July 15, 2026 • 21 mins
Meta is flooding the market with smartglasses and privacy advocates are up in arms. China wants more babies so they are cracking down on chatbot love affair. Dr. Jim Keany, Chief Medical Officer at Dignity Health St. Mary Medical Center in Long Beach, joins The Bill Handel Show for 'Medical News'! Dr. Keany speaks on a new simplified lung cancer screening and Tylenol lawsuits.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty sky some.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Technology KFI AM six forty bill Handle. On a Wednesday morning,
July fifteenth, some of the big stories were covering the
President threatened to bomb Iron's bridges and power plants, which
she had done occasionally, unless Tehran comes to the negotiating
table and the President says, the strikes will continue until
(00:31):
I say it's enough. He also said the war will
continue until I say the war is over. The sun
will rise when I say the sun will rise. And
I'm not far off by the way. Guys, you know,
even those that are pro pro Trump, you gotta be
(00:52):
honest about this man. You know, every decision on the
planet is his, all right. Now, what's going on with
Meta Well, MENA has smart glasses and some privacy people
are up in arms, and it's pushing to popularize it's
AI enabled camera equipped smart glasses. Why. Because they want
(01:14):
to control. They want to be part of the control
of the next phase of the Internet. More than seventy
organizations assigned a letter saying halt plans. For example, for
name tag, which is one of the features. Name tag
is designed to remember people's faces and I'm surprised that
I don't have that. I don't have those glasses yet
because I never remember what a face looks like. Had
(01:37):
a friend of mine, as you know, I was in
reproductive law for a very long time, so I knew
a lot of infertility doctors and there was one leading gynecologist,
one of the real experts in the field, and he
would always tell me I never remember a face, And
that's probably true. In any case, Meta is really gearing up.
(01:59):
And the problem with this particular, this particular camera equipped
smart glass is that it remembers everybody that you've seen.
It'll tell you their names, it'll tell you where you
met them, it'll tell you under what circumstances, and it
(02:21):
is it's a lightning rod for the privacy folks. Meta
employees were actually asked to take them off when Meta
was testifying in front of Congress. When Zuckerberg was testifying
front of Congress, people have complained about being filmed without
their knowledge, account surfacing of users disabling the white light.
(02:46):
There's a little white light that signals that glasses are recording,
and without that white light, you have no idea if
glasses are recording effectively, what it does is someone comes
up to you with a pair are glasses on and
everything you say is being recorded, your name effectively, it
(03:06):
is smart technology that will put you in there, saying
that I won't put you in the database, but it well,
do you want to go there? Do you really want
to be every place you turn to? And the reason
that met is so excited about this is you have
two billion people in the world wear eyeglasses. For example,
(03:28):
let's look at our show here, Neil glasses, Cono glasses,
Will glasses, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Meta glasses as well. Do you Yeah, I have them
right here in front of me.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
And what do you use them for?
Speaker 3 (03:44):
I actually use them for when I'm building things in
the shop. I can video what I'm using, what I'm
building and keep track of certain things. I don't use
them in public typically as far as I don't wear
them in public typically, but they can be very very helpful,
and like you've said, there is no privacy. And ultimately,
(04:07):
whether someone's putting their phone in my face publicly or
the glasses, I'm not sure what the difference. And the
other thing is is that you're everyone's recording everything. They
have a new thing called pocket which goes on your
(04:28):
phone and records conversations both on the phone and live
and you never see it.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
The point I'm going to make at the end of it,
and to your point is, and I do this in
my commercials for Incogniti, is there's no such thing as privacy.
You go outside, you're in public, and people, oh, my
privacy has been invaded. I went outside and they recorded me.
They recorded me on my front porch, they recorded me
(04:56):
walking down the street. You have no privacy. You have
no privacy. So here's how you deal with it. Okay,
because this is going to happen. I mean the privacy
advocates are going to go crazy. Here is still going
to happen. How do you deal with your privacy? You
make two assumptions. Now you add an assumption. One assumption
is that you have to have is everything you do
(05:17):
outside your front door is public and can be recorded
and can be put on a camera on a cell phone,
and it's there for posterity. That's one add to that. Now,
everybody who has glasses on whenever you talk to someone,
(05:38):
assume that that is being recorded and your information, what
you're wearing, even what time of day you ran into them.
Certainly what you're saying, and those every time someone has glasses.
Oh wait a minute, how about if someone has a
button on their shirt, Well, there's technology there. How about
if someone is putting a pen in their pocket and
(06:01):
their shirt pocket, well, technology is there to record. I mean,
this is science fiction stuff. You think this is about
a James Bond. It's not. It's all there. I mean,
button cameras have been around for years, so for a
long time. So here's the assumption you make. Every time
you talk to someone, Assume it's being recorded. Every time
(06:23):
you're meeting someone, assume it's going to be recorded. Every
time you walk out the front door, assume it's being recorded.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
It's going to be based on the individuals because I
don't like it. I would love to have privacy. I
think it would be great. But yeah, it doesn't exist
how people utilize it, Neil, it does not exist at all. Okay, Now,
a couple of things going on in China, one universal
and one not so universal. First of all, what China
(06:51):
is doing is banning virtual relationships or trying to ban them.
That is, you fall in love with a chat bot,
hold a man? Is that true?
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah? People do. That's a whole sociological issue where people
are connecting with computers and instead of Japanese blow up
dolls for example, which used to be the case, now
it's computers. They say we love you, I love you,
and you have real relationships. And what does that mean?
That means that people don't have relationships because the more
(07:23):
they deal with the computer, the less they are going
to deal with people. Now, let's move over to China.
When people deal less with people, when their relationships, their
romantic relationships are with computers and not with people. Guess
what people don't do. They don't stoop because as of
(07:44):
right now it's pretty hard to stoop with your laptop
or your keyboard not so easy. And when people stoop,
they have kids. Aha, So let me go on and
progress logically here. China used to have a one child
policy and would encourage people to abort and would actually
(08:08):
pay people, would pay couples to only have one child.
With that backfired on them. They had too many people,
and now they don't have enough young people in Japan.
It's really a problem, and it's happening all over the
industrialized world. There aren't enough young people being born. There
are enough babies and Why is that important, Well, because
old people get old. We all become elderly, which means
(08:31):
we're no longer working and we have to be taken
care of. Society somehow has to figure out a way
for when I hit sixty five or seventy or seventy five,
I've got to eat. And then you have societies where
most people don't do a real good job of saving
up for their long term care. Matter of fact, the
(08:54):
United States is a horrible job. All over the world
is terrible. So how do you fix that. You put
more workers into the workforce, which means money is coming
in and those don't age out. It is critical to
have babies being born for the long term effect the
(09:14):
long term financial health of any country. And in China
the birth rate is low because of the policy it
used to have that they're spinning right now and figuring
out how is this going to work long term? Also,
China plays the long game. Anyway, We're not very good
at playing the long game, but we're still looking at
(09:35):
what's going on here. For us, it's a matter of
individual constitutional rights. Having kids. Over there, it's a question
of let's see what we can do to have more
children because they don't have individual rights there, so it's
unintended consequences is what ended up happening with the policy
of one child per family. Also the abortion rate. Guess
(09:57):
what they used to abort. They used to abort earls,
not boys, because in China, boys are everything. So what
do you have now, Well, you have too many males,
and so you have x number of bails going after
a smaller number of female people, and therefore that skews
(10:20):
everything up. I mean, China really screwed itself by not
allowing people to screw themselves. It's very deep, very very
deep when you think about that, very metaphysical. This show
does tremendous analysis, doesn't it. In the meantime the and then,
of course the sociological issue which we've talked about and
(10:40):
we will keep on tak talking about, and that is
romantic relationships with chatbot and chat bots to exactly what
the the eight eight eight or seven seven seven phone calls?
Remember those the people used to pay five dollars a
minute or eight dollars a minute. Hey baby, you're looking
pretty good. Hey what are you wearing? Wow, you sound
(11:04):
so sexy? Stop it? Eight dollars a minute eight I
just I just created eight dollars. Okay, No, you just
created a limp on all right. Jim Keeney, who is
chief medical officer for Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in
Long Beach, Jim, did uh and tell you about the
(11:26):
diarrhea story I want to cover? Or I know you
didn't really dive into it.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, No, of course, of course I knew you want
to talk about.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
That, of course. And that's the picture. That's the parasite
which causes basically uncontrolled diarrhea and U So, I mean
that's no fun or it is if someone else has it,
particularly the sound effects. But this can be pretty dangerous stuff.
And that's growing like wildfire, this parasite, and so let's
(11:55):
talk about it because it's now hitting the news, actually
at the forefront of the news. So what's going on
with this, Jim?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah. So it's called cyclospora. It's a single cell parasite
that causes diarrhea. There's been about sixteen hundred cases confirmed,
so the CDC's investigating, you know, and it does cause profuse,
watery diarrhea. It causes you know, that's going to make
you tire, It causes fatigue, loss of appetite and some
severe abdominal cramping. So you know you're going to notice this.
(12:25):
It's not something subtle and without any treatment at all,
it'll usually last anywhere from a week to a month.
And the treatment is typically like a sulfa drug like
bactrum or septra or tritemethaprim. Those kind of sulfa drugs
will kill this. So you know, that's essentially what it is.
(12:45):
I mean. And the other thing is chlorine and a
lot of commercial available like cleansing products don't reliably kill it,
you know, so you really have to scrub things down
to get rid of this.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah the past, go ahead, But in the past has.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Been linked to things like you know, salad, cilantro, raspberries,
you know, things like that leafy produce. So that's typically
where we see it.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, And the reason I bring this up is this
can really be dangerous stuff. If we look at the
death rate, for example, in Africa among kids. From what
I understand, the number one reason those kids are dying
is because of diarrhea, because they lose so much fluid
that you know, they basically die. Do I have that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
I mean, diarrhea is a number one killer worldwide because
they don't have the medical care that we have. But absolutely,
you know, and when you travel, I'd say when people
who travel, about a one third of travelers will get
diarrhea while they're traveling out of the United States. And
if you look at India, a place like India and
some places in Africa, it's more like fifty percent.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Isn't that lovely? I can't wait. I'm going to Afro
and I know you are. I know, and I think
you brought that up just just for that reason. Okay,
moving into some good news. A new simplified lung cancer
screening that is big news. So tell me about that.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, So, I mean people need to be aware that
there is such a thing as lung cancer screening, right.
And if you are a smoker in the past, what
it's been is a forty pack year smoking history. So
what that means is if you smoked two packs a
day for twenty years, two times twenty is forty pack
year history. You would qualify to your insurance would pay
for a low dose CT scan, so a low radiation
(14:44):
CT scan to look at your lungs and see if
there's any tumors. A lot of times those can be false, right,
because your lungs are a dead end. If you inhale
something into your lungs, it's going to stay there the
rest of your life. So a lot of people may
have nodules in their lungs that could be mistaken for
cancer on a fetis scan. So that's why you don't
(15:06):
want to overdo this. But so they took data from
hundreds of thousands of patients and looked at them, looked
at who we could screen and if we could change
the screening process, and it turned out that if we
just used years of smoking forty years or more of smoking,
(15:26):
whether that was a pack a day or two packs
a day or whatever, you actually screen a few less
people need to be screened, and you catch more cancers.
So in the end you're getting less false negatives and
it's a more simple way. People don't have to do
the math. Right, if you smoke for more than forty years,
(15:46):
go get a fet scan and get screened for lung cancer.
But that is being combined with a new technology that
makes finding these little nodules less scary because in the past,
what we do is we go from outside and we
stick a needle into your chest using ultrasound or CT
guidance and try and get a piece of that nodule
(16:07):
to look at under a microscope to see if it's
actually cancer. Nowadays, they have a robotic assisted endoscopy where
you put that into your lungs, So we're doing an
endoscopy looking inside the lungs, and now we can get
closer to the actual nodule, and then when we put
a needle into it, it doesn't create an air leak
that collapses your lungs, So the complications are way way lower,
(16:31):
and you're also much less likely as a blood vessel.
So it's a much easier way to look and look
for and diagnose lung cancer.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
So why wouldn't I, For example, I'm not a smoker,
never have been. Why wouldn't I get some kind of
a test for lung cancer because from what I understand,
by the time symptoms occur, you're basically dead.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, that's not really accurate, because some people will have
a cost say you have a cough for more than
thirty days. That's somebody that you'd probably get a CT
scan to look for. If they've had any smoking history,
you know, you should probably get a CT scan to
look and make sure you don't have some nodule in
your lung that's making you cough like that, so and
that would still be catching it early. The problem is
(17:12):
the math is that you know, in the study if
they looked at say somebody smoked for twenty years, Well,
suddenly the accuracy rate drops from you know, eighty five
percent of the time you're you know you're catching a
cancer if it's there and you're only missing it fifteen
percent of the time. Now you know you're the numbers
drop so that not only are you not catching a
(17:34):
ton of cancers, but you're also doing a ton of
unnecessary biopsies. So from a public health perspective, you don't
want to overdo these things, just waste public you know,
essentially public money trying to figure this out. Now, a
lot of people do say, well I just want to know,
so they go out and get a cafcan. Well, on
an individual basis, if you want to go do that
something to discuss with your doctor, but you know, realize
(17:57):
that you may be setting yourself up for a necessary,
worry and unnecessary biopsy.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Okay, back we go with Jim Keeney, Chief Medical Officer
for Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach and
er doctor extraordinaire who's been with us for thirty years.
Long time, So jim a story about this cancer cluster
in California and explain what a cancer cluster is and
(18:25):
what is going on.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
So, yeah, a cancer cluster would be once we can
confirm that a group of people living in a close
geographic area all have a similar or connected in some
way connected disease, like a certain cancer. In this case,
it's Ewing's sarcoma happens to be the second most common
(18:49):
bone cancer and children, behind osteosarcoma. And here they have
six cases in the Ladera area, and it's tough to
know what to make it. Obviously, that makes you stand
up and pay attention. I mean, that's a lot of cases.
We're talking about something that's diagnosed maybe two hundred, two
hundred fifty times across the entire United States per year,
(19:10):
and here we have six cases in one area. Now
those weren't all diagnosed within a year. We're talking about
over a thirteen year period. So still though, I mean
thirteen times two hundred or twenty six hundred cases across
the country are in that area very concerning. I tell you,
everybody jumps to environmental factors, right, and they jump to
(19:34):
thinking that it's pesticides or something like that. And to date,
uing sarcoma is not associated with any environmental factors. We
don't know anything about that causes uing sarcoma. Because it's
relatively uncommon, there's not a lot to know about it. Thankfully, smokers,
it gave us a lot of information. When everybody was smoking,
(19:56):
we had a ton of people getting one on cancer,
so we know a lot more about that. So it's
not to say that there aren't environmental factors. We just
haven't identified any. And so what will happen is this
Typically county or state governments will look into this and
confirm how long do these people live in the area.
We call this some statistics. They call it a Texas sharpshooter. Right.
(20:21):
You basically you shoot at a target with no bulls eye,
and then after the fact, you draw a circle around
where all the holes are closest together. So it's not
really we're not asking statistically, how likely is it that
six people live in one town and then all of
a sudden get yu Ink's sarcoma. But how likely are
six people with u inks sarcoma to land in the
same place?
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Okay, Jim, Jim, we got to cut you off because
we're out of time, so we'll pick this up again.
I'm sure next week I have a good one. Ok.
Take care you too. All Right, we're done, guys with
the show. Tomorrow morning we start the show, and tomorrow
is the thirty third anniversary of this show. It's been
around for quite a long time with me talking to you. Well,
(21:06):
that's thirty three years tomorrow, so I think we're gonna
spend the entire three hours with me telling you how
great I am.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
And I'll say it's been on too long.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, that's probably true. But the point is is that
I'm a pretty great guy and am enormously talented, never
go off on tangents, know how to pronounce words constantly,
and well, the bottom line is, yeah, I'm pretty neat.
You've been listening to The Bill Handle Show. Catch My
(21:35):
Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am, and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty sky some.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Technology KFI AM six forty bill Handle. On a Wednesday morning,
July fifteenth, some of the big stories were covering the
President threatened to bomb Iron's bridges and power plants, which
she had done occasionally, unless Tehran comes to the negotiating
table and the President says, the strikes will continue until
(00:31):
I say it's enough. He also said the war will
continue until I say the war is over. The sun
will rise when I say the sun will rise. And
I'm not far off by the way. Guys, you know,
even those that are pro pro Trump, you gotta be
(00:52):
honest about this man. You know, every decision on the
planet is his, all right. Now, what's going on with
Meta Well, MENA has smart glasses and some privacy people
are up in arms, and it's pushing to popularize it's
AI enabled camera equipped smart glasses. Why. Because they want
(01:14):
to control. They want to be part of the control
of the next phase of the Internet. More than seventy
organizations assigned a letter saying halt plans. For example, for
name tag, which is one of the features. Name tag
is designed to remember people's faces and I'm surprised that
I don't have that. I don't have those glasses yet
because I never remember what a face looks like. Had
(01:37):
a friend of mine, as you know, I was in
reproductive law for a very long time, so I knew
a lot of infertility doctors and there was one leading gynecologist,
one of the real experts in the field, and he
would always tell me I never remember a face, And
that's probably true. In any case, Meta is really gearing up.
(01:59):
And the problem with this particular, this particular camera equipped
smart glass is that it remembers everybody that you've seen.
It'll tell you their names, it'll tell you where you
met them, it'll tell you under what circumstances, and it
(02:21):
is it's a lightning rod for the privacy folks. Meta
employees were actually asked to take them off when Meta
was testifying in front of Congress. When Zuckerberg was testifying
front of Congress, people have complained about being filmed without
their knowledge, account surfacing of users disabling the white light.
(02:46):
There's a little white light that signals that glasses are recording,
and without that white light, you have no idea if
glasses are recording effectively, what it does is someone comes
up to you with a pair are glasses on and
everything you say is being recorded, your name effectively, it
(03:06):
is smart technology that will put you in there, saying
that I won't put you in the database, but it well,
do you want to go there? Do you really want
to be every place you turn to? And the reason
that met is so excited about this is you have
two billion people in the world wear eyeglasses. For example,
(03:28):
let's look at our show here, Neil glasses, Cono glasses,
Will glasses, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Meta glasses as well. Do you Yeah, I have them
right here in front of me.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
And what do you use them for?
Speaker 3 (03:44):
I actually use them for when I'm building things in
the shop. I can video what I'm using, what I'm
building and keep track of certain things. I don't use
them in public typically as far as I don't wear
them in public typically, but they can be very very helpful,
and like you've said, there is no privacy. And ultimately,
(04:07):
whether someone's putting their phone in my face publicly or
the glasses, I'm not sure what the difference. And the
other thing is is that you're everyone's recording everything. They
have a new thing called pocket which goes on your
(04:28):
phone and records conversations both on the phone and live
and you never see it.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
The point I'm going to make at the end of it,
and to your point is, and I do this in
my commercials for Incogniti, is there's no such thing as privacy.
You go outside, you're in public, and people, oh, my
privacy has been invaded. I went outside and they recorded me.
They recorded me on my front porch, they recorded me
(04:56):
walking down the street. You have no privacy. You have
no privacy. So here's how you deal with it. Okay,
because this is going to happen. I mean the privacy
advocates are going to go crazy. Here is still going
to happen. How do you deal with your privacy? You
make two assumptions. Now you add an assumption. One assumption
is that you have to have is everything you do
(05:17):
outside your front door is public and can be recorded
and can be put on a camera on a cell phone,
and it's there for posterity. That's one add to that. Now,
everybody who has glasses on whenever you talk to someone,
(05:38):
assume that that is being recorded and your information, what
you're wearing, even what time of day you ran into them.
Certainly what you're saying, and those every time someone has glasses.
Oh wait a minute, how about if someone has a
button on their shirt, Well, there's technology there. How about
if someone is putting a pen in their pocket and
(06:01):
their shirt pocket, well, technology is there to record. I mean,
this is science fiction stuff. You think this is about
a James Bond. It's not. It's all there. I mean,
button cameras have been around for years, so for a
long time. So here's the assumption you make. Every time
you talk to someone, Assume it's being recorded. Every time
(06:23):
you're meeting someone, assume it's going to be recorded. Every
time you walk out the front door, assume it's being recorded.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
It's going to be based on the individuals because I
don't like it. I would love to have privacy. I
think it would be great. But yeah, it doesn't exist
how people utilize it, Neil, it does not exist at all. Okay, Now,
a couple of things going on in China, one universal
and one not so universal. First of all, what China
(06:51):
is doing is banning virtual relationships or trying to ban them.
That is, you fall in love with a chat bot,
hold a man? Is that true?
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Yeah? People do. That's a whole sociological issue where people
are connecting with computers and instead of Japanese blow up
dolls for example, which used to be the case, now
it's computers. They say we love you, I love you,
and you have real relationships. And what does that mean?
That means that people don't have relationships because the more
(07:23):
they deal with the computer, the less they are going
to deal with people. Now, let's move over to China.
When people deal less with people, when their relationships, their
romantic relationships are with computers and not with people. Guess
what people don't do. They don't stoop because as of
(07:44):
right now it's pretty hard to stoop with your laptop
or your keyboard not so easy. And when people stoop,
they have kids. Aha, So let me go on and
progress logically here. China used to have a one child
policy and would encourage people to abort and would actually
(08:08):
pay people, would pay couples to only have one child.
With that backfired on them. They had too many people,
and now they don't have enough young people in Japan.
It's really a problem, and it's happening all over the
industrialized world. There aren't enough young people being born. There
are enough babies and Why is that important, Well, because
old people get old. We all become elderly, which means
(08:31):
we're no longer working and we have to be taken
care of. Society somehow has to figure out a way
for when I hit sixty five or seventy or seventy five,
I've got to eat. And then you have societies where
most people don't do a real good job of saving
up for their long term care. Matter of fact, the
(08:54):
United States is a horrible job. All over the world
is terrible. So how do you fix that. You put
more workers into the workforce, which means money is coming
in and those don't age out. It is critical to
have babies being born for the long term effect the
(09:14):
long term financial health of any country. And in China
the birth rate is low because of the policy it
used to have that they're spinning right now and figuring
out how is this going to work long term? Also,
China plays the long game. Anyway, We're not very good
at playing the long game, but we're still looking at
(09:35):
what's going on here. For us, it's a matter of
individual constitutional rights. Having kids. Over there, it's a question
of let's see what we can do to have more
children because they don't have individual rights there, so it's
unintended consequences is what ended up happening with the policy
of one child per family. Also the abortion rate. Guess
(09:57):
what they used to abort. They used to abort earls,
not boys, because in China, boys are everything. So what
do you have now, Well, you have too many males,
and so you have x number of bails going after
a smaller number of female people, and therefore that skews
(10:20):
everything up. I mean, China really screwed itself by not
allowing people to screw themselves. It's very deep, very very
deep when you think about that, very metaphysical. This show
does tremendous analysis, doesn't it. In the meantime the and then,
of course the sociological issue which we've talked about and
(10:40):
we will keep on tak talking about, and that is
romantic relationships with chatbot and chat bots to exactly what
the the eight eight eight or seven seven seven phone calls?
Remember those the people used to pay five dollars a
minute or eight dollars a minute. Hey baby, you're looking
pretty good. Hey what are you wearing? Wow, you sound
(11:04):
so sexy? Stop it? Eight dollars a minute eight I
just I just created eight dollars. Okay, No, you just
created a limp on all right. Jim Keeney, who is
chief medical officer for Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in
Long Beach, Jim, did uh and tell you about the
(11:26):
diarrhea story I want to cover? Or I know you
didn't really dive into it.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Yeah, No, of course, of course I knew you want
to talk about.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
That, of course. And that's the picture. That's the parasite
which causes basically uncontrolled diarrhea and U So, I mean
that's no fun or it is if someone else has it,
particularly the sound effects. But this can be pretty dangerous stuff.
And that's growing like wildfire, this parasite, and so let's
(11:55):
talk about it because it's now hitting the news, actually
at the forefront of the news. So what's going on
with this, Jim?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah. So it's called cyclospora. It's a single cell parasite
that causes diarrhea. There's been about sixteen hundred cases confirmed,
so the CDC's investigating, you know, and it does cause profuse,
watery diarrhea. It causes you know, that's going to make
you tire, It causes fatigue, loss of appetite and some
severe abdominal cramping. So you know you're going to notice this.
(12:25):
It's not something subtle and without any treatment at all,
it'll usually last anywhere from a week to a month.
And the treatment is typically like a sulfa drug like
bactrum or septra or tritemethaprim. Those kind of sulfa drugs
will kill this. So you know, that's essentially what it is.
(12:45):
I mean. And the other thing is chlorine and a
lot of commercial available like cleansing products don't reliably kill it,
you know, so you really have to scrub things down
to get rid of this.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah the past, go ahead, But in the past has.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
Been linked to things like you know, salad, cilantro, raspberries,
you know, things like that leafy produce. So that's typically
where we see it.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, And the reason I bring this up is this
can really be dangerous stuff. If we look at the
death rate, for example, in Africa among kids. From what
I understand, the number one reason those kids are dying
is because of diarrhea, because they lose so much fluid
that you know, they basically die. Do I have that right? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
I mean, diarrhea is a number one killer worldwide because
they don't have the medical care that we have. But absolutely,
you know, and when you travel, I'd say when people
who travel, about a one third of travelers will get
diarrhea while they're traveling out of the United States. And
if you look at India, a place like India and
some places in Africa, it's more like fifty percent.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Isn't that lovely? I can't wait. I'm going to Afro
and I know you are. I know, and I think
you brought that up just just for that reason. Okay,
moving into some good news. A new simplified lung cancer
screening that is big news. So tell me about that.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, So, I mean people need to be aware that
there is such a thing as lung cancer screening, right.
And if you are a smoker in the past, what
it's been is a forty pack year smoking history. So
what that means is if you smoked two packs a
day for twenty years, two times twenty is forty pack
year history. You would qualify to your insurance would pay
for a low dose CT scan, so a low radiation
(14:44):
CT scan to look at your lungs and see if
there's any tumors. A lot of times those can be false, right,
because your lungs are a dead end. If you inhale
something into your lungs, it's going to stay there the
rest of your life. So a lot of people may
have nodules in their lungs that could be mistaken for
cancer on a fetis scan. So that's why you don't
(15:06):
want to overdo this. But so they took data from
hundreds of thousands of patients and looked at them, looked
at who we could screen and if we could change
the screening process, and it turned out that if we
just used years of smoking forty years or more of smoking,
(15:26):
whether that was a pack a day or two packs
a day or whatever, you actually screen a few less
people need to be screened, and you catch more cancers.
So in the end you're getting less false negatives and
it's a more simple way. People don't have to do
the math. Right, if you smoke for more than forty years,
(15:46):
go get a fet scan and get screened for lung cancer.
But that is being combined with a new technology that
makes finding these little nodules less scary because in the past,
what we do is we go from outside and we
stick a needle into your chest using ultrasound or CT
guidance and try and get a piece of that nodule
(16:07):
to look at under a microscope to see if it's
actually cancer. Nowadays, they have a robotic assisted endoscopy where
you put that into your lungs, So we're doing an
endoscopy looking inside the lungs, and now we can get
closer to the actual nodule, and then when we put
a needle into it, it doesn't create an air leak
that collapses your lungs, So the complications are way way lower,
(16:31):
and you're also much less likely as a blood vessel.
So it's a much easier way to look and look
for and diagnose lung cancer.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
So why wouldn't I, For example, I'm not a smoker,
never have been. Why wouldn't I get some kind of
a test for lung cancer because from what I understand,
by the time symptoms occur, you're basically dead.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Yeah, that's not really accurate, because some people will have
a cost say you have a cough for more than
thirty days. That's somebody that you'd probably get a CT
scan to look for. If they've had any smoking history,
you know, you should probably get a CT scan to
look and make sure you don't have some nodule in
your lung that's making you cough like that, so and
that would still be catching it early. The problem is
(17:12):
the math is that you know, in the study if
they looked at say somebody smoked for twenty years, Well,
suddenly the accuracy rate drops from you know, eighty five
percent of the time you're you know you're catching a
cancer if it's there and you're only missing it fifteen
percent of the time. Now you know you're the numbers
drop so that not only are you not catching a
(17:34):
ton of cancers, but you're also doing a ton of
unnecessary biopsies. So from a public health perspective, you don't
want to overdo these things, just waste public you know,
essentially public money trying to figure this out. Now, a
lot of people do say, well I just want to know,
so they go out and get a cafcan. Well, on
an individual basis, if you want to go do that
something to discuss with your doctor, but you know, realize
(17:57):
that you may be setting yourself up for a necessary,
worry and unnecessary biopsy.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Okay, back we go with Jim Keeney, Chief Medical Officer
for Dignity Saint Mary Medical Center in Long Beach and
er doctor extraordinaire who's been with us for thirty years.
Long time, So jim a story about this cancer cluster
in California and explain what a cancer cluster is and
(18:25):
what is going on.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
So, yeah, a cancer cluster would be once we can
confirm that a group of people living in a close
geographic area all have a similar or connected in some
way connected disease, like a certain cancer. In this case,
it's Ewing's sarcoma happens to be the second most common
(18:49):
bone cancer and children, behind osteosarcoma. And here they have
six cases in the Ladera area, and it's tough to
know what to make it. Obviously, that makes you stand
up and pay attention. I mean, that's a lot of cases.
We're talking about something that's diagnosed maybe two hundred, two
hundred fifty times across the entire United States per year,
(19:10):
and here we have six cases in one area. Now
those weren't all diagnosed within a year. We're talking about
over a thirteen year period. So still though, I mean
thirteen times two hundred or twenty six hundred cases across
the country are in that area very concerning. I tell you,
everybody jumps to environmental factors, right, and they jump to
(19:34):
thinking that it's pesticides or something like that. And to date,
uing sarcoma is not associated with any environmental factors. We
don't know anything about that causes uing sarcoma. Because it's
relatively uncommon, there's not a lot to know about it. Thankfully, smokers,
it gave us a lot of information. When everybody was smoking,
(19:56):
we had a ton of people getting one on cancer,
so we know a lot more about that. So it's
not to say that there aren't environmental factors. We just
haven't identified any. And so what will happen is this
Typically county or state governments will look into this and
confirm how long do these people live in the area.
We call this some statistics. They call it a Texas sharpshooter. Right.
(20:21):
You basically you shoot at a target with no bulls eye,
and then after the fact, you draw a circle around
where all the holes are closest together. So it's not
really we're not asking statistically, how likely is it that
six people live in one town and then all of
a sudden get yu Ink's sarcoma. But how likely are
six people with u inks sarcoma to land in the
same place?
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Okay, Jim, Jim, we got to cut you off because
we're out of time, so we'll pick this up again.
I'm sure next week I have a good one. Ok.
Take care you too. All Right, we're done, guys with
the show. Tomorrow morning we start the show, and tomorrow
is the thirty third anniversary of this show. It's been
around for quite a long time with me talking to you. Well,
(21:06):
that's thirty three years tomorrow, so I think we're gonna
spend the entire three hours with me telling you how
great I am.
Speaker 3 (21:12):
And I'll say it's been on too long.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah, that's probably true. But the point is is that
I'm a pretty great guy and am enormously talented, never
go off on tangents, know how to pronounce words constantly,
and well, the bottom line is, yeah, I'm pretty neat.
You've been listening to The Bill Handle Show. Catch My
(21:35):
Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am, and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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