3 battle for lives after Wash. school shooting
3 battle for lives after Wash. school shooting
MARYSVILLE, Wash. (AP) — Three students fought for their lives in Seattle-area hospitals Sunday, days after being shot in the head during an attack at a high school on Washington’s Puget Sound.
The close-knit community, meanwhile, on the nearby Tulalip Indian reservation struggled with the news that the shooter was a popular teenager from one of their more well-known families.
A tribal guidance counsellor said no one knows what prompted 14-year-old Jaylen Fryberg to walk into a busy school lunchroom and open fire Friday.
“We can’t answer that question,” said Matt Remle, who has an office at Marysville-Pilchuck High School. “But we try to make sense of the senselessness.”
Churches have held vigils since the attack that killed one student and wounded four others, including two of Fryberg’s cousins, and gatherings were planned Sunday afternoon in the high school gym and at a tribal center.
In the nearby community of Oso, where a mudslide this spring killed dozens, people planned to gather to write condolence letters and cards.
Of the wounded students, only 14-year-old Nate Hatch showed improvement, though he remained in serious condition in intensive care at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Fifteen-year-old Andrew Fryberg also remained in critical condition in intensive care. Both are cousins of Jaylen Fryberg.
Meanwhile, 14-year-olds Shaylee Chuckulnaskit and Gia Soriano remained in critical condition in intensive care at Providence Regional Medical Center Everett.
The girl killed in the shooting hasn’t been officially identified.
Fryberg died in the attack, after a first-year teacher intervened. It’s unclear if he intentionally killed himself or if the gun went off in a struggle with teacher Megan Silberberger.
New test shakes up colon cancer screening
Starting today, millions of people who have avoided colon cancer screening can get a new home test that’s noninvasive and doesn’t require the icky preparation most other methods do.
The test is the first to look for cancer-related DNA in stool. But deciding whether to get it is a more complex choice than ads for “the breakthrough test … that’s as easy as going to the bathroom” make it seem.
On one hand, the test could greatly boost screening for a deadly disease that too few people get checked for now.
On the other hand, it could lure people away from colonoscopies and other tests that, unlike the new one, have been shown to save lives.
It might even do both.
“It looks promising,” but its impact on cancer risk and survival isn’t known, said Dr. Barnett Kramer, a National Cancer Institute screening expert.
David Smith, 67, a retired teacher from Northfield, Minnesota, shows the test’s potential. He has never been screened for colon cancer and his doctor ran through the options, including a barium enema or a scope exam.
“He pulled out one of those really colorful brochures they have for all those procedures,” Smith said, but he had suffered an infection from a prostate biopsy years ago and didn’t want another invasive test. When the doctor mentioned the new DNA test, “I said, well, sign me up.”
The test was approved by the Food and Drug Administration last month and will be offered by prescription at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, where it was developed, and soon nationwide. It’s called Cologuard and is sold by Exact Sciences Corp. of Madison, Wisconsin. Mayo Clinic and one of its doctors get royalties from the test.
Poll: Neighbors key to coping with disasters
HOBOKEN, N.J. (AP) — Neighbor helping neighbor. Trust in a community. Looking out for each other. An AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey suggests that those factors — collectively termed “social resilience”— have a big impact on how prepared communities feel for disasters such as Superstorm Sandy, and are seen as more valuable in a crisis than even government.
The survey polled more than 1,000 residents in a dozen communities hit by the 2012 hurricane in New York and New Jersey. It found that, regardless of income, residents in areas where people say their neighbors actively seek to fix problems in the neighborhood are three times more likely to say their community is extremely or very prepared for a disaster than people in communities without such social resilience.
Likewise, 37 percent of residents in areas reporting high levels of neighbors helping each other are very or extremely confident their neighborhood would recover quickly from a disaster, compared to 22 percent in areas with lower levels of neighborly cooperation.
The survey also showed residents rely more on neighbors than government. Sixty-nine percent of respondents said they got help from neighbors in recovering from the storm, while 57 percent said local government assisted them and 55 percent cited federal government agencies as helpful.