried to stop the former NFL player. Deputy Aaron Nadal was hit on the back of the head with a bag holding two, 24-ounce cans of beer before Deputy Wesley Kraft drew his handgun and fired twice at Turner, authorities said.

Friends and family told the The Bakersfield Californian they have trouble believing authorities' account of the story. Nephew Kevin Turner called his uncle "the backbone of our family."

"He was a marvelous kid," Bakersfield College coach Gerry Collins told the newspaper.

Turner excelled at shredding defenses at Shafter High School, Bakersfield College and San Diego State University before getting drafted by the Bengals in the second round in 1978.

Turner was used primarily as a kick returner in his three years in the league, amassing 1,149 return yards in 1979 for the last-place Bengals. He had 549 career rushing yards.

Court records show an arrest history stretching back to 1986. The most recent, on June 17, was for driving while his license was revoked because of a conviction for driving under the influence.

Sheriff Donny Youngblood said department investigators were getting tapes from video cameras at the store to see if the incident Sunday was recorded. He said he has purposely not researched Turner's criminal background.

"I want to look at it with an open and objective mind," Youngblood said. "Having a record is a tiny piece of the puzzle, but not a significant piece."

He declined to comment about the investigation directly. The department issued a release saying Nadal was treated and released at a hospital. Officials have not described the nature of his injury.

Kraft is on administrative leave while sheriff's detectives investigate the shooting.

___

July 11, 2011 06:11 PM EDT

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Alabama Judges Impose Death Though Juries Vote For Life In Prison

Last November, jurors in Lee County, Ala., found Courtney Lockhart, a 26-year-old Iraq War veteran, guilty of the 2008 murder of Lauren Burk, an 18-year-old college student.

During sentencing, all 12 members of the jury recommended that Lockhart serve life in prison without the possibility of parole for his crime. Prosecutors had sought the death penalty, but the defense argued for lenience, presenting evidence that Lockhart had suffered psychological damage during a bloody 16-month combat tour in Iraq.

The jurors' unanimous decision to spare Lockhart's life was not the final word, however. On March 3, 2011, Judge Jacob Walker, who presided over the trial, nullified the jury's recommendation of life without parole and sentenced Lockhart to death by lethal injection.

In a lengthy decision, the judge wrote that Lockhart deserved death because of evidence of other crimes not presented by prosecutors during his trial. Had the jury heard these "additional facts," he wrote, "their sentencing recommendation would likely have differed."

In virtually all 35 states that allow the death penalty, juries are the supreme arbiter of whether capital defendants live or die. But not in Alabama. Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty after a four-year ban, Alabama judges have held the power to overturn the sentencing recommendations of juries in capital cases.

Since then, state judges have overturned 107 jury decisions in capital cases, and in 92 percent of those cases, jury recommendations of life imprisonment were rejected in favor of death sentences, according to a new report by the Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit law firm based in Montgomery, Ala.

The group's report is strongly critical of the practice, calling it arbitrary and lacking meaningful standards or oversight.

"No capital sentencing procedure in the United States has come under more criticism as unreliable, unpredictable and arbitrary than the unique Alabama practice of permitting elected trial judges to override jury verdicts of life and impose death sentences," it states.

Alabama has the highest per capita death sentencing rate in the country; last year, the state, with a population of 4.5 million, sentenced more offenders to death than Texas, with a population of nearly 25 million. And more than one in five prisoners now on death row in Alabama are there because of judicial override of jury decisions, the report found.

Two other states, Delaware and Florida, allow judges to overturn jury sentencing recommendations in capital cases, but judges in those states must give "great weight" to jury decisions and demonstrate clearly how jurors erred in their verdicts. Delaware has no prisoners on death row because of judicial override, and Florida has not reversed a jury recommendation of life in prison since 1999.

In Alabama, by contrast, jury decisions are just one of many equally weighted factors judges are allowed to consider in making their final sentencing decisions for capital defendants. Judges must explain their legal reasoning if they reverse a jury recommendation, but there are no specific standards they are required to meet in their decisions.

In one 2010 case, a Jefferson County judge justified his reversal of a recommended life sentence for a man convicted of shooting his girlfriend to death in part by citing the size of the handgun used during the crime.

The decision to override a life sentence in a controversial murder case can also take on political overtones, critics charge. State judges in Alabama are elected -- not appointed as in most states -- and many have touted their "tough-on-crime" records in campaigns to extend their stay on the bench.

Alabama lawmakers have tried on several occassions to strip judges of their power to alter jury decisions, but with no success. A 1995 Supreme Court decision also upheld the authority of judges to render verdicts in capital cases.

"Year in and year out, legislation is introduced to strip Alabama's elected judges of this frightening power," the Birmingham News wrote in an unsigned editorial in 2010. "But year in and year out, state lawmakers fail to act."

The enduring popularity of reversing more lenient sentencing decisions by jurors is not difficult to understand, however.

In 2009, for instance, a Lee County jury recommended by a vote of 8-4 to give a life sentence to a man convicted of capital murder in the shooting death of a young father during a botched robbery. When the life sentence was overturned by the judge in favor of death, the victim's family -- and an outraged community -- were appeased.

"The judge did what the jury should have done," the father of the murdered man's widow told The Montgomery Advertiser.

In the case of Courtney Lockhart, the Iraq War veteran, the judge's imposition of a death sentence against the recommendation of the jury was also greeted with relief by the victim's family.

Nick Abbett, the prosecutor in the case, called the judge's decision to overturn the sentencing recommendation the right one.

"The judge heard a tremendous amount of evidence that the jury didn't hear," he said.

Bryan Stevenson, director of the Equal Justice Initiative, disagreed, calling the judge's decision in the Lockhart case "shocking."

The jurors in the case had voted unanimously for a life sentence without parole, he said, based in part on evidence that Lockhart had performed courageously during combat in Iraq.

"To get 12 death-qualified jurors in east Alabama to come back and say life means that they saw some significant mitigating factors there," he said. "The judge just ignored that."