04/08/05

LC050408

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

It's cropped up in jails, playing fields and hospitals, but
should you be worried about a new type of staph infection?

Dr. Peter Miao>> I don't want to alarm everybody, but we are
seeing community-acquired infections that are due to MRSA in
people who have never been in a hospital or never had surgery or
never had antibiotics.

Val>> And then, time was when African-Americans couldn't appear
in mainstream movies, let alone win Oscars. We look at black
Hollywood stars of the silver screen.

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.

Val>> You've probably heard of a common infection called a
staph infection. It's caused by a common bacteria,
staphylococcus. Now normally, it responds to antibiotics, but
recently there's been a new, more potent form of staph bacteria,
one that's proving resistant to antibiotics. As Toni Guinyard
tells us, health officials are concerned.

Toni Guinyard>> We touch each other every day usually without
considering the transfer of germs, but doctors are now warning
the public to think twice before reaching out to touch someone
or something. They're seeing an increase in a strain of
staphylococcus aureus, the bacteria commonly known as staph.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding>> It can occur on abrasions, a cut in the
skin, or sometimes on intact skin, and it can be red and raised
and can get pus inside it. It's something we usually call a
boil, sometimes an abscess or just a big pimple.

Toni Guinyard>> Dr. Jonathan Fielding is Director of Public
Health for the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.
He points out that twenty-five to thirty percent of the
population carries the bacteria in their noses or on their hands
without any sign of infection. But over the past few years,
there has been an increase in a strain of staph that is
resistant to a family of widely-used antibiotics. It's called
MRSA.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding>> It means Methicillin-resistant
Staphylococcus Aureus.

Dr. Peter Miao>> It complicates what I do if I only have four
antibiotics that I can use for certain infections and the
patient happens to be resistant, sensitive or allergic to three
of the antibiotics. Now I'm stuck with one.

Toni Guinyard>> Dr. Peter Miao is an internist and infectious
disease specialist at Sherman Oaks Hospital in Sherman Oaks. He
is the hospital's chairman of Infection Control. He says just
thirty years ago, most antibiotics used were effective in
treating staph infections.

Dr. Peter Miao>> Now the opposite. We're seeing more and more
resistance, resistance, resistance and only very few sensitive.

Toni Guinyard>> What is that telling you?

Dr. Peter Miao>> That's telling me the bugs are winning, in a
sense. As time goes on, they're learning to adapt, they're
learning to become resistant to the antibiotics that we have and
that we have to find more or newer antibiotics to try and
overcome these resistant organisms, the so-called super bugs.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding>> There have been outbreaks in sports
teams, in some neonatal units and a bunch of different places
around and there's no question that this has increased all
around the country. We don't know exactly why.

Toni Guinyard>> What they do know is that staph has been around
for a long time. It's not uncommon for hospital patients to
contract antibiotic-resistant staph infections.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding>> Hospital-acquired MRSA as opposed to
community has been with us a long time. It's been with us for
decades and it's the result of a lot of antibiotic use within
health care institutions, particularly hospitals, and that has
grown staph that is resistant to a number of classes of
antibiotics.

Alan Cronin>> I never really found out the results of what a
staph infection can do until after this happened to me, after I
acquired a staph infection.

Toni Guinyard>> Simi Valley resident, Alan Cronin, contracted a
staph infection after a hernia operation in 1998.

Alan Cronin>> And after I came out of the coma and realized
what had happened to me, that's when I really started learning
anything at all about how deadly staph infections can be.

>> "Let's see how it is when you lay down and when we put some
pressure on it."

Alan Cronin>> The hospital had to amputate my legs and arms to
save my life because the staph infection that I had acquired was
causing gangrene to settle into my limbs because of the lack of
circulation.

Toni Guinyard>> We met with Alan as he was being fitted for
prosthetic legs.

>> "You're not even close to getting down in that, are you?"

Toni Guinyard>> Alan has become somewhat of an expert about
staph infections, forced to learn from his own situation. He is
a one-man force fighting to educate the public.

Alan Cronin>> We hear about them all the time and people think
that, well, you know, geez, that's a horrible thing, but they
never think it's going to happen to them. It's a real scary
thing and I just don't think enough is being done about it.

Alan Cronin>> "It is pretty tight."

>> "The leg's getting bigger. That's all there is to it. You
want to try standing up or not?"

Alan Cronin>> "No."

Alan Cronin>> You know, I'm not angry and I don't want to be
angry, but it's really disappointing for me after this has
happened to me just to see additional staph infections in
various hospitals.

Toni Guinyard>> Even more frightening is the spread of a strain
of staph resistant to antibiotics.

Alan Cronin>> You know, if I can get a staph infection and
almost die, then it can happen to anybody.

Toni Guinyard>> Consider this: while Alan contracted the common
form of staph in an outpatient medical facility, the concern now
is the somewhat alarming spike in the number of antibiotic-
resistant cases found in the community, so-called community-
acquired MRSA.

Dr. Peter Miao>> I don't want to alarm everybody, but we are
seeing community-acquired infections that are due to MRSA in
people who have never been in a hospital, never had surgery,
never had antibiotics.

Toni Guinyard>> In 2002, an outbreak was first reported among
Los Angeles County jail inmates. The jail sees an average of
one hundred eighty to two hundred new cases each month.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding>> When we started out, of the cases we
found in the jail, only nine percent were coming in from the
community already with MRSA. Now that percentage is at least
twenty-five percent, so part of what we're seeing in the jail is
that there's a lot more in the community and people coming into
the jail are more likely to have MRSA than before.

Toni Guinyard>> The Centers for Disease Control has already
investigated outbreaks of MRSA among athletes, military recruits
and even children. Environment does not seem to play a
significant role in its transmission, but overcrowded living
conditions and poor hygiene are factors.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding>> Skin to skin is absolutely one of the
ways that it can be transmitted and we certainly have seen
situations where it's been transmitted that way.

Dr. Peter Miao>> There was at one time an infectious disease
conference and they did a study, set up observers, and saw how
many people actually go in and out of the bathroom and wash
their hands or not. I don't want to tell you the answer.

Toni Guinyard>> Oh, go ahead and tell me.

Dr. Peter Miao>> There were quite a few that did not wash their
hands.

Toni Guinyard>> And that raises concerns about how easily the
bacteria can be transferred as we go about our day-to-day
routines at home, at work or at play.

Dr. Jonathan Fielding>> In your average gym, this is not going
to be a significant problem. Is there a possibility that, you
know, somebody could contract it from somebody else there?
Sure, but there's a lot of other places that that could occur as
well, so I don't think there's any reason for people to be
afraid to go to gyms. But they shouldn't share personal
articles and they should observe good hygiene.

Dr. Peter Miao>> With the bugs getting smarter, hopefully we're
a little smarter than the bugs and we're one step ahead and we
can find new antibiotics that will help take care of that.

Toni Guinyard>> For now, antibiotic-resistant staph is part of
our lives, forcing us to think twice before we touch. I'm Toni
Guinyard for Life and Times.

Val>> If you should have a staph infection, the only way to
tell if it's resistant to antibiotics is to have a culture done.
In the meantime, the best way to prevent the spread of germs is
to wash your hands for twenty to thirty seconds with warm soap
and water often.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
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Val>> Is the thought of getting older a frightening one? Well,
that depends on how old you are. Young adults, people in their
twenties and thirties, are increasingly anxious about the
thought of getting older, but older people say, hey, this isn't
bad at all. The survey is featured in AARP Magazine and was
conducted in partnership with USC. Hena Cuevas talked with a
USC gerontologist about what's behind these very different
perceptions of aging.

Hena Cuevas>> Tell me a little bit about that new study that
you conducted with the AARP.

Merril Silverstein>> Well, we partnered with AARP to replicate
a study that was done in 1994 about the public's attitudes,
perceptions, anxieties, about aging and older people, the older
population, to see how things have changed over the last ten
years.

Hena Cuevas>> What was one of the most surprising differences
between the study back in 1994 and the study that you just
conducted?

Merril Silverstein>> Well, there were several. One is that we
asked people a series of twenty questions which was basically a
quiz about their knowledge of aging. People seemed to have more
accurate pictures of what it means to age normally, that is
decline in senses, a decline in eyesight and hearing, as well as
a slowing of reflexes. But there is also an increase in the
perception that older people are senile. That, we think, is a
warning sign, a negative sign, about how the public views the
older population.

Hena Cuevas>> So most of the respondents thought that old
people, being old, equates being senile?

Merril Silverstein>> About thirty percent said that and that
was particularly true among the young adults who were eighteen
to twenty-five. That's where, I think, the negative stereotypes
have taken some root.

Hena Cuevas>> Why do you think that was the case?

Merril Silverstein>> Well, I think there's been in the media
images of older people that have been less than flattering. If
you look at many television programs, you see images of older
people who are cranky, who need help, who are frail, and these
images sit in peoples' minds and give them very negative
impressions about the whole older population, the entire
population. I think part of it is that.

In addition to emphasis on remedies for aging with Botox and
even legitimate interventions like taking antioxidants, the
spotlight has been put on aging as a double-edged sword. Part
of that is inducing fear and anxiety in the younger population
and part of it is producing healthy anxiety about changing
behaviors. Then there's the dark side which is really
stigmatizing older people as being senile and helpless and
frail.

Hena Cuevas>> How surprised were you when you saw the increase
in the anxiety levels among the twenty and thirty year olds?

Merril Silverstein>> Well, we were surprised in one way and not
surprised in another. It's not surprising to see younger people
expressing anxiety because of how far away the aging process
will be for them and people are generally more afraid of the
unknown. As people get closer to old age, they see that it's
not as threatening, it's not as dire, it's not as tragic as
younger people think.

Hena Cuevas>> Do you think this anxiety is tied in any way with
our obsession with youth?

Merril Silverstein>> Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think the culture
of youth, as we call it, is alive and well. In fact, I think
it's growing and I mentioned Botox and other interventions to
get rid of wrinkles, to dye your hair, tremendous pressure, I
think, to eliminate the signs of aging. In fact, that's one of
the major anxieties we see among young adults in their twenties
and thirties that they're going to be demonstrating the signs of
aging and the stigmas attached to that.

Now I have to say that older people do not see that as a stigma.
The older you get, the fewer anxieties people have. As you
approach old age, you realize that wrinkles don't hurt. You
realize that life can be good after sixty-five. But the anxiety
in the twenty and thirty year old group is very prominent, I
think, and this is something we need to address.

Hena Cuevas>> How is this information going to be helpful?

Merril Silverstein>> I think it's going to alert the population
-- and AARP is keen on this as well -- alert the population of
what people need to know about aging. I think a little anxiety
is healthy. It helps you prepare in terms of savings, in terms
of health behaviors and so on. But too much anxiety is a
reflection, I think, of stereotypes that are very negative. We
have a term in gerontology called "elder bashing" that is
blaming the elderly for everything, all the social ills of
society, and I think we've seen a slight increase in that.

There's also the idea that generations are in conflict with each
other. Those kinds of conflicts are real, but represent a small
proportion of the population which I think is growing. But in
terms of the percent who support older people, it's about ninety
percent. Ninety percent of the population say that older people
do not have too much power, that they have just enough power.
In fact, many say that older people have too little power.

Hena Cuevas>> How can these perceptions be changed or improved?

Merril Silverstein>> Well, I think some of it can occur as
young as grade school. Having older people visit classrooms and
talk about the aging experience. Other studies have shown
tremendous amounts of age segregation. I would say fewer than
ten percent of people in their twenties even associate with an
older person outside of their family. So getting more
integration between age groups, having more exposure to older
adults, as well as formal education about aging, about what to
expect when you make a transition to teenager, young adulthood,
middle age and old age, I think, can help.

Hena Cuevas>> So are you ready then for the next survey in the
next ten years? Already thinking about it?

Merril Silverstein>> We absolutely are. We're thinking of this
survey as a barometer of attitudes toward aging which will occur
every ten years. We'd actually like to do it every five years
because the pace of social change and the aging of the baby
boomers is occurring at such a rate now that entry into old age
will start occurring in just a few years. That will accelerate
as the baby boomers get into the senior years, so we want to
really keep tabs of how the public is thinking about aging and
old people.

Hena Cuevas>> Very important information as our population
ages. Thank you very much, Dr. Silverstein.

Merril Silverstein>> Thank you.

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Val>> It was a whole world unto itself. Black stars, talent
agents and nightclubs created opportunities when the movie
industry often shut out African-Americans. It's now the subject
of a new book and Vicki Curry talked with historian, Donald
Bogle, about black Hollywood in the 1930's and 1940's.

Vicki Curry>> Donald Bogle, your book is "Bright Boulevard,
Bold Dreams, The Story of Black Hollywood", but you chose to
focus not just on what happened on screen, but also on what
happened off screen. Why did you go in that direction?

Donald Bogle>> Well, you know, I had written before about black
movie images and black television images and I wanted to do
something else because I discovered that there had been a real
black community of film people in Los Angeles going back to the
early years of the twentieth century and I wanted to explore
that. I wanted to see what happened when African-Americans
first came to Hollywood, how it was that they got to work in the
industry.

I wanted to look at the town itself, how the town changed, and
also how black performers struggling to get roles in the
beginning and then questioning those roles and struggling for
better roles, and to really trace this history of a really
vibrant, energetic black film colony within the midst of the
larger film industry.

Vicki Curry>> Well, some of the pioneers of black Hollywood are
obviously well-known, like Dorothy Dandridge or Bill "Bojangles"
Robinson, but many of them came later in the 1930's, 1940's and
1950's. Who were some of the earliest pioneers?

Donald Bogle>> Well, it's very interesting when you look at the
history because really black Hollywood probably starts with a
woman that most people are not going to know anything about. It
was a woman who came to Los Angeles. She had been born in
Kentucky. She came here in the teens of the twentieth century
and her name, or the name she gave herself, was Madame Sul-Te-
Wan, but that wasn't her real name. Her real name was Nellie
Conley. She struggled to find work and then she was able to get
an introduction to D.W. Griffith, the filmmaker who was shooting
"The Birth of a Nation". But she was the first really who comes
and makes a place for herself in the industry. She keeps
working in bits. Sometimes she lucks up in supporting roles and
she keeps going for decades.

The other thing which was interesting was that there was an
actor by the name of Noble Johnson, a very handsome actor who
came to Hollywood in the teens. Noble Johnson did bits and
supporting roles. He didn't just do black parts. He played
other ethnic characters. He might play a Native-American. He
might play an Arab. He worked in silents and kept working into
the sound era.

The interesting thing about Noble Johnson was that Noble Johnson
helped found the Lincoln Motion Picture Company and this was a
company that made race movies. Race movies were black-cast
movies made for black audiences. So those two were Madame Sul-
Te-Wan and Noble Johnson. They were early, but the interesting
thing is the first real kind of black star in Hollywood was a
child.

Vicki Curry>> Oh, really?

Donald Bogle>> It was a child actor. His name was Ernest
Morrison. He was known as Sunshine Sammy and he worked with
Harold Lloyd. He worked in the early "Our Gang" series. He was
very well-known within the black community in Los Angeles.
People knew him and admired him. But they were the early ones.
The other thing that was also interesting was that, in the very
early days, there were a number who ended up working as servants
for major white stars.

Vicki Curry>> Yeah, I thought it was interesting that you spend
quite a bit of time in the book talking about that. Why is
that?

Donald Bogle>> Well, I found that interesting because the black
servants working for these white stars understood that, in
Hollywood, if you know any secrets, you've got some power or
you've got some influence and the black servants knew a lot of
secrets. They really saw the whole thing of being a servant as
a stepping stone and they never really saw themselves as
servants. That's really interesting. But that's how the town
began to open up and the real shift came once sound pictures
came into being. Then you do find more blacks working regularly
in Hollywood films and you get the rise of Step'n Fetchit in the
late 1920's and 1930's. Fetchit, I mean, lived in high style.
I mean, he had mansions, he had limousines.

But you know, the other thing that's so interesting about black
Hollywood is that it's a mythic place, but it's also real
because there was this black part of town. There was the big
thoroughfare, Central Avenue, and Central Avenue was this place
where there were black nightclubs and restaurants and shops and
there was the great Dunbar Hotel. So there really was a
definite part of town where there was all of this energy and all
of this excitement.

Vicki Curry>> Well, you also talk about sort of the lavishness
of many of the stars.

Donald Bogle>> Well, what happened in the early 1940's was
that, by the early 1940's, Hattie McDaniel had won her Oscar for
"Gone With the Wind", the Nicholas Brothers had come to
Hollywood to live from the East Coast. These were these
extraordinary dancers, both of them very, very dapper.

There emerges in the early 1940's within black show business
circles a black elite. They were able to make enough money and
to live comfortably and there was a part of town originally
called Blueberry Hill, but it became known as Sugar Hill. There
you had these beautiful homes, really these mansions, and these
beautifully tended landscaped lawns. So there was just this
whole other world there. It was a very enclosed world and
eventually it was a world that disappeared.

Vicki Curry>> One of the movies in the book that you spent some
time on is one that I had never heard of. It was quite
significant. It was "Imitation of Life".

Donald Bogle>> Yes, "Imitation of Life". There were two
versions of "Imitation of Life", but the first one made in 1934
was one that proved to be very important to the African-American
community. The subplot of "Imitation of Life" dealt with a
light-skinned young black woman and she wants to pass for white.
The thing about "Imitation of Life", I mean, it just indicated
really that you had all this talent out here, these black
performers and so forth, and to get in the movies, to get roles,
was a real accomplishment, but then they really wanted roles
with more substance. They wanted roles that said more and spoke
about life in America for them.

Vicki Curry>> So you take your book from the earliest days of
Hollywood through the 1950's, but that's where you stop. Why
did you end at that time?

Donald Bogle>> Well, the book ends at the close of the 1950's,
a little bit into the 1960's, and I talk about the death of
people like Nat King Cole and Dorothy Dandridge. Because what
happens really by the end of the 1950's, certainly into the
1960's, with the changes in America, socially Hollywood opens up
in another kind of way and so we move on to a new kind of new
black Hollywood, but the old one then really does start to
vanish. The sad thing is that not only is it fading and does it
disappear, but it also disappears from the history books.

Vicki Curry>> Well, Donald Bogle, author of "Bright Boulevard,
Bold Dreams", thank you for bringing us the story of black
Hollywood.

Donald Bogle>> Thank you, Vicki.

Val>> 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.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

Prices at the pump are on the rise again, but will that get
people out of their gas guzzlers?

>> They take up too much room on the streets. It's their sense
of arrogance. They're doing more damage to the air. I mean,
they are doing the worst on every level.

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