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tv   ABC7 News Getting Answers  ABC  May 1, 2024 3:00pm-3:31pm PDT

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today on getting answers as columbia and ucla crack down on pro-palestinian student protest last night. what is going too far for protesters? counterprotest letters, university administrations and police on this first day of bay and asian pacific american heritage month, the nation's leading nonprofit to promote and celebrate the advancement of asian americans, announces its
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top 100 list and a new visible initiative, and a leading panel reverses itself and now recommends earlier mammogram screenings for women. you're watching getting answers. i'm kristen sze. thanks for joining us. the new mammogram guidelines come as we kick off a women's health month in may. the us preventive services task force is now encouraging women to start getting screened at the age of 40. their previous recommendation was to start at 50. joining us live now to talk about this and other health headlines is doctor peter chin-hong, ucsf infectious diseases specialist doctor chin-hong, nice to have you on the show. >> thanks for having me on, kristen. >> all right. so this group's new guideline is a ten year difference. that's pretty sizable from 50 to 40 right. why the change? >> i think some of the changes really, given the overall, increase in, in malignancies and cancers in the younger age groups, this is not just only seen in breast cancer, but in
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other cancers like colon cancer. so what are you seeing as a pattern? is uh- uh- screening guidelines that are earlier in age group, i think for breast cancer in particular, some of the issues before have been, you know, the, the false positives. so as imaging techniques have improved, you know, that is that's why that you're seeing, screening guidelines, go for the younger age again for the idea that screening can prevent it, you know, morbidity as well as mortality later on. >> i see, i see part of the reason to not recommend it to be earlier before was because the technology was not as good, so that the breast density of younger women that led to more false positives and a lot of nerves and things like that. is that what you're saying? >> yes, that's part of it. and as as part of a general, you know, statement. but now technology has gotten better, of course. >> but i want to ask you, how
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much of a difference is this really make in terms of practically what's going to happen? because correct me if i'm wrong, but i think the american cancer society was already recommending age 40 for women to start. right. and wasn't that the one insurance companies and doctors were already going with? so does this change anything? >> well, i think the misalignment was causing some people to not get screening, you know, at earlier age groups. so i think aligning the messages is actually an important thing, even if insurance companies were already paying it some, some payers probably would would probably not pay if there was a difference as well. but i think just as somebody taking a recommendation or not, if you can say somebody is saying a different message, you're probably going to go for the one that that doesn't seem as disruptive to your life, doctor. >> this is like when we were kids and the mom says, you got to be home by 11 p.m. then dad says, be home by 1 a.m. you know which one you're going with. so it's nice when they are aligned. but genetics, we understand, is
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the biggest part to breast cancer. but are there environmental factors that may increase a woman's risk? and if so, what can women do to try to minimize their risk? >> yeah. so some of the risk factors of course, smoking there's, you know, in the past when, hormone replacement therapy was used much more often, that was another risk factor, genetics, as you mentioned. now, and, and, you know, some other lifestyle factors, you know, have being very overweight can sometimes have a negative effect on that as well. so in terms of what you can do, just think about some of those risk factors, exercise does help, you know screening of course. like we mentioned, not smoking. >> okay. i want to ask you now about something different, something kind of trendy. it's called the vampire facial. and i don't know a lot about it, but i know it involves infusion of blood. and i understand there have been some hiv cases. explain to us what this is. and
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what the, you know, situation is . >> yeah. so vampire facial is basically, technique where, some clinics, take, blood from patients s, and then centrifuge it so it separates out the plasma from the red blood cells. plasma is platelets in it. and then you take these very small needles and puncture the skin a bunch of times, and then you take that separated blood plasma, and then you smear it all over those small holes. so that's meant to like, stimulate collagen growth and therefore sort of, smooth out wrinkles. okay. >> so where does the hiv potential or concern come from? >> so in this particular clinic in new mexico, again, this is just one clinic found. i'm just worried that there are others with potential risk that are unlicensed, they found that they were reusing, equipment. reusing needles, potentially, there were, syringes found without
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wrappers, in drawers. there was, you know, some of the samples that were in a refrigerator with food items. so there was a lot of potential for cross-contamination and essentially, how do you get hiv? you get hiv from, sharing secretions and bodily fluids, right? so if you're reusing the needles, of course, that's an efficient way to, to get it. >> so any tips on finding i mean, if you are considering such a thing on finding a reputable provider of the service, i think one just basic step which people don't always do because you kind of believe in the clinic is just checking to see if they've been licensed, the state, the aspect of being licensed. >> it's not just a one time thing. you have to keep up your license and basically show that you have, procedures that have, you know, follow strict infection control, protocols, etc. so, just finding out in your particular region what that
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, where you can find whether or not a place is licensed, there's there've also been reports of people getting, fake botox, and not getting hiv from it, but getting sick from it and being hospitalized. >> ooh. okay. i don't know what this bogus botox is. i mean, what are you injecting into people if not the, you know, the toxin, the bovine toxin, whatever that paralyzes you? >> i think what it is just not quality control. so people have been coming in with blurry vision. double vision and difficulty breathing. it looks like it's toxin poisoning, but so far it's turned up negative on testing. >> okay, so please, please do be careful if you're considering any of those procedures, folks. doctor chin-hong i want to talk about contagious diseases. now the spread of bird flu through dairy cow populations in the u.s. the virus has been detected in grocery store milk. but the fda says it's safe to drink. what do you think about it? >> yes, i think it's safe to drink. i just bought some milk recently over the weekend. i don't feel unsafe about it, but
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to me, what it is, it's a wake up call because of the extent of which genetic material is, you know, in our milk supply, and the outbreak in the, you know, 34 herds and nine states is probably more widespread than originally thought, so far, the influenza has made the leap into humans, meaning no human to human transmission, even though, of course, people have gotten sick. so that's kind of where we are right now. the process of pasteurizing the milk, which is heating it at high temperatures for a short time, will kill all of these viruses, including influenza. okay. >> all right. well, let's hope for no human to human and let's hope that, you know, it's all going to be safe and you trust us. so that's good enough for me. i want to ask you now also about a new covid variant that's making the rounds. and it comes just before the summer. what is it and how concerned are you about it. >> yeah. so it's called a flirt variant, flirt or cpt2, it's now
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causing about 1 in 4 cases, even though, infections, even though we're at the lowest point in the pandemic. but, so far the, the, it has a little bit more mutations than jane one and, you know, as people's immunity wanes by the summertime and people gather indoors because it's so hot outside with climate change, where are expecting another bump in the summer. this is coupled with the fact that only about 22% of americans have gotten the recent shot. i was in the hospital this weekend. i would say i took care of two people who didn't get the most recent shot, who are older. so i think that's just a wake up call for me. >> oh, by the way, is there going to be any more news? types of shots coming out for covid? >> yeah. so the w.h.o. in the last few days has recommended that there's a there should be a new formulation for the fall based on jn1. even this new variant is kind of closely
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related to jn1 and not xhb 1.5, which is the current shot available. so what it means really is every year you're kind of updating based on what's going around, for the fall, all right. >> doctor chin-hong, thank you so much. always a wealth of information. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> coming up, campus chaos, violence breaks out at ucla and columbia between pro-palestinian students and counter-protesters. a historian joins us to offer some perspective on this movement.
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on a cruise in the past 24 hours. police arrested 400 people as the pro-palestinian demonstrations came to a head, sparking violent clashes in southern california at ucla. fights broke out between pro-palestinian students and pro-israel counter protesters who tried to tear down their encampment. people used sticks to beat one another. it was chaotic for two hours before police intervened. ucla cancel classes today. overnight in arizona, police showed up on the university of arizona campus in riot gear when pro-palestinian protesters refused to disperse. police sprayed chemical irritants on the crowd. the university says it's trying to ensure the safety of their faculty and students. and last night at columbia university, where this all started, new york city police forced their way into a building that had been occupied by pro-palestinian protesters for over a day. the protesters had broken windows and used furniture as barricades. police arrested 300 people at columbia, in some cases with tension and force. they also made arrests at city
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college of new york and today fordham university. nearby is also seeing tense protests. joining us live now to talk more about the movement is angus johnston, historian of student activism, who teaches at hostos community college in the city university of new york. angus thank you so much for joining us. >> thanks for having me. >> look, you teach, i think, at a different college, right in new york city, seeing what happened, though, at columbia, what do you think about what transpired? >> so i think it's really interesting that what all of this was started by was columbia's decision to send in the police and then for about a week, they realized that that had been a mistake, and they were attempting to negotiate. and then they did something very strange. they announced that they were suspending all of the students who were participating in the encampment without first removing them. and so i think it was at that point, kind of inevitable that students were going to escalate in turn,
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because basically columbia said you had nothing to lose. >> can i just ask you then obviously it sounds like you're saying columbia did it all wrong, what should have what should they have done? and who did it right. >> so there are a lot of campuses right now that are doing it right. we've seen, i think, more than a hundred campuses where there have been encampments or other demonstrations. and as far as i can tell that fewer than half of those has there been, police action. there are a bunch of campuses, including, last i heard, berkeley, mit in the east, a lot of others where the administration is conducting negotiations. they are letting the encampments be. and in fact, at brown university in rhode island, they announced yesterday that they had reached an agreement on a plan going forward, and the students had voluntarily given up the encampment. i saw that, and i think what they gave up, the brown administration was saying we will consider divesting or we'll hold a vote.
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>> we'll talk about it, which some might view as not concrete enough, because they could certainly meet and vote and say, no, we're not going to change a thing about the way we've been investing. which, by the way, is what a lot of these student protesters are calling for. they want their universities that they feel they have some sway over to, to divest, to take their investments out of anything israel related. i want to ask you if this has always been kind of historically the main tactic of student protesters to call for divestment. >> so the divestment call is something that is clearly coming out of the anti-apartheid movement of the 1970s and 1980s, but i think it's also important to note that students are right now are calling for disentangle sort of relationships with the israeli government and military, which is something that we saw in regard to the vietnam war movement in the 1960s. they're calling for transparency in their, campuses relationship with israel, which is something we've seen over and over again. they're calling for statements, in some cases of opposition to what they consider the genocide that's currently taking place in
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gaza, and as well as other things as well. >> look, you mentioned that you thought columbia was wrong to just give out suspensions, essentially without giving them a chance to say, okay, now, if you don't leave now. right. this is getting in the way of people now getting the way of students who want to go to class and some students don't feel safe, etc, etc. let me just ask you then, what consequences do you think are appropriate? at what level of action? because we saw lots of different types of student actions, including the breaking into hamilton hall at columbia and then kind of occupying it, that did require some destruction of windows and stuff for the students to get in. should that have a consequence, and what should that be? is it a suspension? is it expulsion? what's appropriate? >> well, i think the goal in all of these situations is for there to be a resolution, you know, it's not my job to say what, discipline should be handed down. there have been plenty of circumstances in which amnesty for, disciplinary actions has been part of the negotiated
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settlement. i think whatever gets us to a point where the students feel like their voice has been heard, where the students have an active role in governance, which is, i think, something that is a legitimate request for them to make. i think anything that gets us to a place of the university functioning as it should is a, is a is a positive outcome. >> should a university ever do anything preemptive in the sense of, forecasting violence and therefore, for example, like usc, which canceled their valedictorian speech, the pro-palestinian valedictorian, and then eventually the whole commencement and then, you know, having the cops come in pretty much from day one, you know, i know that the usc annenberg school journalism school, the faculty issued a stern letter to the president of the university. do you feel like that was a missed opportunity for the university? >> well, i think it's important to note that overwhelmingly, where there has been violence in
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these protests, the violence has been initiated by police, not protesters. the overwhelming majority of the not true at ucla last night, though, the two different camps were fighting each other and they actually waited hours before they. well and right in that that's, i think, perhaps the most troubling one of all, because in that instance, what happened was that the protesters were in the encampment and a group came in from outside and initiated violence against the encampment. and the university not only refused to intervene to stop the violence that was happening, they also, according to the accounts of the daily bruin reporters, refused to let, medical care in. so i think that that's not an instance of the, the pro-palestinian students initiating violence. i think that's an instance of them being, having violence initiated against them and the university referring to refusing to stop
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it. that's what the daily bruin said. and the la times said this morning. >> yeah, i think they were just loath to call in police at all. you know, no matter who's doing what i think there was that sense. right. but i want to ask you. okay, when you look at this, i wonder if student activism in the past got this kind of attention, right? i mean, not just on their campuses . i mean, of course, in vietnam, during the vietnam war, we saw the protests and they did make international news. but i mean, really from politicians like the major parties, political leaders that would descend upon their campus and kind of, you know, it becomes a flashpoint, right? for political agendas as well. have we seen that in the past? >> i think every generation or two. you have a moment like this on the campuses. we saw it in the 1930s. we saw it in the 1960s and early 70s. we saw it with the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s, i would say, and i think we've seen a level of this early in the earlier in the 21st century. but i think this really is extraordinary as as something
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that is new for the last few decades, an important moment in history. >> angus johnston, historian of student activism at hostos community college in the city university of new york. thank you, thank you. up next, honoring asian pacific american heritage month, the new initiative to raise awareness when ♪ ♪
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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ a month to recognize and celebrate the contributions of those communities to the history and progress of our nation. one influential asian american nonprofit, gold house, has taken the opportunity to release its annual a100 list, the list of the 100 most impactful asian pacific leaders in culture, business and society. >> we stand together in crisis and turn it into strength. we have a history full of champions , traditions, innovations as
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well. >> that's a lot of leaders right there. joining us live now to talk about the achievements, challenges and opportunities for asian americans. bing chen, ceo and co-founder of gold house. bing great to see you. >> likewise, there's a leader here in kristen. thanks so much for having us. >> i don't know about that, but you're too kind. and you know what? you founded gold house in 2018 before covid, before aapi hate. clearly you foresaw a need to connect and uplift the community. i guess why and how? >> i'm just lucky to be a vehicle, i think. kristen, you're a great example of this. there were so many people who had a fervor for this. we knew that we weren't being portrayed well in media. we knew we were the least likely to be promoted to management. we knew we had the widest income disparity, but we also knew our incredible gifts. we knew how creative we were. we knew we were the most successful founders, and we wanted to forge an apparatus to hone all that power for everyone's benefit. >> and you have done that, and you just announced your annual a100 list. i know we have some
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video who are these folks? what are their achievements? just run through some of them. i know you can't do all 100 and you should, but we don't have the time. >> i have a song for that, actually, but these are the 100 most impactful asian pacific leaders on the continent. as voted by all the heads of the top asian pacific nonprofits. as well as 1500 cultural leaders. from times. jess sibley, all the way to chris anderson over at ted uh. these names include leaders in ai from clara shih over at salesforce, ai to alexander wong at scale ai. they include even love and affinity app leaders from faye, the ceo of tinder uh- all the way to the ceo of lvmh, anish melwani uh. and of course, across policy and activism, we have the incredible crystal eye. on the 25th anniversary of the white house initiative on a and apis. and last certainly not least, we have all the celebrities too. so the incredible dave patel, writer, producer, director and also action star all the way to alex nordstrom, the co-president of spotify. >> really stunning. and by the way, doctor faye lee too, right.
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she's like the mother of the bay . look why is it important to release and be as public as possible about this list, you were in times square in new york city today. i think that's pretty public. but why is that so important? >> we're so honored to be able to put our leaders and community in mainstream spaces, whether it's turning the empire state building gold or being in ten billboards in times square or on google.com for really two reasons. one is we want to project new and affirming portrayals that the next generation of leaders in general agnostic of where you come from or what you look like, can aspire towards. we know that that sort of move also helps dismantle a lot of pernicious stereotypes and baggage that our community has been laden on with the second exciting thing is our community historically has just not supported each other. and so being able to celebrate such incredible achievements that have unlocked opportunities for all of us has become a really beautiful rallying cry and unifying cry. >> i think for all of us, by the way, we saw soul there all lit up, which is part of your new
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initiative. it's called gold lights. tell us about that. can we bring up that soul picture again? i just love it so much. it's so beautiful. what is that and are we going to see that here? >> absolutely, there's a sizzle and also a stake to this. or i should probably say wagyu, the wagyu, which is anchored in research like our nielsen report, we just released our mckinsey report last week, is trying to dismantle certain negative stereotypes like asians are invisible or quiet or cheap or meek. instead, we're turning more than a dozen global iconic towers. the most in fact, our colorold. and it's to show how public, how mainstream, and how physically towering our community can be in our contributions, the sizzle, of course, is we have a lot of incredible opportunities. so we were lucky to ring the closing bell in times square of nasdaq yesterday with 200 top leaders and ceos, across the nation, we have the empire state building and the world trade center for the first time, turning gold all the way to honolulu city hall and la city hall, all the way to the willis tower in chicago. wow, and then check it out.
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tonight, breaking news as we come on the air here in new york. the aerials coming in right now from fordham university. the nypd on the scene in riot gear. and new video tonight as the nypd enters that hall at columbia university to take it back. tonight, those aerials coming in. the unfolding scene at fordham. across the country tonight, protesters by the hundreds arrested. new york city police clearing propalestinian demonstrators, and they say outside agitators,

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