CNN contributor who wanted to urinate on dead Afghans complains about TSA pat down

Get short URL email story to a friendprint version Published: 15 October, 2012, 23:25 TAGS: Sex, USA, Security, TSA Screenshot from youtube.com @Dana Loesch Conservative radio host and CNN contributor Dana Loesch says she was molested by TSA agents over the weekend when a routine security pat-down ended with federal agents repeatedly touching her vagina all the while refusing her a public screening. Loesch, 34, says the incident occurred on Sunday at the Phoenix International Airport in Arizona as she prepared to board for a flight. After passing through a primary screening without incident, Loesch says she was told she tested positive for explosive residue and required a secondary pat-down behind closed doors. “TSA said I was covered in explosives, took me to a private room and touched my vagina. So how was your day?” the commentator writes from her @DLoesch Twitter account. Loesch’s husband managed to catch some of his wife’s encounter with Transportation Security Administration agents on camera in a clip that has quickly accumulated thousands of hits on YouTube. On the page where she’s uploaded the footage, Loesch goes further into detail about the day’s event and the “enhanced screening” that she describes as “pressing down repeatedly upon the front of my vaginal area.” “It began after I was ‘randomly selected’ for an additional screening which consisted of swabbing my hands with paper strips. The strips were then taken to a machine for analysis and an alarm sounded. TSA agents determined that I had a suspicious, possibly explosive, residue on my hands and required another, ‘enhanced screening,’” she writes. “They performed the regular pat-down and then the agent informed me that she would be using the front of her hands to "sweep" my groin. She pressed and swept across my crotch three times horizontally and three times vertically. In any other circumstance this would be sexual assault.” Loesch insists that she asked twice for a public screening but was denied both times, and on Twitter she writes she recited the agency’s official rules “as per their website” yet was still refused. Even still, Loesch says she doesn’t have a bone to pick per se with the TSA agents that subjected her to what she equates to sexual molestation. “The agents themselves were friendly and smiled, yet I was still denied a public screening and no witness of my own present for the screening itself (a second agent was in the room at the time). I had no reason to be angry with the agents themselves, yet I was angry, and still am, at the regulations which require them to routinely violate men, women, and children in the name of a false sense of security,” she writes. Even if there are no hard feelings with the agents involved, Loesch writes on Twitter that she intends on filing an official complaint with the TSA and asks others subjected to similar accounts to do the same. “It only continues because we allow it,” she writes. Back on YouTube, though, Loesch breaks-down with a health sampling of snark the TSA’s sometimes overzealous actions on account of counter-terrorism. “After concluding that I wasn’t a terrorist hiding weapons in my vagina, the TSA agents allowed me to go,” she writes. Just months earlier, however, Loesch had a much more open mind about what’s allowed for the sake of security. When video footage was leaked in January of US troops urinating on the corpses of dead Afghan fighters, Loesch chimed-in on her radio show by saluting the soldiers, saying, “I’d drop trou and do it too” and suggesting the guilty persons were worth of receiving “a million ‘cool points.’” “Come on people, this is a war,” she said at the time. And rightfully so: it’s the very same War on Terror that spawned the Department of Homeland Security and, consequentially, the TSA. In the name of war, however, lines must be drawn, and, apparently, airport security screenings are on the side that warrants speaking up about. But the desecration of slain humans? Cool points galore. =============== Scan scam? Full-body scan-maker denies faking test amid TSA probe Get short URL Link copied to clipboardemail story to a friend print version Published: 17 November, 2012, 11:40 TAGS: Conflict, Human rights, Terrorism, USA, Security, Transport, TSA A security officer examines a computer screen showing a scan from a RapiScan full-body scanner, being trialled by Manchester Airport, during a photocall at the airport, in Manchester(Reuters / Phil Noble) A US legislator says Rapiscan, the maker of controversial body-scanners used at American airports, may have falsified its software test results. The company denies the allegations, saying it’s cooperating with the TSA probe into the matter. The test made by a third party was to evaluate the producer’s attempt to address privacy issues with the machines. The company “may have attempted to defraud the government by knowingly manipulating an operational test,” Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Transportation Security Subcommittee, said in a letter to Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole on November 13, according to a Bloomberg report. Rogers said his committee received a tip about the faked tests. The company denied the allegations on Thursday, saying that in couldn’t have manipulated the testing because it was controlled by the government. “At no time did Rapiscan Systems falsify test data or engage in any fraudulent conduct,” said Ajay Mehra, president of Rapiscan Systems, in a statement. At a Thursday hearing before the committee Rogers was questioning John Sanders, assistant administrator for TSA’s Office of Security Capabilities. Sanders said the agency has no evidence that tests were manipulated. “At this point we don’t know what has occurred,” Sanders said. “We are in contact with the vendor. We are working with them to get to the bottom of it.” Rapiscan machines use backscatter radiation to detect objects concealed beneath clothes. The company is one of the two vendors supplying full-body scanners under a contract with the TSA. The other, L-3 Communications, uses a different type of technology for the same purpose. US authorities accelerated introduction of full-body scanners in 2010 following an alleged attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight. This was met with a publicity backlash, as privacy advocates and passengers protested against the revealing images produced by the scanners. Activists said being subjected to the machines equated to a strip search. In a bid to quell the outcry, the TSA asked the producers to adjust the scanners so that a generic outline of the body was displayed in place of the actual image of the person being searched. L-3 Communications managed to do this while Rapiscan failed, Bloomberg says. Instead the TSA places operators of the backscatter scanner in a separate room, where the feedback cannot be seen by the public. If an operator notices anything suspicious, he or she communicates with officers at the checkpoint via radio and asks for further screening. Recently the agency said it was moving backscatter machines from big airports to smaller ones to address the extra time they take for screening. But eventually it moved 91 units to a warehouse instead of redeploying them. As a result, Sanders told the committee, the same number of lines can now process an additional 180,000 more passengers per day. They will stay there until the privacy software issue is resolved, he said. At present the TSA has 174 backscatter machines, according to David Castelveter, a TSA spokesman. Rapiscan has a contract to produce 500 for the agency at a cost of about $180,000 each. The TSA believes backscatter technology is still effective in screening for suspicious objects. =============== Scan scam? Full-body scan-maker denies faking test amid TSA probe Get short URL Link copied to clipboardemail story to a friend print version Published: 17 November, 2012, 11:40 TAGS: Conflict, Human rights, Terrorism, USA, Security, Transport, TSA A security officer examines a computer screen showing a scan from a RapiScan full-body scanner, being trialled by Manchester Airport, during a photocall at the airport, in Manchester(Reuters / Phil Noble) A US legislator says Rapiscan, the maker of controversial body-scanners used at American airports, may have falsified its software test results. The company denies the allegations, saying it’s cooperating with the TSA probe into the matter. The test made by a third party was to evaluate the producer’s attempt to address privacy issues with the machines. The company “may have attempted to defraud the government by knowingly manipulating an operational test,” Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Transportation Security Subcommittee, said in a letter to Transportation Security Administration chief John Pistole on November 13, according to a Bloomberg report. Rogers said his committee received a tip about the faked tests. The company denied the allegations on Thursday, saying that in couldn’t have manipulated the testing because it was controlled by the government. “At no time did Rapiscan Systems falsify test data or engage in any fraudulent conduct,” said Ajay Mehra, president of Rapiscan Systems, in a statement. At a Thursday hearing before the committee Rogers was questioning John Sanders, assistant administrator for TSA’s Office of Security Capabilities. Sanders said the agency has no evidence that tests were manipulated. “At this point we don’t know what has occurred,” Sanders said. “We are in contact with the vendor. We are working with them to get to the bottom of it.” Rapiscan machines use backscatter radiation to detect objects concealed beneath clothes. The company is one of the two vendors supplying full-body scanners under a contract with the TSA. The other, L-3 Communications, uses a different type of technology for the same purpose. US authorities accelerated introduction of full-body scanners in 2010 following an alleged attempt to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight. This was met with a publicity backlash, as privacy advocates and passengers protested against the revealing images produced by the scanners. Activists said being subjected to the machines equated to a strip search. In a bid to quell the outcry, the TSA asked the producers to adjust the scanners so that a generic outline of the body was displayed in place of the actual image of the person being searched. L-3 Communications managed to do this while Rapiscan failed, Bloomberg says. Instead the TSA places operators of the backscatter scanner in a separate room, where the feedback cannot be seen by the public. If an operator notices anything suspicious, he or she communicates with officers at the checkpoint via radio and asks for further screening. Recently the agency said it was moving backscatter machines from big airports to smaller ones to address the extra time they take for screening. But eventually it moved 91 units to a warehouse instead of redeploying them. As a result, Sanders told the committee, the same number of lines can now process an additional 180,000 more passengers per day. They will stay there until the privacy software issue is resolved, he said. At present the TSA has 174 backscatter machines, according to David Castelveter, a TSA spokesman. Rapiscan has a contract to produce 500 for the agency at a cost of about $180,000 each. The TSA believes backscatter technology is still effective in screening for suspicious objects. ================

New scanners break child porn laws

"Body scanning is a big change for customers who are selected under the new rules and we are aware that privacy concerns are on our customers' minds, which is why we have strict procedures to reassure them that their privacy will be protected."

A group of Muslim-American scholars, the Fiqh Council of North America, last month argued that going through the scanners would violate Islamic rules of modesty because they expose people's private parts. The pope has also expressed concerns.

The system produces high resolution images that enable the operator to easily identify concealed threat and contraband items.

The Rapiscan Secure 1000 is ideal for high security environments because both organic (e.g. explosives, narcotics, ceramic weapons) and inorganic (e.g. metal) materials are apparent in the image.

Rapiscan Systems has developed advanced techniques to protect the privacy of the person being screened while enabling effective detection of threat items.

In a recent study, 19 out of 20 persons preferred a Secure 1000 scan to an invasive pat-down physical search.

The system is completely safe for all persons and exceeds the requirements of health authorities worldwide.

The dependable Rapiscan Secure 1000 is easy to use and is the most widely deployed image-based people screening solution.





Jan 05 2010 07:44



The rapid introduction of full body scanners at British airports threatens to breach child protection laws which ban the creation of indecent images of children, the Guardian has learned.

Privacy campaigners claim the images created by the machines are so graphic they amount to "virtual strip-searching" and have called for safeguards to protect the privacy of passengers involved.

Ministers now face having to exempt under 18s from the scans or face the delays of introducing new legislation to ensure airport security staff do not commit offences under child pornography laws.

They also face demands from civil liberties groups for safeguards to ensure that images from the £80 000 scanners, including those of celebrities, do not end up on the internet. The Department for Transport confirmed that the "child porn" problem was among the "legal and operational issues" now under discussion in Whitehall after Gordon Brown's announcement on Sunday that he wanted to see their "gradual" introduction at British airports.

A 12-month trial at Manchester airport of scanners which reveal naked images of passengers including their genitalia and breast enlargements, only went ahead last month after under-18s were exempted.

The decision followed a warning from Terri Dowty, of Action for Rights of Children, that the scanners could breach the Protection of Children Act 1978, under which it is illegal to create an indecent image or a "pseudo-image" of a child.

Dowty told the Guardian she raised concerns with the Metropolitan police five years ago over plans to use similar scanners in an anti-knife campaign, and when the Department for Transport began a similar trial in 2006 on the Heathrow Express rail service from Paddington station.

"They do not have the legal power to use full body scanners in this way," said Dowty, adding there was an exemption in the 1978 law to cover the "prevention and detection of crime" but the purpose had to be more specific than the "trawling exercise" now being considered.

A Manchester airport spokesperson their trial had started in December, but only with passengers over 18 until the legal situation with children was clarified. So far 500 people have taken part on a voluntary basis with positive feedback from nearly all those involved.

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Q+A-U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security under scrutiny
05 Jan 2010 06:00:34 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Alister Bull

WASHINGTON, Jan 5 (Reuters) - The Department of Homeland Security, created following the Sept. 11 attacks, is under scrutiny after President Barack Obama blamed human and systemic failures for a Christmas Day airplane bombing attempt.

Following are questions and answers about the agency:

WHAT IS DHS?

The department's prime responsibility is to protect the U.S. homeland from terrorist attacks and lead a unified response if one does occur. President George W. Bush founded the Office of Homeland Security in an executive order on Oct. 8, 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks revealed serious flaws in the country's protection measures. A year later after lengthy negotiations with Congress, lawmakers approved the creation of a Cabinet-level department. It is in charge of border and transportation security to keep militants and explosives out of the country. It has the lead in preparing the U.S. response to domestic emergencies; developing countermeasures against chemical, biological and nuclear attacks; and producing a picture of threats distilled from raw intelligence gathered across the government. The department is currently led by Obama appointee Janet Napolitano, who replaced Bush appointee Michael Chertoff.

WHY WAS DHS NECESSARY?

Sept. 11 was a catastrophic failure to connect the dots between scraps of information collected by various U.S. intelligence agencies and draw the conclusion, clear in hindsight, that a determined plot to attack the United States was afoot. Part of the problem was that national security duties had been spread among 40 different federal agencies and funded through roughly 2,000 separate congressional appropriations accounts. U.S. lawmakers had been worried by this arrangement for years, and a national homeland security agency was proposed in March 2001, based on the recommendations of a U.S. commission on future security needs.

HOW BIG IS HOMELAND SECURITY?

It has roughly 225,000 employees and a current budget of $55 billion, which has climbed from $19.5 billion in 2002. Setting up the department represented a huge reorganization of government activities. Among agencies it absorbed were the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

HOW WAS IT SET UP?

With ample evidence of how things had gone wrong, Bush announced 11 days after Sept. 11 that he would create an Office of Homeland Security and named Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge as its first director. Bush's Oct. 8 executive order was followed by other presidential decisions to give the office teeth and on June 6, 2002, Bush proposed creating a permanent cabinet-level Department of Homeland Security. Only Congress has the power to set up a federal agency of this reach. The House of Representatives passed its version of the Homeland Security Act on July 26; the Senate backed it, with some amendments, on Nov. 19, and Bush signed it into law on Nov. 25, 2002.

Its motto is: "Preserving our Freedoms, Protecting America".

(Reporting by Alister Bull; Editing by Steve Gutterman)


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By ASSOCIATED PRESS

Beginning Monday, air travelers flying into the United States from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Yemen and other "countries of interest" will be subjected to enhanced screening techniques, such as body scans, pat-downs and a thorough search of carry-on luggage.

Additionally, all passengers on U.S.-bound international flights will be subject to random screening, the Transportation Security Administration announced Sunday. Airports were also directed to increase "threat-based" screening of passengers who may be acting in a suspicious manner.
Photo Gallery
Security increased for U.S.-bound travelers
gallery photo

Airline passengers heading to the United States met increased security screening following U.S. requests for stricter checks after a Nigerian man allegedly tried to ignite explosives on a flight to Detroit.

The TSA said anyone traveling from or though nations regarded as state sponsors of terrorism -- as well as "other countries of interest" -- will be required to undergo enhanced screening. The TSA said those techniques include full-body pat-downs, carry-on bag searches, full-body scanning and explosive detection technology.

"The new directive includes long-term, sustainable security measures developed in consultation with law enforcement officials and our domestic and international partners," the TSA said in a statement posted on its Web site.

The new security measures come in response to the failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb a jetliner as it approached Detroit after a flight from Amsterdam.

The State Department lists Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria as state sponsors of terrorism. The other countries whose passengers will face enhanced screening include Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.

A spokesman for Pakistan International Airline said the company has instituted new security standards for U.S.-bound passengers.

Passengers are subjected to special screening, including full body searches, in a designated area of the departure lounge, said the spokesman, Sultan Hasan. The airline has run advertisements in newspapers to advise passengers of the stepped-up security.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Sunday that full body scanners would be introduced in British airports and officials in Amsterdam said last week they would begin using the scanners on passengers bound for the U.S.

In the Yemeni capital, security personnel at the San'a airport were ordered to apply strict measures, including careful baggage examinations and patting down travelers, especially those departing for the United States as the final destination, an official said.

The security official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to talk about security measures to the media, said the airport was expecting to receive some new equipment to provide better security.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man who allegedly tried to set off an explosive device aboard a Northwest airliner on Christmas Day, has told U.S. investigators he received training and instructions from al-Qaida operatives in Yemen.

The TSA said the ability to enforce the new security measures is the "result of extraordinary cooperation from our global aviation partners."


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Two women barred from flight to Pakistan for refusing scan
Updated at: 2225 PST, Wednesday, March 03, 2010
LONDON: Two women, one a Muslim, have become the first people to be barred from boarding a flight because they refused to go through a full-body airport scanner, a British daily reported Wednesday.

Manchester airport confirmed today that the women, who were booked to fly to Islamabad with Pakistan International Airlines, were told they could not get on the plane after they refused to be scanned for medical and religious reasons.

The women had been selected at random, said the airport.

The Muslim woman decided to forfeit her ticket and left her luggage at the airport. Her companion also left the airport saying she did not go through the scanner on medical grounds because she had an infection.

The full-body scanners were introduced at Manchester and Heathrow last month after the Christmas Day bombing attempt in Detroit. The £80,000 Rapiscan machines show a clear body outline and have been described by critics as the equivalent of "virtual strip searching".

While American transport authorities offer passengers a choice between going through the full-body scanner or going through a metal-arch scanner and a physical search, the British government has said that a refusal to go through the body scanner would bar passengers from boarding aircraft.

A Manchester airport spokeswoman said: "Two female passengers who were booked to fly out of Terminal 2 refused to be scanned for medical reasons and religious reasons. In accordance with the government directive on scanners, they were not permitted to fly.



Heathrow airport has refused to comment on individual cases.



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Airport body scanners ‘could cause cancer’
Updated at: 30 PST, Thursday, July 01, 2010

LONDON: Airport body scanners have a potentially greater risk of cancer than previously thought, a scientist has warned.

The devices emit radiation up to 20 times more powerful than it was believed.

Dr David Brenner, head of the centre for radiological research at Columbia University in New York, said that the concentration of the radiation on skin could pose a greater risk of cancer than expected.

The risk is due to inability of a body to repair X-ray damage to its cells.

"If all 800 million people who use airports every year were screened with X-rays then the very small individual risk multiplied by the large number of screened people might imply a potential public health or societal risk," the Telegraph quoted Brenner as saying.

"The population risk has the potential to be significant,” he added.

However, Civil Aviation Authority spokesman insisted that all the health regulations by the Department for Transport and Health Protection Agency have been considered for the device’s use.

"Under current regulations, up to 5,000 scans per person per year can be conducted safely," he added.


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Experts: CT scans pose risks, need more regulation

By MARILYNN MARCHIONE | AP

Published: Jun 24, 2010 04:36 Updated: Jun 24, 2010 04:36

MILWAUKEE: From long-term cancer risks to radiation overdose mistakes, CT scans pose a growing danger to the American public and need more regulation to improve their safety, imaging experts write in a leading medical journal.

The articles in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine come a week after a story by The Associated Press detailed the overuse of imaging tests and how much the average American's radiation dose has grown in recent years.

CT scans are super-sharp X-rays that have transformed medicine by helping doctors quickly diagnose or rule out injuries and diseases. But they use far more radiation than ordinary X-rays, and too much radiation raises the risk of cancer over time.

The federal Food and Drug Administration and Congress are considering new measures to help prevent medical mistakes — relatively rare cases where some people are accidentally given radiation overdoses.

However, far more people face potential long-term harm from ordinary scans that are done correctly but that are overused, repeated or simply unnecessary.

Each year, 10 percent of the US population gets a CT scan, and use of this imaging is growing more than 10 percent per year.

"That's really the area we should focus on," said the author of one of the articles, Dr. Rebecca Smith-Bindman.

She is a radiologist at the University of California at San Francisco on temporary leave to do radiation research at the National Cancer Institute.

The FDA regulates scanning equipment, but lacks authority to say how doctors use it, or when tests are appropriate.

No federal standards exist for how much radiation a CT scan should use, and a study Smith-Bindman led found a 13-fold variation in the dose that patients at four California hospitals received for the same type of scan.

"The doses are much higher and much more variable than people realize" for CT scanning, she said. "It's time to make it safer." Industry efforts to curb overuse and lower radiation doses have had little impact, she said.

"It is all voluntary," conceded Dr. John Patti, a Massachusetts General Hospital radiologist who heads the American College of Radiology's board of chancellors.

Two scientists with leadership roles in the group and extensive ties to industry and health insurers wrote in a second article in the journal that the use of high-tech imaging needs to become more selective.

Patients who pressure doctors for tests they may not need are part of the problem, write Dr. Bruce J. Hillman of the University of Virginia, and Jeff Goldsmith, president of Health Futures Inc., a Charlottesville, Virginia-based health information policy and analysis company.

Fear of being sued also leads to too many tests — a problem that won't be fixed unless there are limits on malpractice awards, they write.

And although Medicare bars doctors from having a financial stake in care they order for their patients, "a loophole" lets them do tests on machines in their offices, Hillman and Goldsmith write. Some doctors have exploited this to send patients to off-site scanning facilities they own.

Congress could give the FDA authority to set doses for CT scans the way it has allowed the agency to do so for mammograms, Smith-Bindman said.

Groups that track quality-of-control measures for the federal government also should include lowering radiation dose as one of their standards, Smith-Bindman said.

European countries have done this for more than a decade and doses have fallen there, she said.

— Online: New England Journal: www.nejm.org Consumer information: www.radiologyinfo.org and http://tinyurl.com/2wv5fg

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Woman who wore underwear to airport under scrutinyA 52-year-old woman who went through airport security in her underwear posed for Playboy an had her medical license revoked.



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New U.S. mammogram rules may risk minorities, younger women: studies

06 May 2011 03:01

Source: reuters // Reuters

NEW YORK, May 6 (Reuters Life!) - Recent U.S. changes to guidelines for mammography breast cancer screening may prevent women in their 40s, and specifically minority women, from receiving early breast cancer diagnoses, two U.S. studies suggest.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force no longer advises women in their 40s to get routine screening mammograms.

But one of the two studies, a 10-year retrospective analysis from the University of Missouri at Columbia, showed that mammograms detected smaller tumors, with less spreading to nearby lymph nodes, in women in their forties than manual breast exams could.

Minority women were also more likely to develop cancers in their forties than white women, according to data reviewed by researchers at Loma Linda University in California.

"For some Asian women and other minorities, the peak incidence (of breast cancer) is a decade earlier. The guidelines are not ethnicity-specific," said Sheldon Feldman, chief of breast surgery at Columbia University Medical Center in New York and chairman of the American Society of Breast Surgeons publication committee.

"That's an important point. Whether or not you agree with the general recommendations for average groups, then certainly for minorities and certain subgroups, those recommendations need to be altered."

The two studies were presented at the annual meeting of the society last week. Feldman was not involved in either study.

Researchers at the University of Missouri reviewed data on 1,581 breast cancer patients and identified 311 who were aged 40-49, with 47 percent diagnosed with a mammogram.

The median tumor diameter was 20 mm in the mammogram group, compared to 30 mm in the non-mammogram group. Women in the mammogram group also had a lower rate of spread to the lymph nodes, 25 percent against 56 percent.

And, five years after diagnosis, women in the mammogram group were more likely to be free of the disease, 94 percent to 71 percent, and have a better overall survival rate.

A separate study showed that minorities seem to make up a disproportionate number of the younger women who might benefit from mammograms.

Sharon Lum and her team at Loma Linda University used the California Cancer Registry to identify 46,691 patients aged 40 to 74 who were diagnosed with certain kinds of breast cancer from 2004 to 2008.

Among the women in their forties, Hispanics were most likely to receive the cancer diagnoses, followed by Asians and Pacific Islanders. Non-Hispanic black women had more diagnoses of one form of the cancer and fewer of the other.

"The implementation of the... guidelines would disproportionately impact non-white women and potentially lead to more advanced presentation at diagnosis," Lum and her team wrote.

Breast cancer kills around 500,000 people globally each year and is diagnosed in close to 1.3 million people annually. (Reporting by Rob Goodier at Reuters Health; editing by Elaine Lies)