A young shooting victim wrestles with his fears

After the nightmares started, Davien Graham avoided his bicycle.

In his dreams, he pedaled his silver BMX bike through his neighborhood, heard gunfire and died.

If I stay off my bike, I'll be safe, he thought.

He placed it in a backyard shed, where it sat for months. But Jan. 12, 2008, dawned so spectacular that Davien decided to risk it.

He ate Cap'n Crunch Berries cereal, grabbed the bike and rode a half-mile west to Calvary Grace, a Southern Baptist church that was his haven.

Davien lived with an unemployed aunt and uncle, a former Crip, and five other kids in a cramped four-bedroom house in Monrovia, about 20 miles east of Los Angeles.

Yet as a 16-year-old junior at Monrovia High School, Davien earned A's and B's, played JV football and volunteered with the video club. He cleaned the church on Saturdays for minimum wage.

If I live right, God will protect me.

That afternoon, sweaty from cleaning, Davien reached for his wallet to buy a snack — only to realize he had forgotten it at home.

After returning to his house, he caught his reflection in the front window. He was 6 feet 2 and wiry. His skinny chest was beginning to broaden. He was trying to add weight to his 160-pound frame in time for varsity football tryouts.

He showered, told his aunt he would be right back and again jumped on his bike, size-14 Nike Jordans churning, heading for a convenience store near the church.

At the store, he bought Arizona fruit punch and lime chili Lay's potato chips. He recognized a kindergarten-age Latino boy and bought him Twinkies.

Davien pedaled down the empty sidewalk along Peck Road. He could hear kids playing basketball nearby. As he neared the church, a car passed, going in the opposite direction. He barely noticed.

He heard car tires crunching on asphalt behind him. He glanced back, expecting a friend.

Instead he heard: "Hey, fool."

The gun was gray. It had a slide. Davien recognized that much from watching the Military Channel.

Behind the barrel, he saw forearms braced to fire and the face of a Latino man, a former classmate.

The gunman shouted, "Dirt Rock!," cursing a local black gang, the Duroc Crips.

Davien's mind raced: Don't panic. Watch the barrel. Duck.

Suddenly, he was falling. Then he was on the ground, looking up at the church steeple and the cross.

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“Partners” Canceled by CBS

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – CBS’s freshman comedy “Partners” has been canceled, an individual with knowledge of the situation told TheWrap on Friday.

“Partners,” which starred Michael Urie and David Krumholtz, and centered around the “bromance” between two co-workers, one gay and one straight, premiered September 24 and occupied the Monday at 8:30 slot.

Its most recent episode scored a 1.8 rating/5 share in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 demographic – down 14 percent from the previous week, and its poorest showing to date. While the show had strong network support, it proved to be the weak link in CBS’s Monday night comedy lineup, the rest of which – “2 Broke Girls,” “How Met Your Mother” and “Mike & Molly” – has been on an upward trajectory.

“Partners” was created by “Will & Grace” writers David Kohan and Max Mutchnick and was loosely based on their own lives.

A “Two and a Half Men” repeat will air in the show’s former timeslot next week.

This makes the second cancellation for the network so far this year, following “Made in Jersey.”

TV News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The Neediest Cases: Emerging From a Bleak Life to Become Fabulous Phil

For years, Phillip Johnson was caught in what seemed like an endless trench of bad luck. He was fired from a job, experienced intensifying psychological problems, lost his apartment and spent time in homeless shelters. At one point, he was hospitalized after overdosing on an antipsychotic drug.

“I had a rough road,” he said.

Since his hospital stay two years ago, and despite setbacks, Mr. Johnson, 27, has been getting his life on track. At Brooklyn Community Services, where he goes for daily counseling and therapy, everybody knows him as Fabulous Phil.

“Phillip is a light, the way he evokes happiness in other people,” his former caseworker, Teresa O’Brien, said. “Phillip’s character led directly to his nickname.”

About six months ago, with Ms. O’Brien’s help, Mr. Johnson started an event: Fabulous Phil Friday Dance Party Fridays.

One recent afternoon at the agency, 30 clients and a few counselors were eating cake, drinking soft drinks and juice, and grooving for 45 minutes to Jay-Z and Drake pulsating from a boom box.

Mr. Johnson’s voice rose with excitement when he talked about the party. Clients and counselors, he said, “enjoy themselves.”

“They connect more; they communicate more,” he continued. “Everybody is celebrating and laughing.”

The leadership Mr. Johnson now displays seems to be a far cry from the excruciatingly introverted person he was.

As an only child living with his single mother in public housing in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, he said, he tended to isolate himself. “A lot of kids my age would say, ‘Come outside,’ but I would always stay in my room,” he said. He occupied himself by writing comic books or reading them, his favorites being Batman and Spiderman because, he said, “they were heroes who saved the day.”

After graduating from high school in 2003, he worked odd jobs until 2006, when he took a full-time position at a food court at La Guardia Airport, where he helped to clean up. The steady paycheck allowed him to leave his mother’s apartment and rent a room in Queens.

But the depression and bleak moods that had shadowed him throughout middle and high school asserted themselves.

“My thinking got confused,” he said. “Racing thoughts through my mind. Disorganized thoughts. I had a hard time focusing on one thing.”

In 2008, after two years on the job, Mr. Johnson was fired for loud and inappropriate behavior, and for being “unpredictable,” he said. The boss said he needed counseling. He moved back in with his mother, and in 2009 entered a program at an outpatient addiction treatment service, Bridge Back to Life. It was there, he said, that he received a diagnosis of schizophrenia and help with his depression and marijuana use.

But one evening in May 2010, he had a bout with insomnia.

He realized the antipsychotic medication he had been prescribed, Risperdal, made him feel tired, he said, so he took 12 of the pills, rather than his usual dosage of two pills twice a day. When 12 did not work, he took 6 more.

“The next morning when I woke up, it was hard for me to breathe,” he said.

He called an ambulance, which took to Woodhull Hospital. He was released after about a month.

Not long after, he returned to his mother’s apartment, but by February 2011, they both decided he should leave, and he relocated to a homeless shelter in East New York, where, he said, eight other people were crammed into his cubicle and there were “bedbugs, people lying in your bed, breaking into your locker to steal your stuff.”

In late spring 2011, he found a room for rent in Manhattan, but by Thanksgiving he was hospitalized again. Another stint in a shelter followed in April, when his building was sold.

Finally, in July, Mr. Johnson moved to supported housing on Staten Island, where he lives with a roommate. His monthly $900 Social Security disability check is sent to the residence, which deducts $600 for rent and gives him $175 in spending money; he has breakfast and lunch at the Brooklyn agency. To assist Mr. Johnson with unexpected expenses, a grant of $550 through The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund went to buy him a bed and pay a Medicare prescription plan fee for three months.

“I was so happy I have a bed to sleep on,” he said about the replacement for an air mattress. “When I have a long day, I have a bed to lay in, and I feel good about that.”

Mr. Johnson’s goals include getting his driver’s license — “I already have a learner’s permit,” he said, proudly — finishing his program at the agency, and then entering an apprenticeship program to become a plumber, carpenter or mechanic.

But seeing how his peers have benefited from Fabulous Phil Fridays has made him vow to remain involved with people dealing with mental illnesses or substance abuse.

He was asked at the party: Might he be like the comic-book heroes he loves? A smile spread across his face. He seemed to think so.

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Two council members assail LAFD over response times

The Los Angeles Fire Department, which has been embroiled in a months-long controversy over response-time data, has failed to move decisively to resolve the problem, two Los Angeles City Council members said Friday.

In a formal motion, council members Eric Garcetti and Mitch Englander demanded that fire officials appear before the full council as soon as possible to explain why the department has not presented specific actions that could be taken to improve response times by rescuers during life-and-death emergencies.

"The department's managers are either unwilling or unable to do their job to reduce response times and make L.A. safer," said Garcetti, who is running for mayor, in a statement.

Battalion Chief Armando Hogan said Fire Chief Brian Cummings would respond to issues regarding the agency's data on Tuesday at LAFD headquarters, after a regularly scheduled meeting of the Fire Commission.

Friday's comments by the council members were some of the most critical to date about Cummings and his department since the data controversy erupted in March. That's when the LAFD acknowledged it was using response time figures that made it appear that rescuers were reaching victims in need faster than they actually were.

The motion comes after a series of Times investigations on delays in processing 911 calls, dispatching rescuers and summoning the nearest firefighters from other jurisdictions in medical emergencies.

On Thursday, The Times reported that waits for medical aid vary dramatically across Los Angeles' diverse neighborhoods. Residents in some of the city's most exclusive hillside communities can wait twice as long for rescuers to arrive as people who live in densely packed areas in and around downtown, according to the analysis that mapped out more than 1 million LAFD dispatches since 2007.

A task force of experts formed by Cummings has found that inaccurate response time data were a result of systemic problems in the LAFD's 30-year-old computer-assisted dispatch system and a lack of training by LAFD personnel who were assigned to complex data analysis projects.

Earlier this year, Garcetti and other council members asked the LAFD to return with a five-year plan laying out what is needed to improve response times. The council members wanted specifics regarding technology, more firefighters and other resources.

"Six months later, we have bupkis, and that's unacceptable," said Garcetti's spokesman, Yusef Robb.

robert.lopez@latimes.com

kate.linthicum@latimes.com

ben.welsh@latimes.com

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Honey Boo Boo Gets Trashy and Some Really Cute Dumb Ways to Die

We realize there’s only so much time one can spend in a day watching new trailers, viral video clips, and shaky cell phone footage of people arguing on live television. This is why every day The Atlantic Wire highlights the videos that truly earn your five minutes (or less) of attention. Today:

RELATED: Catching Kangaroos Seems Pretty Easy; ‘The Dark Knight’ Goes Pee-wee

So, we’re not quite sure what kind of spirit moved artist Jason Mecier to create a Honey Boo Boo portrait from 25 pounds of trash. But it did. And we’re thankful (sort of?): 

RELATED: Dating Is Just So Depressing

RELATED: A Dubstep Birthday for Michael Jackson and One Soggy Koala

And thank god for YouTube. Besides going to America’s shopping malls, how else would we find terrible parents and gullible children? And how else would we know that we were entertained by these fascinating creatures? 

RELATED: Ai Weiwei’s ‘Gangnam Style’ Isn’t Bad

RELATED: ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ Gets Beautiful

Now that the Dark Knight trilogy is over, aren’t you in the mood for something lighter? Another prequel? How about a fan-made video (which we’re guessing took hours and hours and footage from the 90s and beyond) which imagines all Dark Knight‘s characters in high school?

OMGosh Melbourne Metro this is like the cutest video on earth! You guys are adorable, like we’re talking totes adorable squeeeee—Oh wait. We take that back. We take all of it back. 

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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At Washington’s James Bond exhibit, villains are forever

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Fans of fictional super spy James Bond rely on the durable film franchise for must-have elements, such as jaw-dropping stunts, great clothes, sultry women – and villains who are drop-dead evil.

An exhibition that opened on Friday makes clear that the nasty types that 007 has battled for five decades have changed but one constant remains. The only true match for the world’s greatest secret agent are characters that moviegoers love to hate.

“Exquisitely Evil: 50 Years of Bond Villains” at the International Spy Museum in downtown Washington, is dedicated to the most memorable bad guys and gals in the 23-film series.

From the eponymous “Dr. No” in 1962 to the just-released “Skyfall,” the exhibit shows links between fact and fiction and how villains have kept pace with an evolving world.

“Bond seems the same, but the villains have all changed. They have changed to reflect the changing times,” Anna Slafer, the museum’s director of exhibitions, told a news conference.

In “Dr. No,” the villain schemes against the U.S. space program. Probing the nuclear fears of the 1970s, tycoon Karl Stromberg plots genocide in “The Spy Who Loved Me” (1977).

The information age turns up with Max Zorin, who lusts to corner the microchip market in “A View to a Kill” (1985). In “Skyfall” cyberterrorist Silva tries to hack British intelligence computers.

THINK BIG

But some things have remained the same for the Bond villain, said Alexis Albion, a guest curator and intelligence historian.

They are highly successful, often charming, live in isolated places, generate fanatical loyalty, and think big, she said. “They are on a level that we have to send someone like James Bond after them.”

They also “are off physically,” Albion said. Le Chiffre in “Casino Royale” (2006) weeps blood, Dr. No has a magnetic claw in place of a hand, and the hitman Jaws in “The Spy Who Loved Me” and “Moonraker” (1979) is a giant with steel teeth.

A galaxy of well-known actors – and a few actresses – from around the world have faced off against the six men who have played Bond, from Sean Connery to Daniel Craig.

Yaphet Kotto, Max von Sydow, Sean Bean, Javier Bardem, Donald Pleasence, Christopher Lee, Michael Lonsdale, Lotte Lenya, Mads Mikkelsen, Jeroen Krabbe, Christopher Walken and Telly Savalas all have gone mano-a-mano with 007, and lost.

The International Spy Museum‘s show was timed to the release of “Skyfall” and done in cooperation with EON Productions, which makes the Bond movies.

The exhibit, which includes more than 110 movie and historical artifacts, including Jaws’ teeth, interactive stations, and videos, runs through 2014. General admission to the museum is $ 19.95.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Paul Simao)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Well: Meatless Main Dishes for a Holiday Table

Most vegetarian diners are happy to fill their plates with delicious sides and salads, but if you want to make them feel special, consider one of these main course vegetarian dishes from Martha Rose Shulman. All of them are inspired by Greek cooking, which has a rich tradition of vegetarian meals.

I know that Greek food is not exactly what comes to mind when you hear the word “Thanksgiving,” yet why not consider this cuisine if you’re searching for a meatless main dish that will please a crowd? It’s certainly a better idea, in my mind, than Tofurky and all of the other overprocessed attempts at making a vegan turkey. If you want to serve something that will be somewhat reminiscent of a turkey, make the stuffed acorn squashes in this week’s selection, and once they’re out of the oven, stick some feathers in the “rump,” as I did for the first vegetarian Thanksgiving I ever cooked: I stuffed and baked a huge crookneck squash, then decorated it with turkey feathers. The filling wasn’t nearly as good as the one you’ll get this week, but the creation was fun.

Here are five new vegetarian recipes for your Thanksgiving table — or any time.

Giant Beans With Spinach, Tomatoes and Feta: This delicious, dill-infused dish is inspired by a northern Greek recipe from Diane Kochilas’s wonderful new cookbook, “The Country Cooking of Greece.”

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Northern Greek Mushroom and Onion Pie: Meaty portobello mushrooms make this a very substantial dish.

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Roasted Eggplant and Chickpeas With Cinnamon-Tinged Tomato Sauce and Feta: This fragrant and comforting dish can easily be modified for vegans.

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Coiled Greek Winter Squash Pie: The extra time this beautiful vegetable pie takes to assemble is worth it for a holiday dinner.

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Baked Acorn Squash Stuffed With Wild Rice and Kale Risotto: Serve one squash to each person at your Thanksgiving meal: They’ll be like miniature vegetarian (or vegan) turkeys.

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Rockets land near Jerusalem in escalation of Gaza fighting

Rockets from Gaza hit Southern Israel on Friday, one day after rocket fire from Palestinian militants killed three Israelis. Israel continued its offensive against militants in Gaza, but offered a brief truce during the Egyptian premier's visit.

GAZA CITY -- Palestinian militants for the first time targeted the holy city of Jerusalem on Friday with rocket fire as Israel and the Islamist group Hamas inched closer to all-out war.

It marked the first time in 21 years that air raid sirens rang in Jerusalem,  a crowded ancient city that had long been thought to be off-limits since it includes many Arab residents and some of the world’s most sacred holy sites to Muslims and Jews.

Hamas’ military wing claimed responsibility for what it said were homemade rockets aimed at Jerusalem. Earlier in the day, the military wing said it was aiming for Israel's parliament.

Israeli media reported that the projectiles fell well short of their target, landing in open areas in Gush Etzion, a West Bank settlement about 10 miles south of Jerusalem. No damages or injuries were reported.

“It is a bit of a surprise,” said Yitzhak Reiter, professor of Middle East studies at Ashkelon Academic College. “We always thought Jerusalem was the safest place because they wouldn’t dare target the holy city.”

Militants also tried again – but failed -- to hit Tel Aviv, another heavily populated Israeli city.

Hamas also claimed it shot down an Israeli aircraft Friday evening, though Israeli military officials would not comment on the report. In Gaza City, mosque loudspeakers heralded what they characterized as a great victory for Palestinians. On its Twitter account, the Qassam Brigades, Hamas' military wing, claimed that Israel was shelling the area of the wreckage to prevent Palestinians from reaching it.

The Palestinian rocket attacks followed a heavy Israeli air assault on Gaza Strip – the worst in four years - targeting several hundred sites, military officials said.

By Friday evening, the Palestinian death toll since Wednesday was 23 people, including 11 civilians, Gaza hospital officials said. Three Israelis were killed in a rocket attack on southern Israel on Thursday.

With the escalation in violence, chances of an Israeli ground assault seemed to rise. The Israeli defense minister said Friday that he had called up 16,000 reservist soldiers of the 30,000 authorized this week by the government. Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon said he believed a ground invasion could be launched in a matter of days if the rocket attacks do not stop.

ALSO:

Heavy Israeli airstrikes overnight bring lull in Gaza rockets

Twitter and other social media now another front in Gaza attack

Egyptian prime minister's Gaza visit fails to bring lull in violence

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After Garbo, Leigh, no defining “Anna Karenina”: Knightley

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Film adaptations of “Anna Karenina” have featured the likes of Greta Garbo and Vivien Leigh, but Keira Knightley isn’t fazed about measuring up to such silver screen luminaries with a new cinematic take on Leo Tolstoy‘s classic novel.

The British actress’s turn in the title role in the timeless story about a beautiful married socialite in 1870s Russia who embarks on a passionate affair with a cavalry officer, follows the 1935 version starring Garbo and the 1948 film with Leigh. It is released in the United States on Friday.

“Although there have been many famous actresses play her, there’s never been a definitive version of ‘Anna Karenina,’” Knightley said in an interview. “I think it’s partly because of the relationship you have with the character. She poses more questions than she answers, so it’s always open to different interpretation.”

Knightley stars opposite Jude Law as her husband, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the dashing Count Vronsky, and teams up again with filmmaker Joe Wright in their third film together after previous book-to-film collaborations with 2007′s “Atonement” and 2005′s “Pride & Prejudice.”

The film debuted at the Toronto film festival to warm reviews for Knightley‘s performance. Critics have said the film is overall technically and visually accomplished but lacks a cohesive emotional punch.

Adapted by playwright Tom Stoppard, Wright’s “Anna Karenina” takes place mostly in a theater setting and sees the title character more high-strung and less sympathetic than in previous incarnations.

The director said he cast Knightley, 27, because he felt she could tap into all the internal elements of Anna.

“She was 18 when we made ‘Pride & Prejudice‘, just a kid,” said Wright. “I’ve seen her develop from stunning ingénue to great actress. I felt that she was stronger, braver, even less conforming than she had been before.”

Knightley, newly engaged to musician James Righton, said she stood in moral condemnation over Anna,- “But am I any better than her? No.”

“I think we’re all her,” she added. “That is why she’s so terrifying. We all have bits of her personality within us. We can be wonderful, we can be loving, we can be full of laughter and full of life, and we can also be deceitful, malicious, needy and full of rage.”

WORLDS AWAY

While “Karenina” cements the perception of Knightley as a go-to actress for period pieces that also includes films like 2008′s “The Duchess” and 2004′s “King Arthur,” her career wasn’t always associated with roles grounded in the past.

Knightley spent the 1990s working in the British film and television industry before gaining international attention in the 2002 teenage soccer movie “Bend it Like Beckham.” After that, the actress said she was offered “an awful lot” of films in the teenage genre.

“The one thing that I knew right from the beginning was that I didn’t want to get into those high school movies,” she said. “I was never that interested in being a teenager. I was always interested in worlds away from my own.”

She credits the “massive” success of the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise – which saw her play Elizabeth Swan in the first three installments – as an integral part of her career and “a lot of the reason I was able to do other kinds of smaller films, because my name would help in financing them.”

Coming up, Knightley takes a turn away from costume dramas, in “Can A Song Save Your Life?” – a musical drama that sees her starring as an aspiring singer who meets a down-on-his-luck record producer, played by Mark Ruffalo. She’s currently shooting a reboot of the Tom Clancy thriller “Jack Ryan.”

“I got to the end of ‘Anna Karenina’ and I realized that I’d done about five years of work where I pretty much died in every movie and it was all very dark,” she said. “So I thought, okay, I want this year to be the year of positivity and pure entertainment.”

(Reporting by Zorianna Kit, editing by Christine Kearney and Patricia Reaney)

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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For Alzheimer’s, Detection Advances Outpace Treatment Options

Joshua Lott for The New York Times

Awilda Jimenez got a scan for Alzheimer’s after she started forgetting things. It was positive.

When Awilda Jimenez started forgetting things last year, her husband, Edwin, felt a shiver of dread. Her mother had developed Alzheimer’s in her 50s. Could his wife, 61, have it, too?

He learned there was a new brain scan to diagnose the disease and nervously agreed to get her one, secretly hoping it would lay his fears to rest. In June, his wife became what her doctor says is the first private patient in Arizona to have the test.

“The scan was floridly positive,” said her doctor, Adam S. Fleisher, director of brain imaging at the Banner Alzheimer’s Institute in Phoenix.

The Jimenezes have struggled ever since to deal with this devastating news. They are confronting a problem of the new era of Alzheimer’s research: The ability to detect the disease has leapt far ahead of treatments. There are none that can stop or even significantly slow the inexorable progression to dementia and death.

Families like the Jimenezes, with no good options, can only ask: Should they live their lives differently, get their affairs in order, join a clinical trial of an experimental drug?

“I was hoping the scan would be negative,” Mr. Jimenez said. “When I found out it was positive, my heart sank.”

The new brain scan technology, which went on the market in June, is spreading fast. There are already more than 300 hospitals and imaging centers, located in most major metropolitan areas, that are ready to perform the scans, according to Eli Lilly, which sells the tracer used to mark plaque for the scan.

The scans show plaques in the brain — barnaclelike clumps of protein, beta amyloid — that, together with dementia, are the defining feature of Alzheimer’s disease. Those who have dementia but do not have excessive plaques do not have Alzheimer’s. It is no longer necessary to wait until the person dies and has an autopsy to learn if the brain was studded with plaques.

Many insurers, including Medicare, will not yet pay for the new scans, which cost several thousand dollars. And getting one comes with serious risks. While federal law prevents insurers and employers from discriminating based on genetic tests, it does not apply to scans. People with brain plaques can be denied long-term care insurance.

The Food and Drug Administration, worried about interpretations of the scans, has required something new: Doctors must take a test showing they can read them accurately before they begin doing them. So far, 700 doctors have qualified, according to Eli Lilly. Other kinds of diagnostic scans have no such requirement.

In another unusual feature, the F.D.A. requires that radiologists not be told anything about the patient. They are generally trained to incorporate clinical information into their interpretation of other types of scans, said Dr. R. Dwaine Rieves, director of the drug agency’s Division of Medical Imaging Products.

But in this case, clinical information may lead radiologists to inadvertently shade their reports to coincide with what doctors suspect is the underlying disease. With Alzheimer’s, Dr. Rieves said, “clinical impressions have been misleading.”

“This is a big change in the world of image interpretation,” he said.

Like some other Alzheimer’s experts, Dr. Fleisher used the amyloid scan for several years as part of a research study that led to its F.D.A. approval. Subjects were not told what the scans showed. Now, with the scan on the market, the rules have changed.

Dr. Fleisher’s first patient was Mrs. Jimenez. Her husband, the family breadwinner, had lost his job as a computer consultant when the couple moved from New York to Arizona to take care of Mrs. Jimenez’s mother. Paying several thousand dollars for a scan was out of the question. But Dr. Fleisher found a radiologist, Dr. Mantej Singh Sra of Sun Radiology, who was so eager to get into the business that he agreed to do Mrs. Jimenez’s scan free. His plan was to be the first in Arizona to do a scan, and advertise it.

After Dr. Sra did the scan, the Jimenezes returned to Dr. Fleisher to learn the result.

Dr. Fleisher, sad to see so much plaque in Mrs. Jimenez’s brain, referred her to a psychiatrist to help with anxiety and suggested she enter clinical trials of experimental drugs.

But Mr. Jimenez did not like that idea. He worried about unexpected side effects.

“Tempting as it is, where do you draw the line?” he asks. “At what point do you take a risk with a loved one?”

At Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, Dr. Samuel E. Gandy found that his patients — mostly affluent — were unfazed by the medical center’s $3,750 price for the scan. He has been ordering at least one a week for people with symptoms ambiguous enough to suggest the possibility of brain plaques.

Most of his patients want their names kept confidential, fearing an inability to get long-term care insurance, or just wanting privacy.

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