04/01/05

LC050401

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

The law says every inch of California's coastline belongs to the
public, but just try to use it.

Steve Hoye>> Because, quite frankly, this is the most
inaccessible beach in the state of California except for this
one Zonker Harris access-way that we just came down. You can't
get to the water for four and a half miles in this direction.

Val>> And then, it's been a long time coming, but the work of
some Los Angeles artists is finally getting the recognition it
deserves.

It's all straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M.
Parsons Foundation.

Val>> Southern California is famous for its public beaches, but
how public can our beaches be if the public can't get to the
beaches? What if they're blocked by private homes? Well, as
the law stands, if you want to build a house along the ocean,
you might have to give up part of your land to allow the public
through. But as Kevin Smith tells us, some of these easements,
as they're called, are not being used and neither are many of
our prettiest beaches.

Kevin Smith>> It's a beautiful stretch of beach along the
Malibu coastline, pristine, uncrowded and open to the public,
but if you want to spend a day here, you have to know the way
in.

Steve Hoye>> Zonker Harris is one of the characters from
Doonesbury.

Kevin Smith>> This is the so-called Zonker Harris access-way.
It's one of a dozen public easements open along the Malibu
coastline. Maintained by Los Angeles County, it's across from
McDonalds on Pacific Coast Highway.

Steve Hoye>> Well, this is called billionaires' beach. This is
Carbon Beach.

Kevin Smith>> Meet Steve Hoye. His group, "Access for All",
has vowed to open and operate at least five more public
easements, including two that would run from PCH right next to
some of the most expensive homes in California. Why?

Steve Hoye>> Because, quite frankly, this is the most
inaccessible beach in the state of California except for this
one Zonker Harris access-way that we just came down. You can't
get to the water for four and a half miles in this direction.

Kevin Smith>> Under California law, all beaches are public, in
theory anyway. On this wall here, we have a sign that says
"Private Beach". What's your thought about that?

Steve Hoye>> Well, that sign really shouldn't be there.

Kevin Smith>> But the public part of the beach only runs from
the ocean to the high tide line, the so-called wet sand. Any
right of the public to use the beach above that requires an
easement negotiated by the California Coastal Commission with
property owners in exchange for development permits.

There are two types of public easements at the beach. I'm
walking on a so-called lateral easement which runs between the
high tide and private property, giving the public an extra
buffer zone to enjoy. But the most controversial easements are
the so-called vertical easements that run between the beach and
the nearest road, usually through private property.

But easements negotiated by the Coastal Commission don't
actually open for public use unless they are adopted in a sense
by a government agency like Los Angeles County or a nonprofit
group like Steve Hoye's "Access for All". "Access for All" has
agreed to accept and operate five vertical easements along
Malibu's beaches. So far, none of the five is open to the
public, but not for lack of trying.

Steve Hoye>> The verticals are precious. They're like gold.
We've actually tried to open two of those easements and actually
have been sued by both of the homeowners on those occasions.

Kevin Smith>> By far, the most controversial easement is one
that runs through this gate right next to the home of music
mogul and DreamWorks co-founder, David Geffen. Geffen sued to
stop "Access for All" from opening the easement in 2001.

Steve Hoye>> Mr. Geffen made a commitment to the people of the
state of California to open up that easement in exchange for
actually being able to develop his property and for building a
seawall in front of his house.

Kevin Smith>> The case is still bogged down in court and
Geppen's spokesman declined an interview with Life and Times.
The Geppen easement is about a mile down coast from the existing
Zonker Harris access-way and Hoye hopes to make quicker progress
opening another easement halfway in between. That would mean
lopping off part of the tennis court on this property, but Hoye
expects the owners to cooperate.

Steve Hoye>> And, quite frankly, having an access-way at Zonker
Harris and the quarter of a mile down to this one and a quarter
of a mile down to Mr. Geffen's would pierce this beach
beautifully. We'd actually have some people here during the
summertime as opposed to having this vacant rich man's paradise.

Sharon Barovsky>> We support safe, accessible and sanitary
beach experiences for the public.

Kevin Smith>> For Mayor Sharon Barovsky and the city of Malibu,
Hoye is a thorn in their side. She says that most of the
existing easements accepted and run by Los Angeles County are a
waste of money.

Sharon Barovsky>> It's at a cost of over thirty thousand
dollars a year per access for the county and sometimes some of
the access-ways are not used at all.

Kevin Smith>> Case in point, this access-way off Malibu Road.
It was closed due to recent storms and Barovsky says that the
public barely noticed.

Sharon Barovsky>> By and large, they don't use the access-ways
because they want to go to a beach that has a lifeguard, has
toilet facilities and that has parking where they're not taking
their lives in their hands running across PCH.

Kevin Smith>> Barovsky also says that some pathways just
wouldn't make good easements, like this one that the Coastal
Commission is currently negotiating.

Sharon Barovsky>> If this were a good access and could give a
good beach experience for people, it should be open. But this,
in my opinion, is not an appropriate access because if they're
caught down there on the rocks at high tide and for some reason
or other this gate gets locked, they'll be trapped down there.

Kevin Smith>> In contrast, Barovsky says there is a good
easement at the end of Malibu Road near Corral Beach. This is
one of the public easements that gets some use and you have no
objection to this?

Sharon Barovsky>> This makes total sense to me. You can get
easily down to a sandy beach, you're within walking distance of
a lifeguard station and sanitary facilities, the county provides
all these trash cans, they pick up the trash, and the money is
better spent to service the public on the beaches that the
public goes to.

Steve Hoye>> Well, a lot of people don't want that kind of
suntan lotion and radio experience for their beach. They'd
rather have something that's a little prettier, a little quieter
and a little better. They, after all, do actually own the
tidelands and they have the right to go to the beach wherever
they actually choose.

Kevin Smith>> Barovsky also worries that, unlike Los Angeles
County, "Access for All" has no track record in operating public
easements, making sure they stay safe and clean. But Hoye
scoffs at that notion. He points to a $35,000 grant his group
has received to develop a new electronic gate.

Steve Hoye>> I'll give you an example what Los Angeles County
does with vertical easements. They turn up in the morning, they
open the gate, they empty the trash. They turn up in the
evening, they close the gate. Now with our new gate, we won't
need anybody turning up in the morning or the evening. The gate
will open and close itself. Believe me, in my fifty-four years,
I have honed the ability to empty the trash.

Kevin Smith>> While opposing signs in Malibu continue to draw
lines in the sand, beaches are not the only place where
easements are an issue.

Rorie Skei>> These are technically scenic easements.

Kevin Smith>> Rorie Skei is describing easements up in the
Santa Monica Mountains where the Coastal Commission's
jurisdiction goes five miles inland. These so-called open
space, or scenic, easements are designed to maintain natural
resources and wilderness areas. They are not meant for public
use.

Rorie Skei>> And the idea is to set aside properties that have
environmental significance that were in exchange for the Coastal
Commission approving a development right some years in the past.

Kevin Smith>> Under the law, these open space easements must be
adopted by entities like the Mountains Recreation and
Conservation Authority within twenty-one years from the time
they were first negotiated by the Coastal Commission. So about
fifty easements could expire every year and return to private
hands unless someone steps up to preserve them.

Rorie Skei>> Well, we think it's a big deal. The public gave
something up in terms of environmental view preservation and the
public should get its end of the bargain.

Kevin Smith>> Unlike open space easements, public access
easements to beaches and hiking trails can never expire. But
although there will be no sunset on those easements, the battle
of sand versus land in Malibu means it could be a while before
they ever open for public use. I'm Kevin Smith for Life and
Times.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
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Val>> Suppose you've been diagnosed with a serious illness.
Now you have to make decisions about which would be best
possible treatment. Your doctor can make some recommendations,
but there are hundreds of studies out there that your doctor may
not be familiar with. That's where "Doctor Evidence" comes in.
It's a private company that offers clients individual medical
research customized to their particular situation. Dr. Todd
Feinman is one of its founders. I met him at his home in Venice
where he showed me how it works.

Dr. Todd Feinman>> Well, the traditional way of getting a
diagnosis or treatment now is to go to your doctor, tell him
your symptoms, get a physical exam, sit in a chair and then he
will make recommendations about tests and treatments. You may
or may not get the right diagnosis or you may or may not get the
right treatment. The antidote to that problem is to go get
evidence, also known as outcome data, that identifies the most
accurate tests and the most effective treatments and the safest
treatments.

Val>> To get your own evidence that pertains to your particular
case?

Dr. Todd Feinman>> Exactly.

Val>> Now a lot of people would say, well, yeah, you can just
go on the web and do that. There is all sorts of information
these days, medical information, on the web.

Dr. Todd Feinman>> The typical website or the typical result
from surfing the internet is you're going to get review
information, general review information, as opposed to actual
outcome data, but it won't identify a surgeon in your area that
has the best outcomes. It won't identify a diagnostic center
that's famous for diagnosing correctly most of the time.

Val>> Okay, so give us an example of a client who came to you
with a particular question. This case is a diagnostic question.
He wasn't sure whether his problem was being diagnosed
correctly.

Dr. Todd Feinman>> Okay. This client is a gentleman who was
diagnosed with lung cancer a year ago, had curative surgery and
the lung cancer came back. He has been told -- he had a PET
scan that told him that the cancer has come back and it's
positive and he wants to know if the PET scan is truly positive.
What is the accuracy of a PET scan?

Val>> So he wants to know whether that PET scan is accurate,
whether he can trust it or not, right?

Dr. Todd Feinman>> That's right.

Val>> So you've designed a very specific technical question.

Dr. Todd Feinman>> And the question is, what is the accuracy of
a PET scan to confirm that a solitary lung mass is truly cancer
and if the cancer is metastatic, also known as spreading, in a
patient who has a history of resected non-small cell squamos
lung cancer?

Val>> All right, so then, in response to that question, you
have --

Dr. Todd Feinman>> -- so a question is framed. It's given to
our librarian who has a Masters in Library Science and they are
given that and they look up every clinical study all over the
world that answers that question. A hundred abstracts will come
back or a hundred clinical trials and we cherry-pick and pick
the ones that are most relevant and most valid and we load them
in. We found twenty articles, twenty abstracts, twenty clinical
trials that answered that question.

Val>> Clients then look over all the abstracts and, if there's
a term they don't understand, all they have to do is click on
it. The program is linked to a medical dictionary that will
explain what the terms mean. The clients then choose which
abstracts are most interesting or relevant and, if they want,
they can view the entire text. And not only can they see it,
but their doctor can get into their portal and they can discuss
it together, right?

Dr. Todd Feinman>> Exactly.

Val>> That's really a good thing.

Dr. Todd Feinman>> We provide access for our client to the
portal and we provide access for their doctor so they can review
the evidence with them and help them evaluate it and use the
evidence to get the right tests and treatments. For this
particular client, what he did was read the full-text articles.
We had three clients using this information.

One client used this information to confirm to get a PET scan
done. He had never had a PET scan done. He got a PET scan done
at a center that had a high accuracy rate and the spot in his
lung was determined to be truly cancer and he ended up having
curative surgery.

Another client who reads this information who'd never had a PET
scan before had the PET scan done and it truly showed that it
wasn't cancer and he did not need surgery and he's now being
followed every six months by his doctors.

Another client had the PET scan done and it was positive, but it
wasn't done initially at a center that had a high accuracy rate,
so he's getting the PET scan redone at another center that has a
better outcome rate, a better accuracy rate.

Val>> So basically this is private medical -- customized, I
should say -- this is customized medical research that pertains
to your individual situation, something that you will not get
from your doctors because they just don't have the time.

Dr. Todd Feinman>> And most doctors all over the country use
our service when they want it to find evidence for themselves.
When a doctor gets sick, he loves this service because he needs
evidence. He knows how to read it and he's going to get it.
Other doctors will use our service to get evidence for their
patients. The reason they do that is because, one, very few
doctors have time to look it up and, two, most doctors don't
have the resources or the skills to actually go through all the
medical search engines, find relevant abstracts and full-text
articles and then store it. You have to have the technology to
store it, so we make it simple for them. We get it, store it
and give it to them.

Val>> "Doctor Evidence" charges clients by the question, $250
per question, then an additional charge of about twenty or
thirty dollars for each full-text article retrieved. The whole
process can take anywhere from a day to a week or so. How else
can you use this information gathered from "Doctor Evidence"?

Dr. Todd Feinman>> Once you frame a question, find the
evidence, evaluate it and you've made an informed decision with
your doctors about what tests and treatments you want, you have
to get your insurance plan to pay for it and prove it. An
insurance plan cannot deny you access to a diagnostic test that
has proven to be highly accurate or a treatment that has been
proven to be highly effective.

Val>> So if you've been denied treatment by an HMO, you could
come here, get the evidence that shows that this will give me a
positive outcome and turn it in to them and they have to pay
attention to that?

Dr. Todd Feinman>> Exactly. The medical director or the case
manager for that insurance plan cannot deny you that treatment
or that test if you have evidence proving it's very effective.
That's part of our insurance advocacy program. We have clients
who use evidence to overturn denials or use evidence to get
approval for a test or a treatment that's effective.

Val>> That's really important. And then the other thing you're
interested in doing is --

Dr. Todd Feinman>> -- besides finding evidence and storing
evidence and getting evidence to the people, we also want to
create better evidence. One of the ways we do that is to do
programs and initiatives that create databases of outcomes. For
example, we're gearing up to do a huge initiative with a large
pharmacy outlet, one of the largest pharmacy outlets in the
country, to create a database of patients on hundreds of
different medications and seeing what their outcomes are. For
example, if a patient is on a cholesterol drug, did the
cholesterol drug work? Were there any side effects? We're
going to enroll millions of patients into that database and
measure the outcomes and get the outcomes to the people and to
the drug companies.

Val>> These are people who voluntarily take part in this?

Dr. Todd Feinman>> Exactly. There will be programs that
incentivize them to do it and most patients want to be in a
program like that to find out if the drugs really work and if
they're safe.

Val>> So the idea is to avoid another Vioxx fiasco?

Dr. Todd Feinman>> Exactly. This program will prevent future
Vioxx.

Val>> Dr. Feinman, thank you very much for giving us a survey
of "Doctor Evidence".

Dr. Todd Feinman>> Okay. It's been great.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
by mail at this address:

Life and Times
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Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or
contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Val>> It is art work seldom seen by the public before, the work
of dozens of Los Angeles area black artists in the post-war
period. They were sculpting and painting at a time when
recognition for African-American artists was hard to come by.
Well, they're finally getting the attention they deserve and
Vicki Curry takes us to the Municipal Art Gallery in Hollywood
for a look at the exhibit called "Reactions".

Vicki Curry>> It's a small exhibition of less than twenty
artists, but it tells a story that's never been told before, of
African-American artists working in Los Angeles between World
War II and the 1960's.

Leonard Simon>> There was a colony of artists living in Los
Angeles during these years that the exhibitions represent that
most people didn't know about, so there's a great cache of black
art work in this city now.

Vicki Curry>> Leonard Simon is Curator of this exhibit which he
titled "Reactions".

Leonard Simon>> I was alive during that time and I remember how
the image of the black person given to us by the general public
was not a good image. Seeing the black artists that I saw
during the 1940's, particularly after the war in 1945, the
Second World War, I discovered that many of the black artists
were painting and drawing and promoting an image of black people
that no one had done before. They were showing black people as
human, as thoughtful, as energetic, as intelligent, not
stereotypical, so I wanted to deal with the image that black
artists created during these years that in fact helped propel
black people into the civil rights movement.

Vicki Curry>> A civil rights movement born in the boom years
after World War II. At that time, Los Angeles was considered a
place of progress and opportunity.

Leonard Simon>> Hollywood and Los Angeles was a Mecca to get
away from the tyranny and the segregation and the prejudice that
was happening back east. Many of the blacks moved west, so I
think Los Angeles was a good place, a good breeding ground, for
a lot more openness than maybe other cities had at the time and
I think that's why we produced some artists here who maybe had
not thought about being artists originally.

[Film Clip]

Leonard Simon>> A good piece is that piece by Charles White
called "Frederick Douglas in Jail". He's young and he's in jail
and that picture looks very contemporary, even though Frederick
Douglas was, you know, early twentieth century, late nineteenth
century. Still, that is a contemporary look at a black man in
jail and I think everyone can relate to that. That, I think,
sets up an idea -- that set up the idea for me -- of how we had
to react to our own personage, what happened to all of us as
black people in this country and how the artists depict that.

[Film Clip]

Leonard Simon>> Then there's another painting by Kofi Bailey of
a black man who looks skyward. He's got his eyes almost in a
beatific look and I don't know if he's looking toward heaven,
looking for death, but looking for something that obviously
isn't on the same plane as his eyes. So he's looking for it and
that denotes to me a lot of the religious feelings and tension
that most blacks grow up with here, understanding that there's
something better than this.

[Film Clip]

Leonard Simon>> The piece by Beulah Woodward is a portrait of a
woman and she has a red cap on and a red dress and a nice shawl
or scarf around her neck. The background of the painting is
blue and her face is painted blue, a beautiful woman showing in
fact the serenity that a black woman has, I guess because of the
patience she has to have during that time. But it's painted
overlaying with blue in a sense to show that there's this
blueness, to use that word, but maybe a sadness that encompasses
her and it shows that she's living in this world despite the red
cap and the red dress which gives her life and blood and energy.
Still, there's this sadness that she has to deal with every day.

[Film Clip]

Leonard Simon>> And then there are other paintings of a sad
young boy. It says "A Tear and a Sigh for JFK", the painting is
titled. It's a young boy with a tear washing down his face in a
baseball cap. You don't know if he's really crying for JFK or
if he's crying for himself or for his future.

[Film Clip]

Leonard Simon>> The artist in the other room, Melanie Blocker,
painted a lot of the scenes of Santa Monica, of Santa Clarita,
and various outdoor scenes in this area. She removed herself
from painting just portraits and images of black people. She
delved into nature and everything else and experimented with
different kinds of paint and she was one of those first persons
to do that, to incorporate where she lived, her environment,
into her paintings and open it up for other artists to see that,
yes, we can do other things. Despite having done our images, we
can still do other works.

Next to her paintings in there, there is an old water color done
by her father. It's a battleship. He was in the war and he
painted this battleship. He was an amateur painter, but I
wanted to show his work just because that was some of the things
that black people were doing even before 1930 and after 1930,
but they weren't getting recognized for it.

[Film Clip]

Leonard Simon>> The first piece as you enter this gallery is by
Yvonne Mayo. That picture she did is called "The Slave Driver"
and reflects a lot of what was going on at the time she made it
in the early 1940's, the cubism, the expressionism that was
going on, a lot of the abstract art that was going on, but it
also reflects her own personality about who was getting ill-
treated in this country and all over the world.

Vicki Curry>> For Leonard Simon, the black artists of the
1940's and 1950's not only reflected the issues of their time,
they set the social agenda for the years that followed.

Leonard Simon>> This country flourished into an era where more
people had more rights and, as a result of that, more black
people were able to spread across the nation the idea that we
were no longer slaves, that we were no longer ugly, that we were
no longer Uncle Toms, and many of the artists helped do that.
When I'd go to a gallery or went to a black artist's house and
saw paintings of a black man or a black woman, it inspired me
because I knew that's what we looked like. All of that
propelled me into the civil rights because I got a dignity from
all of this art and a self-esteem that I didn't have before.

[Film Clip]

Val>> The exhibit is up through April 10. You can call the
Municipal Art Gallery for details. And that's our program. I'm
Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for
watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

With additional support for Life and Times from The Ralph M.
Parsons Foundation.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

Their church is in Southern California, but their bishop is
thousands of miles away in Africa. What caused the rift in the
Episcopal Church?

>> In the scriptures, it says in Hebrews that He is the same
yesterday, today and forever. I began to ask why all of a
sudden are things changing?

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.