Mercedes Bryce Morgan’s horror film “Bone Lake” announces itself with a startlingly cheeky opener and closes with a bloody gore-fest, the song “Sex and Violence” by U.K. punk outfit the Exploited spelling out the thesis of the film for us. It’s about the intertwining of sex and violence, you see. But what unfolds between these naughty, viscera-drenched bookends is less of a traditional horror film and more of a psychosexual thriller, like “Funny Games” played between two, young attractive couples, with a setup borrowed from “Barbarian.”
In the script by Joshua Friedlander, a double-booking of a secluded rental mansion becomes a double date when Will (Alex Roe) and Cin (Andra Nechita) stumble in on the intimate weekend vacay of Sage (Maddie Hasson) and Diego (Marco Pigossi). The couples decide to make the best of it and stay, promising to rock-paper-scissors for the house if anything gets “weird.”
And get weird it does. While Diego and Sage seemed perfectly happy on arrival, the sexy, uninhibited Will and Cin have a way of nosing out their insecurities, finding the cracks in their connection and weaseling their way in. Suddenly, their lackluster sex life is on trial, and Sage’s resentment about financially supporting Diego while he pursues his dream of writing a novel bubbles to the surface.
Like any weekend-goes-awry horror movie (e.g., “Speak No Evil”), the female half of the couple catches a bad vibe that her male partner dismisses, due to his vested interest in wanting to stay. For Diego, it’s the promise that Cin will share his writing with his favorite author, for whom she claims to work. They overlook the red flags, blow off their opportunities to leave and decide to go all in with this wanton pair, drinking, playing games, breaking into secret rooms and dodging sexual overtures from each of them.
Morgan and her cinematographer Nick Matthews make the location fun to look at, with a saturated color palette and clever camera movements. However, there are scenes where the film is frustratingly dim and underlit, even if it might be justified by the power going out during a storm.
While there’s a certain verve and style to the middle section, where Will and Cin draw in their prey and toy with them, the Grand Guignol climax bears no rhythm or suspense; it’s merely a bludgeoning of the audience with carnage — too much too late.
Other blunt instruments? Roe and Nechita, who don’t play their roles with any subtlety. Roe’s Will comes off as a dangerous himbo; Nechita’s Cin is an over-the-top minx in her seduction of both Diego and Sage. While Hasson’s Sage is a plausibly strident freelance journalist type, you wonder if she has much experience with female friendship, because Cin’s manipulation is so painfully obvious. Pigossi’s self-obsessed novelist, however, is perfectly pitched in his all-around obliviousness.
There’s a kernel of something fascinating at the center of “Bone Lake,” a melding of sex and violence into gestures that are familiar from true crime stories. But there’s not enough motivation baked into the big third-act twist, and the performances just aren’t strong enough to suggest anything deeper.
“Bone Lake” offers up an appealing surface but it’s ultimately too shallow to get you immersed.
Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.
‘Bone Lake’
Rated: R, for strong bloody violence, grisly images, sexual content, graphic nudity, language throughout and some drug use
IT was perhaps the most famous poster in election history. “Labour Isn’t Working,” proclaimed its simple slogan above a photo of a long, snaking queue outside an unemployment office.
The image helped Margaret Thatcher’s Tories to win a decisive victory in 1979.
4
The iconic ‘Labour Isn’t Working’ poster helped MargaretThatcher secure a historic election victory in 1979 – and it again rings true todayCredit: handout
4
Sir Keir Starmer, seems to be trapped in a kind of doom loop created by his party’s epic mismanagement of the economyCredit: Getty
That poster could be revived today as the beleaguered Labour Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, seems to be trapped in a kind of doom loop created by his party’s epic mismanagement of the economy.
Growth is anaemic, the tax burden colossal. Just like in the late 70s, Britain is gripped by rising debt, inflation and unemployment, as well as increasing militancy in the public sector workforce, where recent generous pay settlements have fuelled a mood of greedy irresponsibility.
Only yesterday the distinguished business leader Lord Stuart Rose, the former head of Marks & Spencer, warned that Starmer and his bumbling Chancellor Rachel Reeves had dragged Britain “to the edge of crisis.”
In a bleak analysis, Lord Rose argued that because “there is no growth in the economy,” neither wealth nor jobs are being created.
The parallel with the 1970s is at its most stark in the hostility to hard work. Fifty years ago Britain became known as “the sick man of Europe” because of its addiction to strikes, with an astonishing 29million working days lost in 1979 alone.
Modern Britain has yet to plumb those depths, though the pig-headed unions are trying to go in that direction, as shown by the current miserable strike on the London Underground, which has paralysed the capital this week.
What makes this strike so ridiculous is that the Tube drivers are extremely well-paid, typically earning around £72,000-a-year, and enjoy excellent job security, pensions, hours and holidays. Yet they act like they are oppressed members of the proletariat.
London Tube Strikes Cause Travel Chaos: Everything You Need to Know
These grotesque demands are part of a wider culture of self-serving entitlement that is destroying Britain’s work ethic, reducing productivity and weakening the dynamism of business.
That destructive spirit can be seen in the recent surge of sick leave in the national workforce, a phenomenon caused not by harsher conditions but by more indulgent management, and the fashion for treating normal emotions as mental health problems.
Mental-health crisis
Yesterday a study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development revealed that employees are now taking an average of nearly two weeks off sick every year.
Only two years ago absenteeism stood at an average of 7.8 days a year. Now that figure has risen to 9.4 days a year, with the mental-health crisis the key driving force.
All too predictably, the record of the public sector is much worse than the private sector. That is not because work on the state payroll is tougher. Just the opposite is true.
The heavily unionised culture of public employment, with its emphasis on workplace rights and victimhood, promotes weak management and a lack of accountability.
The rise in absenteeism is mirrored by the growth in welfare dependency where ever increasing numbers of people think that the state owes them a living. Social security is no longer just a temporary safety net but has become a comfortable lifestyle choice.
There are now 6.5million adults of working age who are claiming out-of-work benefits, while some forms of incapacity payments have become a sort of subsidy for early retirement.
As Lord Rose puts it, “We have arrived in a situation in Britain today where there is effectively no obligation to work, absolutely none.”
In a recent newspaper interview, one claimant called Clare Russell gave an insight into the mentality of some of the worst freeloaders.
Labour likes to boast that it is the party of ‘working people’. Now it should live up to that description.
Ten years ago she gave up work at the age of 46 and since then has lived off the disability benefits she receives for a bad back, as well as a substantial rental income from some property, plus a carer’s allowance to look after her mother who lives 30 miles away.
In her sickening interview, she said that she has “a lovely life, thanks to the great British taxpayer.”
Just to heighten the outrage she added, “when I am at the gym, I watch young people scuttle past the window on the treadmill of work and I must admit to feeling smug.”
The disappearance of the work ethic is neither morally defensible nor financially affordable.
The disability benefits bill is expected to reach £100billion by 2030 while the overall cost of welfare is forecast to go up from £210billion a decade ago to £380billion by 2030.
The welfare leviathan is tracking us ever deeper into debt and towards national bankruptcy.
In the depths of its current political crisis, France — which has an even more lavish benefits system than Britain — shows what can happen when the cost of welfare spirals out of control.
We were the nation of the industrial revolution. We must revive that kind of drive and determination. This should be an absolute priority for the new Labour cabinet.
Reform of welfare and the workplace is not an option, it is a necessity.
Labour likes to boast that it is the party of “working people”. Now it should live up to that description.
4
London is currently paralysed by Tube strikes, despite drivers earning £72,000 and enjoying top job perksCredit: Alamy
4
Business leader Lord Stuart Rose, the former head of Marks & Spencer, warned that Starmer and bumbling Chancellor Rachel Reeves had dragged Britain ‘to the edge of crisis’Credit: PA
WASHINGTON — Filmmaker Peter Jackson owns one of the largest private collections of bones of an extinct New Zealand bird called the moa. His fascination with the flightless ostrich-like bird has led to an unusual partnership with a biotech company known for its grand and controversial plans to bring back lost species.
Last week, Colossal Biosciences announced an effort to genetically engineer living birds to resemble the extinct South Island giant moa — which stood 12 feet tall — with $15 million in funding from Jackson and his partner, Fran Walsh. The collaboration also includes the New Zealand-based Ngai Tahu Research Center.
“The movies are my day job, and the moa are my fun thing I do,” Jackson said. “Every New Zealand schoolchild has a fascination with the moa.”
Outside scientists say the idea of bringing back extinct species onto the modern landscape is likely impossible, although it may be feasible to tweak the genes of living animals to have similar physical traits. Scientists have mixed feelings on whether that will be helpful, and some worry that focusing on lost creatures could distract from protecting species that still exist.
The moa had roamed New Zealand for 4,000 years until they became extinct around 600 years ago, mainly because of overhunting. A large skeleton brought to England in the 19th century, now on display at the Yorkshire Museum, prompted international interest in the long-necked bird.
An artist’s depiction of the largest species of moa, the South Island giant moa, which could stand 12 feet tall.
(Colossal Biosciences via AP)
Unlike Colossal’s work with dire wolves, the moa project is in very early stages. It started with a phone call about two years ago after Jackson heard about the company’s efforts to “de-extinct” — or create genetically similar animals to — species such as the woolly mammoth and the dire wolf.
Then Jackson put Colossal in touch with experts he’d met through his own moa bone collecting. At that point, he’d amassed 300 to 400 bones, he said.
In New Zealand, it’s legal to buy and sell moa bones found on private lands, but not on public conservation areas — nor to export them.
The first stage of the moa project will be to identify well-preserved bones from which it may be possible to extract DNA, Colossal’s chief scientist, Beth Shapiro, said.
Those DNA sequences will be compared with genomes of living bird species, including the ground-dwelling tinamou and emu, “to figure out what it is that made the moa unique compared to other birds,” she said.
Colossal used a similar process of comparing ancient DNA of extinct dire wolves to determine the genetic differences with gray wolves. Then scientists took blood cells from a living gray wolf and used the CRISPR gene-editing tool to modify them at 20 sites. Pups with long white hair and muscular jaws were born late last year.
Working with birds presents different challenges, Shapiro said.
Unlike mammals, bird embryos develop inside eggs, so the process of transferring an embryo to a surrogate will not look like mammalian IVF.
“There’s lots of different scientific hurdles that need to be overcome with any species that we pick as a candidate for de-extinction,” Shapiro said. “We are in the very early stages.”
If the Colossal team succeeds in creating a tall bird with huge feet and thick pointed claws resembling the moa, there’s also the pressing question of where to put it, said Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm, who is not involved in the project.
“Can you put a species back into the wild once you’ve exterminated it there?” he said. “I think it’s exceedingly unlikely that they could do this in any meaningful way.”
“This will be an extremely dangerous animal,” Pimm added.
The direction of the project will be shaped by Maori scholars at the University of Canterbury’s Ngai Tahu Research Center. Ngai Tahu archaeologist Kyle Davis, an expert in moa bones, said the work has “really reinvigorated the interest in examining our own traditions and mythology.”
At one of the archaeological sites that Jackson and Davis visited to study moa remains, called Pyramid Valley, there are also antique rock art done by Maori people — some depicting moa before their extinction.
The South Island giant moa at 12 feet tall would dwarf even the tallest humans.
(Colossal Biosciences via AP)
Paul Scofield, a project advisor and senior curator of natural history at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand, said he first met the “Lord of the Rings” director when he went to his house to help him identity which of the nine known species of moa the various bones represented.
“He doesn’t just collect some moa bones; he has a comprehensive collection,” Scofield said.
Larson writes for the Associated Press. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
From Kevin Baxter: The Dodgers will be without Max Muncy for approximately six weeks after the third baseman was placed on the injured list Thursday with what the team is calling a bone bruise in his left knee. Muncy was injured in the sixth inning of Wednesday’s walk-off win over the Chicago White Sox when Chicago’s Michael Taylor slid headfirst into third on an unsuccessful attempt to steal third base.
Taylor’s helmet hit Muncy’s knee, bending it sideways and flipping the infielder to the ground. The collision was so gruesome, SportsNet LA, which was broadcasting the game, did not show replays. Muncy writhed on the ground in obvious pain before being helped to the clubhouse.
Muncy, who entered the Dodger clubhouse Thursday afternoon wearing a blue elastic support bandage on his left leg, said he originally feared the worst, but an MRI found no structural damage.
“It was tough news, but it was also great news,” he said. “I still get to play baseball this year instead of coming back next year around April. So it was kind of best-case scenario.”
Muncy, who said his knee felt stiff but not painful, was scheduled to meet the Dodger doctors later Thursday but said he intended to embark on an aggressive rehabilitation process.
“Everybody’s body is different,” he said. “You know, some guys heal extremely fast, some guys heal extremely slow. Traditionally, I’ve always healed fairly fast.”
Dave Roberts had some goals in mind for starting pitcher Dustin May on Thursday. And they had little to do with the final result.
“The first thing is his ability to go deeper in games,” the Dodger manager said. “The sweeper has got to be a more effective pitch. His sinker has got to be more effective.
“I know he’s working through some delivery things with the pitching coaches. I’m kind waiting to see what to expect tonight.”
May would give Roberts far more than he asked for, setting down the first 16 batters in order and pitching into the eighth inning for the first time in his career in a 6-2 win over the Chicago White Sox.
The win was the Dodgers’ fourth in a row and ninth in their last 10 games.
The start was May’s 16th of the season and the seven innings he threw gave him 89.2 for the year, both career highs. Consistency, however, has been an issue. He won just once in June, when his 5.67 ERA was highest among Dodger starters.
Get the latest on L.A.’s teams in the daily Sports Report newsletter.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
ANGELS
Zach Neto had three hits, including a homer, Nolan Schanuel added a two-run blast and José Soriano gave up only three hits in seven scoreless innings to lead the Angels to a 5-1 victory over the weak-hitting Atlanta Braves on Thursday night.
The Braves avoided a shutout on Jurickson Profar’s ninth-inning homer off left-hander Brock Burke. It was Profar’s second homer in two games since returning from an 80-game PED suspension.
Soriano (6-5) had seven strikeouts and did not allow a base runner to reach second base. Neto scored three runs.
As athletic and skilled as Deandre Ayton is for a 7-footer, he’s better known at this stage of his career for his shortcomings.
His maddening inconsistency. His uninspired defense. His lack of motivation. His inability to stay healthy.
Portland Trail Blazers center Deandre Ayton shoots under pressure from Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic on Feb. 10 in Denver. (David Zalubowski / Associated Press) If you didn’t like Anthony Davis, you’re going to hate Ayton. Davis was always accountable or at very least not tone deaf, which Ayton apparently is.
Little wonder the Portland Trail Blazers officially gave up on Ayton during the weekend by buying out his contract, opening the door for the Lakers to pick him up at a bargain price.
The Lakers are wagering they can do what the Trail Blazers, and the Phoenix Suns before them, couldn’
Natasha Cloud scored 11 of her 23 points in the third quarter and sparked a huge run to lead the New York Liberty to an 89-79 victory over the Sparks on Thursday night.
Breanna Stewart added 17 points and 14 rebounds and Sabrina Ionescu had 20 points for New York (12-5).
The defending champion Liberty trailed 53-42 midway through the third before Cloud and Ionescu got going. Cloud’s three-point play sparked a 13-0 run and then Ionescu scored 10 straight points for New York to give the Liberty a 63-59 advantage.
Dearica Hamby scored 25 points to lead the Sparks, who got a boost with the return of Rae Burrell. She saw her first action since injuring her knee in the opener. She checked in late in the first quarter and played 12 minutes, finishing with five points.
1907 — Canadian world heavyweight boxing champion Tommy Burns KOs Bill Squires of Australia in round 1 in Colma, Calif., his 6th title defense.
1910 — Jack Johnson knocks out Jim Jeffries in the 15th round at Reno, Nev., to retain the world heavyweight title and spoil Jeffries’ comeback.
1914 — The Harvard eight wins the Grand Challenge Cup to become the first American crew to capture the top event at the Henley Royal Regatta.
1919 — Jack Dempsey wins the world heavyweight title at Toledo, Ohio, when Jess Willard fails to answer the bell for the fourth round.
1923 — Jack Dempsey beats Tommy Gibbon in 15 for the heavyweight title. The fight almost bankrupts the town of Shelby, Montana, which borrowed heavily to stage it.
1930 — Helen Wills Moody wins her fourth straight singles title at Wimbledon with a 6-2, 6-2 win over Elizabeth Ryan. Moody would go on to win four more Wimbledon singles titles.
1954 — FIFA World Cup Final, Wankdorf Stadium, Bern, Switzerland: Helmut Rahn scores twice as West Germany beats Hungary, 3-2.
1964 — Maria Bueno of Brazil upsets Margaret Smith of Australia 6-4, 7-9, 6-3 for the women’s title at Wimbledon.
1975 — Billie Jean King beats Evonne Goolagong, 6-0, 6-1 for her sixth and final singles title at Wimbledon.
1982 — Jimmy Connors beats John McEnroe 3-6, 6-3, 6-7, 7-6, 6-4 for the men’s singles championship at Wimbledon. The match lasts 4 hours, 16 minutes.
1987 — Martina Navratilova wins her eighth Wimbledon singles title and sixth straight, beating Steffi Graf 7-5, 6-3.
1994 — FIFA World Cup: A Bebeto strike saves Brazil from embarrassment, beat USA 1-0 at Stanford.
1999 — Pete Sampras overwhelms Andre Agassi in three sets to capture his sixth Wimbledon title and tie Roy Emerson’s record with his 12th Grand Slam championship. Sampras is the first man in the Open era with six Wimbledon titles.
2002 — Venus and Serena Williams win in straight sets to set up their third title match at a major in 10 months — and the first all-sister Wimbledon final since 1884. Top-seeded Venus, the two-time defending champion, overpowers Justine Henin 6-3, 6-2. Second-seeded Serena routs Amelie Mauresmo 6-2, 6-1 in 55 minutes.
2003 — Lakers star Kobe Bryant is arrested in Eagle, Colo., for sexual assault, charges eventually dismissed.
2004 — UEFA European Championship Final, Estádio da Luz, Lisbon, Portugal: In a huge upset Greece beats host nation Portugal, 1-0.
2004 — Meg Mallon wins the Women’s U.S. Open with a 6-under 65, the lowest final round by a champion in the 59-year history of the tournament. Mallon finishes at 10-under 274 for a two-shot victory over Annika Sorenstam.
2008 — Dara Torres completes her improbable Olympic comeback, making the U.S. team for the fifth time by winning the 100 freestyle at the U.S. Olympic trials in Omaha, Neb. The 41-year-old wins in 54.78. A nine-time medalist, she already was the first U.S. swimmer to make four Olympic teams.
2009 — Serena Williams beats her big sister Venus 7-6 (3), 6-2 for her third Wimbledon title and 11th Grand Slam championship. In the fourth all-Williams final at Wimbledon, Serena comes out on top for the third time. Later, Venus and Serena win their fourth women’s doubles title at Wimbledon and ninth Grand Slam doubles title as a pair.
2010 — Rafael Nadal beats Tomas Berdych in straight sets, 6-3, 7-5, 6-4, to win his second Wimbledon title and eighth Grand Slam championship.
2011 — Tyler Farrar becomes the first American to win a July 4 Tour de France stage, dominating a sprint finish in the third leg as teammate Thor Hushovd of Norway kept the yellow jersey.
2014 — Germany becomes the first country to reach the semifinals for a fourth straight World Cup by beating France 1-0 in a quarterfinal match settled by a first-half header from Mats Hummels.
2015 — Copa América Final, Estadio Nacional Julio Martínez Prádanos, Santiago: Chile defeats Argentina, 4-1 penalties to win their first title; 0-0 after extra time.
2015 — Super Rugby Final, Westpac Stadium, Wellington: Otago Highlanders beat Wellington Hurricanes 21-14 for their first title.
THIS DAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY
1905 — The Philadelphia Athletics scored two runs in the 20th inning, giving Rube Waddell a 4-2 victory over Cy Young of the Boston Red Sox. Both pitchers went the distance.
1908 — George Wiltse of the New York Giants pitched a 10-inning, 1-0 no-hitter against the Philadelphia Phillies.
1912 — George Mullin of the Detroit Tigers celebrated his 32nd birthday by pitching a no-hitter over the St. Louis Browns.
1925 — Two of the great left-handers of their time, Herb Pennock of the Yankees and Lefty Grove of the Athletics, hooked up in a pitcher’s duel that New York won 1-0 in 15 innings. Pennock gave up four hits and walked none.
1939 — Jim Tabor of the Boston Red Sox hit three home runs, including two grand slams, in an 18-12 triumph over the Philadelphia Athletics in the second game of a doubleheader.
1945 — Augie Bergamo drove in eight runs to lead the St. Louis Cardinals to 19-2 rout of the New York Giants in the second game of a doubleheader. Bergamo, batting leadoff, went 5 for 6 with two home runs and four runs scored.
1976 — The Phillies’ Tim McCarver lost a grand slam when he passed Garry Maddox on the base paths. The Phillies still beat the Pirates 10-5 at Pittsburgh.
1983 — Dave Righetti of the New York Yankees pitched a 4-0 no-hitter against the Boston Red Sox at Yankee Stadium.
1984 — Phil Niekro of the New York Yankees struck out five Texas Rangers to become the ninth pitcher with 3,000 strikeouts. No. 3,000 was Larry Parrish.
1985 — The New York Mets beat the Braves 16-13 in 19 innings at Atlanta. The game went until just before 4 a.m. on July 5, and was followed by a fireworks display for the 10,000 still left in the stands. Keith Hernandez of the Mets hit for the cycle in 10 at-bats. The score was tied 8-8 after innings. Both teams scored two runs apiece in the 13th. The Mets scored a run in the 18th to take an 11-10 lead, but Braves pitcher Rick Camp tied the score with a homer. Camp then gave up five runs in the top the 19th. Ron Darling, the seventh Mets pitcher, closed the game giving up two runs.
2006 — Victor Martinez went 5-for-6 and Jhonny Peralta and Travis Hafner each hit two of Cleveland’s six home runs, powering the Indians to a 19-1 rout of New York. The win was Cleveland’s largest at home in more than 56 years, since a 21-2 victory over the Philadelphia Athletics on June 18, 1950.
2006 — Jose Contreras tossed 6 2-3 scoreless innings to win his 17th straight decision and lead the White Sox to a 13-0 victory over Baltimore.
2008 — The Cardinals drop a 2-1 decision to the Cubs but Albert Pujols socks his 300th career home run. At 28 years, 170 days old, he becomes the fifth youngest player to hit 300, one day ahead of Mel Ott. The younger players were Alex Rodriguez, Jimmie Foxx, Ken Griffey Jr. and Andruw Jones.
2008 — Colorado homered six times to rally from a nine-run deficit for the biggest comeback in franchise history and an 18-17 victory over Florida. Chris Iannetta singled home the winning run off Kevin Gregg in the ninth inning. The Rockies and Marlins combined for 35 runs and 43 hits, 21 of them for extra bases with eight home runs.
2010 — The rosters for the 2010 All-Star Game, to be played at Angel Stadium, are announced today. The top vote getters are Joe Mauer in the American League and Albert Pujols in the National League. Among the first-time All-Stars is 40-year-old reliever Arthur Rhodes of the Reds; he sports a sparkling 1.09 ERA in his 19th big league season.
2012 — Boston Red Sox slugger David Ortiz hit his 400th career home run, a leadoff drive to right in the fourth inning against Oakland’s A.J. Griffin.
2014 — Brian Roberts hit three doubles and a triple, leading the New York Yankees to a 6-5 win over Minnesota.
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time…
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected]. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
The Dodgers will be without Max Muncy for approximately six weeks after the third baseman was placed on the injured list Thursday with what the team is calling a bone bruise in his left knee. Muncy was injured in the sixth inning of Wednesday’s walk-off win over the Chicago White Sox when Chicago’s Michael Taylor slid headfirst into third on an unsuccessful attempt to steal third base.
The Dodgers now have 13 players on the injured list.
Taylor’s helmet hit Muncy’s knee, bending it sideways and flipping the infielder to the ground. The collision was so gruesome, SportsNet LA, which was broadcasting the game, did not show replays. Muncy writhed on the ground in obvious pain before being helped to the clubhouse.
Muncy, who entered the Dodger clubhouse Thursday afternoon wearing a blue elastic support bandage on his left leg, said he originally feared the worst, but an MRI found no structural damage.
“It was tough news, but it was also great news,” he said. “I still get to play baseball this year instead of coming back next year around April. So it was kind of best-case scenario.”
Muncy, who said his knee felt stiff but not painful, was scheduled to meet the Dodger doctors later Thursday but said he intended to embark on an aggressive rehabilitation process.
“Everybody’s body is different,” he said. “You know, some guys heal extremely fast, some guys heal extremely slow. Traditionally, I’ve always healed fairly fast.”
Taylor also left the game with a shoulder contusion. The White Sox have listed his status as day to day.
Muncy’s place on the roster was taken by outfielder Esteury Ruiz, who was acquired on April 2 from the Athletics in exchange for minor league right-handed pitcher Carlos Duran. Ruiz appeared in 66 games for triple-A Oklahoma City, batting .292 with eight homers, 37 RBIs and 38 stolen bases.
Muncy’s absence will leave a big hole in the Dodgers’ lineup. He led the team with a .333 average and 24 RBIs in June, when he matched Shohei Ohtani for the lead in home runs with seven. He is hitting .250/.375/.457 for the season and is third on the team with 55 RBIs.
“He’s huge,” pitcher Clayton Kershaw, who was on the mound when the injury happened, said of Muncy. “I don’t really know why he stole there. It just seemed unnecessary. We’re all holding our breath that Munc is going to be OK.
“He’s obviously a huge part of our team, especially the last two months.”
Michael Taylor’s helmet collided with Max Muncy’s left knee on his unsuccessful attempt to steal third base, injuring Muncy in the process.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
Miguel Rojas, who hasn’t played since injuring his left hand on an attempted steal Sunday, started at third base Thursday. Kiké Hernández, who took Muncy’s place Wednesday, is also likely to see some time at third in Muncy’s absence.
Hernández is hitting .204/2.70/.383 while Rojas, primarily a second baseman, is batting .250/.289/.380.
President Biden’s weekend announcement that he has an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer that has metastasized to his bone sparked the usual sympathy from supporters — and sharp suspicions among detractors.
The announcement comes amid fresh reporting on Biden and his inner circle hiding the degree to which his mental acuity was slipping during his presidency and campaign for reelection last year, and the advanced stage of his cancer drew immediate accusations from the right that the former president was also hiding problems with his physical health.
President Trump said he was surprised the cancer “wasn’t notified a long time ago,” suggested the public wasn’t being properly informed and said that “people should try and find out what happened.”
The Times spoke to six doctors who are experts in prostate cancer. They said the information Biden’s office has shared about his condition is indeed limited, but also that many of the assumptions being made publicly about the progression of such cancers, the tests that can screen for them and the medical guidelines for care among men of Biden’s advanced age — 82 — were simply off base.
The cancer
In its statement Sunday, Biden’s office said the former president was seen last week “for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms,” and on Friday was “diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone.”
Dr. Mark Litwin, chair of UCLA Urology, said that description indicated Biden has a more advanced and aggressive form of prostate cancer than is diagnosed in most men, but that it was nonetheless “a very common scenario” — with about 10% of such cancers in men being metastatic at diagnosis.
Dr. Howard Sandler, chair of the Department of Radiation Oncology at Cedars-Sinai, agreed.
“It’s a little unusual for him to show up with prostate cancer that’s metastatic to bone at first diagnosis, but not extraordinary,” he said. “It happens every day to elderly men.”
That’s in part because of the nature of such cancer, the modern screening guidelines for older men, and the advanced treatment options for such cancer when it is found, the doctors said.
Prostate cancer in small, slow-growing amounts is prevalent among men of Biden’s age, whether it’s causing them problems or not. Most prostate cancers can be slowed even more dramatically — for years after diagnosis — with medical intervention to block testosterone, which feeds such tumors.
For those reasons, many doctors recommend men stop getting tested for prostate-cancer-related antigens, through what’s known as a PSA test, around age 70 or 75, depending on the individual’s overall health.
That advice is based in part on the idea that finding a slow-moving prostate cancer and deciding to act on it surgically or otherwise — which many alarmed patients are inclined to do when they get such news — can often lead to worse outcomes than the cancer would have caused if simply left alone. That includes impotence, incontinence and life-threatening infections.
Also, if an older patient does start experiencing symptoms and is found to have a more advanced prostate cancer, modern treatments are capable of stalling the cancer’s growth for years, the doctors said — often beyond the point when those patients are statistically likely to die from something else.
Even when older patients are tested and show somewhat elevated PSA levels, it is not always of immediate concern, and they are often told to just keep an eye on it, Litwin said. Simply put, doctors “typically don’t get too exercised about a diagnosis of prostate cancer in an 82-year-old,” he said.
Dr. Sunil Patel, a urologic oncologist and an assistant professor of urology and oncology within the Brady Urological Institute at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said that’s because the average life expectancy for an American man is under 85.
“And so most men at that time, at 75, they’re like, ‘OK, well, if it’s not going to kill me in the next 10 years, I’m going to leave it alone,’” Patel said. “That’s a really shared decision between the patient and the physician.”
When advanced, aggressive prostate cancers are found, as with Biden, the prognosis — and treatment plan — is of course different, the doctors said. “He is for sure going to need treatment,” Litwin said. “This is not the type that we can just observe over time like we often do.”
But that doesn’t mean Biden’s doctors dropped the ball earlier, he and others said.
The diagnosis
Biden’s office has not said whether he was receiving PSA screenings. A letter from Biden’s White House physician in February of last year made no mention of PSA testing, despite other recent presidents’ medical assessments including that information. Biden’s aides did not respond to requests for comment.
The doctors The Times spoke to had no special insight into Biden’s medical care, but said his diagnosis did not make them feel any less confident about the caliber of that care or suggest to them any nefarious intent to hide his condition.
For starters, “it would be considered well within the standard of care” for Biden to have forgone testing in recent years, given his age, Sandler said. “Certainly after 80.”
Litwin said he believes Biden probably was still tested, given his position, but that doesn’t mean he was necessarily hiding anything either. Some forms of aggressive prostate cancer don’t secrete antigens into the blood at levels that would be flagged in a PSA test, while others can grow and even metastasize rapidly — within a matter of months, and between routine annual screenings, he said.
Patel said he has personally found “very aggressive disease” in patients who had relatively normal PSA levels. “I don’t think anyone can blame anyone in terms of was this caught too late or anything like that,” he said. “This happens not too infrequently.”
Dr. Alicia Morgans, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, a genitourinary medical oncologist and the director of the Survivorship Program at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, agreed. Even if a patient is diligent about getting screened annually, “there will be some cancers that arise between screening tests,” she said.
Morgans said things gets even more complicated as men get older, when their PSA number may increase and start getting monitored before it is considered a clear indicator of cancer.
“Maybe it’s up a while. It was not cancer before, it hasn’t really changed that much. Now it has become cancer. It’s not the fault of anyone,” she said. “You can do everything right and things like this can happen.”
The treatment
Biden’s office said his cancer appeared “to be hormone-sensitive, which allows for effective management.”
The doctors The Times spoke to were relatively bullish about Biden’s short-term — and even medium-term — prognosis. “It’s not curable, but it’s highly treatable,” Morgans said.
“Without meaning to sound glib, there’s never been a better time to have metastatic prostate cancer in the history of medicine,” Litwin said — in part thanks to Biden’s own cancer “moonshot” initiative and the funding it sent to institutions such as UCLA, which has helped develop new drugs.
“There are numerous, very effective treatments for a patient in his situation,” Litwin said.
The standard and most likely course of care for Biden will be ADT, or androgen deprivation therapy, which involves a pill or shot that will shut down testosterone production, the doctors said.
“Now, an 82-year-old doesn’t have the same testosterone production as a 22-year-old anyway, so there’s not that far to go. But we shut it off,” Litwin said. “And by shutting it off, it cuts out the principal hormone that feeds the prostate cancer. That alone can be very, very effective.”
Dr. Geoffrey Sonn, urologic oncologist and associate professor of urology at Stanford Cancer Center, said Biden’s cancer is serious, but the ADT treatment “will make prostate cancer cells shrink down, stop growing, at least temporarily, in the vast majority of guys.”
“That is, it’s not a permanent fix, in that those cells will eventually figure out a way to grow even with low levels of testosterone,” Sonn said. “But that can take several years, and sometimes longer.”
Recent studies have shown that adding additional medications to an ADT regime can extend life even further, Sonn said, to “four, five, seven, 10” years or more after a metastatic prostate cancer diagnosis.
Dr. Mihir Desai, a urologist with Keck Medicine of USC, said with modern advancements, prostate cancer is just different than other cancers.
“If you find, say, colon cancer or pancreatic cancer or liver cancer are metastasized, then the deterioration is fairly fast and the outcomes are very poor,” he said. But with previously untreated metastatic prostate cancer, “there are many lines of treatment that can, if not cure it, certainly keep it under control for many years, with good quality of life.”
Sandler, who focuses on radiation oncology, said ADT treatment can cause loss of bone density or muscle mass, so Biden will likely be encouraged to stick to a fitness regimen or take medications to counter those effects.
He may also receive radiation to more heavily target specific pockets of cancer, including where it has metastasized to the bone, but that would depend on the number of metastatic sites, Sandler said — with radiation more likely the fewer sites there are.
“If there’s cancer all over the place, then there’s probably no benefit,” he said.
Former President Biden’s office said Sunday that he has been diagnosed with aggressive prostate cancer and is reviewing treatment options with his doctors.
Biden was having increasing urinary symptoms and was seen last week by doctors who found a prostate nodule. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and the cancer cells have spread to the bone, his office said in a statement.
When caught early, prostate cancer is highly survivable, but it is also the second-leading cause of cancer death in men. About 1 in 8 men will be diagnosed over their lifetime with prostate cancer, according to the American Cancer Society.
Here are some things to know about prostate cancer that has spread.
What is the prostate gland?
The prostate is part of the reproductive system in men. It makes fluid for semen. It’s located below the bladder and it wraps around the urethra, the tube that carries urine and semen out through the penis.
How serious is Biden’s cancer?
Biden’s cancer has spread to the bone, his office said. That makes it more serious than localized or early-stage prostate cancer.
Outcomes have improved in recent decades, and patients can expect to live with metastatic prostate cancer for four or five years, said Dr. Matthew Smith of Massachusetts General Brigham Cancer Center.
“It’s very treatable, but not curable,” Smith said.
What are the treatment options?
Prostate cancer can be treated with drugs that lower levels of hormones in the body or stop them from getting into prostate cancer cells. The drugs can slow down the growth of cancer cells.
“Most men in this situation would be treated with drugs and would not be advised to have either surgery or radiation therapy,” Smith said.
What is a Gleason score?
Prostate cancers are graded for aggressiveness using what’s known as a Gleason score. The scores range from 6 to 10, with 8, 9 and 10 prostate cancers behaving more aggressively. Biden’s office said his score was 9, suggesting his cancer is among the most aggressive.
