After an emotional and tense two-day hearing in Silver Springs, Maryland, federal advisers voted to revoke the approval of the world’s top-selling cancer drug Avastin as a treatment for women with advanced breast cancer. The Food and Drug Administration’s Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee heard from patients who say Avastin is a miracle drug, and from cancer advocates who point to adverse side-effects in other users. Finally, the committee concluded that research showed that the drug, which costs $88,000 a year per patient, failed to significantly extend patients’ lives or their quality of life. 

New findings published in the Journal of the American Medical Association yesterday report that a long accepted but invasive protocol for treating breast cancer may not be necessary in some 20 percent of patients. 

This week a government physicians' group, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, issued a recommendation that women with no underlying risk factors for breast cancer wait until they are 50 before getting regular mammograms. Until that point, the recommended age for the screening was 40. And today the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology issued a recommendation of its own. That group says women shouldn't get the pap smear test that screens for cervical cancer until they are 21. They also said women should get the tests less frequently than many do now: once every two years for women under 30 and once every three years for women over 30. The new recommendations have many women up in arms. Dr. Andrea Price, an OBGYN, says some of her patients are confused and dismayed by these recommendations. We hear what she recommends.

• Business Takeout: The House Financial Services Committee passed a measure yesterday that would let the government break up large banks, even if they're healthy. New York Times reporter Louise Story tells us why.
  
• Sports Takeout: Ibrahim Abdul-Matin takes a look at baseball's Managers of the year and attempts to predict who could win the NL Cy Young Award.
• The Value: Farai Chideya interviews Tanya Selvaratnama, a theater actor who is organizing a book drive for Sri Lankan children. Click through for a video of their interview.