City Council cutting ties with Boy Scouts
The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday moved to end its
relationship with the Boy Scouts of America because the
organization discriminates based on homosexuality.
The council directed all of the city’s departments to
review contracts with the Boy Scouts and ordered an audit of those
contracts to ensure they comply with a nondiscrimination clause.
The contract audits are due within 90 days.
Council members also want the Los Angeles Police Department to
eliminate its Explorers program, a police cadet training program
for young people that is affiliated with the Boy Scouts. Council
members would like the police department to create its own cadet
program within three months.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that the Boy Scouts can
legally exclude gays. Councilwoman Jackie Goldberg supported
severing the ties with the youth organization and noted that police
departments in San Diego, Chicago and Tempe, Ariz., have taken
similar action.
Goldberg was backed by Councilman Mike Feuer, who said the city
doesn’t work with organizations that discriminate.
“We don’t have a choice, legally,” Feuer said.
“Both the spirit and the content of existing city law is very
clear. The city shouldn’t participate in a discriminatory
practice or policy.”
Boy Scout officials have said the Explorer program is run
through a subsidiary, Learning for Life, that does not have a
policy of discrimination.
UCLA researchers develop TB vaccine
UCLA researchers have developed the first vaccine against
tuberculosis that is more potent than the current commercially
available vaccine, developed nearly 100 years ago. The bacterium
that causes tuberculosis ““ Mycobacterium tuberculosis ““
currently infects 2 billion people worldwide, and 8 million new
cases of active tuberculosis develop annually. The new vaccine,
developed and tested using laboratory animals, may prove to be a
better, more potent vaccine for humans.
“Tubercolosis is the greatest cause of death from a single
infectious agent, killing 2 million people each year
worldwide,” said Dr. Marcus.
The new vaccine was found to be 10 times more potent than
commercially available vaccines in an animal model.
Researchers test purity of dietary
supplements
Athletes hoping to boost their performance by consuming
androstenedione, an over-the-counter dietary supplement known as
“andro,” may actually increase their risk of testing
positive for a steroid banned by sports organizations, a study
found.
Andro can contain a contaminant that produces a urine byproduct
linked to the use of nandrolone ““ an anabolic steroid,
reported a UCLA study in the Nov. 22-29 issue of The Journal of the
American Medical Association.
“Our findings question the purity of over-the-counter
steroids,” said Dr. Don Catlin, principal investigator and
director of the UCLA Olympic Analytical Laboratory. “What you
buy isn’t always what you get.”
Alleged to increase muscle size and strength, andro made
headlines in 1998 when baseball star Mark McGwire admitted using it
and hit a record 70 home runs that season.
This year, a number of Olympic athletes lost their medals after
their urine samples tested positive for 19-norandrosterone. The
Olympic Games ban both nandrolone and andro.
Catlin acknowledged that his team tested only one batch of andro
and cannot claim that all andro is contaminated.
Compiled from Daily Bruin wire reports.