New U.S. law sanctions nations employing enslaved Cuban doctors and denies federal funding to ‘private’ Cuban businesses
Translated excerpt:
Several key provisions of the United States Congressional Appropriations Act, which have an impact on Cubans both inside and outside the island, were presented this Wednesday in Miami by Cuban-American congressmen Mario Díaz-Balart and Carlos A. Giménez.
Among the most notable are provisions that restrict visas for officials linked to the exploitation of Cuban doctors abroad, those that cut federal funds to private companies on the island, and those that increase funding for projects related to Cuba.
“We have included the prohibition of visas to enter the United States for any foreign government or group that traffics with Cuban doctors. [Those trafficking with Cuban doctors] will not be able to enter the U.S. because visas will be denied to them and their families,” said Díaz-Balart at a press conference at the Museum of the Brigade 2506 in Hialeah Gardens.
Alongside leaders from the Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan exiles in Miami, the congressmen spoke about the importance of the legislation, which hits one of the main sources of income for the Cuban regime: the export of professionals, which according to official data generates billions of dollars annually.
“This is not human trafficking. This is slavery. They [the doctors] are slaves of the Cuban regime. All nations involved in helping the regime use its slaves are involved in slavery, so more sanctions are needed against those countries and organizations,” said legislator Carlos Giménez.
The island’s regime has doctors working in dozens of countries and appropriates at least 75% of the salaries paid by governments in the destination countries. In what Havana qualifies as “internationalist missions,” professionals face numerous violations of their rights, as denounced by international organizations and United Nations rapporteurs.
Screening with a PSA test has a small impact on prostate cancer deaths but leads to overdiagnosis, finds study
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2024-04-screening-psa-small-impact-prostate.html
Excerpt:
The largest study to date investigating a single invitation to a PSA blood test to screen for prostate cancer has found it had a small impact on reducing deaths, but also led to overdiagnosis and missed early detection of some aggressive cancers.
The CAP trial, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and carried out by researchers from the universities of Bristol, Oxford and Cambridge, involved over 400,000 men aged 50-69. Just under half received a single invitation for a PSA test as part of the trial.
After following up for 15 years, there was a small difference in the number of men who died from prostate cancer between the two groups—nearly 7 men out of every 1,000 in the group invited for screening had died from prostate cancer, compared to nearly 8 men out of every 1,000 in the group who hadn’t been invited for screening.
The results of the trial show that an estimated 1 in 6 cancers found by the single PSA screening were overdiagnosed.
Cancer Research UK warns that overdiagnosis of prostate cancer is the main worry with PSA testing for early detection. This can result in the unnecessary treatment of cancers that would not have caused any harm in someone’s lifetime.
.....Professor Richard Martin, lead author and Cancer Research UK scientist at the University of Bristol, said, “Our studies have been measuring the effectiveness of the PSA test with hundreds of thousands of men for 15 years. The key takeaway is that the small reduction in prostate cancer deaths by using the test to screen healthy men does not outweigh the potential harms.