It’s official: Brain cancer has replaced leukemia as the leading cause of cancer deaths among children and adolescents.
In 1999, almost a third of cancer deaths among patients aged 1 to 19 were attributable to leukemia while about a quarter were caused by brain cancer. By 2014, those percentages were reversed, according to a report published Friday by the National Center for Health Statistics, which is part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It’s a milestone moment, a kind of changing of the guard,” said Sally Curtin, who was the lead author of the report. She said the change reflected a reduction in deaths from leukemia, rather than an increase in deaths from brain cancer.
Overall, the report showed, cancer death rates among children and adolescents dropped 20 percent between 1999 and 2014, continuing a long-term trend.
The number of brain-cancer deaths first exceeded those from leukemia in 2011, Curtin said, but it wasn’t until 2014 that the gap was large enough that statisticians concluded it was “a true finding.”
The decrease in deaths from leukemia, once universally lethal, is a result of the enormous strides oncologists have made in recent decades in developing effective chemotherapy regimens and finding the best ways to use radiation and bone-marrow transplants, said Elizabeth Ward, senior vice president for intramural research at the American Cancer Society.
By contrast, she said “brain cancers are generally very hard to treat,” partly because surgeons have to be careful not to damage healthy tissue during operations and partly because of the blood-brain barrier, which prevents some drugs from getting into the brain.
Ann Kingston, director of research and science policy at the National Brain Tumor Society, said the brain-cancer death rates were “not acceptable,” adding that she hoped that the increased use of molecular profiling of tumors, which can identify which drugs tumors are likely to respond to, and the development of other targeted therapies would lead to progress.
Both Ward and Kingston noted that cancer therapies — surgery, radiation or chemotherapy — can often lead to long-term cognitive and developmental problems for children who survive the disease. They called on researchers to find ways to mitigate the harms of the treatments.
Besides brain cancer and leukemia, other pediatric malignancies commonly involve bones, the thyroid and other endocrine glands and soft tissue.
The report comes as experts are pressing for stepped-up effort against pediatric cancer. For example, a blue-ribbon committee of the National Cancer Institute recently proposed focusing on “fusion oncoproteins,” the drivers of many childhood cancers and setting up clinical trials to give children access to new immunotherapy drugs.
Shemar, an Eisenhower High School sophomore, shares why he refused to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, which he said led to a teacher attempting to pull him out of his chair. Sept. 9, 2016. (Zak Koeske / Chicago Tribune)
An Eisenhower High School sophomore who said he has dealt with threats and harassment from fellow students following a flap with a teacher over his participation in the Pledge of Allegiance last month is leaving the school, his mother said.
Kelley Porter Turner said Wednesday that she was pulling her 15-year-old son Shemar out of Eisenhower and had already started the process of enrolling him in an online charter school.
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“My son tells me every day he’s afraid to walk down the halls,” she said. “Every day someone is calling him out of his name or being mean to him. He’s lost a few friends, his grades have dropped.”
The harassment, which Porter Turner said she reported to the school but not to law enforcement, started after Shemar began sitting out the Pledge on Aug. 26 to protest killings of blacks by police, she said.
“It’s terrible,” Shemar said of the repercussions of his action. “Now a whole bunch of people don’t like me because of this, and people are trying to fight me, too.”
A Community High School District 218 spokesman said the district takes any reports of threats or harassment very seriously and investigates them, but declined to confirm or comment on Porter Turner’s claims that her son had been bullied.
Superintendent Ty Harting, meanwhile, has since asserted that students aren’t required to stand for, or recite, the Pledge of Allegiance.
An outspoken sophomore who lives in Merrionette Park, Shemar sat through the Pledge of Allegiance during his entire freshman year at Eisenhower without issue, simply because he didn’t feel like standing up, he said.
This school year, however, the act took on a new significance for him after he began watching videos of police violence against blacks that popped up on his social media feed.
“I was like, ‘No, I’m not going to stand up,’ so I didn’t,” said Shemar, who first refused to stand and recite the pledge in class on the morning of Friday, Aug. 26, just hours before San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sparked a national debate on the issue by sitting for the National Anthem during an NFL preseason game.
When Shemar’s teacher asked why he wasn’t standing, he replied, “America sucks,” he said.
Porter Turner said the teacher confronted her about the incident later that day when she stopped in at the school to drop off her son’s lunch.
After learning what her son had told his teacher, Porter Turner said she made him apologize for his “inappropriate” comment, but told the teacher it was his right to sit if he wanted.
According to Porter Turner, the teacher said she understood Shemar’s First Amendment right to not pledge allegiance and would allow him to sit in the future.
“In my mind, it was over,” Porter Turner said. “In my mind, there was nothing else to discuss.”
The following Tuesday, however, when Shemar again refused to stand for the Pledge in the same class, the teacher tried to pull him out of his seat, he said.
“She grabbed me by my arm,” said Shemar, demonstrating the motion. “I pulled back and she grabbed me, and eventually I yanked, all the way.”
Shemar said the teacher then went to the front of the classroom and threatened any students who refused to stand for the Pledge in the future with a disciplinary write-up.
Upon learning of the second incident, Porter Turner said she reached out to the school’s associate principal and met with her, the dean of students and school security that Wednesday. She said she asked for an apology from the teacher and said she left the meeting with the notion that one was forthcoming.
Instead, the teacher took her son into the school office the next day and continued scolding him, Porter Turner said.
“This meeting is at my request, so that she could apologize to my son. It never happened. He was again being accused of being disrespectful, disrespecting the military,” said Porter Turner, who decided to contact the media with her story because she felt the school administration ignored her. Since Friday, Sept. 2, her son has been permitted to sit out the Pledge, she said.
Harting, the superintendent, confirmed that an incident around the Pledge had occurred between a student and a teacher, and acknowledged that the teacher had “bumbled” by asking the student to stand for the Pledge. He denied, however, that the teacher grabbed the student and tried to pull him out of his seat.
Harting said the teacher had been disciplined, but declined to provide the teacher’s name or the extent of the discipline, citing the confidential nature of personnel matters.
In a statement, the superintendent called the situation an “isolated incident” and said the district “respects an individual’s constitutional right to not stand for or recite the pledge,” and that district staff “should neither encourage nor dissuade students or others from participating in the pledge.”
The district has since provided all staff members with a copy of the school’s policy regarding recitation of the Pledge and will customarily remind its teachers of the policy on an annual basis going forward, according to correspondence between the district’s attorney and the American Humanist Association, an organization that supports a boycott of the Pledge and issued a statement in Shemar’s defense.
Porter Turner said she also requested an apology from the teacher and asked that the district send a letter home to students explaining their constitutional rights, but isn’t expecting either to happen. She said she told the district she would be OK as long as the school disciplined the teacher and respects her son.
“I highly doubt if I get any more from [the district], because in their eyes they’ve done what they were supposed to do,” she said.
When asked if he planned to use the incident as a teachable moment to engage students about their rights and discuss the underlying societal issues that sparked Shemar’s protest, Harting said the district was working to establish a Student Bill of Rights that would address the matter.
“We want to empower students to make meaningful contributions to our schools and district,” Harting said in a statement. “One way to do this is to empower our students and make sure they are aware of their school rights and constitutional rights. ”
While Shemar said he received support from a few other students who have expressed solidarity and even joined him in sitting out the Pledge, the majority of the reaction has been negative.
He said he feels a tinge of regret over the social consequences of his actions, but said the experience hasn’t dissuaded him from acting on his beliefs in the future.
“I’m going to keep making statements,” he said. “Whoever doesn’t support me, doesn’t. Whoever does, they do. I’m just not going to worry about it anymore. I’m just going to do what I think should be done.”
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Porter Turner, who said her father was a decorated World War II veteran, said that while her son’s decision to sit out the Pledge was entirely his own, she supports his stance and will continue to encourage him to do what he feels is right, even when it’s not popular.
“This is a 15-year-old who’s formulating his opinion,” she said. “Now as he moves through life he may change his mind, but for right now that’s how he feels, and as his mother I have to stand by my son.”
She said she views the situation as nothing more than a constitutional free speech issue and wishes it had been treated as such from the beginning.
“No one is trying to pick a fight or make Eisenhower look like some horrifying school — although they’ve done that for themselves — but it’s about the truth,” she said. “It’s about the truth and what’s right and what’s legal, and that’s all it really is.”
David Niose, legal director at the American Humanist Association, said students regularly contact his organization about problems they’ve experienced after opting out of reciting the Pledge, especially toward the beginning of the school year when teachers are confronted with students sitting for the first time.
While the issue is more prevalent in Bible Belt states, Niose said, he hears from students at schools all over the country.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 1940s that free speech rights preserved in the First Amendment protect people from being forced to pledge allegiance cannot, Niose said.
“You could have a fairly progressive school with tolerant values, but all it really takes is one uninformed or overly assertive teacher to cause a problem,” he said. “And that’s what we sometimes find, that even in communities outside the Bible Belt you might find a rogue teacher, if you will, who kind of insists on trying to force a kid to participate in the Pledge.”
You could argue there’s no such thing as “summer” in San Francisco. It’s foggy, windy and sometimes downright cold, despite the sandy beaches in the Outer Sunset and the beautiful tall palm trees that line Dolores Street. But this August was particularly crisp.
The temperature hit 70 degrees on just one day, Aug. 8, but otherwise stayed in the 50s and 60s every other day. That hasn’t happened since 1942.
The overall average temperature for the month was 65 degrees. It was not the coldest August on record for downtown San Francisco, but it’s still significant. Not only was it colder than July, it was also colder than February — a month in which the temperature soared to 77 degrees one day.
“I got the perception that longer-time residents were fine with this ‘Fogust,’ especially since the last couple Augusts were warmer with less fog,” said Daniel Alrick, a meteorologist at the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Alrick lives in San Francisco and runs awebcam from the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, documenting the daily weather.
“I heard more complaints from newer residents, who were less accustomed to such a chilly summer,” Alrick added.
Why was it so cold in August? Why is there no such thing as summer there? The marine layer.
The temperature in San Francisco itself is highly controlled by its proximity to the cold Pacific Ocean. The air over the water, called the marine layer, is very cold and damp. Moisture easily condenses into tiny fog droplets. Since the temperature over land is often warmer than the air over water, a circulation sets up that pushes the fog inland, especially in the summer. The whole, damp air mass can waft over the entire city and drive temperatures down.
Fortunately for those newcomer residents, September is starting off warmer. San Francisco hit a toasty 82 degrees on Wednesday.
A 23-year-old man who fatally stabbed his friend while they were play wrestling at a house in the West Australian coastal city of Bunbury has been sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum 19 years behind bars.
Dylan Anthony McColl was found guilty by a Supreme Court jury of murdering 24-year-old Brent Barton in the Bunbury suburb of Eaton in May last year.
The court was told the two were with friends drinking in a shed and play wrestling when McColl became angry and upset after Mr Barton grabbed him in a headlock.
Mr Barton let go and McColl punched him to the jaw.
As Mr Barton apologised and tried to move away with his hands in the air, McColl stabbed him in the chest and back with a boning knife, which Justice Stephen Hall described as a “cowardly thing to do”.
McColl, a former abattoir worker, then fled the scene.
At his trial McColl denied responsibility for Mr Barton’s death and suggested that two of his friends who were with them in the shed may have been responsible.
Justice Hall said that caused him “reservations” about McColl’s level of remorse, however he accepted the stabbing was a “sudden act, borne out of anger” as a result of the altercation with Mr Barton.
He said the death had a tragic effect on Mr Barton’s family, including his sisters, his mother – who has since died – and his two-year-old daughter.
Justice Hall said the occupants of the house where the stabbing happened were faced with a “terribly traumatic series of events”, and one of them had “heroically” tried to save Mr Barton’s life.
Outside the court Mr Barton’s sister Jaymie said she remembered her brother as “a happy, bubbly person”.
“Nothing will ever bring him back but we’ve got good memories of him,” she said.
“He was a great father, a great uncle, just a great person all round really.”
With time already served, McColl will be eligible for release on parole in 2034.
In the Rift 
