A doctor in Northridge explains why he is not treating unvaccinated kids, a black officer talks about his experience on the beat, five hockey teams head to California.
Northridge doctor turns away unvaccinated children
Measles FAQ | School immunization rates
In the midst of the measles outbreak, some doctors are refusing to see children who haven't had their shots.
Dr. Charles Goodman, who specializes in pediatrics and adolescent medicine and practices in Northridge, California, is one of these doctors.
"My stance has always been that it's best to vaccinate. It's one of the best ways to protect children, and the vaccines are both safe and efficacious," he said. "I've believed that ever since I've been a pediatrician, which is over 20 years, but I didn't really force the issue, and I was accepting of many patients who chose not to vaccinate."
He has changed his mind, thanks to the measles outbreak stemming out of Disneyland.
"I realized that my main job was to take care of children and not do harm. Originally when there was not a lot of measles out there, not getting that vaccine didn't seem, to me, quite so dangerous and didn't seem like it was doing much harm to children, although I probably was doing more harm to children than I knew, to be honest," he said. "But now that there's many, many more cases popping up every day, I've realized that, you know what? Do no harm means make sure they get that vaccine, and if they don't get that vaccine and they show up at school, or my waiting room, or somewhere else with measles, perhaps before they even have signs and symptoms of that disease, they are highly contagious...they are a public health risk."
Goodman used to spend 10 or 15 minutes during an appointment to explain to parents that the MMR-autism link was a myth. Now, he is cracking down on parents of both new and existing patients who do not vaccinate their kids. He started by posting signs in his office, and even put a notice on his practice's Facebook page, that said he is not accepting any new patients that don’t vaccinate.
After about a day, he decided to add existing patients who were not vaccinated to that list. He has had his office call parents personally, offering to help them find new doctors.
"We still care about them, but we just can't allow that risk to occur at our office," he said.
Goodman says the response has been overwhelming, and vaccination appointments are through the roof.
"We're scheduling them like crazy, which has made this thing a giant success," he said.
There are exceptions, of course, like children with pre-existing conditions or children who are allergic to the vaccine.
"Of course if somebody has a medically good reason to not do the vaccine, whether it be allergy or immunosuppression, those people don't get it. And it's actually because of those patients that the herd immunity -- the idea that we need to protect everybody to protect those few who can't get the vaccine -- it's because of those people that I believe strongly, at least in part, that I really, strongly believe that everyone should get the vaccine," he said.
Raising vaccinated children among anti-vaccine parents
The measles outbreak that began at Disneyland in December has brought the polarizing debate to vaccinate or not to vaccinate back into the national spotlight.
Recent decisions of some pediatricians to close their practices to un-vaccinated children has anti-vaccine parents feeling bullied and alienated. But can some understanding be had for parents who choose not to vaccinate their children?
Ann Bauer, essayist and author of Forgiveness 4 You, wrote an article for Slate that offers a first-person perspective into why the mothers in the liberal community where she lived in the 1980s-90s chose not to vaccinate.
"It was very different back then. No one had seen a case of measles ever in our group. We thought of this as something that was gone, and so I think it was easier for people to discount it as a risk," she said.
Though Bauer chose to vaccinate her children, she cautions against anger and finger pointing as a way to persuade parents who do not vaccinate.
"The hate and anger that's coming out now is really counter productive because no one who's fearful is going to change their mind because someone is screaming at them," Bauer said.
Bauer says it is helpful to try to empathize.
"I wanted to show a picture of these people who I will tell you straight out I think were selfish... but I think people do selfish and irresponsible things. Parents in particular tend to do things that are good for their own children like pulling them out of the public school system and putting them in private schools because their focus is on that child not on the other children who need resources," she said.
According to Bauer, people need to see this as a complex issue in order to get to something beyond judgment.
"Let's look at this in a lens of something larger. What is our responsibility to each other? A lot of people made this mistake 20-25 years ago. What mistakes are we making today?" she said.
Black cop: 'Common to hear racial slurs, often from my own race'
Officer Darren Sims is a rookie police officer with the city of San Bernardino, just east of Los Angeles.
As a black man, he's a minority on the force he serves on, and in the community he serves in. The city is about 60 percent Hispanic, 19 percent white, and about 15 percent black. On the force, 60 percent of the officers are white, about 28 percent are Hispanic and nine percent are black.
The department does not reflect the community it patrols. And that includes Officer Sims.
It's a challenge for the San Bernardino Police Department, and an issue that weighs on law enforcement across the country following several high-profile incidents that led to the deaths of black men at the hands of police.
But in San Bernardino, the issue of diversity is secondary to the rise in crime the city is facing since it declared bankruptcy in August of 2012. Since then, under immense financial pressure, the police department has had to make some drastic cuts.
The force has shrunk from more than 350 officers to 230. That means fewer officers on patrol; and criminals in San Bernardino know it. Gang violence is up. Homicides surged to 46 in 2013 from 32 in 2009.
To get a sense of what Officer Sims faces in a community so violent and underserved, Bloomberg reporter Esme Deprez went out on patrol with him recently.
During her interview with him, Sims told her about a night when the officer had to make a snap, life or death decision to subdue a suspect. Both reporter and officer joined Take Two to discuss his experiences.
Interview Highlights with officer darren sims
On what patrolling the streets of San Bernardino is like now
I've only been a police officer for a short period of time, so it's all I know. But at times, things can be stressful. There's a lot of tension - a lot of racial tension.
There's a lot of tension between law enforcement and citizens. The perception that civilians have towards law enforcement does affect us in a sense.
On his perception of police as a kid in Riverside, CA
Initially starting out, I'm not going to lie, I didn't have a good view of law enforcement. I listened to a lot of gangsta rap - a lot of the cop-killing and glorifying hating the police. A lot of my friends had that same kind of mind set.
But, as I matured, as I grew up and became more educated, my perception kind of changed.
On how the black community responds to him on his patrols
It's quite common to hear racial slurs or whatever the case is, and a lot of times, it's from my own (laughs), my own race. I get called all kinds of names - Oreo, Uncle Tom. It gets frustrating.
On the racial disparity between San Bernardino cops and the community they serve
I can't say that I really focus on racial issues. In my opinion, when it comes to law enforcement, there's individuals who are qualified and there's individuals who aren't qualified. I know what the statistics say...but at the same time, when we're entrusted with the ability to take someone's rights and, ultimately, up to taking someone's life, that's a big responsibility, that's a big burden to carry.
When it comes to the application process, I think the most qualified applicants should be the ones that get hired.
On the tension between law enforcement and civilians following high-profile, police-related cases like the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown
I see what's going on in the media and I take it in. It's important to know what's going on and what the state of the relationship is between law enforcement and the community. I take it for what it's worth; use it as a learning [and] training experience. However, I don't think it changes how I deal with people.
[But], there's times when I respond to a call...or come in contact with people and they'll put their hands up and say, 'Don't shoot.' For me, the first couple of times, it kind of catches me off guard...but then I remember, 'Okay, that's related to some of the incidences that happened recently.'
Before they even talk to me, before they can even interact with me, I'm being judged. That's one of the barriers that we in law enforcement have to get past. We have to work to bridge that gap.
On the night when the he had to make a snap, life or death decision to subdue a suspect
We got a call for service. There was a man down on the street, potentially shot. I respond. I'm the first one on scene. I exited my patrol car, walked up to the subject, and he had a 9 mm pistol next to his leg. I was scared.
We go through training and you think that you know how you're going to feel or what you're going to do, but in that situation, after exiting my patrol car, there's no cover. I have nothing to get behind if this man picks up the gun and starts shooting at me.
Now I'm facing a situation where it could potentially escalate to a deadly force situation, which is something that I hope I never have to live through.
I secure the weapon, and after it's secured, I try to help him. As soon as I go to contact him to try to search him and everything, he starts coming to. He starts waking up and he wants to fight.
Since I wasn't able to do a proper search, I don't know what he's armed with. I don't know if he has knives, guns, you know; I don't now what the situation is; I don't know if I'm going to get ambushed - a million things are running through your mind in a situation like that.
The situation escalates, he wants to fight, and I'm trying to determine how I'm going to respond. Instead of switching to any of my tools, I utilize a lateral vascular neck restraint so I can render him non-combative.
Luckily, I was able to overpower him and I was able to bring him into custody without having to transition to my fire arm. Because I don't know any law enforcement officer, I've never met one, that says at the beginning of shift that he wants to go out and use deadly force. That doesn't happen.
Me personally, and a lot of my peers and a lot of my supervisors, we got into this job to help people. And, unfortunately, we're placed in situations where we have to contact subjects and suspects where their actions sometimes dictate how we respond. And sometimes, it is deadly force. It's unfortunate, but we don't go out looking to hurt people or to harm people.
Sports roundup: Tom Brady's Superbowl legacy, Phil Jackson's tough run with the Knicks, high school recruits
Has the Patriots' Tom Brady cemented his legacy as the NFL's all-time great QB? The debate rages. And, speaking of legends, should Phil Jackson return to the struggling Lakers? It's time for sports with Andy and Brian Kamenetzky.
Hockey expands in California with 5 new farm teams
California is quickly rivaling the Northeast and Upper Midwest as a bastion of professional hockey.
The LA Kings have been here since the late sixties, later joined by the San Jose Sharks and the Anaheim Ducks. Now five teams from the American Hockey League are moving to California.
The AHL is described as being much like Triple-A teams in Major League Baseball. The clubs are moving mostly from the northeast, and they will play in cities across the state - San Diego, Stockton, San Jose, Bakersfield and Ontario.
NHL teams here say the new farm clubs will provide them with better access to younger players. They also expect the AHL teams to generate more interest in hockey among the already growing legion of fans.
California recommends new way to rate school success
Since 1999, public schools in California have been measured by a number called the Academic Performance Index, or API. Now, a state commission is recommending the system be replaced with another, more comprehensive method of evaluation.
How does the housing market in LA compare with NYC?
In his State of the City address yesterday, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio honed in on the issue of affordable housing.
"If we do not act and act boldly," de Blasio said, "New York risks taking on the qualities of a gated community. A place defined by exclusivity rather than by opportunity and we can not let that happen."
It's a sentiment that residents of Los Angeles are familiar with. L.A. is one of the least affordable places to live in the country, maybe even less affordable than New York City.
A recent study from UCLA named L.A. the worst rental market, based on the fact that the average resident spends almost half their income on housing costs. That's a greater proportion than in other high-priced places like New York or San Francisco.
Richard Green, Director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate, explains that while New York's housing is a little more expensive than it is in Los Angeles, "Los Angeles' incomes are a little lower than they are in New York. So if you look at how well people can afford housing, Los Angeles actually turns out to be a little worse than New York City."
Add to that the fact that there are more people who want to live in L.A. than there are houses available, Green says, and "we get things like more doubling up in Los Angeles than any other city in the country."
Like Mayor de Blasio, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has also made affordable housing a priority, pledging to build 100,000 new housing units by 2021. But Green says that right now Los Angeles is not on pace to meet that goal.
"We're not even building 25,000 [units] a year. The demand for housing grows by probably about 30,000 units a year, so we have to build more stuff."
In order for Los Angeles to get back to a normal housing stock relative to its population, Green says, Angelenos will have to let go of the idea of L.A. as a city of single-family homes and get more comfortable with "building up."
That doesn't necessarily mean that L.A. would be packed with skyscrapers like New York City, but it could mean that L.A. would look a little more like Paris.
"Paris is a very dense city, it's almost as dense as Manhattan," Green says. "Paris doesn't have skyscrapers, but it has a bunch of six story buildings."
Study looks at Ice Age, predicts alarming trend in ocean oxygen loss
When you think of oxygen, you probably think of the air we breathe. But it's just as important to life in the ocean as it is to things that live on land.
But new research predicts an alarming trend - a dramatic loss of oxygen in the world's oceans due to ocean warming.
There are always low oxygen zones in the interior of the ocean. But these zones are getting bigger, and they aren't so hospitable to most species of fish and shellfish.
In order to learn more about the effects of this environmental change, researchers at UC Davis recently took a look way back, more than ten thousand years ago, to see how the oxygen loss might affect ocean life today.
Researchers looked at ocean sediment records from the last deglaciation. That's the time when the Earth transitioned out of the Ice Age - and the last time the planet has abruptly warmed. Their findings were recently published in Plos One.
For more, Dr. Sarah Moffitt joined Take Two. She's the study's lead researcher and a post-doctoral scholar at the UC Davis Bodega Marine Laboratory.
Hot pink sea slugs invade Bay Area tide pools
Bay Area researchers are raising their eye brows at the increased sight of hot pink sea slugs, known as the Hopkin's Rose Nudibranch.
Son inspires Caldecott winner Dan Santat's book, 'Beekle'
A Pasadena man's story of imaginary friends is this year's Randolph Caldecott Medal winner.
Author and illustrator Dan Santat was awarded the prestigious literary prize for his book "The Adventures of Beekle: The Unimaginary Friend."
Beekle is a white, formless character that lives on an island, waiting to be chosen by a child. What unfolds is a story of friendship and finding the perfect match.
Dan Santat sat down with Take Two's Alex Cohen and A Martinez to talk about the inspiration behind the book and the meaning of the word "Beekle."