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Doctors hope newer versions of artificial ankles will better mimic nature’s joint
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This news story attempts to explain the treatment options available for people who have severely disabling pain caused by osteoarthritis of the ankle. The article is generously sprinkled with both hope and caveats about the newest generation of ankle replacement implants intended to improve life for people like patient Dan Sivia: “Specialists hope… although it’s too soon to be sure.” “If the newer implants pan out…” “There is little research to tell how long newer versions will last…” Despite this attempt at even-handedness, however, readers are left with a fuzzy understanding of the potential harms of ankle replacements, little hard data about their potential benefits, virtually no understanding of the quality of the evidence on this topic, and no mention of a key source’s potential conflicts of interest. Are there any randomized trials comparing 3rd-generation ankle replacement to nonsurgical treatments or fusion or any other treatments? If not, are there large cohort studies? Small case series? What are the limitations of the evidence? What exactly do we know about the clinical outcomes of the new implants? What proportion of patients report less pain and improved mobility? How many fail? (See “Quantification of Benefits of Treatment” criterion.) What are the short- and long-terms harms associated with ankle replacement? (See “Harms of Treatment” above.) This is not a simple procedure and complications are an important outcome. What does it mean for an ankle replacement to fail, other than the need for “additional surgeries on your ankle in the future”? Can a failed implant usually be converted to an ankle fusion without problems? (There is some research to suggest that this is often the case.) Given that the new generation of implants were approved in 2005, does that mean there are no published data on their durability beyond a year or two? Is there any precedent in the development of other weight-bearing joint replacements (hip, knee) to suggest that outcomes improve after an implant is re-engineered to “work more like the joint you’re born with?” Is there good research to buttress the contention that the new ankle implants “really mimic a natural ankle”? Is there no expert free of industry conflicts who could provide more than a few words of independent assessment of the newest ankle implants? The absence of such a source is troubling in a story about a medical device with a long history of problems. (See “Sources of Information” criterion.) The story provides good reasons to be cautious. So, in the end, why wasn’t it?
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mixture
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"The article says that the costs of a typical ankle replacement can “reach $50,000.” However, it doesn’t mention the cost of the most common alternative, fusion, or take into account the future cost of treatment after the device fails. The story provides no quantitative estimate of benefit from ankle replacement or ankle fusion—-no information about what patients would consider ""real"" outcomes. One meta-analysis has reported that 38% of patients treated with ankle replacement had an excellent result, 30.5% had a good result, 5.5% had a fair result, and 24% had a poor result. Among people who had fusion, the corresponding numbers were 31%, 37%, 13%, and 13%. (J Bone Joint Surg Am. 2007;889(9):1899-905.) Even reporting the research on earlier generations of ankle replacement would be helpful, since it would reinforce the message that people should approach the new treatment with caution. It would be fairer if the writer simply stated that these are patients who have a real problem, but one that currently lacks a good, proven treatment option. The article explains some of the potential harms and limitations of an ankle fusion, but says little about those of ankle replacement. What are the short- and long-term risks? (In the closing paragraph there is a vague reference to “different risks of wound infections” with different implants.) What does it mean when an ankle replacement “fails”? Is fusion usually still an option? This is not a simple procedure and complications are an important outcome. For example, an analysis of more than 5000 patients in California found that people who received an ankle replacement had an increased risk of device-related infection and were more likely to require a major reoperation than people who had an ankle fusion. The rates of major reoperations after ankle replacement were 9% at one year and 23% at five years compared with 5% and 11% following ankle fusion. (J Bone Joint Surg Am. 2007;89(10):2143-9.) The news story summarizes the literature on ankle replacement in a single sentence. The article says that a review in the Journal of the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (JAAOS) “cautions that so far, there is little research to tell how long newer versions will last—and that few hospitals have much practice in implanting them.” In doing so, the story cites one review article, no original research, and makes no attempt to characterize the quality of the clinical evidence to support the review’s conclusions. Although it issues a number of caveats, the story fails to simply state that there are no large, long-term studies examining these devices. Part of the problem is the ""FDA approval"". To the lay person, this may imply efficacy even though it often requires only a minimum amount of short-term evidence. The article says some 200,000 people seek care for their ankles annually. A reader could come away with the mistaken impression that there is an alarmingly high prevalence of ankle pain that is disabling enough to warrant an ankle replacement. The actual prevalence is unknown, but is likely to be a small proportion of that number, though more than the 10,000 or so annually who are currently getting fusions and ankle replacements. The story fails on a critical point: It neglects to mention key potential conflicts of interest in its main expert source. The story includes interviews with one patient who had a successful ankle replacement and one surgeon (Dr. Haddad) who is currently developing an ankle replacement implant for Wright Medical Technology and is also the lead investigator in a trial sponsored by device maker DePuy Orthopaedics of a DePuy ankle implant, according to Haddad’s website. The story briefly cites a second orthopaedic surgeon (Dr. Wapner), who is said to believe that the newest implant designs will last longer than previous designs. The story describes some of the pros and cons of ankle fusion, the main alternative to ankle replacement. It makes no mention of other surgical or nonsurgical treatments. According to the story, fusion appears to be a more predictable operation than ankle replacement, but also one that triggers unwelcome long-term problems. The story explains that ankle replacements have gone out of favor and that device makers are attempting a comeback with a “third-generation” model. It also explains that the FDA began approving the current generation of implants in 2005, but few hospitals have experience with the procedure. The story explains that ankle replacement has been around for decades, but that a new generation of implants was recently approved in 2005. The story uses several sources and does not appear to rely solely or largely on a news release."
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39234
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This eRumor lists a number of different uses for hydrogen peroxide from using it as mouthwash to its alleged value for cleaning sinks. (The full text of the eRumor is at the bottom of this page.)
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The Many Uses of Hydrogen Peroxide
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mixture
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Household, Medical
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Hydrogen peroxide’s chemical representation is H2O2. It has uses in industry in it’s purest form but the product available to most of us over-the-counter is usually only 3% hydrogen peroxide and 97% water. It breaks down quickly when exposed to light so it generally comes in brown bottles that filter out the sun’s rays. It is known for its antibacterial qualities. The pure stuff is dangerous if not used correctly. There are also 30%-35% high strength solutions on the commercial market, typically found in health food stores but also sold as a disinfectant. There has been continuing controversy over using hydrogen peroxide either orally or through injection to treat a variety of internal ailments including arthritis and cancer. Proponents say that the oxygen released by the breakdown of the hydrogen peroxide is medicinal. Opponents say there isn’t good evidence of the health benefits and that there are circumstances in which hydrogen peroxide can be dangerous. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved those high strength hydrogen peroxide products for use internally and considers them dangerous. In July, 2006, the FDA issued a warning about the high strength hydrogen peroxides, saying they could lead to serious health risks and even death. A warning from the BC Cancer Agency in Canada said that over a three year period 6 children were seriously poisoned and one died from drinking the high strength hydrogen peroxide. They report one near-fatal case of an adult ingesting high strength hydrogen peroxide. Let’s go through the claims of the eRumor one at a time: 1. Take one capful (the little white cap that comes with the bottle) and hold in your mouth for 10 minutes daily, then spit it out. (I do it when I bathe or shower.) No more canker sores and your teeth will be whiter without expensive pastes. Use it instead of mouthwash. But Limited Use! The Merck Manuals recommended diluting the 3% hydrogen peroxide 50 percent with water, but suggest it as a rinse and part of a treatment for trench mouth, for example. The FDA has approved 3% solutions of hydrogen peroxide for use as a mouthwash. Most sources said to use it only for a short time, however, such as part of a treatment of a mouth infection. A report from Well-Connected (written or edited by physicians at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital) recommended against extended use, saying that overuse may actually damage cells and soften tooth surfaces. We were not able to find any authoritative information about hydrogen peroxide and canker sores. 2. Let your toothbrushes soak [in] a cup peroxide to keep them free of germs. We didn’t find anything authoritative about soaking toothbrushes in hydrogen peroxide. Because hydrogen peroxide degrades quickly when exposed to light, if you do soak a toothbrush, do it in freshly poured hydrogen peroxide. Just keeping an open cup of the stuff around won’t do much good. 3. Clean your counters, table tops with peroxide to kill germs and leave a fresh smell. Simply put a little on your dishrag when you wipe, or spray it on the counters. 4. After rinsing off your wooden cutting board, pour peroxide on it to kill salmonella and other bacteria. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved hydrogen peroxide as a sanitizer. 5. I had fungus on my feet for years – until I sprayed a 50/50 mixture of peroxide and water on them (especially the toes) every night and let dry. We were not able to find any authoritative source about foot fungus and treatment with hydrogen peroxide. Again, we are assuming she means a 50/50 mixture of water and 3% hydrogen peroxide. An actual 50/50 mixture of pure hydrogen peroxide and water would be too high a concentration to be safe. For many of us, hydrogen peroxide was one of the first things we put on a cut or a wound, but that is less recommended nowadays. The reason, according to numerous medical sites, is that there is a downside to the hydrogen peroxide as well. It also damages healthy cells that are needed for the wounds to heal and hinders them from getting to the area where the healing needs to take place. The HealthFinder publication of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says don’t use hydrogen peroxide on a wound because it interferes with healing. The U.S. Gymnastics team has followed the recommendations of researchers and uses soap and water for cleansing wounds and not hydrogen peroxide. The National Safety Council’s First Aid Pocket Guide (1996) says “DO NOT use hydrogen peroxide It does not kill bacteria, and it adversely affects capillary blood flow and wound healing.” The Mayo Clinic gives the same advice. 7. Put two capfuls into a douche to prevent yeast infections. I had chronic yeast infections until I tried this once or twice a week. Interestingly enough, hydrogen peroxide is naturally produced in the vagina to deal with bacteria. There is conflicting opinion among the experts, however, about whether douching with hydrogen peroxide is helpful or harmful and even some voices that doubt whether douching is necessary at all under normal circumstances. 8. Fill a spray bottle with a 50/50 mixture of peroxide and water and keep it in every bathroom to disinfect without harming your septic system like bleach or most other disinfectants will-But be sure you put the mixture into a bottle that filters out sunlight. Also, it appears that hydrogen peroxide does not harm septic systems. Again, this is probably a mixture of 50% water with the other half being 3% or 30% strengths of hydrogen peroxide. 9. Tilt your head back and spray into nostrils with your 50/50 mixture whenever you have a cold, plugged sinus. It will bubble and help to kill the bacteria. Hold for a few minutes then blow your nose into a tissue. We couldn’t find much about this in terms of research. Again, if you choose to do it, this is probably referring to a mixture of 3% hydrogen peroxide with water. 10. If you have a terrible toothache and can not get to a dentist right away, put a capful of 3% peroxide into your mouth and hold it for ten minutes several times a day. The pain will lessen greatly. 11. And of course, if you like a natural look to your hair, spray the 50/50 solution on your wet hair after a shower and comb it through. You will not have the peroxide burnt blonde hair like the hair dye packages, but more natural highlights if your hair is a light brown, faddish, or dirty blonde. It also lightens gradually so it’s not a drastic change. One of the classic uses of hydrogen peroxide is to bleach hair. The concentrations are between 3% and 6%. This suggestion to dilute with water probably applies to those solutions. 12. Put half a bottle of peroxide in your bath to help rid boils, fungus, or other skin infections. The half a bottle probably refers to a 3% solution. 13. You can also add a cup of peroxide instead of bleach to a load of whites in your laundry to whiten them. If there is blood on clothing, pour directly on the soiled spot. Let it sit for a minute, then rub it and rinse with cold water. Repeat if necessary. But Careful! The effectiveness of this method is a matter of experimentation, but the principle is sound. Some of the so called “oxygen” bleaches contain hydrogen peroxide. Be careful about the suggestion to use it on spots. Hydrogen peroxide is a bleach! 14 This list didn’t have it, but I use peroxide to clean my mirrors; there is no smearing, which is why I love it so much for this. The original hydrogen peroxide eRumor did not include this. Some of these were added by people along the way. 15. Gargle with hydrogen peroxide, put drops in the ear and nose to end colds, flu, chronic sinustis (including polyps], and infections. A repeat of some previous information. 16. Use as a vegetable wash or soak to kill bacteria and neutralize chemicals. We don’t know about the chemicals, but there are several credible references about the use of hydrogen peroxide on fruits or vegetables. Research published by the Journal of Food and Science in 2003 showed effective results of using hydrogen peroxide to decontaminate apples and melons that were infected with strains of E.coli. 17. Disinfect your dishwasher or refrigerator. 18. Use it on trees and plants as a natural fungicide, insecticide, and as a weed killer. We found no research on the use of hydrogen peroxide as an insecticide, fungicide, or weed killer. 19. Clean with hydrogen peroxide when your house becomes a biohazard after its invaded by toxic mold, such as those with water damage. In a publication about “Healthy Homes,” the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) listed hydrogen peroxide as among the substances that can be used against mold, but also said there had not been enough research to recommend its use. It is not known what molds hydrogen peroxide is most effective against or what the human health hazards may be from using it so extensively. Also, since hydrogen peroxide is a bleach, be careful where you use it in terms of preserving the colors in your home. Updated 8/5/06 Comments
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8483
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Exclusive: Nurses at Mexico hospital hit by coronavirus say they were told to avoid masks.
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Nurses at a public hospital hit by Mexico’s worst coronavirus outbreak were told by their managers not to wear protective masks at the start of the epidemic to avoid sowing panic among patients, nurses and other medical workers said.
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true
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Health News
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Two doctors and a hospital administrator have died and at least 51 staff members have been infected since the new coronavirus was detected at the IMSS General Hospital in Monclova in the northern state of Coahuila in late March, the state health department said. The hospital became Mexico’s first hot spot for the COVID-19 illness caused by the coronavirus. At least four of the infected workers are currently hospitalized as a result of the outbreak, which has fed concerns that Mexico’s underfunded healthcare system is ill prepared to cope with a major epidemic in the nation of nearly 130 million people. At the beginning of the outbreak, managers “said that protective equipment wasn’t necessary,” said nurse Charly Escobedo Gonzalez who works at the Monclova hospital. Answering questions from Reuters about the reports that hospital management told staff not to wear masks, a senior official at Mexico’s main public health service IMSS which runs the hospital said that the health workers should be believed, but he did not confirm details of the reports. “Specifically, if they are saying that then of course we have to believe it,” said the IMSS official, Raul Pena Viveros. He said there can be misunderstandings inside a hospital about where it is appropriate to wear protective equipment. “Not all of the workers have to wear the same equipment inside the hospital. And when this type of equipment is used badly...it runs out more quickly and they put workers who are in contact with patients at risk,” he said. Mexico has registered 4,661 people with the coronavirus and 296 deaths, a fraction of the figures in the neighboring United States, but the coronavirus arrived weeks later in the Latin American country. The Monclova hospital became a coronavirus focal point in the third week of March, highlighting a lack of masks and even soap and bleach there, staff said. As staff began to fall ill, hospital floor managers instructed healthcare workers not to use facemasks, which some had bought for themselves due to the lack of hospital equipment, seven workers told Reuters. Pena Viveros said the hospital had been short of protective equipment as well as other materials to fight the coronavirus in March. Health officials have not given a detailed explanation of why so many Monclova healthcare workers became infected. Hospital workers are at greater risk of contracting the coronavirus if they do not wear protective equipment like facemasks and gloves. The N95 respiratory masks offer more protection from other people who are infected while more simple surgical masks help the wearer avoid spreading the virus. Due to a lack of proper N95 masks, some staff at the hospital were also wearing inappropriate industrial-style masks that were donated to them, Pena Viveros said. The lack of N95 masks was later resolved, said Pena Viveros, who was sent by the head of the IMSS from Mexico City to investigate the Monclova hospital and spent a week there in early April. Staff say the hospital has more protective equipment now but that they still lack gear such as masks. Three nurses said that while some colleagues chose not to wear facemasks after being told by managers or supervisors that they were not necessary, other staff kept wearing them. On the night of March 22, one of the heads of the nursing staff told a group of doctors and nurses gathered in the emergency room to take off their N95 masks because they were not necessary, according to a nurse who heard the order. Another nurse, surnamed Hernandez Perez, was given a similar order by a deputy head of nursing a few days earlier. “In a morning clinical class, the sub-head told us not to create panic...that we shouldn’t wear facemasks because we were going to create a psychosis,” said Hernandez Perez, who did not want her full name used. She is now at home sick and has tested positive for the COVID-19 respiratory illness caused by the coronavirus. A second nurse confirmed Hernandez Perez’s account. Reuters was unable to speak to two of the nursing managers who nurses say spoke at that meeting. After media accusations that the Monclova hospital badly lacked equipment to deal with the virus, the head of the IMSS, Zoe Robledo, announced in early April that the director of the hospital had been temporarily replaced. Neither the suspended hospital manager, Ulises Mendoza, nor the current hospital director answered repeated requests from Reuters for comment. One nurse, who asked that her name not be used for fear of retaliation, said that during the second half of March she was repeatedly told by superiors not to wear a facemask while working in high-risk areas such as on the ground floor of the hospital, where the emergency room is located. As well as the 51 confirmed cases, Pena Viveros said more than 300 other workers were temporarily sent home as the hospital scrambled to contain the outbreak. He said the hospital contracted nurses and doctors from other facilities to address the personnel shortage, nevertheless the hospital’s ability to care for patients has been impeded, some staff said.
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5255
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Massachusetts prison cited for nearly 600 health violations.
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State public health regulators say they found nearly 600 health code violations, including dirty or broken toilets, improperly stored food and sinks with discolored or scalding hot water, during an annual inspection at one of the state’s maximum security prisons.
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true
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Health, Shirley, Massachusetts, Public health
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The Sentinel & Enterprise reports that the Department of Public Health says more than half of the citations at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley were for repeat violations. The department gave the prison 10 days to come up with a plan to fix the issues. A corrections department spokesman says prison maintenance staff is “working diligently” to address the problems. The prison houses about 1,000 of the state’s most dangerous inmates. It is where former NFL star Aaron Hernandez was being held when he hanged himself last year. ___ Information from: Sentinel & Enterprise (Fitchburg, Mass. ), http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com
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3762
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Survey shows boom in marijuana vaping among school kids.
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About 1 out of 5 high school students in the U.S. say they vaped marijuana in the past year, and its popularity has been booming faster than nicotine vaping, according to a report released Wednesday.
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true
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Health, Vaping, General News, Marijuana
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“The speed at which kids are taking up this behavior is very worrisome,” said Dr. Nora Volkow of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the federal agency that pays for the large annual teen survey. Electronic cigarettes and other battery-powered vaping devices mostly heat a liquid containing nicotine into a vapor that’s inhaled, In recent years, they have been increasingly used to vaporize THC, the chemical that gives pot its high. The University of Michigan survey asks students in grades 8, 10 and 12 across the country about smoking, drinking and drugs. About two-thirds of this year’s 42,000 participants were asked about vaping marijuana. Vaping nicotine is still more popular: about 1 in 4 high schoolers said they had done it at least once in the previous year. But vaping marijuana grew more quickly: 1 in 5 high schoolers had done it at least once the year before. About 1 in 7 high school seniors this year were considered current users of marijuana vaping — they had vaped in the month before they took the survey. That’s almost doubled from 1 in 13 the year before. Overall, marijuana use — in all its forms — is holding steady. It’s not clear if students are switching to vaping or continuing to use other forms as well, said Richard Miech, who oversees the survey. Daily marijuana use rose in both middle school and high school kids in 2019, and “if you want to be a daily marijuana user, vaping makes it easier,” he said. It’s odorless and slips easily into a pocket. “You can just kind of graze on that all day,” he said. The survey is in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which also published results of a different survey in 2018 that showed an increase in marijuana vaping among middle and high school students. Both have limitations: the surveys rely on what kids say, and it does not include teens who are not in school. Federal and state laws ban minors from using marijuana recreationally, and prohibits sale of vaping products to kids The Michigan survey was conducted earlier this year, before reports of a surge in cases of vaping-related lung damage, mostly in teens and young adults who used black-market THC products. Volkow said the illnesses “may scare some teenagers away” from vaping marijuana. The survey also found most other forms of teen drug use are flat or declining, including alcohol, ecstasy, heroin, cocaine, and meth. An exception was LSD, which has been increasing in 10th and 12th graders. About 3.6% of high school seniors said they’d dropped acid in the previous year. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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7063
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Residente worked with scientists to create his new album.
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Grammy-winning rapper Residente has some new collaborators on his upcoming album: scientists.
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true
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Animals, Hip hop and rap, General News, Entertainment, Residente, Worms, Music, Science, Bad Bunny
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The Puerto Rican performer said he studied intensely with professors at Yale University and New York University to read brain patterns in worms, mice, monkeys, fruit flies and even hitmaker Bad Bunny to create his second solo project. ″(The album is) going to be about everything that I have inside of my head ... because of that I kept brainstorming and I said, ‘Oh I have to study my brain, and then I have to study other people’s brains, and then I have to study animals’ brains,’” he said. Daniel Alfonso Colón-Ramos, an associate professor of neuroscience at Yale, said Residente spent days at the school doing research: “We were joking that at that we should give him a diploma.” On campus, they used electroencephalogram (EEG) tests on worms to track and record brain wave patterns. “Without harming the animals we can actually see as the animal is thinking, as it’s moving, as it’s exploring its environment, we can see individual cells talking into each other. It turns out when these cells, when these neurons talk to each other they’re using rhythms to communicate — we call it rhythms of activity. But, at the end of the day, those rhythms can be turned into music,” Colón-Ramos said. The untitled album will be released in November. Residente, born René Juan Pérez Joglar, worked with Suzanne Dikker, a senior research scientist in NYU’s Department of Psychology, to use EEG tests on himself and Bad Bunny to produce the album’s first single, “Bellacoso.” The song is a return to Residente’s reggaeton roots and the collaboration with Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, came as a surprise since the 41-year-old Residente is known to rap about politics, social justice and related topics, and he has been critical of the younger generation of Latin trap stars as well as the popularity of the reggaeton sound. “I wanted to prove to the people that even though we are different in certain ways, we can connect with each other with our brain frequencies,” Residente said. “For my fan base, they are very hardcore fans and I know they don’t understand why I’m collaborating with Benito even though he’s huge. Because of the things that I stand for, and other stuff, the way I write lyrics, I wanted to show them that even though we’re different, we can connect.” “As a human being, I like him,” Residente said of 25-year-old Bad Bunny, who has become a breakout star around the world, launching multiple hit songs, topping the charts and even selling out New York’s Madison Square Garden. “It was like working with a little brother.” Residente said during the EEG test he and Bad Bunny “were watching a woman dance, we were drinking (and) they were capturing those frequencies.” “The song is “Bellacoso” — it is like a fun song. It’s like being better than horny. It’s kind of like you’re horny, but two steps up: super-horny,” he said. Residente is a member the alternative hip-hop band Calle 13 and is the most decorated act in the history of the Latin Grammys with 24 wins. He also has four Grammy Awards. His new song’s release comes after he was part of last month’s massive protests against Puerto Rican Gov. Ricardo Rossello, who announced his resignation following controversies surrounding his time in office. The colorful music video for “Bellacoso” — which starts with a group of men and women twerking in thongs — includes models of various sizes and skin tones. Residente said diversity in music and film “is always important.” “You have to keep going with that,” he said. “Also it’s cool, you see the butts and ladies, you’re liking it, and it’s a guy,” he continued. “There’s a transgender (model in the video). A nice (butt). Everyone has a nice (butt). I was like ashamed of my (butt).”
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30331
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TV celebrity and food writer Anthony Bourdain was planning to run an exposé of an pedophile ring at the time of his death.
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All of this misreporting was par for the course for Neon Nettle, a notorious fake news site with a predilection for publishing sensationalized and exaggerated (if not completely fabricated) stories about pedophiles. True to form, Neon Nettle added multiple false elements to this particular report to enhance its luridness.
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false
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Junk News, neon nettle
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As much of the world grieved the death of TV celebrity and food writer Anthony Bourdain, the Neon Nettle fake news site shamelessly exploited the tragedy to push out yet another fabricated clickbait story about “elite pedophile rings.” A 9 June 2018 Neon Nettle article headlined “Anthony Bourdain Was About to Expose an Elite Pedophile Ring Before He Died” stated the following: As the world still reels in shock at the news that journalist Anthony Bourdain has been found dead, evidence is now emerging that the mainstream reporter was about to expose an elite pedophile ring just before he died. More recently, following news of a major child trafficking bust, sources are stating that Bourdain was planning on running “an exposé” and the sex slave network. However, the text of the article was a typical Neon Nettle disjointed word salad that provided absolutely no substantiation or documentation for their assertion that Bourdain was “about to expose an elite pedophile ring.” The sum total of the case presented by Neon Nettle was a pair of out-of-context tweets from Bourdain, which Neon Nettle attempted to spin as evidence of some undefined conspiracy involving Hillary Clinton and Harvey Weinstein: know what Hillary Clinton is NOT? She's not stupid. Or unsophisticated about the world. The Weinstein stories had been out there for years — Anthony Bourdain (@Bourdain) October 11, 2017 So go for it , but no one would give a shit if it wasn’t Trump and he wasn’t President. A lot of people are shady, or assholes , that mean the Feds can jack you up? He was shady 2 years ago no warrants? — Jeff Hulme (@jeffhulme) May 2, 2018 Certainly Bourdain had openly criticized Hillary Clinton’s response when film producer Harvey Weinstein — a longtime Clinton donor — was accused of sexually assaulting and harassing dozens of women, including Bourdain’s girlfriend, Asia Argento. Bourdain expressed incredulity that Clinton could have been unaware of Weinstein’s sexual misbehavior, but the Weinstein scandal had nothing to do with a child sex trafficking sting later conducted in the Atlanta area, to which Neon Nettle bizarrely attempted to link it. Neon Nettle’s tortured logic seemed to be that Bourdain’s Parts Unknown program aired on CNN, and CNN is headquartered in Atlanta, where a child sex-trafficking ring was recently busted, so … something. The bottom line is that absolutely nothing suggests Anthony Bourdain knew about, much less was planning to expose, any “elite pedophile ring.” Neon Nettle also tossed an abundance of obfuscatory false and misleading statements into their word salad to deflect from the article’s complete lack of substance: o Although Mr. Bourdain’s death has been officially declared a suicide, many see his untimely passing a suspicious and unexpected. Bourdain’s death may have been unexpected to many, but that it was the result of a suicide is not rationally disputed. o It’s no secret that people who cross the Clintons’ path end up dead … Usually from suicide. This statement is nothing more than a rehash of rumors we first debunked here over twenty years ago. And it’s irrelevant, as Bourdain plainly expressed that he didn’t believe Hillary Clinton was in any way responsible for Harvey Weinstein’s crimes: Hillary is CLEARLY not responsible for anything Weinstein Thats screamingly obvious. Her response to questions though has been uninspiring — Anthony Bourdain (@Bourdain) October 12, 2017 o Just this week, famous designer and Clinton Foundation member, Kate Spade reportedly killed herself. According to Spade’s family, she had also been threatened for speaking out. Again, there is no “reportedly” to designer Kate Spade’s death by suicide. And what Spade’s sister maintained she was “threatened” over was speaking out about her sibling’s mental illness, not anything remotely related to child sex trafficking or “pedophile rings.” o More recently, following news of a major child trafficking bust, sources are stating that Bourdain was planning on running “an exposé” and the sex slave network. We found zero evidence of any “source” — outside of disreputable Neon Nettle itself — stating that Bourdain had plans to run a “sex slave network exposé” on his travel and food show. (Naturally, Neon Nettle neither identified nor linked to a any such “source.”) o Despite reports that 160 children were rescued and will almost 150 arrested during the raids [in Atlanta], Mr. Bourdain’s network, CNN, has refused to cover the case. Even more bizarrely, suspicious “fact-checking” website Snopes even went as far as to debunk reports that the raids even took place. This statement was completely and utterly untrue. We debunked false reports that a so-called ‘child trafficking bunker’ had been discovered near Tucson (it was actually an abandoned homeless encampment); we wrote nothing about the completely unrelated Operation Safe Summer raids conducted by the FBI’s Atlanta field office. o A group of retired veterans uncovered child trafficking camp in the Tucson, Arizona. After accidentally stumbling upon the “pedophile bunker” whilst looking for homeless vets, they found children’s toys, pornography, and even a human skull believed to belong to a child aged 7-8. Again, not only is the Tucson “pedophile bunker” claim false, but the related rumor that a child’s skull” was found at the site is untrue as well. (The skull was that of an adult, not a child, and it was found in a remote area more than twenty miles northwest of Tucson, not at the site of the supposed “pedophile bunker.”)
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6350
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Nearly 3,400 Hepatitis A cases reported in Florida in 2019.
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Florida health officials say there were nearly 3,400 hepatitis A cases in 2019.
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true
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Health, General News, Florida, Hepatitis
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According to statistics through Saturday, there were 3,395 cases — included 63 new cases reported the prior week. To underscore the outbreak, the Panama City News Herald reported the state totaled 1,175 reported cases of hepatitis A in the five previous years combined — with 548 of those cases in 2018, according to state Department of Health data. Hepatitis A can cause liver damage and is spread through such things as fecal matter. That can include transmission by people not properly washing their hands after going to the bathroom and contaminating food or drinks. Health officials urge people to get vaccinated against the disease. As of Saturday, Pasco County had the most cases in the state in 2019, with 414.
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8164
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As coronavirus takes emotional toll, mental health professionals brace for spike in demand.
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For the last few days, unease and paranoia have followed Ann Ostberg like a black cloud, as the coronavirus swept through the United States, reaching all 50 states by this week.
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true
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Health News
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With state and local governments urging isolation to stem the spread of the highly contagious and sometimes deadly respiratory illness, the 62-year-old Nebraska woman worries she will not be able to provide emotional support for her daughter, whose husband is paralyzed with Guillain-Barre syndrome. If someone were to infect her son-in-law with his weakened immune system, “he’d be dead,” Ostberg said. Chicagoan Mike Wisler was prescribed a sedative to help him sleep when the financial and emotional impact of the pandemic hit the 50-year-old bartender. “My mind won’t shut off,” Wisler said. “As soon as I wake up, it’s like, ‘How am I going to get by this month?’” With public gatherings banned, his work tending bar at parties and private events has evaporated. In North Carolina, 23-year-old Niko, who asked that his last name not be used, is in recovery for drug addiction, and fears a relapse. The grocery store clerk is suffering nervous ticks and bouts of reticence while trying to put on a brave face to avoid alarming shoppers. “What I’m worrying about in my head, I’m only showing about 20 percent of it,” he said. Psychologists and psychiatrists are beginning to report signs of distress among patients worried about the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic that has infected more than 14,500 nationwide, and over 255,000 globally, killing more than 10,000. Six clinicians interviewed by Reuters say the coronavirus has been the prime focus of virtually all recent therapy sessions. Stress caused by fear of the disease is compounded by isolation, mental health experts say, as governments close schools and restaurants, and recommend that people limit social interaction. Stress-reducing activities like exercise, watching sports and going to movies, are becoming nearly impossible after shutdowns of gyms, professional leagues and theaters. The virus’ invisibility makes it all the harder to reconcile the severity of the response. “We’re all a little disoriented,” said Sharon Greenfield, a clinical psychologist in Concord, Massachusetts. “When we see a bear, we go straight into fight-or-flight, but this is a bear we can’t see or taste. Our brains aren’t quite sure whether we’re being exposed to a traumatic trigger or not.” A Reuters/Ipsos poll this week showed 48% of Americans feel the pandemic is an “imminent threat” to the United States, up 20 percentage points from previous polling taken March 2-3. Psychiatrists interviewed by Reuters cited surges in requests for new anti-anxiety prescriptions and longer refills on existing ones. For mental health professionals, there is the challenge of providing much-needed care while following social distancing guidelines. That likely means seeing patients via video services. But remote therapy, known as telehealth, isn’t covered by every insurance plan. Federal legislation enacted this month in response to the coronavirus eases restrictions on telehealth coverage under Medicare. Some states are also requiring private insurers to cover telehealth more broadly. Most therapists, though, have not historically provided it. A 2018 study published in the American Psychological Association (APA) Journal showed nearly 60% of providers do no online counseling, and just 6% do more than five hours per week. Since the outbreak took hold, people are scrambling to figure out how to do telehealth, said psychologist Lynn Bufka, director of practice research and policy at the APA. Greenfield said the mental health impact of the coronavirus should warrant a coordinated response, and that federal and local leaders should have protocols for managing a mental health emergency as they do a physical one. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had no comment when asked if coordinated plans exist. The mental health of hospital and other healthcare workers, who risk increased exposure to the virus, is a rising concern. The Facebook group “Covid19 for Healthcare Workers”, which had 124,000 members as of Friday, circulated online signup sheets for therapists willing to donate a free hour of care to such workers. Volunteers “may be asked to provide some debriefing support, for the healthcare workers’ mental health needs during Covid-19,” the form said. Administrators for the group did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday. To manage anxiety, doctors recommend limiting news intake to once or twice a day, to stay abreast of health experts’ recommendations while avoiding over-exposure that can trigger panic. They suggest watching comforting movies, video-chatting with family, and going outside as long as it does not conflict with health experts’ guidance. “Connect more deeply with nature, since that is a safe space many of us have become too busy to enjoy,” said Charles Mobayed, a psychologist in Lunenburg, Massachusetts. They also recommend acknowledging anxious thoughts, rather than repressing them - but then moving on quickly. “Notice yourself starting to go there, and say, ‘I hear you, but I’m not gonna think about that right now,’” said Laura Dalheim, a psychiatrist in New York City, which has seen a big spike in coronavirus cases with increased testing. Therapists who spend hours each day soothing the fears of others say they are not immune to the anxiety all around them. Dalheim says she’s had to fight the urge to mirror her patients’ concern during sessions. Greenfield, after an exhausting week, said she found herself on her couch last Friday night eating cheese puffs - and in bed by 9:30. It’s common for health workers to exhaust themselves in a crisis, and crucial they heed the same stress-management advice they provide, said psychologist Jacqueline Sperling, an instructor at Harvard Medical School. “If you wear down your resources,” she said, “you have only an empty hand to give.”
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35137
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Gargling with salt water or Vinegar 'eliminate' the COVID-19 coronavirus from the throat of an infected person's system.
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What works for colds is unlikely to help an already-infected person stave off the COVID-19 coronavirus disease.
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false
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Medical, COVID-19
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The COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic of early 2020 brought a raft of dubious and false medical advice about the prevention and treatment of the illness to the internet, among which was one widely circulated graphic advocating that persons exposed to the virus try gargling various substance to ‘eliminate’ the virus and prevent it from reaching the lungs via the throat: “Corona virus before it reaches the lungs it remains in the throat for four days and at this time the person begins to cough and have throat pains. If he drinks water a lot and gargling with warm water & salt or vinegar eliminates the virus. Spread this information because you can save someone with this information.” While gargling some combination of warm water, salt, and vinegar has long been used as a means of relieving symptoms related to colds and flus, such as sore throats, there’s no evidence that it can help ward off or drive out infections from the COVID-19 coronavirus disease. And although the virus is said to replicate in the nose and nasal secretions, we’ve found nothing documenting the notion that the current coronavirus “remains in the throat for four days” and can be effectively expelled at the conclusion of that time period to keep it from reaching the lungs. (The incubation period for this virus, which is the time between when a person is exposed to the virus and when they start showing symptoms, has been estimated at about five days on average.) The World Health Organization’s (WHO) website offers a page offering COVID-19 coronavirus disease advice for the public which addresses the substance of this rumor in an item about rinsing nasal passages (which are connected to the throat) with saline: There is no evidence that regularly rinsing the nose with saline has protected people from infection with the new coronavirus. There is some limited evidence that regularly rinsing the nose with saline can help people recover more quickly from the common cold. However, regularly rinsing the nose has not been shown to prevent respiratory infections.
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7502
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Nigeria confirms 1st case of new virus in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Nigerian authorities on Friday confirmed the first case of the new coronavirus in sub-Saharan Africa as the outbreak spread to a region with some of the world’s weakest health systems.
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true
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Health, General News, Airlines, Africa, International News, Business, Lagos, Milan, Nigeria, Virus Outbreak, Ebola virus
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The health commissioner for Lagos, Africa’s largest city with more than 20 million people, said an Italian citizen who entered Nigeria on Tuesday from Milan on a business trip fell ill the next day. Commissioner Akin Abayomi said the man was clinically stable with no serious symptoms. Abayomi said officials were working to identify all of the man’s contacts in Nigeria. The Italian had traveled on Turkish Airlines to Istanbul and then to Lagos, according to health authorities. Lagos state early this month advised people arriving from virus-affected areas to observe 14 days of self-quarantine. “I have seen him this morning, he is in high spirits,” said Dr. Bowale Abimbola, medical director of the hospital where the 44-year-old Italian was brought with body aches and fever. “He is doing well and we expect that he will continue to do well.” Nigerian health authorities urged Lagos residents to take measures such as keeping their distance from people who cough and washing their hands regularly. Cases of the virus also were confirmed in Egypt and Algeria in north Africa in recent days. Until then, some global health experts had expressed surprise that no cases had been reported in Africa. Concerns about the virus spreading to countries with weaker health systems led the World Health Organization to declare the outbreak a global health emergency last month. WHO officials in Africa have warned that health systems could be overwhelmed. Nigeria is one of 13 African countries classified by the WHO as high priority in this outbreak because of direct links to China or a high number of visitors from there. That Nigeria’s first case came from overseas and wasn’t person-to-person transmission inside Africa “shows that the Nigerian government had the right systems in place to detect and confirm this case,” Trudie Lang, director of The Global Health Network at the Nuffield Department of Medicine and the University of Oxford, said in a statement. But detection of further cases in Africa will be challenging as more inexpensive testing kits are needed for on-the-spot diagnosis, Lang added. The Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has hurried to train its 54 member countries in testing for the virus. Just two countries had the capability at the beginning of this month. Now more than two dozen have it, including Nigeria. Africa Centers for Disease Control has deployed an epidemiologist to Nigeria and shipped 1,000 additional testing kits, according to Africa CDC director Dr. John Nkengasong. “Nigeria is well capacitated to respond to the outbreak,” he said. “Africa CDC had anticipated that COVID-19 outbreak would inevitably impact Africa and has been working actively with African Union Member States and partners on preparedness and response to the disease in the continent. “ Most African airlines with direct flights to China quickly suspended them, and countries activated surveillance and quarantine measures. Many had experience with trying to prevent the spread of the devastating West Africa Ebola outbreak that ended in 2016. Global health experts point to that as a sign of preparedness in this outbreak. The Africa CDC was created in response to the Ebola outbreak, and many countries established public health institutes. Nigeria was praised for quickly containing cases when the Ebola outbreak reached there in 2014 after an infected man from Liberia landed in Lagos. Nineteen people were infected and seven died, but officials were praised for effective public awareness campaigns. “The Ebola outbreak taught us a lot of lessons,” the director of the Nigeria Center for Disease Control, Chikwe Ihekweazu, wrote in a commentary for The Conversation last month. As of December, all 36 of Nigeria’s states had a rapid response team in case of a disease outbreak, he wrote, and 22 states had emergency operations centers. Nigeria is also currently dealing with an outbreak of Lassa fever — an indication of the health challenges that many African nations face. With the new virus case announced in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country with 190 million people and numerous air links around the continent and beyond, other nations warned of possible spread. “Given these recent developments globally and in Africa, it is not unlikely that we will have importation of COVID-19 to South Africa,” that country’s National Institute for Communicable Diseases said. Separately, South Africa said two citizens who had been working on the Princess Diamond cruise ship have the virus and will stay in Japan for treatment. South Africa said it was informed by Japanese authorities Tuesday after the quarantine on the ship ended. In a separate statement, South Africa said it planned to evacuate more than 130 citizens from China’s Wuhan city where the outbreak began. It did not say when that would happen. South Africa is the first major country in sub-Saharan Africa to evacuate its citizens, while thousands of African students remain stranded. Several governments have said it’s safer to stay in place and not risk spreading the virus back home. In Kenya, the High Court on Friday ruled that all 239 passengers who arrived Thursday on a China Southern Airlines flight should be found and quarantined at a military facility until declared virus-free. The case was brought by the Law Society of Kenya and others amid a public outcry. The court also suspended all flights from China for 10 days. Separately, President Uhuru Kenyatta ordered that a national isolation and treatment facility be completed within a week. ___ Anna reported from Johannesburg. AP journalists Danica Kirka in London, Carley Petesch in Dakar, Senegal and Tom Odula in Nairobi contributed.
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36314
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Police in Portland, Oregon determined that anti-fascist activists mixed quick-dry concrete and caustic chemicals into milkshakes that were both thrown and consumed.
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Did Protesters Throw ‘Concrete Milkshakes’?
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false
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Disinformation, Fact Checks
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"Dueling protests became dueling narratives in Portland, Oregon on June 29 2019 when clashes erupted between Proud Boys attendees and anti-fascist demonstrators, quickly devolving into rumors that milkshakes thrown at one person contained one or more damaging or caustic substances — including quick-dry concrete, quicklime, and caustic chemicals.Rumors to that effect were spread by the verified Portland Police account as protests continued:Police have received information that some of the milkshakes thrown today during the demonstration contained quick-drying cement. We are encouraging anyone hit with a substance today to report it to police.— Portland Police (@PortlandPolice) June 29, 2019According to that tweet, police in Portland “received information” that some of the milkshakes thrown contained “quick-drying cement.” Approximately half an hour later, video game blogger Ian Miles Cheong tweeted without citation or evidence that the milkshakes contained “quicklime” in addition to “concrete mix,” and that they would “produce chemical burns in addition to being heavy”:This HuffPost writer @letsgomathias deleted this tweet celebrating Antifa’s “milkshaking” of a journalist.The milkshakes were lined with quicklime/quick dry concrete mix and produce chemical burns, in addition to being heavy. pic.twitter.com/orQi1ikruv— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) June 30, 2019Claims of concrete in milkshakes solidified, as it were, after Quillette writer Andy Ngo was pelted with a milkshake. The day before the Portland protests, Ngo tweeted a claim that he was concerned for his safety ahead of the rallies:I am nervous about tomorrow’s Portland antifa rally. They’re promising “physical confrontation” & have singled me out to be assaulted. I went on Tucker Carlson last year to explain why I think they’re doing this: They’re seeking meaning through violence. https://t.co/kpkESjsOmI pic.twitter.com/J45MMshyyK— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) June 28, 2019Just before 12:30 PM local time, Ngo shared a photograph to Twitter depicting a backpack with what was presumably milkshake spattered on it:“Peaceful” protest pic.twitter.com/u2gaMYOHF5— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) June 29, 2019Roughly an hour later, Ngo shared a video about a clash with anti-fascist protesters and additional updates:https://t.co/B8Gh4KQxFS— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) June 29, 2019Attacked by antifa. Bleeding. They stole my camera equipment. No police until after. waiting for ambulance . If you have evidence Of attack please help— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) June 29, 2019On way to hospital. Was beat on face and head multiple times in downtown in middle of street with fists and weapons. Suspects at large.— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) June 29, 2019Ngo also retweeted a reporter’s tweet about the purported clash:First skirmish I’ve seen. Didn’t see how this started, but @MrAndyNgo got roughed up. pic.twitter.com/hDkfQchRhG— Jim Ryan (@Jimryan015) June 29, 2019Notably, Ngo’s tweets did not show any evidence of concrete, quicklime, chemical burns, or anything else substantiating any of the subsequent rumors of adulterated milkshakes:In the ER. pic.twitter.com/spe5N4nzVl— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) June 29, 2019As is often the case, the quickly moving story became embellished with claims supported by stock images (not photographs of injuries sustained at the rally). One popular tweet used a 2011 photograph stolen from DeviantArt to claim that attendees sustained chemical burns from adulterants in the milkshakes:Misleading pics feature in the ""cement milkshake"" narrative. @javier_pan01's image of a supposedly milkshake-induced chemical burn is a stock photo, and @JackPosobiec's speculation that a specific picture shows folks mixing cement milkshakes has been debunked by the photographer. pic.twitter.com/LPdhmcSege— Conspirador Norteño (@conspirator0) June 30, 2019On June 30 2019, people on Twitter continued to ask @PortlandPolice to substantiate the rumors they spread about concrete in milkshakes as reporters filed information requests. A spokesperson for that account responded to questions, but failed to corroborate the claims that the account spread:Apparently, this is all @PortlandPolice can share with the public to back up the claim that milkshakes had quick-dry concrete in them.I asked for more details, but have not yet received a response. I will update if the Bureau decides to release more information. pic.twitter.com/gQlQSzHeTI— Katie Shepherd (@katemshepherd) June 30, 2019. @PortlandPolice offer more information about the “cement milkshake” Tweet. pic.twitter.com/rtsWnLUpAI— Katie Shepherd (@katemshepherd) July 1, 2019As reporter Katie Shepherd noted, an email shared by the Portland police as evidence of concrete in milkshakes was received after their tweet was sent — not before:I feel like an important point being missed by many is that this anonymous email was only sent to PPB after they Tweeted the idea that cement mix had been added to milkshakes. https://t.co/pdPXDV0Zi6— Katie Shepherd (@katemshepherd) July 1, 2019Additionally, users pointed out that the thrown milkshakes were clearly liquid, defeating the point of “concrete” in the first place, and that even a small amount of sugar (an important ingredient in milkshakes, even vegan ones) disrupts the process of cement or concrete drying to the point that it is well known as an inhibitor.Logistically, thrown milkshakes were either liquid (rendering concrete a pointless addition) or solid, the aims of which could be easily achieved by throwing rocks or bricks instead:I'm not quite following what the inference is with ""concrete milkshakes."" They're clearly liquid upon impact. What is the point exactly?— Strange Magic (it's magic) (@ashelteredstorm) June 30, 2019It doesn't make sense anyways. Wouldn't the concrete dry in the cups if they just stood around holding concrete milkshakes?— Turbonium 2K (@Turbonium2K) June 30, 2019Oh: if you don’t understand why this super secret plan to turn milkshakes into bricks makes no sense, it’s that when you add more than 1% sugar to concrete, it doesn’t set. Like, you cannot turn a milkshake into a brick. It’s chemistry.— steveklabnik (@steveklabnik) June 30, 2019Common sense. Think this thru. Wouldn't it be easier and cheaper to throw rocks instead of buying milkshakes and concrete mix? ¯_(ツ)_/¯— The Emperor Has No Soul (@Citizen_WA) June 30, 2019By July 1 2019, no one had appeared with any concrete-related injuries relating to milkshakes, either by ingesting them or being pelted by them. Nevertheless, news articles from that same day bore headlines like “Protestors threw milkshakes containing ‘quick-drying cement’ as far-left and far-right groups clashed in Portland, according to police.”Inaccurate claims spread during clashes in Portland are not the first time milkshaking-related disinformation has been spread in smear form, nor is it the first time such rumors were reported as news by multiple news organizations. Although tweets claiming that Portland police had confirmed that milkshakes at the rallies contained quick-dry cement, quicklime, or other caustic chemicals accrued tens of thousands of shares, those rumors were false and unfounded."
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7508
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Doctor’s death highlights dangers on front lines of outbreak.
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The death of a doctor who issued an early warning about the new virus in China represents a grim reminder that the first health care workers to recognize new outbreaks are sometimes among their earliest victims.
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true
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AP Top News, Epidemics, General News, Health, China, United Nations, Asia Pacific, Virus Outbreak, Ebola virus
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Dr. Li Wenliang’s death underlined the dangers health workers have faced in similar epidemics, including SARS and Ebola. On Dec. 3, Li wrote on his social media account that he saw a test sample suggesting the presence of a coronavirus similar to SARS. In early January, the 34-year-old eye doctor was visited by police who forced him to sign a statement admitting to having spread falsehoods. Within days, he developed a cough and fever, began having trouble breathing and was hospitalized. His death was confirmed Friday, prompting a deluge of messages of mourning and outrage at how he was treated. The death was an all-too-familiar occurrence, said Dr. Michael Ryan, head of the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program. “We’re very sorry to hear the loss of any health care worker that’s attempted to care for patients,” Ryan said Friday. “We have suffered similar losses like the death of Carlo Urbani during SARS.” In 2003, Urbani was an Italian doctor at the U.N. health agency’s Hanoi office and investigated the unusual case of a patient suffering respiratory symptoms in a private hospital. Urbani treated patients, took samples and worked to improve infection control policies in Hanoi. Weeks later, he died of the same disease — severe acute respiratory syndrome — in a Bangkok hospital. Doctors working at the early stages of any new outbreak are particularly vulnerable, said Dr. Bharat Pankhania, a University of Exeter infectious disease expert. “At the beginning, doctors are just not aware of what kind of behaviors may be dangerous,” he said. When Li was exposed to the new virus, “he didn’t know an outbreak was already underway and what precautions he should take,” Pankhania said. Doctors and nurses also were infected in the early stages of multiple Ebola outbreaks, before the lethal disease was recognized and proper infection control policies were implemented. “It’s just bad timing,” Pankhania said. “Doctors get infected because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Among people infected in the current outbreak, 82% have suffered only mild disease, WHO estimated. Fatal cases have been most common in people aged over 60 and those with other health problems, like diabetes or high blood pressure. Fewer than 2% have died, according to the latest figures. Li, however, may have been at risk for a more serious illness because he was treating patients before he knew to take any precautions, doctors said. He also may have been exposed to an especially large dose, given that eye doctors tend to work close to patients’ faces. A study published Friday in the Journal of the American Medical Association underscored the dangers faced by health care workers. The report detailed illnesses in 138 people treated at Zhongnan Hospital in Wuhan, including 40 hospital workers believed to have become infected on the job. More than 10 of them were presumed to have been infected by a single patient who was admitted to the surgical ward with abdominal symptoms. Patients also apparently infected other patients, the researchers said. The patients were all adults, adding to evidence that suggests cases in children are rare. On Friday, WHO warned that increased demand for masks and other protective equipment might further jeopardize health workers responding to the outbreak. WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, noted that prices have skyrocketed and that there were insufficient quantities of masks and respirators to meet the demands of WHO and its partners. The problem has been exacerbated by inappropriate use of equipment such as masks, gloves and gowns, he said. “We need to make sure we get it to the people who need it the most,” he said. “Our first priority is health workers.” ___ Jamey Keaten in Geneva and Lindsey Tanner in Chicago contributed to this report. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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2926
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Brain-dead California girl arrives at extended care facility.
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A California girl declared brain dead following complications from a tonsillectomy, whose case has prompted debate over when to withdraw life support, has arrived at an undisclosed care facility with her mother, a family spokesman said on Monday.
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true
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Health News
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Jahi McMath, 13, was taken by a private ambulance on Sunday night from Children’s Hospital and Research Center in Oakland to a long-term care facility where she will be given a tracheostomy and feeding tube, uncle Omari Sealey said. “The goal is for them (the new center) is to give her treatment to help her get to full recovery,” Sealey said. McMath was admitted to Children’s Hospital on December 9 to have her tonsils removed as well as other procedures performed in an effort to treat her sleep apnea. After the surgery, the girl began to bleed profusely, went into cardiac arrest and suffered brain swelling. The hospital declared her brain dead three days later and made plans to remove her from a ventilator. But her family has fought in state and federal court to keep her on life support. A restraining order barring the hospital from removing that life support had been set to expire on Tuesday. The case has drawn international attention, as well as support from relatives of Terri Schiavo, a Florida woman who died in 2005 after a 15-year battle over whether to keep her body alive in a persistent vegetative state. An extended-care facility on New York’s Long Island, the New Beginnings Community Center, has offered to care for the child. But it was not immediately clear if McMath’s family had accepted the offer. Sealey said on Monday that the Long Island facility was among dozens willing to admit his niece, but declined to disclose what facility had taken her in, saying the family had received threats of violence since McMath’s story became public. Physicians at the new care center planned to perform surgeries on the girl, including a tracheostomy and gastrostomy for breathing and feeding, Sealey said. McMath has not been fed since the day before she was admitted to Children’s Hospital four weeks ago, and nutrients would be needed for any rehabilitation, he added. McMath’s lungs are continuing to function because of air being forced in and out by a ventilator, without which her breathing and heartbeat would cease, according to medical experts. Unlike a person in a coma, McMath lacks brain activity that would allow her to breathe on her own, doctors have said. Sealey said initial doctors’ exams of McMath since her transfer showed some possible brain activity. “They feel like she is not completely gone,” he said. Children’s Hospital has said that McMath’s brain death was tragic but irreversible. Hospital officials have said the facility and state health officials are investigating how a routine operation led to McMath’s condition.
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24557
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We waterboard, incidentally, hundreds of our own military personnel. They waterboard themselves in training to toughen themselves up.
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Duncan Hunter says we have waterboarded our own military as part of training exercises
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true
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National, Military, Duncan Hunter,
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"In a discussion on MSNBC's Hardball program about whether the government ought to consider prosecuting people involved in enhanced interrogation techniques used on some terror suspects, former U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter, a Republican from California, argued that the issue really comes down to waterboarding. ""And,"" he said, ""waterboarding is not torture."" In fact, said Hunter, a Vietnam veteran and former candidate for president, ""We waterboard, incidentally, hundreds of our own military personnel. They waterboard themselves in training to toughen themselves up."" He added, ""The Geneva Convention .. .was analyzed by the lawyers in place, and they came to the conclusion, especially about waterboarding, because that's the primary thing, that, since we do it to our own soldiers, by the hundreds, incidentally, and it doesn't hurt them, and they — and it makes them tougher, and it doesn't hurt anybody — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gained weight after he was waterboarded — we decided that, since we do that to our own soldiers in training... we‘re not going to consider that torture. "" Hunter later challenged host Chris Matthews saying, ""But the point is, if we do it, are we torturing American soldiers? You have to answer yes if you consider waterboarding to be torture."" Matthews said the difference is that U.S. service people know they are in training. They know they aren't going to be killed. ""That captured person who is one of our enemies has no idea what we‘re doing when we submit him to water torture."" Said Hunter: ""If we use it with our own soldiers in training, as we do waterboarding, then it should be allowed with people who have killed thousands of Americans."" We decided to examine Hunter's claim about waterboarding our service personnel as part of their training and found that he is right. U.S. special operations troops have, in the past, sometimes used a form of waterboarding as part of survival exercises, called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape training. The idea is to prepare them in the event they are ever captured and interrogated with such means. According to reports in the New York Times and Vanity Fair, the CIA adopted some of the interrogation techniques used on terror suspects from that SERE training, including the use of waterboarding. According to the Vanity Fair story, three-week SERE training for the U.S. soldiers included waterboarding, forced nudity, extreme temperatures, sexual and religious ridicule, agonizing stress positions, and starvation-level rations. The story quotes Michael Rolince, former section chief of the FBI's International Terrorism Operations: ""You're not going to die, but you think you are."" But while the techniques may have been derived from SERE training, a different, more intense brand of waterboarding was used on terror suspects, according to recently released CIA documents. According to a May 7, 2004, CIA Inspector General special report on interrogation techniques used on terror suspects, which has some parts redacted, ""OIG’s (Office of the Inspector General's) review of the videotapes revealed that the waterboard technique employed at (redacted) was different from the technique as described in the DoJ (Department of Justice) opinion and used in the SERE training. The difference was in the manner in which the detainee’s breathing was obstructed. At the SERE School and in the DoJ opinion, the subject’s airflow is disrupted by the firm application of a damp cloth over the air passages; the interrogator applies a small amount of water to the cloth in a controlled manner. By contest, the Agency interrogator (redacted) continuously applied large volumes of water to a cloth that covered the detainee’s mouth and nose. One of the psychologists/interrogators acknowledged that the Agency’s use of the technique differed from that used in SERE training and explained that the Agency’s technique is different because it is 'for real' and is more poignant and convincing."" The report also says the CIA's Office of Medical Services has characterized the SERE waterboarding as ""so different from the subsequent Agency usage as to make it almost irrelevant."" The office said its frequency and intensity raised questions about whether it was effective or medically safe. So we think Hunter misleads a bit by equating waterboarding in training of military personnel with the technique used on terror suspects. According to the CIA inspector general's report, the technique used on the suspects was more powerful and convincing. And in the case of one terror suspect, it was used 183 times, often in rapid succession. So to argue the technique isn't torture because it is used on American servicemen as part of training ignores that it was not used in the same way. Still, Hunter is correct that the U.S. military has waterboarded servicemen as part of survival training. And so we rule his statement ."
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34879
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Actor Jimmy Stewart suffered what would in 2019 be diagnosed as PTSD due to his experience as a World War II bomber pilot.
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Matzen’s depiction of Stewart’s state of mind as “flak happy” towards the end of World War II (a depiction reflected in Forney’s viral Facebook post) was relatively thinly sourced, and involved only one direct quotation from a person who met the actor at that time.
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unproven
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History
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In late 2019, we received multiple inquiries from readers about the veracity of a viral Facebook post that presented an account of the actor Jimmy Stewart’s military service during World War II. The post claimed a profound link between the trauma Stewart suffered from flying 20 combat missions over Germany and his ability to immerse himself in the role of George Bailey, the melancholic protagonist of the classic American film (and holiday favorite) “It’s a Wonderful Life.” On Dec. 22, 2018, Ned Forney — a writer who devotes his Facebook page to personal histories and tributes to many U.S. military service members — posted one such account of Stewart’s patriotism and dedication, and the emotional scars he bore from his sacrifice: For all the fans of “It’s A Wonderful Life” and Jimmy Stewart … Just months after winning his 1941 Academy Award for best actor in “The Philadelphia Story,” Jimmy Stewart, one of the best-known actors of the day, left Hollywood and joined the US Army. He was the first big-name movie star to enlist in World War II. An accomplished private pilot, the 33-year-old Hollywood icon became a US Army Air Force aviator, earning his 2nd Lieutenant commission in early 1942. With his celebrity status and huge popularity with the American public, he was assigned to starring in recruiting films, attending rallies, and training younger pilots. Stewart, however, wasn’t satisfied. He wanted to fly combat missions in Europe, not spend time in a stateside training command. By 1944, frustrated and feeling the war was passing him by, he asked his commanding officer to transfer him to a unit deploying to Europe. His request was reluctantly granted. Stewart, now a Captain, was sent to England, where he spent the next 18 months flying B-24 Liberator bombers over Germany. Throughout his time overseas, the US Army Air Corps’ top brass had tried to keep the popular movie star from flying over enemy territory. But Stewart would hear nothing of it. Determined to lead by example, he bucked the system, assigning himself to every combat mission he could. By the end of the war he was one of the most respected and decorated pilots in his unit. But his wartime service came at a high personal price. In the final months of WWII he was grounded for being “flak happy,” today called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). When he returned to the US in August 1945, Stewart was a changed man. He had lost so much weight that he looked sickly. He rarely slept, and when he did he had nightmares of planes exploding and men falling through the air screaming (in one mission alone his unit had lost 13 planes and 130 men, most of whom he knew personally). He was depressed, couldn’t focus, and refused to talk to anyone about his war experiences. His acting career was all but over. As one of Stewart’s biographers put it, “Every decision he made [during the war] was going to preserve life or cost lives. He took back to Hollywood all the stress that he had built up.” In 1946 he got his break. He took the role of George Bailey, the suicidal father in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” The rest is history. Actors and crew of the set realized that in many of the disturbing scenes of George Bailey unraveling in front of his family, Stewart wasn’t acting. His PTSD was being captured on filmed for potentially millions to see. But despite Stewart’s inner turmoil, making the movie was therapeutic for the combat veteran. He would go on to become one of the most accomplished and loved actors in American history. When asked in 1941 why he wanted to leave his acting career to fly combat missions over Nazi Germany, he said, “This country’s conscience is bigger than all the studios in Hollywood put together, and the time will come when we’ll have to fight.” This weekend, as many of us watch the classic Christmas film, “It’s A Wonderful Life,” it’s also a fitting time to remember the sacrifices of Jimmy Stewart and all the men who gave up so much to serve their country during wartime. We will always remember you! Postscript: While fighting in Europe, Stewart’s Oscar statue was proudly displayed in his father’s Pennsylvania hardware store. Throughout his life, the beloved actor always said his father, a World War I veteran, was the person who had made the biggest impact on him. Jimmy Stewart was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 and died in 1997 at the age of 89. It’s a stirring account, and one firmly rooted in an accurate presentation of the basic sequence of events of Stewart’s involvement in World War II. However, elements of the story — the claim that Stewart was removed from flying missions over Germany because he suffered from PTSD, and descriptions of him suffering nightmares of “men falling through the air screaming” — appear to be rather thinly sourced and not corroborated in other accounts of the actor’s military service. The version of events presented in the meme appears to have borrowed heavily from a 2016 book by the nonfiction writer Robert Matzen, called “Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe.” The book charted Stewart’s early career as an actor, his friendships and relationships, his family’s history of military service, his famously close and affectionate bond with his father, and his entry into military service during World War II. However, the book attracted attention in the media for the revelatory claim that Stewart had suffered from what would now be diagnosed as PTSD, as a result of the horrors of flying 20 bombing missions over Germany, to such an extent that Stewart had to withdraw from combat missions, and that his trauma was visible to those on the set of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Here’s what Matzen wrote in the book itself about Stewart’s state of mind after returning to Hollywood from the war: Jim Stewart was a man at sea, untethered by his old employer, yet also away from the regimentation of the service, the adrenalin rush, the striving toward great accomplishments, and the defying of odds with an extraordinary collection of brothers in arms who had become like sons to him. Combat fatigue and shell shock were the terms of the day for what eventually became known as post-traumatic stress disorder, but whatever the name, Stewart suffered along with millions of other combat veterans who had returned to homes the world over, to friends and family who just couldn’t understand what they had experienced. On several occasions throughout the book, Matzen described Stewart as “flak happy,” a World War II-era phrase for symptoms of anxiety, sleeplessness, nightmares, and so on, which would now likely be diagnosed as PTSD. In one instance, he cited an interview he conducted with Lt. Barry Shillito, a fellow pilot and contemporary of Stewart’s, as follows: “… Shillito was shocked at the change in his old squadron commander. Stewart was gray of face, with bags under his eyes and a furrowed brow. His full head of hair had begun to recede and was half silver. Jim had grown so thin that the skin hung from his neck. It was almost as if Jim Stewart had been imprisoned like the others. ‘He went flak happy there for a while,’ said Shillito. ‘He wasn’t flying anymore and he was quieter than I remembered. '” The specific claim that Stewart had suffered nightmares about “planes exploding and men falling through the air screaming” appears to be of dubious origins. It comes from the prologue of Matzen’s book, which is in several places written in an impressionistic style, mixing third-person narration with first-person, stream-of-consciousness prose, the latter a style that does not lend itself well to source-checking. The book reads: “In every newspaper, in every magazine were stories about families who didn’t recognize the boys who had come home. This isn’t my son. This isn’t my husband; this isn’t my brother. He’s so cold, so distant, and the rages, the nightmares! “Oh yes, the nightmares came every night. There he was on oxygen at 20,000 feet with 190s zipping past, spraying lead and firing rockets, flak bursting about the cockpit. B-24s hit, burning, spinning out of formation. Bail out! Do you see any chutes? How many chutes? Whose ship was it? Oh no, not him! Not them! Bodies, pieces of bodies smacking off the windshield …” In the chapter notes, Matzen wrote the following about the sourcing for the prologue: “The prologue was written last and drew upon all the research that came before. I interviewed dozens of Armed Services personnel about the experience of coming home from wartime and their feelings of unreality and disconnectedness from friends, family and co-workers who couldn’t possibly understand what had happened overseas.” It’s perfectly plausible that Stewart, who led and took part in multiple bombing missions, might have experienced nightmares or had traumatic memories of those difficult experiences. However, the “exploding planes” claim serves as a useful warning about describing what might be a general impression of the collective experience of World War II aviators as a specific experience that Stewart himself personally had. The Facebook post’s claim that Stewart was “grounded for being ‘flak happy'” is also factually dubious. The broader assertion that Stewart had to fight to be allowed to fly combat missions, and play a more active part in the war, is fully corroborated in two other sources that we consulted: “Jimmy Stewart: The Truth Behind the Legend,” a book by the film historian Michael Munn; and “Jimmy Stewart: Bomber Pilot,” a book by Starr Smith, an author and journalist who worked alongside Stewart as an Eighth Air Force intelligence officer during World War II. According to all three sources, the “higher-ups” within the U.S. military preferred to deploy Stewart’s fame and widespread respect among the American population by using him for propaganda purposes, morale-raising exercises, and to encourage other young men to enlist. However, Stewart was persistent in requesting combat missions, and was eventually stationed in England where he led or took part in 20 bombing missions over Germany. Neither Munn nor Smith’s accounts describe Stewart as “flak happy,” “shell-shocked,” or suffering from what would now be diagnosed as PTSD. Neither account describes any nightmares or obvious trauma on Stewart’s part, in detail, and neither book ascribes his supposed condition as the reason he was withdrawn from combat missions towards the end of the war. Rather, according to Smith, Stewart was promoted and moved in the spring of 1944, as part of what Smith describes in his book as a natural progression in his military career, given his frequently commended performance as a bomber pilot and squadron leader: “… Toward the end of March [1944], the news came: Major Stewart had been promoted. After flying twelve missions with the 445th Group and commanding the 703rd Squadron, he was leaving to become the operations officer of the 453rd Group, at Attleborough, or Old Buc … When the appointment was announced, nothing was said about “flying too many missions.” The official word was that the 453rd needed an operations officer, and Major Stewart had been promoted to the job. I was then a combat intelligence officer with the 453rd, and met Stewart for the first time upon his arrival at Old Buc … Since then, I have been asked many times about it. I must say that I think it highly unlikely that Stewart’s mission schedule and high command’s efforts to “protect” him had any bearing on his transfer and promotion.” Smith speculates, in the book, that Col. Bob Terrill, with whom Stewart had a close affinity, might have lobbied for the transfer, but otherwise describes it as “a routine air force change of assignment,” adding: “Stewart was a mature, knowledgeable and experienced air force officer with an operational and administrative background. And a stellar combat record. He knew the territory. In short, he was ready for promotion. And deserved it.”
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12299
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One in three people who’s receiving treatment for (opioid) drug problems gets some help from Medicaid to pay for that.
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Warren said that one in three people receiving treatment for opioid addiction were covered by Medicaid, basing her estimate on 34 percent of people with opioid use disorder. The number was higher when we looked at only those receiving treatment: 39 percent. So while the numbers differ slightly, one in three is still a fair estimate.
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true
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National, Health Care, Medicaid, Elizabeth Warren,
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"In a video denouncing the Senate health care bill’s slashing of Medicaid funding, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., emphasized the importance of Medicaid in battling the opioid crisis. Warren called an additional $45 billion introduced in the new Senate health care bill to fight the opioid crisis insufficient if spending on Medicaid is to decrease. ""Right now, Medicaid is the principal way we deal with opioid abuse,"" Warren said. ""One in three people who’s receiving treatment for drug problems gets some help from Medicaid to pay for that."" A reader asked us to check out her claim. Are one in three people receiving treatment for drug problems on Medicaid? When we asked her office to clarify her statement, they said Warren referred specifically to opioid users, rather than all of those who suffer from drug problems. Warren was referencing a study by Richard Frank, a professor of Health Economics in the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School who testified before the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee. Frank calculated the percentage of the non-elderly adult population with opioid use disorder covered by Medicaid, which came to 34.3 percent. He used data from the 2015 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the latest study from the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality. Thirty-four percent effectively comes to 1.029, or one, person for every three. Warren said those people are receiving treatment, but Frank’s research looked at people suffering from opioid use disorder whether or not they are currently in treatment. But other research supports her point. When the Kaiser Family Foundation ran the numbers for us, they found that of the 880,000 nonelderly adults with opioid addiction who received treatment for opioid use disorder in 2015, 39 percent were covered by Medicaid. They looked at the same information as Frank. When we extended the population size to include people of all ages, the number was similar: 38 percent. Breaking down these numbers further, 51 percent of the 880,000 treated adults got outpatient treatment only (which refers to visits that don’t warrant an overnight stay), 6 percent got inpatient treatment only, and 43 percent got both inpatient and outpatient treatment. Julia Zur, a senior policy analyst at the Kaiser Family Foundation, explained that outpatient treatment is more popular and that patients who start in inpatient treatment will often go on to receive outpatient treatment. When we asked why the number of those who are receiving treatment and covered by Medicaid is higher than those who are simply covered, Frank explained that Medicaid programs tend to be more generous in covering costs than private programs, and Medicaid plans cover at least some medication-assisted treatment to treat substance use disorders. The Medicaid expansion was particularly helpful in securing coverage, as it reached high-need segments of the low-income population in states that have been hard hit by the opioid crisis. Warren said that one in three people receiving treatment for opioid addiction were covered by Medicaid, basing her estimate on 34 percent of people with opioid use disorder. The number was higher when we looked at only those receiving treatment: 39 percent. So while the numbers differ slightly, one in three is still a fair estimate."
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1773
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Montana to give bison from Yellowstone to tribes instead of zoos.
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An Indian reservation in Montana will receive 145 bison from Yellowstone National Park that were quarantined to create a herd free of a disease that threatens ranchers’ cattle, according to a government plan approved on Thursday.
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true
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Environment
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The Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission agreed unanimously to give the bison to the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes of the Fort Peck Indian Reservation to further the conservation of the country’s last herd of wild, purebred buffalo. The tribe was chosen instead of a proposal to distribute the iconic, hump-shouldered creatures to six organizations across five states, including New York’s Bronx and Queens zoos. “It would be a great celebration at Fort Peck to make this happen,” said Becky Dockter, chief legal counsel for Montana’s wildlife agency. The bison, now in confinement at a Montana ranch owned by media mogul Ted Turner, were part of a government experiment that quarantined the animals to produce a band free of the cattle disease brucellosis, which is carried by roughly half of Yellowstone’s buffalo. The success of the experiment, documented in a scientific study issued earlier this year, gave Montana assurance that relocating the bison would not pose a risk of transmitting brucellosis to commercial livestock. The ailment can cause cows to miscarry. Commissioners adopted the revised plan after calls by buffalo advocates not to send the animals out of state when Indian lands in Montana were suitable and where tribal biologists have already proven they can manage bison, said Andrea Jones, spokeswoman for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. In 2012, the Fort Peck tribes saw the historic return of 63 Yellowstone buffalo to their reservation under a plan crafted by state, federal and tribal bison managers. Montana Fish and Wildlife Commissioner Lawrence Wetsit said the tribes would be open to working with the state on possibly distributing offspring of the brucellosis-free bison to zoos and other proposed recipients like the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma. “I’m sure the tribes would be willing to work closely with the state for a percentage of the offspring to go and replenish other herds,” he said. The New York zoos could not immediately be reached for comment on the plan, which must be approved by the head of the state’s wildlife agency. It is also subject to review for adverse environmental impacts. The agreement with the Turner ranch requires the bison be relocated by the end of the year.
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25896
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Majority Forward Says Sen. Thom Tillis “doesn’t think restaurant workers should have to wash their hands.”
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A new television ad by Majority Forward PAC says U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) “doesn’t think restaurant workers should have to wash their hands.” The ad doesn't provide context for the comments, which Tillis made in 2015. Tillis was making a point about regulations, not offering his opinion on whether workers should wash their hands.
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false
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Public Health, North Carolina, Coronavirus, Majority Forward,
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"The novel coronavirus outbreak has prompted renewed attention on controversial comments Thom Tillis made in 2015. Tillis is the Republican incumbent running for U.S. Senate in North Carolina. He faces a challenge from Democrat Cal Cunningham in one of the most competitive Senate races in the country. A new TV ad from Majority Forward PAC takes the senator’s old comments and presents them in the context of the pandemic. The ad highlights Tillis’ comments on regulation and hand washing. But it doesn’t play the audio. Instead, a narrator says: ""He doesn’t think restaurant workers should have to wash their hands."" An Asheville Citizen-Times headline appears on the screen: ""Tillis: Restaurant workers shouldn't have to wash hands."" That’s a reference to the paper’s article about Tillis’ comments. But did Tillis really say that? The attack ad is misleading. Tillis talked about handwashing on Feb. 3, 2015 at an event of the Bipartisan Policy Center. A clip from the event is available on C-SPAN’s website. At the event, Tillis recalled a conversation he had with a friend. He said they were sitting in a Starbucks when an opportunity presented itself to make a point about business regulations in the U.S. Here’s part of the transcript: ""And at that time we were sitting back at a table that was near the restrooms and one of the employees just came out. She said, ‘For example, don’t you believe that this regulation that requires this gentleman to wash his hands before he serves your food is important, should be on the books?’ I said, as a matter of fact, I think it’s one that I can illustrate the point. ""I don't have any problem with Starbucks if they choose to opt out of this policy, as long as they post a sign that says, 'We don't require our employees to wash their hands after leaving the restroom.’ The market will take care of that. ""It's one example — but then let them decide. Now that's probably one where every business that did that would go out of business, but I think it's good to illustrate the point that that's the sort of mentality that we have to have to reduce the regulatory burden on this country."" There’s an important distinction that needs to be made here. Tillis never said restaurant employees shouldn’t be required to wash their hands. Tillis said he would be fine if the government didn’t require employees to wash their hands. Under the fictional scenario Tillis presented, businesses could choose to have a handwashing policy. And if businesses disclosed that they didn’t require employee handwashing, Tillis said they would likely go out of business. In other words, Tillis argued that regulations aren’t needed because market forces would prompt business owners to do the right thing. He offered an opinion on business regulations, not the health benefits of hand washing. Another misleading aspect of the ad is that it mentions Tillis’ handwashing comments in the present tense. The beginning of the ad shows someone washing their hands. A narrator says: ""Everyone does it. Especially now. Well, maybe not everyone."" Then it shows a photo of Tillis. But Tillis clarified his 2015 comments shortly after making them. In an interview with The Hill in 2015, Tillis said his comments weren’t meant to be taken seriously. ""Of course (handwashing) needs to be regulated,"" Tillis said. ""If you noticed it was one of the instances at the very tail end, it was clearly meant as a joke. Even (the moderator) at the end said, 'Well, now I'm not sure I should shake your hand.' It was just fun."" In an interview with HuffPost, he blamed any controversy on a blogger ""without a sense of humor."" It’s also inaccurate to suggest that Tillis hasn’t encouraged handwashing during the pandemic. On April 6, he told Fox 8: ""If we want to get out of this sooner, then everybody in North Carolina needs to make sure they’re staying at home, social distancing, washing their hands, all the things that they’re being asked to do every single day."" He made the same point in a tweet the next day. Asked about the ad, Majority Forward spokeswoman Rachel Irwin said the old Tillis comments are ""fair game."" ""North Carolinians deserve to know that Tillis holds such extreme views, especially during a pandemic when their health and safety are further at risk,"" Irwin said. ""I think health and safety experts would agree that his view is problematic and he should have to answer for it."" The ad says Tillis ""doesn’t think restaurant workers should have to wash their hands."" He never said restaurant workers shouldn’t wash their hands. In context, he was saying he didn’t think the government needed to regulate handwashing at restaurants, because customers would stop going if that happened. He later reversed that statement, saying ""of course"" it needs to be regulated. What’s more, his 2015 comments had nothing to do with the pandemic. During the pandemic, Tillis has held up hand washing as an important public response. The ad is inaccurate."
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"Just last year, alone, 710 police officers"" were assaulted in New York state."
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"Golden said, ""Just last year alone, 710 police officers … were assaulted in this state."" Golden relied on FBI data that does not include assaults on officers from New York City. Golden undercounted, but his point is not lost: The number of reported assaults on law enforcement officers is significant. His statement needs clarification and additional information."
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true
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Criminal Justice, Crime, New York, Martin Golden,
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"A bipartisan push in Albany would classify offenses against first responders and law enforcement officers as hate crimes. The Community Heroes Protection Act would also toughen the sentences for those convicted. State Sen. Martin J. Golden, a Republican from Brooklyn and co-sponsor of the bill, said the number of assaults on police officers in New York state should convince his colleagues to support the effort. ""The numbers show this law is definitely needed,"" Golden said. ""Just last year, alone, 710 police officers - this is just police officers - were assaulted in this state."" Is Golden right? Were that many police officers assaulted last year? Data from the FBI The Federal Bureau of Investigation has reported the number of law enforcement officers killed and assaulted in the United States since 1972. The FBI defines a law enforcement officer as a local, state, and federal public authority who ordinarily carries a badge and a firearm. The report does not include attacks on correctional officers or emergency responders, though they are included in the proposed legislation. The bureau reported 710 assaults on New York state law enforcement officers in 2015, the latest data available. That’s the lowest number since 2007, when 656 officers were assaulted. The FBI's New York state number, however, is not a statewide figure. It only includes assaults on law enforcement officers outside New York City. The agency said it does not have data for reported assaults on law enforcement officers in New York City. Data from the NYPD The New York City Police Department reports its own data on police assaults, but it defines officers more broadly. The Police Department tracks assaults on police officers, peace officers, prosecutors, nurses, sanitation workers, firefighters, paramedics, city marshals, school crossing guards, traffic agents and emergency responders. The department said it does not report solely the number of assaults on law enforcement officers. Last year the department reported 1,632 assaults on people within the department's definition. That’s down from 2015, when 1,738 assaults were reported. Our ruling Golden said, ""Just last year alone, 710 police officers … were assaulted in this state."" Golden relied on FBI data that does not include assaults on officers from New York City. Golden undercounted, but his point is not lost: The number of reported assaults on law enforcement officers is significant. His statement needs clarification and additional information.
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32265
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"Hillary Clinton and/or members of her 2008 presidential campaign started the ""birther"" movement questioning whether Barack Obama was born in the U.S."
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The conspiracy theory was already fully formed at this point. Clearly, the Clinton supporters accused of spreading it via forwarded e-mails knew “good ammo” when they saw it, but, as the above posts show, they deserve neither credit nor blame for the invention of birtherism.
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false
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Politics Conspiracy Theories, barack obama, birtherism, donald trump
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On 16 September 2016, after years of being the most visible and outspoken exponent of “birtherism” — the notion that, despite all evidence to the contrary, Barack Obama was born outside the U.S. and thus his presidency is illegitimate and his allegiances suspect — GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump stepped up to the podium at a televised campaign event and completely reversed his stance on the matter — but not before trying to lay blame for the long, drawn-out smear campaign on someone else. “Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it,” Trump said. “President Barack Obama was born in the United States, period.” A press release issued by Trump’s campaign staff elaborated on the accusation: Hillary Clinton’s campaign first raised this issue to smear then-candidate Barack Obama in her very nasty, failed 2008 campaign for President. This type of vicious and conniving behavior is straight from the Clinton Playbook. As usual, however, Hillary Clinton was too weak to get an answer. Even the MSNBC show Morning Joe admits that it was Clinton’s henchmen who first raised this issue, not Donald J. Trump. In 2011, Mr. Trump was finally able to bring this ugly incident to its conclusion by successfully compelling President Obama to release his birth certificate. Mr. Trump did a great service to the President and the country by bringing closure to the issue that Hillary Clinton and her team first raised. Inarguably, Donald J. Trump is a closer. Having successfully obtained President Obama’s birth certificate when others could not, Mr. Trump believes that President Obama was born in the United States. The statement is correct when it suggests that the claim that Hillary Clinton invented birtherism isn’t new. It had been made in 2015, for example, on the MSNBC Morning Joe program: Though it’s true that the specific allegation that Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. first reared its head during the 2008 presidential race, rumblings about Obama’s “otherness” had been percolating since long before that. In 2004, a political gadfly named Andy Martin issued a press release calling Barack Obama a “complete fraud” who had “misrepresented his heritage” in his memoir, Dreams From My Father, and “is a Muslim who has concealed his religion.” The theme was pushed further in December 2006 by conservative columnist Debbie Schlussel, who published an article entitled “Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always a Muslim,” which stated that “Obama has a ‘born-again’ affinity for the nation of his Muslim father, Kenya.” In March 2007, Clinton campaign strategist Mark Penn proposed attacking Obama on the basis of his “lack of American roots.” And, in December 2007, a Clinton volunteer county coordinator in Iowa was fired for forwarding an e-mail making the by-then familiar claim that Obama is a Muslim. The idea that Obama was born elsewhere, specifically Kenya, was first floated in April 2008, according to a 22 April 2011 Politico article by Ben Smith and Byron Tau on the origins of birtherism: That theory first emerged in the spring of 2008, as Clinton supporters circulated an anonymous e-mail questioning Obama’s citizenship. “Barack Obama’s mother was living in Kenya with his Arab-African father late in her pregnancy. She was not allowed to travel by plane then, so Barack Obama was born there and his mother then took him to Hawaii to register his birth,” asserted one chain email that surfaced on the urban legend site Snopes.com in April 2008. That Hillary Clinton supporters circulated such an e-mail isn’t in question, but the claim that that’s the moment the birther theory “first emerged” simply isn’t true. The likeliest point of origin we’ve been able to find was a post on conservative message board FreeRepublic.com dated 1 March 2008 (which, according to a report in The Telegraph, was at least a month before Clinton supporters got on the e-mail bandwagon): I was told today that Obama swore in on a Koran for his Senate seat. I do not believe he did. Can someone clarify this for me? I am under the impression only a Congressman has so far sworn in on a Koran. Also that Obama’s mother gave birth to him overseas and then immediately flew into Hawaii and registered his birth as having taken place in Hawaii. Again, any clarifications on this? Defintely disqualifies him for Prez. There must be some trace of an airticket. While small babies are not charged air fare they do have a ticket issued for them. Long time ago but there may be some residual information somewhere. Good ammo (if available and true) BEST USED AFTER he becomes PREZ (if that occurs) and it’s too late for Dems – except accept the VP. The same rumor was repeated, with elaborations, four days later on the conservative blog Ruthless Roundup: Add to the family history shown in this article that Obama’s mother was allegedly visiting Kenya with Obama’s father in the final months of her pregnancy and was not allowed to board a flight in her late term to return home. She allegedly had Obama in Kenya and quickly boarded a flight to Hawaii. Airlines do not accept late term pregancies but do not refuse passage to a newborn, usually issuing a 10% or free fare ticket for the trip. Once in Hawaii, his mother registered him as being born in Hawaii.
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22157
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"Arianna Huffington Says although the unemployment rate seems to be improving, it does not reflect real job creation -- it’s caused by a ""shrinking of the actual labor force."
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Arianna Huffington says unemployment gains are actually from shrinking workforce, not job creation
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true
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National, Economy, Jobs, Pundits, This Week - ABC News, Arianna Huffington,
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"On the May 1, 2011, edition of ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour, Arianna Huffington -- founder of the liberal news and opinion website The Huffington Post -- threw some cold water on the recent drop in the unemployment rate. Between October 2010 and March 2011 -- when unemployment measures have declined most consistently recently -- the rate has fallen from 9.7 percent to 8.8 percent. That has cheered the Obama Administration, which argues that the numbers are concrete evidence of an improving economy. But Huffington expressed caution about what these numbers really mean, pointing out a complicating factor in how the unemployment rate is calculated -- one that raises questions about whether the administration’s optimistic interpretation is accurate. Here’s what Huffington said: ""What's happening in the country with jobs, basically, despite the fact that supposedly, you know, we have a reduction in unemployment. We know this is really a statistical reason because of the shrinking of the actual labor force, but not any real creation of jobs."" We’ve streamlined what Huffington said for clarity’s sake and will use that for our fact-check: Although the unemployment rate seems to be improving, she indicated, it does not reflect real job creation -- the improvement is actually caused by a shrinking labor force. This gets a bit complicated, so bear with us. We’ll start with the way the government’s official arbiter of employment statistics, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, calculates the unemployment rate. BLS determines how many Americans are looking for work, excluding people who have taken themselves out of the labor force, either temporarily or permanently -- for instance, if they are leaving jobs to return to school full time, taking time off to raise children, retiring, taking time to travel long-term or simply living off their savings for a stretch. BLS takes the number of Americans who are unemployed but still looking for work and divides it by the ""workforce"" -- working Americans plus those who are jobless but looking for work. The result is the unemployment rate. So, the unemployment rate can be shaped by two distinct factors -- the number of unemployed Americans and the number of Americans working or looking for work. If the number of jobless Americans declines and the size of the work force doesn’t change much, the unemployment rate will fall. But if the size of the workforce falls at a fast enough rate, even a decline in the number of jobless Americans can actually lead to a rising unemployment rate. Enough with the theory -- let’s turn to the actual numbers. Between October 2010 and March 2011, the unemployment level -- the numerator used to determine the unemployment rate -- has declined from 14,876,000 in October to 13,542,000 in March. Meanwhile, the civilian work force -- the denominator -- has declined over the same period from 153,960,000 to 153,406,000. And as we indicated, the unemployment rate has declined during that period from 9.7 percent to 8.8 percent. So, over that period, unemployment fell by 1,334,000 people, but it did so for two separate reasons. On the one hand, 554,000 left the work force and, by the logic of the BLS statistic, were no longer counted as ""unemployed."" On the other hand, 780,000 people secured jobs. Comparing those two numbers, then, we can say that about 0.5 of the 0.9 percentage-point decline in the unemployment rate was due to people actually getting jobs, and the remaining 0.4 points was due to people leaving the workforce, either because they gave up on their job search or for other reasons, such as retirement. End of story? Not yet. This calculation assumes that the labor force at least should stay the same size from month to month. In fact, economists say that to keep pace with population growth, the labor force has to grow from month to month -- according to one popular estimate, by 100,000 every month. So when the labor force declined from October to March by 554,000, that actually underestimated the migration away from the labor force. The real hit to the work force over that period was more than 1 million Americans. This gets complicated to calculate, so economists sometimes use a different statistic instead -- the employment-to-population ratio. This shows what percentage of the 16-and-over population has a job. The EPOP (as it’s commonly called) fell significantly during the most recent recession, meaning that a smaller share of the population held jobs. In fact, the last time labor force participation has been this low was in the mid 1980s -- a quarter-century ago. This is the statistic that Huffington cited when we reached her. She first referred us to a blog post by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman that bemoaned the sluggish EPOP. She later followed up with a flurry of other articles and economic blog posts that made this point. So we’re left to decide whether it’s better to trust the traditional BLS statistics or EPOP. It’s a tough call. The advantage of EPOP is that it solves the population growth problem, which is not a trivial factor, particularly when you’re talking about a span of several months. The drawback is that it counts as unemployed people who have chosen that course on a truly voluntary basis -- going back to school, raising kids and so on. That overestimates the genuine unemployment rate. On balance, we think (and experts across the ideological spectrum tell us) that both measures are imperfect, but valid. This leaves us with Huffington’s specific comment. The main shortcoming is in her phrasing. She says that there has ""not (been) any real creation of jobs."" There’s a legitimate argument to be made about whether the economy is creating enough jobs to keep the economy humming, but we don’t think it’s accurate to say that there’s been no job creation. Over the period we studied, the economy created 700,000-plus jobs, which is not only an increase in absolute terms but is also a pace that exceeded the amount experts say is necessary to keep up with population growth. It’s been modest job growth, perhaps, but not zero. On the other hand, Huffington’s broader point -- that unemployment statistics can be affected by workers’ departure from the labor market -- is an important one, and one that’s often overlooked outside the world of professional economists. No less an authority than the Federal Reserve Board of Governors took note of this reality during its March meeting. According to the minutes of the meeting, ""several participants noted that the drop in unemployment was attributable more to people withdrawing from the labor force and to fewer layoffs than to increased hiring."" ""There has been some growth in employment, but not as much as the headline-figure drop in the unemployment rate would initially suggest, and labor-force participation has dropped during the recession,"" said James Sherk, a senior policy analyst in labor economics at the conservative Heritage Foundation. ""There are caveats you could add to make the statement more complete, but as a one-sentence summary it is not far off the mark."" Ultimately, we agree that Huffington is largely correct that the unemployment rate is affected by people leaving the workforce, not just by job creation, even if she has slightly exaggerated its extent."
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24107
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A lot of the ideas in terms of the (health insurance) exchange, just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market, that originated from the Heritage Foundation.
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Obama says Heritage Foundation is source of health exchange idea
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true
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National, Health Care, Barack Obama,
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"EDITOR'S NOTE: An analysis of this comment by President Barack Obama was published on April 1, 2010. After it appeared, the Heritage Foundation's communications office contacted us to argue that our rating of was too generous to the president. We did some additional reporting to review our ruling. Our second round of reporting -- primarily talking to conservative policy experts outside of Heritage -- solidified our initial conclusions. Below is the updated version of our story, which retains the rating of , published April 26, 2010.Democrats like to parry Republican criticism of the recently passed health care law by talking about how it includes ideas that originated with conservatives. During an interview on NBC's Today show on March 30, 2010, President Barack Obama offered a specific example.Obama told host Matt Lauer that ""when you actually look at the bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas. I mean a lot of commentators have said this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts. A lot of the ideas in terms of the exchange, just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market, that originated from the Heritage Foundation. ...""We zeroed in on the notion that the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that is no fan of Obama's health care law as a whole, might have ""originated"" the idea of the health insurance exchange -- a virtual marketplace where individuals can purchase health insurance. Our interest only grew after we received an e-mail from Heritage president Ed Feulner that blasted Obama's claim. ""President Obama this morning cited the Heritage Foundation's research in an attempt to sell his health care package as a 'middle-of-the-road, centrist approach,'"" Feulner wrote. ""We take great exception to this misuse of our work and abuse of our name. This is but the latest act in a campaign to sell this big-government program as a moderate law that incorporates conservative ideas. Americans should not be fooled. ""Feulner went on to argue that ""the president knows full well — or he ought to learn before he speaks — that the exchanges we and most others support are very different from those in his package. True exchanges are simply a market mechanism to enable families to choose their health insurance. President Obama’s exchanges, by contrast, are a vehicle to introduce sweeping regulation and federal standardization on health insurance. ""Heritage continued its campaign against Obama's claim in an April 19, 2010, op-ed column in the Washington Post. The director of Heritage's Center for Health Policy Studies, Robert Moffit, wrote that ""the version of the exchange we did develop couldn't be more different than that embodied in this law."" He charged that ""the Obama health-care law 'builds' on the Heritage health reform model only in the sense that, say, a double-quarter-pounder with cheese 'builds' on the idea of a garden salad. Both have lettuce and tomato and may be called food, but the similarities end there. ""We see two related, but distinct, questions here. The first is whether Heritage did in fact ""originate"" the idea of health insurance exchanges. The second is whether the exchange prescribed by the new law mirrors the one that Heritage has supported.• Did Heritage originate the idea? Our research suggests that while Heritage has advocated for health insurance exchanges for many years, others did, too. Scholars credit Alain C. Enthoven -- an emeritus professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business who worked in the Defense Department during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations -- with popularizing the idea for an exchange as many as three decades ago.Still, there's little doubt that Heritage has been a consistent and eager promoter of the exchange idea, especially during the effort to design a new health care system for Massachusetts. That effort concluded with the Democratic legislature joining with the Republican governor, Romney, to implement a system that includes a health insurance exchange.On numerous occasions, Heritage scholars wrote approvingly of the exchange system in Massachusetts, known as the Connector. In a paper about the Massachusetts plan published on April 11, 2006, Edmund Haislmaier, a Heritage fellow in health care policy, wrote of the ""truly significant and transformative health system changes that the legislation would set in motion. ""Specifically, Haislmaier wrote that ""this concept of organizing a state's insurance markets around a central clearinghouse represents a dramatic departure from recent state health insurance reform proposals. States have spent the past 15 years trying to expand health care coverage to small-business employees, with virtually no positive results. The Massachusetts legislation represents a bipartisan commitment to move away from the policies that have largely failed to make progress in covering the uninsured for the past 15 years. ""In another paper, titled, ""The Rationale for a Statewide Health Insurance Exchange,"" and published on Oct. 5, 2006, Heritage scholar Robert Moffit wrote that ""the best option is a health insurance market exchange."" Comparing it to a farmers' market or the used-car dealer CarMax, Moffit said the exchange ""would expand coverage and choice"" and would represent ""a revolutionary change in the health insurance market. ""Journalists seemed to give Heritage credit, as well. During 2006, columns and articles citing Heritage's role in promoting the health exchange idea ran in such publications as the Washington Post, the Dallas Morning News, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the National Review.We feel the president is largely right on this point. The idea for exchanges may have ""originated"" outside Heritage, but in well over a decade leading up to the introduction of the president's health care plan, Heritage clearly took a high-profile role in touting it, culminating in the proposal enacted in Massachusetts. And given that, they can hardly be shocked that the president is noting the think tank's role in developing the overall concept (even if he did so in a self-serving way).• Is it the same idea? After Obama made his comment, we spoke to both Haislmaier and to Stuart Butler, Heritage's vice president for domestic policy. Both argued that the plan now enacted into law is fundamentally different in structure than the one Heritage advocated. ""What Obama and Capitol Hill did was to take a mainstream idea and push it toward a much more interventionist, regulatory model, as opposed to the original idea, which was more market-based,"" Butler said in an interview.To prevent Heritage scholars from moving the goalposts after the fact, we decided to analyze how similar the proposals are only by referring to policy stances that can be documented in briefing papers published prior to Obama's election. We found at least four papers that spoke directly to the health insurance exchange idea, and in these papers, we noticed several passages that advocated elements of an exchange that differ from how the bill was ultimately written.Here are some of those differences:-- Who can use the exchange? In a 2006 paper, Moffit wrote, ""Ideally, an exchange should be open to all state residents and all interested employers, regardless of the size of the firm, who want to arrange health insurance through the exchange. ""That's not the case with the exchanges in the new law -- at least not any time soon. When the exchanges go live in 2014, they will only be open to people already buying insurance on the individual market (that is, those buying insurance independent of their employer) and to employees of small businesses with up to 100 employees. A provision does allow employees of businesses with more than 100 employees to purchase coverage from the exchange, but not until 2017, and only if their state decides to allow it. (The exception is that employees who are paying too large a percentage of their income on their employer-based health insurance will be eligible in 2014.) -- How much federal regulation will there be? Heritage scholars have regularly argued that the key regulatory role for the exchanges should be handled by the states, rather than the federal government.In a 2007 paper, Butler wrote that ""each state would determine on its own such features as the infrastructure for handling premiums, as well as the regulations and requirements for accepting insurance plans into the exchange. The state also would be responsible for determining pooling, reinsurance, and risk adjustment arrangements and the degree to which firms would, if at all, be required to offer plans available through the exchange to their employees. ""It's true that the new health care law will create state-based exchanges. However, they will have to adhere to many federal requirements.For instance, the federal law requires the Secretary of Health and Human Services to define an ""essential health benefits package"" (and update its details every year). This will become the minimum package offered on the exchanges. The law also limits plans sold on the exchange to charging differential premiums only based on age (in a 3-to-1 ratio), geography, family composition and tobacco use (on a 1.5-to-1 ratio). And health plans on the exchange will have to abide by an assortment of other rules governing marketing requirements, provider networks and standards for presenting information to consumers.-- How portable will insurance be? In a 2007 paper published by Heritage, researcher Connie Marshner argued that health insurance exchanges would promote portability of health insurance. ""When individuals are able to purchase health insurance for themselves in an (exchange) marketplace, the insurance belongs to them,"" Marshner wrote. ""Even if they change jobs, move, or quit working and retire, they own the policy and can keep the same health insurance if they so choose. ""That should be the case for many people on the health care law's exchange, especially those who bought their insurance individually, as long as states don't erect high barriers that bar people from moving from one state's exchange to another. But full portability will be unlikely for those who purchased insurance on the exchange with the help of their employer. While the exchange should make it easier for those switching jobs to find new insurance, there will most likely be a disruption when that employee switches companies -- and whenever there's a disruption in coverage, there's a likelihood that their plan will have to change to one degree or another.So where does this leave us?Edwin Park, a senior fellow with the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, sees significant similarities in approach despite the differences outlined above. Park said the differences involved ""rules of the road within the exchange, rather than fundamental differences in the underlying concept or structure. ""Henry Aaron, a fellow with the centrist-to-liberal Brookings Institution, called the new health care law ""a close relative"" of Heritage's plan -- ""not identical to be sure, but a sibling or at least a first cousin. The essence is that you have a government or nonprofit entity that regulates the sale of insurance to individuals or businesses in order to standardize offerings and to control selling methods in order to produce real, head-to-head competition and to provide customers information in forms they can readily understand. ... Yes, they are all different; but they are all of the same family. ""We also solicited the views of conservative policy experts beyond Heritage.One -- Tevi Troy, a visiting senior fellow at the Hudson Institute -- thought Heritage had a legitimate gripe. ""In the policy world, there is often a vast gulf between theoretical ideas and policies as implemented, and this case is no exception,"" Troy said. ""While Heritage had been a leading advocate for health insurance exchanges, the law as written creates something so different from what Heritage sought that I understand why they want to remove their name from the list of proponents. ""However, we heard from nine people affiliated with conservative policy organizations other than Heritage who thought that the president's statement was reasonably accurate.Seven of them declined to publicly express their differences with Heritage for fear of making waves within the tight-knit conservative policy world. But two did allow their names to be used. One was Dan Miller, executive vice president of the Chicago-based Heartland Institute, who acknowledged that Obama's statement was so carefully worded that the president ""was able to exploit"" the issue ""for his own ends. ""The other was Daniel McCarthy, senior editor of the American Conservative magazine who has written recently about the conservative origins of the president's health care plan. ""Every think tank on the left and right knows that its recommendations will undergo some deformation before they make their way into law, if they ever do,"" McCarthy told PolitiFact. ""Heritage might prefer state insurance exchanges with greater individual choice, including for workers already covered by their employers. But I don't imagine Ed Feulner would be complaining at all if a Republican president or a Republican Congress had passed a plan that deviated from the Heritage blueprint to the same degree that Obama's bill has. While it's not true that 'lots of' the specifics in the Obama plan were dreamed up by Heritage, the overall approach is similar to policies Heritage has long championed, including the individual mandate as well as the insurance exchanges. This is only controversial because the wrong party happened to pass the law, and it's poison for any conservative to be identified with it. ""We agree with Heritage that the differences between its original vision and the version enacted into law are not trivial, and are enough to undercut the president's effort to secure a Heritage Foundation seal of approval for his bill. But the president helped his case by wording his statement with extreme care. Intentionally or not, he gave himself subtle linguistic running room by saying that ""a lot of the ideas"" for the exchange came from Heritage, including the concept of ""just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market."" Even if not all of the ideas in the two plans are identical, we feel that it was fair of him to say that ""a lot of the ideas"" are in common, including the notion of pooling. So we conclude that the president's statement qualifies as ."
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15510
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Georgia residents file the most insurance claims for lightning strikes in the country.
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State Farm says Georgia residents file the most claims for lightning strikes in the country. There’s evidence this has been the case last year and the two previous years.
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true
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Georgia, Weather, State Farm Insurance,
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"Florida leads the nation in deaths from lightning strikes. But State Farm, one of the nation’s major insurers, says it is Georgia residents who file the most claims for lightning strikes in the country, WSB-TV reported Friday, June 5. PolitiFact Georgia was intrigued and decided to dig a little deeper. We began by contacting Justin Tomczak, a State Farm spokesman. He sent us data showing Georgia was No. 1 in 2014 for lightning-related claims both in number (3,709) and total dollar value ($16.3 million). Texas was second, Alabama at third, Louisiana at fourth and Illinois at fifth. STATE Reported Count Paid Indemnity Georgia 3,709 $16,301,952 Texas 2,201 $14,160,258 Alabama 1,902 $10,930,264 Louisiana 1,707 $10,930,264 Illinois 1,669 $8,030,507 . ""This is the third year in a row that Georgia has been ranked No. 1,"" Tomczak said. Most of the lightning claims were surge- or power-related, the spokesman said. Damages generally resulted from power surges in electrical wiring, TV cable or phone lines in homes or businesses, he said. As to why Georgia has the most claims, Tomczak said, ""there is no simple answer. However, many of the lightning claims are concentrated in the Southeastern United States, and Georgia has one of the highest populations in this area."" John Jensenius, lightning safety specialist with the National Weather Service, said the population density in metro Atlanta may be a factor in Georgia’s high claim rate. The denser the population the more likely lightning will strike a house, Jensenius said. The Insurance Information Institute, in conjunction with State Farm, compiles a list each year of the top 10 states for homeowners insurance lightning losses by number of claims. In 2013, the institute listed Georgia as highest with 11,184 lightning-related insurance claims from homeowners. Its 2014 report is due out within days, a spokeswoman said. (Georgia was No. 1 for 2012 with 3,844 claims totalling $21.5 million and for 2013 with 2,969 claims totalling $14.9 million, according to State Farm). Nationwide, lightning strikes cost about $674 million in homeowners insurance losses in 2013, down 30.5 percent from 2012, according to the institute. From 2007 to 2011, local fire departments across the country responded to an average of 22,600 fires a year that were started by lightning, according to the National Fire Protection Association. These fires caused an average of $451 million in direct property damage and nine civilian deaths a year, an NFPA analysis shows. Lightning deaths Florida led the nation for lightning deaths in 2014 with six, followed by Wisconsin with three. Georgia, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado and Massachusetts each had two deaths. Seven additional states -- California, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Texas -- reported one lightning death in the year. The 26 lightning deaths in 2014 followed a record low of 23 set in 2013. The National Weather Service said deaths from lightning strikes averaged 33 a year from 2004 to 2013 and, going back over the last 30 years, an average of 51 people died each year after being hit by lightning. The significant decline in lightning deaths has been attributed to fewer farmers working in the fields, technological advances, improved safety standards and protection. As of the June 1, 2015 there have been six lightning fatalities, two in North Carolina and one each in Iowa, Florida, New Mexico and West Virginia, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). WSB-TV meteorologist Brian Monahan said lightning strikes occur most often in Georgia during the summer months when the high pressure area out in the Atlantic around Bermuda pumps in warm, humid air, creating those all-too-familiar afternoon and evening thunderstorms. A secondary spike of lightning strikes also occurs in the severe weather seasons of March to early May and around October and November, when the air is still warm and humid enough to support storms, Monahan said. Our ruling State Farm says Georgia residents file the most claims for lightning strikes in the country. There’s evidence this has been the case last year and the two previous years."
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37413
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Army veteran Jerry Holliman's legs were repossessed because the Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) refused to pay for them.
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Were an Army Veteran’s Prosthetic Legs ‘Repossessed’ After a VA and Medicare Dispute?
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mixture
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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"On January 9 2020, an article about Army veteran Jerry Holliman and the repossession of his prosthetic legs after a payment dispute between the VA and Medicare was shared to Reddit’s r/nottheonion, a subreddit for news stories odd enough to sound as though they could be satire, but aren’t:Army veteran has prosthetic legs repossessed after VA refuses to pay for them: ""Medicare did not send me to Vietnam"" from nottheonionComments addressed the summarized claim versus its details. One commenter asserted that the linked reporting was insufficiently detailed, making the described situation difficult to understand fully:From the article, the vet did not ask for or get the legs from the VA. He got them from a private provider apparently without being seen at the VA. The VA has a prosthetics service at every VA med center and provides legs, arms, hands, wheelchairs, canes, walkers, hospital beds, urinals, scooters, enteral infusion pumps, etc, etc, etc.But for the VA to pay for something you actually have to get it through the VA, either directly or after they authorize a community provider to get it. The VA does not pay random bills that show up in their mailbox — that would lead to excessive fraud waste and abuse — to ask taxpayers to pay the bill for health care the VA needs to have some process of accountability to ensure that the taxpayers are not being scammed or ripped off (not saying that was the issue here, but that is why the VA has policies and procedures).It sounds like this poor guy was confused about the process, did not understand ‘how things work’. It would take investigation to learn why that was the case — whether the VA failed to provide him with the info he needed to get what he needed, or if he did not take advantage of the VA’s help at all. Who knows? not enough info in the linked article to decide this.Linked in the original post was a January 9 2020 Newsweek article titled “Army Veteran Has Prosthetic Legs Repossessed After VA Refuses to Pay for Them: ‘Medicare Did Not Send Me to Vietnam. '” It began by indicating Holliman “claimed” his prosthetic legs were repossessed, and cited original reporting by the Clarion Ledger:A decorated military veteran who served in Vietnam and Iraq has claimed that his prosthetic legs were taken away after the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) would not cover the cost.Jerry Holliman, 69, told the Clarion Ledger that he was in his room at the Veterans Home in Collins, Mississippi just a couple days before Christmas when a man walked in and took away his prosthetic limbs. According to Holliman, the VA said it would not cover the cost of the limbs, while Medicare said there’d be a copay required.“Medicare did not send me to Vietnam,” Holliman, who received Bronze Stars in both wars in which he served, told the Ledger in an article published Thursday. “I was sent there by my country…with the understanding that if something bad happened to me, that it would be covered by the VA.”Newsweek‘s information appeared to have been sourced in its entirety from reporting published the same day by the Clarion Ledger. According to that coverage, Holliman’s prosthetic legs were repossessed on December 23 2019.That article began by reporting that Holliman had intended to move out of a veteran’s nursing home and regain independence after receiving prosthetic legs, but that the limbs were “repossessed” just before Christmas 2019:The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs wouldn’t pay for his prosthetic legs, Holliman said, and Medicare wanted him on the hook for co-pays. As Holliman tried to navigate what felt like a maze of paperwork, it felt like his country was forgetting him.“Medicare did not send me to Vietnam,” Holliman said. “I was sent there by my country… with the understanding that if something bad happened to me, that it would be covered by the VA.”According to the paper, Holliman obtained the prosthetic legs from a company called Hanger in August 2019, and at some point learned the “U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs would not pay for his prosthetic legs.” Parties involved (such as the VA, Hanger, the facility in which Holliman resided, and Medicare) were unable to comment on the story due to medical privacy laws.The paper said Holliman “tried to raise the alarm” with nursing home staff, but also that Holliman understood the VA was the only entity who could make the decision. In that reporting, the outlet indicated Holliman was advised to “use Medicare” to cover the costs, but it wasn’t clear which parties advised which things.It continued, suggesting that the prosthetic legs were repossessed after Holliman declined to sign unspecified Medicare forms. Holliman said the forms mentioned a co-pay for the limbs but not a total cost, and that Holliman refused in part because he believed the VA should cover the cost of the limbs:Holliman said he was encouraged to use Medicare to pay for the prosthetic legs, but he was never shown a total cost, and the forms indicated he would have to pay a co-pay.So he refused, never expecting what would come next.On Dec. 23 [2019], an employee from Hanger came to the Veterans Home to see Holliman. Holliman said the man was adjusting his prosthetic legs, then asked him to sign some paperwork for Medicare.Holliman said he declined because the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs should pay for the legs in full … The man responded by taking the legs and leaving.Newsweek‘s article was widely discussed on Reddit, but it was not as detailed as the original article from which its information was drawn. According to the Clarion Ledger, the same Hanger representative visited Holliman on January 2 2020 and returned the legs.However, Holliman’s difficulties with retaining and using his prosthetic limbs was not yet over. Although he indicated the representative was friendly and acknowledged Holliman’s military honors, simply getting the legs back did not resolve the situation:“He didn’t know that I received those [rewards],” Holliman said.There was a problem with the legs, though. No adjustments had been made to them, Holliman said, and he can’t walk without one leg folding in on him.“’You can have ‘em,’” Holliman recalled the man saying, “but they’re not going to do anything to them until the VA pays them.”Initially, Hanger told the Clarion Ledger that it was unable to comment due to patient privacy laws, and a waiver from Holliman was required to further discuss the impasse over his prosthetic legs. Hanger spokesperson Meghan Williams eventually described a complex rigamarole during which the clinic maintained that it “does not take back prosthetic devices after final delivery to a patient has been made,” but that “final delivery … [is only fulfilled if] a patient has signed a verification of receipt that allows a claim for payment to be submitted to the applicable insurance payer.”In other words, Holliman receiving and using the prosthetic legs was not considered “final delivery” because payment on the limbs was at least partially outstanding. Finally, the Clarion Ledger described a lack of resolution over Holliman’s legs and his desire to leave the nursing home. None of the parties involved — including the VA, Medicare, and Hanger — commented on its resolution, citing medical privacy laws.On January 9 2020, Clarion Ledger reporter Giacomo Bologna tweeted an image sent to him by Holliman’s son of the unadjusted legs:Just got a photo from Jerry Holliman’s son. Here’s Jerry with his legs back. Jerry says they still need adjusting. pic.twitter.com/hEBWyp8Owx— Giacomo Bologna (@GBolognaCL) January 9, 2020As that report illustrated, obtaining the basic facts of the story was complicated — perhaps in no small part because people whose answers might prove unpopular could hide behind medical privacy laws. But the Reddit commenter quoted above hinted that VA procedure might be a factor in the payment dispute, and they claimed that the VA’s rules in part require going through the agency for approved devices and procedures:But for the VA to pay for something you actually have to get it through the VA, either directly or after they authorize a community provider to get it. The VA does not pay random bills that show up in their mailbox — that would lead to excessive fraud waste and abuse — to ask taxpayers to pay the bill for health care the VA needs to have some process of accountability to ensure that the taxpayers are not being scammed or ripped off (not saying that was the issue here, but that is why the VA has policies and procedures).Holliman said that he believed the VA should pay for his prosthetic legs, a sentiment clearly shared due to the article’s virality. The VA Prosthetics Handbook contained a section called “3.4. Provision of Artificial Limbs.” Sections A through C described the VA’s procedures for administration involving prosthetic limbs:a. Artificial limbs, parts and repairs must be procured, fabricated and issued to eligible beneficiaries by prescription from a designated physician assigned to the Amputee Clinic Team or from the Prosthetic Representative in accordance with the policies and procedures outlined in VHA Handbook 1173.1, VHA Handbook 1173.2, and VHA Handbook 1173.3. Prescription for the initial prosthesis, and any change in the prescription, requires the involvement of the Amputee Clinic team physician, or in the case of a partial foot amputation, the podiatrist assigned to the Amputee Clinic Team. A prescription for a new prosthesis, or a change in the current prosthetic prescription, occurs in conjunction with an appointment in an Amputee Clinic.b. These artificial limbs (appliances) can be procured from contract vendors where adequate appliance facilities are available, the time required to receive delivery of the appliance is not excessive for patients, and the prices charged for such appliances are reasonable. NOTE: VA Orthotic Laboratories with a certified prosthetist may also be used as a source in the fabrication of preparatory, temporary, and permanent artificial limbs.c. Eligible veterans, as identified in VHA Handbook 1173.1, who have previously received artificial limbs from commercial sources, will continue to have their choice of vendors on contract with VA or their non-contract prosthetist, providing the prosthetist accepts the VA preferred provider rate for the geographic area. VA facilities with Orthotic Laboratories that have certified prosthetists, or facilities with access to a VA Laboratory, will provide eligible veteran amputees with the preparatory or temporary prosthesis and permanent limbs. NOTE: When the patient has achieved appropriate shrinkage and is ready for a permanent prosthesis, the preparatory or temporary prosthesis is replaced.That particular handbook was long and detailed, and the word “excessive” appeared at least eleven times. Typically, it was used in conjunction with guidelines involving private vendors (possibly like Hanger). Section 3.5., “VA Source for Artificial Limbs Purchased for VA Beneficiaries,” holds:a. The VA Artificial Limb Contract must be used as a primary source in custom fabrication for artificial limbs purchased for VA beneficiaries. However, fabrication may be from VA Orthotic Laboratories where adequate facilities are conveniently available, certified staff is available to patients and prescribing physicians, the time required for delivery is not excessive or will not result in prolonged hospital stay for patients, and the prices charged for such appliances are reasonable.The VA also hosted prosthetics.va.gov for a battery of individual handbooks relating to myriad prosthetics (and a timeline of military prosthetics), all of which were download-only. Multiple, dense “handbooks” provided by the VA seemed a possible contender for the “maze of paperwork” which Holliman tried to navigate before obtaining the subsequently-repossessed artificial limbs.One of several handbooks, timelines, guideline sheets, and fact sheets [PDF] noted the VA provided “prosthetic equipment,” highlighting a lack of available information in the story about Hanger’s status with the VA and the manner in which the prosthetics were prescribed and dispensed. Reading between the lines, it seemed possible both that the devices were not covered automatically by the VA, and that that information might not be obvious to a patient like Holliman until it escalates to a scenario like the limb repossession:VA provides all clinically appropriate and commercially available, state-of-the-art prosthetic equipment, sensory aids and devices to Veterans that cross the full range of patient care. Such items include: artificial limbs and bracing, wheeled mobility and seating systems, sensory-neural aids (e.g., hearing aids, eyeglasses), cognitive prosthetic devices, items specific to women’s health, surgical implants and devices surgically placed in the Veteran (e.g., hips and pacemakers), home respiratory care, recreational and sports equipment. In addition to providing devices, PSAS also administers the following three unique benefits to assist Veterans and Servicemembers with disabilities.In the end, no one involved seemed to deny some basic facts — that Holliman obtained prosthetic legs in August 2019, and that Hanger “repossessed” the prostheses on December 23 2019 (returning them without adjusting them on January 2 2020). Holliman contended the VA ought to pay for his prosthetic legs, and available VA guidelines indicated that prosthetics like legs are covered under their benefits — so long as the devices are approved of and/or dispensed by the VA. Details regarding the dispute around the VA, Medicare, and Hanger were unavailable due to privacy laws, making the claim broadly decontextualized.As of January 9 2020, Holliman’s prosthetic legs were returned, but without the necessary adjustments he needed to utilize them and move out of the nursing home."
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26809
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Viral image Says it’s “OK to kill babies once born” in Virginia.
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Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam made confusing comments in 2019 about abortions when a mother is about to go into labor, but this Facebook post overreaches by claiming that killing newborns is legal in that state.
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false
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Abortion, Virginia, Viral image,
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"Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam worked as a doctor before he was elected to helm the Commonwealth, and it’s not hard to find photos of him online wearing a stethoscope around his neck. One such picture shared on social media features text on top criticizing the state. ""Thanks Virginia,"" it says. ""OK to kill babies once born."" This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) One account that posted the image also links to a Jan. 30, 2019, National Review article with this headline: ""Virginia governor defends letting infants die."" It is not legal to kill babies once born in Virginia. That is a felony. But here’s what you need to know about the late-term abortion debate in the state. That story cites a radio interview Northam did with the station WTOP, after a Jan. 29, 2019, committee hearing on proposed legislation that would loosen restrictions on late-term abortions. The bill was introduced by Kathy Tran, a Democatic delegate to the state House, and during the hearing she fielded questions from Todd Gilbert, a Republican delegate. ""How late in the third trimester could a physician perform an abortion if he indicated it would impair the mental health of the woman?"" Gilbert asked. ""Through the third trimester,"" Tran said. ""The third trimester goes all the way up to 40 weeks."" ""Where it’s obvious that the woman is about to give birth, would that still be a point at which she could request an abortion if she was so certified? She’s dilating,"" he said. ""My bill would allow that,"" Tran said. The next day, Northam appeared on the radio show. Reporter Julie Carey asked him this question: ""There was a very contentious committee hearing yesterday, when Fairfax County delegate Kathy Tran made her case for lifting restrictions on third-trimester abortions as well as other restrictions now in place, and she was pressed by a Republican delegate about whether her bill would permit an abortion even as a woman is essentially dilating, ready to give birth, and she answered that it would permit an abortion at that stage of labor. Do you support her measure? And explain her answer."" Northam said he couldn’t speak for Tran but that the situation illustrates why such decisions should be made by physicians and parents. ""When we talk about third-trimester abortions, these are done with the consent of obviously the mother, with the consent of the physician — more than one physician, by the way — and it’s done in cases where there are severe deformities, there may be a fetus that is nonviable,"" he said. ""So in this particular example, if a mother’s in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen. The infant would be delivered, the infant would be kept comfortable, the infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother,"" he said. ""So I think this was really blown out of proportion but again, we want the government not to be involved in these types of decisions. We want the decisions to be made by the mothers and the providers, and this is why legislators … most of whom are men, shouldn’t be telling a woman what she should and shouldn’t be doing with her body."" Virginia law already allowed abortions after the second trimester but required three doctors to certify that the mother would die or her mental and physical health would be ""substantially and irremediably"" impaired without the procedure. Tran’s bill, which died in committee, would have eliminated the requirement that two other physicians certify that a late-term abortion is necessary to prevent the mother’s death or harm or mental or physical health. It also eliminated the words ""substantially and irremediably"" from the law, among other changes. In the interview, Northam said he supported keeping the state’s requirement that multiple physicians certify the abortion is necessary because ""these decisions shouldn’t be taken lightly."" The Democratic governor’s comments drew criticism from conservatives, including U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. ""I never thought I would see the day America had government officials who openly support legal infanticide,"" he tweeted on Jan. 30. U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., called Northam’s comments ""morally repugnant."" ""In just a few years pro-abortion zealots went from ‘safe, legal, and rare’ to ‘keep newborns comfortable while the doctor debates infanticide,’"" Sasse said. ""I don’t care what party you’re from — if you can’t say that it’s wrong to leave babies to die after birth, get the hell out of public office."" Tran later said she misspoke when she was asked whether her bill would let an abortion happen when the mother was in labor and about to give birth. ""I should have said, ‘Clearly, no, because infanticide is not allowed in Virginia, and what would have happened in that moment would be a live birth.’"" In Virginia, killing a newborn is a felony punishable by death. A Northam spokesperson told Vox that his comments were ""absolutely not"" a reference to infanticide. Rather, they ""focused on the tragic and extremely rare case in which a woman with a nonviable pregnancy or severe fetal abnormalities went into labor."" He called the idea that he approved of killing infants ""disgusting,"" according to the Washington Post. Our ruling The Facebook post says it’s ""OK to kill babies once born"" in Virginia. Late-term abortions are allowed under the state’s laws through the third trimester if doctors certify the procedure is necessary for the mother’s health — the proposed law discussed by Northam would not have changed the time period during which an abortion is allowed. As we’ve previously reported, Northam’s comments were confusing and he didn’t clarify what he meant by saying ""resuscitated."" But he was speaking in the context of pregnancies in which the fetus has severe deformities or is nonviable. The Facebook post overreaches by claiming it’s OK to kill newborns. In Virginia, that’s a felony."
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7823
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Scientists find how 'obesity gene' makes people fat.
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Scientists have unraveled how a gene long associated with obesity makes people fat by triggering increased hunger, opening up potential new ways to fight a growing global health problem.
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true
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Science News
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A common variation in the FTO gene affects one in six of the population, making them 70 percent more likely to become obese - but until now experts did not know why. Using a series of tests, a British-led research team said they had found that people with the variation not only had higher levels of the “hunger hormone” ghrelin in their blood but also increased sensitivity to the chemical in their brains. “It’s a double hit,” said Rachel Batterham from University College London, who led the study, which was published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation on Monday. The discovery follows studies of blood samples from people after meals, combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging of volunteers’ brains and cell-based studies looking at ghrelin production at a molecular level. Batterham said the work provided new insights and possible new leads for treatment, since some experimental drugs are known to suppress ghrelin and could be particularly effective if targeted at patients with the obesity-risk variant of the gene. Previous research has also shown that ghrelin can be reduced by eating a high-protein diet. Steve Bloom of Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study, said the FTO gene only explained a small part of the obesity epidemic but the latest discovery was “an important step forward” in unraveling the various factors involved. The prevalence of obesity is increasing worldwide at an alarming rate and both developed and developing countries are affected. Obesity is a major risk factor for diabetes, heart disease and certain cancers. At least 2.8 million adults die each year as a result of being overweight or obese and more than 40 million children under the age of five were overweight in 2011, according to the World Health Organization. Developing effective obesity drugs has been a challenge for drugmakers, although some new medicines are now coming through. After a gap of more than a decade, two new obesity drugs - Vivus Inc’s Qsymia and Arena Pharmaceuticals Inc’s Belviq - were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year. Belviq’s launch was delayed, however, pending a final classification on its risk of abuse and Qsymia’s sales have been disappointing, triggering fierce criticism from Vivus’s largest shareholder.
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1984
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Beaches, parks off limits to New York smokers.
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New York City took its smoking prohibition outdoors on Monday, adding the city’s parks and beaches to the list of places where smoking is banned as part of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign to promote healthy habits.
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true
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Health News
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A man walks his dog through Central Park in New York August 27, 2010. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson The ban, which officials hope will prevent problems caused by second-hand smoke, adds to the city’s 2003 ban on cigarettes in bars and restaurants. The new law will not be enforced by police but by some 200 parks personnel who watch over the city’s 29,000 acres of park land and beaches. Violators face a $50 fine but officials say the ban is meant to be largely self-enforcing. “We don’t think that people should be exposed to those chemicals when they go to a park to enjoy the fresh air,” city Health Commissioner Thomas Farley told Reuters. Saleswoman Polonia Jourdain, sitting on a park bench with her 8-month-old nephew, said she was happy with the ban. “I don’t want to smell smoke wherever I go,” said Jourdain, 17. “The smell of cigarettes makes me nauseous and gives me headaches.” New York’s City Council voted in February to broaden the city’s smoking prohibitions to cover its 1,700 parks, beaches, boardwalks and pedestrian plazas, such as Times Square. New York follows Chicago and Los Angeles, which have already enacted similar bans. New Yorkers still can smoke on sidewalks, parking lots, streets and in their homes, although many landlords of rental properties do not allow it. Not everyone was so pleased by the new law. The ban represents “an extreme revocation of civil liberties rather than telling people to just walk away,” said Audrey Silk, a member of New York Citizens Lobbying Against Smoker Harassment. “If you held up the evidence up to sunlight, it would disintegrate,” she said. Some New Yorkers said they were confused by the limits. “Can you smoke on the sidewalk next to a park?” asked attorney Alex Roberts, 36, smoking a cigarette in violation of the ban. New York health officials say cigarettes kill more than 7,000 residents a year. In 2002, 21 percent of New York adults smoked and the percentage is now down to 15.8 percent, Farley said. Bloomberg has promoted health measures including a ban on trans fats in restaurant food and a requirement that chain restaurants display calorie counts on menus. He has campaigned nationally for food companies to cut salt levels in their products and for the federal government to ban the purchase of sugary drinks with food stamps — federal vouchers used by 42 million low-income Americans to buy food.
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7424
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Trump says ‘life and death’ at stake in following guidelines.
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President Donald Trump warned Americans to brace for a “hell of a bad two weeks” ahead as the White House projected there could be 100,000 to 240,000 deaths in the U.S. from the coronavirus pandemic even if current social distancing guidelines are maintained.
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true
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AP Top News, Understanding the Outbreak, Health, General News, Politics, Pandemics, Virus Outbreak, Public health, Donald Trump
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Public health officials stressed Tuesday that the number could be less if people across the country bear down on keeping their distance from one another. “We really believe we can do a lot better than that,” said Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force. That would require all Americans to take seriously their role in preventing the spread of disease, she said. Added Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, “This is a number that we need to anticipate, but we don’t necessarily have to accept it as being inevitable.” Trump called it “a matter of life and death” for Americans to heed his administration’s guidelines and predicted the country would soon see a “light at the end of the tunnel” in a pandemic that in the United States has infected about 190,000 people and killed more than 4,000, according to figures compiled by Johns Hopkins University. “I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead,” Trump said. The White House figures assume that Americans follow the rigorous social-distancing guidelines set out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or the stricter “stay at home” restrictions set by many governors across the country. Still, the White House was not looking at a nationwide order. “We live in a nation that has a system of federalism, and the governors get to make the decisions,” Dr. Jerome Adams, the surgeon general, told NBC’s “Today” on Wednesday. “But we’re gonna give them the best possible guidance we can, and that’s to stay at home and to social distance.” “This is going to be one of the roughest two or three weeks we’ve ever had in our country,” Trump said. “We’re going to lose thousands of people.” The jaw-dropping projections were laid out during a grim, two-hour White House briefing. Officials described a death toll that in a best-case scenario would likely be greater than the more than 53,000 American lives lost during World War I. And the model’s high end neared the realm of possibility that Americans lost to the virus could approach the 291,000 Americans killed on the battlefield during World War II. “There’s no magic bullet,” Birx said. “There’s no magic vaccine or therapy. It’s just behaviors. Each of our behaviors, translating into something that changes the course of this viral pandemic.” Fauci called the numbers “sobering” and urged Americans to “step on the accelerator” with their collective mitigation efforts. “We are continuing to see things go up,” Fauci said. “We cannot be discouraged by that because the mitigation is actually working and will work.” Birx said pandemic forecasts initially predicted 1.5 million to 2.2 million deaths in the U.S. But that was a worst-case scenario, without efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus through social distancing. She added that states that have not yet seen a spike in cases as New York has could take action to flatten the curve of rising hospitalizations and deaths. It’s not only social distancing that could make a difference but also the frantic efforts by hospitals around the country to prepare for an onslaught of seriously ill patients. The better prepared hospitals are, the greater the chances of lives being saved. There’s also a wild card when it comes to treatment: whether the experimental drug combination Trump has touted — a medicine for malaria and an antibiotic — will actually make a difference. That combination is already being used on thousands of patients, and Fauci said he would want to see a rigorous test of its effectiveness. Trump’s comments came after he announced Sunday that he was extending to April 30 the social distancing guidelines that advise Americans to cease large gatherings, work from home, suspend onsite learning at schools and more in a nationwide effort to stem the spread of the virus. Adams said that some areas of the country would likely need to maintain those restrictions into May. “Well, it will be for some places, it won’t be for others, depending on where they are on their curve,” he told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” It was an abrupt reversal for the Republican president, who spent much of last week targeting April 12 as the day he wanted to see Americans “pack the pews” for Easter Sunday services. Trump called the data “very sobering,” saying it was his understanding that 100,000 deaths was a minimum that would be difficult to avoid. He also sought to rewrite his past minimization of the outbreak, saying he rejected those who compared the new coronavirus to the flu when in fact he repeatedly did so publicly. “This could be hell of a bad two weeks,’” Trump said. He added: “You know 100,000 is, according to modeling, a very low number. In fact, when I first saw the number ... they said it was unlikely you’ll be able to attain that. We have to see but I think we’re doing better than that.” Trump played down concerns from New York’s Andrew Cuomo and other governors that their states’ hospitals don’t have enough ventilators to treat an anticipated crush of patients. Trump said the federal government currently has a stockpile of 10,000 ventilators that it plans on distributing as needed. “Now, when the surge occurs, if it occurs fairly evenly, we’ll be able to distribute them very quickly before they need them,” Trump said. “But we want to have a reserve right now. It’s like having oil reserves.” Birx said the experiences of Washington state and California give her hope that other states can keep the coronavirus under control through social distancing. That’s because they moved quickly to contain the early clusters of coronavirus by closing schools, urging people to work from home, banning large gatherings and taking other measures now familiar to most Americans, she noted. Trump said he would also ask Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to allow the docking of two cruise ships with passengers who have had contact with patients suffering from COVID-19. Passengers are anxious to disembark once they reach Florida, but DeSantis said the state’s health care resources are already stretched too thin to take on a ship’s coronavirus caseload. “They’re dying on the ship,” Trump said. “I’m going to do what’s right, not only for us for but humanity.” Trump also said he planned to curtail his travel for the month ahead and stay close to the White House to safeguard his health. The president hasn’t held one of his signature big-stadium rallies since early March. “I think it’s important that I remain healthy. I really do,” Trump said. “So for the most part we’re staying here.”
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7585
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Anxiety in Alaska as endless aftershocks rattle residents.
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Seven weeks after a massive earthquake rocked Alaska, aftershocks are still shattering 7-year-old Connor Cartwright’s sense of safety.
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true
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Anxiety, Anchorage, Alaska, AP Top News, Science, U.S. News, Earthquakes
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They shake the earth far less than the 7.0 magnitude quake that sent a mirror, TV and dishes crashing to the ground in the Anchorage home where Connor lives with his mother, father and 11-year-old brother. But the seemingly never-ending aftershocks deepen quake anxiety for the second-grader and many other Alaska residents in the wide swath of the state shaken by the Nov. 30 quake. When the big aftershocks hit, Connor fears his home will collapse. “I feel like the house won’t hold up,” he said. Many of the aftershocks are so small that people don’t notice them, like a recent one that Connor didn’t feel at school — but his teacher made all the students dive under their desks to be safe. The latest big aftershock happened last Sunday — a magnitude 5.0 jolt that flared already frayed nerves and prompted panicky posts on social media. That one “reminded people again that it’s not over yet,” said seismologist Natalia Rupert at the Alaska Earthquake Center. There have been more than 7,800 aftershocks since the main earthquake struck 7 miles (11 kilometers) north of Anchorage, the state’s most populous city. Most were too small to feel, but 20 have had magnitudes of 4.5 or greater. Rupert expects the temblors to continue for months, although the frequency has lessened, from about 200 daily to a couple dozen a day. With no end to the seismic action in sight, Laura Dykes said her upcoming vacation trip to Las Vegas will be a huge relief from the stress she now experiences. The Anchorage law firm worker still has vivid memories of her basement office in a building swaying back and forth during the November earthquake. It was built on rollers to protect it from seismic events. “I can’t get out of here fast enough,” Dykes said. “It’ll be five days I can get sleep.” The earthquake buckled roads and some homes and buildings sustained heavy damage, with initial estimates to repair damage and other costs at about $100 million. But most parts of Anchorage and other areas escaped the type of widespread catastrophic damage that happened in a devastating 1964 earthquake because of strict building codes that were put in place after that quake, which had a magnitude of 9.2 and was the second most powerful quake recorded on the planet. No deaths or serious injuries were reported after the quake seven weeks ago, but federal officials soon declared a public health emergency and mental health aid was made available for people traumatized by the event. School counselors were swamped and crisis counselors were brought in from Oregon to help at several Anchorage-area schools. Therapists and other professionals struggled to meet demand from a nervous public. Mental health providers say the rush of new patients has slowed, but they still treat clients rattled by the aftershocks, which strike without warning or any apparent pattern. “It’s overwhelming for people, and they feel emotionally out of control,” said Deborah Gonzales, a licensed clinical social worker in Anchorage. Gonzales said people tell her they can’t stand the shaking and don’t feel safe anywhere. Some are considering moving out of state while others say they feel “crazy” — feelings Gonzales called “100 percent normal.” For Connor, every noticeable shake triggers feelings of vulnerability, said his mother, Tamra Cartwright, adding that many of her friends’ children also struggle with quake-related fears. Tamra Cartwright said her husband was at work when the main quake struck, but she and her sons ran out of the house and hugged each other as they huddled together outside. Along with broken family items, the only damage to their home was an existing hairline wall crack that was made wider. But Connor couldn’t sleep in his own bed for weeks and only just returned to it. His mother said she “totally” hates the aftershocks, but tries to “be strong for my kids.” Lifelong Alaskan Robert Bell was 12 during the 1964 earthquake and remembers it as a rolling action while the recent quake was more of a back-and-forth movement that felt more violent even though it wasn’t as powerful. The recent quake and its aftershocks have been like reliving that youthful experience over and over, Bell said. Bell, who worked in construction for years, built his own home and says it’s safe and solid. But his heart races when the aftershocks hit. “You don’t know when the next one’s going to hit — that’s been unnerving,” he said. They’re also unsettling for Ethel Sechlera. But the Anchorage supermarket cashier considers them a way for the ground to let out seismic pressures. “I’d rather have the little aftershocks to keep from having the big one hit,” she said. Others shrug off the aftershocks as part of daily life in the most seismically active region of the U.S. “I guess I’m a special kind of case because I don’t really mind it so much,” said Isaiah Sagayo. “I just continue on.” ___ Follow Rachel D’Oro at https://twitter.com/rdoro
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35343
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Churches are required by the local government to record and register lists of attendees for tracking purposes in Kansas City, Missouri.
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Liberty Counsel noted this change in a follow-up blog post on May 5, attributing the revision to an “overwhelming public outcry.” A city spokesperson released the following statement regarding the updated guidance:
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false
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Politics, COVID-19
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In early May 2020, various websites and commentators claimed that Kansas City, Missouri, was ordering churches to turn over lists of attendees to the government. The commentary posted by evangelical groups implied that the measures persecuted Christians, with one of the more sensational takes gaining online traction. “Never in our wildest dreams could we have imagined Nazi-like measures designed to surveil, track and spy upon what was once a FREE American people,” wrote Matt Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a non-profit legal organization that advocates for evangelical causes, in a blog post dated May 1, 2020. The comparison of Kansas City’s public health policy amid the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic to the tactics of the genocidal, fascist Third Reich was echoed on the website for conservative radio host Todd Starnes, which ran a headline reading, “‘NAZI-LIKE MEASURES’ Kansas City Orders Churches to Turn Over Membership Lists.” These characterizations of Kansas City’s rollout of reopening measures for establishments closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic were based on a version of Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas’s stay-at-home order that ultimately never went into effect. The policy, announced April 29, 2020, stipulated that beginning May 6, non-essential businesses and other establishments previously closed due to COVID-19 safety precautions could reopen but would be expected to observe social distancing practices and, depending on crowd size, implement record-keeping measures “to ensure adequate confidential public health tracing” while in operation. In a statement, Lucas said the information would be used so that the organization itself or the city’s health department “can advise people who may have been exposed to an ill person, and so that we can limit community spread to their friends or family.” The mayor stated that the city is asking establishments “like many church gatherings on Sundays, restaurants with reservations, or stylists with appointments,” to keep those records on hand for 30 days in the event that the establishment turns out to be the location of a COVID-19 cluster. The version of the order signed by Lucas on April 30 (archived here) contained language that appeared to make such record-keeping mandatory. It said that non-essential businesses, for example, “must maintain a record of time of service for customers on the premises in a seated capacity for more than ten (10) minutes.” And it appeared to condition the resumption of religious gatherings on a similar record-keeping requirement: Religious gatherings, including, but not limited to, weddings, funerals, memorial services, and wakes, of ten (10) persons inside or ten (10) percent of building occupancy (whichever number is greater) and fifty (50) people outside may resume, provided social distancing is maintained and event organizers maintain a record of attendees. Data obtained by the Department of Public Health, pursuant to this provision, shall, to the extent allowed by law, remain confidential in accordance with professional public health standards and may be used only to address public health concerns. That specific language never went into effect, however, because Lucas signed a new version of the order on May 4 clarifying that such record-keeping, for both business and religious gatherings, would be strictly voluntary. This was the revised language applicable to religious gatherings: In the interest of public health and to avoid a Covid-19 outbreak in the community, event organizers should consider maintaining a record of attendees where appropriate. Attendees are not required, however, to provide their names or contact information at any religious gathering. In the event of a Covid-19 outbreak connected to a religious gathering, a religious gathering may contact those potentially exposed and, subject to confidentiality, provide the names and other relevant information voluntarily provided at the gathering to the Department of Public Health.
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11553
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Journal of Surgical Oncology Publishes Study Showing Oncotype DX® DCIS Score™ Result Changes Treatment Recommendations in 30 Percent of DCIS Breast Cancer Patients Physicians Ranked Oncotype DX DCIS Score Most Important Factor in Treatment Planning
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DCIS is usually diagnosed from a screening mammogram.This company news release describes a study which found that the Oncotype DX DCIS Score test changed recommendations for radiation treatment among women with Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS) — a condition marked by abnormal, pre-cancerous cells inside the breast. The terminology employed by this news release is likely to be confusing to many readers. The body text includes a description of DCIS as a “non-invasive, indolent form of breast disease ” that often doesn’t progress to breast cancer. But the headline refers unambiguously to “DCIS Breast Cancer.” We think the release could have done a better job of capturing the controversy over the very name for this condition, what it means, and the confusion it causes women. There are also some important gaps in the information provided about the study and the test. The news release doesn’t mention the costs of this new test or acknowledge that the study did not assess clinical outcomes among patients (only changes in treatment recommendations that may or may not be appropriate). The release is also silent on the fact that the study was funded by Genomic Health, Inc, which makes the test, and that the study authors included company employees and researchers who are paid to speak and consult for the company. New tests come on the market all the time, but that doesn’t mean that insurance will cover them or that they will provide a real clinical benefit to patients. Currently, the Oncotype DCIS score is not included in guidelines from the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) and is not uniformly accepted by oncologists as an important test to determine treatment recommendations. There is not enough good-quality evidence to determine if the test provides a benefit, and these new study results are unlikely to change that situation. The NCCN guidelines for DCIS state: “whole breast radiation therapy following lumpectomy reduces recurrence rates in DCIS by about 50%. Approximately half of the recurrences are invasive and half are DCIS. A number of factors determine local recurrence risk: palpable mass, larger size, higher grade, close or involved margins, and age <50 years. If the patient and the physician view the individual risk as “low”, some patients may be treated by excision alone. All data evaluating the three local treatments [lumpectomy with radiation, mastectomy, lumpectomy without radiation] show no differences in patient survival.”
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false
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Breast cancer,Diagnostic tests,industry/commercial news releases
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The release never mentions the cost of the test and there is some concern that insurance carriers may not cover costs for tests of DCIS. Insurance coverage is variable and appeals do not always result in reversal of the denial. The news release highlights the fact that information from the test changed physician recommendations for treatment. Some physicians changed to recommending whole breast irradiation while others recommended against. A company official says the study is evidence that the test “can play a key role in enhancing cancer care for patients with DCIS, and we believe that these results will support expanded adoption of and access to the DCIS Score.” But while changing practice recommendations may be an indication that the information provided by the test could be useful and beneficial, it’s not evidence that the test actually improves results for patients. Without clinical outcomes, it’s difficult to know the true extent of benefits — if any. The release should have qualified the findings with some mention of the fact that the study was not designed to assess outcomes that are meaningful to patients. Without such a warning it’s too easy for readers/patients to be misled about the real impact of the test. Any statement along those lines would have earned the release a Satisfactory rating here. The news release emphasizes the potential beneficial effect of test results on refinement of treatment recommendations. It doesn’t contemplate or even mention the possibility that an inaccurate test result could cause harm — for instance by recommending a conservative course of therapy when a more aggressive approach is warranted, or vice-versa. While the study itself didn’t assess outcomes or potential for harm, as with Benefits we’d expect some nod to the fact that this is an area of uncertainty that requires more research. The study that’s the basis for this news release discussed a number of limitations that aren’t addressed in the release — for example that this was a utility study, not designed to assess outcomes, and that actual treatments were not assessed, just the change in treatment recommendations. As the study authors put it: “The primary limitation of this study is that, by design, this study is an analysis of how decisions are made and the impact of the DCIS Score result on the treatment recommendation, but not an assessment of whether those decisions were made appropriately.” There was also selection bias in that they included patients only with perceived low recurrence risk. The study did not randomly select patients for inclusion and instead approached women with a low risk of local recurrence. The news release needed some acknowledgment of such limitations. The story did not commit disease mongering. Although it didn’t mention or emphasize the fact that some physicians don’t consider DCIS to be cancer at all, it does call DCIS “indolent” and says that it may be treated too aggressively in some cases. The original study listed financial conflict of interests among the study authors — including the fact that several study authors are paid speakers and consultants for Genomic Health, which makes the test. One of the authors is an employee of the company. But the new release did not provide any of this context. The release does not discuss alternatives to the Oncotype DX DCIS Score, except for the absence of such testing. But since there are no other commercially available tumor genomic tests for DCIS, we’ll rate the story Not Applicable here. There was no mention on how available the Oncotype DX DCIS Score test is in clinical offices and no mention on whether it is covered by insurance. The test is, in fact, widely available — the physician sends a requisition form either to the pathology department, which will send the tissue to Genomic Health, or to Genomic Health, who will then request the tissue samples from pathology. The news release states that there is no other commercially available tumor genomic test for DCIS. The press release did not use unjustifiable language. But as noted above, we think the terminology used is confusing.
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32728
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Medal of Honor recipient Kyle Carpenter was stripped of his award for failing to complete a minor driving course while on active duty.
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Readers familiar with Duffel Blog immediately recognized its satirical intent. However, the brand of humor employed is very specific. Because of this, occasionally Duffel Blog articles can cause confusion on social media. Previous instances in which Duffel Blog material was misidentified as factual include articles reporting that West Point posthumously revoked diplomas of confederate soldiers, the Army adopted a “mandatory divorce” policy to “improve readiness,” Ariana Grande joined ISIS, the USS Gabrielle Giffords would be the Navy’s first “gun-free” warship, and that the Pentagon spent massive amounts of money on Powerball tickets to fund the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.
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false
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Junk News, duffel blog, kyle carpenter, medal of honor
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On 3 May 2016, the military satire site Duffel Blog published an article reporting that Medal of Honor recipient Kyle Carpenter had been stripped of the award for valor after he failed to complete an online training course during active duty: Marine veteran and Medal of Honor recipient Kyle Carpenter was recently informed that his award, the highest for valor in the armed services, will be rescinded because he failed to complete a mandatory annual training course while on active duty. A recent Headquarters Marine Corps (HQMC) review of his records shows that he did not complete the online “Driving in Icy Conditions” course in 2010 while he was deployed to the violent city of Marjah, Afghanistan. Many Marines are calling for the award to be reinstated, but Sgt. Maj. of the Marine Corps Ronald L. Green says there’s no place for “tough guys” like Carpenter being honored in today’s Corps, whose main mission is to fight things like social injustice and hurt feelings. “Any motivator can block a grenade blast with his face and selflessly save a teammate’s life under a hail of withering enemy gunfire,” said Green, from his air-conditioned office in Virginia. “But it takes a true Marine to listen to that creepy guy in S-2 give a three-hour PowerPoint on STDs, and that’s the message Marines need to hear.” Kyle Carpenter is a real person, but the circumstances described by Duffel Blog are fictional. The former Marine medically retired from the service in July 2013 due to injuries sustained in Afghanistan, and was awarded the Medal of Honor on 19 June 2014. Carpenter was charged with misdemeanor hit-and-run in late 2015 when he struck a pedestrian while making a left turn on a street in Columbia, South Carolina (the victim suffered minor injuries; Carpenter turned himself in). However, his medal was not stripped then, nor was it taken away while he was on active duty. Duffel Blog‘s “About” page mirrored the tongue-in-cheek style of its content, hinting its content wasn’t meant to be taken seriously. However (unlike most self-labeled “satire” sites) Duffel Blog aimed to amuse (not confuse) a relatively small audience: military people: Since 1797, Duffel Blog has been serving the men and women of the American military with insightful commentary and hard-hitting journalism. While other agencies have sometimes run from possibly scandalous stories, Duffel Blog has been known to be edgy and ahead of its time, almost as if they could see into the future. After reporting on President John Adams’ $200 per week cocaine habit in March 1799, Duffel Blog was named The American Military’s Most-Trusted News Source by the Columbia Journalism Review and the nickname stuck. Duffel Blog is sometimes referred to as “The military version of The Onion,” but this is a popular misconception. The misnomer was cleared up in May 2012 when DB staff successfully conducted an airborne assault on the offices of The Onion News Network so that others would know “The Onion was actually the civilian version of Duffel Blog.”
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Number of U.S. coronavirus cases of unknown origin climbs to four.
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U.S. public health officials said they have identified four “presumptive” coronavirus cases believed to have emerged from community transmission of the infection, signaling a turning point in efforts to contain the disease in the United States.
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true
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Health News
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued a statement on Friday citing three such cases newly diagnosed by state public health authorities - one each in California, Oregon and Washington state. If confirmed by the CDC, together with a previous case of unknown origin announced on Wednesday in California, that would bring to four the number of diagnosed individuals in the United States with no history of travel to a country where the virus is circulating and no close contact with an infected person. The three latest patients were diagnosed based on results obtained in their respective states from CDC-supplied test kits and are considered “presumptive positive” cases pending CDC confirmatory testing, the U.S. agency said. A fourth presumptive positive was also announced in Washington state on Friday, but that one is “likely travel-related,” the CDC said. Still, the three latest cases of apparent community transmission, plus the one identified earlier this week in California, are a sign the virus is now spreading within at least four separate locations up and down the U.S. West Coast. They span nearly 900 miles from California’s Silicon Valley region in Santa Clara County north to the Puget Sound near Seattle. “What we know now is that the virus is here, present at some level, but we still don’t know to what degree,” said Dr. Sara Cody, the chief public health officer for Santa Clara County, speaking of the newly diagnosed case there, the latest of three in her county and the 10th statewide. Even as confirmation was pending there, the CDC sent a team to assist local authorities in tracing close contacts the patient had with others in a bid to curb transmission. Until this week, the CDC had counted 15 confirmed cases in six states as having been detected through the U.S. public health system since Jan. 21, none fatal. Most were contracted by individuals while traveling in China, where the outbreak originated. Only two person-to-person transmissions were documented among them, both between married couples. An additional 47 cases have been confirmed among people recently repatriated from abroad, either from the Diamond Princess cruise ship quarantined in Japan or from Wuhan, China, the epicenter of the outbreak, according to the CDC. The latest flurry of cases came as the Trump administration said the United States would invoke a federal defense law to boost production of masks, gloves, gowns and other items needed to protect medical personnel from exposure. Around the world, more countries are reporting new infections, companies have curtailed travel and global stock markets have tumbled. President Donald Trump said at the White House on Friday the United States will decide “very soon” about whether to bar entry to travelers from countries other than China where community transmission has emerged. At a rally in South Carolina on Friday night, Trump defended his administration’s response to the coronavirus outbreak and accused Democrats of politicizing the disease. “This is their new hoax,” Trump said at the event, held a day before the state’s Democratic presidential primary. The U.S. State Department has issued travel advisories for several nations and on Friday it said Americans should reconsider travel to Italy, where nearly 900 coronavirus cases have been confirmed. A similar warning was issued earlier this week for South Korea, which has hundreds of infections. A government task force appointed by Trump to deal with the threat will meet at the White House on Saturday morning, according to an administration official. Latest figures from China, where the outbreak started late last year, indicated that nearly 80,000 people have been infected, with more than 2,800 deaths. The World Health Organization reported 57 deaths in 46 other countries. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a closed-door briefing in the U.S. House of Representatives that sustained spread of the coronavirus meant there would be many more infections in the United States, according to a source. Fauci warned lawmakers the country lacked enough testing resources, the source said on condition of anonymity. The CDC said it has revised its criteria for who should be tested and is ramping up testing capabilities. “Our goal is to have every state and local health department online and doing their own testing by the end of next week,” CDC official Nancy Messonier told reporters. A vaccine may take up to 18 months to develop, health officials have said. The United States has decided to postpone a meeting with leaders of Southeast Asian countries it had planned to host on March 14 in Las Vegas because of worries about the outbreak. U.S. and global stocks plummeted as rattled investors braced for the prospect that a pandemic could further dent an already slowing world economy. The S&P 500 .SPX fell for the seventh straight day on Friday, suffering its biggest weekly drop since the 2008 global financial crisis. Stocks cut losses right at the end of the session. The Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI fell 1.4%. Trump this week said the coronavirus risk to Americans remained “very low,” but he has been increasingly alarmed by the reaction of the U.S. stock market, which he considers a barometer of the economy’s health. (GRAPHIC - Tracking the novel coronavirus: here)
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Larger Dose of Zinc Lozenges May Shorten Colds
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Here we have a story with lots of facts, but not a coherent message to consumers about whether zinc lozenges are of any benefit in shortening cold symptoms. The title and early comments suggest this single retrospective review of existing research gives evidence that larger doses of zinc are effective, but the author of the study says more research is needed. The story’s own independent voice says this is not conclusive at all. Consumers are left without the context to evaluate this latest report. One researcher estimates that Americans spend about $40 billion per year on both over-the-counter treatments and visits to the doctor for the common cold. No wonder that any new publication should gain wide attention, but the new study (examining old studies) concluded “The effects of zinc lozenges should be further studied to determine the optimal lozenge compositions…” This story shortchanges the consumer by presenting information without much context. It exaggerates the evidence and implies that zinc is an answer.
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mixture
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HealthDay
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The story does not mention cost. But zinc lozenges are not expensive, costing perhaps $5 – $10 for a course of treatment. The story gives us many figures, but it may not reveal enough for a consumer to gain much insight on benefits. It says that some clinical trials comparing zinc acetate lozenges to placebo reduced the duration of colds by an average of 42 percent. But other trials, considered by the author of the research article, used zinc salts (not acetate) at a different dosage, and got results more like 20 percent. The story gives information on the duration of a cold in aggregate and in relative but not not absolute terms. Consumers are left without critical details. It could have explained 42% of what? A week? The story suggests that, “No prior studies showed zinc lozenge use — even up to 150 mg per day — might cause harm aside from bad taste or constipation” We give it a pass since it does note the major side effects seen. The tone of this story – if reported at all – should have been that a few small studies were analyzed in an area where there have been many questions about effectiveness in the past. Indeed, the story quotes expert Lisa Winston saying “I don’t think the evidence is strong enough… that we can base clinical practice on it.” Great use of an expert to get context, but why not write the whole story to reflect this context? One could have stressed, higher up in the story, that the results are intriguing but not conclusive and based on small sets of patients. Instead, “may shorten colds” is in the headline. “Still no cure…but there may be a way to shorten misery” in the lede. The story took on a cheerleading tone from the outset where it did not appear warranted. The story says there’s no “cure” for the common cold “but there may be a way to shorten its misery.” Yet it doesn’t discuss the fact that most colds for most people are self-limiting and of short duration. And what is the average duration of this “misery”? The story quotes the author of the original journal article and one expert. Neither of these appear to have conflicts of interest. The story does not talk about existing strategies to relieve cold symptoms, and so, does not satisfactorily place the new research into context. A quick look at the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Diseases website includes these: resting in bed, drinking plenty of fluids, gargling with warm salt water, using a decongestant or saline nasal spray, among others. The story mentioned the “popularity of zinc supplements” but never established how popular, widespread are their use and never explained if the lozenges on market shelves are at the same dosages as discussed in the story. We can’t give it a satisfactory score; we’ll rule it N/A. There is nothing novel about zinc lozenges as an over-the-counter aid for cold symptoms. The story is about research reviewing previously published articles on the use of zinc lozenges. The story does not rely solely on a news release.
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7372
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Soccer clubs contemplating options for season ticket holders.
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Many soccer clubs in Europe are still contemplating how to reimburse their season ticket holders amid the coronavirus pandemic.
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true
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Soccer, Health, Madrid, Sports - Europe, Europe, La Liga, Virus Outbreak, Sports - General, Spain
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With most European leagues likely finishing the season in empty stadiums, clubs have decisions to make regarding fans who paid for tickets but won’t be allowed to attend matches. Though few clubs in Spain have announced options for their ticket holders, Madrid-based club Getafe is taking the forefront by giving fans a free season of league matches in 2020-21. Getafe president Ángel Torres said the more than 13,000 fans who are up to date with their ticket payments won’t have to pay for La Liga games next season. though they will still have to purchase tickets for non-league matches. The club said the move was a way to give back to fans for “the damages caused by the coronavirus health crisis.” “With this measure Getafe wants to compensate the fans and thank them for their support in these difficult times,” the club said. Getafe was in the round of 16 of the Europa League when the competition was suspended because of the pandemic. It was fifth in the Spanish league, just outside the qualification spots for the Champions League. It has five league home games left this season. Belgian club Genk also extended its ticket memberships, making them valid until January of next year for free. The club said the measure could be further extended if fewer than six home matches with fans are played by then. In England, Manchester United offered season ticket holders either a rebate for next year or a cash refund based on the number of games still to be played. Liverpool suspended its ticket renewal process but said prices would be frozen for a fifth consecutive year. Brighton offered a refund but said many fans agreed to donate the money back to the club or to a charity. “It has been humbling to receive so many emails and messages from fans, firstly concerned for our welfare as a club and also as individuals and secondly asking for their ticket or membership payments to be retained by the club or Albion As One fund,” Brighton CEO Paul Barber said. “We fully appreciate not all fans will be in a position to make a donation or some may not wish to do that, but in response to those writing in we wanted to give all our supporters the choice.” Spanish club Valladolid also said many of its fans were giving up their rights for a refund “as a way to help the institution.” Like many other clubs in Spain, Real Madrid and Barcelona were yet to announce their plans for season ticket holders. Atlético Madrid said it would give a 20% discount for next season, while Real Sociedad refunded 20% of what fans paid this season regardless of how the league would end. “We do not know if the competition is going to take place and, if it does, we do not know if it will be behind closed doors or with fans, which is what we would like to happen,” the club said last month. “In any case, these measures will be applied even if the competition resumes with matches being played with fans.” Eibar planned to give money back for the games played without fans, and was studying other actions that could include giving fans additional credit at the club’s stores. Osasuna said it would not offer refunds this season but would keep prices unaltered for next season and would add two extra games that normally are not included in the regular season ticket package — usually against Real Madrid and Barcelona. If matches continue to be played without fans next season, the club said it would refund 3% for each match, up to a total of 57% of the total price for the season. Germany’s Bundesliga is set to restart without fans this weekend, but there was no officials dates yet for the resumption of the other top leagues in Europe. The Spanish league plans to restart without fans on June 12. The French league was canceled ___ AP Sports Writers Steve Douglas, Samuel Petrequin and Rob Harris contributed to this report. ___ More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/Soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports ___ Tales Azzoni on Twitter: http://twitter.com/tazzoni
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18225
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Stephen Nodine Says he can be on the ballot for Congress while serving time in jail.
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"Nodine claimed that he ""can run"" for office. As a legal matter, he is correct. The Constitution enshrines the idea that the people get to decide who shall represent them, and the only limits are age, citizenship and residency. In terms of federal law, Nodine can indeed run. His desire to run as a Republican puts him in murkier waters. Political parties enjoy a certain independence. The opinions of the legal experts we reached ranged from thumbs up to thumbs down on Nodine’s chances in court. But even on the more optimistic end, the court battles would be decided long after the election Nodine cares about is over. In the broadest sense, Nodine has the legal right to run for office from jail, but significant barriers lie between that right and his name appearing on the ballot."
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true
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National, Elections, Stephen Nodine,
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"By day, Stephen Nodine works at a law office in Bay Minette, Ala. By night, he is an inmate at the Baldwin County Jail where he is serving a two-year sentence for perjury. This would be of little interest except Nodine says he might want to run for Congress and represent Alabama’s 1st Congressional District. Nodine notified the media of his interest last week, and in an email to PolitiFact, he said, ""I can run, but it seems some party leaders don't want me to."" Nodine is right that Republican officials in Alabama have not embraced his candidacy -- more on that in a bit. But we thought we should take a moment and ask, is Nodine correct when he says he can run for office? Nodine is not the first man behind bars to seek the chance to serve the public while serving time. In 2002, former Rep. James Traficant, I-Ohio, took 15 percent of the vote even though he had just started an eight-year sentence for bribery, racketeering and other crimes. Going farther back in history, Matthew Lyon was successful in 1798. He had been convicted of libel, ran for Congress from prison and won. The Constitution lists three conditions one must meet to be a candidate for the House of Representatives -- you must be at least 25 years old, have been a citizen for at least seven years and live in the state you hope to represent. These are all that are required, and states may not add to them, for example, by prohibiting a felon from running for office. According to a 2002 Congressional Research Service report, these conditions ""are fixed and may not be supplemented by Congress nor by any State unilaterally."" States have more leeway when it comes to setting rules for who may hold state level office, but they have none at the federal level. The Supreme Court, in a case involving term limits, made it clear that states may not interfere. In U.S. Term Limits, Inc. vs. Thornton, the court struck down an amendment to the Arkansas constitution that limited those elected to Congress to three terms in the House and two in the Senate. The court explained in its decision that not only states but even Congress itself could not ""impose additional qualifications (that) would violate that ‘fundamental principle of our representative democracy . . . that the people should choose whom they please to govern them,’"" according to an analysis in the Brigham Young University Law Review. So when Nodine says he can run, he’s right. But getting his name on the ballot is a different matter. The Republican primary hurdle Nodine is no stranger to politics. He was a county commissioner in Mobile County. His emailed announcement of his interest in running came with photos of him and President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. Nodine’s fall from grace came in 2010 when he was indicted in connection with the death of a long-time mistress. In a deal with prosecutors, Nodine pleaded guilty to felony perjury, and a charge of criminally negligent homicide was dropped. He now says he had a moral failing but was ""wrongfully accused."" (Read an overview of the case from the Mobile Press-Register.) Nodine is an ardent Republican and should he run, he plans to compete in the GOP primary in a special election to fill the seat of Rep. Jo Bonner, R- Ala., who will resign in mid August. Nodine isn't slated for release until more than a year after that. But the Alabama Republican Party chairman, Bill Armistead, vowed that Nodine won’t get very far. ""I can tell you that as chair, I see no circumstances where I would support a convicted felon being a candidate for the Republican Party,"" Armistead said. The state GOP has its own rules for qualifying candidates. To run as a Republican, a person must affirm, ""I have not been convicted of a felony under the laws of the United States or of another state."" Nodine unambiguously falls short. ""This would be stopped at the time of an attempt to qualify,"" Armistead said. Armistead said he’s confident that the party has the right to determine who may participate in its own primary. He said when Democrats tried to run as Republicans, party leaders blocked them with no challenge. On the other hand, he said he’s never faced this exact situation before. The issue is whether a state party could exclude a person who would otherwise pass muster by federal standards. We asked a few experts in election law for their opinions, and while their views vary, Nodine clearly has his work cut out for him Richard Winger, the editor of Ballot Access News, said Nodine might well prevail should the court find that the party plays a vital role in the electoral process. ""I just re-read U.S. Term Limits vs. Thornton,"" Winger said, ""I now feel confident that the Alabama Republican Party can't exclude the candidate. The U.S. Supreme Court said that indirect attempts (to exclude) are just as unlawful as direct attempts."" But Winger said Nodine can expect a fight. ""There is no real clarity in the law, because obviously parties can ban candidates from their primary ballot for Congress if the candidates aren't members of the party. It's possible the Alabama state courts would let the party exclude the person, but if the person appeals to federal court I believe he will win."" David Schultz, a law professor at Hamline University, said this is an area of contested law. ""There is a big debate over how far parties can go in terms of governing internal affairs,"" Schultz said. ""Could they pick their own dates for conventions, how they select their officers? Yes. But once it gets to primaries run by the state and to general elections, then the choices parties make are subject to more regulation."" Schultz’s summary on whether the Alabama GOP has the legal right to block Nodine? ""This is a cool issue -- right at the edge of the law."" But Justin Levitt, professor at Loyola Law School, has more discouraging news for Nodine. ""Nodine is right that federal law protects his right to run,"" Levitt said, ""But it doesn't likely protect his right to run as a Republican, or even to run for the right to run as a Republican standard-bearer."" So long as parties don’t discriminate in ways banned by the Constitution -- on the basis of race or religion for example -- then they can do much as they please, Levitt said. To be clear, this dispute centers on the primary, not the general election. For a general election, there are two ways to get on the ballot -- as the nominee of a party or by getting enough Alabama voters to sign a petition. Nothing would prevent Nodine from running as an independent in a general election; nothing except the need to gather the signatures of 5,938 voters who live in the 1st Congressional District, the minimum number required under Alabama law. A final irony The Constitution might affirm Nodine’s right to run for office, but it grants states broad authority over deciding who may vote. Alabama law disenfranchises anyone who is behind bars, on probation or on parole. Nodine is definitely still in jail. This leads to the potentially paradoxical situation that should he get on the ballot, he wouldn’t be able to vote for himself. Interestingly, his inability to vote also further hamstrings any plans for a primary bid. The Alabama GOP requires that a candidate declare that ""I am not subject to disqualification from registering and voting."" Our ruling Nodine claimed that he ""can run"" for office. As a legal matter, he is correct. The Constitution enshrines the idea that the people get to decide who shall represent them, and the only limits are age, citizenship and residency. In terms of federal law, Nodine can indeed run. His desire to run as a Republican puts him in murkier waters. Political parties enjoy a certain independence. The opinions of the legal experts we reached ranged from thumbs up to thumbs down on Nodine’s chances in court. But even on the more optimistic end, the court battles would be decided long after the election Nodine cares about is over. In the broadest sense, Nodine has the legal right to run for office from jail, but significant barriers lie between that right and his name appearing on the ballot."
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10713
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Here’s how a five-day diet that mimics fasting may ‘reboot’ the body and reduce cancer risk
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The story is about a USC study that links partial fasting for five days each month to a number of health benefits. But it fails to quantify those benefits in any way and fails to note that two of the researchers have potential conflicts of interest when promoting this line of research. The story receives 0 out of 5 stars — reflecting failure to earn a Satisfactory rating on any of the 7 applicable criteria. The benefits of fasting are well known, but so too are the risks. This study offers what may be a happy medium — a diet that is linked to health benefits, yet one that appears safe and, perhaps, may be easier to follow.
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false
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Conflict of interest,Washington Post
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The story described what the diet would contain (and would not contain), but it did not say how much it would cost to follow the regimen composed of the foods that were given to the study participants. However, since participants were mostly eating what they would normally consume (and less on partial fasting days), we’re guessing that the cost implications are not significant. We’ll rate it Not Applicable. Alas, the story says “the results are so promising that the University of Southern California researcher who helped develop the regimen is already talking about trying to get approval from the Food and Drug Administration so that it can be recommended for patients.” But it fails to quantify those results — at all. There is no discussion of harms, beyond the story’s undocumented claim that the modified fast is safe. At a minimum, low-calorie diets can cause problems with fainting and poor concentration that could have been mentioned. And if the study that’s the basis for the story found no adverse effects at all, the story should have said so. The story’s description of the findings as “promising” is as detailed as it gets. The story says nothing about the incidence in the United States of obesity and the diseases linked to it. In fact, there’s so little context that we’re hesitant to rate this Satisfactory. “Not Applicable” seems more appropriate. The story fails to note that Longo and a second author have financial ties to L-Nutra, a company that develops foods for use in such diets. The study itself says Longo plans to donate all of his equity in the company to non-profit organizations; it does not say what the second author’s plans are. It also fails to note that the University of Southern California has licensed intellectual property to L-Nutra and that, as part of the license agreement, the school may receive royalty payments from L-Nutra. And it does not say that the clinical part of the study on which the story focused was funded by the USC Edna Jones chair fund. The sole independent voice comes in the form of comments from a nutritional therapist that are lifted, inexplicably but with attribution, from a newspaper. Performing a real interview with a nutrition expert would likely have led to a deeper, more thorough report on this research. The story mentions “extreme dieting” and its attendant dangers, but does not say what those dangers are. A brief discussion of other fasts/very low calorie diets would have been useful. Or, even better, the story could have discussed the role of known programs that result in weight loss that most physicians would recommend (e.g. behavioral counseling or Weight Watchers). The story notes that the FDA has not approved the regimen, though it is not clear what exactly it would be asked to approve — since one does not need FDA approval to fast. This description is arguably confusing to readers, and the story contains no information about how one would actually learn more about the details of the fasting protocol. . The story suggests that the modified fast described here is new. But the concept of intermittent fasting is not novel. The quote below is lifted directly from this news release — but the story never identified where the quote came from. ‘It’s about reprogramming the body so it enters a slower aging mode, but also rejuvenating it through stem cell-based regeneration,’ Longo said. ‘It’s not a typical diet because it isn’t something you need to stay on.’
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7478
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Schumer calls on VA to explain use of unproven drug on vets.
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The Senate’s top Democrat on Sunday called on the Department of Veterans Affairs to explain why it allowed the use of an unproven drug on veterans for the coronavirus, saying patients may have been put at unnecessary risk.
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true
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AP Top News, Malaria, Understanding the Outbreak, Health, General News, Politics, Charles Schumer, Virus Outbreak, Veterans, Veterans affairs, Donald Trump
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Sen. Charles Schumer of New York said the VA needs to provide Congress more information about a recent bulk order for $208,000 worth of hydroxychloroquine. President Donald Trump has heavily promoted the malaria drug, without evidence, as a treatment for COVID-19. Schumer’s request comes after a whistleblower complaint filed this past week by former Health and Human Services official Rick Bright alleged that the Trump administration, eager for a quick fix to the onslaught of the coronavirus, wanted to “flood” hot spots in New York and New Jersey with the drug. Major veterans organizations have urged VA to explain under what circumstances VA doctors initiate discussion of hydroxychloroquine with veterans as a treatment option. “There are concerns that they are using this drug when the medical evidence says it doesn’t help and could hurt,” Schumer said in an interview with The Associated Press. He said given the fact the malaria drug, despite being untested, had been repeatedly pushed publicly by Trump, VA Secretary Robert Wilkie must address whether anyone at the department was pressured by the White House or the administration to use hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. Schumer said Wilkie also should answer questions about a recent analysis of VA hospital data that showed there were more deaths among patients given hydroxychloroquine versus standard care, including how much patients knew about the drug’s risks before taking it. In a statement Sunday, VA spokeswoman Christina Noel called it “preposterous” for anyone to suggest that VA would make treatment decisions based on anything other than “the best medical interests of patients.” “VA only permits use of the drug after ensuring veterans and caretakers are aware of potential risks associated with it, as we do with any other drug or treatment,” she said. Wilkie in recent weeks has denied that veterans were used as test subjects for the drug and that it was instead administered at government-run VA hospitals only when medically appropriate, with mutual consent between doctor and patient. Still, Wilkie and the department have repeatedly declined to say how widely the drug was being used for COVID-19, including how many veterans were given the drug, and whether VA doctors were given guidance by VA headquarters on specific scenarios when it should be used. In a weekly call with veterans’ groups this past week, Wilkie continued to defend VA’s use of hydroxychloroquine. He dismissed the recent analysis of VA hospital data showing no benefits to patients, suggesting the poor outcomes were because the cases involved older, very sick veterans. “Use of this medication for treatment of COVID-19 is considered ‘off label’ — perfectly legal and not rare,” he wrote in an April 29 letter to veterans’ groups. The analysis of hospital data, done by independent researchers at two universities with VA approval, was not a rigorous experiment. Researchers analyzed medical records of 368 older male veterans hospitalized with confirmed coronavirus infection at VA medical centers who died or were discharged by April 11. About 28% of veterans who were given hydroxychloroquine plus usual care died, versus 11% of those getting routine care alone. The VA recently said most of its recent bulk order for hydroxychloroquine was being used for approved uses, such as treating lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, but it didn’t provide breakdowns. Wilkie in recent weeks took advocacy of the drug even further than Trump by claiming without evidence that it has been effective for young and middle-aged veterans in particular. In fact, there is no published evidence showing that. Veterans are “very concerned that we still do not have clarity on the VA’s past and present use of hydroxychloroquine in treating veterans with COVID-19,” Jeremy Butler, chief executive officer of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, told the AP. “Now that the federal government issued an emergency use authorization for remdesivir to treat COVID-19, we need answers to these questions as well as the VA’s plans for administering, or not administering, remdesivir,” he said. That action by the Food and Drug Administration came after preliminary results from a government-sponsored study showed that remdesivir shortened the time to recovery by 31%, or about four days on average, for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. In a tweet Sunday, former VA Secretary David Shulkin urged the department to immediately curtail use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19. “With studies showing no benefit, VA should restrict use exclusively to clinical trials,” he wrote. Shulkin was fired by Trump in March 2018, and Wilkie replaced him. Schumer said his main concern is determining whether the VA had conducted any “clandestine studies to determine whether hydroxychloroquine was effective without their permission.” He said there’s also concern that the department won’t address specifically where the drug was sent. “These are people who risked their lives for us,” Schumer said. “They should be treated only with the utmost dignity, respect and high standards of care.” The drug has long been used to treat malaria and other ailments. A few, very small preliminary studies suggested it might help prevent the coronavirus from entering cells and possibly help patients clear the virus sooner. But the FDA last month warned doctors against prescribing the drug for COVID-19 outside hospitals because of the risks of serious side effects and death.
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11464
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Gene Therapy Shows Potential Against Heart Failure
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Are we really going to report commonly now when early research moves from one phase into another? What researchers announced was that a year after a very small number of heart failure patients were given a type of gene therapy intended to improve how their heart muscles manage calcium cycling there appear to be enough indications of relative benefits and safety to move ahead to a phase 3 trial that would be capable of providing more reliable evidence of clinical effects. What’s more, the key conclusions of this trial were announced at another heart failure meeting last summer. This presentation just updated the statistics with a few more months of data. Instead of asking probing questions of researchers, the story relies on quotes from a news release. Instead of getting comments from independent sources that illuminate the specific strengths and weaknesses of this trial, the story just passes along general statements about heart failure and the preliminary nature of research. At least the story discloses the use of prepared statements and it notes that the company developing this gene therapy funded the trial. Earlier reports about this trial highlighted questions about the statistical methods used by the researchers in this trial… and words of caution about reading too much into the findings. This story could have done a better job explaining to readers that this trial was capable only of determining whether or not this gene therapy is ready for the next phase of testing – and that it cannot settle questions about whether the therapy is safe and effective.
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false
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HealthDay
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Although this gene therapy has barely begun the long road of clinical trials and so we won’t hold this story to the expectation that it discuss costs, the story could have offered readers at least some general comments about how the costs of this sort of gene therapy might compare with conventional treatments for heart failure. This story doesn’t seem to distinguish between “getting better” and “not declining as fast.” As one line states, “At both six months and a year later, the patients who had received the new gene saw their risk for death, cardiac transplantation, worsening heart failure and hospitalization decline by half.” That sentence seems to say that the patients had lower risks than before they enrolled in trial, when what researchers actually reported was that the patients given the gene therapy were only half as likely as the patients who got a placebo to have one of those bad events. The story reports only relative benefits without telling readers the absolute numbers. One result reported in a company news release was particularly striking, that during the year following treatment, the average number of days spent in the hospital was 0.4 per patient for the 9 patients who got the highest dose and 4.5 days per patient for the 14 who received a placebo. The story could have at least included the actual numbers of deaths reported in each group. The story does not mention any harms. Even though the researchers said in their meeting abstract that the therapy had “an excellent safety profile” in this trial, the story should have pointed out that patients have been harmed and some have died during experiments using other types of gene therapy. The story falls short in accurately describing both the big picture and key details. For instance, the lead sentence says the gene therapy partially restored “the heart’s ability to pump in 39 heart failure patients.” But 39 patients was the total number enrolled in the trial. Of those, 14 received a placebo. Of the 25 who received the gene therapy, only 9 were given the high dose that produced results the researchers highlighted. As for the big picture, not only was the purpose of this trial limited to determining if the therapy appears to be safe and effective enough in order to be given to a much larger number of patients in a trial capable of producing convincing evidence of clinical effects, but the statistical methods used have sparked debate among observers. Following the release of shorter-term results last summer, one independent observer was quoted as having reservations about the way the trial defined improvement, which he said had never been used before and hadn’t been well validated. The generic statement in the story that results are preliminary and need more investigation isn’t enough to put the sketchy nature of these results into the proper context for readers. At least the story included a standard disclaimer that “research presented at meetings isn’t subjected to the same level of scrutiny as studies published in peer-reviewed journals.” See “CUPID: First-in-human gene therapy for advanced heart failure promising in small study” available at http://www.theheart.org/article/1083549.do Although a quote from one of the researchers and another line in the body of the story refer to patients with “advanced heart failure,” the headline and lead of the story refer to just “heart failure,” which includes a far broader range of people. A company news release defined the trial participants has having moderate to severe heart failure and significantly impaired pumping function of their hearts and less than half the normal ability to transport and utilize oxygen during exercise testing. The story should have been clear from the top about the severity of disease in the participants in this trial. A single additional sentence would have gone a long way in addressing this. The story does quote two independent experts and reports that the trial was funded by the company developing this gene therapy. Unfortunately, those experts’ quotes didn’t add much to help readers evaluate the quality and value of this trial. But it nonetheless gets a barely passing grade on this criterion. Other than saying that one goal of this line of research is to provide an alternative to heart transplants, the story does not describe the alternative treatments available to people with heart failure. For example, even when drug therapy loses its effectiveness, some heart failure patients are receiving heart assist pumps for long-term use… so there are approved alternatives to a heart transplant for some patients like those in this trial. The story should have included that fact. The story clearly states that this gene therapy is experimental and not available to patients. This gene therapy technique is indeed something new, but the story would have been better if it had included some independent assessment of a researcher’s claim that, “This is the first time gene therapy has been tested and shown to improve outcomes for patients with advanced heart failure.” Also, the researchers reported very similar results at other heart failure meetings last summer. The story does not make clear that this latest announcement merely adds a few more months of follow-up, not entirely new results. At least the story discloses that the quotes from the lead research are taken from a university news release.
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6298
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Long-hidden toxic waste endangers Serbia’s health, EU status.
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Dozens of rusty barrels and plastic tubs filled with a dark, oily liquid cluttered a muddy yard where chickens roamed. More brimming containers packed a wooden barn.
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true
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International News, Industrial waste, Serbia, Environment, Europe, Hazardous waste
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The property in northern Serbia, located next to farmland and a railway line, stored about 100 tons of likely hazardous waste altogether, the country’s environmental protection ministry said. Authorities found it last month, along with another big batch cemented into the walls of a nearby brick factory. A string of similar discoveries has triggered alarms in Serbia, where masses of poorly secured industrial waste are believed to have been dumped or hidden and could pose long-term environmental and public health dangers. The situation arising from decades of neglect, corruption and economic decay is “dramatic,” Serbian Environmental Protection Minister Goran Trivan said. “People actually buried hazardous waste in their own yards as if it were some kind of hidden treasure,” Trivan said in an interview with The Associated Press. “This has to stop.” The problem has come into focus as Serbia and other Balkan nations move closer to joining the European Union, a step that ultimately will require their environmental protection standards to be in line with those in existing EU member countries. Such reforms could take the EU candidates years to achieve. Hazardous waste must be exported from Serbia to places such as Austria, Romania and Switzerland because the country does not have its own processing facilities. The shipments are costly, so some manufacturers and waste-management companies get rid of production residues improperly. The concern about concealed pollutants results from simple math, Trivan said. The country generates some 130,000 to 220,000 tons of hazardous waste every year, and while part of it is either exported or stored properly inside Serbia, a chunk remains unaccounted for, he said. “So, where is it?” Trivan said. “Figures tell us that we could be dealing with serious quantities, possibly thousands of tons.” The way to handle the problem would be to step up government oversight and to introduce harsher sentences for offenders while encouraging private investments in waste management, Trivan said. The ministry has teamed up with the state security agency, the prosecutor’s office and police to locate as much dumped waste as soon as possible. A public campaign urges citizens to report sites where they suspect toxic materials might be stored. Andjelka Mihajlov, an environmental scientist on the Serbian government team working to revise the country’s laws to be in line with EU membership, said the potential damage that hidden toxic hazards pose to the country’s people and environment cannot be estimated. It depends on factors such as the type of substances and where and how they were stowed. “If not handled properly, hazardous waste poses a serious concern for public health,” said Mihajlov, who served briefly as Serbia’s environment minister. Authorities say that out of the more than a hundred companies registered in Serbia to handle hazardous waste, only about a dozen followed proper labeling, storage and disposal regulations. Instead, many waste management firms pocket the money companies pay them and abandon loads that were supposed to be shipped abroad somewhere in Serbia. Officials suspect that was the case with the barrels and plastic tubs found on the property in the town of Pancevo in mid-March. A business named Eko 21 had been hired to deal with production waste disposed of the containers in an inhabited area without fences or any other safeguards to keep the population safe. Residents of a village near the Serbian capital, Belgrade, were warned not to use their wells after dozens of barrels of toxic waste containing carcinogenic benzene were found buried in Obrenovac. The property owner was arrested and faces a prison term of up to five years if convicted of illegally storing dangerous substances. Trivan said unreported waste could have been seeping into the ground for years at a number of as-yet unknown locations, polluting the surrounding water and land. “I am astonished by the level of negligence toward our own lives,” he lamented. Serbia also has unaddressed environmental problems with its waste water; all Serbian cities and many factories dump it straight into rivers. Air quality, drinking water safety and pollution from mines and power plans are worries as well. Trivan acknowledged that his country is lagging at least 25 to 30 years behind in environmental protection, but is optimistic it will steer its way clear. “Nothing has been done for decades and we are now dealing with the consequences,” he said. “But we should not despair. It can be done.”
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10549
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Colonoscopy may miss more than 7 percent of cancers
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"The story puts the numbers right in the headline and follows up with more numbers in the lead. The story hits most of our marks and does an especially good job making use of independent voices. We would have liked to see more use of absolute numbers to help readers understand whether, on balance, colonoscopy is still a good way to detect cancer. As the story notes, colon cancer is the second leading killer among all cancers in the US. Detecting it early can save thousands of lives. If there are flaws in the way these screenings are being applied, they need to be documented and remedied. This story does a great job of showing both the flaws and some of the potential solutions. Consumers also should be aware that having a normal colonoscopy does not ""guarantee"" them they are free of colon cancer for the 10 year interval until the next recommended screening."
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true
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"The story does not discuss costs and should have. If colonscopy is not providing that value that people once thought, it should be examined from a cost basis as well. Since fecal occult blood stool slide testing is so much cheaper (something referenced in the story but without cost estimates given), this is an even more important issue. The story includes a lot of numbers and, for this reason, we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt on this criterion although we would have liked to have seen more numbers in absolute terms. Saying that women had a 30 percent higher chance of having their cancers missed, for example, sounds like cause for a significant health policy overhaul. But what does that mean in hard numbers? How many women were included in this study, for one. And what was the ratio of missed cancers for them? We’re told 1 in 13 overall, but what was the breakdown for men and for women? It also would have been helpful to see the absolute numbers by gastroenterologist versus primary care physician, as the skill set of the person operating the colonscopy also appears to be a factor. The story does not quantify potential harms from colonscopies, such as colon perforation. The story does a good job of evaluating the quality of the evidence. The writer includes sufficient detail about the study, including the ages of people screened, the total number, the years screened, and other important facts. The story does not engage in disease-mongering. Some mention of how often people live with polyps that don’t become cancer or that, in the later stages of life, don’t merit the risk of a procedure. This story includes two independent sources to great effect. Without their commentary, readers might be inclined to doubt the results of their colonscopies or seek repeated screenings beyond the recommended schedule. In a short amount of space, this story was able to bring in some valuable perspective on an important study. The story says, ""Another less expensive test is fecal occult blood testing, which involves taking stool specimens at home and mailing them to the doctor’s office or medical lab. The US Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of medical experts appointed by the federal government, recommends screening people aged 50 to 75 for the disease, but does not specify which test is best."" There could have been some mention of how effective fecal occult blood testing is and whether similar studies have been done on that type of screening. The story makes it clear that the screening is widely available and is the standard. The story makes it clear that colonoscopy is the dominant screening for colon cancer. This story does not rely on a news release."
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18042
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"Of the roughly 15 percent of Americans who don’t have health insurance, ""half of them made more than $50,000 a year."
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"Paul said that of the roughly 15 percent of Americans who don’t have health insurance, ""half of them made more than $50,000 a year."" In reality, if you measure what individuals make, Census data shows that 28 percent of uninsured Americans earn $50,000. By another measure, using household income, almost 38 percent of uninsured Americans earn at least $50,000. Both of these figures are pretty far from the 50 percent Paul cited in the interview."
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false
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National, Health Care, Income, Rand Paul,
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"During a recent appearance on The Daily Show, guest host John Oliver and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., engaged in a lively exchange on health insurance and why people buy it or not. Paul, an eye surgeon, is strongly opposed to President Barack Obama’s health care law. During the interview, Oliver pressed him on how to get more Americans signed up for insurance. Paul indicated that the biggest issue is affordability, particularly for young, healthy and relatively affluent people. According to the most recent statistics, he said, ""85 percent of people had insurance, so 15 percent didn't. So what you need to do is look at who are the 15 percent, and why don't they have insurance? Of the 15 percent who didn't have insurance, half of them made more than $50,000 a year. Why didn't they buy insurance? Because of the expense. They were young healthy people."" In this fact-check, we’ll check his claim that half of the uninsured made more than $50,000 a year. In a separate report, we’ll look at whether the cost of insurance is the biggest barrier to uninsured Americans. We’ll start by noting that Paul is very close to the mark when he says 15 percent of Americans don’t have insurance. The most recent Census Bureau statistics for 2011 show that 15.7 percent of Americans are uninsured. What about the income breakdown for that 15 percent? There are a few different ways to slice the data, but none produces a number for $50,000-plus earners that reaches the 50 percent level Paul offered on The Daily Show. In a September 2012 paper, the Employee Benefits Research Institute looked at 2011 census data on health coverage. It found that 28 percent of the uninsured earned at least $50,000. That’s quite a bit lower than what Paul had indicated. The highest plausible percentage cited by our experts -- who included both liberals and conservatives -- used census data for households rather than for individuals. Using this method, 37.5 percent of the uninsured live in a household with an income above $50,000. Why the variation between household and individual data? Uninsured young adults who are roommates might live in a household where all roommates collectively make more than $50,000, even if each roommate individually earns much less. This type of living arrangement tends to boost the count of uninsured adults who ""earn"" more than $50,000, even if they really don’t make that much individually. This difference in counting methods matters in this sort of statistical comparison because people without health insurance ""are more likely to be living in less-common housing arrangements -- more in multi-generation families, more living with people who aren't related to them,"" said Hanns Kuttner, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. When we showed our calculations to Paul’s office, communications director Moira Bagley said there’s significant uncertainty in the Census data due to ""inexact data collection"" that ""under-reports the numbers of people who actually have health insurance."" This refers to an argument made by some critics of Obamacare that the Census Bureau undercounts Medicaid recipients compared to the total cited by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Subtracting these uncounted Medicaid recipients leaves the pool of uninsured Americans relatively better off. However, each of the seven ideologically diverse health policy experts we talked to for this story used the census numbers when we asked them to evaluate Paul's claim, and none expressed concerns about the ability of the census data to fairly evaluate the question. Our ruling Paul said that of the roughly 15 percent of Americans who don’t have health insurance, ""half of them made more than $50,000 a year."" In reality, if you measure what individuals make, Census data shows that 28 percent of uninsured Americans earn $50,000. By another measure, using household income, almost 38 percent of uninsured Americans earn at least $50,000. Both of these figures are pretty far from the 50 percent Paul cited in the interview."
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1694
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France bans super-skinny models in anorexia clampdown.
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France will ban excessively thin fashion models and expose modeling agents and the fashion houses that hire them to possible fines and even jail, under a new law passed on Friday.
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true
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Health News
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The move by France, with its fashion and luxury industries worth tens of billions of euros, comes after a similar ban by Israel in 2013, while other countries, like Italy and Spain, rely on voluntary codes of conduct to protect models. The measure is part of a campaign against anorexia by President Francois Hollande’s government. Lawmakers also made it illegal to condone anorexia and said any re-touched photo that alters the bodily appearance of a model for commercial purposes must carry a message stating it had been manipulated. “The activity of model is banned for any person whose Body Mass Index (BMI) is lower than levels proposed by health authorities and decreed by the ministers of health and labor,” the legislation says. The lawmaker behind the bill previously said models would have to present a medical certificate showing a BMI of at least 18, about 55 kg (121 lb) for a height of 1.75 meters (5.7 feet), before being hired for a job and for a few weeks afterwards. The law, voted through the lower house of parliament by Hollande’s Socialist majority despite opposition by conservative parliamentarians, envisages imprisonment of up to six months and a fine of 75,000 euros ($82,000) for any agency contravening it. A second measure means that any website inciting a reader to “seek excessive thinness by encouraging eating restrictions for a prolonged period of time, resulting in risk of mortality or damage to health” will face up to a year in prison and fines of up to 100,000 euros. Elite and IMG, two big modeling agencies present in France, both declined to comment on the moves. Some 30,000-40,000 people in France suffer from anorexia, most of them teenagers, health experts estimate. In 2010, Isabelle Caro, an anorexic 28-year-old former French fashion model, died after posing for a photographic campaign to raise awareness about the illness.
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29151
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New York City is set to ban hot dogs and processed meats in an effort to combat climate change.
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"What's true: New York City announced a ""Green New Deal"" in April 2019 that would reduce the amount of processed meat purchased by government-run facilities such as hospitals, schools, and correctional facilities. What's false: New York City did not ban hot dogs outright. Restaurants, hot-dog stands, grocery stores, and other privately owned businesses will still be able to sell hot dogs."
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false
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Politics
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On 22 April 2019, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city’s “Green New Deal,” an “audacious plan to attack global warming on all fronts.” While this package of investments and new legislation covered several approaches to reduce emissions by nearly 30 percent by the year 2030, a number of outlets focused their headlines on one specific fast-food item: hot dogs. An article published on iHeartRadio’s platform, for instance, was misleadingly entitled “NYC To Ban Hot Dogs and Processed Meats To Improve Climate.” As this article and others like it circulated on social media, many viewers apparently stopped reading after the headline and came away with the belief that hot dogs had been banned city-wide: One Twitter user wrote: “NYC Mayor – you just made enemies of a lot of NYC vendors who sell great hot dogs, the citizens & visitors who love them! Repeat: You will make NYC a ghost town by 2030 if you continue this ridiculous green deal! New Yorkers, speak up!” Hot dogs are not being banned in New York City. Headlines such as “NYC To Ban Hot Dogs and Processed Meats To Improve Climate” are misleading for two reasons. First, hot dogs are not being banned throughout the city. The city government plans to reduce the purchase of processed meats consumed at city-run facilities, such as hospitals, public schools, and correctional facilities, but this policy will have no effect on vendors, restaurants, grocery stores, or any other privately owned businesses that sell hot dogs, or on their customers who eat them. Second, the city’s plan to reduce the consumption of hot dogs is only partly based on an effort to “improve climate.” NYC’s “Green New Deal” policies are part of the city’s “OneNYC 2050: Building a Strong and Fair City” strategy. While these policies address climate-change issues, they also deal with community well-being and the general health of the city’s population. The section of OneNYC 2050 dealing with processed meats can actually be found in the “Healthy Living” portion of this strategy. More specifically, the section dealing with processed meats explains that reducing the consumption of hot dogs will lower the risk of heart disease and cancer. Here’s the relevant section of OneNYC 2050 (emphasis ours): ADOPT MORE SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION PRACTICES IN CITY GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS The City will shift away from goods that have an outsized impact on the environment and identify opportunities to reduce waste and cut GHG emissions throughout City government. Through updates to our Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP) and executive action, we are ending the purchasing of unnecessary single-use plastic foodware, reducing the purchasing of beef, and phasing out the purchasing of processed meat. Single-use plastic foodware — including straws, cutlery, cups, plates, bowls, and trays — are designed to be used once and then thrown away. These petroleum-based products are a threat to our neighborhoods, waterways, and climate. The City is ending the purchasing of unnecessary single-use plastic foodware, switching to compostable, reusable, or recyclable alternatives while maintaining a sufficient supply of single-use plastic foodware for those who need it. And we will work with City Council to expand these requirements to private businesses. Building on the success of implementing Meatless Mondays at all New York City public schools, the City will reduce the purchasing of beef by 50 percent. Beef has a relatively high environmental footprint compared to poultry, pork, and plant-based foods. Beef cattle, managing manure, and manufacturing fertilizer produces nitrous oxide and methane, two climate-warming pollutants 298 and 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, respectively. Processed meat consumption is linked with increased risk of cancer and is often high in saturated fat and sodium which is linked with heart disease. This policy would offer health benefits to the most vulnerable New Yorkers. So New York City plans to reduce the consumption of processed meats at city-run facilities such as hospitals, public schools, and correctional facilities. But this plan will not “ban” hot dogs in the city. Restaurants, hot dog stands, grocery stores, and other privately owned businesses will still be able to sell hot dogs in the city.
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5741
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California Assembly committee backs vaccine exemption law.
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A California Assembly committee backed new rules for vaccination exemptions on Thursday following a raucous, hours-long hearing in the midst of a national measles outbreak and renewed scrutiny of immunization policies.
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true
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Bills, Immunizations, Health, Measles, General News, Legislation, California, Science, Sacramento, U.S. News
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The 9-2 vote showed support among lawmakers for a modified version of legislation that has spurred heated debate. But the vote also showed division within the Assembly’s Democratic majority. America’s most populous state allows students exemptions from required vaccinations for medical reasons. But proponents of the bill calling for greater scrutiny of the exemptions argue that parents are shopping for unscrupulous doctors who will write one even if it is not necessary. Sen. Richard Pan, a Democrat from Sacramento and author of the bill, argued that greater oversight of medical exemptions is a matter of protection for children. “California cannot allow a handful of unscrupulous physicians to put our children in danger,” he told the Assembly Health Committee. But hundreds of people at the hearing urged lawmakers to vote against the bill. Critics argue Pan’s legislation amounts to government overreach. “It takes the state government and puts it squarely in the middle of the doctor and patient relationship,” said Leigh Dundas of the group Advocates for Physicians’ Rights, which has recently bought Facebook ads targeting the legislation. Several parents told lawmakers they would not comply with the law. The five-hour hearing came to epitomize the heated debate around the bill. A packed gallery jeered, and some threatened Pan. Under the bill, the public health department would scrutinize doctors who grant more than five medical exemptions in a year and schools with vaccination rates of less than 95%. Officials say that threshold is needed to provide “community immunity,” which protects those who haven’t been vaccinated for medical reasons or because they are too young. The measure, which Gov. Gavin Newsom said he will sign if it reaches his desk, comes as measles cases have reached a 25-year high in the U.S. Lawmakers in other states also have been considering changes to confront the increase. Maine eliminated religious and philosophical exemptions, while New York lawmakers ended a religious exemption. Washington state halted most exemptions for the measles vaccine, though legislators in Oregon defeated a measure that would have made it harder for families to opt out. California’s legislation has received national attention after actor Jessica Biel appeared at the Capitol last week to lobby lawmakers against the measure with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent critic of vaccination. Pan initially proposed requiring state health officials sign off on every exemption from vaccinations. But he dropped that requirement in the version of the bill that advanced Thursday. Among the provisions in the revised California legislation: — Doctors can’t charge for filling out a medical exemption form or conducting a related medical examination. They would have to sign the forms under penalty of perjury. — California Department of Public Health doctors or registered nurses would review exemptions issued by local medical providers who issue five or more a year or at schools with high exemption rates. — The state public health officer, who is a doctor, could revoke any exemptions that don’t meet national guidelines. — Parents could appeal to an independent panel of doctors. — Officials could consider families’ medical histories in allowing exemptions in addition to immunization guidelines issued by federal medical authorities. Supporters said the legislation would permit exemptions for the less than 1% of students who should avoid vaccinations because they would have a severe allergic reaction or have impaired immunity from a liver problem, HIV, chemotherapy or other conditions. Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Alameda, praised the bill during Thursday’s hearing as “science-based” while still allowing robust medical exemptions. New figures show the rate of kindergartners with permanent medical exemptions has quadrupled since California banned personal exemptions, and more than 100 schools have medical exemption rates exceeding 10%. Public health officials have said they are stymied in investigating these cases because of a lack of oversight. The bill’s backers argue its additional reporting requirements will help the state curb “doctor shopping” and abuses of the exemption system. Still, critics questioned whether the measure would discourage doctors from writing exemptions at all. Those arguments resonated with some lawmakers. “I want the freedom to make choices for my family,” said Assemblywoman Autumn Burke, a Democrat from Marina Del Rey who voted against the bill.
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40889
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There were 32 deaths from suicide in Ireland in August.
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It’s too soon to know this figure as only a coroner can officially rule a death as a suicide, but this figure is realistic looking at past data.
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false
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online
|
There were 700 deaths from cancer in Ireland in August. We don’t know these figures yet as it is too soon after the fact. The figure for cancer seems realistic from past trends, as there were around 830 deaths caused by cancer in Ireland per month in Q1 of 2020. There were 70 deaths from alcohol in Ireland in August. We could find no source for this figure. A 2013 average of 88 alcohol-related deaths a month in Ireland includes a number of different factors, such as the coroner mentioning alcohol dependency, certain alcohol-related diseases, and if they were an alcoholic. There were 32 deaths from suicide in Ireland in August. It’s too soon to know this figure as only a coroner can officially rule a death as a suicide, but this figure is realistic looking at past data. Claim 1 of 4
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28448
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So far in 2018, the number of U.S. students killed in school shootings is greater than the number of U.S. military personnel who have been killed on active duty.
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What's true: The number of U.S. students killed in school shootings so far this year is greater than the number of U.S. military personnel who have been killed in combat operations. What's false: The number of active duty U.S. military personnel killed from all causes so far this year (including training accidents) is greater than the number of people (including adults) killed in school shootings.
|
mixture
|
Politics, school shootings
|
On 18 May 2018, ten people were killed in a mass shooting by a 17-year-old student at Santa Fe High School in Texas. That same day, the Washington Post published an article whose headline proclaimed that so far, the year has been “deadlier for schoolchildren than deployed service members.” Readers’ summaries of the article (and the article itself) varied somewhat in stating whether the central claim referred to all persons killed in school shootings or just students, and whether it referred to all deaths of active duty military personnel or just those occurring in combat zones. But either way, that central claim is largely true. If we count only students killed in school shootings up through and including the Santa Fe High School shooting of 18 May 2018, we tally the following figures: 23 January 2018: 2 students killed at Marshall County High School in Benton, Kentucky. 14 February 2018: 14 students (and 3 staff members) killed at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. 7 March 2018: 1 student killed at Huffman High School in Birmingham, Alabama. 20 March 2018: 1 student killed at Great Mills High School in Great Mills, Maryland. 18 May 2018: 8 students (and 2 teachers) killed at Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, Texas. These incidents total 26 students killed in school shootings up through the cutoff date, with another five adults who were also fatally shot, but not included in this tally. (As of 22 May 2018, the Post article also referenced five school shootings that left 31 people dead, but stated that 27 rather than 26 students had been killed. We do not yet know the source of this discrepancy.) The number of military deaths occurring during that timeframe was the subject of some debate. Shortly after the article’s initial publication, Jared Keller of Task & Purpose (a news site for veterans) noted that statistics the Post obtained from the Department of Defense about military deaths were incomplete: “The DoD doesn’t always present a clear picture of accidental mishap-related deaths due to worries about operational security, hence the trouble with [Public Affairs Office] releases,” Keller wrote in an email. “Back in March 2017, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis even cautioned public affairs officials across the military to ‘be cautious about publicly telegraphing readiness shortfalls’ because ‘communicating that we are broken or not ready to fight invites miscalculation,’ as his spokesman put it at the time.” As revised version of the article said that as of May 2018, “there have been 13 service member fatalities in seven incidents. Seven of those casualties occurred in a helicopter crash in Iraq in March. Three of the total number of military casualties were not related to combat.” These numbers appear to be derived from deaths related to Operation Inherent Resolve (Iraq and Syria) and Operation Freedom’s Sentinel (Afghanistan). Five separate incidents in 2018 related to Operation Inherent Resolve resulted in military deaths on the following dates: 8 January 2018 19 February 2018 7 March 2018 15 March 2018 and 30 March 2018. Four of these incidents resulted in a single death each, while the fifth (on 15 March 2018) was a crash of an HH-60 Pave Hawk helicopter in western Iraq that left 7 U.S. service members dead. Two incidents related to Operation Freedom’s Sentinel resulted in military deaths on the following dates: 1 January 2018 and 30 April 2018. Each of those incidents resulted in a single death, bringing the overall year-to-date total of U.S. military personnel killed in combat zones to 13. (The first three incidents involving Operation Inherent Resolve linked above each said that the attendant death was “non-combat related”). The revised Post article also referenced an additional 29 year-to-date military deaths tallied by Task & Purpose, all of which occurred in training accidents (including 9 persons killed in a WC-120 crash in Savannah, Georgia), bringing the military death total to 42. So as of 18 May 2018, the military vs. school shooting totals stood at: All active duty military deaths: 42 All combat zone military deaths: 13 All school shooting deaths: 31 All school shooting student deaths: 26 In general, the overall number of people (31) and the number of students (26) killed in school shootings through 18 May 2018 was greater than the number of military personnel killed in combat zones (13). If all military deaths (including accidental training deaths) are counted, then that number (42) exceeds the total number of school shooting deaths (31). How meaningful these numbers really are is something of a subjective issue. The number of school shooting deaths was skewed upwards because two relatively large mass shootings (Parkland and Santa Fe) took place in roughly the first third of the year, killing 22 students between them. On the other hand, the number of military deaths (both combat and non-combat) was skewed upwards by a few aircraft crashes that each left several service members dead. One way of putting these figures in context might be to note that the number of students currently attending high school in the U.S. is a little over 15 million, while U.S. active duty military personnel number just under 1.3 million (with around 18,000 to 20,000 of those personnel deployed to combat zones). As the Post noted of those numbers: The figures for 2018 do not suggest schools are more dangerous than combat zones. After all, there are more than 50 million students in public elementary and high schools and only about 1.3 million members of the armed forces. So far in 2018, a member of the military has been about 40 times as likely to be killed as someone is to die in a school shooting…. Still, some critics might suggest that such a comparison is not an apt one, because members of the military perform a necessary service for which they volunteer to put themselves in harm’s way, while the mere act of attending school should not pose any significant danger to children.
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8292
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U.S. to start antibody testing of sailors on coronavirus-hit aircraft carrier.
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The U.S. Navy said on Friday it will conduct antibody testing of sailors aboard the coronavirus-hit aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt to determine whether they were exposed to the virus as it spread through the ship.
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true
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Health News
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Sweeping testing for the coronavirus among the entire crew of the Roosevelt has already yielded a curious result: The majority of the positive cases so far are among sailors who are asymptomatic. With so many of the crew symptom-free, it is unclear how many of them had been infected and recovered without anyone realizing they had contracted the virus. Many of these infections could have finished their cycle before testing of the crew began. The extent of the infections aboard the vessel should become more clear with results of the new “outbreak investigation” the Navy announced that will use serology testing developed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The serology tests look for the presence of specific antibodies that are created by the immune system’s attack response to the presence of the virus and remain in the blood for a period of time. “We are seeking crew member volunteers,” Navy Surgeon General Rear Admiral Bruce Gillingham told reporters. The roughly thousand volunteers who are being sought for testing over the next week or so will also be swabbed again for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, as well as asked to answer a short survey, officials said. The U.S. coronavirus death toll - the highest in the world - surged past 35,000 on Friday. It also claimed the life of a sailor from the Theodore Roosevelt this week. The Navy’s testing of the entire 4,800-member crew of the aircraft carrier - which is about 94% complete - was an extraordinary move in a case that already has led to the firing of the ship’s captain and the resignation of the Navy’s top civilian official. It has also given scientific researchers a case study about how the virus spreads asymptomatically in a confined environment among mostly younger adults. That cohort has been somewhat underrepresented in the epidemiological data so far. As of Friday, some 660 sailors - nearly 14% of the crew - had tested positive for the coronavirus. The Navy has said that about 60% of those positive tests were among sailors who were symptom-free. The Navy said medical staff on the island of Guam, where the ship pulled into port, would take the samples and collect questionnaire results. The actual serology tests will be sent to the CDC in Atlanta for analysis. The data could further shed light on how the coronavirus spreads undetected, which could help inform the U.S. national response to the pandemic and efforts to restart the economy. “We will also be sharing that with the White House task force so that that information can be used for the benefit of the nation,” Gillingham said.
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Plan to use malaria drug in Mumbai slums temporarily shelved.
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A plan to give the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine to thousands of people in Mumbai’s crowded slums to prevent coronavirus infections has temporarily been shelved, officials said Wednesday.
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true
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Understanding the Outbreak, Malaria, Mumbai, Health, General News, India, Asia, International News, Asia Pacific, Virus Outbreak
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Health officials in Mumbai said that a test to prove the efficacy of the much touted but largely untested drug was still in the cards, but that for now they would follow federal Indian guidelines. India, which reached the grim milestone of over 1,000 deaths from the virus on Wednesday, is one of the few countries that has pushed for the use of hydroxychloroquine, as a precautionary measure among high-risk groups such as health care workers or people who have come in close contact with COVID-19 patients. Mumbai, one of the world’s most densely populated cities, has struggled to contain the spread of the virus, and has over 3,000 cases. In Mumbai slums like Dharavi, which is Asia’s largest, social distancing is nearly impossible. In response, the state government had said it would conduct a clinical trial to test the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine on slum residents. But experts pointed to the scant evidence for the efficacy of the drug and the risks it poses, and questioned the ethics of using hydroxychloroquine on a vulnerable population. Dr. Daksha Shah, Mumbai’s deputy executive health officer, said that officials would now follow guidelines set by India’s top medical research body, and that they were waiting for approval to test the drug. The state government has now said that hydroxychloroquine — which has been touted by President Donald Trump — can be given only after patients consent to taking it while knowing the risks involved. It added that adverse reactions need to be immediately reported to authorities, and that doctors must sign off on giving the drug to those with heart ailments, diabetes or blood disorders. But concerns remain over India’s policy of using the drug as a precautionary measure. India’s National Task Force for COVID-19 issued a statement on March 22 that said its decision to allow the use of the drug was based on “risk-benefit considerations, under exceptional circumstances” and was “derived from available evidence of benefit as treatment and supported by preclinical data.” After the statement was issued, health workers in Mumbai, like other parts of India, began taking hydroxychloroquine. The drug was also given to healthy police officers in the city. But experts say there is no evidence that the drug is a preventative tool against COVID-19. Even for the treatment of diagnosed patients, hydroxychloroquine has shown no benefit. An analysis of 368 patients in U.S. veterans hospitals published earlier this month reported more deaths among those given the drug versus standard care. “If there is no evidence ... why are scientific bodies pushing this drug and giving the impression to the public that there is a magic bullet, and this is your last hope?” said Dr. Shriprakash Kalantri, an epidemiologist in the west Indian state of Maharashtra.
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Canadian mining firm threatens to suspend Greece investment.
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Canadian mining company Eldorado Gold on Monday threatened to suspend a major investment in Greece in 10 days, accusing the government of delaying permits and licenses.
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International News, Europe, Athens, North America, Environment, Business, Greece, George Burns
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One of Greece’s largest foreign investors, Eldorado operates mines in northern Greece that have faced vehement opposition from parts of local communities on environmental grounds, with protests often turning violent. “This decision is not one that we have taken lightly,” Eldorado President and CEO George Burns told reporters in Athens, noting the company has made a $3 billion-investment in the country. A company announcement said it would continue maintenance and environmental safeguards, but would make no further investment in three mines in the Halkidiki area of northern Greece and two projects in the northeastern province of Thrace. It said the permit delays “have negatively impacted Eldorado’s project schedules and costs, ultimately hindering the company’s ability to effectively advance development and operation of these assets.” Burns said the company’s decision will take effect on Sept. 21 unless Eldorado receives the permits. “Approvals must not be held hostage to political posturing or other agendas put forward by a vocal minority,” he said. “I keep hearing the permits are coming, but they’re not coming in a timely fashion.” But Environment Minister Giorgos Stathakis said European and national law had to be upheld, and that the company had still not completed all necessary procedures, including completing an investment plan detailing production methods. He also said some pending permits were scheduled to be given in mid-September for six months, allowing the company to operate during the arbitration process. “The company’s choices toward the employees are clearly their responsibility,” Stathakis said. “We are witnesses of an extraordinary event, of a company that through its CEO holds press conferences and makes statements judging prime ministers, ministers and political parties in Greece.” Burns said the company was unable to legally continue work without the permits, adding he was open to dialogue and hoped to have the issue resolved in time. This is not the first time Eldorado has suspended operations in Greece. In January 2016, it had threatened to suspend work at one of its sites and lay off 600 workers following protests by local residents and a spat with the government. Work restarted several months later. Burns said he had sent three letters to Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras during the last five months, since he took over the helm of Eldorado, but had not received any reply. Eldorado employs some 2,400 staff and contractors in Greece through its local subsidiary, Hellas Gold. The company said 90 percent of the workers faced being suspended temporarily from their jobs if the permits don’t come through in time. The company took over old mines in 2012, paying nearly $2 billion. Burns said it had since invested a further $1 billion in Greece, a figure which would double if the company could fully develop its assets in Greece. Monday’s action comes as Greece struggles to emerge from years of a deep financial crisis and attract investment. Interior Minister Panos Skourletis said disagreements would be resolved through arbitration. The company, however, counters it has not been officially informed of what the arbitration would be about. “This might be a move to (exert) political pressure on the government at a crucial time,” Skourletis said. He insisted Greece was friendly toward foreign investments, but that the Canadian project, being a mining operation, was a special case. “Such kinds of investments no longer exist in the rest of Europe. They’re not allowed due to the great environmental cost they have,” he said. “So it’s wrong to connect this particular case with the general picture in the area of investments (in Greece).” The Halkidiki mines have been mired in controversy for decades, with Eldorado’s predecessors also facing protests. Many in the local communities vehemently oppose mining development on environmental grounds, saying it would hurt the area’s tourism industry, destroy forests risk contaminating the groundwater. The company counters it’s carrying out environmental cleanup work even of its predecessors, and rejects accusations of pollution. It noted that Greece’s Council of State, the country’s highest administrative court, had issued 18 decisions in its favor in various permit disputes. Burns said he remained optimistic that a solution could be found. “I’m confident these mines will be built,” he said. When first elected on an anti-bailout platform in 2015, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’ left-wing government initially favored the suspension of the permits that had previously been granted to the mining company. Greece’s confederation of industries urged Tsipras to personally intervene to rescue the gold mine investment. Nikos Panairlis, head of the workers’ union at one of the mines, described the company’s move as “a catastrophe for us,” adding that workers were looking to organize protests. The mood among opponents of the mine was cautious. Aristotelis municipality mayor Giorgos Zoumbas accused Eldorado of “using the workers and their jobs to blackmail and get the permits.” Local residents, he said, would be happy if the suspension goes ahead, “but they’re still cautious.” ___ Derek Gatopoulos in Athens and Costas Kantouris in Thessaloniki, Greece contributed to this report. ___ Follow Becatoros http://www.twitter.com/ElenaBec
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States, military clash on cleanup of toxic chemicals.
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The U.S. Department of Defense has quietly begun battling environmental regulators in several states, after the agencies attempted to force the military to clean toxic firefighting chemicals from polluted streams, marshes and aquifers. The efforts mark the opening acts of what could turn into a nationwide war on legal liabilities, which the Pentagon estimates could reach into billions of dollars as it investigates the presence of the chemicals at hundreds of bases across all 50 states.
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Financial markets, U.S. Department of Defense, Health, Environment, Aquifers
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Per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, have burst onto the national radar in recent years. Originally produced by companies 3M and DuPont, the chemicals are used in everything from Teflon pans to food packaging to water-resistant clothing. Scientists have linked some PFAS chemicals to health effects including ulcerative colitis, thyroid disease, reproductive issues and some cancers. Few producers or users of PFAS face potential liabilities as great as the U.S. military, which has already spent more than $200 million over the past half-decade to start investigations of chemical family members perfluorooctane sulfonate, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, at more than 400 military bases across the country. Both chemicals, particularly PFOS, were ingredients in firefighting foams used widely by the military during training and emergencies since the 1970s. There are thousands of PFAS chemicals, but PFOS and PFOA are believed to be among the most harmful, and are the only two for which the Environmental Protection Agency has set an advisory limit for drinking water. To date, the military has focused on filtering drinking water containing PFAS above the EPA’s advised limit of 70 parts per trillion, after finding the chemicals in excess of that limit in more than 560 private and public drinking water supplies around 50 bases. But impacted communities worry continued environmental contamination is impacting wildlife, property values, municipal taxes and even human health. “There’s been very little focus to date on cleanup standards or cleanup guidelines,” said Rob Bilott, an Ohio attorney who has litigated PFAS issues for decades. “Once you’ve stopped the ongoing exposure to people . what do you do with what’s left? And that’s a much, much bigger issue.” Because the EPA has yet to set any formal PFAS regulations, an increasing number of state environmental agencies are taking matters into their own hands, creating their own standards to compel polluters to begin cleaning up the chemicals within their borders. In Pennsylvania, where some of the nation’s highest PFAS levels have been discovered in Bucks and Montgomery Counties, regulators recently announced they would create a state drinking water standard, and lawmakers are mulling legislative solutions. New Jersey is further ahead, with regulators preparing to implement the lowest PFOS and PFOA drinking water standards in the country. But in several cases where states already acted, the military is resisting or even taking the issue to court. Erik Olson, a senior director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, noted the efforts appear to double back on promises made by Maureen Sullivan, a deputy assistant secretary for the environment at the Department of Defense, during a 2018 congressional hearing. Sullivan testified that state standards would be “rolled in” to the military’s cleanup considerations at bases. “The Defense Department is going back on its word . and appears to be arrogantly refusing to comply with state laws,” Olson said. “This is a very worrisome trend.” On March 14, this news organization emailed the Department of Defense a list of questions about its efforts. Department spokeswoman Heather Babb responded Monday with statements that did not address many of the specific questions. “DOD, like any federal agency engaged in certain activities, such as owning or operating a public water system, must comply with all federal, state, interstate, and local safe drinking water requirements, in accordance with the Safe Drinking Water Act,” Babb wrote. “DOD takes our cleanup responsibility seriously. We work with regulatory agencies and local communities to ensure we can share information in an open and transparent manner.” States of controversy Nowhere is the issue more contentious than in New Mexico, where the state Environment Department and the U.S. Air Force are suing each other over widespread PFAS contamination near two bases. Last July, the state’s Water Quality Control Commission added PFOS and PFOA to a list of regulated substances, after which its environmental department issued violations to Cannon and Holloman Air Force bases. The notice at Cannon said the Air Force failed to sample some nearby water supply wells, was too limited in which PFAS it tested for, and failed to submit a proposal for extended testing of aquifer contamination. At Holloman, the second violation notice added that 137 ppt of PFAS had been detected at the nearby Apache Mesa Golf Course, a violation of the standard, and asked that a contingency plan be submitted. In January, the Air Force submitted a letter to New Mexico saying it could not comply. “Legal constraints limit the Air Force’s authority and ability to investigate and mitigate PFAS compounds under the New Mexico Water Quality Act,” the Air Force wrote. A week later, the Air Force filed a suit seeking relief in the U.S. District Court of New Mexico, calling the state standard “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, and not supported by substantial evidence.” On March 5, New Mexico filed its own suit in the same court against the Air Force and United States, seeking a declaration the Air Force had violated its law, would have to comply, and would be held liable for applicable fines and penalties. The cases are ongoing. There is similar contention in Michigan, where environmental regulators say the Air Force is violating state standards near the former Wurtsmith Air Force Base, as PFAS seeps into nearby waterways and marshes. To combat the issue, Michigan created a 12-ppt PFOS standard for groundwater where it enters surface water, and a 70-ppt standard for aquifers that are used for drinking water. Citing the regulations in early 2018, Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality issued a notice of violation to the Air Force for failing to install a water treatment system. After some resistance, the Air Force agreed to construct the unit. But a second violation issued in October received greater resistance. Again citing the water standards, the Michigan department told the Air Force to increase treatment of groundwater, expand the area needing treatment, conduct monthly sampling and stop pumping PFAS-laden water into a pit. In December, the Air Force issued a letter stating it would not comply for various reasons, including that it had not waived sovereign immunity and that the chemicals do not appear on a list of hazardous substances under the federal Superfund law. “That’s their way of fighting back,” Arnie Leriche, a veteran and retired environmental engineer with the EPA who lives near the base, said in a conference call with an environmental organization in March. Scott Dean, a spokesman for the Michigan department, said the agency isn’t backing down. “The slow response by the Air Force to the Wurtsmith contamination is having an increasingly negative impact on the people, wildlife and environment,” Dean said. “Although Michigan seeks to work cooperatively with the Air Force, slow response to PFAS contamination is not acceptable.” New York has faced similar issues. In 2016, the state Department of Environmental Conservation added several PFAS sites, including Stewart Air National Guard Base, to its list of state Superfund sites. It then spent approximately $50 million to provide clean drinking water to the city of Newburgh, located near the base. The conservation department submitted a claim to the Department of Defense for reimbursement, but said it had not received a response as of late February. The state also filed a claim under the Federal Torts Claims Act, a precursor to potential legal action, and demanded the military enter into a robust cleanup program. The Air National Guard declined. “In absence of needed federal action, New York is continuing to ensure aggressive actions are taken to protect the residents of Newburgh,” conservation department spokesperson Jomo Miller said. Alan Knauf, an attorney representing Newburgh in a lawsuit against the military, said residents want the Air National Guard to pay for connection to an aqueduct that carries pure water from the Catskill Mountains to New York City, as opposed to using PFAS-laden water from nearby Washington Lake. “Try telling people on the East Side of Manhattan they have to drink toxic water that goes through a filter that might not catch everything,” Knauf said. “I don’t think so.” Issues also are coming to a head in Colorado, where the Department of Public Health and the Environment last year added PFOS and PFOA to a state listing of hazardous constituents. The state also created a 70-ppt groundwater standard for the aquifer underlying Peterson Air Force Base near Colorado Springs. In a letter, the Air Force warned regulators the water standard “may not qualify as a cleanup standard” because it does not apply across the whole state, and said its legal immunities are only waived “when state regulation is non-discriminatory.” State regulators have not issued any violations or orders under the statutes, but said they expect the Air Force to comply when it does begin cleanup activities. Waiting on the feds Several states hit by PFAS contamination say they want the EPA to create nationwide standards for the chemicals, and environmental attorneys say such measures would boost legal efforts. “Failure to address PFAS at a national level will really put public health at risk,” said Lisa Daniels, director of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s Bureau of Safe Drinking Water, at a public meeting last year. “EPA must take a leadership role.” In February, EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler visited Philadelphia to announce a PFAS Action Plan, which included an “intention” to set a federal drinking water standard for PFOS and PFOA. Wheeler also revealed a proposal to declare the chemicals hazardous substances under the federal Superfund law, and touted a scheduled release of groundwater cleanup recommendations. But the plan received lukewarm reception from several states that felt it lacked hard commitments or deadlines. Immediately following the Feb. 14 announcement, Pennsylvania became the latest state to say it would set its own standards, with a spokesman declaring the state “cannot wait” for the EPA. Several attorneys said listing PFAS as hazardous substances under Superfund, the nation’s primary law governing areas of major chemical contamination, would help most in pursuing cleanup actions. “We have sued under (Superfund). We believe it’s a hazardous substance, but you don’t see it on the list,” Knauf said of his efforts in Newburgh. “If it were put on the federal list that would tremendously help us.” Babb, from the Department of Defense, said the department also supports federal regulation. “DOD supports EPA establishing regulatory standards and a consistent cleanup approach for PFOS/PFOA based on (Superfund),” Babb wrote in an email. “We want a standard risk-based cleanup approach that is based on science and applies to everyone.” Some attorneys say they think the EPA already has authorities it could use more aggressively. Tim Bergére, an environmental attorney with Philadelphia’s Montgomery McCracken Walker & Rhoads, pointed out that the EPA previously used an “imminent and substantial” endangerment clause under the Safe Drinking Water Act to compel the military to act on PFAS at the Naval Air Warfare Center Warminster and Horsham Air Guard Station. The EPA has issued eight such orders for PFAS nationwide. Bergére added that many states have laws that are more stringent than federal standards and aren’t limited by sovereign immunity, such as a Clean Steams Law in Pennsylvania that he says could be used to force the cleanup of PFAS around the bases in Bucks and Montgomery Counties. “The Navy’s sovereign immunity . does not extend to discharges once they move off the site,” Bergére said. Other attorneys said states can generally use powers delegated by the EPA to force actions by polluters, including through the issuing of water discharge permits under the federal Clean Water Act and the oversight of hazardous waste removal. “Since the feds are not doing anything, the states have the authority, and we think, frankly, the obligation to step into the vacuum,” the NRDC’s Olson said. But the Department of Defense’s recent actions underscore the pitfalls of states taking the lead. In New Mexico, regulators sought to force the Air Force to take action based on a federally-delegated hazardous waste authority. The Air Force responded by arguing in court that the state incorrectly applied the law. Adam Sowatzka, an attorney with the Atlanta-based firm King & Spalding and a former EPA lawyer, said federal regulations are needed to ensure a strong legal case. Without such standards, even the EPA has to go to great lengths to make an effective argument while using emergency powers, he said. “If you look at what EPA has to do, and all the administrative hurdles, and the case it needs to develop to bring an imminent and substantial endangerment (order), it’s a very, very difficult task,” Sowatzka said. The ability of states to compel action could be tested again soon, with the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection on track to institute drinking water standards of 13 ppt for PFOS and 14 ppt for PFOA within a year. Those levels would be the strictest in the nation. Under New Jersey law, the levels also would become groundwater standards, and spokesman Larry Hajna said his department believes the military would have to comply while cleaning up sites like the massive Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in the center of the state. However, there are signs of potential issues. In 2018, the U.S. Air Force commented on a state department of environmental protection standard for a chemical cousin, perfluorononanoic acid, or PFNA, questioning its legitimacy. “Standards based on poor scientific methodologies are often the subject of litigation because they are arbitrary,” the Air Force wrote. There is no evidence the Air Force acted on the warning, but PFOS and PFOA present much greater liabilities than PFNA, which was not a major ingredient in firefighting foams. New Jersey also recently implemented interim groundwater standards of 10 ppt for PFOS and PFOA, and a spokesman said the state expects the Air Force to comply. An Air Force spokeperson said the agency is still reviewing the standard. Anthony Spaniola, a Michigan attorney who has tracked state PFAS issues, said he thinks states that are expecting automatic compliance with their laws are in for a surprise. “They’re wrong,” Spaniola said. “Those states better get their head out of the sand.” The crawl of cleanup Environmental attorneys said there is also room for legal jousting as the military decides to what extent, and how quickly, it will clean PFAS from the environment. That’s because while EPA typically has broad authority to drive cleanup at contaminated sites, federal law puts the Department of Defense in the driver’s seat at military bases. “Fundamentally, EPA and DOD are part of the ‘unitary executive,’ meaning EPA can’t take DOD to court and so doesn’t have the same leverage as it would at a private site,” Taly Jolish, a recently retired Superfund attorney for EPA in California, said. In several cases where states have created their own environmental standards, the military has said it will consider the limits as “ARARs.” Short for Applicable or Relevant and Appropriate Requirements, the acronym refers to a process under the federal Superfund law that determines to what level a polluter must clean up a chemical in water or soil. Several attorneys agreed the EPA or state regulators typically have authority in selecting an ARAR level for an unregulated chemical at a contaminated site. While some experts said regulators still have to sign off on such decisions at military bases, those with experience in the area say disagreements get messy. “It becomes basically a political knife-fight between DOD and EPA,” Olson said. Jolish also said such decisions are “very political determinations.” Tensions between the EPA and military apparently already exist. On March 13, U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Delaware, authored a letter in which he cited sources saying the military and other federal agencies were pressuring the EPA to relax draft groundwater cleanup recommendations from 70 ppt to 400 ppt. The numbers have not yet been released publicly, and Carper urged the EPA to resist the alleged pressure. “Such levels would, among other consequences, subject fewer sites that were contaminated through the military’s use of PFOA/PFOS from having to be remediated in the first place,” Carper wrote. Further complicating matters is that the EPA has even less authority to control how long it takes the military to make cleanup decisions, experts said. The issue is playing out at bases across the country, where the military has spent years studying the extent of the PFAS contamination but has done far less to actually remove the chemicals. Officials have commonly cited the need to do more studies before they reach the point of selecting an ARAR. “I suspect the cause of delay at the federal level is the concern that the Department of Defense is going to have to spend hundreds of millions, and maybe even billions of dollars responding to these PFOS sites,” said David Engel, an environmental attorney litigating PFAS in New York. The Defense Department’s Sullivan suggested in an early March congressional hearing that the department is holding off on containing PFAS releases until it further studies the issue. She also gave a “back of the envelope” estimate of needing $2 billion for PFAS cleanup. “Right now we’re trying to determine the extent of the presence in the groundwater around our bases, how far it is, where it’s flowing. So we can design the right system to contain it,” Sullivan said. Babb, the department spokeswoman, said “DOD has proactively addressed PFOS and PFOA and follows the federal cleanup law.” “DOD’s priority is to quickly address PFOS and PFOA in drinking water from DOD activities,” she added. The military is also pushing about $60 million into research on methods to better detect, understand and filter PFAS chemicals, with many studies not due until 2021. Jennifer Field, an Oregon State University PFAS expert whose work has been funded by the military, says there are about 50 ongoing projects, many of them looking for novel and cost-effective ways of destroying PFAS. “There are definitely some higher-energy processes that look promising, but the problem is practical aspects have to be worked out,” Field said. “I haven’t heard of the stunning breakthrough that’s going to revolutionize (cleanup). Not yet.” But Engel thinks the military can already act more robustly with current technologies, citing its $700 billion annual budget. “Let’s say it’s a $10 billion (liability). My response is, ‘So what?’” Engel said. “If the purpose of the Department of Defense is to defend the United States and the people living in it, you would think that a good thing for them to do would be to defend the people who are drinking water contaminated by these facilities.“___ ___ Online: https://bit.ly/2FSsHLy ___ Information from: Bucks County Courier Times, http://www.buckscountycouriertimes.com
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Now what do I do? Suddenly women in their 40s must ponder whose mammography advice to follow
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News of the new recommendations from the US Preventative Services Task Force (USPSTF) stating that average risk women need not start regular mammography screening until age 50 has exploded all over the media. The timing of the issuing of the new guidelines at the time of great debate in health care reform has many women wondering if this is an attempt by the government to contain costs or somehow deny preventative services. In fact, the new statement by the USPSTF is not actually new. There are no new data or studies that have been published recently that provided the impetus for the new recommendations. Rather, this is a culmination of years of research and taking a bold new look at our familiar mantra that early detection is better. We all like to believe we have control, but truth is that we have been oversold on the benefits of mammography. The new recommendations will not deny mammograms to women who want them, women in their 40’s will still be able to get screened and insurance companies have emphasized that they will still be covered. Women who are at high risk, such as those with a family history or African-American women, who tend to get more aggressive forms of breast cancer, will still get offered regular screening. But for those women at average risk, the new guidelines state that it is reasonable to wait to start screening until age 50. This story does a good job of describing the potential harms of mammography screening, including needless procedures and stress and anxiety from false positive results. The story quotes multiple sources who provide valuable contrasting perspectives. The story could have been improved by describing the costs or insurance coverage for mammograms and if or how this recommendation might affect insurance coverage. Nor does the story discuss the evidence for the new recommendations. Readers would want to know if this is based on new results or just a new look at the same studies. Finally, the story does not adequately quantify the benefits or harms of mammography. The representative of the American Cancer Society provides the number needed to screen, which is very helpful, but this should have come from a source that is more objective. A reader might also want to know the false-positive rate for mammography. The story seems to suggest that the recommendation was to not have screening without presenting the second part of the recommendation – that “The decision to start regular, biennial screening mammography before the age of 50 years should be an individual one and take patient context into account, including the patient’s values regarding specific benefits and harms.” The framing that this is about withholding needed care seems misguided. In the end, the new recommendations emphasize that deciding when to start screening is a DECISION that women can make on their own, in consultation with their doctors. One good thing that may come out of the confusion is that women will more openly discuss the pros and cons of screening with their doctors.
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There is no mention of costs or insurance coverage for mammograms and if or how this recommendation might affect insurance coverage. The story does not adequately quantify the benefits or harms of mammography. The representative of the American Cancer Society provides the number needed to screen, which is very helpful, but this should have come from a source that is more objective. A reader might also want to know the false-positive rate for mammography. The story adequately describes the harms of mammograms, such as needless procedures and stress and anxiety from false positive results. The story does not discuss the evidence for the new recommendations. Readers would want to know if this is based on new results or just a new look at the same studies. The story does not exaggerate the seriousness or prevalence of breast cancer. The story quotes multiple experts who provide contrasting view points and much needed perspective. It should be noted though, that, in terms of pure quote count, those who oppose the new recommendations outnumber those voices who support them. The story mentions breast self-exams, breast exams by a clinician and no screening as alternatives to regular mammography screening. Clearly mammograms are widely available. Clearly mammograms are not a new idea, but delaying starting screening until age 50 is a relatively new concept in the US. The story could have explained, though, that this idea is not at all novel in other Western countries. Because the story quotes multiple sources, the reader can assume the story does not rely on a press release as the sole source of information.
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23242
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"Harry Reid ""voted to use taxpayer dollars to pay for Viagra for convicted child molesters and sex offenders."
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Sharron Angle attacks Harry Reid over giving sex offenders taxpayer-subsidized Viagra
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false
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National, Federal Budget, Health Care, Crime, Message Machine 2010, Sharron Angle,
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"Judging by her newest television ad, Sharron Angle, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate from Nevada, is banking on the idea that even Sin City voters have limits on acceptable behavior. In an ad released Oct. 7, 2010, Angle accuses Harry Reid of voting to use taxpayer dollars to pay for Viagra for convicted child molesters and sex offenders. The ad begins by attacking Reid on immigration, repeating a charge from one of Angle's earlier ads that Reid voted ""to give illegal aliens special tax breaks and Social Security benefits."" When the initial ad came out, we rated those claims. In this article, we'll focus on the Viagra claim. The narrator says, ""Here's the kicker: Reid actually voted to use taxpayer dollars to pay for Viagra for convicted child molesters and sex offenders. What else could you ever need to know about Harry Reid?"" Our friends at PolitiFact Texas analyzed a similar -- but not identical -- claim in June, so we'll rely in part on their reporting. The charge stems from the health care law passed by Congress earlier this year. By 2014, states must create exchanges in which individuals can buy insurance from a choice of four plans that must meet minimum standards, although premiums, out-of-pocket costs and benefits may differ. To limit costs for indigent residents, premiums and costs such as deductibles and co-payments will be subsidized for people with incomes between 133 to 400 percent of the federal poverty level, which in 2009 ranged from $29,327 to $88,200 for a family of four. For instance, people with incomes at or below 150 percent of the federal poverty level will only be responsible for one-third of their out-of-pocket costs; the federal government will pay the rest. Last spring, Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican opposed to the Democratic-sponsored health care plan, requested a report by the Congressional Research Service -- the nonpartisan research arm of Congress -- that examined the Viagra question. CRS concluded that the law does ""not appear to prohibit... coverage for drugs prescribed to treat [erectile dysfunction] for a non-incarcerated beneficiary who was previously convicted of rape, child molestation or another sex offense."" Nor, the memo states, would those individuals ""appear to be excluded from enrolling in a qualified health plan offered through an American Health Benefit Exchange in their state solely because of that conviction."" The number of people potentially affected isn't trivial. According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, about 704,700 sex offenders are registered in the United States, including the District of Columbia and U.S. territories. Coburn offered an amendment to the health care bill that would ""reduce the cost of providing federally funded prescription drugs by eliminating fraudulent payments and prohibiting coverage of Viagra for child molesters and rapists and for drugs intended to induce abortion."" By the time the Senate took up the amendment on March 24, 2010, the margin for passing the bill was extremely narrow, and the bill's sponsors knew that any changes, no matter how small, could effectively kill the bill. So they fought Coburn's amendment for procedural reasons, hoping to save the bill as a whole and knowing that they would almost certainly be called to account for their ""no"" vote during the 2010 campaign. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., encouraged his colleagues to reject the amendment, arguing, ""This is a serious bill. This is a serious debate. The amendment offered by the senator from Oklahoma makes a mockery of the Senate, the debate and the American people... It is a crass political stunt aimed at making 30-second commercials, not public policy."" Ultimately, the amendment failed, 57-42, with Reid among those voting against it. The health care law eventually was signed into law, and Baucus was quite right that it would show up in 30-second commercials. So how accurate is Angle's charge? The ad implies that Reid actively wanted to give subsidized Viagra to sex offenders, but that isn't the case. First, what Reid actually did was vote against an amendment that would have stopped using taxpayer dollars for that purpose. Second, Senate Democrats made it clear at the time that they were not voting on the merits of the amendment, but rather to salvage their bigger legislative priority, the health care bill itself. Finally, Reid didn't actively bring up this issue; it was proposed by a senator opposed to the broader health care bill. We should also mention that the use of taxpayer dollars for sex-offender Viagra was -- and is -- a hypothetical. While CRS concluded that there was nothing in the current law to stop it from happening, the earliest it could start is in 2014 -- so there's ample time for lawmakers or federal officials to write laws or regulations to stop it before then. Finally, whatever taxpayer subsidies for sex offenders may materialize after 2014 would not go to all sex offenders; it would go to the subset of sex offenders who get their health care through the exchanges and who also qualify for subsidies. The ad is correct that Reid voted against a prohibition on taxpayer-subsidized Viagra for sex offenders. But the ad leaves out a lot of important context that, if it had been included, would have given a different impression."
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1689
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A dog's life: study reveals people's hormonal link with tail-waggers.
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Dogs are called “man’s best friend” - women’s, too - and scientists say the bond between people and their pooches may be deeper than you might think.
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true
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Science News
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Researchers in Japan said on Thursday oxytocin, a hormone that among other things helps reinforce bonds between parents and their babies, increases in humans and their dogs when they interact, particularly when looking into one another’s eyes. They described a series of experiments that suggest that people and their canine companions have mutually developed this instinctual bonding mechanism in the thousands of years since dogs were first domesticated. Sometimes called the “love hormone,” oxytocin is made in a brain structure called the hypothalamus and secreted from the pituitary gland. It is involved in emotional bonding, maternal behavior, child birth, breast-feeding, sexual arousal and other functions. “Oxytocin has many positive impacts on human physiology and psychology,” said Takefumi Kikusui, a veterinary medicine professor at Japan’s Azabu University, whose research was published in the journal Science. In one experiment, dogs were put in a room with their owners. The researchers tracked their interaction and measured oxytocin levels through urine samples. People whose dogs had the most eye contact with them - a mutual gaze - registered the largest increases in oxytocin levels. The dogs also had an oxytocin spike correlating with that of their owner. The researchers conducted a similar experiment with wolves, close relatives of dogs, and found that no such thing happened despite the fact that the wolves had been raised by the people. In another experiment, the researchers sprayed oxytocin into dogs’ noses and put them in a room with their owners as well as people the dogs did not know. With the female dogs, and not the males, this increased the mutual gazing between dogs and their owners and also led to an oxytocin increase in the owners. “I personally believe that there is a tight bond between the owner and dogs,” Kikusui said. “I have three standard poodles. I strongly feel the tight bonding with these dogs. Actually, I participated in the experiment, and my oxytocin boosted up after the eye gaze, like 300 percent,” Kikusui added. The study involved dogs of various breeds and ages including the miniature schnauzer, golden retriever, border collie, Labrador retriever, Shiba Inu, standard poodle, beagle and others.
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9153
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First large-scale population analysis reinforces ketamine's reputation as antidepressant
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In this study of the effect of the anesthetic drug ketamine on depression, researchers at University of California – San Diego data-mined the FDA Adverse Effect Reporting System database for information on ketamine use for pain relief. Their analysis found an association between ketamine and reduced incidence of depression. However, the absence of depression the researchers found in 41,000 people (out of 8 million entries in the database) taking ketamine for pain relief in no way proves ketamine is responsible for the lack of depression. The release and the study it’s based on stand on a very shaky foundation. The release’s only nod to caution about the findings is an acknowledgement that the effect of ketamine on depression could be due to an “unidentified” factor. But it does not mention the problems with this retrospective, data-mining study, the main one being that the absence of a symptom (depression) does not equate to the drug alleviating the symptom. No mention is made of the fact that the data were not collected for the purpose for which the researchers used them or the fact that there are no medical histories attached to the subjects included in the study. According to the World Health Organization, more than 300 million people experience depression worldwide. The suffering due to depression can be severe, and affect families, co-workers and friends of the person with the diagnosis. Most anti-depression medications take weeks if not months to reach full effect, and many patients quit taking the drugs before they reach full effectiveness. Patients with acute depression or suicidal intentions need drugs that will work more rapidly. Because anti-depression medications do not work for everyone, an effective intervention that might work quickly would be beneficial. There’s a lot of better-designed research underway on ketamine and its safety and usefulness in treating depression. Readers would be best served waiting for stronger evidence to emerge before drawing conclusions.
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false
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depression,ketamine,University of California San Diego
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The release does not specify cost, but says ketamine is “relatively inexpensive and is covered by most health insurance plans if three other antidepressants fail.” If prescribed it is done so “off-label” since ketamine is not FDA approved for depression, and thus not covered by health insurance. At least one ketamine treatment center says the drug is not covered by insurance. The release also doesn’t specify which ketamine formulation it assessed. When given by infusion, which is how depression is treated clinically with the drug, it can cost several hundred dollars per treatment. The release strongly suggests ketamine is beneficial for depression, but gives almost no evidence. It states that compared to other patients in the database, ketamine users showed a 50 percent reduction in depression, but no absolute numbers of people aided by the drug were provided. The absence of depression as a side effect is a novel but invalid way of defining effectiveness. The release does not mention any harms from taking ketamine. A British Journal of Clinical Pharmacology study of ketamine for chronic pain devoted a lengthy discussion to side effects from clinical ketamine use, dividing them into central nervous system (CNS)-related, cardiovascular and hepatic (liver). The release does not clearly explain the limitations of a retrospective, data-mining study and how it differs from conclusive evidence that can be obtained in a randomized, controlled trial. While certainly some information can be garnered from this type of study, and the paper itself indicates that clinical studies would be necessary to establish these findings, the release does not include this important point. Perhaps the release’s biggest weakness is the omission that the data were collected for other purposes (adverse event reporting) and that patient histories are missing. The study is unusual in that it assumes that the lack of mention of depression is evidence of improvement in depression, and that is a stretch. The analysis also found the same so-called “anti-depressant” effect in other drugs that had no obvious mechanism of action: an antibiotic, an anti-inflammatory, and a wrinkle treatment. The release does give a nod to the fact that other factors may be at play with this statement: “Abagyan says it’s still possible, though unlikely, the effect could be due to a still unidentified confounding factor.” However, that statement inappropriately downplays the many limitations of this association study. There is no disease mongering here, but the release doesn’t provide any context about depression. We’ll rate it N/A. The release names the funder, not in the release text itself but on the EurekaAlert! website which hosts the news release. The release notes that depression is currently treated with “five classes of antidepressants, most commonly serotonin uptake inhibitors.” The release could also have included psychotherapy and other common non-pharmaceutical therapies for depression. The release does not address availability or how many physicians currently prescribe ketamine for depression. The release refers often to this study being the largest of its kind and the first “large-scale” study of ketamine for depression. The second sentence might lead some people to believe that this analysis is a large clinical trial — which it is not. The research is novel only in its approach to claiming a benefit where there is no clear-cut relationship. Ketamine has been tested in several small studies and research is on-going. The release establishes some novelty with this statement: “While most researchers and regulators monitor the FAERS database for increased incidences of symptoms in order to spot potentially harmful drug side effects, we were looking for the opposite — lack of a symptom.” But the fact remains, this is questionable science. There is no unjustifiable language in the release.
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2909
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Intercept liver drug meets main goal in study, shares quadruple.
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Intercept Pharmaceuticals Inc’s drug to treat liver disease caused by fat buildup was found effective in a trial, paving the way for it to become the first approved treatment for the chronic condition.
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true
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Health News
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The company’s shares nearly quadrupled to a life high of $305 on Thursday morning on the Nasdaq, valuing the company at about $6 billion. Intercept said it had stopped the trial after the drug showed statistically significant improvement in patients, compared with a placebo, in a review by an independent safety committee. The trial tested the drug, obeticholic acid, in patients with non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a form of liver inflammation. Analysts said the news came as a surprise to investors, who had previously focused on the drug as a treatment for primary biliary cirrhosis, an autoimmune disease in which bile ducts in the liver are destroyed. The drug is being tested for the condition in a late-stage study. “We didn’t expect this data until the fourth quarter,” Wedbush analyst Liana Moussatos said. “It’s a huge opportunity for the company as there are over 10 million patients worldwide.” Moussatos said Intercept could tie up with Big Pharma companies to conduct a late-stage trial of the drug. Intercept could also conduct a late-stage trial with its partner Dainippon Sumitomo Pharma, which is testing the drug in Japan, she said. Obeticholic acid, Intercept’s lead drug, is also being tested in mid-stage studies to treat bile acid diarrhea and portal hypertension, which is high blood pressure in veins that transport blood from the gastrointestinal tract and spleen to the liver. The drug’s structure is similar to that of a naturally occurring human bile acid. Intercept said the safety committee made the recommendation after reviewing liver biopsy data from about half of the 283 patients enrolled in the mid-stage trial. There is currently no specific treatment for NASH, according to the U.S. National Institutes of Health. To manage the disease, patients are recommended to maintain a healthy weight, follow a balanced diet, increase physical activity and avoid alcohol.
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8470
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With cheers, New York nurses greet reinforcements from across the U.S.
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With loud cheers and applause, medical staff at New York’s Northwell Health network greeted 46 nurses on Tuesday who had arrived from all over the United States to reinforce hospitals as they battle the coronavirus pandemic.
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true
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Health News
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U.S. deaths from the novel coronavirus topped 24,000 on Tuesday, according to a Reuters tally. There were nearly 583,000 confirmed cases, over 200,000 of which were in New York state alone. Treating the large number of patients with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, has challenged hospitals in its U.S. epicenter. They have scrambled to find enough ventilators and other equipment, as well as beds and staff. Northwell, the largest healthcare provider in New York, said it had contracted medical staffing companies to help it buttress efforts to treat patients at 18 hospitals across New York City, Long Island and Westchester county. The “clap-in,” with dozens of staff cheering loudly and holding signs saying “Nurses are the heart of healthcare” and “Welcome, healthcare heroes,” was a surprise for the nurses who arrived on Tuesday afternoon for a half-day training session. Hailing from states including California, South Carolina, and Indiana, they are undergoing training in subjects ranging from operating ventilators to dealing with electronic medical records. “It’s so heartwarming to see so many nurses come from so far away to assist us in our time of need,” said Maureen White, executive vice president and chief nurse executive at Northwell. About 300 nurses from other areas have been enlisted over the past three weeks, said Launette Woolforde, Northwell’s registered nurse and vice president for nursing education. Marybella Cole, who had arrived in New York from Lewiston, Idaho, said community was important to her. “There’s no bigger calling than something like this,” she said. Raymond Woods said he had left kids and grandchildren behind in Indiana so he could help. “I have never been more proud to be a nurse. This is by far the most rewarding career I’ve had in my life,” he said.
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10990
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More Options Before Bypass Surgery, Study Finds
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The piece gave readers some powerful information to help them sort through the range of factors that should be considered for any medical intervention. The only weakness our reviewers found with the story is the lack of comment about cost. Too often stories present medical options as false choices of best versus worst. They don’t take into consideration the very real differences between patients’ medical histories, diagnoses and expectations. This story should be applauded for giving readers a clear understanding of the complexities of shared decision-making between providers and patients. As noted by one of the experts quoted in the story, “You don’t have a good therapy and a bad therapy, you have a choice.” This is a message that the story gets across very well and is an important one for readers.
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true
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heart disease,Wall Street Journal
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The story does not talk about costs, which was disappointing. The costs of intensive medical therapy can easily be identified. Using an online pharmacy we calculated the costs to be about $1,500 to $2,000 annually for medical therapy, using generic drugs. Using the Health Care Blue Book, we found the average cost of coronary artery bypass sugery and hospitalization to be about $62,000. We think that this is important information for readers that should have been included. The quantification here was presented in such a way to make it clear to readers that there was no significant benefit found to surgical intervention, which is a fair conclusion to draw from the study. The story says, “In the Stich study, 41% of patients assigned to treatment with drugs alone died during the follow-up period, which averaged five years. That compared with a mortality rate of 36% among patients who received bypass surgery plus medication. Although the relative reduction in risk of death was 14%, the result didn’t meet tests for statistical significance, meaning it could have resulted from chance alone.” That’s a great way to describe the lack of statistical significance. It would have been even more powerful to show readers the actual number of patients who died in each group. The story provides great information about the study itself and about the overall state of the evidence supporting heart surgery. “How best to treat these patients has been fraught with uncertainty,” is one of the more notable phrases from the story. It also says, “Many patients aren’t evaluated for heart surgery to treat diseased arteries because they don’t suffer classic chest pain or because doctors worry that hearts weakened by heart failure won’t benefit from the procedure. Other doctors recommend immediate bypass surgery despite a lack of vigorous studies to support that strategy.” The story does not engage in disease-mongering and takes a very careful approach to describing the types of patients who would be affected by this study’s results. We also like the way they provided snapshots of patients who were in both arms of the study — surgery and non-surgery — at the end of the story, making it clear, as the study did, that both routes can be equally successful. The story brings in some strong independent voices who help make sense of this complicated study: James Fang, a cardiologist at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland, who wrote an editorial accompanying the study, Raymond Gibbons, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic, and Clyde Yancy, chief of cardiology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. Rarely do you see a story that spends as much time with independent experts as it does with the authors of the study. The story does a great job showing how the standard interventions for heart disease stacked up against each other in this study. We wish that some mention had been made of diet and exercise and that at least a sentence had been included about whether there might be differences in outcomes seen as a result of different medication patterns. The story doesn’t make it clear what exactly the patients were taking. The story makes it clear that the range of treatments studied by the authors are widely available. The story makes it clear that there is a great need for more evidence in this field and that this study will be surprising to many clinicians because of a long-held assumption that surgery is the superior option. tudies published in the early 1990s supported the view that bypass surgery provided a better long term outcome. The story does not rely on a news release.
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38836
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Johnson & Johnson has removed formaldehyde from baby products like No More Tears shampoo.
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Johnson & Johnson Removes Formaldehyde from Baby Products.
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true
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Business, Health / Medical
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Johnson & Johnson removed formaldehyde-releasing ingredients from its baby products back in 2014. Susan Nettesheim, the vice president of product stewardship and toxicology at Johnson & Johnson, wrote in a 2012 blog post that the company would reformulate its baby products due to consumer concerns over ingredients: Over the past few years, some interest groups have raised questions about the ingredients in personal care products used widely around the world, and they’ve put particular focus on our baby products. At first we were disappointed, because we know that all our products are safe by scientific standards and meet or exceed government regulations. Over time, though, we’ve come to realize that sometimes safety alone isn’t enough. There’s a vigorous public discussion going on around the world about what ingredients should or shouldn’t be in personal care products, and how they should be regulated. We have a point of view that we’ve expressed, based on our considered understanding of the science involved, and that’s always going to be our starting point. But what matters most isn’t what we think, it’s what the people who use our products think. Johnson and Johnson didn’t directly add formaldehyde to its baby products, however. Rather, the company used formaldehyde-releasing ingredients like the ammonia salt quaternium-15 to extend the shelf life of many consumer products, including baby shampoo. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics and other consumer groups lauded Johnson & Johnson’s decision to remove these formaldehyde-releasing ingredients from baby products as a “major victory for public health.” However, some toxicology experts have dismissed concerns about formaldehyde-releasing ingredients in baby shampoo as form of hysteria. After all, it’s a naturally-occurring chemical that our own bodies produces, Slate reports: The concern about formaldehyde in personal care products reveals a bit ofchemophobia, which Dartmouth chemistry professor Gordon Gribble defines as “an irrational fear of chemicals based on ignorance of the facts.” He says, “people don’t know how small molecules are, and they believe that single molecules of some chemical pose a health threat.” That’s exactly the concern EWG expressed. “The actual molecule formaldehyde itself is the carcinogen,” says Johanna Congleton, toxicologist and senior scientist at EWG. “It doesn’t matter if it’s in a liquid or if you’re inhaling particles with formaldehyde.” In fact, the only studies that link formaldehyde to cancer are related to humans inhaling it, and inhaling large amounts of it. Funeral industry professionals with more than 34 years of experience or who had performed more than 500 embalmings and factory workers who spent years working around formaldehyde before the 1990s had higher risks for leukemia and Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The amount of exposure required to cause cancer is so high that other studies of factory workers have been inconclusive. Formaldehyde occurs naturally in common fruits and vegetables (even organic ones). “Unless people calling for removal of quaternium-15 are also keeping their children from eating apples and french fries,” Hartings says, “I think their activism might be misplaced.” Our own bodies create formaldehyde as a normal byproduct during amino acid synthesis and overall metabolism, including breaking down antibiotics and other medications. It’s also in drinking water and the air we breathe. Homer Swei, a scientist at Johnson & Johnson, points out that 90 percent of the formaldehyde around us is naturally occurring, with 60 percent of that coming from plants and trees, yet it’s still perfectly fine to walk through the woods. Further, the formaldehyde in synthetic or manufactured products is no different in terms of chemical structurethan naturally occurring formaldehyde—it’s all CH2O. Nevertheless, Johnson & Johnson elected to remove formaldehyde-releasing ingredients from baby shampoo (and many other products) because of consumer fears. By early 2014, Johnson & Johnson had reformulated many products, the New York Times reports: In doing so, the company is navigating a precarious path, investing tens of millions of dollars to remove the chemicals while at the same time insisting that they are safe. The company is responding, executives said, to a fundamental shift in consumer behavior, as an increasingly informed public demands that companies be more responsive to their concerns, especially when it comes to the ingredients in their products. The complex effort carries both risks and rewards for the health care giant — it requires difficult re-engineering of some of Johnson & Johnson’s most beloved brands, but success in the marketplace could serve as a much-needed boost to a company that has been battered by a series of embarrassing quality lapses and product recalls. In addition to reformulating many of its products, Johnson & Johnson also created a new website to provide consumers with information about its ingredients. Click here for that website. Comments
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8594
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Swiss urge public to stick to anti-virus measures over Easter.
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Switzerland’s president called on the public to stick with emergency measures designed to halt the spread of the new coronavirus, saying on Tuesday the country remains “very far from normal” ahead of the long Easter weekend.
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true
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Health News
|
Police are bulking up their presence at tourist hot spots and on the roads over the four-day holiday, officials said, urging people to stay home during what is normally a popular time for trips. The appeal came as the Swiss death toll continued to rise and neighbouring Austria prepared to relax its own lockdown. “It is not the moment to drop our guard,” President Simonetta Sommaruga told journalists after visiting Lausanne University Hospital. “We do not have a magic wand to bring back our lives from before, but we are already preparing for after the pandemic,” she added. The Swiss death toll from the new coronavirus rose to 641 from 584 people on Monday. The number of positive tests passed 22,000. Sommaruga said it remained vital that people comply with the emergency measures, which include bans of gatherings of more than five people and shutdowns of schools and many businesses. “It will be difficult, very difficult with the Easter holidays coming up. We are still very far from normal,” she said. The government was working on options to relax its restrictions, she added, without giving details. A decision on how to proceed is due by next week. Daniel Koch from the public health agency said the emergency measures had proved their worth, and great care had to be exercised in how they were phased out. “The challenge now is to hold out until the end, because we are halfway there at best,” Koch told a news conference in Bern. Driven by the shutdown, the Swiss unemployment rate jumped to 2.9% in March and was set to rise further. The Swiss army has conducted its biggest mobilisation since the Second World War to aid the emergency services, although its deployment had not been without hitches. [L8N2BV5BR] The police called on people to postpone trips to the mountains or the hard-hit southern canton of Ticino on the Italian border so as not to burden the emergency services. “The goal is not to punish but to be effective and to prevent the spread of the virus,” said Stefan Blaettler, head of the association of regional police chiefs. “Better days will come more quickly if we stick to the rules,” he added.
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3978
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Wasting disease detected in 4 deer on Crow Wing County farm.
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Chronic wasting disease has been detected in four deer at a quarantined farm in Crow Wing County.
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true
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Animals, Health, Deer, Minnesota, Animal health
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The Minnesota Board of Animal Health has been monitoring the farm since December 2016 when two white-tailed deer tested positive for the disease. The Department of Natural Resources is currently in the second year of sampling wild deer for CWD in Crow Wing County as a result of the farm’s earlier infection. The disease has not been found in wild deer since the DNR began its surveillance in Crow Wing County in 2017. Assistant Director Dr. Linda Glaser says the biggest change following this new detection will be to extend their deadline to monitor the herd.
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9750
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'Play This Video Game And Call Me In The Morning'
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This story about video games being tested as therapies for cognitive disorders is better than its star score indicates. The focus of the story is primarily on the standards that should be used to evaluate and regulate such video games, rather than the evidence, or lack thereof, that this sort of game could have therapeutic value. Nevertheless, the story passes along several claims about these games that lead the reader to believe that there will be some discussion of the evidence that backs them. But apart from a skeptical comment toward the end and a link to previous story addressing the issue, the hoped-for analysis doesn’t materialize. Which is not to suggest that the story doesn’t deliver a significant amount of valuable information. Readers are treated to the perspective of a number of different players in the technology, health care, and drug industries — and what they have to say about the regulation of such possible therapies is fascinating. Among the interesting questions raised: Can the years-long FDA approval process keep up with a technology that’s changing every six months? And what problems occur when you try to apply that methodical, evidence-based process to such a fast-moving area of technology? The rules of the game often determine the outcome. For example, sales of nutritional supplements are far higher than they would be if purveyors were subject to regulations similar to those the FDA applies to pharmaceuticals. This story helps educate readers about the battlefield terrain and the objectives of those who promote or resist the use of video games as therapy for cognitive disorders.
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false
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ADHD,video games
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There is no mention of the costs of the games. The story does quote an insurance industry executive who suggests that the reimbursing patients to play games could lead to overall cost savings, but we didn’t think that was quite enough for a Satisfactory rating. The story includes claims that these games could be effective for a range of symptoms of cognitive disorders; that they could be as effective as drug treatment; and that they could cut the size and length of certain clinical trials in half. But there are no hard numbers that pin down what these claims mean. There is no mention of potential harms. There is strong debate about whether recreational video games affect social development or behavior. Such games certainly can displace physical activity… playing outdoors… that is important to the health of children in particular. The story would have been better if it at least mentioned that video games may not be entirely benign. The story quotes a game company executive who says that clinical trials have been done on ADHD, autism, depression and other cognitive disorders, but there is no description of the trials or their results. On the other hand, the story does briefly mention some experts who say there is a lack of good evidence. The story doesn’t exaggerate the need for this sort of video game treatment, if it was ever offered. This is a key strength of the story. Several different experts and viewpoints are presented, so that readers are shown a range of opinions and perspectives. The affiliations of key sources are identified, so that readers can see how their interests might influence their outlook. The story includes a claim that video game therapy might replace drug treatment, but there is no clear comparison made between the approaches. Behavioral therapy is mentioned only indirectly. Such comparisons would have welcome even in a story whose main objective is describing the approval process. The story is clear that these video games are experimental and not currently available. The story does not explain how these video games are different from other computer-based cognitive therapy approaches that have been tried before. The number and range of sources make it clear that the story does not rely on a news release.
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35577
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The address used for the home of the SpongeBob SquarePants character corresponds to a location on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein's privately owned island.
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Hundreds of thousands of false listings sprout on Google Maps each month, according to experts. Google says it catches many others before they appear.
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false
|
Viral Phenomena
|
One of the odder conspiracy claims associated with the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein (who committed suicide in custody while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges) was the claim that the home address shown on the driver’s license of the beloved SpongeBob SquarePants cartoon character was the same as the location of Epstein’s so-called “pedophile island: so can we talk about why spongebob’s address on his license is the address for jeffery epstein’s pedo island??? this is truly sick. all of these cartoons are tainted by pedophiles. our kids are not safe. 🤯 this is breaking my heart. pic.twitter.com/WQmKH4lhBZ — 𝟙𝟛 (@StormEllimac) July 22, 2020 The 124 Conch Street address is indeed one that has been used in the fictional world of the SpongeBob SquarePants animated series, as the location of the Bikini Bottom pineapple house on the floor of the Pacific Ocean where SpongeBob SquarePants lives with his pet snail Gary and his pet scallop Shelley. However, that address has no connection with the Caribbean island known as Little St. James in the U.S. Virgin Islands that was owned by Epstein, at which under-aged girls were allegedly sexually abused. As shown in the post reproduced above, a Google search for “Little St James Island Theme Park” did at one point return information displaying an address of “124 Conch Street, Bikini bottom” as being associated with that notorious Epstein property in the U.S. Virgin Islands: However, as The Wall Street Journal had reported about a year earlier, Google Maps and its online business listings have been highly prone to being gamed and propagated with false information (for fun and profit): Google’s ubiquitous internet platform shapes what’s real and what isn’t for more than two billion monthly users. Yet Google Maps is overrun with millions of false business addresses and fake names, according to advertisers, search experts and current and former Google employees Google still can’t seem to stop the proliferation of fictional business listings and aggressive con artists on its search engine. The scams are profitable for nearly everyone involved, Google included. Consumers and legitimate businesses end up the losers. Often, Google Maps yields mirages, visible in local business searches of U.S. cities, including Mountain View, Calif., Google’s hometown. Of a dozen addresses for personal-injury attorneys on Google Maps during a recent search, only one office was real. A Viennese patisserie was among the businesses at addresses purported to house lawyers. The fakes vanished after inquiries to Google from The Wall Street Journal. The false listings benefit businesses seeking more customer calls by sprinkling made-up branches in various corners of a city. In other cases, calls to listed phone numbers connect to unscrupulous competitors, a misdirection forbidden by Google rules but sporadically policed by the company.
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11628
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Oral multiple sclerosis drug shows promise
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"LA Times blog headline: ""Oral multiple sclerosis drug shows promise."" AP story headline: ""MS pills show promise and risk."" Two huge differences should jump out at you. AP mentioned pills – plural – because two drugs were reported on in this week’s NEJM. And AP mentioned risks right along with harms. The blog entry ran only 305 words, compared with more than 700 for the AP story. We needed the extra words because they provided needed context and balance. Studies on two MS drugs were published in NEJM this week. Why did the LA Times blog feature only one?"
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false
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"No costs were mentioned. The story could have at least mentioned what is the cost of the drug when now used to treat hairy cell leukemia. Again, only one drug was mentioned and benefits given in only relative terms. This was a major shortcoming of this piece: harms were never mentioned. They were emphasized – even headlined – in the AP story. For whatever reason, the LA Times chose to write about only one of the two oral MS drugs described in studies in the New England Journal of Medicine this week. AP reported on both. For this reason, we grade this unsatisfactory. No disease-mongering in this story. The story used at least one independent source. Inadequate job on this – in that it didn’t even mention another drug reported on in the same issue of the NEJM. One strength of this story, in comparison with the AP and NPR story we reviewed, is that it stated: ""The drug company MD Serono, an affiliate of Merck, has requested approval from the Food and Drug Administration to market the tablet. However it recently received a ""refuse to file"" letter from the FDA, which means the agency is requiring additional information or data. MD Serono said it is pursuing the matter with the FDA and hopes to re-submit its application."" Given that this story reported on only of the two oral drugs being tested for MS that were described in the NEJM this week, we think the paper overemphasized the novelty of the one it chose to highlight. It’s clear that the story did not rely on a news release."
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7654
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In crackdown, U.S. FDA seeks details on new electronic cigarettes.
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Faced with a proliferation of new electronic cigarettes and a sharp rise in teen vaping, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday sent letters to 21 electronic cigarette manufacturers seeking information to assess whether the products are being marketed illegally.
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true
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Health News
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An FDA rule banned the sale of new e-cigarette products after August 2016 without regulatory approval. In September, Reuters reported that startups and big tobacco firms launched more than a dozen new high-nicotine e-cigarette products mimicking the popular Juul devices after the FDA imposed the deadline reut.rs/2PwFgOX. The agency on Friday sent letters to companies including Reynolds American Inc, a unit of British American Tobacco Plc, which makes the Vuse Alto device, asking for evidence that the products were on the market before the August 2016 cutoff. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the agency “will not allow the proliferation of e-cigarettes” being sold without proper approval. The agency also sent letters to Fontem Ventures, a unit of Imperial Brands Plc, seeking information about its myblu e-cigarettes, as well as smaller companies including Kandypens, Myle Vapor and VGOD. Shares of British American Tobacco on Friday were down 3.9 percent and Imperial Brands fell 6 percent in London. A spokesman for British American Tobacco said the company will provide to the FDA information to show it is in compliance with the rule. He said the company notified the FDA in May that the product was a “repackaged and re-branded” version of a product that was on the market before August 2016. A spokesman for Imperial Brands said the myblu products are in compliance with FDA rules, adding that the company will provide the requested documentation soon. Representatives for the other companies did not respond to requests for comment. If the FDA determines the e-cigarettes were introduced after the August 2016 deadline, companies could face fines or have their products seized from store shelves. Gottlieb said the agency was concerned about sweet flavors in several of the products, which he said are “one of the principal drivers of the youth appeal of e-cigarettes.” The FDA has faced increased pressure to act as the sleek Juul e-cigarettes have surged in popularity among U.S. teenagers. Juul Labs Inc’s share of the e-cigarette market rose to more than 70 percent now, up from 13.6 percent in early 2017, according to a Wells Fargo analysis of Nielsen retail data that does not include online sales. Juul sales grew from 2.2 million devices sold in 2016 to 16.2 million devices last year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Many high schools have resorted to locking bathrooms – jokingly called “Juul rooms” by students. The Juul design mimics a flash drive - with plug-in cartridges of concentrated nicotine juice. It is far more compact than earlier vaping devices and produces less vapor, making it easy to use without being detected - an attribute some health advocates say attracts teenagers. Juul was on the market before the August 2016 FDA deadline, but other companies have introduced new copycat devices after the cutoff date without regulatory consequences. Anti-smoking advocates including the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids complained about the Juul lookalikes in an August letter to the FDA, saying the companies that had “evaded the review process.” The FDA has recently cracked down on what it calls an “epidemic” of youth e-cigarette use, threatening last month to ban Juul and four other leading e-cigarette products unless their makers take steps to prevent use by minors.
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27944
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A girl on an amusement park ride was scalped when her hair got caught in the attraction's machinery.
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Girl on an amusement park ride is scalped when her hair gets caught in the attraction's machinery?
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true
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Horrors, amusement parks, ASP Article, scalping
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Amusement parks are supposed to be carefree, fun-filled environments folks visit when looking for a thrilling yet safe experience. Attractions are designed to chill and terrify even the most stalwart of souls yet do so with every care having been taken to prevent riders from coming to harm. Or at least that’s the way it should work. But it doesn’t always. Sadly, the basic thrust of the legend — that a child was scalped by an amusement ride — is true. On 14 September 1996, 8-year-old Danielle Foti and her friend, Valentina Espinola, were celebrating their eighth birthdays with a visit to Bonkers 19 indoor amusement park at the Harborlight Mall in Weymouth, Massachusetts. Part of the fun was to be a ride on the Mini-Himalaya, a sled-like carousel ride. Danielle’s hair slipped through a one-inch gap between the back of her seat and the cover on the motor. It wound around a motor shaft spinning at 1,745 revolutions per minute, reeling in her head with such force that it smashed the back of her fiberglass seat. A piece of her scalp was caught in the motor. (A manufacturer of the rides has said the gap should not exist, that the motor cover should be flush with the back of the seat.) Danielle has undergone four bouts of reconstructive surgery, and in 1998 she was awarded $7.5 million in an out-of-court settlement. The amusement park where she was injured closed shortly after the accident, never to reopen. What puts this real-life accident within the realm of lore is how the incident is now remembered. As shown by the examples quoted above, people recall it having happened at a number of different parks and having involved a high-speed, high-drop thrill ride, or at least a ride in which height played a significant factor (such as a ferris wheel). In such scenarios, the horrifying event would not only have been public, but the victim would have been hung in the air for all to see. However, the Mini Himalaya cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered a “thrill ride,” as the following photograph shows. Indeed, it’s classified as a “kiddie ride” by those who operate amusement parks: A deadly incident (albeit one involving a maintenance worker rather than a passenger) occurred on 16 August 2003, when 40-year-old carnival worker Doug McKay was killed at the Whidbey Island County Fair (about 30 miles northwest of Seattle) after being dragged by a doughnut-shaped Super Loop 2 roller coaster while spraying lubricant on the tracks. The coaster pulled McKay between 25 and 40 feet into the air (reportedly scalping him in the process), and dropped him back-first onto a fence, killing him. We include mention of it here because sheriff’s deputies originally reported McKay’s long hair was caught in the ride. Later reports agreed that he had been trapped by his arm. An 11-year-old girl named Elizabeth Gilreath was critically injured in May 2016, when her long hair was caught in the machinery of a “King’s Crown” ride during a Cinco de Mayo festival in Omaha, Nebraska: “I just wanted to get to my daughter. I wanted to know she was okay and that she was taken care of well” Cooksey said. “I wouldn’t recommend any parent to put their child on a carnival ride.” The carnival told ABC News in a statement, “Thomas D. Thomas Shows values the safety and health of our guests above all else, and we are saddened by this accident.” Elizabeth suffered a skull fracture as well as having her hair ripped out, but doctors are optimistic that she will make a full recovery. Accidents at amusement parks are nothing new. As safe as we want to believe these sites are, they have been the scenes of injury and death. Tragedies like these stay in people’s minds, however, due to the nature of the injury — we view scalping as especially horrific. That such a gruesome event could take place in a venue so strongly associated with fun and happy times is the ultimate in ironic juxtaposition. Barbara “the happiest place unearthed” Mikkelson
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10969
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Exelixis drug slows prostate cancer spread in trial
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The story provides the reader with a confused and often contradictory profile of interim findings of a study reported in abstract at a big scientific conference. The American Society of Clinical Oncology conference fosters a lot of rush-to-publication among journalists. This story was an example of what an empty exercise that can sometimes be.
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false
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Cancer,Reuters Health
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No discussion of projected costs – not even a statement that the company has not yet projected costs. We look for cost information in every single story. The story presents the reader with a set of apparently contradictory information on the benefits of the drug. How many patients were in the study: 108 or 31? What were the results and when were they recorded? While all of the statistics are indeed correct, they are not provided in a way that a reader can get a true picture. The story said “Side effects of cabozantinib included fatigue, high blood pressure and hemorrhage” but it never explained how often these were seen. In 1% of patients? 10% All of them? The story states that it is reportinig on “interim results from a midstage trial” but it never says anything about the limitations of such a preliminary report. In doing so, it present a confused and sometimes contradictory set of information that provides the reader with little in the way of a take home message. No disease mongering of late-stage prostate cancer. No physician or researcher was interviewed – only the drug company CEO. Not good form in reporting on health news. With thousands of cancer specialists in Chicago for the ASCO conference, was none available? No comparison with other treatment approaches. The story says the drug is “experimental.” We wish it had provided more details than that. But we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. We’re not told much about the relative novelty of the drug – only that it’s being studied in ovarian and thyroid cancer as well. We can’t be sure of the extent to which the story relied on a news release. We do know it quoted only the company CEO.
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10555
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Pain Relief for Some, With an Odd Tradeoff
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"This story delivers some important information about how spinal stimulation devices have been investigated for use in chronic pain. But it does not make clear that the study upon which the story is based concerned patients for whom an initial surgery had failed. The story suggests that the procedure might be an alternative to initial surgery. The story also mentions complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) as an indication for use of the device. But the study did not address this condition. Radicular pain – so-called ""neuropathic pain"" in the source study is not CRPS. Some of this framing conveys a message that is too bold while the jury is not yet in. The story does accurately characterize the evidence about the device’s partial effectiveness and potential disadvantages. It includes interviews with four sources, and mentions conflicts of interest. Though the story mentions problems some people have with spinal stimulators, it overlooks some important ones, including infection and device migration. (See “Harms of Treatment’ above.) Importantly, it also neglects to point out the consensus view among pain experts that this is a treatment of last resort—to be used only after everything else has failed, including surgery."
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mixture
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"The article notes the cost of the device alone ($20,000), the cost inclusive of hospital and other charges ($40,000), and the cost in comparison to other operations (""cheaper""). But let’s not forget that the alternatives include non-invasive treatment. The story accurately characterizes the results of a 2007 multinational randomized trial showing that the device helped reduce pain by about half in about half of people who received the treatment, compared to only 9% of people receiving conventional medical treatments. The study is the largest of its kind and a fair representation of the literature. A 2004 review, for example, found that spinal cord stimulators provide mild to moderate pain relief in selected individuals for anywhere from 6 months to several years. (Pain 2004;108:137-47) Still, the story could have probed the absolute reduction in pain. For instance, halving moderate pain may be less beneficial than halving severe pain. The story notes some annoyances and potential problems with the device (e.g. the “buzzing” vibration and the need for reoperations to replace dead batteries), but neglects to mention others. For example, the authors of the 2007 trial noted that electrode migration occurred in some 10% of patients and infections in 8%. A 2004 review by a leading group of pain experts noted that complications occur in about one-third of patients. Additional problems included pain near the site where the device is implanted, tears of the membrane that surrounds the spinal cord (the dura), and malfunctioning equipment. (Pain 2004;108:137-47) The story discusses a 2007 multinational randomized trial, though it doesn’t offer much detail. The news story fails to mention some limitations of the trial (e.g. lack of blinding and lack of independent assessment by a third party). Even the editorial accompanying the published study pointed out that the trial didn’t have a ""sham"" arm"" so there is no assurance that the study measured any possible placebo effect The article does not make clear that the study upon which the story is based concerned patients for whom an initial surgery had failed. The story suggests that the procedure might be an alternative to initial surgery. The story also mentions complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) as an indication for use of the device. But the study did not address this condition. Radicular pain – so-called ""neuropathic pain"" in the source study is not CRPS. Finally, the second paragraph suggests that this is an alternative for chronic pain. This is too bold a message while the jury is not yet in. The story provides a good mix of sources, including one patient and three pain experts (one of whom relates the story of a dissatisfied patient). It also reports a potential conflict of interest among the authors of the study it cites, as well as with one of the expert sources. The news story mentions several alternatives to spinal stimulators—bed rest, drugs, nerve blocks, and physical therapy. However, it neglects to point out the consensus view among pain experts that this is a treatment of last resort—to be used only after everything else has failed, including surgery. The story explains that spinal stimulation devices “are not widely used,” though it does not mention that they are approved by the FDA for the treatment of chronic pain. The news story doesn’t explain whether this is a new treatment, old treatment, or a new twist on an old idea. The story turned to several different sources, making it unlikely that it relied solely or largely on a press release."
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7494
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Congo, weary from Ebola, must also battle the coronavirus.
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Congo has been battling an Ebola outbreak that has killed thousands of people for more than 18 months, and now it must also face a new scourge: the coronavirus pandemic.
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true
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AP Top News, International News, Ebola virus, Africa, Health, Pandemics, Virus Outbreak, General News
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Ebola has left those living in the country’s east weary and fearful, and, just as they were preparing to declare an end to the outbreak, a new case popped up. Now, they will now have to manage both threats at once. The new virus has overwhelmed some of the world’s best hospital systems in Europe and ripped through communities in New York. In Congo, it could spread unchecked in a country that has endured decades of conflict, where corruption has left the the population largely impoverished despite mineral wealth, and where mistrust of authority is so entrenched that health workers have been killed during the Ebola outbreak. It’s also unclear how forthcoming international support will be at a time when the whole world is battling the coronavirus. “It all feels like one big storm,” said Martine Milonde, a Congolese community mobilizer who works with the aid group World Vision in Beni, which has been the epicenter of the Ebola outbreak. “Truly, this is a crisis within a crisis within a crisis. The community suffers from insecurity, and suffered under Ebola, and now may have to face COVID-19.” In early March, an Ebola patient whom many hoped would be the last was discharged, and the outbreak was supposed to be officially declared over Sunday. But the World Health Organization on Friday announced a new case in Beni. The outbreak has claimed more than 2,260 lives since August 2018 — the second largest the world has ever seen, after the 2014-2016 outbreak in West Africa. Still, there is some hope: Many of the tools used to fight Ebola — hand-washing and social distancing chief among them — are also key to combating the coronavirus. In Beni, which has reported two cases of the new coronavirus, “the communities here hold onto some hope that they are going to overcome this pandemic the way they had been working to overcome Ebola,” said Milonde. “They are counting on the caution, vigilance and hygiene practices that they have been performing to save their families.” Community advocates in Beni — who walk around with megaphones to talk about Ebola — have started to include warnings about the coronavirus. Messages explaining COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and where to go if sick are being spread on radio stations, through text message blasts and by religious leaders. Schools, churches and mosques are already armed with hand-washing kits. Beni’s mayor, Nyonyi Bwanakawa, says many of the measures will be familiar — but the recommendations to stay home are more stringent than what is required for Ebola, and officials are prepared to take “dramatic measures” if people resist. Unlike Ebola, which kills about half of the people it infects, the new coronavirus causes mostly mild or moderate symptoms in about 80% of people. Spreading Ebola typically requires an exchange of bodily fluids, and people have often been infected when caring for loved ones or mourning in traditional funerals that involve close contact with the body. In contrast, the new coronavirus is far more contagious and mostly spread by people coughing or sneezing, including those with only mild flu-like symptoms. That means the task of controlling the virus’ spread in Congo will be massive: The government has only limited control in parts of the vast country, there are also some dense population centers with poor sanitation and infrastructure, and the country’s mineral-rich east is beset by violence from various armed groups. Dr. Michel Yao, program manager for emergency response at the WHO’s Africa office, said implementing robust testing and contact tracing will be key. But getting the community fully involved in fighting the disease might be even more important. That means not just speaking at communities, “but giving them responsibility and roles to play.” Initially, efforts to control Ebola were met with resistance, one of the major contributors to its spread. Amid the insecurity in the country’s east, superstitions arose, and some clinics to treat Ebola patients were attacked and health workers killed. The capital, Kinshasa, a tightly packed city of 14 million located on the country’s western border, remains another major worry, said Yao, who is based at WHO’s African headquarters in the neighboring Republic of Congo. “If it reaches this place, it would be a big disaster,” he said. “Africa is only partly ready,” said Yao. “If we stick to sporadic cases, this can be managed.” But many more developed countries have seen cases surge, and a sizable outbreak in Congo could easily overwhelm its hospital system. Advanced equipment to deal with severe respiratory illness, which the coronavirus can cause, is lacking: The Health Ministry says there are about 65 ventilators — all in Kinshasa — and 20 more on order for a country of more than 80 million people. There have been 215 confirmed cases of the new coronavirus in Congo, with 20 deaths, the ministry said Friday. And health workers will also need to find a way to continue to treat people infected with the many other diseases that regularly torment the population. Over the past year, for instance, a measles outbreak killed more than 6,000 people in Congo. In addition, because donor countries are themselves dealing with outbreaks, help from abroad could be less forthcoming. The key, Yao said, is training more people locally to care for the ill. The challenge will be rallying again after many months of trying to contain Ebola. “The job wasn’t yet finished, and we have to deal with another emergency,” Yao said. Katungo Methya, 53, who volunteers for the Red Cross in Beni, expressed a weariness many feel. “It’s so upsetting to have this second disease. We lost so many people through Ebola, a lot of deaths, now corona,” she said. “Everyone is really afraid.” ___ Petesch reported from Dakar, Senegal. AP medical writer Maria Cheng in London contributed from London.
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13499
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"Tim Kaine Says Hillary Clinton and millennials have the same positions on climate change, abortion rights, immigration reform, gay rights and college affordability. ""Donald Trump doesn't."
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"Kaine said Hillary Clinton and millennials believe in climate change, abortion rights, immigration reform, gay rights and college affordability but ""Donald Trump doesn't."" Reputable polls back Kaine’s claim, though the VP nominee is overstating the extent of Trump’s opposition to gay rights and college affordability. Millennials agree decisively with Clinton’s position on immigration, gay rights and college affordability, and by narrow margins on climate change and abortion rights."
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true
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Abortion, Immigration, National, Climate Change, Education, Gays and Lesbians, Tim Kaine,
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"Young voters carried Barack Obama to victory in the past two elections and felt the Bern for Bernie Sanders during the 2016 Democratic primary. But polls show they’re not exactly transferring their enthusiasm to Hillary Clinton. The 69.2 million millennials — typically defined as adults under age 35 — now make up the second-largest age block in America after the Baby Boomers. While Clinton still leads Donald Trump among young voters, polls show sizable portions of millennials now backing Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson and Green Party’s Jill Stein. (In comparison, third party candidates received about 3 percent of the vote in 2012.) Clinton’s trouble connecting with millennials prompted NBC’s Chuck Todd on Meet the Press to ask Clinton’s running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, how the campaign could rebuild the Obama coalition and win swing states without them. Kaine agreed that that young voters are crucial, but laid out ""five litmus test issues"" that should convince them to get with her. ""Do you believe in climate science or don’t you? Millennials do, Hillary Clinton and I do, Donald Trump doesn’t. Do you believe women should be able to make their own health care decisions, or don’t you? Millennials do, Hillary Clinton and I do, Donald Trump doesn’t. Do you believe in immigration reform or don’t you? We do, millennials do, Donald Trump doesn’t. Do you believe in LGBTQ equality? We do, millennials do, Donald Trump doesn’t. And finally, do you have a plan to deal with college affordability? We have one. Millennials need one. And Donald Trump, with Trump University, has ripped off students,"" Kaine said. Does Clinton have more in common with the youth than Trump on the five issues Kaine laid out? We asked the Clinton campaign and Trump campaigns for data showing how millennials feel about the various issues. We didn't hear back from the Trump side. A Clinton spokesman sent us a report that surveyed millennials in only 11 swing states. In addition, it used questions phrased to favor Democratic talking points, such as asking about ""making the wealthy pay their fair share"" and ""implementing common sense gun safety rules."" We will not be using those results. But the campaign later sent us other polling data. In addition, we did our own search. Here's what we found. Climate science Kaine’s assertion on climate change is largely accurate. Recently, a 2014 Gallup survey found that 58 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds believe global warming's effects have already begun. About a year later, a national poll conducted in 2015 by Harvard's Institute of Politics found that 55 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds agreed with the scientific consensus that the planet is warming and emissions ""from cars and industry facilities"" are to blame. But 20 percent said that, although the planet is warming, natural changes in the environment are to blame, which is at odds with the consensus of the experts. Twenty-three percent believe global warming is a ""theory that has not yet been proven."" Clinton has called for more pollution controls, investing more in clean energy and cutting ""wasteful"" tax subsidies for oil and gas companies. Trump's website doesn’t include a position on climate change. However, the site has reposted a PBS Newshour article that says Trump regards climate change as a hoax. And as we reported in June, during a May 26 energy policy speech Trump advocated rescinding ""all the job-destroying Obama executive actions, including the Climate Action Plan"" and said he would ""cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs."" Women's health care Kaine said that women should be able to make their own health care decisions. Few people would disagree that women — or men for that matter — should be able to make their own health care decisions. In a political context, Kaine’s comments indicate Clinton’s position in favor of abortion rights. A 2014 poll by the nonpartisan organization PRRI (formerly the Public Religion Research Institute) in Washington found that 55 percent of millennials thought abortion should be legal in most or all cases. The same level of support is seen in people under 68. Only older Americans showed less support for abortion, with 43 percent of people over 67 saying it should be legal. Similarly, when Gallup surveyed abortion attitudes in 2015, it found that 53 percent of people age 18 to 34 identified themselves as ""pro choice,"" versus 52 percent of 35- to 55-year-olds and 47 percent of people over 55. Once again, that puts millennials in the Democratic camp, but not by an overwhelming amount. Clinton spokesman Josh Schwerin subsequently directed us to a Fox News survey taken last week that found 61 percent of registered voters under age 35 reported being pro-choice. Clinton, as with most Democrats, supports the right of a woman to seek an abortion. Trump doesn't address abortion on his website, but he’s said in interviews that he opposes abortion in most cases. In a March interview, he said women who have an abortion after it’s outlawed should received ""some form of punishment,"" but he backtracked on the idea after widespread criticism. Once again, the Clinton-Kaine team seems to be in synch with at least a bare majority of millennials. Immigration Immigration is another issue where the stances of Trump and Clinton diverge dramatically. Trump has made the removal of illegal immigrants his signature issue. He wants to build a wall across the southern border and change the law that dictates that if you are born in the United States you automatically become as U.S. citizen. Clinton, in contrast, has called for legislation to allow some of those living in the United States illegally to remain, especially young adults brought to the United States as children. Most — criminals are a major exception — would be eligible for an eventual path to citizenship. On the issue of the wall, millennials are firmly against Trump. According to a 2016 PRRI survey, 70 percent oppose it, compared to 52 percent of people age 65 and older. Only 11 percent of Americans age 18 to 29 support identifying and deporting illegal immigrants (it's 23 percent for people age 65 and older), according to a 2015 PRRI poll; and 69 percent of younger voters support a path to citizenship, as do 58 percent of seniors. More recently, a Fox News poll taken in last August found that 87 percent of respondents under 35 favored setting up a system for illegal immigrants to become legal. Only 11 percent supported deporting as many as possible. Also, Trump seems to be out of step with the younger people in his own party, 63 percent of whom support a path to citizenship and only 20 percent want mass deportation. LGBT equality Polls show millennials overwhelmingly support gay rights, which is a plank of Clinton's platform. But Kaine is exaggerating when he suggests Trump is totally against LGBT equality — the Republican nominee has given mixed messages on the issue. An August GenForward survey, conducted by the Black Youth Project at the University of Chicago and the AP-NORC Center, found that young voters (defined as age 18 to 30) strongly supported LGBT individual rights including equal employment rights (90 percent), HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment (92 percent) and LGBT adoption (80 percent). According to a May 2016 Pew report, 71 percent of Americans born after 1981 favor same-sex marriage (as do 55 percent of all Americans). Clinton’s LGBT promises mirror the attitudes of millennials in the GenForward survey. She calls the Supreme Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in 2015 as a ""landmark victory"" for the country. Kaine, for his part, signed an executive order that banned discrimination based on sexual orientation in Virginia in 2006, his first year as governor. Equality Virginia, the commonwealth's LGBT organization, called him a friend and major ally in an editorial to the Advocate. Trump, meanwhile, has vowed that he ""will do everything in my power to protect LGBT citizens"" in his speech at the Republican National Convention. He often criticizes the Clinton Foundation for taking donations from governments that oppress gay men and women. But Trump opposes gay marriage and has said in interviews during the Republican primary that he would appoint judges that would reverse the Supreme Court ruling or allow states to decide. The Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights groups that endorsed Clinton, points out that Trump’s running mate is Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, who passed a 2015 law that allowed businesses to refuse to serve gay and lesbian customers based on religious freedom; the law was modified after an uproar. College affordability Trump isn’t against making colleges more affordable, but polls show millennial attitudes on higher education costs are more closely aligned with Clinton’s than Trump’s. Many millennials say college affordability is a top issue, according to a USA Today/Rock the Vote survey, and the vast majority say higher education should be debt free (77 percent in a poll commissioned by Bankrate Inc., a financial services company). Under Clinton’s college affordability plan — retooled with input from Sanders in June 2016 and seen as a grab for his millennial voters — families with incomes less than $85,000 will pay no tuition at in-state public colleges and universities, with the income cap increasing to $125,000 by 2021. Clinton’s plan also addresses student debt refinancing. Kaine focused on complaints lodged against Trump University in his Meet the Press interview. We found that Trump University received a D-minus rating from the Better Business Bureau in 2010, the last time the consumer watchdogs gave any rating at all. Trump has been vague about his own college affordability plans. In an Iowa town hall in November 2015, he suggested he would create ""some governmental program"" to help lower-income families pay for school. He promised to ""work with all of our students who are drowning in debt"" during the Republican National Convention. His website does not list college affordability as an issue, but Trump’s policy advisor Sam Clovis floated a few ideas in a May interview with Inside Higher Ed. Clovis said the campaign thinks student loans should be ""market driven,"" and said colleges should ""have skin in the game"" and share the risks associated with student loans. Clovis rejected proposals for free higher public education. Our ruling Kaine said Hillary Clinton and millennials believe in climate change, abortion rights, immigration reform, gay rights and college affordability but ""Donald Trump doesn't."" Reputable polls back Kaine’s claim, though the VP nominee is overstating the extent of Trump’s opposition to gay rights and college affordability. Millennials agree decisively with Clinton’s position on immigration, gay rights and college affordability, and by narrow margins on climate change and abortion rights.
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36320
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Proof exists that Rep. Ilhan Omar married her brother.
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There Is No Credible Evidence Rep. Ilhan Omar Married Her Brother
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false
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Disinformation, Fact Checks
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On June 23 2019 pundit Dinesh D’Souza tweeted a very old claim: That Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) once married her own brother:I’m trying to keep the @IlhanMN story straight. She marrried her brother to evade immigration laws? Then she divorced him and illicitly filed joint tax returns with another guy years before they were married? I was prosecuted for doing far less; why hasn’t she been indicted yet?— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) June 23, 2019In the tweet above, D’Souza claims without citation or evidence that Omar “married her brother to evade immigration laws,” and that “she divorced him and illicitly filed joint tax returns with another guy years before they were married.” In conclusion, D’Souza complains that he was “prosecuted for far less,” referencing his 2014 conviction and probation for violating campaign finance law.D’Souza did not link to any material supporting his claim, but there are innumerable articles about the rumor. So common is the claim that it and its variation could reasonably be classed as proof by assertion, argument by repetition, or argumentum ad nauseam — “repeating an argument or a premise over and over again in place of better supporting evidence.”Rumors that Omar married her brother appear to have originated with an August 2016 post published to the Power Line political blog, and its tenuous source seems to have been largely forgotten in the ensuing years. Originally, its author Scott Johnson explained how he first became aware of the rumor:A reader has written us to point out that the Somali website Somalispot posted information last week suggesting Omar’s involvement in marriage and immigration fraud. The post notes that Omar married Ahmed Hirsi in 2002. Hirsi is the father of Omar’s three children. Omar is depicted with Hirsi and their children on Omar’s campaign website here.The post further notes that Omar married her brother Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009, implying that the latter marriage assisted his entry into the United States. Her brother was a British citizen. “As soon as Ilhan Omar married him,” the post continues, “he started university at her [a]lma mater North Dakota State University where he graduated in 2012. Shortly thereafter, he moved to Minneapolis where he was living in a public housing complex and was later evicted. He then returned to the United Kingdom where he now lives.”Let me note here that Omar’s marriage to her brother, if it occurred in fact, is illegal under Minnesota law. I believe it would be void ab initio, as though it never occurred. If it occurred, I infer that it must have taken place for dishonest purposes.Another article was published by City-Journal.org in September 2016 with the headline, “The Curious Case of Ilhan Omar.” This piece was framed as exploring the mystery of the allegations — but it was also authored by Johnson, the individual responsible for pushing the specious claims to begin with.As an August 2016 MinnPost.com article noted, Johnson implicitly alleged that Omar had “married” her purported brother in order to illegally prioritize an immigration process:The nature of the charge is easy to trace, however, and stems from the fact that immigration authorities give priority to U.S. citizens who request to bring in their noncitizen spouses to the United States. In practical terms, the immigration process for nonresidents can be cut by years if they are sponsored by citizen spouses. […]That’s illegal, of course, and carries the potential for serious criminal consequences for both the sponsored immigrant and the petitioner. “Any individual who knowingly enters into a marriage for the purpose of evading any provision of the immigration laws shall be imprisoned for not more than five years, or fined not more than $250,000, or both,” writes Ilona Bray of Nola, a California-based company that specializes in immigration law and real estate.An important point pertaining to those specific allegations was addressed in a June 22 2019 Star Tribune article about the years-old rumor. In a portion about the specific motives underlying the claim, the newspaper reported:Siblings who petition for a U.S. visa for a noncitizen sibling have typically had to wait more than a dozen years to obtain the document, according to the U.S. State Department. Applications for a spouse carry a minimal waiting period, but Minnetonka-based immigration lawyer Steven Thal said examples of siblings fraudulently marrying to gain immigration benefits are nearly unheard of compared to cases of strangers marrying to get green cards.“It is so rare that you would think that it would be more easily uncovered,” Thal said.The Star Tribune also noted that Omar had, at some point in 2016, provided the names of her siblings:In 2016, her campaign provided the names of six siblings, but only their first names, citing their need for privacy. Elmi was not among them.Also in August 2016, Omar released a statement explaining her marital history, detailing the points where she married or separated in religious manners versus legal ones. After a 2008 separation from husband Ahmed Hirsi, she married Ahmed Nur Said Elmi legally. Omar and Elmi separated in 2011 and she reconciled with Elmi. As of 2016, her formal divorce from Elmi was pending.In the statement [PDF], Omar identifies Ahmed Nur Said Elmi as her former spouse, adding that claims that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is her brother are “absurd and offensive”:In 2002, when I was 19 years old, Ahmed Hirsi (whose name before he received citizenship was Ahmed Aden), the father of my children and love of my life, and I, applied for a marriage license, but we never finalized the application and thus were never legally married. In 2008, we decided to end our relationship in our faith tradition after reaching an impasse in our life together.I entered into a relationship with a British citizen, Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, and married him legally in 2009. Our relationship ended in 2011 and we divorced in our faith tradition. After that, he moved home to England. I have yet to legally divorce Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, but am in the process of doing so. Insinuations that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is my brother are absurd and offensive.Since 2011, I am happy to say that I have reconciled with Ahmed Hirsi, we have married in our faith tradition and are raising our family together. Like all families, we have had our ups and downs but we are proud to have come through it together.Omar has consistently and categorically denied that Elmi is her brother. The Star Tribune investigation from June 2019 quotes the Minnesota congresswoman as explaining that her immigration status is such that claims of that variety can be leveled at her with impunity, and that she is powerless to disprove them:Omar expressed frustration over the controversy again last October [2018], telling the Star Tribune in an interview that like many refugees without birth certificates, “anybody can accuse me of whatever they want and I don’t have a way to defend myself.”Later in August 2016, Minnesota news blog AlphaNewsMN.com was contacted by a man with the name Ahmed Elmi who lived in London. Elmi took issue with the extensive use of images of both him and his various social media accounts, and he denied both having married Omar and being Omar’s brother. Elmi stated that all of his siblings at the time lived in the United Kingdom, and that Omar was not among them.That article included three screenshots of emails from Elmi, in which he said his birthday was in May, not April (as was the case for the Elmi who Omar had married.). Nevertheless, Alpha News titled their article on the topic, “The Brother Ilhan Omar Legally Married Sends Alpha News an Email.”Elmi explained to the outlet that there “are about as many Ahmed Elmis as there are John Smiths”; Alpha News then responded by saying that they would continue to misidentify Elmi as Ahmed Nur Said Elmi — unless he produced another of the many people bearing the same name:Alpha News sent a final email to Elmi explaining that we trusted our sources and that unless he can produce documentation of another Ahmed Elmi who attended NDSU we will continue using his picture.In October 2018, the same outlet published an item titled “New Evidence Supports Claims That Ilhan Omar Married Her Brother.” The content of the post did not match the title:According to official school records from St. Paul Public Schools obtained by [PJ Media], an “Ahmed N. Elmi” was enrolled as a senior at Arlington Senior High School in St. Paul, Minnesota from September 2002 to June 2003. Ahmed N. Elmi graduated in June 2003 with a diploma. [PJ Media] reports that the enrollment record lists Ahmed N. Elmi’s date of birth as April 4, 1985–the same date of birth listed on Omar’s marriage documents and divorce proceedings for Ahmed Nur Said Elmi.“After an extensive background search, I have not been able to find any other person named ‘Ahmed Nur Said Elmi,’ ‘Ahmed N. Elmi,’ or even ‘Ahmed Elmi’ with the birthdate April 4, 1985. The man Ilhan Omar married and the 17- to 18-year-old who attended Arlington Senior High School in St. Paul, MN, in 2002-2003 are one and the same,” [PJ Media] writes.We were unable to deduce how the existence of school records for an Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in any way substantiated the claim that Rep. Omar once married her brother, nor how it related to Alpha News’ prior claim that the London-based Elmi was the same individual.On August 22 2016, Omar shared a letter to her office from the office of Minnesota’s Attorney General via Facebook. In the letter, United States Attorney Andrew Luger stated “my office is not investigating, nor have we requested an investigation into Ms. Omar”:Many of the claims made about Omar’s marriage to Ahmed Nur Said Elmi relied on inference, and perhaps a soupçon of wishful thinking. It is clear that authorities were aware of these claims, and that said authorities did not consider them sufficient to warrant investigation despite the frequency with which they appeared on blogs and on social media.In October 2018, the Associated Press unsuccessfully attempted to verify that Elmi is Omar’s brother. Once again, Omar noted such efforts were hamstrung by a dearth of records available for her to provide the requested information:Sorting out these claims is difficult without access to immigration records, birth certificates or other documents that could prove parentage or family lineage.In response to a Freedom of Information Act request, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said records about individuals cannot be released without written permission from that individual. Omar’s campaign has said she and others can’t get birth certificates because the infrastructure in Somalia collapsed during a civil war that displaced over 2 million Somalis.Omar and her campaign have declined to provide the AP with a list of her siblings, but she has said publicly that she is the youngest of seven children. Elmi’s birthdate on the couple’s marriage certificate would make him three years younger than her.That same month, Omar provided access to immigration documents during an interview and she expressed frustration about the impossibility of “prov[ing a negative].” The documents listed Omar and six siblings — with Omar listed, just as she had said, as the youngest. Both Elmis identified in other reports are three years younger than she:“It’s really strange, right, to try to prove a negative,” Omar said in the interview. “If someone was asking me, do I have a brother by that name, I don’t. If someone was asking … are there court documents that are false … there is no truth to that.”[…]During an interview, Omar showed a reporter cellphone photos of documents from her family’s U.S. entry in 1995 after fleeing Somalia’s civil war. She declined to provide copies of the papers, which included refugee resettlement approval forms and identification cards, but they appeared to list her father, siblings and Omar by order of birth, with Omar as the youngest of seven children. No one named Ahmed Nur Said Elmi, who is three years younger than Omar, could be seen listed in the documents.“For someone like me, who left a war-torn country at the age of 8, who got refugee status to come to America, where in the world am I finding a sibling 15 years, 20 years later to seek to do what people accuse me of?” Omar said.No credible explanation of an unlisted younger sibling with an immigration record to a different country (the UK, where Elmi has citizenship) was provided by those pushing this theory. While the rumor became immensely popular, no one addressed the fact that a child younger than Omar at the time of the family’s emigration from Somalia in 1995 somehow wound up separated from the family and remained, as a child, in the United Kingdom, reappearing just in time for his sister to marry him.Another inconsistency on which the entire theory seemed to rest was Omar and Elmi’s purported plot to secure United States residency or citizenship for Elmi — but after their divorce, Elmi returned to the United Kingdom and did not pursue residency or citizenship in the United States.As of June 2019, partisan blogs still claimed that documents were surfacing supporting the theory that Rep. Ilhan Omar married her brother. But those documents did not in any way support the idea that Elmi and Omar are siblings, they merely reinforced that the two were married — information that Omar herself has provided and never denied. Those blogs argued that “Omar has not provided records or answered detailed questions from any news organization that could clear her of the accusation that she married her alleged brother,” a claim that is demonstrably false.Another outlet alluded to a “hidden clue” that Elmi was Omar’s brother surfacing in June 2019. That particular clue consists of website source code suggesting that an Ahmed Elmi helped build a website for Omar’s sister. Given that Elmi stated the name “Ahmed Elmi” is “as common as John Smith,” that “hidden” information (which is not exactly “hidden” if it’s up on a website for all to see) again shed no light on the claims Omar married her brother.All claims that Rep. Omar married her brother Ahmed Elmi traced back to the same single third-hand account originally shared by Power Line Blog in 2016. Omar and a man in the United Kingdom by the name Ahmed Elmi have denied all the claims. Omar has provided access to the limited records she has as a refugee to journalists, efforts on her part that are later dismissed as non-cooperation. No one has ever substantiated the claim, and “new” information repeatedly spread by partisan blogs almost inevitably consists of speculative details such as a name appearing to exist in website code for a URL belonging to her sister.Multiple aspects of the theory taken examined in part also fail to make sense, such as how a UK citizen (Elmi) purportedly sought US citizenship (which he did not pursue) or the insinuation the family’s youngest member somehow went off on his own to a separate country (England) as a small child. Finally, we were unable to determine the standard of evidence by which proponents of the claim demand Omar disprove it. Omar has categorically denied the claim and provided records to journalists seeking information, and we were not able to identify any specific information she has refused to provide.
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9811
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Study clouds evidence on soy and menopause
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Overall, this story addressed our criteria. The big picture is that this is a small study, funded by pharma that showed a benefit for soy. Put in the context of the many randomized clinical trials that have looked at this issue over the past decade, there are questions about this finding, and the story puts those doubts in readers’ minds. Many women may not feel comfortable taking hormone replacement therapy to relieve symptoms of menopause, but are interested in something to reduce uncomfortable symptoms. However, studies of supplements or over-the-counter remedies need to be conducted in the same populations for which the products are marketed. It’s interesting that this study in China showed a benefit. Historically, anthropologic studies of Asian women have reported that they don’t tend to report hot flashes. Whether this is due to high estrogen in the diet (e.g., soy) or to cultural/communication factors is not known. Multiple randomized clinical trials in the US and Europe have showed no benefit from soy despite many attempts to find one.
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true
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hot flashes,menopause
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Soy supplements are over the counter so the price may vary. Story cites estimate. There was a discussion about the reductions of symptoms among patients in the study in both relative and absolute terms. Would have liked a better idea if the levels in the study among Chinese women are what American women also experience. In most prior studies of hot flashes, the frequency has been much higher in study subjects – more like 5 – 10 per day, not per week. So, as commenter in story notes, these Chinese women were not very symptomatic compared to their American counterparts. There was a brief mention of harms that the National Institutes of Health list for soy supplements, but no mention of side effects experienced by women in the study. The story did highlight the sample size was small and the number of hot flashes reported by the women in the study was low. The story did not commit disease mongering. The journalist interviewed an American researcher who did not agree with the study results and had conducted other studies using soy supplements and did not find any significant effects. Also, it was stated the supplements in the study were provided by Frutarom Netherlands – a private company that sells soy supplements over the counter in the U.S. The story states that “The standard drug treatment for stubborn menopause symptoms is hormone replacement therapy. But doctors and women have become increasingly wary of that option because of serious side effects such as increased risk for heart attack, stroke and breast cancer.” Not applicable. Soy supplements are over-the-counter products sold in most health stores. The story at least establishes that there has been other past research on soy supplements and hot flashes, quoting an American researcher. The journalist sought out another expert in the field who had conducted similar studies in the U.S. without the same findings.
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14225
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"Bernie Sanders Says an array of statistics show that conditions in some parts of Baltimore rival that of ""the West Bank in Palestine,"" ""North Korea,"" and ""distressed cities in Nigeria, India, China and South Africa."
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"Sanders presented a series of comparisons showing that conditions in some parts of Baltimore rivaled that of ""the West Bank in Palestine,"" ""North Korea,"" and ""distressed cities in Nigeria, India, China and South Africa. Some of Sanders’ figures need to be updated, but the gist of his specific comparisons are accurate: 12 Baltimore neighborhoods have a lower life expectancy than North Korea; 11 have a higher infant mortality rate than the West Bank; and research shows health conditions are worse for poor teens than in Baltimore than in Ibadan, New Delhi and Shanghai."
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true
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Global News Service, Poverty, Public Health, Bernie Sanders,
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"Residents of some Baltimore neighborhoods are no better off than people living in impoverished North Korea and the violent West Bank, Bernie Sanders said during a campaign rally in Maryland ahead of that state’s primary. ""Poverty in Baltimore, and around this country — poverty is a death sentence,"" Sanders said April 24. He then laid out some rather unflattering and harsh comparisons: ""Fifteen neighborhoods in Baltimore have lower life expectancies than North Korea. Two of them have a higher infant mortality rate than the West Bank in Palestine. Baltimore teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 face poorer health conditions and a worse economic outlook than those in distressed cities in Nigeria, India, China and South Africa. We are talking about the United States of America in the year 2016 — a country in which the top 1/10th of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent."" While it would be wrong to take Sanders’ claim to mean that conditions overall are worse than Baltimore, we found that his specific comparisons are largely accurate. ""The comparisons fairly make the point that there are some parts of this rich country where conditions resemble those in much poorer countries,"" said Alan Berube, an expert on urban poverty at the Brookings Institution. ""This isn't isolated to Baltimore; there are neighborhoods in nearly every big U.S. city and metropolitan area, and many rural communities, that perform just as poorly on these outcomes."" Let’s take Sanders’ claims one by one. Life expectancy in North Korea The Sanders campaign referred us to a Washington Post article noting that 14 Baltimore neighborhoods had shorter life expectancies than North Korea in 2013. (The article originally said 15 but was corrected.) His number is slightly outdated. In 2014, the latest year where there’s data on both places, the average life expectancy in North Korea was 69.81 years, according to the CIA World Factbook. That placed the impoverished dictatorship at No. 155 in longest lifespans out of 224 countries. The United States overall ranked at No. 42 with 79.56 years. Residents in 12 of Baltimore's 56 neighborhoods lived shorter lives, according to data from the Baltimore City Health Department provided to the Baltimore Neighborhood Indicators Alliance. That’s not 15, but it’s close. (For context, just five Baltimore neighborhoods have life expectancies higher than the U.S. national average, and four of them are relatively affluent and white.) Here’s a map from the University of Maryland’s Capital News Service that compares the life expectancies of Baltimore neighborhoods in 2013 to other places in the world: An important caveat: The city of Baltimore has a total population around 600,000 people while North Korea has a population 40 times that. That means fewer events in Baltimore neighborhood could swing the overall life expectancy of a neighborhood up or down. Infant mortality in the West Bank For this claim, the Sanders campaign referred us to a Vox article that said two neighborhoods in Baltimore — Little Italy and Greenmount East — had a higher rate of infant mortality than the West Bank, Honduras and Venezuela in 2013. But in his speech, Sanders only mentioned the West Bank. In 2014, 13.49 out of 1,000 babies died before their first birthday in the notorious conflict zone, according to the CIA’s World Factbook. The West Bank places in the middle of the pack in infant mortality at No. 117 out of 224 countries. The United States, meanwhile, ranked at No. 169 with a rate of 6.17 deaths per 1,000. In 2014, 11 Baltimore neighborhoods had a higher rate than the West Bank. In Hilltop and Little Italy, at least 20 out of 1,000 infants died before their first birthday. That’s not only higher than the West Bank, Honduras and Venezuela but also war-torn Syria and oppressive Uzbekistan. Teen health in distressed cities in developing countries Sanders claimed that ""Baltimore teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19 face poorer health conditions and a worse economic outlook than those in distressed cities in Nigeria, India, China and South Africa."" The Sanders campaign cited a Washington Post article by Johns Hopkins University researchers. ""Teenagers in Baltimore face poorer health and more negative outlooks than those in urban centers of Nigeria, India and China,"" they write. Contrary to what Sanders said, the work by the Johns Hopkins researchers don’t consider economic outlooks nor do they show Baltimore conditions being worse than South Africa’s. Nonetheless, his broader point is accurate. The researchers published a comprehensive set of studies published in the Journal of Adolescent Health in 2014 that compared the well-being of teens in impoverished areas in Baltimore; Ibadan, Nigeria; Johannesburg, South Africa; New Delhi, India; and Shanghai, China. Baltimore teens reported the highest rates pregnancy and, after Johannesburg, the second highest rates of substance use, sexual and physical violence, and feeling unsafe in their community: Our ruling Sanders presented a series of comparisons showing that conditions in some parts of Baltimore rivaled that of ""the West Bank in Palestine,"" ""North Korea,"" and ""distressed cities in Nigeria, India, China and South Africa. Some of Sanders’ figures need to be updated, but the gist of his specific comparisons are accurate: 12 Baltimore neighborhoods have a lower life expectancy than North Korea; 11 have a higher infant mortality rate than the West Bank; and research shows health conditions are worse for poor teens than in Baltimore than in Ibadan, New Delhi and Shanghai."
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2906
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Sangamo to develop blood disorder drugs with Biogen.
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Sangamo Biosciences Inc said it would collaborate with Biogen Idec Inc to develop treatments for a group of inherited blood disorders in a deal for up to $320 million.
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true
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Health News
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Sangamo shares jumped as much as 30 percent to a six-year high of $17.73 on the Nasdaq on Thursday morning. Biogen will use Sangamo’s genome-editing technology to develop drugs targeting sickle cell disease and beta-thalassemia. It will provide Sangamo $20 million upfront and reimburse costs related to research and development. Sangamo will also be eligible for milestone payments of about $300 million, as well as double digit royalties on product sales. The upfront payment and the terms of the milestone payments and the double digit royalties were pretty high, Wedbush analyst Liana Moussatos said. “The deal terms are very lucrative for a pre-clinical platform. So I think Biogen must have been impressed with the pre-clinical data that Sangamo presented last month.” Sangamo presented the data last month at the annual meeting of the American Society of Hematology. The company will be responsible for research and development for the first proof-of-concept study for beta-thalassemia, according to Thursday’s deal. Beta-thalassemia impairs the body’s ability to produce hemoglobin, the protein in red blood cells (RBC). Sickle cell disease changes the shape RBCs, tending to block blood flow. Moussatos said Sangamo also had a promising HIV program, with a patient to stay with undetectable viral load for six months. “That’s another viable treatment and I won’t be surprised if they announce another partnership for that,” Moussatos said.
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5026
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Argentine women see legal abortion closer than ever.
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Pushed by a wave of demonstrations by women’s groups, the homeland of Pope Francis seems closer than ever to legalizing abortion.
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true
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Public opinion, Mauricio Macri, International News, Buenos Aires, Abortion, Latin America, Health, Pope Francis, Argentina, Bills
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The protests and shifting public opinion have led conservative President Mauricio Macri to call for Congress to launch a debate on a broader legalization of abortion in Argentina, which currently allows the procedure only in cases of rape or risks to the mother’s health. A bill allowing elective abortion in the first 14 weeks of pregnancy was introduced in Congress earlier this year with the backing of 70 lawmakers from across the political spectrum. The bill needs 129 votes in the 257-seat lower house and then would go to the Senate. The lower house vote is expected in June. Macri has said that even though he remains anti-abortion, he would not veto the bill if passed. Natalia Rodas welcomes this unprecedented opening to greater abortion rights in Argentina. The 31-year-old housemaid recently found herself pregnant and in dire economic straits after the father refused to accept responsibility. Desperate and alone, she went to a pharmacy on the poor outskirts of Buenos Aires and paid twice her monthly salary for the drug misoprostol. Unsure if the drug would harm her without medical supervision, she fearfully took the pills and aborted. “An illegal abortion has made me live through some horrible situations,” Rodas said. “If something goes wrong, who do you call? Who do you fall back on? No, you just die.” Argentina’s health ministry estimates that between 370,000 to 522,000 Argentine women undergo illegal abortions each year and thousands of women, mainly poor, are hospitalized each year for complications. It is the main cause of maternal death. “What point is there in penalizing abortions if they continue to happen?” asked Nelly Minyersky, a 90-year-old lawyer and one of the authors of the bill, who underwent an illegal abortion more than 50 years ago. Although therapeutic abortions to protect the mother are allowed in Argentina, advocates say doctors and judges often continue to block women from carrying them out despite a 2012 Supreme Court ruling that was supposed to remove barriers and take judges out of these decisions. Argentina’s Roman Catholic Church is leading the resistance against the initiative. “When you deny the most elemental right to live, all human rights hang by a thread,” said Gustavo Carrara, who was recently named auxiliary bishop by the pope. “If there’s an excuse to eliminate a human life, there will always be reasons to exclude humans who are a nuisance from this world.” In recent years, Argentina has been at the forefront of social movements in the region. In 2010, it became the first country in Latin America to legalize same-sex marriage. More recently, the Ni Una Menos, or Not One Less, movement that was created in Argentina to fight gender-based violence has grown into a global phenomenon. These days, demonstrators have filled the streets in front of Congress wearing the green handkerchiefs that symbolize the abortion rights movement. Even dozens of lawmakers wore them when the bill was introduced. “The green handkerchiefs will remain as a record of the history of our great struggle,” said Betty Maidana, 48, who heads the Buenos Aires cooperative that makes them. A survey conducted the Buenos Aires-based Tendencias consultancy in March found that 48.5 percent of the 7,600 people questioned were in favor of a broader legalization of abortion, while 35.6 percent opposed it and 16 percent didn’t have an opinion. The survey’s margin for error was 1.2 percentage points. Many women in Argentina use misoprostol to end first-trimester pregnancies. The drug is only sold under prescription, but doctors often fear that prescribing it could expose them to a lawsuit since the pills are usually bought on the black market. Doctors who perform abortions, and women who have illegal abortions, can face from one to four years in prison in Argentina. In Latin America, only Nicaragua, Honduras, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador prohibit abortion without exceptions. For the poorest women living in the slums, a box with 16 tablets of misoprostol that costs about $170 is out of reach. Rodas says she paid an inflated price of about $300 — she earns $150 a month — to buy the drug without a prescription. For many poor women, the methods used to induce an abortion include using an IV tube with a sharp wire clothes hanger or knitting needle to try to break the amniotic sac inside womb. Others, drink herbs, insert dubious non-abortive pills in the vagina, or pump toxic mixtures, which can cause ulcers, hemorrhage and ultimately severe infections, and death. “When an abortion is safe, it’s less complicated than pulling out a tooth. It’s an easy practice that doesn’t put the women’s health or life at risk,” said Analia Bruno, a physician, who is part of Argentina’s network of health professionals in favor of abortion.
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2827
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Covidien to stop making hypertension devices.
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Covidien Plc said it would stop making devices for treating high blood pressure due to weak industry-wide demand.
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true
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Health News
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The device, known as a renal denervation system, belongs to a class of products that take a new approach to treating hypertension and are aimed at patients resistant to traditional drug-based therapies. Covidien’s device is approved in Europe and is being tested in the United States. The adoption of such devices has been slow as austere governments are reluctant to pay for the unconventional technology. These devices work by creating tiny scars along nerves in the kidneys - organs that play a pivotal role in regulating blood pressure by sending signals to the brain that can cause blood vessels to constrict. This scarring process is carried out by threading a catheter through the renal arteries from the groin. It deadens the nerves and decreases blood pressure. Covidien said the decision to exit the business was a result of its regular review of strategic programs. Covidien said it expects to record after-tax charges of $20-$25 million as a result of exiting the program. The company’s shares were unchanged in light premarket trading on Tuesday.
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6602
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UK jury convicts doctor of performing unnecessary surgeries.
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A prominent breast surgeon whose victims accused him of playing God with their lives faces a life sentence after a jury convicted him Friday of carrying out unnecessary operations that maimed some of his victims for life.
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true
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Health, Nottingham, AP Top News, Europe, Courts
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The Nottingham Crown Court jury found Ian Paterson guilty of 17 counts of wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and three counts of unlawful wounding. Prosecutors say the 59-year-old doctor lied to patients or exaggerated their risk of cancer to persuade them to have surgery. “Of the 11 victims he was charged with in relation to this case, none had breast cancer, and yet he led them to believe they were at risk. This was cruel and unnecessarily led to many people suffering and living in fear,” West Midlands police Superintendent Mark Payne said. “Paterson was a controlling bully, who played God with people’s lives so he could live a luxurious lifestyle.” Paterson owned a luxury home in Birmingham as well as properties in Cardiff, Manchester and the United States, West Midlands police said. Hundreds of Paterson’s patients were recalled in 2012 after concerns about unnecessary or incomplete operations. Nine women and one man testified about the procedures during his trial, which dealt with surgeries between 1997 and 2011. One patient, Frances Perks, who underwent an unnecessary mastectomy, hopes he “rots in hell.” ″″I think he’s a psychopath,” she said. “Why would anyone in their right mind do operations to people knowing that they didn’t need them?” Another victim, Carole Johnson, who had six surgeries in seven years, said he manipulated his patients into trusting him. “I, for one, trusted him with my life,” she said after the verdicts. “To realize that I was betrayed makes me question my own judgment and I feel like I cannot trust any doctor.” Emma Doughty, a specialist medical lawyer with law firm Slater and Gordon who represents dozens of Paterson’s victims, said many are relieved justice has been done. “Paterson’s barbarous acts of cruelty have hugely impacted many hundreds of people,” she said. “I now hope they can start to rebuild and move on with their lives.” Paterson was granted bail until his sentencing hearing scheduled for May.
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Malaysia steps up coronavirus tests as it braces for 'worst scenario'.
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Malaysia is ramping up coronavirus tests in preparation for the “worst scenario”, as it grapples with Southeast Asia’s highest number of infections, a health ministry official told Reuters.
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true
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Health News
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The World Health Organisation has urged countries to widen testing to contain the virus. Malaysia’s tally of infections has jumped six-fold in just ten days to more than 1,500, exceeded only by China, South Korea and Japan in Asia. By the end of the week, Malaysia will double daily testing capacity to 7,000, before stepping that up to 16,500 by the first week of April, the official, Noor Hisham Abdullah, said. “We are preparing for the worst scenario, but hope for the best outcomes,” Noor Hisham, the director general of Malaysia’s health ministry, added in a text message late on Monday. “Once we have the capacity ready, we will scale up active case detection, testing, isolation and treatment.” Ministry data shows Malaysia had done 17,923 tests by Monday, when the biggest daily increase of 212 new infections took the country’s total to 1,518. That works out to about 560 tests per million people, fewer than neighboring Singapore’s 4,500 tests per million, according to the city-state’s most recent data, but well above Indonesia’s single-digit figures. Malaysia has recorded at least 14 virus deaths. It has linked nearly two-thirds of its infections to a religious gathering last month near the capital, Kuala Lumpur, that the government says drew more than 16,000 people. The event is also linked to more than 100 cases across Southeast Asia. On Monday, Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin said Malaysia may extend beyond the end of the month travel and movement curbs imposed to contain the spread of the virus. [nL4N2BG1XK]
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8613
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Chinese masks, or 'blue gold', arrive for Swiss hospitals.
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A Boeing 747 landed in Geneva on Monday with 92 tonnes of protective medical equipment including masks made in China for distribution to 13 Swiss hospitals and pharmaceutical associations as they battle the COVID-19 pandemic.
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true
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Health News
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The flight contained 2.5 million surgical masks, 10 million gloves as well as goggles and thermometers worth more than 3 million Swiss francs ($3.1 million), and made by Sinopharm Group Co Ltd. Another delivery arrived in Zurich on Sunday evening on a chartered Swiss airline flight from Shanghai carrying protective gowns for dozens of health care facilities. Further flights with additional equipment are planned. Christophe Weber, president of the Swiss-Chinese Chamber of Commerce for western Switzerland, who helped organise the Geneva delivery, said that the order was placed in response to appeals from doctors and pharmacists amid serious supply shortages. “I always considered that we, Switzerland, had the quotas necessary for protective medical equipment and it was unfortunately not the case and it became urgent to take action,” he said at Geneva’s Cointrin airport. About a dozen police surrounded the cargo. The equipment was inspected inside an airport warehouse and will be moved to another secret location for redistribution, with police escorts, later on Monday. Weber said the government knew about the delivery and had approved of it. “The competition is extremely lively with the Americans now joining in the bidding and we know about their firepower,” said Vincent Subilia, director general of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce, who was also involved with the shipment, referring to masks as “blue gold”. A German official last week said that an order of 200,000 masks bound for Germany had been “confiscated” in Bangkok and diverted to the United States, calling it an “act of modern piracy”. The United States had no knowledge of the shipment, a spokesman said. Switzerland reported 21,652 positive COVID-19 cases on Monday and 584 deaths, with the rate of new confirmed increases slowing. It has mobilised the army to help back up hospitals. Medical aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres is helping in the University Hospital of Geneva, which is one of the facilities due to receive equipment. It was not immediately clear if the additional supplies would fill the gap in Switzerland’s supplies. Daniel Koch, the federal government’s point man for battling the epidemic, said on Swiss television RTS on Sunday: “There are stocks for hospitals, for professionals, for retirement homes, and the distribution system is working.” ($1 = 0.9790 Swiss francs)
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29980
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Meth in Louisiana is contaminated with the Zika virus.
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Police Chief Walker stated that as of the evening of 30 December 2018, no one had brought in meth to the department for testing.
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false
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Politics
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On 29 December 2018, the Police Department of Harahan, Louisiana, posted a warning on Facebook advising local residents that if they had “recently purchased meth in any area of Louisiana,” they should bring it to their local police department to ensure it was not “contaminated with the Zika virus”: ***WARNING: *** If you have recently purchased meth in any area of Louisiana it may be contaminated with the Zika Virus. Please bring all of it to your local Police Department and they will test it for free. If you’re not comfortable coming to us, an officer will be glad to come to you and test your Meth in the privacy of your home. Please spread the word! We’re available 24/7/365. Be Safe! ~Ofc Moody In fact, no meth in Louisiana — or anywhere else — is believed to be contaminated with the Zika virus (which is typically transmitted through mosquito bites). Most viewers recognized the Facebook post as yet another example of similar stunts aimed at fooling naive lawbreakers into voluntarily turning contraband over to law enforcement or otherwise incriminating themselves. Indeed, the Harahan police chief admitted that the department “never had reason to believe Zika was able to contaminate meth” and that they have “no way to test for Zika in meth,” asserting that the Facebook post was “a stunt to raise awareness of drug abuse”: Harahan Police Chief Tim Walker acknowledged that the post was just a stunt to raise awareness of drug abuse and that it’s not actually possible to have Zika virus in methamphetamine. Walker said his department got the idea for the post from other law enforcement agencies that made essentially the same announcement over the past year, with police in Alabama, Ohio and New Jersey all doing so, according to media reports. As for [the Facebook] post, Walker admitted that it had garnered a lot more attention than anticipated. He said the post had already gotten over 300,000 views and been mentioned in news publications around the world. He said the hope is that anyone with a drug problem who reads it will take a moment to think about the dangers of illegal drugs. That’s what he defines as a success.
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29244
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The World Health Organization has declared that medical marijuana has no health risks.
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What's true: The World Health Organization’s Expert Committee on Drug Dependence announced they considered the non-psychoactive component of cannabis — cannabidiol or CBD — safe enough to justify not scheduling the chemical legally. What's false: The announcement says nothing about cannabis as a whole or about any other potential oils or products derived from cannabis that would contain the psychoactive ingredient THC, and the announcement carries no legal ramifications for United States drug policy.
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false
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Medical, cannabidiol, cannabis, CBD
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Since mid December 2017, viral headlines have made the astonishing announcement that, in the words of the New York Post, the World Health Organization recently declared that medical marijuana has no health risks. While most experts agree that cannabis in general carries few serious health risks for adult use compared to other Schedule I drugs, these viral reports overstate the scope of the World Health Organization’s announcement. In a 13 December 2017 press release from the World Health Organization’s Expert Committee on Drug Dependence — which meets annually to provide recommendations for the level of legal control governments should exercise over specific drugs — the group presented a brief opinion on one specific chemical found in cannabis, cannabidiol or CBD, which does not cause the psychoactive high for which marijuana is best known: The ECDD did an initial review of a cannabis compound called cannabidiol (CBD). Recent evidence from animal and human studies shows that its use could have some therapeutic value for seizures due to epilepsy and related conditions. Current evidence also shows that cannabidiol is not likely to be abused […] The ECDD therefore concluded that current information does not justify scheduling of cannabidiol and postponed a fuller review of cannabidiol preparations to May 2018, when the committee will undertake a comprehensive review of cannabis and cannabis related substances. This opinion essentially allowed the question of how to schedule CBD preparations, whose legal status in the United States remains a complicated mess to be separated from a larger question of cannabis preparations that do contain the psychoactive compound THC. On the international stage, that larger question will begin to be addressed in early June 2018 during a meeting of the Expert Committee on Drug Dependence in Geneva, Switzerland. The June 2018 meeting is dedicated entirely “to carrying out pre-reviews of cannabis and cannabis-related substances,” including (but not limited to): Under current United States law, any preparation made from the Controlled Substance Act’s definition of cannabis would be considered the Schedule I drug marijuana, including any CBD oil derived from it. The definition is extremely broad, and it includes: All parts of the plant Cannabis sativa L., whether growing or not; the seeds thereof; the resin extracted from any part of such plant; and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture, or preparation of such plant, its seeds or resin. However, many manufacturers of CBD oil claim that they make their product with hemp, which according to the 2014 Farm Act is a legal classification for “any part of [Cannabis sativa L.], whether growing or not, with a delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol concentration of not more than 0.3 percent on a dry weight basis,” and which can be grown in states that allow its cultivation under federal law. In addition, several states have passed laws allowing for the possession of CBD oil with minimal THC, even if that oil is derived from cannabis. Speaking to the apparent discrepancy between the legal definition of a cannabis product and the legal definition of hemp, DEA spokesperson Russ Baer told the cannabis-focused outlet Leafly.com in March 2017 that products derived from hemp are not controlled substances: If the products are derived from the non-intoxicating part of the marijuana plant […] then you’re talking a non-controlled substance. The ability to produce CBD from the “non-intoxicating” parts of the plant or from “hemp” at all is a controversial topic, despite claims made by some manufacturers. These issues are likely to be among those discussed during the June WHO meeting. In any event, the December 2017 WHO announcement declaring CBD safe has no legal bearing on its preparation and sale in the United States, and referred only to cannabidiol and not medical marijuana more broadly.
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3585
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2 puppies euthanized after contact with rabid bats.
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Officials say two German shepherd puppies were euthanized after they came into contact with bats that tested positive for rabies in southwestern Washington.
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true
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Rabies, Health, General News, Washington, Longview, Environment, Bats, Pets, Dogs
|
KATU-TV reports Cowlitz County environmental health manager Season Long said Friday a 4-month-old and a 5-month old German shepherd were euthanized because the puppies hadn’t been vaccinated for rabies yet. Cowlitz County Health and Human Services said Thursday that two bats tested positive for rabies in the county and that some people’s pets were exposed to the disease. Officials say the bats are the first to test positive for rabies in the county in nearly a decade. Long says dogs that have been vaccinated for rabies and are exposed to rabid bats would not need to be euthanized. Officials are investigating whether people were exposed to the bats.
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5211
|
Harris, Gillibrand offer plans to bolster maternal care.
|
Two Democratic women running for president unveiled plans Wednesday to improve maternal health care, with Sen. Kamala Harris reintroducing a bill aimed at addressing racial disparities in childbirth care and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand promising to make adoptions and high-tech fertility treatments more accessible to those who want children.
|
true
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Health, Kirsten Gillibrand, Race and ethnicity, Kamala Harris
|
Harris’ bill, first introduced in 2018, would create a $25 million program to fight racial bias in maternal care. It would direct grants to medical schools, nursing schools and other training programs to improve care for black women, who are three to four times more likely than white women to die in childbirth . Her revived proposal also would allocate an additional $125 million toward identifying high-risk pregnancies and, according to her Senate office, provide mothers with the “culturally competent care and resources they need.” “Black mothers across the country are facing a health crisis that is driven in part by implicit bias in our health care system,” Harris, of California, said in a statement. “We must take action to address this issue, and we must do it with the sense of urgency it deserves.” Harris and Gillibrand, of New York, are among a number of contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination focused on maternal mortality rates. The issue was the first that Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was questioned on at a recent candidate forum in Houston focused on issues key to women of color, and she recently penned an op-ed for Essence magazine on the topic. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker earlier this year teamed up with Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley and introduced legislation aimed at reducing the country’s maternal mortality rate, particularly among black women. Gillibrand announced a plan for a Family Bill of Rights , which she vowed to implement promptly if elected president. It seeks to improve access to obstetrician-gynecologists in rural areas, while making adoptions or in vitro fertilization more affordable for everyone wanting children, regardless of income, religion or sexual orientation. Her plan would provide government-sponsored “baby bundles” for new parents, with diapers, onesies, a small mattress and other items designed to make newborn nurseries healthier. It further includes beefed-up paid family leave allowing parents to care for their children into infancy, universal prekindergarten programs and expanded child care tax credits. “The Family Bill of Rights will make all families stronger — regardless of who you are or what your zip code is — with a fundamental set of rights that levels the playing field starting at birth,” Gillibrand said in a statement. Gillibrand said she had a “several ideas” to pay for the proposed initiatives, including a 0.1% tax on financial transactions like stock purchases, which she says would generate $777 billion over 10 years. ___ Associated Press Writer Laurie Kellman contributed to this report.
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26811
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“If you have the Flu… get these two items… Sambucol (and) Oscillococcinum… in 48 hours you will feel better. In 72 hours you will be almost symptom-free.”
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These homeopathic supplements have been shown in some small studies to help relieve symptoms of flu and respiratory infection. But there are not enough trials to conclusively call them medications. Doctors agree that Sambucol has the most flu-fighting potential, while there is little evidence that Oscillococcinum can considerably shorten the length of the flu.
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false
|
Drugs, Health Care, Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Health Check, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
|
"You wouldn’t expect drops that taste like ""sweet tarts"" or elderberry syrup to cure anything, but one Facebook post claims that these homeopathic supplements can rid you of flu symptoms after only three days. This post, which has been shared more than 70,000 times, was flagged by Facebook as part of efforts to combat false news and information on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The post from Nov. 15, 2019, claimed that Sambucol, an elderberry extract, and Oscillococcinum, a diluted duck heart and liver pill, offer flu relief. ""A nurse friend taught me this,"" the post says. ""If you have the Flu… get these two items… Sambucol [and] Oscillococcinum… in 48 hours you will feel better. In 72 hours you will be almost symptom-free."" The medical community is still debating how effective these supplements are, with a few small studies showing positive results. While doctors agree that Sambucol has the most flu-fighting potential, there is little evidence that Oscillococcinum can considerably shorten the length of the flu. Both Sambucol and Oscillococcinum’s websites note that their claims to treat influenza symptoms ""have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration."" The Mayo Clinic recommends using an antiviral drug like Tamiflu if you ""have severe infection or are at higher risk for complications."" Effectiveness of Sambucol Sambucol is an elderberry extract that originates in folk medicine, where elderberries were used to treat various illnesses, including sinus congestion, sore throat, common cold and rheumatism. Elderberries contain tannins and viburnic acid, which have been shown to help with nasal congestion and to improve respiration. They also have one of the three highest anti-inflammatory capacities ever seen in fruit or berries, according to a study from the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry. A study in 2001 found that Sambucol has antiviral properties and was connected to an increase in the inflammatory cytokines found in patients’ blood, effectively activating the immune systems of influenza patients. A small 2004 study of the healing properties of Sambucol in Norway found that otherwise-healthy flu patients treated with the elderberry extract had symptom relief on average four days earlier than the placebo group. Patients treated with Sambucol had no symptoms after 48 to 72 hours. The study found that Sambucol ""seems to offer an efficient, safe and cost-effective treatment for influenza."" The study included only 80 influenza patients, and the administrators called for a larger study of elderberry extracts to verify their findings. Effectiveness of Oscillococcinum Oscillococcinum is made from highly diluted heart and liver of wild duck, but essentially no molecules of duck heart or liver are found in the actual pill, according to Pharmacy Times. Cochrane, an independent health care research center, did a review of Oscillococcinum trials in 2015. Cochrane found that Oscillococcinum did not prevent the flu in preventative trials, and that the trials that ""proved"" the supplement helped with flu symptoms were biased because they were performed by employees at Boiron, the company that produces Oscillococcinum. A study in Italy in 2018 did use Oscillococcinum to treat patients with respiratory tract infections and found that patients taking the supplement had fewer RTI episodes than patients without treatment. Their study spanned an eight-year period with 455 patients and found that it had the potential to save health center funds, with ""significantly lower costs in the patient population being treated."" Our ruling A post claims, ""If you have the Flu… get these two items… Sambucol [and] Oscillococcinum… in 48 hours you will feel better. In 72 hours you will be almost symptom-free."" Overall, Sambucol has the most flu-fighting potential, but there is little evidence that Oscillococcinum can considerably shorten the length of the flu. And there isn’t enough evidence to prove that either of them can treat influenza better than antiviral medications. The post’s claim has an element of truth but leaves out critical context."
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32262
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Pouring Coca-Cola onto a piece of raw pork will cause worms to come crawling out of the meat.
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Pouring Coca-Cola onto a piece of raw pork will not cause worms to come crawling out of the meat.
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false
|
Cokelore, coca-cola, pork
|
Most of us have been exposed to information cautioning us to be wary of pork, from religious traditions (particularly in Jewish and Muslim cultures) that proscribe its consumption to warnings that one can get really sick by ingesting parasites present in (undercooked) pork products. The disease trichinosis (or trichinellosis) can be caught through the consumption of raw or undercooked meat of animals infected with the larvae of the Trichinella worm, a parasite common to many wild carnivorous animals and sometimes found in game meat from bears, pigs/boars, large felines, foxes, dogs, wolves, horses, seals, and walruses. Because Trichinella infection may also occur in domestic pigs, consumers of pork have long been cautioned to cook the meat thoroughly to ensure that any parasites in the meat are killed off prior to their being ingested by humans. However, as the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) note, the incidence of trichinosis associated with pork consumption is now much less common due to a number of factors: Infection used to be more common and was usually caused by ingestion of undercooked pork. However, infection is now relatively rare. During 2008-2010, 20 cases were reported per year on average. The number of cases decreased beginning in the mid-20th century because of legislation prohibiting the feeding of raw-meat garbage to hogs, commercial and home freezing of pork, and the public awareness of the danger of eating raw or undercooked pork products. Cases are less commonly associated with pork products and more often associated with eating raw or undercooked wild game meats. Moreover, the potential for trichinosis can be headed off through observing a few simple precautions in the preparation of pork, such as cooking the meat thoroughly (the CDC recommends a temperature of 170°F, although most sources state that temperatures in the 140-150°F range are sufficient to kill the Trichinella spiralis roundworm), or freezing pork less than 6 inches thick for 20 days at 5°F or lower. Separate legends involving pork and Coca-Cola have been combined into a sort of meta-legend, one which holds that pouring Coke over a piece of uncooked pork will cause worms to come crawling out of the meat: I live in the south and have heard a rumor for several years now that I have been too busy (or lazy) to test myself. The rumor says that if you take uncooked pork bacon and pour carbonated, sugary soda on it, tiny “worm-looking” things will come out of the meat. This is believed to be a type of tapeworm, according to the supporters of the rumor. I HEARD THAT IF YOU TAKE A PORK CHOP PUT IT ON A PLATE AND POUR COCA COLA SODA ON IT AND WAIT 5 OR 10 MIN THAT LITTLE TINY WORMS WILL COME OUT Any comment yet on the idea that if you take a piece of pork, draw a circle around it and then pour coke over it, the pork will literally move on its own outside the outline — apparently this is due to the worms and microbes living inside of it (pig, of course, being swine that wallow in their own filth). This newer legend plays off misconceptions of pigs as filthy, garbage-eating animals whose meat is ordinarily contaminated by disease-bearing worms and Coca-Cola as a drink chock full of caustic, bad-for-you substances that will dissolve flesh and bone. Thus, even the hardy, nasty worms supposedly found in pork can’t withstand the onslaught of the corrosive chemicals allegedly present in Coke and will come crawling out of their comfy, edible homes to escape it. The less-than-fantastic reality is that pork products made from domestically-raised animals and sold on the consumer market are pretty reliably free of worms, and pouring Coca-Cola over a slab of raw pork won’t get you much other than perhaps a nicely marinated piece of meat. At great personal expense, we verified this conclusion by obtaining a pork chop from the local supermarket and marinating it in a can of Coca-Cola Classic, producing no discernable result other than a slightly soggy chop. (We didn’t try frying it up afterwards to see how the Coke affected its taste): However, when we tried the same experiment with a can of cheap, store-brand cola, the results were somewhat ambiguous: Sightings: In February 2007 a spoof video based on this legend made the rounds of the Internet:
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15200
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Of the 25 wealthiest nations, we're the only one that doesn't provide basic health coverage.
|
"Gecker said that ""of the 25 wealthiest nations, we’re the only one that doesn’t provide basic health coverage."" Gecker was referring to rich nations that provide coverage to all of their citizens. We can’t say definitively that the U.S. is the only one that doesn’t provide universal coverage, but evidence strongly points that way."
|
true
|
Health Care, Virginia, Dan Gecker,
|
"When it comes to health care, state Senate hopeful Dan Gecker says the U.S. is in a dubious league of its own. ""Of the 25 wealthiest nations, we’re the only one that doesn’t provide basic health coverage,"" Gecker, a Democrat who serves on the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors, said during an Aug. 18 candidates’ forum. Gecker is seeking the 10th District Senate seat that long has been held by Republican John Watkins, who is not seeking re-election. Also running is Glen Sturtevant, a Republican who serves on the Richmond School Board; Marleen Durfee, an independent who is a former Chesterfield supervisor; and Carl Loser, a Libertarian from Powhatan County. Gecker, in his comment, was referring to universal coverage, in which all citizens get national help in paying for health costs. We wondered if he was right about about the United States’ exceptional status among the wealthiest nations. Gecker pointed us to a report last year issued by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of 34 nations -- mostly with industrialized economies -- seeking to improve trade. The report says only two OECD countries -- the U.S. and Mexico -- do not offer universal care. A chart in the study shows that all of the other OECD nations provide coverage for more than 90 percent of their people.. The roster of OECD nations, however, does not translate to a list of the 25 wealthiest countries. Gecker also directed us to the World Bank’s ranking of the wealthiest nations based on each country’s gross domestic product divided by its population -- a figure called GDP per capita. About two-thirds of the nations on the World Bank’s 25-richest list belong to the OECD. We sought to compare that ranking with a list of all nations that provide universal health care. We found two organizations that try to keep tabs on nations that provide universal coverage. One is the New York State Department of Health, which compiled a 2011 list to give medical providers guidance on billing practices when they treat foreign patients. The other resource is a 2010 study by researchers in the United Kingdom and the U.S. examining universal health care around the world. Among high GDP-per-capita nations, universal care coverage is the norm. Only three of the 25 wealthiest -- the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Qatar -- weren’t listed as having universal health care. The embassy for Qatar told us that the country does provide universal health care. Saudi Arabia is listed as providing universal health care in a June 28, 2012, story from The Atlantic magazine. We reached out to the Saudi Arabian embassy several times to confirm that’s the case, but did not hear back. A 1998 study published in the Journal of Family Community Medicine says ""Saudi Arabian policy is to provide free, comprehensive and universal health care services to all citizens."" The final source Gecker cited is a 2012 op-ed by David de Ferranti, former vice president of the World Bank, and Julio Frenk, the former dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, about universal health care coverage. ""Except for the United States, the 25 wealthiest nations have some form of it (universal coverage),"" de Ferranti and Frenk wrote in their op-ed. We got a similar take from two other health care analysts we contacted. Andrea Feigl, a visiting scientist at Harvard who co-wrote the 2010 U.K.-U.S. report, told us in an email that ""The United States is still on its way towards UHC (Universal Health Coverage), and it is the last developed country to do so."" The World Health Organization said in a September 2014 report that the United States is ""currently the only high-income country without nearly universal health-care coverage."" Our ruling Gecker said that ""of the 25 wealthiest nations, we’re the only one that doesn’t provide basic health coverage."" Gecker was referring to rich nations that provide coverage to all of their citizens. We can’t say definitively that the U.S. is the only one that doesn’t provide universal coverage, but evidence strongly points that way."
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37651
|
Author Malcolm Gladwell said in a January 2020 speech that a statue of former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno should be restored.
|
Did Malcolm Gladwell Say Penn State Should Restore a Statue of Joe Paterno?
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true
|
Fact Checks, Viral Content
|
Author Malcolm Gladwell’s latest defense of deceased Penn State University football coach Joe Paterno drew attention on January 29 2020.During a speech at the campus in State College, Pennsylvania, Gladwell once again said that a statue of Paterno — who was fired in 2011 for failing to respond appropriately to an alleged sexual assault by a former subordinate nine years earlier — should be restored. The remark was reported by both the Penn State student newspaper, the Daily Collegian, and the Centre Daily Times. The two publications were billed as the hosts of the event.“That statue is in honor of someone’s integrity, skills as a football coach, and contributions to his community,” Gladwell said. “All of those three things are still intact. None of those things were called into question by the events surrounding the case, so I think the statue deserves to go back up.”In reality, a 2012 report conducted by former Louis Freeh, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, determined that the behavior of not only Paterno, but three other high-ranking university officials — president Graham B. Spanier, senior vice-president of finance and business Gary C. Shultz, and athletic director Timothy M. Curley — was questionable concerning the abuses committed by Paterno’s assistant coach Jerry Sandusky.“These men concealed Sandusky’s activities from the Board of Trustees, the University community and authorities,” the report stated:They exhibited a striking lack of empathy for Sandusky’s victims by failing to inquire as to their safety and well-being, especially by not attempting to determine the identity of [a] child who Sandusky assaulted in the Lasch Building in 2001.According to the report, it was reasonable to conclude that one reason Paterno and his fellow university leaders hid the facts related to Sandusky’s aggression against children was “in order to avoid the consequences of bad publicity.” Instead, the four men allowed Sandusky to retire from coaching in 1999 despite being under criminal investigation, a decision that granted him a “license to bring boys to campus facilities for ‘grooming’ as targets for his assaults.”The report also found that Sandusky continued to have unfettered access to university facilities until November 2011, when he was arrested in his home.“Despite their knowledge of [a] criminal investigation of Sandusky, Spanier, Schultz, Paterno and Curley took no action to limit Sandusky’s access to Penn State facilities or took any measures to protect children on their campuses,” it said.Both Paterno and Spanier were fired from the university on November 9 2011. Curley and Schultz later resigned from their own positions. Sandusky was convicted on 45 out of 48 counts of sexual abuse on June 22 2012 after being accused of abusing ten boys over a 15-year period. Exactly a month after Sandusky’s conviction, a statue of Paterno outside the school’s football stadium was removed.Gladwell reportedly devoted a chapter in his most recent book to defending Paterno, an argument he continued to revisit while promoting it in September 2019 podcast appearances.When asked if her news outlet endorsed Gladwell’s views on Paterno, Centre Daily Times executive editor Jessica McAllister said, “As the leading news outlet in the community, we aim to create events where our readers and featured speakers can exchange ideas and discuss issues that are important to the community.”We also contacted the Daily Collegian seeking comment.Update 01/30/2020, 3:35pm: We updated the story with a comment from Centre Daily Times executive editor Jessica McAllister.
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7483
|
South Dakota continues malaria drug trial despite FDA alert.
|
South Dakota health officials said Friday that they will continue to make a malaria drug widely available to treat COVID-19, even as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned against its use outside of hospital and research settings.
|
true
|
Sioux Falls, Drug trials, Malaria, Health, General News, South Dakota, Kristi Noem, Virus Outbreak, Clinical trials, Donald Trump
|
In an alert, regulators flagged reports of serious side effects and death among patient s taking hydroxychloroquine and the related drug chloroquine. Gov. Kristi Noem has pushed for doctors to be able to use hydroxychloroquine, creating a statewide clinical trial as well as making it available to COVID-19 patients if their doctor advises taking it. South Dakota received 1.2 million doses of the drug from the Strategic National Stockpile after President Donald Trump championed it as a potential treatment for COVID-19. Secretary of Health Kim Malsam-Rysdon said plans for the trial were moving forward and the drug would still be available to COVID-19 patients if their doctor advises it. The trial, which is planned by Sanford Health, would administer smaller doses of the drug to health care workers and people vulnerable to COVID-19 as a preventive measure. Participation in the trial is voluntary. Susan Hoover, an infectious disease physician at Sanford Health, said its physicians are aware of the potential of both hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, an antibiotic sometimes administered with the malaria medication, to disrupt heart rhythms. The are closely monitoring patients who receive the drugs. Noem has said that the state has enough of the medication to treat 100,000 patients. The state is also pitching in funding for the trial. The governor’s spokeswoman Maggie Seidel said that the final amount of funding from the state has not yet been determined and that it would come out of federal funding for addressing the coronavirus. South Dakota health officials reported one more death from COVID-19 on Friday as the total number of confirmed cases surpassed 2,000. Almost 90% of the confirmed cases were reported in Minnehaha and Lincoln counties, which both contain parts of the state’s largest city, Sioux Falls. Noem said on Friday she will extend an executive order for two more weeks, telling people in Minnehaha and Lincoln counties to stay home if they are vulnerable to COVID-19 as cases. A Smithfield pork processing plant was the epicenter of the outbreak in the city, with more than 1,000 cases tied to the plant. Sioux Falls Mayor Paul TenHaken said on Friday that he has no timeline for the plant’s reopening, according to the Argus Leader. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has toured the facility and created a list of recommendations for Smithfield to prevent another outbreak. ___ Associated Press writer Amy Forliti in Minneapolis, Minnesota, contributed to this report.
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8437
|
Taiwan says donating 2 million face masks to virus-hit Japan.
|
Taiwan will donate two million face masks to its former colonial master Japan, which has been hard hit by the outbreak of the new coronavirus, as part of the island’s efforts to show it can help the world combat the pandemic.
|
true
|
Health News
|
Despite being locked out of the World Health Organization (WHO) due to the objections of China, which considers the island merely a Chinese province, Taiwan has been keen to demonstrate it is a responsible member of the international community. Taiwan is in the process of donating 16 million masks to countries hardest hit by the virus, including the United States and Europe, under the slogan “Taiwan can help and Taiwan is helping”. Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday the two million masks for Japan would go to front line medical workers. “Taiwan and Japan share values and are close partners and important friends at all levels,” it said. Taiwan hopes to further strengthen cooperation with Japan, including in the research and development of vaccines and exchanges between medical experts, the ministry added. Japan, like most countries, has no official diplomatic ties with Taiwan, but the two have close unofficial relations. Japan ruled Taiwan between 1895 and 1945. Japan has seen an accelerating infection rate in recent weeks, particularly in Tokyo. The government has responded by declaring an emergency in Tokyo and six other areas including Osaka, and a goal to cut interactions between people by 70 percent. Japan, which tests only people with symptoms of the coronavirus, has so far recorded nearly 200 deaths and more than 9,000 infections, including passengers who caught the virus on a cruise ship.
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9718
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Merck's Keytruda extends survival in lung cancer study
|
The story reports on new findings from a clinical trial of the drug Keytruda. Specifically, the story says that patients with late-stage lung cancer whose tumors produce a protein called PD-L1 had increased overall survival when taking Keytruda rather than docetaxel, which is is a widely-used drug for treating lung cancer. The story offers little information on how significant the health benefits associated with Keytruda are, what it costs or what its potential harms are. The story claims that more data on the trial findings will be available soon — and, given the paucity of information here, one wonders at the decision not to wait for that additional data. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths for both men and women in the United States, claiming more than 157,000 lives in 2012 alone. Similarly, cancer treatment is big business. The story notes that cancer immunotherapies, such as Keytruda, are expected to bring in annual sales of $20 billion by 2020. But that may be a conservative estimate. One recent estimate from a market research firm set the annual revenue from cancer immunotherapies at more than $80 billion by 2020. Between the health impact and the economic impact, any advances in treatment that can improve health outcomes for patients battling lung cancer is clearly a big story. But rushing to tell the story before all — or even most — of the facts are in can be a dicey business. Doctors and patients are eagerly awaiting news on new therapies. It’s important to give all parties concerned a clear picture, rather than a rushed one.
|
false
|
Keytruda,Merck
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The story does not mention cost at all. Given that this is as much a business story as a health story, and that Keytruda has already been approved for use by regulators, this is a significant oversight. Previous news coverage of Keytruda in other news outlets says that Keytruda will cost $12,500 per month, and that median use of the drug is 6.2 months — or $77,500. If a patient takes it for a year, that comes to $150,000. That’s worth noting. It would also have been worth noting what the estimated costs of docetaxel are, for comparison purposes. The story notes that patients taking Keytruda had “longer overall survival compared with those taking docetaxel.” The story also notes that “Patients whose tumors had especially high levels of PD-L1 also went longer without a progression of disease than those taking docetaxel.” But the story doesn’t tell readers whether these measures improved by a day, a week, a month, or a year. This is likely because the source of the information — a news release from Merck, which produces Keytruda — doesn’t provide the information either. As the story notes, “More detailed data from the study will be provided soon, Merck said.” That forthcoming information is essential to understanding just how meaningful the Keytruda study’s findings are. Even if the story couldn’t wait for the forthcoming information, the story should have made clear that Merck is simply not telling anyone how much extra time Keytruda is buying people. When making decisions about health care treatment options, patients often consider three factors: cost, benefit, and quality of life (i.e., potential harms/side effects). Some patients may decide not to pursue treatment that may extend life for a short period of time if that treatment will also have a significant adverse effect on their quality of life. In short, discussion of potential harms is extremely important. The story notes only that “[s]afety of Keytruda was consistent with what had been seen in previous trials among lung cancer patients.” Given that potential side effects include hepatitis, hypothyroidism, and Type 1 diabetes mellitus, it would have been worth devoting an additional sentence or two to possible harms. The story describes the findings as coming from a “late-stage study” and describes the dosage that patients received. The Merck news release offers significantly more information. It was a randomized, phase 2/3 trial involving 1,034 patients. 550 of those patients received Keytruda (at either of two doses). But neither the story nor the release tells readers how long the trial lasted, whether there was any difference between the effects of the two doses of Keytruda, or how significant the difference was between Keytruda and docetaxel. No disease mongering here. The story does note that the Keytruda trial information came from Merck, which produces Keytruda. However, the story does not appear to include any input from independent sources. The story does make clear that Keytruda was being compared to docetaxel, so we’ll award a Satisfactory here. Again, however, it would have been very good to know how well Keytruda compared to docetaxel. Was the improvement in overall survival time, and in postponing progression for patients with high-expressing PD-L1 cancers, a meaningful one? Even if Merck declined to provide that information, the story could say that. Are they still crunching the numbers? Or the story could have included input from independent experts on what a “meaningful” improvement might look like; reasons to be optimistic; reasons to be cautious. The story notes that Keytruda has been approved for use in treating lung cancer. The story does explain, in broad terms, the novel way in which Keytruda and a competing cancer immunotherapy drug, work. The story also talks about the expected economic impact of cancer immunotherapies broadly. So we’ll give the benefit of the doubt on the rating. However, it’s not clear how many cancer immunotherapy drugs are on the market — just these two? A dozen? More? The story also doesn’t tell readers how many of these drugs are approved for use against lung cancer. Is it just Keytruda? While the story does offer some additional background information, it appears to draw almost exclusively from Merck’s news release.
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31139
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Actor Kirk Cameron has contracted an extremely rare form of leprosy.
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If Cameron, who is best known for playing Mike Seaver on the show “Growing Pains”, was truly diagnosed with a rare form of leprosy, legitimate news outlets would certainly report on it. However, the only mention of this alleged diagnosis comes from a well-known purveyor of fake news.
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false
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Fauxtography, fake news, kirk cameron, leprosy
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On 26 July 2017, TheLastLineOfDefense.com published a shocking article about an unexpected diagnosis for former child actor Kirk Cameron: Actor, musician, director and devoted follower of Christ, Kirk Cameron, has been stricken with an extremely rare form of what can only be described as a biblical disease. Cameron has a mutated form of leprosy that is so rare, less than one in 600 million people will ever encounter someone who has it. The strain, leprosis metapupalis carnivore’, essentially turns its victim into a walking pile of dead skin, rotting flesh, and festering organs while keeping the brain functioning at primal levels and the heart pumping just enough to send diseased blood to the marrow and muscles to allow the person to be mobile. This is not a genuine news item. TheLastLineOfDefense.com is an entertainment web site that does not publish factual stories, and carries multiple disclaimers labeling its content as fiction: In a cynical world where the news of the day often seems fake, The Last Line of Defense offers today’s busy conservative a place to go to read things they’ll enjoy and congregate with a bunch of people they agree with. So while everything on this site is a satirical work of fiction, we are proud to present it to those who will have called it real anyway. DISCLAIMER: America’s Last Line of Defense is a satirical publication that may sometimes appear to be telling the truth. We assure you that’s not the case. We present fiction as fact and our sources don’t actually exist. Names that represent actual people and places are purely coincidental and all images should be considered altered and do not in any way depict reality. In other words, if you believe this crap you’re a real dumbass.
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3734
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South Korea reports 1st possible case of viral pneumonia.
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South Korea has put a 36-year-old Chinese woman under isolated treatment amid concerns that she brought back a form of viral pneumonia that has sickened dozens in mainland China and Hong Kong in recent weeks.
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true
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Seoul, Health, Hong Kong, General News, Wuhan, Pneumonia, China, South Korea, Asia Pacific
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The Korea Centers of Disease Control and Prevention said Wednesday that the woman, who was diagnosed with pneumonia on Tuesday following two business trips to China last month, represented the country’s first possible case of the respiratory illness whose cause remains unknown. The unidentified woman, who works for a South Korean company near capital Seoul, has experienced cough and fever since returning from a five-day trip to the Chinese city of Xiamen on Dec. 30, the KCDC said in a press release. She had also visited Wuhan, the mainland Chinese city where the outbreak originated, for five days in mid-December. She told South Korean doctors she made no contact with animals while she was there and didn’t visit a seafood market in Wuhan’s suburbs where most of the cases have been traced to. The KCDC said the woman was in relatively good condition and undergoing tests at a hospital south of Seoul to confirm whether she has the same illness as the Wuhan patients. South Korean officials have tightened monitoring of people entering from China and advised travelers to avoid contact with animals and take extra care in personal hygiene. The disease — an unidentified form of viral pneumonia — has sent 59 people to the hospital in Wuhan in central Hubei province. As of Sunday, seven were in critical condition, while the rest were stable. In Hong Kong, a total of 15 patients were being treated Sunday for symptoms including fever and respiratory infection after recent visits to Wuhan. It is not clear whether they have the same illness as the Wuhan patients.
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10871
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Study: Advanced Cancer Patients Receiving Early Palliative Care Lived Longer
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This post from the Wall Street Journal Health Blog got it right on the big picture but missed some smaller points that might have been addressed in a longer piece. Kudos to the WSJ for doing the best job of reporting on the limitations of this study. A bit more detail on costs and availability would have rounded out the picture for readers. Why is it important to discuss the limitations of a study–even a very good study? Because experience has shown us time and again that any single study can be flawed in ways that may not be fully appreciated at the time of publication. It is the weight of the accumulated evidence — not the findings of any one study — which is important to consider when making decisions about health care.
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true
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"This issue is alluded to obliquely in the quote that ends the article, which suggests that palliative care may help address ""critical concerns regarding the use of health care services at the end of life."" This is not specific enough to satisfy the criterion. This story adequately quantifies the survival benefit and at least mentions the improvements in quality of life and depression scores. It also provides some reasonable explanations as to why palliative care may be beneficial when administered early. Although we wish it had been more precise in its characterization of the depression and quality of life benefits (how big was the improvement? on which specific symptoms? ), we feel there’s enough here for a satisfactory. As with the competing coverage, we’ll rule this one not applicable since the harms of palliative care are thought to be minimal. An excellent overview of the study’s methods and outcomes. And we were particularly impressed that the WSJ delved into limitations of the research, which few other outlets attempted to tackle in any detail. This is important, in our view, because even the most well conducted studies have limitations which may cause them to produce incomplete or ""wrong"" answers to important research questions. In this case, as the WSJ points out, the study was conducted at one of the top institutions in the country under conditions which may not be repeatable elsewhere. In addition, the patients receiving palliative treatment also received more general attention from caregivers, which can have a beneficial effect. It may be that more attention in general — rather than the specific palliative support offered in the study — is the key to making patients feel better and live longer with advanced cancer. No disease-mongering of cancer here. Although it didn’t include the breadth of perspectives included in some of the other stories about this study, this story did include an interview with an expert not affiliated with the study–enough for a satisfactory. Since this source is the past president of American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine– a professional group that obviously supports increased awareness and use of palliative care–we wish it had also included a comment from someone without these industry ties. As noted in the competing reviews, the point of the study was to compare early palliative care with existing standard cancer treatment. We wish, however, that the story had spent more time discussing what standard oncology care (the current ""existing alternative"") entails. As other stories covering the study pointed out, access to palliative care is limited by complicated reimbursement and lack of skilled providers in some areas. The WSJ didn’t mention these barriers. This story doesn’t do a good enough job explaining what’s newsworthy about the research. Palliative care is widely viewed as synonymous with hospice care provided in the last days of life. But this study suggests that it can be initiated early after diagnosis to improve outcomes — something that hasn’t been demonstrated previously in a rigorously conducted trial. This important distinction isn’t explicitly discussed. Since the story includes an interview with an expert not affiliated with the study, we can be sure that it didn’t rely solely on a news release."
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33215
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry hide a close familial connection to an Iranian official with whom he negotiated a nuclear deal.
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Finally, the unsourced statement that “Secretary Kerry and Zarif first met over a decade ago at a dinner party hosted by George Soros at his Manhattan penthouse. What a surprise.” is (even if true) little more than out-of-context innuendo intended to suggest some kind of close pre-negotiation friendship between the two figures without providing any actual evidence of it. Both men have an extensive history of political and diplomatic service to their countries over the last thirty years: Mohammad Javad Zarif lived in and was educated (up to the PhD level) in the United States, served as a member of the Iranian delegation to the United Nations (a position in which he met with a number of Washington politicians), has been a headline speaker at foreign policy conferences in the U.S. (attended by prominent Washington politicians), and has been Iran’s minister of foreign affairs since 2013, while John Kerry served several terms in the U.S. Senate, was the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, chaired the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee, and has been U.S. Secretary of State since 2013. It’s hardly a “surprise” to anyone the least bit familiar with the political world that two men who have long held high positions in their countries’ national governments and been closely involved with foreign affairs might have crossed paths at some point prior to their first negotiation as their countries’ official representatives.
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false
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Politics, allen b. west, conservative tribune, iran nuclear talks
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On 28 July 2015, the web site of Allen B. West, a former one-term congressman and conservative pundit, published an article asserting that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had hidden a close familial connection to an Iranian official with whom he had negotiated a nuclear deal. According to that article (“You will NOT BELIEVE who was best man at John Kerry’s daughter’s wedding”), John Kerry concealed the information that his son-in-law was Iranian during the U.S. Senate confirmation hearing for his position as secretary of state. Moreover, throughout the negotiations over a deal limiting Iran’s development of nuclear weapons, Kerry hid the fact that he was buddy-buddy with Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister whom he negotiated the nuclear deal — so much so that the best man at the wedding of Kerry’s daughter was Zarif’s son: You not might be aware that in 2009, the daughter of Secretary of State John Kerry, Dr. Vanessa Bradford Kerry, John Kerry’s younger daughter by his first wife, married an Iranian-American physician named Dr. Brian (Behrooz) Vala Nahed. Of course you’re not aware of it. Brian (Behrooz) Nahed is son of Nooshin and Reza Vala Nahid of Los Angeles. Brian’s Persian birth name is “Behrooz Vala Nahid” but it is now shortened and Americanized in the media to “Brian Nahed.” At the time his engagement to Bradford Kerry, there was rarely any mention of Nahed’s Persian/Iranian ancestry, and even the official wedding announcement in the October 2009 issue of New York Times carefully avoids any reference to Dr. Nahed (Nahid)’s birthplace (which is uncommon in wedding announcements) and starts his biography from his college years. Gosh, I wonder why?? Gee, do you think Secretary Kerry should have recused himself from the negotiations with Iran at the very outset because of his long-standing relationship to his Iranian counter-part, Mohammad Javad Zarif? Let me explain. Zarif is the current minister of foreign affairs in the Rouhani administration and has held various significant diplomatic and cabinet posts since the 1990s. He was Kerry’s chief counterpart in the nuclear deal negotiations. Secretary Kerry and Zarif first met over a decade ago at a dinner party hosted by George Soros at his Manhattan penthouse. What a surprise. I have to say, connecting the dots gets more and more frightening. But it gets even worse. Guess who was the best man at the 2009 wedding between Kerry’s daughter Vanessa and Behrouz Vala Nahed? Javad Zarif’s son. Does this bother anyone at all? Apparently Kerry only revealed his daughter’s marriage to an Iranian-American once he had taken over as Secretary of State. But the subject never came up in his Senate confirmation hearing, either because Kerry never disclosed it, or because his former colleagues were “too polite” to bring it up. As Front Page Magazine pointed out several months ago, the nuclear talks with Iran were a tragic farce, choreographed and orchestrated by Iran. And unfortunately, we’re going to have to live with the consequences. At least, I hope we live. All of this information was wrong. Vanessa Bradford Kerry, John Kerry’s daughter from his previous marriage to writer Julia Stimson Thorne (from whom he was divorced in 1988), married Brian Vala Nahed on 10 October 2009. Brian Nahed is not Iranian: he is an American-born U.S. citizen who attended school at UCLA and Yale and is currently a neurosurgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital (where his wife is also a physician specializing in critical care). All of this information has been plainly available for years in his official workplace biography on the Massachusetts General Hospital web site: Dr. Brian Nahed is a neurosurgeon who specializes in brain tumors (glioblastoma, gliomas [low grade and high grade], metastatic brain tumors, and meningiomas) as well as Spinal Disorders. Dr. Nahed’s clinic interest are in tumors of the eloquent cortex requiring awake surgery, language and motor mapping, and subcortical stimulation. Born in New York, Dr. Nahed attended UCLA where he majored in Neuroscience, graduating Phi Beta Kappa and with the department’s Highest Honors. He attended the Yale School of Medicine where he was awarded the Doris Duke Clinical Research Fellowship and graduated with honors. Dr. Nahed completed his internship and neurosurgery residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital; where Dr. Nahed also completed a postdoctoral fellowship with Drs. Daniel Haber and Shyamala Maheswaran in the MGH Cancer Center. Brian Nahed is not Iranian: he was not born in Iran, he has never held Iranian citizenship, he has never worked or lived in Iran, and he has never even been to Iran. He’s a natural-born U.S. citizen from New York who has lived, attended school, and worked in the United States his whole life. More important, he is not close friends with either Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif or Zarif’s son: he doesn’t know either of them, and Zarif’s son was not the best man at his wedding (nor, as some accounts report, was Zarif’s son his college roommate). Vanessa Kerry herself verified to us that Zarif’s son was not at her wedding: Persian Shrug http://t.co/BtnKMzXM27 via @po_st Happy 2 verify. No wedding party when we married. No Zarif’s son. Sorry 2 disappoint. — Vanessa Kerry (@VBKerry) August 2, 2015 The small piece of information here that is true is that Brian Nahed’s parents were themselves born in Iran. However, they permanently left that country to immigrate to the U.S. forty years ago, well before the Iranian Revolution of 1979, and now live in Los Angeles (where Brian’s father also works as a physician). As for the rest of the “facts” presented in the Westian article, they were nothing more than a collection of supposition and innuendo, such as the claim that John Kerry “only revealed his daughter’s marriage to an Iranian-American once he had taken over as Secretary of State” in 2013. By the article’s own admission, that marriage had been very publicly covered in wedding announcement published by the New York Times in 2009, one which used the full “Persianized” versions of Brian’s parents’ names — something hardly suggestive of the notion that the media were conspiring to cover up revelation of their ancestry: The bride, who is a stepdaughter of Teresa Heinz Kerry and Richard J. Charlesworth, and the bridegroom, a son of Nooshin P. Nahed and Dr. Reza M. Nahed of Los Angeles, were married Saturday evening at Brandegee House, a Tuscan-style villa in Boston. The Right Rev. M. Thomas Shaw, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, officiated. Dr. Kerry and Dr. Nahed, both 32, are residents at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She is in her third year of a residency in internal medicine; he is in his fifth year of a residency in neurological surgery. More absurdly, the article’s statement that “even the official [New York Times] wedding announcement carefully avoids any reference to Dr. Nahed (Nahid)’s birthplace (which is uncommon in wedding announcements) and starts his biography from his college years” was deliberately misleading and specious, as that wedding announcement also made no mention of the bride’s birthplace and started her biography from her college years (which is in fact quite common in wedding announcements, especially those of people who have achieved significant accomplishments in adulthood). And it makes no logical sense whatsoever that anyone attempting to hide Brian Nahed’s familial connection to Iran would “carefully avoid any reference” to his “foreign” birthplace of New York.
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33355
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An unusually high percentage of the child actors who starred in the Our Gang film series have met tragic, premature ends.
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Although these percentages may be higher than one would expect to find among the general population, they’re not at all out of line with reasonable expectations given the extremely small sample size (29) used here. One man’s “curse” is another man’s normal cross-section of society.
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false
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Entertainment, curse, Movies, our gang
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Classifying this entry about a purported Our Gang curse as “True” or “False” is a bit problematic: Although the facts stated in the example above are mostly true, we’ve listed this item as false because the implied significance of these facts — that they represent an unusually high pattern of tragic deaths amongst a selected group — is not supported by the evidence: Example: [Collected via e-mail, 2005] Gee, rough neighborhood! Remember Our Gang? What ever happened to those people? Well, here it is………..sad……….. THE OUR GANG CURSE… Alfalfa — Carl Switzer was shot to death at age 31. Chubby — 300-pound Norman Chaney died at age 22 following an operation. Buckwheat — William Thomas died at age 49 of a heart attack. Darla Hood — The Our Gang leading lady contracted hepatitis and died at age 47. Brisbane — Kendall McCormas, known as Breezy Brisbane, committed suicide at age 64. Froggy — William Robert Laughline was killed in a motor scooter accident at age 16. Mickey Daniels — He died of liver disease at 55. Stymie — Mathew Bear led a life of crime and drugs. He died of a stroke at age 56. Scotty Beckett — He died at age 38 following a brutal beating. Wheezer — Robert Hutchins was killed in an airplane accident at age 19. Pete the Pup — He was poisoned by an unknown assailant. and Spanky…….Robert Blake is accused of murdering his wife (recently acquitted) In general, most “curse” lists which supposedly document remarkably high levels of premature deaths and other tragedies of life within a group of people connected by some common bond should be taken as nothing more than frivolous entertainment because they are constructed through a number of misleading means: To amplify on that last point, we’d explain it this way: If one were to choose any group of thirty or so people born in the U.S. in the 1920s and 1930s and follow them through the course of their lives, it wouldn’t be the least bit unusual to find that several of those people died well short of the average life expectancies of their times due to disease, accident, homicide, or suicide. People get sick, die in accidents, and kill each other (or themselves) all the time — these are the facts of life, sad as they are. Such deaths may be tragedies, but they’re hardly outside the pale of ordinary human experience. Before we launch into specifics, let’s briefly run down the lives of the 29 child actors who were regulars (i.e., appeared in fifteen or more installments) of the 221 Our Gang comedies (also known as The Little Rascals) produced between 1922 and 1944. This information was compiled from Leonard Maltin’s book (The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang), the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), and various news accounts: Frankly, the first thing that seems evident from this list is that the Our Gang bunch has been, on average, remarkably long-lived (especially considering that many of the men served in the military during World War II). Prior to a detailed analysis of their longevity, however, we should first dispose of a couple of names that don’t belong on this list: So, what do we find? Analyzing the information about the 28 Our Gang child stars described above, we calculate the following: On the “tragic” side, we find that:
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28279
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The FBI discovered a terrorist compound in Alabama, as reported in May 2019.
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"What's true: The FBI discovered a property near Tuskegee, AL, that is closely linked to a group of people, mostly U.S. citizens, charged with serious terrorism offenses stemming from the discovery of another compound in New Mexico. According to the FBI, the Alabama property contained a ""military-style obstacle course."" What's undetermined: Notwithstanding the allegations by federal prosecutors of an overarching, religiously inspired terrorist plot among the group, each of the defendants has pleaded not guilty to all the charges against them, and therefore the nature and purpose of their compounds cannot yet be stated definitively."
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mixture
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Politics
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In May 2019, several news websites — most of them right-leaning — reported that federal agents had discovered a “terror compound” or “terror training camp” in Macon County, Alabama, and that the property was owned by Siraj Wahaaj, a man who was charged with terrorism offenses after a high-profile raid on a New Mexico compound in August 2018. Those articles, by the Daily Caller and Jihad Watch among others, were largely based on a 7 May report published by the Sinclair Broadcast Group which carried the headline “FBI Uncovers Homegrown Terror Training Camp in Alabama” and went on to say: This plot of land in Macon County, Alabama is described in an FBI search warrant as a ‘makeshift military-style obstacle course’ belonging to a small group of terrorists led by Siraj Wahhaj who owned the property up a long dirt road but just a few miles from downtown Tuskegee. The property [is] similar to another compound in New Mexico the group is now linked to where federal prosecutors say Wahhaj and four other suspects were training children to carry out deadly terror attacks on American soil. Earlier in May 2019, the Sinclair-affiliated Mobile, Ala., television station WPMI broadcast their own investigation into the property, which can be viewed below: Snopes has obtained federal court filings and Alabama property records that thoroughly corroborate the reporting of Sinclair Broadcast Group and WPMI. The FBI has indeed discovered and raided property in Alabama that appears to be owned by Wahhaj, who has been charged with terrorism and firearms offenses. Court filings related to the Alabama property are heavily redacted and do not actually include Wahhaj’s name. But an FBI task force agent’s description of the Alabama investigation so closely matches unique details of the allegations against Wahhaj already made public as part of his terrorism and firearms trial that Snopes is satisfied that the link is certain, as was originally reported by WPMI and Sinclair Broadcast Group. (Note: This article refers repeatedly to Siraj Wahhaj, a man aged in his early 40s. He should not be confused with his father, the prominent Brooklyn, New York, imam of the same name.) In September 2018, an FBI task force agent obtained a warrant from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama to search multiple electronic devices and other items seized from a property in Alabama. (News reports about the search warrant and the Alabama property did not emerge until the spring of 2019 because the court only unsealed the warrant documents on 5 April 2019.) The purpose of the search, the agent wrote in an affidavit, would be to seize evidence related to an ongoing kidnapping investigation. That affidavit outlined the background to the investigation and included details that clearly showed a link to a broader investigation into the macabre, tragic circumstances surrounding the death of Wahhaj’s 3-year-old son Abdul-Ghani, whose remains were discovered at a compound in New Mexico in August 2018 and prompted widespread media coverage at that time. Several individuals, including Wahhaj’s girlfriend and two of his sisters, were charged with kidnapping the boy and bringing him to what prosecutors have described as a “training compound” in Amalia, New Mexico, where they allegedly engaged in firearms and tactical training and plotted terrorist attacks on police, federal agents and military personnel as part of their preparation for a religiously inspired “end of days” scenario. The background was outlined in a criminal complaint against Wahhaj, his girlfriend, Jany Leveille, his sisters Hujrah and Subhanah, and Subhanah’s husband, Lucas Morton: John Doe 1 [Abdul-Ghani] was the biological child of Siraj Ibn Wahhaj (Ibn) and his wife by lawful marriage, Jane Doe …[Abdul-Ghani] was born with Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (HIE). As a result of this condition, [Abdul-Ghani] was developmentally delayed, and he walked with a limp and had frequent seizures … Ibn is involved in a relationship with Jany Leveille (Jany)… Jany has six children, including John Doe 2 and John Doe 3 … According to a witness statement, Jany became pregnant at the same time that Jane Doe became pregnant with [Abdul-Ghani]. Jany’s pregnancy soon failed. In or about December 2017, in Georgia, Jany formed the belief that Jane Doe became pregnant only by engaging in “black magic” that resulted in Jany’s baby being transferred from Jany into Jane Doe’s womb. Jany understood Jane Doe to be barren and thus claimed that [Abdul-Ghani] was her child. According to a statement by [Jany’s son], Jany believed she received messages and directions from God … According to a witness statement, in or about November and December 2017, before Jany and the others left Georgia for New Mexico, Jany directed Ibn to take [Abdul-Ghani] and bring him to her … According to witness [Jany’s son], Jany together with her children and Ibn took [Abdul-Ghani] in her vehicle and drove from Georgia to New Mexico in December 2017. According to [Jany’s son], Jany explained that she wanted to take [Abdul-Ghani] to New Mexico to perform an exorcism on him, to cast the demons from his body, after which he would come to life as Isa (an Islamic term for Jesus Christ). Jany explained that Isa would then instruct [Jany’s son] and the others on what corrupt institutions they needed to get rid of. [Jany’s son] explained that those institutions were teachers, military, law enforcement, and financial institutions. The following is how the FBI task force agent outlined the background to the investigation into the Alabama property in an affidavit in support of the search warrant. Redactions are signified by “(R).” We are publishing these excerpts in order to clearly demonstrate that the search of the property in Alabama was without doubt linked to the same set of circumstances that surrounded the death of Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj in New Mexico. In several instances, whole passages are identical, word-for-word, to passages contained in the criminal complaint against Siraj Wahhaj, Leveille and the other defendants: (R) is the biological child of (R) and his wife by lawful marriage, (R) … (R) was born with (R). As a result of this condition, (R) was developmentally delayed … (R) required heightened care and also required medication to (R)… According to a statement by (R) to the FBI during an interview conducted on (R) became pregnant at the same time that (R) became pregnant with (R). (R) pregnancy soon failed. In or about (R) in Georgia, (R) formed the belief that (R) became pregnant only by engaging in “black magic” that resulted in (R) baby being transferred to (R) womb. (R) understood (R) to be barren. (R) thus believed (R) to be her child… According to (R) explained that she wanted to take (R) to (R) to perform an exorcism on him, to cast the demons from his body, after which he would come to life as Isa (Jesus Christ). (R) explained that Isa would then instruct (R) and the others on what corrupt institutions they needed to “get rid of.” According to entries in Leveille’s journal, as well as an interview one of her sons conducted with the FBI, Abdul-Ghani died on or around 24 December 2017 after one of several attempted “exorcisms” in which Siraj Wahhaj — reportedly at the instruction of Leveille — recited the Quran over his young son. Leveille’s son reportedly told the FBI that during the final ritual, the boy’s heart stopped and he died. The New Mexico compound was raided and the adults there arrested in August 2018. Prosecutors in New Mexico have charged Siraj, Subhanah and Hujrah Wahhaj, as well as Jany Leveille and Lucas Morton, with multiple felonies, including providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to murder an officer or employee of the United States, along with immigration and firearms violations connected to Haitian national Leveille’s status as an unlawful resident of the U.S. All five defendants, except for Siraj Wahhaj, have also been charged with the kidnapping of Abdul-Ghani and have pleaded not guilty to all charges against them. Their trial is scheduled to begin in April 2020. According to Macon County Revenue Commission records, Siraj Wahhaj has since 2014 owned two acres of agricultural property at the intersection of County Road 81 and U.S. Route 80, 4 1/2 miles southwest of downtown Tuskegee, Ala. The specific location and county of the property at the center of the FBI’s searches in Alabama in September 2018 have been redacted from the federal court documents in question, with only the state in which the search took place left unredacted. However, it is very likely that the property searched by agents in 2018 is the same one owned by Wahhaj in Macon County. (Even if it is not, the search warrant documents explicitly state that the camp was located in Alabama, as reported by WPMI and Sinclair Broadcast Group, meaning this element of the claim is accurate even if the property is not owned by Wahhaj). We searched property records from throughout Alabama and found that Wahhaj’s land in Macon County was the only property in the state owned by any of the five indicted adults associated with this case. Furthermore, the search warrant documents specify that the land in question is two acres in size, just like Wahhaj’s Macon County property. The first time the Alabama property is mentioned in the search warrant affidavit is after a paragraph about a car crash involving an Explorer which took place in Alabama: “After the traffic accident, the F.B.I. began looking into (R) connections to Alabama and learned that he owns two acres of land in (R).” We know from the criminal complaint against Wahhaj and the others that in December 2017, while the group headed from Georgia to New Mexico, Wahhaj crashed a silver 2004 Ford Explorer in Alabama which was registered to Leveille. Finally, thanks to the work of WPMI in Mobile, we know that the physical features and appearance of Wahhaj’s land just outside Tuskegee very closely match the description of it contained in the FBI agent’s search warrant affidavit, which was as follows: “… F.B.I. Mobile conducted an aerial surveillance of (R) property … and observed a small shed-like structure built out of wooden pallets covered with clear plastic tarps. Surrounding the structure were hundreds of tires built like a barrier to fortify the building.” After the raid on the compound in New Mexico in August 2018, the FBI compared footage of their aerial surveillance on the property in Alabama with the structure and features of the compound in New Mexico: “… The structures are both designed the same. They are both surrounded with hundreds of vehicle tires, assorted trash, and both structures have wooden pallets with clear plastic tarps draped over them.” The video below shows what WPMI discovered when reporters examined Wahhaj’s Macon County property, both via a ground inspection and their own aerial surveillance. The similarities to the property described in the FBI search warrant affidavit are unmistakable. We have established that the FBI’s search of a property in Alabama was connected to Siraj Wahhaj and his family and the circumstances surrounding the death and discovery of his son Abdul-Ghani in New Mexico in August 2018. We have also established that the property the FBI searched is highly likely to have been the same one that Wahhaj owns in Macon County, Ala., as originally reported by WPMI and the Sinclair Broadcast Group. The only remaining question is whether the property the FBI searched in Alabama was being used for “terrorist training” or related activities. On this, the evidence is more mixed. Wahhaj, Leveille and the three other suspects in this sprawling case have been charged with serious terrorism offenses. Federal prosecutors in New Mexico allege that they conspired to “provide material support and resources, including currency, training, weapons, and personnel, knowing and intending that they were to be used in preparation for and in carrying out attacks to kill officers and employees of the United States.” As part of this plot, the government alleges, the group “maintained a training compound to prepare for attacks on government, military and other institutions.” At that compound, according to the indictment against them, Wahhaj and the others built a firing range and engaged in firearms and tactical training, in furtherance of their terrorist plans. Those plans were inspired by apocalyptic Muslim beliefs, according to prosecutors, who claim that Wahhaj and his girlfriend also instructed and encouraged others to “prepare to be engaged in jihad, to die as martyrs, and to engage in violent acts, including killing [F.B.I.] employees, government officials, and military personnel.” Notably, the indictment against the five defendants states that they engaged in these activities in New Mexico “and elsewhere,” suggesting that their plotting began long before they first arrived in New Mexico. According to the criminal complaint against the five, investigators discovered at the New Mexico compound: five pistols, three rifles, two revolvers, a shotgun, high-capacity magazines, a bullet-proof vest and “a large quantity of ammunition.” At least five of those weapons, the document alleges, were in the Ford Explorer when it crashed in Alabama in December 2017. The search warrant affidavit relating to the Alabama property describes it as featuring “a makeshift military-style obstacle course built behind the shelter that consisted of five-gallon buckets with chain link fencing over the top. The course resembled an obstacle [course] similar to what the military uses to low crawl under.” The alleged presence of a “military-style obstacle course” at the Alabama property, combined with the alleged overarching terrorist plans of the group, would make it quite plausible that the Alabama property was used for training and tactical exercises as part of a larger terrorist plot, which is the core of the claim made by various media outlets in describing the Alabama property as a “terror training camp” or “terror compound.” However, it has to be borne in mind that the five defendants have, as of May 2019, only been charged with terrorist offenses, to which they have all pleaded not guilty. The existence of a larger terrorist plot among the group has yet to be adjudicated in court, along with the evidence the FBI and other law enforcement agencies have gathered. As such, the nature and purpose of the Alabama property cannot yet be stated with certainty.
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4094
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Appeals court hears Johns Hopkins black lung lawsuit.
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A federal appeals court heard arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit filed by the families of coal miners who were denied benefits for black lung disease after a Johns Hopkins doctor insisted their X-rays did not show the disease.
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true
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Health, Lawsuits, Lung disease, Courts, U.S. News, U.S. News
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A federal judge in Maryland dismissed the lawsuit in 2017, finding that Dr. Paul Wheeler had immunity as an expert witness for coal companies under Maryland and federal law. During arguments before a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday, the families’ lawyer, Jonathan Nace, said Wheeler and the Johns Hopkins black lung unit “believed they were above the law” when Wheeler disregarded federal regulations on how to interpret X-rays to diagnose black lung disease. “Now they are asking the court to confirm that for them,” Nace said. Nace said Wheeler failed to follow the regulations outlined in the Black Lung Benefits Act for years, causing two West Virginia coal miners — Michael Day and Junior McCoy Barr — to lose significant amounts of money in compensation. Both men later died of black lung disease. James Mathias, arguing on behalf of Johns Hopkins and Wheeler, said the case “begins and ends” with witness immunity, which shields witnesses from later civil liability. Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III said exposing expert witnesses to liability could have a chilling effect. “You need the privilege ... to get people to testify,” Wilkinson said. The three-judge panel did not indicate when it would issue its ruling. The proposed class-action lawsuit filed by the families of Day and Barr cited a 2013 investigation by the Center for Public Integrity and ABC News reporting that Wheeler did not apply the required guidelines for evaluating X-rays of patients to determine if they had black lung disease. The series, which won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting, found that in at least 280 cases in which Wheeler convinced an administrative law judge to deny benefits, autopsies later showed the miners had the disease and were entitled to benefits. After the report was published, Johns Hopkins suspended and later discontinued its black lung program headed by Wheeler, who retired. A spokeswoman declined to comment on the lawsuit, but released a statement saying Johns Hopkins “took swift action when we learned of potential issues with the program.” “We extend our deepest sympathies to those who have lost loved ones to this horrible disease, and we commend all efforts to ensure the Black Lung Benefits claims process is fair and just for all parties involved,” the statement said.
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20737
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For the first time in 13 years, our dependence on foreign oil is below 50 percent.
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Barack Obama campaign says U.S. dependence on foreign oil now below 50 percent
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mixture
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Ohio, Energy, Ethics, Message Machine 2012, Barack Obama,
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"Good news, America: The country is no longer importing the majority of oil it needs. You might have heard about this from a television commercial sponsored by President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, the first commercial the president’s team has run in the 2012 race. Obama for America launched the ad Jan. 18 in Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Virginia, Wisconsin and North Carolina. ""For the first time in 13 years, our dependence on foreign oil is below 50 percent,"" the announcer says on the ad. Obama repeated the claim Jan. 24 in his State of the Union address, too. In the ad, the Obama team listed its source right on the screen: The U.S. Energy Information Administration, in a report dated May 25, 2011. Since the ad was placed in Ohio and we have to fill our gas tanks like nearly everyone else, PolitiFact Ohio decided to check the facts. About the ad: It wasn’t only about oil. It also touched on ""secretive oil billionaires attacking President Obama"" -- a reference to ads placed by an outside group, Americans for Prosperity, backed by billionaires David and Charles Koch. The Obama reelection ad also mentioned Obama’s ""unprecedented record on ethics,"" and this country’s expanding clean-energy industry. Other fact-checkers have weighed in on some of these already, with FactCheck.org noting that some of the 2.7 million jobs in the clean-energy sector (a boast on the screen) were gained long before Obama took office, although his policies have added to the gains. The president’s commercial cited PolitiFact as its source for saying that Obama ""kept his promise to strengthen ethics rules,"" but the ad failed to mention that PolitiFact later gave a ""Promise Broken"" rating to a related ethics promise, concerning lobbying and the revolving door for former government officials. But what about the oil? The Obama campaign is correct that U.S. oil dependence is below 50 percent. According to his own source, the energy administration, it was 49.3 percent in 2010. That’s down from a high of 60.3 percent in 2005. There are several ways to measure foreign oil dependency, the agency adds, and some of the other measures also show a decline but still have U.S. dependence above 50 percent. But we are writing for the general public, not petroleum engineers and economists, and the energy agency itself, staffed by professional analysts, not politicians, certainly includes the broadest measure (net crude and oil product imports as a share of U.S. total demand). Yet this decline in dependence has occurred since 2005. Team Obama is correct in saying dependence only recently -- in 2010 -- fell below 50 percent, but the commercial suggests that the current president deserves credit. The problem with that is apparent when looking at the year--to-year drop, because it mirrors the recession, with the biggest annual decline in 2009. Yes, Obama was president then, serving in his first year. But we’ll let his own source, the energy agency, speak to this. As it says in the very report cited in the commercial: ""This decline partly reflects the downturn in the underlying economy after the financial crisis of 2008. Not surprisingly, demand has bounced back somewhat from a low of 18.8 million barrels per day in 2009, when the U.S. economy bottomed out. But the downward trend in consumption started two years before the 2008 crisis and reflects factors such as changes in efficiency and consumer behavior as well as patterns of economic growth."" These other factors include increases in domestic biofuels production, natural gas liquids and refinery gains, as well as growth in ethanol production that helped displace traditional hydrocarbon fuels and reduced the need for petroleum imports. And then there were ""strong gains in the deep-water Gulf of Mexico and the Bakken formation,"" ending decades of contraction in domestic oil production. In fact, domestic crude oil production is expected to grow by more than 20 percent in the next decade, according to the energy administration’s latest annual outlook, that was released Jan. 23. Domestic crude oil production should reach a level in 2020 not seen since 1994, the report says. But as PolitiFact has reported before, deep-water production comes after years of exploration and preparation. It does not happen over night and gains made during Obama’s term so far have roots in previous administrations and economic difficulties that have had factories and households paring back. So does that mean Obama deserves no credit at all? Well, no. The energy agency says it expects moderating trends in import reliance to continue even as the economy improves and consumption rises. Energy efficiency, ""driven in part by tighter fuel economy standards, will prove increasingly important,"" the report says. And Obama has, in fact, promoted fuel efficiency, alternative fuels and even offshore drilling, though not as broadly as the energy industry would like. In its new annual report, issued Jan. 23, the energy administration said that the United States will produce far more natural gas and oil by 2035, reducing imports to 36 percent of liquid fuels. The American Petroleum Institute, the oil industry trade group, said that’s great -- but falls short of what could occur with different regulations and policies. That’s a debate for the industry and environmentalists. We’re sticking with the facts, and the fact is that part of Obama’s claim is correct: Our dependence on foreign oil is below 50 percent. But fully evaluating the accuracy of the claim also means looking at the context in which it is made. Obama clearly claims credit in the commercial; and his own source for the claim makes clear that a number of factors, including the poor economy and gains from drilling -- which began before his administration -- are among them. These are important details. Without them, the claim in the ad -- made specifically to boast of Obama’s accomplishments -- lacks context. And when factually accurate claims leave out such important context, the Truth-O-Meter’s dial turns to ."
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11343
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Analysis weighs benefits, risks of Actos
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A recent analysis suggests a newer diabetes drug, Actos, may lower risk of death, heart attack, or stroke compared to taking a sugar pill or other types of diabetes drugs. But despite the findings, the story makes it clear that many experts consider these newer types of drugs as second line therapy, due to their higher risk of heart failure and higher costs compared to older drugs that are also effective. The story even includes a quote telling readers that no one is suggesting taking these newer drugs to reduce chance of death, heart attack, or stroke; rather, the analysis was undertaken in an attempt to further understand risk-benefit trade-offs of Actos, particularly in light of recent safety concerns about another drug in the same family (rosiglitazone). The story met most criteria, including describing the type of evidence, costs, availability and novely of the drug, quantifying benefits, and obtaining independent input, or at least describing potential conflicts of interest of sources of information. The story could have been improved with a further discussion of potential harms of treatment (such as quantifying risk of heart failure) and by fully discussing alternate treatment options, including diet, exercise, and weight loss to manage risk factors for diabetes complications.
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true
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While absolute costs of the new drug are not given, the story does tell readers that older, cheaper drugs are less than 20 cents a day, which is 10 times less than the cost of the newer drug. The story provides absolute rates of death, heart attack, or stroke in those taking Actos and in those taking placebo or other diabetes drugs. We applaud the reporter for using absolute -not relative – rates. Not all potential harms associated with Actos are mentioned. Heart failure is one harm and is mentioned. Yet, no absolute data is provided about how often heart failure occurs or how serious it may be. There are also other harms that are not mentioned at all. The article tells readers the findings are based on a review of pooled results from 19 studies that compared the drug to either placebo, or sugar pill, or other diabetes drugs. The article also mentions the study was funded by the drug manufacturer. There is very little information about diabetes given, but one key point is mentioned–that heart attacks are a leading cause of death in people with diabetes. This fact provides context to the discussion of risks and benefits of these newer drugs. Although more background info could have been provided about diabetes itself, there is nothing misstated or embellished. The story obtains multiple sources of information, including from at least one source not connected with the research. The story mentions at least one drug alternative (metformin) to the newer drugs, but fails to mention others. The story also fails to mention lifestyle interventions, such as diet, exercise, and weight loss to help control blood sugar and other risk factors for diabetes complications. The article describes that the diabetes drug studied (Actos or pioglitazone) has been around and used by more than 7 million people since its introduction in 1999. The story tells readers Actos is part of a newer class drugs and tells readers this drug has been on the market since 1999. The story obtains quotes from sources not linked to the research and so it does not appear that this relies solely on a press release.
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