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10386
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Dialysis more often doesn’t help patients
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This was a story about a recent study indicating that at least in the case of dialysis for individuals with acute kidney disease, more is not better. Although the story could have been clearer about the differences and definitions for chronic and acute kidney disease, it did a good job explaining that at least for the type of patients studied (those with acute kidney disease), additional dialysis failed to prevent death or rate of organ failure. It also mentioned that the additional dialysis did not improve in recovery of kidney function. The story then went on to inform the reader that although additional dialysis did not demonstrate benefit in this type of patients, that there may be a specific confluence of medical conditions wherein additional dialysis may be appropriate.
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true
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"There was no cost information provided, but the story was about the results of a study that demonstrated that more dialysis did not provide additional benefit. The clinician quote near the end suggested that more dialysis may have benefit for certain patients but did not provide data. However – the story said that the study reported on did not find additional dialysis to provide benefit, thereby quantifying the benefit as ""none"" The story qualified the information about additional dialysis not being beneficial by having a quote from a clinician indicating that there are some specific situations where additional dialysis is warranted. In so doing, the story was able to present a harm of not allowing for additional dialysis. The evidence presented in this story comes from a study which has not yet been published, though it is available online. The story mentioned the number of people studied as well as the fact that they were randomly assigned to the different treatment groups. It included both the percentage of people in each group that died as well as the fact that the difference between the groups was found not to differ. The story did not appear to engage in disease mongering apart from the fact that it seemed to conflate chronic and acute kidney disease. The story included quotes from several clinicians with expertise in dialysis. No other treatment options were mentioned, though other than refusal of treatment, there usually aren’t any. The story is about two commonly used approaches to dialysis in acutely ill patients. Decision-making is largely physician based; the over-arching decision then is dialysis or no dialysis (which because of the seriousness of the patient condition would likely be fatal). It’s clear from the story that more versus less frequent dialysis would be based in normal clinical practice on a variety of clinical indicators (as mentioned by one of the physicians). The story described the results of a soon-to-be published study and described this clearly. That said, it also mentioned that there had been previous studies, which were smaller and were based on outcomes from individual institutions with different outcomes from the study reported on. This provides a context for the reader to understand that the study reported on was not done in a complete vacuum of information. Does not appear to rely on a press release."
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11363
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Replacing Heart Device Found Risky
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This article does a good job reporting the findings of several new studies of surgery to replace potentially defective heart defibrillators. Two of the studies looked at how often patients needed repeat surgeries to replace malfunctioning pacemakers or more-complex devices called implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs). Rates appear to be dropping, according to the article, but it’s not clear what this might mean for people who received their device in a higher-rate year. The third study tracked how often complications happened in Canadian patients who had ICDs replaced after safety advisories were issued for the devices. However, while the article mentions controversy about ICDs, it doesn’t provide much context. For example, readers would probably want to know how many problems happened among people who opted to leave their original devices in place despite the safety warnings. It might not be clear whether the expert who cited a risk of problems ‘well under 1%’ was referring to the original device or the replacement one. Readers might also want to know if the quoted experts had any ties to the device manufacturers or to FDA, which regulates their use. There is no mention of the cost of the devices themselves, nor of treating complications related to their malfunction or replacement.
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mixture
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There is no mention of the cost of the devices themselves, nor of treating complications related to their malfunction or replacement. The article includes actual numbers of people who had devices replaced and experienced complications as a result. As noted above, it would have been useful to know how many devices malfunctioned in patients who didn’t have replacements. The actual rates of malfunctioning devices that had to be removed and replaced are also noted. The article focuses on complications in people who had their defibrillators replaced after a safety advisory, and on rates of defibrillator and pacemaker malfunction. It specifically mentions infections and deaths after devices were replaced, but it’s not clear what other complications can occur, or how serious they are. It would have been helpful to know what happens to people who have these devices but choose not to replace them–how often do malfunctions occur in devices after safety advisories are issued, and what happens to those patients? The article does not comment on the strengths and limitations or the similarities and differences in how the data on device malfunctions were collected and studied. For example, one of the studies analyzed data reported to the US Food and Drug Administration by device manufacturers, while another reviewed several registries of patients treated in North America, the United Kingdom, and Denmark. The article only briefly mentions how the findings compared. None noted. We give an unsatisfactory score for this criterion because the article does not mention that Dr. Krahn has received research and consulting payments from companies that make pacemakers and defibrillators. Dr. Maisel, author of two of the studies and a quoted expert, is an FDA consultant and chair of the panel that advises FDA on heart and circulatory devices. The third cited expert, Dr Curtis, previously held that post. There is no mention of whether there are other effective ways to manage irregular heart rhythms, nor other options for people who choose not to replace a device that’s under safety advisory. It is clear from the article that the devices studied are FDA approved. It is clear from the article that these devices have been in use for a number of years. The article does not appear to have relied on a press release. Several experts are quoted.
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9383
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Why You Should Get the New Shingles Vaccine
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This New York Times story is a health column that’s unequivocally in favor of vaccination, and as such it presents information about the vaccine in a somewhat lopsided manner favoring the benefits of the vaccine and downplaying risk. For example, relative numbers that inflate the benefits of the vaccine are used to describe effectiveness, but there is no quantification of the relatively common and significant adverse effects. Without giving proper context to the rarity of shingles, especially the incidence of postherpetic neuralgia, and avoiding absolute numbers in terms of benefits and harms related to the vaccine, it is difficult for readers to get a balanced view of the overall utility of this vaccine.
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mixture
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shingles
|
The reporter noted that the “list price is $280 for the two-part shot without insurance.” Since Medicare Part D insurance covered it with a $40 co-pay for each part it is likely affordable for many people. The story provides relative numbers, noting that the previous shingles vaccine, Zostavax, “reduces the risk of shingles by 51 percent and of PHN by 67 percent”, but this new vaccine, Shingrix “can protect 97 percent of people in their 50s and 60s and 91 percent of those in their 70s and 80s. It also reduces the risk of PHN by 86 percent.” But what does this mean in terms meaningful to readers, such as absolute numbers? According to a clinical trial published in the New England Journal of Medicine, of the 6,541 people who got the vaccine, 23 developed shingles (about 0.35%). Of the 6,622 who got the placebo, 223 people got shingles (about 3.4%). This difference, of 3.36%, means that for every 29 people over age 70 who get the two-shot dose of Shingrix, one case of the shingles will be prevented. Another way to say this is 28 out of 29 people will see no benefit from the vaccine over three and a half years. The numbers needed to vaccinate to prevent one case of postherpatic neuralgia is more than 200. The author tells her personal story and a few common harms. She notes that “the shot itself is painful and can cause a sore arm for a day or two. Some people develop immune-related side effects like headache, fever or an upset stomach that last less than three days, according to the manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline. My only reaction beyond local soreness was an acid stomach for a day or two.” This is a good start, but the story didn’t recognize that significant adverse effects are actually more common than the benefits, making the story imbalanced. The study shows that the severity of the side effects of the vaccine were much more intense than what the Times implies. In it, 17% of the patients injected with the vaccine, versus 3% on placebo, had “grade 3” symptoms. These are defined as symptoms that “prevented normal everyday activities.” The absolute rate therefore is 14% or a NNH (number needed to harm) of seven. While the author of the Times story might not have been that sore after the vaccine, according to the data in the trial, for every seven persons injected with the vaccine, one person will have “grade 3” symptoms and have difficulty functioning in everyday activities. The story doesn’t really tell us anything beyond the fact that there were “studies” that involved 16,000 people. What kind of studies were they? Was there a control group? How convinced should we be by the quality of this evidence? The story doesn’t acknowledge the possibility of milder cases of shingles, and makes shingles sound very common. It says that by age 85 “half of adults will have had at least one outbreak of shingles,” but in the study of patients who were older than 70, only 223 people out of more than 6,000 got shingles during a nearly 4-year time span. The study further noted that “the overall incidence of herpes zoster is 2.0 to 4.6 cases per 1000 person-years but increases with age to 10.0 to 12.8 per 1000 person-years among persons 80 years of age or older.” Another way to say that? About 1-1.3% of people over 80 develop shingles in a year. While that is a lot of people, that is not nearly as alarming as the prevalence information presented in the Times story. Study funding is not mentioned. Perhaps more importantly, the story takes an advocacy position in favor of vaccination–and presents the reporter’s opinion as medical advice. This story compared the efficacy of the vaccine to a previous shingles vaccine. It also noted that the drug acyclovir is used to treat active cases of shingles. It’s available, and at least partly covered. The story makes this clear. The story establishes novelty in this way: “studies involving 16,600 people showed it to be far more effective at preventing this disease than the first shingles vaccine, Zostavax, which I had had a decade earlier.” The story does not appear to be based on a news release.
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5835
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Maine stresses test as sexually transmitted infections surge.
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The Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention is calling on residents to get tested for sexually transmitted infections amid a spike in cases of gonorrhea and syphilis in the state.
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true
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Sexually transmitted diseases, Health, Gonorrhea, Syphilis, Maine
|
Tuesday is the final day of Sexually Transmitted Disease Awareness Month, and the state CDC says it’s recommending prevention, screening and treatment. The agency says Maine has seen “dramatic increases” in gonorrhea and syphilis in the last five years. Gonorrhea cases increased nearly 200 percent, to 686, from 2014 to 2018. Syphilis cases have risen by almost 600 percent, to 104, in that same timeframe. Acting Maine CDC Director Nancy Beardsley says the health consequences of sexually transmitted infections are serious enough that residents “know the facts about STDs and get tested if they believe they are at risk.”
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28374
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The Union County Sheriff's Department in Arkansas dressed numerous arrestees in Nike shirts for their mugshots as a jab at the company.
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What's true: Multiple mugshots of persons booked by the Arkansas' Union County Sheriff's Department show the arrestees wearing Nike shirts. What's false: The county sheriff denied that the use of Nike apparel was intended at a jab at Nike over their promotional partnership with Colin Kaepernick.
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mixture
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Politics, nike
|
On 11 October 2018, activist Shaun King posted a series of mugshots purportedly taken by the Union County Sheriff’s Department in Arkansas showing various arrestees dressed in Nike attire. King reported, via a source, that the sheriff was dressing individuals in Nike shirts for their mugshots as a way to mock the company and their new brand ambassador, Colin Kaepernick: The Sheriff in Union County, Arkansas is putting Nike t-shirts on people they arrest and making them wear them during mugshots. Source says it is to mock Nike and Colin Kaepernick. Disgusting. pic.twitter.com/9z9Nw9hxuF — Shaun King (@shaunking) October 11, 2018 The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported that the Union County sheriff’s office removed all mugshots from their web site shortly after King’s tweet went viral: The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reached out to [Union County Sheriff Rick] Roberts but was unable to speak with him. Calls to the sheriff’s office were directed to a voicemail for the the public relations officer, Chief Deputy Charles Phillips, who was also unavailable. About 9 p.m., less than an hour after King posted the allegation to social media, the Union County sheriff’s office removed all photos of inmates from the jail’s online roster. Before the photos were taken down, at least 11 of the 182 inmates were shown wearing a large, black T-shirt with NIKE ATHLETICS in boldface font above Nike’s signature check mark. As of this writing, the “Jail Roster” at the Union County Sheriff’s Department is indeed void of mugshots: However, we did find several of these photographs on arrests.org, a website that collects mugshots from county sheriff’s offices from around the country. In addition to locating several of the mugshots that were originally posted by King, we also found eight additional mugshots taken in Union County, Arkansas showing recently arrested individuals in similar Nike clothing: A number of conservatives called for a boycott of the apparel company in September 2018 after Nike featured Colin Kaepernick, the former NFL star who became a lightning rod for controversy when he started to kneel during the National Anthem in protest of police brutality in 2016, in a new advertisement. Sheriff Roberts told Little Rock television station KLRT that these mugshots were not connected to any Nike protests but rather were simply provided to people who came into the jail without proper attire: Sheriff Ricky Roberts says the shirts were given to people who came into their jail without “proper attire during the booking process.” Roberts says the shirts weren’t purchased by his department — but rather, already on-hand. “We are not, and will not, be influenced by current political and social debates in the media,” Roberts said in a statement. “This shirt is not only in use now, but has also been for several months prior. We have taken steps to rectify this issue and insure that this will never happen again.” The Union County Sheriff’s Department also posted a news release with this information on Facebook: The mugshots available via Arrests.org only date to the end of August 2018, and the earliest mugshot that we could locate involving a Nike Athletics shirt was posted on 13 September 2018. As Union County Sheriff’s Department has removed the mugshots from their website, we are unable to verify Roberts’ statement that this shirt was in use for “several months prior.” Many of the individuals pictured above also appear to be wearing clothing underneath their Nike shirts, which could indicate they were perhaps not supplied with Nike-branded clothing because they lacked “proper attire.” We’ve reached out to the Union County Sheriff’s Department in an attempt to determine what classifies as improper attire. It should be noted that our examination of the mugshots on Arrests.org didn’t yield any specific patterns about who was given Nike shirts to wear. The vast majority of mugshotted by the Union County Sheriff’s Department between 1 September 2018 and 11 October 2018 were not wearing Nike shirts.
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35106
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A traveler from Beijing was caught at Dulles International Airport with a suitcase full of dead birds that the person tried to disguise as pet food.
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What's true: U.S. Customs and Border Protection confiscated a sealed package of dried, dead birds from a traveler's suitcase at Dulles International Airport in February 2020. What's false: However, the traveler made no attempt to hide or disguise this item and even declared it to customs officials. Also, while it may be unusual in the United States to feed dead birds to pets, in China freeze-dried birds, such as quail, are sold as pet food.
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mixture
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Critter Country, COVID-19
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In February 2020, reports started to circulate about a traveler from Beijing who had a “suitcase full of dead birds” confiscated by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after he tried to “disguise” the item as pet food: These reports were based on a genuine incident that occurred at Washington Dulles International Airport on Feb. 10, 2020. However, this traveler did not attempt to “disguise” this item as a pet food product or try to hide it from customs officials. The traveler declared the single, sealed package of pet food to customs officials. And while those residing in the United States may not consider dead birds as a treat for pets, small freeze-dried birds, such as quail, are sold as pet food in Asia. This rumor spun off of a release from CBP about a bag of dead birds that was confiscated from a traveler’s luggage at Dulles: U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agriculture specialists recently seized a package of tiny dead birds in a passenger’s baggage at Washington Dulles International Airport. The traveler arrived on a flight from Beijing, China January 27 and was destined to an address in Prince George’s County, Maryland. During a baggage examination, CBP agriculture specialists discovered a package with pictures of a cat and dog that the passenger said was cat food. The package contained a bunch of unknown small birds, about 2.5 to 3.5 inches in length. While this was a rather mundane incident, it occurred during heightened concerns about the spread of a new coronavirus in China and sparked a flurry of news coverage, some of which appeared to play on people’s fears. Note the creepy, ominous music in this clip from WUSA: Other reports contained misleading details. For instance, some outlets reported that this person’s suitcase — and not a sealed package in a suitcase — was full of dead birds. Others were overly dismissive about the traveler’s claim that these birds were pet food, writing that “a package of tiny dead birds [was] passed off as pet food.” The Daily Mail went as far as to claim this traveler had “disguised” these dead birds as pet food. This led some on social media to believe that the passenger had ulterior motives, had hidden this package from authorities, or was attempting to spread disease in the United States: Anything hidden coming from China should be banned and those people should be punished. There was an Ulterior Motive there. Call for an investigation. Some people are wanting to spread everything to the United States and everywhere else in the world. Other social media users wondered if this was an act of terrorism: Does anyone know why someone would travel with dead birds packaged to look like pet food? Is it cultural food item/medicine, it’s it terrorism? A crazy person who freeze dried all her dead birds for companionship? There is nothing online for this answer that I could find. We reached out to CBP for more information about this incident. The agency told us that the traveler declared this item to border agents. In other words, no one attempted to “hide” it from officials. CBP also confirmed that the single package was sealed, so the suitcase wasn’t full of loose dead birds, and that it wasn’t a package of pet food emptied and filled again with dead birds in an attempt to smuggle it through customs. Lastly, CBP told us that this was treated as a “routine case of a traveler in possession of prohibited agriculture products.” Steve Sapp, a public affairs officer with CBP, told us: It should also be noted that while the words “pet food” don’t typically conjure up images of dead birds for those residing in the United States, this is a genuine pet food product sold in China. From what we can tell, this package contained “small freeze dried quail.” While we haven’t been able to find this specific brand of quail, we did find several similar pet food products:
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10492
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That Must Be Bob. I Hear His New Hip Squeaking.
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This is a well-reported news story about hip replacements that squeak. The story covers all the basics—including the availability, costs, novelty, harms, and benefits of the implants. It provides a reasonable description of the evidence and treatment options, and is loaded with sources and case studies. If there is a problem with the story, it is the suggestion that squeaking is unique to implants made from ceramic. While the Times story cites a study showing “no squeaks occurred among … patients who received hips made of metal and plastic,” some researchers say metal and plastic hips emit noise as well.
|
true
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"The article states that the costs are “generally … close to $45,000.” The news story notes in a sentence that hip replacement has a success rate of more than 90%, and defines “success” as “relatively pain-free mobility.” The article also clearly states why this new device was developed — to provide longer lifetime use prior to device failure. It quantifies this benefit vaguely, saying the device is ""much more durable"" and lasts ""much longer."" The news story focuses on one main harm—squeaking in hip implants made of ceramic—and provides estimates of its prevalence. A spokesperson for the hip maker points out that hip replacement has other potential risks as well, including infection, dislocation, and leg-length discrepancy. The news story makes it fairly clear that the research it is citing is from cohort studies. The first mention of the prevalence of squeaking in ceramic hip implants appears to cite the highest known estimate—7% of ceramic implants in one study of 143 patients. Only later do readers discover that other studies suggest the prevalence of the problem may be much smaller, from 3% (in a study of 1500 people) to less than 1%. This is not disease mongering, but it could cause some people to fear ceramic hip implants more than may be justified. In addition, the Times article says no squeaking occurred in patients with metal and plastic implants. But a recent 2007 review in the Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery (JBJS) reported that squeaking in similar implants made out of metal and plastic occurred in 4% of patients. (JBJS 2007;89:1874-85) If the JBJS review is accurate, the news story would be misleading. Unfortunately, the JBJS failed to support its own contention with a complete reference. The story cites 4 patients, 4 surgeons, a spokesperson for implant maker Stryker, and a lawyer representing aggrieved patients. All in all, they provide a balance of viewpoints. The story mentions a conflict of interest for one surgeon. It appears that 2 of the patients are clients of the lawyer. The story points out that the alternatives to a ceramic total hip replacement include hip replacements with implants made from metal and plastic. It doesn’t mention whether there are nonsurgical alternatives to hip replacement, but this is beyond the scope of the story. The story does not explicitly state that ceramic hip replacements are approved by the FDA, but with “tens of thousands” implanted, it’s clear that surgeons’ adoption of the devices is widespread. The FDA’s warning to implant maker Stryker about squeaking suggests the devices may not be perfect, but are approved. The story notes that Stryker introduced ceramic hip implants into the U.S. in 2003. The story cites several sources and does not appear to rely solely or largely on a news release."
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38763
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Reports have gone viral that Chipotle is closing because of an E. coli contamination linked to its use of dog and cat meat.
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Chipotle Uses Dog and Cat Meat, Will Close All Restaurants
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false
|
Business, Food / Drink
|
Chipotle is not closing all its stores in the U.S. The rumor that Chipotle is closing every restaurant in the U.S. went viral in early November 2015 after Chipotle temporary closed a number of locations because of an E. coli outbreak. On November 3, 2015, Chipotle announced that it would temporarily close 43 restaurants in Oregon and Washington because of an “E. coli incident.” A total of 39 people in the Pacific Northwest had been hospitalized after being exposed to E. coli while dining at Chipotle, a local ABC News affiliate in Washington State reported. A week later, on November 10, Chipotle announced that it had concluded an investigation into the E. coli outbreak and reopened all 43 restaurants in Washington and Oregon. Meat served at 11 of the restaurants tested positive for E. coli. The company said that no known cases had been reported at restaurants outside of the Pacific Northwest. In the meantime, false reports that Chipotle was closing all of its restaurants because of E. coli contamination, or because it had been discovered that Chipotle serves dog and cat meat, swept across the Internet. The fake news website Huzlers was behind a false report that Chipotle had closed 60 restaurants because of an E. coli outbreak related to Chipotle’s use of dog and cat meat: It is being reported that the popular restaurant chain ‘Chipotle Mexican Grill’, more commonly known as simply ‘Chipotle’, is currently being investigated for allegedly using dog and cat meat in their dishes causing the E. coli outbreak. The FDA suspected the chain was using dog and cat meat when an FDA inspector stumbled upon multiple live dogs and cat, as well as dog and cat corpses in one Chipotle factory located in Denver. The inspector notified the authorities and the factory was shut down. The FDA will soon force all Chipotle restaurants in the U.S. to prevent people from consuming dog and cat meat. That story tricked many people into believing that Chipotle actually used dog and cat meat, but Huzlers is “the most notorious urban satirical entertainment website in the world,” according to a disclaimer on its homepage. The website FeedNewz.com also “pranked” more than 8 million people with false report headlined, “Chipotle announced all stores will be closed by March 2016.” Once you click on the link, however, your taken to a page that says, “You got owned!” So, it’s true that Chipotle temporarily closed a number of restaurants to investigate an E. coli outbreak. But reports that Chipotle is closing all restaurants, or that it serves dog and cat met, are false. Comments
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35128
|
Eating bananas is a preventative against the COVID-19 coronavirus disease.
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It is true that bananas, consumed in moderation, are fairly good sources of fiber, dietary potassium, vitamin B6, and vitamin C, all of which are important components of a healthy diet.
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false
|
Medical, COVID-19
|
Amidst the plethora of misleading preventatives and cures for the COVID-19 coronavirus disease offered online during the pandemic of early 2020 was a video posted to Facebook that suggested consuming bananas could ward off infection by the novel coronavirus: However, the video did not stem from any reputable news agency, nor did it offer anything documenting that the consumption of bananas was an effective preventative against COVID-19. It misleadingly combined clips from a January 2020 ABC Australia news segment and a February 2020 Wall Street Journal news video about efforts by scientists at the University of Queensland and the National Institutes of Health to develop a coronavirus vaccine, interspersed with added inserts and overlays about bananas that touted the supposed health benefits of the fruit, as follows: Bananas are one of the most popular fruits worldwide. such as Vitamin C. All of these support health. people who follow a high fiber diet have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. Bananas contain water and fiver, both of which promote regularity and encourage digestive health. Research made by scientists and the University of Queensland in Australia have proven that bananas improve your immune system due to the super source of Vitamins B-6 and helps prevent coronavirus. Having a banana a day keeps the coronavirus away.
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34231
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"Ingesting ""a tablespoon"" of fruit syrup every 15 minutes for an hour can help someone dealing with vomiting or diarrhea."
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According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), between 19 million and 21 million people in the U.S. contract a norovirus every year. To avoid spreading the virus to others, the CDC urges anyone dealing with it to thoroughly clean not only their hands, but also any affected clothing and any areas in which they suffered nausea or diarrhea.
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unproven
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Medical
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One mother’s tips for dealing with “the flu” spread widely on Facebook in December 2018, but it is unclear whether it has any medical merit: The post which had been shared several hundred thousand times on social media at the time of this writing, stated: With the stomach flu going around, try this if your kiddos, spouse, relative, or you are throwing up. Get a can of fruit in heavy syrup (I suggest peaches, it’s what I’ve always used). Take a tablespoon of just the syrup every 15 minutes for an hour. If you get sick in between that hour, restart. This is a tip a nurse gave me while I was pregnant the first time. It literally was a life saver for all 3 pregnancies and any time my husband or I have had the stomach flu. My husband thought I was crazy the first time he got sick around me and was throwing up so often he started throwing up stomach acid and blood.. He finally tried the peach syrup and literally didn’t get sick anymore. Feel free to pass this on cause a lot of people seem to be sick right now, it could help them a lot! The post also included a disclaimer stating that “I am NOT a doctor. Consult your doctor if you have questions about trying this. I am not responsible for customers consuming this product.” The suggested remedy, though, has come under question from medical professionals. In 2009 the New York Daily News briefly mentioned “syrup from canned fruit cocktail” as part of a guide to myths and realities surrounding treatment of a stomach flu. In that article Richard Fleece, an assistant professor of clinical pediatrics at Temple University, described it as an “old-school” approach to the problem comparable to drinking Coca-Cola (which can contain fructose syrup) to settle the stomach. Instead, he advised, people suffering from the stomach flu should drink Pedialyte, which can replenish the body’s electrolyte supply. “If you don’t have Pedialyte, dilute Gatorade or flat ginger ale 50-50,” he added. John Townes, a professor at the Oregon Health & Science University school of medicine specializing in infectious diseases, was also skeptical that peach syrup could help after reading the more recent claim. He pointed out that “nausea and vomiting are not a primary symptom of ‘the flu. '” What people describe as the “stomach flu” or the “24-hour flu,” Townes said, is usually a norovirus. These types of organisms have a dense structure that makes them resistant to stomach acids and normal household cleaners, thus enabling them to survive in various environments for extended periods of time and making them extremely contagious. “What would [fruit syrup] do to somebody who had norovirus? I think it would probably do nothing,” he said, adding that he was “not aware of any study” examining syrup’s potential as a treatment in these types of cases. It is possible, Townes allowed, that the syrup could settle an upset stomach. “It probably won’t hurt you much, but for somebody who’s diabetic it’s probably not a good idea,” he offered. “Just because [the advice is] shared around doesn’t make it [accurate]. Noroviruses usually run their course in 12 to 24 hours, Townes said, and will often include some episodes of vomiting. “If you can’t keep anything down for more than a day, you should contact your doctor,” he advised. “You may need to get an antiemetic medication.”
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6199
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Rising sea levels threatening historic lighthouses.
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Rising seas and erosion are threatening lighthouses around the U.S. and the world. Volunteers and cash-strapped governments are doing what they can, but the level of concern, like the water, is rising.
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true
|
New Jersey, Rising sea levels, Science, Local governments, North America, Erosion, U.S. News
|
New Jersey’s East Point Lighthouse has been lighting up Delaware Bay for the better part of two centuries. But those same waters that the lighthouse helped illuminate might bring about its demise. With even a moderate-term fix likely to cost $3 million or more, New Jersey officials are considering what to do to save the lighthouse. Nancy Patterson, president of the Maurice River Historical Society, says something needs to be done now. State and local governments routinely shore up the perimeter of the lighthouse property with 3,000-pound (1360-kilogram) sand bags and hastily bulldozed earthen walls. During normal conditions, the bay is about 40 yards (37 meters) from the lighthouse; aerial photos from 1940 show at least four times as much beach between the lighthouse and the bay as there is now. And during storms, the surf pounds against an earthen wall just 10 yards (9 meters) from the lighthouse’s front steps. “This lighthouse is in incredible danger; it’s getting worse and worse and worse,” Patterson said. “The water is right there, often within feet of the lighthouse.” She recently led a save-the-lighthouse rally to call attention to its plight and push the state Department of Environmental Protection to do something to save it before it falls into the bay. It’s a threat affecting lighthouses around the country and the world, including those in low-lying areas being inundated by water, as well as those on bluffs or cliffs being eroded by storms and rising sea levels. “It’s happening faster than anybody had predicted,” said Jeff Gales, executive director of the U.S. Lighthouse Society in Hansville, Washington. While some of the lighthouses continue to be relied upon for navigation, others have been supplanted more modern technology, and are treasured more for historical and tourism purposes. Climate change hastened by manmade greenhouse gases is not only melting polar ice, adding to sea levels, but the warmer waters are expanding and some land formations sinking. Globally, sea levels have been rising over the past century, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the rate has increased in recent decades. In New Jersey, seas have risen by 1.3 feet (0.4 meters) over the past 100 years, said Benjamin Horton, a Rutgers University professor and leading expert on climate change and sea level rise. That is a faster pace than for the past 2,000 years combined, he said. Horton and other Rutgers researchers project that by 2050, seas off New Jersey will rise by an additional 1.4 feet (0.4 meters). Tim Harrison is the editor of Lighthouse Digest, a Maine-based publication that maintains a “Doomsday List” of 53 lighthouses around the U.S. deemed to be in danger of being lost due to storms, erosion or other causes. “Lighthouses were built for one purpose: to save lives,” he said. “Now it’s our turn to step up save these lighthouses.” Rising seas have already forced the relocation of several lighthouses. In 1999, the National Park Service moved the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse in Buxton, North Carolina, 2,900 feet inland, at a cost of $11.8 million. In 1993, the Southeast Lighthouse on Block Island, Rhode Island, was moved 300 feet inland. In 2014 the Cape San Blas Lighthouse was moved from the edge of a storm-prone peninsula on Florida’s Gulf Coast to a park in Port St. Joe. A year later, the Gay Head Lighthouse on Massachusetts’ Martha’s Vineyard was moved 129 feet back from an eroding cliff. Others were not so lucky. The Galveston Jetty Lighthouse in Texas and the Sabine Bank Lighthouse in Louisiana were lost to storms or rising seas, and the Kauhola Point Lighthouse on Hawaii’s Big Island was demolished after erosion nearby was deemed too severe to save it, Harrison said. Lighthouses around the country considered to be in danger from rising seas include the Sand Island Lighthouse at the mouth of Mobile Bay in Alabama, the Morris Island Lighthouse near Charleston, South Carolina, and the New Point Comfort Lighthouse in Virginia. Around the world, encroaching seas are drawing nearer to the Orfordness Lighthouse in Suffolk, England; the Troubridge Island Lighthouse in South Australia; and the Kiipsaar Lighthouse in Estonia. In 2010, the Half Moon Caye Lighthouse in Belize was destroyed by a storm. There are few easy answers, financially or scientifically. The East Point Lighthouse is already on the highest spit of land around, which is only a few inches above sea level, so moving it is not an option. Nor is constantly dumping and plowing more sand in front of it. Patterson wants some sort of bulkhead or barrier erected between the bay and the lighthouse to blunt the force of the waves. Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, acknowledges the lighthouse has been “very vulnerable to storms due to erosion” for years. And he realizes the sandbags the state and local governments keep plopping on the shoreline are a stop-gap measure at best. But while affirming the state’s interest in saving the lighthouse, he notes that moving or protecting it with rock-filled cages could cost several million dollars. Because of the high cost of moving or protecting the lighthouses, volunteer preservation groups often partner with governments to maintain them; one has spent at least $5 million on the Morris Island Lighthouse in South Carolina. And cash-strapped governments often can’t spare funds to save lighthouses. Patterson, the New Jersey lighthouse advocate, says a barrier needs to be built near the East Point Lighthouse immediately. “This history matters,” she said. “We need to do something — now — while there’s still something to save.” ___ Follow Wayne Parry at http://twitter.com/WayneParryAC ___ This story has been updated to correct that photos from 1940 were aerial photos, not satellite photos.
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2769
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Lilly's quarterly sales largely offset Cymbalta slide.
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Drugmaker Eli Lilly and Co’s quarterly revenue fell far less than expected, it reported on Thursday, as plunging sales of its Cymbalta depression treatment were largely offset by higher revenues for most of its other prescription drugs.
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true
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Health News
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The company earned $728 million, or 67 cents per share, in the fourth quarter. That compared with $827 million, or 74 cents per share, in the year-earlier quarter, when Lilly took charges for asset impairments and restructuring. “Company sales were stronger than thought, but a lot of that upside came from drugs that are already off patent or about to lose patent protection,” said Edward Jones analyst Judson Clark. Excluding special items, Lilly earned 74 cents per share, matching analysts’ average forecasts, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Shares in the company dropped 1.4 percent to 53.21, after earlier reaching their lowest in two weeks at $53.05. Lilly’s global sales fell 2 percent to $5.81 billion, but topped Wall Street forecasts of $5.46 billion. Sales would have been flat if not for the stronger dollar, which lowers the value of sales in overseas markets. Sales of Cymbalta, which lost U.S. patent protection last month, fell 38 percent to $883 million. But they came in about $100 million higher than Wall Street expected, analysts said. Lilly’s sales, earnings, and its share price, have been badly hurt since late 2011, when its Zyprexa schizophrenia drug lost U.S. patent protection. Once Lilly’s biggest product, with annual sales of $5 billion, it now has sales of only $1.5 billion. The situation worsened last month, when Cymbalta - which also had $5 billion in annual sales at its peak - began facing cheaper generics in the United States. The company’s “patent cliff” will become more daunting in March, when $1 billion-a-year osteoporosis drug Evista faces U.S. generics. “We haven’t wasted the crisis,” Chief Executive John Lechleiter said Thursday in a conference call with industry analysts. “We’re more agile, we’re leaner and I believe we’re better operators today.” Lilly has cut more than 5,000 employees from its workforce in order to reduce annual costs by $1 billion over the last three years to deal with patent expirations on its drugs. It has also restructured itself to focus on cancer and diabetes - lucrative specialties that are two of the company’s longstanding strengths. Clark said sales of Cymbalta could eventually decline 80 percent, which has been the case for many other blockbuster medicines in recent years. He questioned whether gains for other products seen in the fourth quarter will be sustainable. Sales of many products over the quarter showed double-digit sales increases, including Lilly’s Humalog insulin, Cialis anti-impotence treatment, Forteo and Evista osteoporosis drugs, and Straterra for attention deficit disorder. But price increases in the United States accounted for much of those sales gains. The Indianapolis drugmaker is expecting a return to company sales growth next year, from increased sales of drugs that still have patent protection and from launches of new treatments for cancer and diabetes. It hopes to launch three new drugs this year: ramucirumab for stomach cancer, and dulaglutide and empagliflozin for type 2 diabetes - the most common form of the disease, which is closely linked to obesity. Although analysts have forecast annual sales of more than $650 million for ramucirumab, they are concerned the new diabetes drugs may have a hard time competing with similar drugs already on the market. The company has introduced no new products in recent years. In a recent interview, Lechleiter said it was time for Lilly “to go back on offense”, helped by a pipeline of nearly 40 medicines in mid- and late-stage studies, compared with only seven in those stages of development a decade ago.
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26762
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YouTube videos Says President Donald Trump spawned the “Wuhan super virus outbreak under code name ‘zyphr.’”
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There’s no evidence that President Trump had anything to do with the creation of the coronavirus.
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false
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Fake news, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, YouTube videos,
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"As the United States preps for the spread of the coronavirus, a conspiracy video on social media makes claims that President Donald Trump helped create the virus. The video has been viewed around 6,000 times on a YouTube channel called ""stranger than fiction news."" Its title reads: ""BREAKING: TRUMP SPAWNED WUHAN SUPER VIRUS OUTBREAK UNDER CODE NAME ‘ZYPHR’ ACCORDING TO DOCUMENTS."" The video was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) This is a hoax. There are no ""documents,"" or any other sort of evidence, that support the theory that Trump is behind the creation of the coronavirus, which had killed six people in the U.S. as of March 3, 2020. The video, narrated in a male voice, says ""top secret documents"" predict that a flu-like pandemic would strike America and kill millions of people. While the narrator claims the documents are apparently going around ""U.S. establishments,"" there are no credible reports that reflect this information, and the video provides no links or evidence that it exists. This conspiracy theory is based on speculation and contains zero evidence that Trump has anything to do with the the creation of the coronavirus. The video was shared by STFN Reloaded, which has posted other coronavirus-related claims."
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24150
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In Texas, schools do not even have to teach sex education.
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Texas Eagle Forum says Texas schools don't have to teach sex education
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true
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Education, Texas, Pat Carlson,
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"While making a case for abstinence-only sex education, the right-leaning Texas Eagle Forum recently declared that sex isn't a mandated topic in Texas schools. The group states in its March 11 ""News & Notes"" e-mail blast: ""In Texas, schools do not even have to teach sex education."" Teaching the birds and bees, optional? ""In my understanding, it's a local level decision,"" said Pat Carlson of Fort Worth, the forum's Texas president. She pointed us to the state's education code, which requires each school district's board of trustees to establish a local school health advisory council, with at least five members, including parents, clergy and law enforcement officials. The council makes recommendations on the health curriculum taught in the district's schools. An excerpt from the law: ""Any course materials and instruction relating to human sexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, or human immunodeficiency virus or acquired immune deficiency syndrome shall be selected by the board of trustees with the advice of the local school health advisory council."" The law further states that ""before each school year, a school district shall provide written notice to a parent of each student enrolled in the district of the board of trustees' decision regarding whether the district will provide human sexuality instruction to district students."" Whether the district will provide human sexuality instruction? That doesn't sound like a requirement. However, schools do have to follow the state board of education's curriculum standards — Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills — according to a spokeswoman at the Texas Education Agency, which oversees primary and secondary public education. And that curriculum requires health teachers to teach sex education at appropriate grade levels. The state's guidelines for health classes state that in grades 9-10, for example, ""the student analyzes the relationship between unsafe behaviors and personal health and develops strategies to promote resiliency throughout the life span."" The student is expected to explore ""the relationship between the use of refusal skills and the avoidance of unsafe situations such as sexual abstinence... the importance and benefits of abstinence as it relate to emotional health and the prevention of pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases... discuss abstinence from sexual activity as the only method that is 100 percent effective in preventing pregnancy,"" and so forth. On the one hand, it sounds like local school districts can opt out of teaching sex ed. On the other, it sounds like they're required to spell out the particulars. There's another wrinkle. Last year, state lawmakers voted to no longer require high-school students to take a health course to graduate. But a TEA spokeswoman told us schools are still required to offer the course. Confused? Apparently, so is the state education agency. ""It's clear as mud, "" said David Anderson, the agency's legal counsel. ""There is some ambiguity that a school district has to teach parts of the state curriculum about human sexuality."" Anderson explained the history of this issue this way: ""When the curriculum was first written in 1995 — foundation curriculum and enrichment curriculum — and districts had to teach all of the foundation curriculum, like algebra, they did not have to teach every part of the enrichment curriculum. That's where health was."" Anderson noted that Attorney General Dan Morales issued an advisory opinion in 1998 stating that local school districts control the teaching of human sexuality in any enrichment curriculum (fine arts, foreign languages, technology, and health and physical education) — meaning school districts could choose not to teach sex ed. Anderson said lawmakers later amended state law to require districts to teach everything spelled out in state curriculum standards. Despite that change, Anderson said, local districts still control what — if anything — is taught about human sexuality. ""It's at least an open question if a school board is required to teach some part of the health curriculum which some people might regard as sex education,"" Anderson said. ""My guess is districts are making their (sex education) decisions locally and people are happy with that."" The only unquestioned mandate that school districts must meet, said Anderson, is the parenting and paternity awareness program taught as part of high-school health classes. He added, ""But I'm not sure everyone would think that means sex ed."" We asked the attorney general's office to weigh in. Its spokesman, Jerry Strickland, declined, saying: ""We don't provide legal opinions lightly; because of that, this would truly be an issue for TEA."" When we asked Anderson plainly if schools are required to teach sex education, he said: ""It's not a yes or no answer."" How's this for clarity? If the responsible state agency cannot answer ""yes,"" there is no requirement."
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35702
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Dr. Anthony Fauci said the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was told to cancel a grant funding research for a study investigating how coronaviruses jump from bats to humans.
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The exchange can be heard right after the 4:36 mark in this C-SPAN video.
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true
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Politics, COVID-19
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In late June and early July 2020, Snopes readers asked whether Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s foremost immunologist, had stated that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was told to cancel funding for research into how coronavirus infections emerge in humans. Fauci, who leads the NIH National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, made the statement when responding to a question while testifying, along with other coronavirus task force leaders, on June 23, 2020, before the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The testimony came as the U.S. experienced a spike in reported COVID-19 cases. Although scientists believe that the novel coronavirus, the virus causing the COVID-19 disease pandemic, had animal origins before it infected humans, the Trump administration has promoted an unfounded conspiracy theory that the disease originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, where it was originally detected in the winter of 2019. U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey asked Fauci about the grant, stating it didn’t make any sense to him that funding for research on the coronavirus had been canceled “while we are in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic,” asking Fauci if he knew why the decision had been made. “Why was it canceled? It was canceled because the NIH was told to cancel it,” Fauci replied. “I don’t know the reason, but we were told to cancel it.”
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10399
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Coffee may have perks for longer living
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"This was a story about a new analysis of data from the Nurses Health Study and the Health Professionals follow-up study that scrutinized coffee consumption and the incidence of death, coronary disease or cancer. The study found that increasing coffee consumption did not result in more death or death from these specific causes. In the cohort of women studied, after adjusting for confounders, especially for smoking, there were fewer deaths due to cardiovascular disease. The effect of coffee in men appeared more neutral. Our primary recommendation is that the story should have emphasized that this was an observational study and that there are limits to the conclusions you can draw from such studies. We know, for example, that other factors (including HRT use and sunscreen use) can be associated with decreased risk of heart disease but when tested in trials were not found to lower risk. Coffee likely falls into that category, a sort of ""healthy user"" effect. We also all journalists to abandon the use of only relative risk figures. This story stated, ""Women who drank two to three cups of coffee a day, for instance, had a 25% lower risk of dying from heart disease than non-drinkers."" That’s relative risk. You should ask, ""25% of what?"" What is the absolute risk reduction figure? How many out of how many to begin with?"
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true
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"There was no discussion of price, but coffee is a widely available beverage with a generally known price range. The story did not provide absolute risk reduction numbers for the benefit that one might hope to gain from drinking coffee. The real take home from the study was that coffee consumption did not appear to be harmful in terms of the risk a person would die. The story did at least mention anxiety and insomnia as two harms that might be associated with coffee consumption.It would have been more informative to provide some insight as to how commonly these symptoms are associated with coffee use as opposed to other causes. The story did not clearly explain that nature of the study reported on or the conclusions which could or could not be drawn from it because of the study design. While readers were provided with numbers of study subjects and the length of time they were followed, both of which are helpful for understanding how to consider the information, when it came to providing information about the results of the study, only a relative risk reduction was mentioned. Further, the ‘news’, i.e. the findings from a recently published study, was muddled with comments from credentialed individuals who provided their opinions on subject matter that was not supported by the study reported on. Although one researcher said, ""If you want the best of both worlds, drink decaf – avoid the caffeine and get the good stuff,"" the published data demonstrated a strong relationship between caffeine intake and the number of cups of coffee consumed. So while this may be his opinion and may even be supported by other research he has knowledge about, it is not consistent with the study reported on. Another expert interviewed for the study mentioned that it says the key to coffee’s health benefits is its antioxidants. Coffee is a complex entity containing hundreds of different components. It is not possible from a study of this kind to make any sort of conclusion about what is responsible for any particular effect observed. No overt disease-mongering. The lead study author was interviewed for this story. In addition, the story contained quotes from two individuals that were not connected with the study but who had some background related to coffee. The story did not contain any information about other means of lowering the risk of premature death or of dying from a heart attack. The availability of coffee is not in question. Drinking coffee was appropriately not portrayed as something new or innovative. Does not appear to be derived exclusively from a press release."
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15476
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Currently, almost 40 percent of people with HIV are not diagnosed until they already have developed AIDS. And that can be up to 10 years after they first are infected with HIV.
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The press release from Fulton County Health and Wellness promoting the week of testing for HIV states that almost 40 percent of people with the virus are not diagnosed until they already have developed AIDS. And that can be up to 10 years after they first are infected. That specific statistic reportedly came from a national organization that is no longer in operation and appears high compared to the 24 percent figure reported t by the state and CDC. But that still supports the health department’s overarching point about the need for early testing and treatment. For that reason.
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true
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Georgia, Public Health, Fulton County Health and Wellness,
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"The health departments in Fulton and Dekalb counties are hosting a week of free HIV screenings that ends on National HIV Testing Day, June 27. The immediate goal of the Test Atlanta campaign, which starts Sunday, is to encourage people from age 13 to 64 to know their HIV status by getting tested, officials with Fulton County Health and Wellness said in a press release on June 16, 2015. ""Finding out whether you are infected with HIV is the first step to getting connected to life-saving care,"" the release states. "" It’s estimated almost 40 percent of people with HIV are not diagnosed until they have developed AIDS. That can be up to 10 years after they first became infected."" Those statistics got our attention. PolitiFact Georgia decided to check further. We contacted Lyn Vaughn, risk communicator with Fulton County Health and Wellness, to ask the source of those statistics. She provided with us links to, and excerpts from, two statements, one from the Centers for Disease Control and one she said was from the National Association of People Living with AIDS, the group credited with starting the national testing day. The report from the CDC, issued in 2010, said nationally, the proportion of patients diagnosed with AIDS at or within 12 months of their HIV diagnosis in 2007 was 32 percent. We tried to contact officials with the association to ask about the source of their statistics but were unsuccessful. We later learned from the group’s web site that the association filed bankruptcy and closed its doors after 30 years in February 2013. The CDC, which supported National HIV Testing Day (NHTD) from its founding, continues to promote the annual event and advocate for routine HIV testing. According to the CDC, more than 1.2 million Americans are living with HIV, and almost one in seven or 14 percent are unaware of their infection. In the past decade, the number of people living with HIV has increased, but the annual number of new HIV infections has remained relatively stable -- at about 50,000 a year, the CDC reports. So what about that statistic? Vaughn later sent us additional information, including a recent news report on ongoing HIV testing available to patients who come through the emergency room at Atlanta’s Grady Memorial Hospital. Not all of the patients agree to be tested. But among those who were diagnosed as HIV infected between July 2013 and February of this year, nearly half had AIDS, according to data we received from Grady. The physician in charge of Grady’s program said many of the patients in the group that was subject of the report had been HIV positive for several years. The other data we looked at came from the state Department of Public Health. In Georgia, 24 percent of all newly diagnosed HIV patients in 2012 already had AIDS, the agency reported. That percentage also held true for 2013 as well, DPH reports show. We also circled back to the CDC, where the most recent data available is for 2012. Nationally, also, 24 percent of patients who were initially diagnosed with HIV infection were simultaneously diagnosed with AIDS, the CDC reported in 2012. Most of those people were likely infected for many years without knowing it, the CDC said. Our ruling The press release from Fulton County Health and Wellness promoting the week of testing for HIV states that almost 40 percent of people with the virus are not diagnosed until they already have developed AIDS. And that can be up to 10 years after they first are infected. That specific statistic reportedly came from a national organization that is no longer in operation and appears high compared to the 24 percent figure reported t by the state and CDC. But that still supports the health department’s overarching point about the need for early testing and treatment. For that reason."
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2114
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China takes baby steps in narrowing gender imbalance.
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China has taken its first baby steps in narrowing a gender chasm that has left the country with tens of millions more boys than girls, an official said on Thursday.
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true
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Health News
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In 2009, there were 119.45 male newborns for every 100 females, down from 120.56 in 2008 and the first decline in years, said Li Bin, head of the State Population and Family Planning Commission. The natural ratio should be about 105 males per 100 females at birth, but the gap has widened in China since it introduced a one-child policy three decades ago to curb population growth — a restriction that bolstered a traditional preference for boys. Wider use of ultrasound and abortions has caused the imbalance to increase significantly in recent years, shocking ordinary Chinese and alarming leaders who worry violence and instability could plague a society full of unmarried young men. “Looked at from a comprehensive perspective, the lopsided sex ratio at birth has started to be contained,” Li said in comments reported on the government’s main website (www.gov.cn). She said it would take many more years to consolidate the trend, calling for more vigilance in rooting out pre-birth gender scans and abortions that do not serve a medical purpose. More than 24 million Chinese men of marrying age could find themselves without spouses in 2020, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said last year. The government research institution named the imbalance as the most serious demographic problem faced by the country’s 1.3 billion population.
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5788
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Democrats roll out big health care proposals in the states.
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Riding the momentum from November’s elections, Democratic leaders in the states are wasting no time delivering on their biggest campaign promise — to expand access to health care and make it more affordable.
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true
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Health, Campaigns, Business, California, Medicaid, Elections, Gavin Newsom, Access to health care, AP Top News, Washington, Politics, U.S. News, Jay Inslee
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The first full week of state legislative sessions and swearings-in for governors saw a flurry of proposals. In his initial actions, newly elected California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans to expand Medicaid to those in the country illegally up to age 26, implement a mandate that everyone buy insurance or face a fine, and consolidate the state’s prescription drug purchases in the hope that it will dramatically lower costs. Washington Gov. Jay Inslee proposed a public health insurance option for people who are not covered by Medicaid or private employers and have trouble affording policies on the private market. Democrats in several states where they now control the legislature and governor’s office, including New Mexico, are considering ways that people who are uninsured but make too much to qualify for Medicaid or other subsidized coverage can buy Medicaid policies. And in the nation’s most populous city, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a publicly run plan to link the uninsured, who already receive treatment in city hospitals, with primary care. It’s all in keeping with the main theme Democratic candidates promoted on the campaign trail in 2018. They touted the benefits of former President Barack Obama’s health overhaul — such as protections for people with pre-existing conditions, allowing young adults to remain on their parents’ health insurance policies and expanded coverage options for lower-income Americans. At the same time, they painted Republicans as seeking to eliminate or greatly reduce health care options and protections. “Once you give something to somebody, it’s pretty hard to take it away, and I think we see that with how the support for the (Affordable Care Act) has grown over the last two years,” said Washington House Rep. Eileen Cody, who is leading the state’s public option proposal. The actions also represent a pushback to steps taken by the Trump administration and congressional Republicans to undermine the Affordable Care Act. The GOP tax law stripped away the individual mandate, which was intended to stabilize insurance markets by encouraging younger and healthier people to buy policies. And last summer, the Trump administration said it would freeze payments under an “Obamacare” program that protects insurers with sicker patients from financial losses. That move is expected to contribute to higher premiums. The Democratic proposals fall short of providing universal health care, a goal of many Democrats but also an elusive one because of its cost. In recent years, California, Colorado and Vermont have all considered and then abandoned attempts to create state-run health care systems. Still, many Democrats are eager to take steps that get them closer to that. “This is not just a moral right,” Inslee said in announcing his public option proposal this past week. “It is an economic wisdom, and this is very possible.” Some lawmakers in Colorado, where Democrats now control the legislature and the governor’s office, are proposing a state-run health insurance plan similar to that announced by Inlsee. It would reach those who don’t qualify for federal assistance or who live in rural areas with few health care choices. Both states plan to rely on their agencies that administer Medicaid, the state-federal program that provides health coverage for roughly one-in-five Americans. Republicans are skeptical about whether the states can afford it, since they already pick up a portion of Medicaid costs. “This is about having the government competing in the private market. Medicare-for-all will be priced out,” Washington state Rep. Joe Schmick said. Taking incremental steps to increase coverage options and make health care more affordable may be a smarter strategy than pursuing a costly and complicated all-or-nothing proposal for universal coverage, said Katherine Hempstead, senior policy adviser at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. “Everybody wants to pay less for health care,” she said. Democrats now have more leverage to experiment. Campaign messaging around health care helped them flip seven governor’s seats to bolster their numbers to 23 across the country and win back several state legislative chambers. They gained full control of state government in several states, including New York and Nevada. That power will allow them to consider health care expansions that Republicans have resisted. In Nevada, for example, the state’s Democratically controlled legislature passed a bill in 2017 that would have let anyone in the state buy into a Medicaid insurance plan, similar to the option being pushed in New Mexico. But former Gov. Brian Sandoval, a Republican, vetoed it. The new governor, Democrat Steve Sisolak, is forming a committee to look at health care options, including the possibility of requiring everyone to have insurance. In addition to the California proposal, that mandate already is in place in Massachusetts and New Jersey, with Vermont following in 2020. It’s a similar dynamic in New Mexico, where Democratic lawmakers have talked for years about allowing people, including non-citizens, to buy into Medicaid if they cannot afford insurance any other way. Colin Baillio, policy director for the advocacy group Health Action New Mexico, said a bill is being drafted with the goal of getting it adopted this year and implemented for 2020. The optimism comes because the new governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, is a Democrat. “Folks are going to need to have health care one way or another,” he said. “We think health coverage is a good investment for our state.” ___ Follow Sally Ho at https://twitter.com/_sallyho and Geoff Mulvihill at https://twitter.com/geoffmulvihill
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10554
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Brain sensor helps paralyzed people do tasks
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For patients who are paralyzed, the hope for miracles that permit movement or at least more interaction with the world around them is likely to be quite strong. This article states the very limited success of a brain implant device. But it may portray false hope that this may be an option for current patients. The story overstates the benefits of the implant multiple times by saying that the technology can help “paralyzed people” and “paralyzed patients” – implying that there is more than one person involved. The reality is that, so far, the technology “worked” for one person and two monkeys – hardly enough to assume that this technology will truly end up helping people in the real world. Furthermore, it is difficult to state whether this person was truly helped by this technology because the amount of control that he achieved was not very good. The story does not comment on the availability of the treatment, nor does it mention costs, which are likely to be astronomical. The story also does not mention the alternative technologies, including scalp electrodes and devices that pick up eye movements. The story also did not mention harms of treatment, which, since the implant goes through the skull, presumably include at least the risk of infection. The individuals studied in the Nature report represent research subjects who must have been very carefully screened and aware of the novelty of the treatment. The article should have clearly stated that the widespread availability of such devices is likely many years off at best. It is good that the story quotes an independent neurologist: “Duke University neurologist Miguel Nicolelis, who was not part of the studies, said he is surprised that Nature published a report on an ongoing patient trial, noting that two other patients have received implants, and the 25-year-old patient has since had his removed after a year of use. Nicolelis expressed concern that the journal is in effect promoting a medical-device company with the study.”
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false
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The story does not mention costs, which are likely to be astronomical. The story does not quantify the benefits of treatment. Moreover, the story overstates the benefits multiple times by saying that the technology can help “paralyzed people” and “paralyzed patients” – implying that there is more than one person involved. The reality is that the technology worked for one person and two monkeys – hardly enough to assume that this technology will truly end up helping people in the real world. Furthermore, it is difficult to state whether this person was truly helped by this technology because the amount of control that he achieved was not very good. The story does not mention harms of treatment, which, since the implant goes through the skull, presumably include at least the risk of infection. Although the story mentions two reports in the journal Nature, there is insufficient information on the nature of the existing evidence. The story mentions the limited success of the device, but the lead sentence implies that it allows paralyzed patients to use a computer. The story does not engage in disease mongering. The story quotes the authors of the two study and a neurologist not associated with the studies. It included this important perspective: “Duke University neurologist Miguel Nicolelis, who was not part of the studies, said he is surprised that Nature published a report on an ongoing patient trial, noting that two other patients have received implants, and the 25-year-old patient has since had his removed after a year of use. Nicolelis expressed concern that the journal is in effect promoting a medical-device company with the study.” The story does not mention the alternative technologies, including scalp electrodes and devices that pick up eye movements. The story does not comment on the availability of the treatment. Nowhere does the story mention that this treatment is not available outside of the study reported. The story clearly states that this technology is new. Because the story quotes an independent neurologist and does not lift text from the company’s press release or from the article in Nature, the reader can be confident that the story does not rely on a press release as the sole source of information.
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5708
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Mooney and healthy teammates have Brey, Irish encouraged.
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As long as John Mooney keeps putting up double-doubles and his teammates stay healthy, coach Mike Brey feels pretty good about Notre Dame’s chances this season.
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true
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Nikola Djogo, South Bend, Health, Robby Carmody, Juwan Durham, Rex Pflueger, John Mooney, Mike Brey, Mens college basketball, College basketball
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“Johnny carries a lot of clout in our league when you hear the other coaches,” Brey said as he prepares for his 20th season at Notre Dame. “We take him for granted - he just rolls out of bed and goes 15 (points) and 12 (rebounds) like it’s nothing.” The 6-foot-9 senior Mooney averaged team highs of 14.1 points and 11.2 rebounds last season for the Fighting Irish, who lost 63 games to injuries and illnesses during a 14-19 campaign that included just three wins and a last-place finish in the Atlantic Coast Conference. “They had their back sides handed to them . we’re older, we’re healthier, we’re better,” Brey said. The return to health of guards Robby Carmody, Rex Pflueger, Nikola Djogo and forward Juwan Durham, the maturation of sophomores Prentiss Hubb, Dane Goodwin, Nate Laszewski and Chris Doherty, and senior T.J. Gibbs making amends for his junior slump have created excitement for the season opener Nov. 6 at North Carolina. “The guys are playing at a higher level, sharing the basketball and feeding off each other,” Mooney said. “Coming off last year, no one’s giving us a shot. So we have to play with a chip on our shoulder to get the job done and prove these people wrong.” Hubb, who started 29 games at point guard, thinks Mooney’s leadership is just fine, even if his coach would like more confidence from his standout. “He’s a role model for everyone on this team,” said Hubb, who averaged 8.1 points and nearly four assists last season. RALLYING AROUND REX Things went south quickly for the Irish after Pflueger, averaging 8.1 points and 4.7 rebounds at the time, tore left knee ligaments last December. The injury came at the same time his mother was diagnosed with brain cancer. She died early in September and the team attended her memorial service in California. “Some of the stuff they’ve gone through with Rex and his mother’s situation — that’s kind of done some things to our team’s dynamic,” Brey said. “It speaks highly of our coaching staff and players,” said Pflueger, now a grad student working on his MBA who is not being rushed to be ready for the opener. “It’s an act of kindness you don’t see often.” MEDIC In addition to Pflueger missing the final 23 games following knee surgery, Carmody missed his final 24 and Djogo his final six with torn labrums that were surgically repaired. The 6-foot-11 Durham, who missed six games with leg issues, averaged 2.3 blocks when healthy in 27 games. THE HUBB Brey likes what he sees in the 6-foot-3 Hubb at the point. “He moves more confidently and is more vocal,” Brey said. “He and T.J. (Gibbs) have been pretty good.” BEAT THE CLOCK Instead of the usual 30-second shot clock, Brey used a 20-second version during the preseason. “That way we have to play quick and you can’t think too much. You’ve got to make a decision,” he said. SCHEDULE Besides North Carolina, the Irish host Boston College on Dec. 7 in the pre-holiday portion of the 20-game ACC schedule. Notre Dame also has non-conference games with Maryland, UCLA and Indiana before starting the final 18 games of league play at Syracuse Jan. 4. Brey said he and Orange coach Jim Boeheim talked about the league’s big three — North Carolina, Duke and defending champion Virginia — on the summer scouting trail. “He said, ‘You know, we’re all playing for fourth,’” chuckled Brey, whose team is picked seventh. “He never minces words, obviously.” __ More AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/Collegebasketball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25
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1377
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UK's William, Harry and Kate open up about emotional struggles.
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Britain’s Prince William, his wife Kate and brother Harry have given their most public comments on their emotional struggles and how the siblings’ closeness helped them cope with their mother’s death.
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true
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Health News
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The three have been speaking out this week as part of a high-profile “Heads Together” campaign, which aims to break stigmas around mental health issues and encourage people to speak openly about their emotions. In a six-minute film recorded at Kensington Palace in central London on Wednesday, the trio discussed the stress of becoming new parents, dealing with trauma at work, and the death of the princes’ mother, Princess Diana, in a Paris car crash in 1997. “When you have children, it really does put your own emotions and your own life into perspective and it has been very, very interesting understanding why I get so upset about some things, why some things effect me,” William said in the clip released by his office on Friday. “I thought I was fairly straight down the line, but I feel quite a lot more than I used to.” William, Queen Elizabeth’s grandson and second in line to the throne, said he had taken home some of the cases he had encountered when working as an air ambulance helicopter pilot. He and Kate also spoke of the pressure of parenthood following the birth of son George in 2013. “... You have no idea what you’re doing no matter how many books you read - nothing can prepare you for it,” Kate said. The first few weeks after they returned to their former home in Wales, she said, “were a steep learning curve, massively”. Earlier this week, William talked about how the shock of losing his mother still lingered 20 years after her death. Harry said he had sought counseling to help deal with the grief. William warned the British virtue of the stiff upper lip could damage mental health - a departure from the royal family’s traditional stoic attitude amid crises ranging from the 1936 abdication of King Edward VIII to the death of Princess Diana. “We have been brought closer because of the circumstances. You are uniquely bonded because of what we’ve been through. But even Harry and I over the years have not talked enough about our mother,” William said. Harry added: “Never enough”. “I always thought to myself, ‘what’s the point in bringing up the past?’,” Harry said. “What’s the point in bringing up something that’s only going to make you sad, it ain’t going to change it, it ain’t going to bring her back. When you start thinking like that, it can be really damaging.” A Kensington Palace spokesman said the royals had been overwhelmed by the response to their campaign. “Having asked others to start conversations on mental health with their friends and families, they wanted to show that they are taking part as well,” the spokesman said.
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2545
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British shoppers saying nay to meat after horse scandal.
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The discovery of horsemeat in products sold as beef has shocked many British consumers into buying less meat, a survey showed on Monday.
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true
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Health News
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The furor, which erupted in Ireland last month and then spread quickly across Europe, has led to ready meals being pulled from supermarket shelves and damaged people’s confidence in the food on their plate. It also raised concerns over food labeling and the complex supply chain across the European Union, putting pressure on governments to explain lapses in quality control. A fifth of adults said they had started buying less meat after traces of horse DNA were found in some products, according to the poll conducted by Consumer Intelligence research company. “Our findings show that this scandal has really hit consumers hard, be it through having to change their shopping habits or altering the fundamentals of their diet,” David Black, a spokesman for Consumer Intelligence, said. The online poll, conducted on February 14-15, questioned more than 2,200 adults on their spending habits following the horsemeat scandal. It gave no specific figures on how much meat people were buying, focusing only on broader trends. More than 65 percent of respondents said they trusted food labels less as a result. “(Brands) will have to put in place really stringent ways of checking that what’s being delivered and what’s on the label is indeed what’s in there,” Black said. In the month since horsemeat was first identified in Irish beefburgers, no one is yet reported to have fallen ill from eating horse but many supermarkets and fast food chains are already struggling to save their reputations. Governments across Europe have stressed that horsemeat poses little or no health risk, although some carcasses have been found tainted with a painkiller given to racehorses but banned for human consumption. Environment secretary Owen Paterson, who met British retailers earlier in the day for talks on how to restore consumer confidence, said Britain was closely cooperating with European countries to investigate what happened. “Looking ahead, there was absolute determination in the industry to restore confidence in their products,” he said in televised remarks. “We look forward to meeting on a regular basis to absolutely make it clear that when consumers buy a product they get what they bought.” British retailers now expect the vast majority of tests on processed beef products to be completed by February 22, according to the British Retail Consortium. More than 60 percent of adults surveyed said they would now buy meat from their local butchers, the poll said, while a quarter of adults said they would now buy more joints, chops or steaks instead of processed meat. Michael Suleyman, who owns a family-run butchers’ shop in Brixton, London, said more customers appeared concerned although for now there had not been any difference in sales figures. “We have seen people panicking and asking us lots of questions like ‘where do you get your meat from?’,” Suleyman, 51, told Reuters. “We assure our customers by showing them the meat and mincing it for them in front of their eyes.” But with inflation running above central bank targets and an uncertain job market, the spending power of British consumers has been eroded in recent years and, for some, buying more expensive meat is not an option. Nearly a fifth of respondents said they wanted buy less processed meat such as ready-meals, but could not afford to. At a London branch of Britain’s biggest retailer, Tesco, which found horse DNA in some of its own-brand frozen spaghetti bolognese meals last week, consumers were still buying meat products. “I’ve got nothing against horse meat,” said Sean Cosgrove, 39, a local government employee. “I think you’re being ambitious if you expect top quality meat in those products anyway.”
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9666
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Mindful meditation may be the answer to relieving chronic back pain, study suggests
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This story focuses on a JAMA study investigating whether mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is as effective as cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and standard treatment at helping patients reduce lower back pain. The story does a good job of quantifying the benefits and risks seen in the study. However, there were three things we wanted to call special attention to: Lower back pain is an extremely common problem around the world. For example, a 2012 paper reported that lower back pain was responsible for more than three percent of all emergency room visits in the United States. An earlier paper found that health care expenditures in the U.S. directly attributable to back pain came to around $26 billion. When we consider the number of people affected by back pain, and the related economic impact, it’s clear that any research that offers insight into how to effectively treat lower back pain is worth covering.
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true
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back pain,JAMA,meditation,mindfulness
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The story doesn’t address costs for any of the treatment options discussed. Is MBSR comparable to CBT? Does insurance cover either treatment option? The story tells readers what percentage of study participants who got MBSR treatment reported improvement in pain, as well as what percentage of MBSR participants “reported improvement in the activities they could do.” It also offered the same numbers for participants who received CBT and for the control group, which received typical medical care for this condition. These details deserve a Satisfactory rating. But: The story notes: “The study did caution that 30 of the 103, or about one-third, of the participants in the meditation group reported an ‘adverse event,’ most often an increase in pain due to yoga.” It’s good to see that included. Since the story is effectively comparing MBSR to CBT and conventional treatment, it would also have been worth noting “adverse events” for those groups in the study. According to the study, 10 percent of the CBT group also experienced “adverse events,” and no adverse events were mentioned for the control group. Defining “adverse events” would also have been good, since it’s not clear whether they mean momentary pain or a debilitating flare-up of long-term pain. According to the study, the pain–for both MBSR and CBT groups–was “mostly temporary” and no “serious” adverse events were reported. Those things are worth mentioning. (It’s also worth finding out what “mostly” and “serious” mean.) The story describes the study in detail, explicitly stating the study size and the absolute percentages in each arm that had benefit. It also acknowledged the study was randomized. We’ll count this as sufficient for Satisfactory, keeping in mind the following: As explained in the summary above, the story doesn’t make clear MBSR and CBT were used in addition to conventional medical treatment, rather than instead of medical treatment. The story didn’t mention that the study excluded participants with what the study authors term “a specific diagnosis (eg, spinal stenosis).” In other words, the study did not address treatments for back pain caused by issues like a herniated disc or rheumatoid arthritis. Many readers have these conditions, and should be informed that these study results may not be applicable to their situation. Lastly, we would have welcomed a discussion of the high rates of success within the control group. Forty-four percent in that group experienced a gain in functionality, for example. That seems pretty good! What do the researchers have to say about that? No disease mongering here. However, we did want to point out that the story “fear mongers” in a sense, by stating back pain is “one reason why more and more people are addicted to painkillers.” The story insinuates that these other treatment methods–especially meditation–could help with that. And maybe they could. But the study itself says “No overall differences in treatment effects were observed for…self-reported use of medications for back pain.” So why the mention of painkiller addiction? Conflicts of interest don’t appear to be an issue here, and the story includes statements from an accompanying editorial in JAMA, which was written by experts unaffiliated with the research. This squeaks by as Satisfactory, though it should be noted that most of this material was available via news releases (see below). The story is effectively all about comparing alternatives, though–again–it should have made clear that MBSR and CBT were used in conjunction with conventional medical treatment, and it left out discussion of other well-known non-medication treatment methods, such as exercise. It’s not clear from the story whether MBSR is widely available, is available in mainly metropolitan areas, or is a relatively new field that is still uncommon. The story does quote from a separate editorial in JAMA that says health care systems “should provide access to affordable mind-body therapies,” implying that it’s not widely available. Is this the case, or can it be easily accessed? Given the constraints of a brief news story, the piece does a nice job of articulating the differences between MBSR and CBT. It would have been even more helpful for the story to mention previous studies on the impact of MBSR and CBT on low back pain, to help us understand how novel this new study is. There is little in the story that is not found in the two news releases issued on this study. (Those releases can be found here and here.)
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30966
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Fentanyl-laced marijuana use is a real and growing concern in the United States.
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To be clear, fentanyl is an extremely potent and dangerous drug whose presence is increasing in many areas in the United States and unequivocally caused numerous overdose deaths. However, as no incident has actually confirmed the presence of marijuana laced specifically with fentanyl, we rank the claim that such a mixture is a real and increasing danger as false.
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false
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Politics, marijuana
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At numerous times in 2017, local news stories reporting overdose incidents from “fentanyl-laced” marijuana have gone viral. Fentanyl, a relatively cheap opioid that is much stronger than heroin, is sometimes cut with other opioids to increase potency. On 8 February 2017, the Facebook page of Ohio’s Painesville Township Fire Department posted a warning: FYI-The Painesville Twp Fire Dept. has been called to 3 unresponsive person calls in the last 12 hours. The common denominator appears to be marijuana laced with an unknown opiate. The victims are unaware they are using anything other than marijuana but are overdosing like they had used heroin or fentanyl. Be cautious and call 911 asap if you suspect an overdose. It turns out, however, that these victims had indeed been using other illicit drugs and that they were not honest about the role these drugs may have played when asked by first responders, forcing a clarification: The people involved in these incidents later admitted to the use of other drugs, in addition to smoking marijuana. Lab results found no evidence of laced marijuana. Lab results did find crack cocaine and other drugs in the residence. Sometimes people are not honest with us about what they have taken or used. We treat based on symptoms and what we are told might be wrong. We decided to post the notice on possible tainted marijuana based on the best interest of our community. This report was similar to viral stories originating from London, Ontario on 8 August 2017: Police and health officials in London, Ont. are warning that marijuana and other drugs in the city could be laced with the deadly opioid fentanyl. Urine tests from people who said they only used heroin or pot came back positive for the opioid, according to the London Free Press. City officials quickly issued a warning to remind users that illicit street drugs can be cut with fentanyl, which can be lethal in tiny doses. Both sets of reports were based on opiate overdose symptoms and/or self-reports that the affected parties had never intentionally consumed opiates or drugs other than marijuana. Another similarity in both of these accounts is that both later carried corrections clarifying that, in fact, pot-laced fentanyl was in no way associated with either incident. The Ontario story, as published in the Huffington Post, now contains an illustrative correction and a later update which rejects the entire premise of their original story: CORRECTION: A previous version of this story stated that fentanyl had been discovered in marijuana and other drugs in London, Ont. ; in fact, the opioid was found in urine samples of people who said they used pot and heroin. This version has been updated for clarity. UPDATE 8/16/17: Health Canada has confirmed it tested samples of marijuana suspected of containing fentanyl and concluded they were all free of the opioid. Despite neither of these events being rooted in reality, news reports went all in on the fentanyl-pot craze after Hamilton County Ohio Coroner Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco appeared at a political event with Senator Rob Portman, in which she claimed that the mixture had been found and that its risk is real: Synthetic opiates like fentanyl have been found in marijuana, Hamilton County Coroner Dr. Lakshmi Sammarco said Monday. […] She did not specify how many cases involved marijuana mixed with a synthetic opiate. “Essentially, the message we’ve tried to get out there, is if you are using any form of street drugs, count on them having some form of synthetic opioid mixed in,” Samarco said. While these statements have been repeated uncritically in numerous instances, the reality is that the coroner has not, by her own admission, seen a single documented case of fentanyl-laced marijuana in her jurisdiction. She clarified her remarks in a comment to VICE.com: When reached for comment by VICE about her methodology, Sammarco said that her quote had been unfortunately misinterpreted. Her office hasn’t seen fentanyl-laced weed at all, she clarified, adding that Rob Portman, the US senator with whom she appeared Monday, told her it had been spotted in northeast Ohio. She told me that she didn’t know the senator’s source of information. Since then, there have been a handful of reports that are similar in nature to the original two covered here. A 22 September 2017 story reported on law enforcement officers from the Makah Tribal Police Department in Neah Bay, Washington, who claim to have seized and field-tested marijuana laced with fentanyl. These results have been questioned by a number of law enforcement agencies, and remain unconfirmed while awaiting more rigorous testing. An earlier event was recorded on 8 August 2017 by the Yarmouth Police Department in Cape Cod, Massachusetts; it was similarly based on self-reported claims: Police said the man and his girlfriend had smoked marijuana earlier in the day “but did not realize it may have been laced with another drug which caused the overdose.” Officers seized a grinder and glass bong from the house as part of their investigation. In a statement, the Yarmouth Police Department said its officers “believe that it is possible that the marijuana was laced with fentanyl, which police are starting to see more and more across the country.” Of course, the statement used in this news report to back up the latter portion of the claim were the same statements made by Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco that were, in fact, disowned prior to the publication of the 8 August 2017 story being published. We have reached out to the Yarmouth Police for more information regarding this incident, but have yet to receive a response. There have been no confirmed incidents in which fentanyl has ever been conclusively detected in marijuana samples (a combination that purportedly “smells like popcorn” when smoked). In an comment made to the Cincinnati Inquirer, Drug Enforcement Agency Spokesperson Melvin Patterson said he had not heard of such incidents occurring, but didn’t rule out their possibility either: “In regard to marijuana, I’m not familiar with that,” U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Melvin Patterson said. He’d heard of no cases of fentanyl in marijuana. “There could be,” he said. We reached out to the DEA to see if anything has changed since these comments were made in June 2017.
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20454
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"An independent payment advisory board created by the health care reform law ""can ration care and deny certain Medicare treatments."
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Pat Boone says health care advisory board can ration care and deny Medicare treatments
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false
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Ohio, Health Care, Medicare, Message Machine 2012, Pat Boone,
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"Pat Boone gained fame in the 1950s with covers of tunes like ""Tutti Frutti,"" ""Long Tall Sally,"" and ""Ain’t That a Shame."" Now he’s helping the 60 Plus Association, an advocacy group that bills itself as ""the conservative alternative"" to the AARP, to recycle material. Boone is the pitchman in an ad that targets the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, the health reform bill often called Obamacare approved by Congress in 2010. The ad warns seniors of potential dangers in the bill and urges them to call Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio. The 60 Plus Association announced it was launching a new campaign on March 12 that would target five Democratic senators, including Brown, on the issue of health care reform. The centerpiece of the new, $720,000 ad campaign in Ohio, 60 Plus said, is a 60-second spot featuring Boone. In addition to the spot that targets Brown, the campaign also is airing look-alike ads aimed at Sens. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Bill Nelson of Florida, Jon Tester of Montana and Claire McCaskill of Missouri. If the ad looks familiar, it should. It's the same TV spot, recycling a series of claims about the health care reform law, that was part of a $750,000 campaign that 60 Plus aimed at Brown four months ago. Since the ad is again airing in Buckeye State, PolitiFact Ohio decided to take a look at another one of its claims: that the independent payment advisory board created by the Affordable Care Act ""can ration care and deny certain Medicare treatments."" First though, we’ll touch on some of the ad’s other statements. In the ad, Boone says that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act will cut $500 billion from Medicare. PolitiFact has reviewed that claim several times. A review of the claim from an earlier 60 Plus ad noted, ""the law does not take $500 billion out of the current Medicare budget. Rather, it attempts to slow the program’s future growth, curtailing just over $500 billion in future spending over the next 10 years. Medicare spending will still increase - the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects Medicare spending will reach $929 billion in 2020, up from $499 billion in actual spending in 2009."" Boone also claims in the ad that the law creates ""a Medicare IRS with the power to cut Medicare to pay for new government programs."" But what about this claim, that the IPAB ""can ration care and deny certain Medicare treatments""? The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act creates the 15-member Independent Payment Advisory Board to suggest ways to limit Medicare’s spending growth. It can be overruled by Congress. Its appointments will be done in public. It will not make decisions on individual cases. The board can reduce how much the government pays health care providers for services, reduce payments to hospitals with very high rates of readmissions or recommend innovations that cut wasteful spending. It may not raise premiums for Medicare beneficiaries or increase deductibles, co-insurance or co-payments. The IPAB also cannot change who is eligible for Medicare, restrict benefits or make recommendations that would raise revenue. In the ad, Boone says that the IPAB would ""operate in secret, will have vast powers to reach into our lives, and will have the final, irrefutable say on Medicare policy."" Rep. Michelle Bachmann, a Minnesota Republican and former presidential candidate, earned a rating from PolitiFact when she made some similar claims in a debate in October 2011. The board's members won’t be ""bureaucrats,"" as the ad states. The health care law requires they will be doctors and medical professionals, economists and health care management experts, and representatives for consumers and seniors. Boone charges that ""this IPAB board can ration care and deny certain Medicare treatments"" and that the board decides ""whether you get care, such as continuing on dialysis or cancer chemotherapy"" and ""will make all the major health care decisions for over 300 million Americans."" But the IPAB recommendations would not apply to any particular individual. They would be across-the-board policy recommendations applied to the entire program. Given Boone’s rhetoric, some people could get the wrong impression that the board would review individual patient treatments and deny care. That’s not the case. Experts agreed that the board has no say in whether any individual receives dialysis, chemotherapy or any other treatment. It is barred by Section 3403 of the health care law from making policy recommendations that would block patients from needed care. ""The IPAB is specifically forbidden from making any recommendations that would ration care, reduce benefits, raise premiums or cost-sharing or alter eligibility for Medicare,"" HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the House Energy and Commerce Committee last July. ""And all final decisions remain in the hands of Congress,"" she said. ""If Medicare costs are rising at an unsustainable rate, it’s Congress’s choice whether to accept those recommendations or come up with recommendations of its own to put Medicare spending on a stable, sustainable path."" That’s not at all what Boone croons in the 60 Plus ad. His claim that IPAB ""can ration care and deny certain Medicare treatments"" isn’t just wrong. It’s also ridiculous. To that we can say ""Ain’t That a Shame."" On the Truth-O-Meter, the claim rates ."
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4245
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Firefighters study carcinogen exposure.
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Firefighters in Virginia are taking part in a study aimed at finding ways to reduce their exposure to carcinogens.
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true
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Health, General News, Fires, Cancer, Virginia
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WTOP-FM reports that the Fairfax County Fire and Rescue Department is partnering with the National Fire Protection Association Research Foundation on a four-phase study. Part of the focus of the study will be on how chemicals can cling to breathing equipment used by firefighters. Firefighters are exposed to toxic chemicals released into the air by burning buildings and vehicles. According to a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health study, firefighters are twice as likely to get skin and testicular cancer and mesothelioma. ___ Information from: WTOP-FM, http://www.wtop.com
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11079
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Study: Heart attacks not cut by B vitamins
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This story reports on several recent studies that fail to find benefit in terms of heart attack and stroke risk from the consumption of B vitamins by people with established vascular disease. Though the article was factually correct, it missed a golden opportunity to educate consumers about the difference between a disease outcome and a surrogate marker of the disease. In other words, homocysteine levels may be lowered by vitamin B use, but that may not make any difference on the outcome you really care about – risk of heart attack or stroke.
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true
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Since this story doesn’t make claims about efficacy, costs don’t seem applicable. We give this story a satisfactory score, but the story could have helped readers understand why measuring surrogate markers such as homocysteine levels can be different than tracking true outcomes such as heart attack or stroke. Here, the surrogate endpoint (homocysteine levels) “improved,” but the real endpoint – heart attack and stroke – did not. There is no discussion of any harms associated with consumption of vitamin B supplements, although such harms would occur from vitamin B intake unlike that studied, so this gets a satisfactory grade. Two of the three studies referred to in the journal article are detailed; a brief reference is given for the third. In addition to the discussion of the studies, a quote was pulled from an editorial in the journal that published the studies. No other treatment options for lowering risk of heart attacks or strokes are mentioned. It’s clear from the story that B vitamins have been in use for some time by many people for these purposes. It’s clear from the story that B vitamins have been in use for some time by many people for these purposes. We can’t be sure if the story relied solely or largely on a news release.
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8589
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Italian doctors slam failings in Lombardy coronavirus response.
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Doctors in Lombardy, the Italian region hardest hit by the coronavirus epidemic, have criticised local officials for their handling of the crisis and said the mistakes they made should be a lesson for everyone.
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true
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Health News
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A total of 17,127 people have died from the virus in Italy, the most anywhere in the world, with Lombardy accounting for 55% of the tally. The region also accounts for 39% of the country’s 135,586 confirmed cases. The particularly large death toll in Lombardy, the wealthiest region in Italy, has raised eyebrows, with local officials suggesting that both the high urban density and considerable elderly population might have played a part. However, a damning letter by senior doctors, including the heads of 11 provincial health authorities within Lombardy, said failures in the region’s health system had exacerbated the greatest emergency Italy has faced since World War Two. Amongst the failings they highlighted was a lack of protective clothing for medical staff - a regular source of anger since the outbreak emerged on Feb. 21. “This determined the death of many colleagues, the illness of many of them and the probable and involuntary spread of the contagion, especially in the early stages of the epidemic,” said the letter, which was posted on the website of the national federation of doctors, surgeons and orthodontists. The federation says 94 medics have died in the outbreak, many in Lombardy, which is run by the far-right League party. There was no immediate comment from Lombardy officials. The medics bemoaned an “absence of strategies” in tackling the crisis, a lack of good data and limited testing as the virus spread. This “greatly underestimated the number of patients and, to a lesser extent, the number of dead”, they wrote. While the neighbouring region of Veneto engaged in widespread testing in a known coronavirus hotspot, Lombardy only tested the seriously ill arriving for treatment in hospital, saying they did not have the capacity for wider checks. The letter took aim at the management of nursing homes, where hundreds of people have died without ever being tested. The doctors said in the province of Bergamo alone, 600 of the 6,000 pensioners under care had died. Italy’s health ministry announced on Tuesday it was sending inspectors to Milan’s largest nursing home, Pio Albergo Trivulzio, where more than 100 people have died since March. A photograph of nine bodies in the home’s mortuary was published on the front page of La Repubblica newspaper on Tuesday, with another showing its chapel full of coffins. Lombardy’s top health official, Giulio Gallera, rejected media allegations that the region had allowed hospitals to send infected patients to local care homes without proper protection in an effort to free up badly needed space in packed wards. “We always acted for the good of everyone in an extraordinary emergency and we will not let anyone cast aspersions on the serious, rigorous work we have carried out,” he said on Facebook. He did not refer to the doctors’ letter. Italy’s healthcare system is decentralized with regions having control over the money that goes to hospitals within their own borders. Lombardy has focused on developing a dual private-public network of high-performing hospitals, but critics say this was done at the expense of grassroots medical care. “Public health and on-the-ground medicine have been neglected and weakened in our region for many years,” the doctors said. “It is going to be difficult to recover from this situation at the moment,” they wrote, adding that as a starting point, the region should undertake large scale testing of health workers.
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2027
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South Carolina scientist works to grow meat in lab.
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In a small laboratory on an upper floor of the basic science building at the Medical University of South Carolina, Vladimir Mironov, M.D., Ph.D., has been working for a decade to grow meat.
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true
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Environment
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A developmental biologist and tissue engineer, Dr. Mironov, 56, is one of only a few scientists worldwide involved in bioengineering “cultured” meat. It’s a product he believes could help solve future global food crises resulting from shrinking amounts of land available for growing meat the old-fashioned way ... on the hoof. Growth of “in-vitro” or cultured meat is also under way in the Netherlands, Mironov told Reuters in an interview, but in the United States, it is science in search of funding and demand. The new National Institute of Food and Agriculture, part of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, won’t fund it, the National Institutes of Health won’t fund it, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration funded it only briefly, Mironov said. “It’s classic disruptive technology,” Mironov said. “Bringing any new technology on the market, average, costs $1 billion. We don’t even have $1 million.” Director of the Advanced Tissue Biofabrication Center in the Department of Regenerative Medicine and Cell Biology at the medical university, Mironov now primarily conducts research on tissue engineering, or growing, of human organs. “There’s a yuck factor when people find out meat is grown in a lab. They don’t like to associate technology with food,” said Nicholas Genovese, 32, a visiting scholar in cancer cell biology working under a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals three-year grant to run Dr. Mironov’s meat-growing lab. “But there are a lot of products that we eat today that are considered natural that are produced in a similar manner,” Genovese said. “There’s yogurt, which is cultured yeast. You have wine production and beer production. These were not produced in laboratories. Society has accepted these products.” If wine is produced in winery, beer in a brewery and bread in a bakery, where are you going to grow cultured meat? In a “carnery,” if Mironov has his way. That is the name he has given future production facilities. He envisions football field-sized buildings filled with large bioreactors, or bioreactors the size of a coffee machine in grocery stores, to manufacture what he calls “charlem” — “Charleston engineered meat.” “It will be functional, natural, designed food,” Mironov said. “How do you want it to taste? You want a little bit of fat, you want pork, you want lamb? We design exactly what you want. We can design texture. “I believe we can do it without genes. But there is no evidence that if you add genes the quality of food will somehow suffer. Genetically modified food is already normal practice and nobody dies.” Dr. Mironov has taken myoblasts — embryonic cells that develop into muscle tissue — from turkey and bathed them in a nutrient bath of bovine serum on a scaffold made of chitosan (a common polymer found in nature) to grow animal skeletal muscle tissue. But how do you get that juicy, meaty quality? Genovese said scientists want to add fat. And adding a vascular system so that interior cells can receive oxygen will enable the growth of steak, say, instead of just thin strips of muscle tissue. Cultured meat could eventually become cheaper than what Genovese called the heavily subsidized production of farm meat, he said, and if the public accepts cultured meat, the future holds benefits. “Thirty percent of the earth’s land surface area is associated with producing animal protein on farms,” Genovese said. “Animals require between 3 and 8 pounds of nutrient to make 1 pound of meat. It’s fairly inefficient. Animals consume food and produce waste. Cultured meat doesn’t have a digestive system. “Further out, if we have interplanetary exploration, people will need to produce food in space and you can’t take a cow with you. “We have to look to these ideas in order to progress. Otherwise, we stay static. I mean, 15 years ago who could have imagined the iPhone?”
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14671
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Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have the identical position on health care, which is they want to put the government in charge of you and your doctor.
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"Cruz said, ""Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have the identical position on health care, which is they want to put the government in charge of you and your doctor."" While Trump, Clinton and Sanders have all proposed to reduce prescription drug prices, that one policy is a far cry from having ""the identical position on health care."" Cruz’s description of that position (putting the government in charge of you and your doctor) can only reasonably be applied to Sanders’ single-payer system. Clinton has proposed specific ways to defend and expand Obama’s health care law. Trump, whose exact plan is unclear, has said repeatedly that he’d repeal and replace Obamacare with a market-based alternative. To suggest that Trump, Clinton and Sanders have the same health care proposal is inaccurate. There are many specific differences between the three plans."
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false
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National, Health Care, Ted Cruz,
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"One day before the Iowa caucus, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas slammed Republican rival Donald Trump on NBC’s Meet the Press by lumping him in with the Democrats. ""Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have the identical position on health care,"" Cruz said on Jan. 31. ""Which is they want to put the government in charge of you and your doctor."" Trump, who’s leading Cruz by almost six points in Iowa, called Cruz a liar on ABC’s This Week. But is Cruz right that the Republican front runner has the health care plan as the two leading Democrats? Not exactly. Trump, Clinton and Sanders all seem to support one particular health care policy: allowing the government to negotiate drug prices. Beyond that specific proposal, however, the three candidates’ overarching positions on health care are not at all ""identical"" and, one could argue, actually contradictory. Let’s examine each candidate’s health care plan, starting with Sanders'. Sanders’ single-payer system One of the central platforms of Sanders’ agenda is his proposal for universal health care under a single-payer system. Sanders seeks to expand Medicare — the health safety net that covers those over 65 — to all Americans. The plan, which is described in detail on Sanders’ website, ""will cover the entire continuum of health care."" ""As a patient, all you need to do is go to the doctor and show your insurance card,"" the proposal reads. ""Bernie’s plan means no more copays, no more deductibles and no more fighting with insurance companies when they fail to pay for charges."" To pay for the $1.38 trillion plan, Sanders is proposing a 6.2 percent payroll tax, a 2.2 percent income-based premium tax and a slew of taxes for higher income households. Sanders argues that a single-payer system would give the government leverage to trim administrative costs and drug prices. But it’s not clear those significant tax increases and cost reductions would cover the costs of his plan. Clinton to defend Obamacare Clinton, who says single-payer ""will never, ever come to pass,"" proposes instead to hold up and build upon the Affordable Care Act. According to her website, Clinton will defend President Barack Obama’s 2010 landmark health care law, also called Obamacare, from efforts to repeal it. She also wants to expand health care access for rural Americans and work to lower the costs of deductibles, copays and prescription drugs. Specifically, she proposes: • Exempting three doctor's visits per year from deductibles; • Providing a refundable tax credit (up to $2,500 for individuals, $5,000 for families) for Americans whose out-of-pocket health care expenses are more than 5 percent of their income; • Blocking or modifying unreasonable insurance rate hikes. Trump’s ambiguous plan Trump, who once voiced admiration for single-payer, has yet to release a health care plan or propose anything beyond vague suggestions. But Trump consistently has said he would repeal the Affordable Care Act — a position contradicting Clinton’s vow. Obamacare would be replaced with ""something terrific"" that ""takes care of everybody,"" Trump promises but swears now that it wouldn’t be a single-payer system — a position antithetical to Sanders’ plan. What that ""something terrific"" would actually look like is unclear. His comments over the past few months suggests he’s been adding to a grab bag of sometimes contradictory ideas. Trump has suggested a health care system in which insurance companies deemed financially stable can offer plans across state lines. He’s also advocated for the government to negotiate with hospitals and drug companies for lower prices and to provide coverage for lower income Americans. Here are some examples of what he’s proposed: • Jan. 31, 2016, This Week: ""We're going to work with our hospitals. We're going to work with our doctors. We've got to do something. …But that's not single payer and as far as Obamacare is concerned, one of the staples of my speech — and you can ask any of my many supporters — is repeal and replace Obamacare. It's a disaster. • Jan. 25, 2016, Farmington, N.H., rally: ""Drugs, with Medicare — they don’t bid them out, they don’t bid them out. They pay like this wholesale incredible number. They say like $300 billion could be saved if we bid them out. We don’t do it. Why? Because of the drug companies, folks."" • Oct. 25, 2015, This Week: ""I'm okay with the (health) savings accounts. I think it's a good idea; it's a very down-the-middle idea. It works. It's something that's proven. The one thing we have to do is repeal and replace Obamacare. It is a disaster."" • Oct. 14, 2015, WHO Radio: ""If we get rid of the artificial lines drawn around each state and companies from Iowa can bid in New York … you’ll get these great plans. And the only thing the government should be involved in is they have to be really solvent companies in case there’s a catastrophic event or whatever. As far as the other group, as far as what we can do, I don’t want to see people doing in the streets."" • Sept. 27, 2015, 60 Minutes: ""Obamacare's going to be repealed and replaced. ...I am going to take care of everybody. I don't care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody's going to be taken care of much better than they're taken care of now. ...The government's going to pay for it. But we're going to save so much money on the other side. But for the most part, it's going to be a private plan, and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great plans with lots of different competition, with lots of competitors, with great companies, and they can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have everything."" Our ruling Cruz said, ""Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have the identical position on health care, which is they want to put the government in charge of you and your doctor."" While Trump, Clinton and Sanders have all proposed to reduce prescription drug prices, that one policy is a far cry from having ""the identical position on health care."" Cruz’s description of that position (putting the government in charge of you and your doctor) can only reasonably be applied to Sanders’ single-payer system. Clinton has proposed specific ways to defend and expand Obama’s health care law. Trump, whose exact plan is unclear, has said repeatedly that he’d repeal and replace Obamacare with a market-based alternative. To suggest that Trump, Clinton and Sanders have the same health care proposal is inaccurate. There are many specific differences between the three plans."
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31081
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A worker at a Pepsi or Frooti plant has contaminated those beverage products by injecting HIV-infected blood into them.
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Other ingestibles have previously been fingered as vehicles for the transmission of HIV-infected blood to the unsuspecting public, and these stories too were baseless: The 2004 scare about restaurant ketchup dispensers and the 2005-2006 scare about pineapples.
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false
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Food, Food Contamination, frooti, HIV
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A warning about HIV-contaminated Pepsi products began spreading on the Internet and via cell phone text message in July 2011 (with a resurgence in September 2012), and it has also been echoed in recurrent rumors about Mango Frooti, a popular beverage in India: I am hearing that someone with HIV at a pepsi plant has injected their blood into the product during plant production. Is this true? Why would they still be selling the product I thought. But some people are saying the news said to not drink it right now. URGENT NEWS. There’s news from the police. Its an urgent message for all. For next few days don’t drink any product from pepsi company’s like pepsi, tropicana juice, slice, 7up etc. A worker from the company has added his blood contaminated with AIDS. Watch NDTV. please forward this to everyone on your list Such rumors are standard food contamination urban legends akin to the leper in the Chesterfield factory rumor. No news accounts, government agencies, or other reliable sources have reported Pepsi or Frooti products being contaminated with HIV-infected blood. In May 2013, Parie Agro (Frooti’s parent company) responded to this “unjustified rumor” by posting the following message on their Facebook page: As for whether consumers can acquire HIV via contaminated food or beverages, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) emphatically says they cannot: No incident of food being contaminated with HIV-infected blood or semen has been reported to CDC. Furthermore, CDC has received no reports of HIV infection resulting from eating food, including condiments. HIV does not live long outside the body. Even if small amounts of HIV-infected blood or semen was consumed, exposure to the air, heat from cooking, and stomach acid would destroy the virus. Therefore, there is no risk of contracting HIV from eating food. HIV does not long survive outside its host medium of human bodily fluids: blood, semen, vaginal fluid, breast milk, saliva, tears. (Which is not to say HIV can be transmitted by every one of those: according to the CDC, “Contact with saliva, tears, or sweat has never been shown to result in transmission of HIV.”) The CDC says except under laboratory conditions, HIV is unable to reproduce outside its living host; it does not spread or maintain infectiousness outside its host. Therefore, were HIV-tainted blood to be mixed into foodstuffs or beverages, the virus would neither survive nor while it was still viable multiply and so replenish itself. Although such cases are rare, the CDC confirms that people have acquired HIV through oral contact with, or swallowing of, HIV-laden bodily fluids. However, no known infections involving oral transmission of HIV have so far come from contact with, or ingestion of, a food product or beverage; all such infections involved sexual contact.
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1663
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Cold case: scientists encounter prehistoric murder mystery.
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This 430,000-year-old case may be the world’s oldest murder mystery.
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true
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Science News
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Scientists on Wednesday said a fossilized skull discovered deep inside a Spanish cave shows telltale signs of homicide: two fractures inflicted by the same weapon. The skull, belonging to a primitive member of the Neanderthal lineage, was found in an apparent funerary site down a shaft in the appropriately bleak-sounding Sima de los Huesos, Spanish for “Pit of the Bones,” in the Atapuerca mountains. The skull shows that our species, Homo sapiens, cannot claim a monopoly on murder. “This individual was killed in an act of lethal interpersonal violence, providing a window into an often-invisible aspect of the social life of our human ancestors,” said paleontologist Nohemi Sala of Madrid’s Centro Mixto UCM-ISCIII de Evolución y Comportamiento Humano. This oldest-known example of murder occurred 230,000 years before our species first appeared in Africa. “Based on the similarities in shape and size of both the wounds, we believe they are the result of repeated blows with the same object and inflicted by another individual, perhaps in a face-to-face encounter,” Sala added. Remains of nearly 30 individuals were found at the bottom of the 43-foot (13-meter) shaft. The murder victim suffered two penetrating fractures on the forehead’s left side, above the eye. Using forensic methods like those employed by police, the researchers interpreted the wounds, each nearly an inch (2 cm) wide, as evidence of blunt-force trauma occurring around the time of death. “We have examined the bone microscopically and used CT scans,” added paleontologist Juan Luis Arsuaga of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Sala said the weapon may have been a wooden spear, stone spear tip or stone hand-axe. The presence of a notch at a similar location in the outlines of both fractures indicates they were caused by the same object. “Since either of these wounds would likely have been lethal, penetrating the brain, the presence of multiple wounds implies an intention to kill,” Sala said. Arsuaga said the victim was a young adult. Whether it was a man or woman is not clear. The motive and perpetrator are unlikely ever to be known. “Unfortunately, the intentions do not fossilize, so it is impossible to interpret the motivation of the killing,” Sala said. “Not even Sherlock Holmes could help us in that.” The research appears in the scientific journal PLOS ONE.
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41722
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First time in 53 years that drug prices went down last year.
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One aim the president and Democratic 2020 challengers share is the desire to bring down the price of prescription drugs. But is that already happening, or are prices still climbing? The two parties disagree, and it depends on how they’re measuring drug prices.
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mixture
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drug prices, prescription drugs,
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One aim the president and Democratic 2020 challengers share is the desire to bring down the price of prescription drugs. But is that already happening, or are prices still climbing? The two parties disagree, and it depends on how they’re measuring drug prices.President Donald Trump has claimed, “Last year, for the first time in over 50 years, drug prices went down,” while Sen. Kamala Harris says on her website that pharmaceutical companies “increased drug prices by 10.5 percent over the past six months alone.”The president is referring to a measure of what consumers and insurers pay at retail pharmacies (though it hasn’t been 50 years since that index dropped), and Harris is referring to list prices for a basket of drugs, according to their campaigns.The problem with drug prices is that they can be measured in different ways, and there’s not one comprehensive measure of all prices, or alternatively, of what people, insurers and the government ultimately pay. There are rebates and discounts and behind-the-scenes negotiations, as well as common retail drugs, specialty drugs and physician-administered medications. The introduction of generics and how prescribing patterns change also impact what is spent.“There is no measure that actually does what we’re talking about,” Joseph Antos, a health policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, told us. There’s “no good measure of drug pricing trends.”Richard Evans, founder and general manager of SSR Health, an investment research firm, told us the answer to whether prices have gone up or down depends on which drugs we’re talking about and at which point in the supply chain. “List prices are rising for brands, but the net prices are falling,” he said, with “net” meaning after rebates, discounts, coupons and fees are deducted.SSR Health’s analysis captures 90% of brand sales and measures price-per-unit trends. In inflation-adjusted terms, list prices have gone up by 3.3% in the first quarter of this year, while net prices declined by 4.1%, the company found.The Trump administration is relying on the consumer price index for prescription drugs, a measure of drug price inflation that aims to capture what consumers, along with their insurance companies or other payers, are paying for a basket of retail prescriptions. The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent figures show the CPI for prescriptions dropped by 2% from June 2018 to June 2019.The CPI has its shortcomings. Experts point out that it doesn’t include specialty drugs, which tend to be expensive, and its ability to accurately measure what insurers pay is hindered by what pharmacies can report. But Barry Bosworth a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told us the CPI for prescription drugs is “the best that is available.”That doesn’t mean that Democrats don’t have support for some of their claims, but their measures of drug prices have limitations, too, usually pertaining to a subset of drugs, only brand-name drugs or only drug list prices that have increased.The list price affects consumers’ copays, coinsurance or deductibles. Evans said insurance beneficiaries at the prescription counter are “experiencing the list price inflation,” because their out-of-pocket amounts are based on the list prices.But the net price paid for a drug can vary considerably from its list price. Evans said the average difference between list and net for brand-name drugs is 47%, as of the end of the first quarter of the year.We’ll take a closer look at these measures and what politicians have claimed.Over the past several months, Trump has repeatedly made some version of the claim, “Drug prices are coming down, first time in 51 years because of my administration.” Last week, in a July 17 campaign rally in North Carolina, he said it again, claiming drug prices went down “for the first time in over 50 years.” Five days later, on July 22, he upped that to “53 years.”Trump’s campaign pointed to the CPI when we inquired about the president’s claim. But it hasn’t been that long since the year-over-year change in the CPI for drugs dipped below zero. Before the recent decline, the CPI had dropped in July 2013, from the year prior.The president has used the December 2017 to December 2018 decline of 0.6% as the first “calendar year” drop since December 1971 to December 1972, which is 46 years prior, not 50. But looking at each month’s 12-month change, which fluctuates, the December decrease was the first in about five-and-half years.However, the CPI now has decreased year-over-year in six of the past seven months, a string of declines that hasn’t occurred since the early 1970s.Here’s a look at the 12-month change in the CPI for prescription drugs since BLS began tracking this measure:The measure showed a 2% decrease in June, the largest on record, as Alex Azar, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, noted on July 16 in a cabinet meeting.“So, new data in for June that shows that, again, prescription drug prices are going down,” Azar said. “The Department of Labor’s inflation measure for prescription drug prices, it continues to go down. … The biggest decrease in over 50 years.” (It’s technically 49 years. )The CPI for prescription drugs, as BLS explains, “measures price change of drugs purchased with a prescription at a retail, mail order, or internet pharmacy.” The price in this case is “the total reimbursement to the retailer from the patient and all eligible payers for a single prescription.” That means it includes payments to the pharmacy from consumers, insurance companies or other payers, such as Medicare Part D.Like other inflation indexes, the measure is based on a sample. It’s a sample of retail pharmacies, and the drug prices measured are a sample drawn from the last 20 prescriptions dispensed at each pharmacy. It makes adjustments for the introduction of generics six months after brand-name drugs’ patents expire.It’s a broad measure of transactions at retail pharmacies, but that means it doesn’t measure everything.Walid Gellad, director of the Center for Pharmaceutical Policy and Prescribing at the University of Pittsburgh, told us that to answer whether drug prices have gone up or down “really depends on what drug prices you’re talking about.” The CPI, he pointed out, excludes some types of high-price drugs.“Is it important that the CPI shows drug prices went down? Yes,” he said in an email. “But it’s misleading to rely solely on the CPI, because it excludes physician and hospital administered drugs, and does not sample specialty pharmacies. … It also doesn’t adequately account for new drugs that enter the market at [a] very high price.”Gellad mentioned the 2018 Express Scripts Drug Trend Report, which found that spending for traditional drugs went down by 5.8% from 2017 to 2018, while spending on specialty drugs went up 9.4%. Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefit management company, said that those specialty drugs “account for 44.7 percent of total drug spending, up 3.9 percent from 2017.”“To clear it up for your readers, some drugs went up, some went down!” Gellad said.The CPI also doesn’t capture rebates that drug manufacturers pay to pharmacy benefit managers or insurers, of course, since those payments occur outside of the retail transaction. Rebates are used as incentives by the manufacturers to get their drugs on insurers’ formularies, or in a preferred placement on those formularies. (For more on rebates, see this explainer video from the Kaiser Family Foundation. )Antos said it’s difficult to precisely measure what insurers are paying.BLS is “trying to do the impossible,” Antos told us in a phone interview, “which is isolate the amount that is paid in total on behalf of consumers plus by consumers directly for a drug that they buy at the pharmacy. And as you know, there’s enough complication in the way drug pricing is set, the way formularies are determined,” including rebates and other fees, “that muddy the water.”A 2018 report published by the Brookings Institution and National Bureau of Economic Research said the CPI relies “disproportionately” on cash transactions, which only make up about 7% of the retail drug market, because pharmacies are limited in sharing information from electronic transactions from third-party payers. And it raised questions about how well the CPI was able to capture the transitions to generic medications.Despite the concerns about the CPI’s limitations, when we contacted the lead author of that report, Brookings’ Bosworth, he said the Trump administration is “right to rely on the CPI,” calling it “the best that is available.”Bosworth wrote in an email to FactCheck.org that there’s “enormous variability in drug price changes and there is no means of incorporating the initial cost of new drugs” in the CPI. “Still the methods used to calculate the CPI average are superior to the alternatives,” he said, noting that it’s a broad index “that makes a major effort to be representative of all retail sales of prescription drugs” and factors in the introduction of generics.But does the CPI tell us that drug prices have declined? Bosworth said he would “accept [the recent change] as indicative of a sustained change.”Evans, of SSR Health, said, “It is factually correct to say drug prices are coming down,” provided that the speaker means “drug prices at the point of sale.” He added that it’s possible consumers have seen price growth or a decline; there’s no index that calculates only what the consumer pays out of pocket.Similarly, Antos said politicians should stick more closely to the technically correct statement — that the CPI prescription drug price component went down. But what the president and other politicians tend to say “is something that’s looser and therefore has an element of correctness to it but can be misleading.”Our fact-checking colleagues at the Washington Post and PolitiFact also have looked into these claims, finding concerns from experts over what the CPI can show and that there’s no one, perfect measure on drug prices.Democratic presidential candidates, meanwhile, have pointed to other reports, but those, too, have their limitations.For instance, Harris, in her plan to lower drug prices, said that “families have been slapped with double-digit price increases on 2,500 drugs since Trump took office.”Sen. Amy Klobuchar also used the 2,500 figure in the first Democratic debate.“The president literally went on TV, on Fox, and said that people’s heads would spin when they see how much he would bring down pharmaceutical prices. … Instead, 2,500 drugs have gone up in double-digits since he came into office,” Klobuchar said. That refers to a list of drug prices from Pharmacy Benefit Consultants, promoted in a tweet in March 2018 by Andy Slavitt, a former acting administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.But those figures are from more than a year ago and the claims refer only to those drugs, not drug prices overall.Last month, CNBC found there had been nearly 1,600 — not 2,500 — drug price increases of 10% or more since Trump took office, according to Michael Rea, founder of Rx Savings Solutions. Rea’s figure came from public disclosures of price increases.Harris also says in her plan that pharmaceutical companies “increased drug prices by 10.5 percent over the past six months alone,” referring to a Politico story on other figures from Rx Savings Solutions that the company confirmed to FactCheck.org.“In the first six months of the year, prices for 3,443 medicines rose, compared to 2,919 last year — yet the overall size of the price hikes was lower than in the previous period — 10.5 percent compared to 15 percent,” Politico reported.Note that the 10.5% increase refers to those 3,443 drugs — not drug prices overall.The Harris campaign argues that these measures of list prices, before rebates or other discounts are applied, are the more relevant measures. The CPI, a campaign spokesperson, told us “doesn’t reflect what consumers are actually paying overall because it doesn’t take rebates into account,” and the index is “representative of popular drugs, making it less likely to include newer or less-prescribed drugs, which are more expensive.”As we said, the list prices, before rebates, do matter to consumers because their out-of-pocket copays and coinsurance amounts are based on the list prices.SSR Health has found that the increase in brand-name list prices has slowed. List prices went up 3.3% in real terms in the first quarter of this year but 6.3% in the first quarter of 2018. The company said this was due to a decrease in the number of price hikes of more than 10%, and it said political pressure, dating back to a 2015 tweet about drug pricing from then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, had had an impact.The Harris campaign pointed to another measure showing thousands of brand-name drug price hikes. An Associated Press analysis found 2,712 price increases among branded drugs in early January, with a median increase of 5%. Those numbers are down from 3,327 increases in January 2018, with a median hike of nearly 9%, the AP reported, based on data from Elsevier, a health data firm.Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s campaign also pointed the Washington Post Fact Checker to such analyses after she claimed in a CNN interview this month that Trump “promised to lower prescription drug prices and failed.”The Bureau of Labor Statistics also provides a producer price index, which measures the price drug manufacturers receive. Richard G. Frank, a professor of health economics at Harvard Medical School, told the Washington Post that he tends to look at that measure, “because it is closer to what manufacturers are selling drugs for.” It has been flat in recent months but hasn’t shown year-over-year declines like the CPI. Pointing to that and other market measures, Frank said, “I think the evidence points to slowed growth not negative growth.”Trump has claimed that drug prices are coming down “because of my administration,” but experts questioned that.While Trump has focused on lowering drug prices, Antos told us any administration’s policies wouldn’t have had an impact on the CPI this soon. “It is fair to say that three years into a presidential administration” — meaning any administration, he said — “one should not jump to the conclusion that anything they may have done would have been the primary reason for that particular result.”It would take a while, more than three years, to have an impact in either direction — causing prices to go up or down, he said.Evans gave one reason for the drop in the CPI, but it didn’t have anything to do with the Trump administration’s policies: a decrease in markups by retail pharmacies. He said there are more pharmacies than needed in the country, so the pharmacy benefit managers have leverage in their negotiations with retail outlets, causing pharmacies to lower their markup amounts.Express Scripts credits its “clinical innovations” for a decrease in actual drug costs paid by its insurance plans from 2017 to 2018 while list prices went up.A Trump campaign spokesperson pointed to the administration’s efforts to more quickly approve generic drugs. Generic applications faced a backlog during the Obama administration, which began to take steps to expedite the approval process, as a 2017 Brookings Institution paper explains. The Food and Drug Administration has continued to prioritize generics.PricewaterhouseCoopers noted that generic approvals have been “steadily on the rise” since fiscal year 2014. In fiscal 2018, 781 generics were approved, up significantly from the 409 approved in 2014.But it’s unclear how much of an impact this would have had on overall drug prices. Antos said the increase in the introduction of generics “would’ve had an impact but it wouldn’t have had a huge impact,” and Evans said he didn’t think the decline in the CPI could be explained by a shift to generics, as there weren’t any “big blockbuster” generic approvals.In 2016, the percentage of prescriptions filled with generics was already at 89% (but just 27% of total drug costs), according to a study from the QuintilesIMS Institute, conducted for the Generic Pharmaceutical Association. Update, Aug. 1: In 2018, generics made up 90% of prescriptions filled and 22% of total drug spending, according to the Association for Accessible Medicines (formerly the Generic Pharmaceutical Association), citing IQVIA data. The Trump campaign also pointed to some drug companies announcing price freezes in 2018 in response to Trump revealing a plan to lower drug prices (though some companies then planned to raise them in 2019). Other actions by the Trump administration either haven’t been implemented for long or haven’t yet gone into effect, while others don’t pertain to retail drugs measured by the CPI or have been blocked by the courts. For instance, the Trump administration issued a new policy for Medicare Advantage plans, allowing them to use “step therapy,” which requires enrollees to use lower-cost alternatives to more expensive physician-administered drugs for new prescriptions. But the policy didn’t take effect until Jan. 1, and experts told us last year it was unclear how much impact the policy could have on spending or price.The administration has pushed price transparency policies, but a court recently blocked its proposed rule to force drug companies to list prices in TV ads for pharmaceuticals.Democratic proposals include setting caps on drug prices based on what other countries pay (Harris), punishing companies for unjustified price hikes and importing drugs from Canada (Gillibrand), and ending pay-for-delay deals that keep generics off the market and allowing the government to negotiate Medicare Part D prices (Klobuchar).In touting their plans, politicians have their pick of statistics on drug prices. We’d caution voters to question what exactly those statistics are measuring.
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27892
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A newborn child declared dead revived after being placed on his mother's chest.
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In a literal sense, it is true that a child previously declared dead was recognized as being alive after having been placed on his mother’s chest. To what degree that revival was brought about by the mother’s actions is impossible to determine, however.
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true
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Glurge Gallery, miracles
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On 25 March 2010, Australian mother Kate Ogg gave birth to twins Jamie and Emily just 27 weeks into her pregnancy. Although Emily survived the birthing process, Jamie was born in distress and was not breathing. After doctors spent 20 minutes trying to resuscitate Jamie and failed, they told Kate and her husband David that Jamie had died, and nurses placed Jamie’s unmoving body onto his mother’s chest so she could say her goodbyes. But then the couple experienced a seeming miracle. As Kate and David thought they were extending a farewell to their deceased child, a remarkable thing occurred: after about five minutes or so, Jamie began moving, and his movements became more and more pronounced. Nonetheless, the doctor present at the scene informed the parents such movements were simply reflex actions and were not indicative of life. So Kate and David steeled themselves to spending an extra minute or two with the child they believed they would never know for more than just those few moments: “I wanted to meet him and to hold him and for him to know us,” Kate said. “If he was on his way out of the world, we wanted for him to know who his parents were and to know that we loved him before he died. We’d resigned ourselves to the fact we were going to lose him; we were just trying to make the most of those last precious moments.” That “extra minute or two” ended up stretching out to more than two hours. And then something even more remarkable than Jamie’s previous movements took place: the supposedly dead child opened his eyes. “We thought, ‘What a blessing, we get to see his eyes before he passes away,'” Kate said. “But they stayed open!” As most of us probably would, at that point the couple began to considered the possibility their child wasn’t dead at all. “I think half of us said [then], ‘What if he actually makes it? '” David said. “If he does, this would just be a miracle. The other half was saying, ‘No, he’s been declared dead, this is purely instinct. '” As noted in news accounts, David and Kate were practicing what Australians call “kangaroo care”: Actually, it is widely practiced throughout the world, especially in poorer countries where incubators may not be available for premature babies. An infant is held skin-to-skin to their mother or father, generating heat for the newborn much like a baby kangaroo receives in its mother’s pouch. Kate had heard of kangaroo care before. “[The baby] comes out of you, and all of a sudden there isn’t the warmth or smell of the mother or the sound of their heartbeat. And so putting him back on my chest was as close to him being inside me where he was safe.” Jamie continued to come around as he lay across Kate’s chest. He began grabbing at his mother’s finger, as well as his father’s. And when Kate put a dab of breast milk on her finger, Jamie eagerly accepted it. At this point Kate truly began believing her baby was actually alive: “We thought, ‘He’s getting stronger — he’s not dead,'” she said. She and David tried inducing the doctor to come take another look at Jamie. “We kept saying, ‘He’s doing things dead babies don’t do, you might want to come and see this,'” she said. But the couple were told again by other hospital personnel what they were seeing was simply reflex actions of a child who had already been declared dead. Eventually, they had to resort to a little white lie to get the doctor to pay a visit to their room. “David said, ‘Go and tell him we’ve come to terms with the baby’s death, can he just come and explain it.’ That made him come back.” Kate Ogg said the doctor was in disbelief when he arrived back at the bedside. “He got a stethoscope, listened to Jamie’s chest and just kept shaking his head. He said, ‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it. '” Dr. Lisa Eiland of the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City said there may actually be a solid scientific grounding for what seemed like a miracle. “What’s important is the warmth that the mother provides and the stimulation that the baby may have received from hearing the mother’s heartbeat,” Eiland said. “So those are all things that may have helped the baby in terms of going down the path to living as opposed to the path of death.” David Ogg gave all the credit to his “very strong, very smart wife” for Jamie’s survival. “She instinctively did what she did,” he said. “If she hadn’t have done that, then Jamie probably wouldn’t be here.”
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3836
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Parents to get prescription lock boxes, disposal bags.
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More than 800 New Hampshire families are getting lock boxes and safe disposal bags in hopes of keeping youth away from prescription drugs and making a small dent in a big problem.
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true
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New Hampshire, Medication, Opioids, Concord, Health, General News, Prescription drugs, Public health
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Officials from the Capital Area Public Health Network and the Rx Abuse Leadership Initiative of New Hampshire said Tuesday they will be distributing the boxes and bags at community events and recovery-friendly workplaces in Concord and two dozen surrounding towns. Parents can request them directly from the organizations, said Annika Stanley-Smith, the network’s director of substance misuse prevention. She said prevention is an important part of addressing the state’s opioid crisis, and the new initiative builds on other programs, such as the periodic drug take-back days when police departments collect prescription medication. “Prevention can’t just be one event at one time. Prevention needs to happen every day and everywhere. We need to stack up protective factors,” she said. “We want to meet people where they’re at.” A study published in July involving more than 18,000 high school seniors found that about 11 percent reported misusing prescription medication in the past year. Within that group, nearly half said they had multiple sources for the drugs, including family members, friends with prescriptions and other sources that led back to prescription drugs in the home, according to the study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. A second study published in the same journal examined the source of prescription drugs misused by nearly 104,000 adolescents ages 12 to 17. The most common sources were family members, friends and prescriptions written for previous conditions. About 30 percent of those misusing the drugs took them from their home medicine cabinets. Sean Esteban McCabe, the studies’ author, said Tuesday more than 90% of American households that contain controlled substances are easily accessible to youth. Evidence is building that offering families cost-effective ways of safe prescription drug disposal methods is an effective in reducing the amount of leftover medications, he said in an email. “New Hampshire is taking an important step in educating families about the importance of proper storage and disposal of controlled substances,” said McCabe, a professor at the University of Michigan Center for the Study of Drugs, Alcohol, Smoking and Health. In New Hampshire, which has been among the states hardest hit by the opioid crisis, a recent survey by the public health network found that more than 80 percent of youth in the Concord region had easy access to prescription drugs. The initiative announced Tuesday was one of many efforts to address the crisis, along with a new hub-and-spoke model called “The Doorway-NH” in which hospitals and others work with local providers to ensure that help is less than an hour away anywhere in the state. Multiple fire departments also have created “Safe Stations” to direct people to treatment and services. In Nashua, Fire Chief Brian Rhodes said Tuesday that as of last week, the city had seen a 3 percent decrease in fatal overdoses in the last year, compared to the previous year. “I think we are seeing some successes, but I don’t know if we can pinpoint any one thing,” he said. He said he may be difficult to measure the success of efforts like distributing the lock boxes, but said he absolutely thinks such an approach is worth it. “We did not get into this crisis overnight, and we’re not going to get over it overnight, but I think educating our youth to the dangers of prescription drugs is critical for their survival,” he said.
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13247
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"Russ Feingold Says Ron Johnson ""has essentially done nothing"" to fight heroin addiction and opioid abuse."
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"Qualifying his claim only slightly, Feingold says Johnson ""has essentially done nothing"" to fight heroin addiction and opioid abuse. Johnson has voted for a major bill aimed at confronting the heroin-opioids problem, introduced a bill aimed at curbing overprescription of opioids and held Senate committee hearings on the problem. That’s more than nothing."
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false
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Immigration, Candidate Biography, Drugs, Homeland Security, Wisconsin, Russ Feingold,
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"Heroin and prescription painkillers were a topic in the second and final Wisconsin U.S. Senate debate on Oct. 18, 2016, three weeks before election day. It produced this exchange among Republican incumbent Ron Johnson, Democratic challenger Russ Feingold and moderator Mike Gousha. Johnson: ""I’ve been incredibly active on this. The fact that Senator Feingold attacked me, saying I’ve done nothing on this -- completely . And quite honestly, a very disgusting attack."" Feingold: ""I didn’t say he did nothing."" Gousha: ""There was a radio ad that said that Senator Johnson essentially did nothing."" Gousha was correct. A Feingold campaign radio ad released Sept. 6, 2016 says: ""Heroin addiction and opioid abuse are killing Wisconsin, and yet after six years in Washington, Sen. Ron Johnson has essentially done nothing."" Johnson pushed back by posting the video clip of the debate exchange on Twitter and with a digital ad responding to Feingold’s attack. So, let’s check the claim in the radio ad: In the six years since Johnson took Feingold’s seat in the 2010 election, has he ""essentially done nothing"" to fight heroin addiction and opioid abuse? Scope of the problem The lethal power of heroin and opioids (prescription painkillers such as oxycodone) has increasingly drawn the attention of politicians. Prince’s death in April 2016 from fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, led Republican Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel to claim that more people die in Wisconsin from all types of drug overdoses than car crashes. A couple of months later, when Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said ""we’re losing as many people to heroin and opioid overdoses as we lost to the AIDS epidemic at its peak,"" PolitiFact New York’s rating was Mostly . Deaths directly caused by AIDS (43,115) were higher at their peak in 1995. Nevertheless, the latest data show 28,647 people across the country died from heroin and opioid overdoses in 2014, a figure that has been steadily climbing. Now let’s turn to Johnson. Johnson actions Johnson pushed back on Feingold’s claim partly because a nephew of Johnson’s died from a fentanyl overdose. (Initially, when Johnson revealed the death in March 2016, it was reported as a heroin overdose, but Johnson has since said it was fentanyl.) Here’s what Johnson’s campaign cited to us in terms of actions Johnson has taken: 1. Voted for the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, which was approved almost unanimously in Congress before being signed into law by President Barack Obama in July 2016. Obama described the law as modest and complained that Republicans blocked an additional $920 million in funding supported by Democrats. But the law does authorize $181 million in new federal money for opioid and heroin abuse efforts. Moreover, the bill also makes policy changes in what the nonpartisan Pew Charitable Trusts described as the first ""multifaceted federal response to the prescription opioid and heroin epidemic."" 2. Introduced in April 2016 the Promoting Responsible Opioid Prescribing Act, which is aimed at reducing financial incentives for doctors who over-prescribe pain medications. The bill has been referred to a committee. 3. The same month, as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, held field hearings about the opioid problem in Pewaukee, Wis., and Cleveland, Ohio. He also held a hearing in Phoenix in November 2015 on ""America’s heroin epidemic at the border."" 4. Johnson also takes credit for a bipartisan investigation done by his committee. A report by the committee, which was disclosed in May 2016, found oversight problems at the Veterans Affairs facility in Tomah, Wis., where the prescription of painkillers to veterans has been under scrutiny. Feingold's campaign has pointed to Johnson's votes against two amendments — the first for $1.1 billion to combat heroin addiction, the second for $600 million in emergency funding to fight the opioid crisis. More specifically, his campaign criticized Johnson for a no vote in June 2016 on a cloture motion (to limit debate). That motion was in regard to an amendment to a defense authorization bill that would have authorized $18 billion for various purposes, including $1.1 billion to fight heroin and opioid addiction. Johnson also voted no in March 2016 on a motion to ""waive all applicable budgetary discipline"" in order to make appropriations to fight the heroin and opioid problem, which the Feingold said would have provided $600 million. It’s fair to criticize Johnson for what he didn’t do -- but that wasn’t Feingold’s claim. Our rating Qualifying his claim only slightly, Feingold says Johnson ""has essentially done nothing"" to fight heroin addiction and opioid abuse. Johnson has voted for a major bill aimed at confronting the heroin-opioids problem, introduced a bill aimed at curbing overprescription of opioids and held Senate committee hearings on the problem. That’s more than nothing."
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26526
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“59 people die as pastor gives them dettol to drink in church to prevent coronavirus.”
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There’s no evidence 59 people died from drinking the cleaning product Dettol to prevent the coronavirus. In 2016, a South African pastor had his congregation drink Dettol to heal their sicknesses, newspaper reports said. We found no news coverage of people dying as a result.
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false
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Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Viral image,
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"We’ve debunked a lot of claims about ways to ward off COVID-19, and just to recap, here’s what we know now: hot lemon, silver solution, stomach acid, marijuana, cocaine and sunlight won’t kill the coronavirus. Neither will gargling with warm water and salt or drinking bleach — please don’t consume fish-tank cleaner — and don’t bother breathing the steam of boiling orange peels and cayenne pepper. But an April 6 Facebook post suggests that dozens of people indulged in another such remedy and paid the ultimate price. A screenshot of what looks like a news story from daily-sun.com shows a photo of a man pouring a red liquid into a woman’s mouth. ""59 people die as pastor gives them Dettol to drink in church to prevent coronavirus,"" the headline below the image says. 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.) Daily Sun, which describes itself as a leading English newspaper in Bangladesh, did post a story on March 26 with that headline, but it has since been deleted from the website. Google search results for the story show this snippet of the article, though: ""South African Prophet Rufus Phala allegedly gave his members Dettol, a household bleach to drink as a preventive medicine to coronavirus."" The same story appeared on March 19 on a website called Kenya Today. It goes on to say that 59 congregants were confirmed dead and four others are in critical condition after drinking Dettol. But we couldn’t find any news reports to corroborate that account. Rather, the image appeared online in 2016 on the website of another Daily Sun — a newspaper in South Africa. The caption says: ""Prophet Rufus Phala of AK Spiritual Christian Church made his church members drink Dettol, claiming they will be healed of sickness."" Dettol South Africa’s verified Facebook account responded in a statement to reports of Phala ""practice of instructing his congregation to drink Dettol Antiseptic Liquid."" The cleaning product isn’t for human consumption, the company said, urging anyone who drank it to consult a medical professional. ""We have been in contact with Prophet Rufus Phala and asked him to stop this practice,"" the statement says. We didn’t find any news reports that the congregants died after drinking Dettol. A spokesman for the South African Police Service told AFP South Africa that it’s not true that 59 people died after drinking Dettol to prevent coronavirus, and he ""denied any investigations into the deaths of 59 people linked to the consumption of Dettol,"" according to the news outlet."
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40252
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This is a short message which says to immediately delete a flashing “IM” (Instant Messaging). It claims that it’s a “password stealer” and that if after discovering it, you can’t sign on to AOL, you should call AOL.
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Ancient British structures older than the pyramids are being threatened by climate change, experts have warned, as rising sea levels, heavier rainfall and severe weather events endanger Scotland’s archaeological treasures.
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false
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Computers, Warnings
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The Orkney Islands, situated off the north coast of the Scottish mainland, are home to more than 3,000 historical sites. Evidence has been found of human habitation there going back 8,500 years. Some buildings on the islands date to the Iron Age, Viking rule and medieval times. But around 1,000 sites are situated on the coastline and are under threat. One such site is the Iron Age building South Howe Broch on the island of Rousay. Dating from between 600-400AD, the sea has taken much of the site’s western area. Now the broch wall itself is falling into the sea. Julie Gibson, a lecturer at the University of the Highlands and Islands, says it will eventually disappear. “What you can see just over here is the front door of the broch, exposed by the sea, taking away parts of the ruins and leaving a built wall still intact. And each year a little more falls as the sea batters it,” she said as she stood on the cliff’s edge. “What we have discovered in recent years, through the use of geophysics and other things, is that... on this stretch of the coastline, all the settlement archaeology is within 100 meters of the coast edge. And so as the sea takes this heritage of ours away it’s taking all that we have,” she said. A couple of hundred meters north of South Howe Broch is Midhowe Broch. This Iron Age building is well-preserved, courtesy of a sea wall built in the 1930s and well-maintained since. A spring-fed water tank, fireplace and room partitions are clearly visible. But even Midhowe Broch is at risk from climate change. A climate risk assessment of Orkney’s Neolithic sites, published by conservation public body Historic Environment Scotland (HES) in July this year, described the potential impact of climate change on the sites as “extreme” and their vulnerability as “high”. According to HES, average precipitation (rain, sleet and snow) has increased by 27% in Scotland since the early 1960s. In the same period, winter precipitation has gone up by more than 70% in parts of northern Scotland. Wetter weather means buildings are wetter for longer, meaning water is more likely to penetrate masonry and decay it. It also leads to metal parts of buildings corroding and the ground becoming unstable. This can lead to structural collapse. Sea levels are also rising and beach erosion is a growing problem. Since 1970 some Orkney beaches have narrowed by an average of 16 inches (40 centimeters) per year since 1970. That is compared to an annual average loss of eight inches between 1890 and 1970, according to data from cross-governmental coastal change assessment partnership Dynamic Coast. Increased storminess also threatens damaging Orkney’s historical sites, HES says. Arguably the most famous site of Orkney is Skara Brae. This Neolithic settlement, occupied from roughly 3100-2500BC, features a network of stone buildings. When inhabited it was approximately one kilometer (0.6 miles) from the sea with a freshwater loch and sand dunes in between. Now it sits only a few meters from the North Atlantic. Visitors can see the settlement’s 5,000-year-old hearths, bed recesses, cupboards and dressers. Some 112,000 people visited it in 2018. “Climate change is a really real present risk. The climate has already changed because of the influence of humans. And it’s going to continue to change and that pace of change is going to speed up,” said HES climate change scientist, David Harkin. “So the risk to sites like Skara Brae and other sites around Orkney, it’s real, it’s here, it’s happening. But it shouldn’t all be doom and gloom and despair. There is an opportunity to still do something about it and to avoid the worst possible consequences of climate change,” he added.
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26334
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“Dr. Fauci sat on Microsoft’s board of directors.”
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Microsoft says Anthony Fauci never served on the company’s board.
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false
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Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Viral image,
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"Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, are both prominent voices in public discourse about the COVID-19 pandemic, and regular targets of misinformation. One recent attack focuses on both men. ""I bet you didn’t know Dr. Fauci sat on Microsoft’s board of directors — and that Bill Gates — was his boss…"" a Facebook post says. It was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) That’s because Fauci is not on Microsoft’s 12-member board of directors, and according to Microsoft, he never has been. We reviewed the company’s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission going back to 1994 and Fauci is not mentioned. Searching for Fauci’s name on Microsoft’s website, we found citations of his work on Microsoft Academic, where people can search for scientific journal articles, but nothing connecting him to Microsoft’s board. We also didn’t find news coverage suggesting he served on Microsoft’s board when we searched Nexis news archives for articles about Fauci, the company and its board. Scouring the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation website for Fauci’s name, we found a 2010 press release about ""a collaboration to increase coordination across the international vaccine community and create a Global Vaccine Action Plan."" Fauci was among five people named to the Decade of Vaccines Collaboration leadership council, which was formed to oversee the collaboration’s planning efforts, according to the press release. A 2003 Gates Foundation press release about a partnership with the National Institutes of Health said Fauci, among other scientists, was named to a scientific board to ""guide and direct"" an initiative to ""identify critical scientific challenges in global health and increase research on diseases that cause millions of deaths in the developing world."" But we found nothing to corroborate what this Facebook post says, and Microsoft denies the claim."
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7340
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Tourists enter reopened Grand Canyon despite virus concerns.
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Tourists appeared ready to roam Grand Canyon National Park again after it partially reopened Friday, despite objections from Navajo officials and others that it could hurt efforts to control the coronavirus.
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true
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Arizona, Health, General News, Parks, National parks, Travel, Virus Outbreak, U.S. News
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By 7:30 a.m., more than two dozen people were enjoying viewpoints along the South Rim. Among them was Matthias Zutter, 35, who was traveling through Arizona with his wife in a camper van as part of a final adventure before moving back to their hometown of Stans, Switzerland. The couple have been living in the U.S. for the past five years. They had visited the Grand Canyon once already but not the South Rim, which they’ve always wanted to hike. “We got to see it one more time but not experience it the way we’d like to,” Zutter said. “At least it opened up today for us to stop and enjoy the views. We’ve got to look at the positive side.” The couple, who were carrying masks, also never felt at risk of getting sick while they were there. “I’d say you could clearly see that people took precautions and were keeping their distance and not touching things if it was not necessary,” Zutter said. The Grand Canyon had been closed since April 1, one of the last big national parks to shut down completely to visitors. At the time, health officials in Coconino County said keeping the park open put employees, residents and tourists at risk. Liz Archuleta, chairwoman of the Coconino County Board of Supervisors, reiterated that visitors must do their part as well. “Everyone should be wearing face coverings while in public areas, washing hands frequently, maintaining social distancing, avoiding large gatherings and staying aware of current public health recommendations,” she said. Park officials said the South Rim entrance will only open from 6-10 a.m. through Monday. Commercial services within the park remain closed. Those include hiking trails, visitors centers, hotels and restaurants — the places people tend to congregate. Visitors were told to bring food, water and hand sanitizer. There are no overnight accommodations available. Some restrooms along with portable ones were available. Meanwhile, the residential area where more than 2,000 people live year-round was cordoned off with cones and barrels to keep visitors away from the housing areas. About 20 miles (32 kilometers) of roadway were accessible to tourists that allow them to walk along the rim of the canyon and stand at a number of viewpoints. “We saw this route as a good option to reopen,” Grand Canyon spokeswoman Lily Daniels said. “We’re kind of mirroring how the operational stance was prior to us closing, that was a phased closure.” It reopened Friday, in line with the expiration of Gov. Doug Ducey’s stay-at-home order. Signs went up reminding tourists to keep their distance from another and stay in groups of less than 10. Park employees also were giving friendly reminders, Daniels said. “It’s mostly self-awareness, but we are still encouraging the same guidelines that the CDC is putting out,” she said. The National Park Service says it is working with federal, state and local public health authorities to closely monitor the pandemic and using a phased approach to increase access on a park-by-park basis. “This initial reopening phase will increase access to our public lands in a responsible way by offering the main feature of the park for the public, the view of the canyon, while reducing the potential exposure of COVID-19 to our nearly 2,500 residents,” Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Ed Keable said. The Grand Canyon will also be open from Friday to Monday of Memorial Day weekend with increased access and extended hours. The parks gets about 6 million visitors a year, most of whom go to the South Rim. Those entrance gates were open Friday, and tourists were allowed in free. Visitors were blocked from entering at the East Rim entrance to limit travel through the Navajo Nation, where coronavirus has hit residents hard. However, officials on the Navajo Nation, which stretches into northern Arizona, expressed disappointment at the reopening. There have been at least 3,740 positive cases and 127 deaths on the reservation, which also includes parts of New Mexico and Utah. “We welcome the economic benefits that tourists bring, but we are also fearful of the potential negative impacts and had hoped that when the Grand Canyon closed on April 1, the park would remain closed until our positive COVID-19 numbers have flattened,” Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said. The Sierra Club also cited the Navajo Nation in its criticism of the reopening. Alicyn Gitlin of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter said it could result in a “patrolling and enforcement nightmare.” “Cases in Coconino County where Grand Canyon’s South Rim is located are still rising,” Gitlin said. “The large population that lives at Grand Canyon and all nearby communities are put at risk by this move.” For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death. ____ Fonseca reported from Flagstaff. Associated Press writer Terry Tang in Phoenix contributed to this report.
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27877
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For twenty-five years, two brothers-in-law traded the same pants back and forth between them as a Christmas gift, each time finding more inventive ways to wrap them.
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The urn now graces the fireplace mantel in Kunkel’s home.
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true
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Holidays, christmas
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The one present Roy Collette wasn’t looking forward to getting for Christmas 1988 was those damned pants. Yet he knew he was in trouble as soon as the flatbed truck bearing a concrete-filled tank off a truck used to deliver ready-mix rolled up. Sure as God made little green apples, those pants had to be in there. And he was going to have to fish them out, else declare his brother-in-law the winner of a rivalry that had then spanned 20 years. Being the sport he is, brother-in-law Larry Kunkel thoughtfully supplied the services of a crane to hoist the concrete-filled tank off the flatbed. What’s this game, you ask? What was the significance of these pants, and why were two grown men going to such efforts year after year to retrieve them, only to send them off again? It all began in 1964 when Larry Kunkel’s mom gave him a pair of moleskin pants. After wearing them a few times, he found they froze stiff in Minnesota winters and thus wouldn’t do. That next Christmas, he wrapped the garment in pretty paper and presented it to his brother-in-law. Brother-in-law Roy Collette discovered he didn’t want them either. He bided his time until the Christmas after, then packaged them up and gave them back to Kunkel. This yearly exchange proceeded amicably until one year Collette twisted the pants tightly and stuffed them into a 3-foot-long, 1-inch wide pipe. And so the game began. Year after year, as the pants were shuffled back and forth, the brothers strove to make unwrapping them more difficult, perhaps in the hope of ending the tradition. In retaliation for the pipe, Kunkel compressed the pants into a 7-inch square, wrapped them with wire and gave the “bale” to Collette. Not to be outdone, Collette put the pants into a 2-foot-square crate filled with stones, nailed it shut, banded it with steel and gave the trusty trousers back to Kunkel. The brothers agreed to end the caper if the trousers were damaged. But they were as careful as they were clever. As the game evolved, so did the rules. Only “legal and moral” methods of wrapping were permitted. Wrapping expenses were kept to a minimum with only junk parts used. Kunkel next had the pants mounted inside an insulated window that had a 20-year guarantee and shipped them off to Collette. Collette broke the glass, recovered the trousers, stuffed them into a 5-inch coffee can, which he soldered shut. The can was put in a 5-gallon container filled with concrete and reinforcing rods and given to Kunkel the following Christmas. Kunkel installed the pants in a 225-pound homemade steel ashtray made from 8-inch steel casings and etched Collette’s name on the side. Collette had trouble retrieving the treasured trousers, but succeeded without burning them with a cutting torch. Collette found a 600-pound safe and hauled it to Viracon Inc. in Owatonna, where the shipping department decorated it with red and green stripes, put the pants inside and welded the safe shut. The safe was then shipped to Kunkel, who was the plant manager for Viracon’s outlet in Bensenville. The pants next turned up in a drab green, 3-foot cube that once was a 1974 Gremlin. A note attached to the 2,000-pound scrunched car advised Collette that the pants were inside the glove compartment. In 1982 Kunkel faced the problem of retrieving the pants from a tire 8 feet high and 2 feet wide and filled with 6,000 pounds of concrete. On the outside Collette had written, “Have a Goodyear.” In 1983 the pants came back to Collette in a 17.5-foot red rocket ship filled with concrete and weighing 6 tons. Five feet in diameter, with pipes 6 inches in diameter outside running the length of the ship and a launching pad attached to its bottom, the rocket sported a picture of the pants fluttering atop it. Inside the rocket were 15 concrete-filled canisters, one of which housed the pants. Collette’s revenge for the rocket ship was delivered to Kunkel in the form of a 4-ton Rubik’s Cube in 1985. The cube was made of concrete that had been baked in a kiln and covered with 2,000 board feet of lumber. Kunkel “solved the cube,” and for 1986 gift-giving repackaged the pants into a station wagon filled with 170 steel generators all welded together. Because the pants have to be retrieved undamaged, Collette was faced with carefully taking apart each component. News accounts didn’t record the form in which the pants were passed in 1987, and their 1988 packaging (concrete-filled tank) was mentioned at the beginning of this page. Sadly, 1989’s packaging scheme brought the demise of the much-abused garment. Collette was inspired to encase the pantaloons in 10,000 pounds of jagged glass that he would then deposit in Kunkel’s front yard. “It would have been a great one — really messy,” Kunkel ruefully admitted. The pants were shipped to a friend in Tennessee who managed a glass manufacturing company. While molten glass was being poured over the insulated container that held them, an oversized chunk fractured, transforming the pants into a pile of ashes. The ashes were deposited into a brass urn and delivered to Kunkel along with this epitaph: “Sorry, Old Man Here lies the Pants … An attempt to cast the pants in glass brought about the demise of the pants at last.”
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9694
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Report: DASH Diet Best Overall Eating Plan The MIND, Mediterranean and Fertility diets also get high marks for health
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For the sixth year in a row, the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) diet was selected by U.S. News & World Report as the “Best Overall Diet.” The DASH diet was developed by the National Institutes of Health following studies of different diet plans as a method to help treat or prevent high blood pressure. The diet emphasizes fruits, vegetables, whole grains, fish and low-fat dairy products while limiting fats, sodium and sugars. Today it is frequently recommended as a healthy daily diet plan for everyone. HealthDay’s story on the top ranking diet regurgitates the “who” and “what” as found in USN&WR’s news release but doesn’t describe any of the evidence supporting the different diets or give us any hard numbers on benefits. If HealthDay is going to cover what is basically a story from another news outlet, you’d think they want to add depth and context to the coverage rather than just parrot the source news release. Complications from diabetes, heart disease and a host of other health conditions are often made worse, or even caused, by poor diet and nutrition habits. Encouraging widespread adoption of diets that are backed by sound, long-term studies is a positive public health service. The DASH diet, among others, has been shown to lower blood pressure and help people maintain a healthy weight. Identifying diets that can meet these two goals and also be easy to follow is important for a healthy lifestyle.
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false
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DASH diet,diet plans
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The article doesn’t address costs associated with maintaining a DASH diet or other diets. According to an analysis published study in JAMA Internal Medicine in 2013, adoption of the diet has been low, despite its favorable recommendations by nutritionists. The authors noted, “Its limited uptake might be explained by economic constraints, since food prices influence food choices and constitute a major barrier to dietary change. Nutrient-dense foods, central to DASH, tend to be more costly compared to calorie dense alternatives.“ The story gives a nod to some of the diet’s benefits (it’s called “heart healthy,” for example) but offers no hard numbers on what that means in terms of outcomes. The story gives only relative rankings of the various diets. It is unknown if the second best diet is only microscopically worse than the first, or dramatically substandard. There is no indication of range. Also, by not indicating how the diet ranked in all categories, it is hard to differentiate what might be important to some — cost for example — as compared to ease of implementation. The National Institute of Health’s decision some years ago to promote the DASH diet was based on three large trials that involved thousands of patients. Perhaps some data could have been drawn from one of the studies to engage readers and show how a diet can make a difference in health outcomes. Potential harms of the DASH diet are negligible, so we won’t ding the story for not mentioning them. We’d note, however, that USN&WR’s online summary of the “cons” of the diet include “Lots of grunt work” and “somewhat pricey.” The implication of these drawbacks is that well-meaning people will not be able to adhere to the diet. We would have appreciated a delve into what “Lots of grunt work” refers to. The story doesn’t mention any of the hard numbers which would provide evidence backing the diet although they’re readily available on the USN&WR website as well as from numerous government health-related sites. And from HealthDay’s standpoint as an outlet covering these rankings, it would have been helpful to educate readers about the quality of this selection process. How much weight should readers give to the rankings of a bunch of unnamed experts? Does this represent high-quality evidence that a given diet is better than another? No disease mongering here. The only source quoted is the editor of USN&WR and that comment is lifted directly from the news release. It’s standard journalism practice to have at least one outside expert provide additional context or any opposing views in a news story. Many news organizations require two or three. The story (and the release it’s based on) focus on the comparative rankings of different diets. Besides DASH, the MIND Diet, Mediterranean Diet, Fertility Diet, Biggest Loser, Weight Watchers and Atkins Diet are also very briefly compared and contrasted in different categories including weight loss, ease of following, safety and nutritional value. The original news release does provide ranking numbers which could have improved our understanding of the comparisons. It’s understood that the DASH diet is widely available. It has been available and promoted to the public for many years. There are books, public and private websites, shopping lists and menus devoted to it. It has been named the “Top Overall Diet” by one magazine six years in a row. The concern that a broad swath of the public does not have the financial means or a neighborhood grocery store they can walk into and acquire the menu items is another matter. The fact the diet was selected as the top ranked diet for six years running is apparently the news hook. It’s hard to find the novelty in this story or why this is important to publish now. The DASH diet has been around a long time and is heavily promoted by government agencies including but not limited to the NIH, USDA and CDC. The fact that the diet was selected as the top ranking diet for six years is not really news. (Generalisimo Franco is still dead.) The lede for the story is that for the first time the magazine ranked quick weight loss diets. That is news, albeit not very compelling. As noted above, the story appears to rely exclusively on a news release. It could have been much stronger had the story included some of the survey results which are linked and available online.
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31118
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A federal law prohibits U.S. citizens from having contact with extraterrestrial beings.
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The “Extraterrestrial Exposure” law was removed from the CFR in 1991, NASA having determined that it had “served its purpose” and was “no longer in keeping with current policy.” That law is therefore no longer in force.
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false
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Legal Affairs, moon landing, UFOs
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If the government has no knowledge of aliens, then why does Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations, implemented on July 16, 1969, make it illegal for U.S. citizens to have any contact with extraterrestrials or their vehicles? On 16 July 1969, the United States of America (through the efforts of its National Aeronautics and Space Administration) was poised to achieve a milestone in space exploration. That day would see the launch of the Apollo 11 mission, an undertaking which would — if successful — see men set foot on a celestial body other than Earth for the first time in the history of mankind, when two astronauts would land on and explore the surface of our moon. Of course, a key portion of this achievement was to be the safe return to Earth of those very same astronauts, a prospect that raised a number of issues we had not confronted before. Who knew what else might return to Earth with the lunar explorers? Although the moon was presumed to be lifeless, we couldn’t rule out the possibility that bringing back equipment and samples from the lunar surface might also introduce hitherto unknown microorganisms or germs into our environment, potentially triggering a scenario like the one described by Michael Crichton’s 1969 novel The Andromeda Strain, in which a sample-gathering satellite returns to Earth bearing deadly pathogens from space, touching off a plague that threatens to kill nearly everyone exposed to it. To prepare for this eventuality, on the same day that Apollo 11 was launched from Kennedy Space Center, the United States adopted Title 14, Section 1211 of the Code of Federal Regulations, since known as the “Extra-Terrestrial Exposure Law.” The purpose of Title 14, Section 1211 of the CFR was not to “make it illegal for U.S. citizens to have any contact with extraterrestrials or their vehicles”; the law allowed the government to prevent the possibility of biological contamination from pathogens carried to Earth by men and objects returning from space by enforcing a quarantine on any people, plant or animal life, or other material that had “touched directly or come within the atmospheric envelope of any other celestial body.” In other words, if you were an astronaut returning from a mission to the surface of the moon (or any other celestial body), the government could require you to undergo a quarantine; if you did not travel into space yourself but had indirect “extraterrestrial exposure” through contact with returning astronauts, their space capsules, or any samples or other material brought back from the surface (or atmosphere) of another celestial body, the government could require you to undergo a quarantine. Enforcement of the law was provided for by penalties calling for a fine of up to $5,000 or a term of imprisonment of up to one year for those who “disregarded of the quarantine rules or regulations or without permission of the NASA quarantine officer.” Note that Title 14, Section 1211 did not make it “illegal” for “U.S. citizens to have any contact with extraterrestrials or their vehicles”; it simply required those who had such contact to submit to a quarantine at the request of the government. If a spaceship full of little green men landed in your back yard, you would not have been in violation of Title 14, Section 1211 and subject to a fine or imprisonment merely for shaking hands with your visitors or taking a tour of their spacecraft — you would only have been subject to those penalties if you refused to comply with a subsequent government quarantine order. (Even then, the law only applied to “NASA manned and unmanned space missions,” so contact with extraterrestrials who were traveled through space on their own would not have fallen under the provisions of this law.)
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14247
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We know that Saudi Arabia started al-Qaida.
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"Graham said, ""We know that Saudi Arabia started al-Qaida."" Al-Qaida was started in an effort, largely backed by Saudi Arabia, to force the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. The government did not, strictly speaking, create the organization. It was the product of jihadists wanting to continue the fight after the Soviets left, using the funds of Saudi backers to do it. It prospered because of donations from Saudi interests, including groups tied to the government. The Saudis deserve significant responsibility for its existence. But Graham's phrasing could leave people believing the Saudi government itself created the terrorist organization. The truth is fuzzier, and the caveats are important. So we rate the statement Half True.
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mixture
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National, Terrorism, Bob Graham,
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"Controversy is swirling over 28 pages from the congressional report on the 9/11 terror attacks that have been kept hidden from the public. There is a suspicion that they implicate Saudi Arabia, a United States ally in the Middle East. The Saudis have, for years, vigorously denied any involvement in the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon. Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, D-Fla., co-chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee that helped write the report and has pushed for release of all the documents looking at Saudi involvement in the attacks. Sunday on Meet the Press, moderator Chuck Todd asked why United States and Saudi officials don't want the information released. ""To me, the most important unanswered question of 9/11 is, did these 19 people conduct this very sophisticated plot alone, or were they supported?"" Graham said. ""I think it's implausible to think that people who couldn't speak English, had never been in the United States before, (and) as a group were not well-educated could have done that. So who was the most likely entity to have provided them that support? And I think all the evidence points to Saudi Arabia. We know that Saudi Arabia started al-Qaida. It was a creation of Saudi Arabia."" We wondered if, in fact, it was Saudi Arabia that created al-Qaida, the organization led by Osama bin Laden that engineered the attacks. Origin stories The terrorist group's origins can be traced to Afghanistan, where the Soviet Union waged a long and ultimately fruitless war from 1979 to 1989. It was the era of the Cold War, and the United States backed the Muslim insurgents who were fighting the Soviets. The Afghan freedom fighters were also getting backing from fellow Muslims in Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf countries. One person giving money was bin Laden, the son of a wealthy construction magnate. But he also helped establish what was known as the ""Golden Chain,"" a group of Arab donors who gave millions for the cause. The money went to something known as the Services Office, which was run by bin Laden and a Palestinian religious scholar name Abdullah Azzam. The office recruited, trained and equipped thousands of foreign ""holy warriors,"" known as mujahideen, from more than 50 countries. Their training camp was known as ""the base,"" which translates to al-Qaida. In 1988, when the war against the Soviets was winding down, there was a meeting in Pakistan where al-Qaida was formed. Bin Laden wanted to take the fight of jihad to other countries, driving out the corrupting influence of Western countries and replace it with fundamentalist Islam. Bin Laden moved to Saudi Arabia. In 1990, after Iraq President Saddam Hussein invaded neighboring Kuwait, Saudi Arabia's rulers felt vulnerable and asked the United States to intervene. That upset bin Laden. ""Bin Laden viewed this development as an unbearable humiliation for all Muslims — the land of the Prophet defiled by infidels,"" said Philippe Migaux, writing in The History of Terrorism. He offered his mujahideen fighters to help defend the country, but the offer was rejected. He then issued a fatwa, or religious edict, that denounced the ruling House of Saud, calling it corrupt. The Saudi government expelled him in 1991, ultimately stripping him of Saudi citizenship in 1994. He ended up in Sudan, where he operated al-Qaida and coordinated terrorist attacks. Sudan expelled him on May 18, 1996 — but not before he took millions with him raised from his Golden Chain — and he went to Afghanistan, which had just been taken over by the Taliban, a fundamentalist Muslim group. He was in Afghanistan when the 9/11 attacks were launched. A question of financing So did Saudi Arabia start al-Qaida? Clearly Saudi money was directly invested to get the Soviets out of Afghanistan. But once that goal was accomplished and al-Qaida became an entity, the funding became less direct. Daniel Byman, research director at the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, said in a email, ""Osama bin Laden's personal wealth mattered tremendously when the group was formed in 1988. In a way this wealth was ‘Saudi’ in that his family was a Saudi family, but it's different than the Saudi state or Saudi organizations."" ""Over time,"" Byman said, ""Bin Laden lost his money and/or the Saudi government froze it. A network of wealthy donors, many from the Gulf states (including but not limited to Saudi Arabia) became vital to al-Qaida funding (and easily eclipsed Bin Laden's personal wealth)."" Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said, ""It's not as though everyone in the government supported funding al-Qaida."" But there was so much Saudi-based support from individual Saudis and organizations that directed money from the Saudi government that the statement should be considered true, Gartenstein-Ross said, even if Graham's statement ""is a bit under-nuanced."" ""He's talking about Saudi financiers. He's not claiming the state itself is a major supporter for al-Qaeda,"" he said. ""Government-sponsored charities were doing it, and the government had to be aware it was going on."" ""It's clear you had government money that went through these charities,"" he said. ""And while you could talk about lack of oversight for these charities, which used to be the line the government used, mere lack of oversight doesn't fully explain the government's position."" It would be more accurate to say that the terrorist organization was created, Gartenstein-Ross said, by ""Saudi financiers including organizations financed by the government that don't represent official government policy."" Graham directed us to a 2003 Wall Street Journal article that reported ""some of Saudi Arabia's richest and most influential families as among the first financial supporters of Osama bin Laden."" However, as the article notes, that support came as bin Laden was transitioning away from fighting the Soviets. The families involved have denied funding the al-Qaida-involved terrorist attacks. Graham harked back to his comment on Meet the Press when Todd asked about the distinction between the government and wealthy individuals who happen to be Saudi Arabian. ""That is a very murky line. Saudi Arabia has made it murky by its own legal action,"" Graham said. ""Whenever a U.S. group sues a Saudi Arabian entity, whether it’s a bank, a foundation, a charity, immediately, the defense of sovereign immunity is raised. The Saudis don't recognize the difference between a royal decision and a societal decision in the same way that other countries might."" Our ruling Graham said, ""We know that Saudi Arabia started al-Qaida."" Al-Qaida was started in an effort, largely backed by Saudi Arabia, to force the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. The government did not, strictly speaking, create the organization. It was the product of jihadists wanting to continue the fight after the Soviets left, using the funds of Saudi backers to do it. It prospered because of donations from Saudi interests, including groups tied to the government. The Saudis deserve significant responsibility for its existence. But Graham's phrasing could leave people believing the Saudi government itself created the terrorist organization. The truth is fuzzier, and the caveats are important.
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8790
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U.S grapples with rising prescription drug addiction.
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When Sarah Roisman was 11 years old, her doctors prescribed Klonopin, a muscle relaxant, for a psychiatric disorder that caused her to have seizures. She liked how the drug made her feel. Her seizures went away.
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true
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Health News
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A pharmacist in a file photo. The issue of prescription drug abuse shot to prominence with January's death of 28-year-old Hollywood actor Heath Ledger after he took six different prescriptions. REUTERS/File But that’s where her trouble with addiction began. By age 14, the teen from an upper middle-class Philadelphia suburb led a dangerous double life. Editor of her school paper, strong student and popular athlete, Roisman was also hooked on painkillers and other drugs in an addiction that illustrates the rapid expansion in prescription drug abuse in America. “My friends and I would take a bunch of different pills and break them up and put them all together and call it confetti. It could be any combination of anything. We could learn from it, and continue to take it,” said Roisman, who is now 17. The issue of prescription drug abuse shot to prominence with January’s death of 28-year-old Hollywood actor Heath Ledger after he took six different prescriptions. The death of Ledger, who plays the Joker in the new Batman film “The Dark Night,” adds to a growing list of prescription drug overdoses that includes Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith in 2007. Other deaths are less celebrated. In the 45-54 age group, overdose deaths fueled by prescription drugs now surpass motor vehicle deaths as the nation’s No. 1 cause of accidental death, federal data show. The federal data also show nearly 7 million Americans abused prescription drugs in 2007 — more than cocaine, heroin, hallucinogens, Ecstasy and inhalants such as marijuana combined. The figure is up 80 percent since 2000. Definitions of abuse vary but refer typically to nonmedical use of prescription drugs. The number of Americans treated for abuse of painkillers surged 321 percent from 1995 to 2005, federal statistics show — a trend some health experts link to another stunning figure: the 180 million prescriptions dispensed legally by U.S. pharmacies each year for pain medication. In Florida, whose reputation for cocaine and other hard drugs was burnished in movies such as “Scarface” and “Miami Vice,” the rate of deaths caused by prescription drugs was three times the rate of death caused by all illicit drugs combined, according to an analysis of 2007 autopsies by the Florida Medical Examiners Commission released in June. “What you have among over the counter and prescription drug use is a very low perception of risk,” said Stephen Pasierb, president and chief executive of the Partnership for a Drug-Free America, a nonprofit advocacy group. “There’s very low social disapproval. In fact, there are parents who almost relieved that their kid is using Vicodin and not smoking marijuana,” he said. Len Paulozzi, an epidemiologist with the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, testified recently in Congress that he believed physicians were improperly trained in the long-term dangers of therapy involving opioid painkillers, or drugs containing opium. “There are guidelines out there, but we don’t think that they’re being routinely followed,” he said. Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democrat from Delaware, proposed to make August 2008 “National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month” in a resolution now before the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying the Internet had become “an information superhighway” for abuse of medicine in the United States. But containing the abuse is notoriously difficult. Thirty-eight states have passed legislation for prescription drug monitoring programs to trace the source of drugs, and police in some states have had success in reducing pharmacy break-ins. A University of Maine program provides pre-addressed, postage-paid pouches to the elderly so they can mail their surplus prescription drugs to state authorities for disposal in a bid to reduce the amount that get into the wrong hands. None of the measures has stopped the growth nationwide, and experts point to several stubborn problems, including the phenomenon of “doctor shopping,” in which patients go to multiple doctors to get several prescriptions. Hundreds of online pharmacies also offer drugs that include generic versions of opiates like Purdue Pharma’s OxyContin, methadone and Abbott Laboratories Inc’s Vicodin, which are legitimately prescribed as painkillers, along with stimulants like Ritalin made by Novartis, and benzodiazepines like Pfizer’s Xanax. It is as easy in the United States to buy opiates or other abusable prescription drugs online as it is to purchase a book, said David Festinger, a scientist who has studied online drug sales at the Treatment Research Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. Regulating such trade is tough, he said. “These Internet enterprises set up a bank account in one country, buy their drugs from another country, and do their merchandising and sales from another country,” he said. “Everything is spread all over the globe. And in an instant, if anybody’s on their tail, they can switch everything around.” For many children, getting the drugs is simple. In Philadelphia, Roisman and her friends raided family medicine cabinets for the big prizes — OxyContin, a kind of synthetic morphine also known as “hillbilly heroin,” along with Ritalin and Vicodin — until she eventually passed out one day in school. A drug test showed she had seven drugs in her system. “People think that it’s OK because it’s a prescribed pill. It comes from a credible source. Even if a doctor has not told you it’s OK, they’ve told someone else it’s OK,” said Roisman, who became sober two years ago after treatment at a rehab center run by the nonprofit Caron organization. She blames doctors for failing to “watch what they are prescribing” and parents for failing to understand “just how hard people will work to get what they want when they are an addict,” adding many teens use the drugs to help study. On college campuses, popping Adderall, Ritalin and other prescribed amphetamine-like psychostimulant drugs is a popular way to help cram for tests and cope with academic pressure. Some are legitimately prescribed for Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, helping sufferers increase alertness, attention and energy. But many use it without prescriptions. Almost 60 percent of students have been offered an opportunity to try prescription stimulants by their junior (third) year of college in the United States, said Amelia Arria, a senior researcher at the University of Maryland’s Center for Drug Abuse Research, which surveyed 1,253 students on drug usage. Health insurers are also feeling the effects. Some face mounting pressure to expand coverage to include substance-abuse disorders. Others are grappling with swindlers who obtain illicit prescription narcotics through fraudulent insurance claims for bogus prescriptions, treating phantom injuries. Such fraud costs health insurers up to $72.5 billion (36.6 billion pounds) a year, according to a 2008 report by the Coalition Against Insurance Fraud, an advocacy group based in Washington.
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31667
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"Sweden was ""rocked"" by a massive terrorist attack in February 2017."
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Although the incident was not terror-related and no information has been released regarding the identity or nationality of the suspect, the episode has nevertheless resulted in increased scrutiny over crime and migration trends in Sweden.
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false
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Uncategorized, donald trump, fake news, sweden
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On 23 February 2017, a number of disreputable web sites, including PamelaGeller.com and TruthMonitor.com, posted stories reporting that Sweden had been “rocked” by a terrorist attack which involved a man throwing a fume-releasing canister into a train car. The stories were topped by headlines such as “MASSIVE TERROR ATTACK ROCKS SWEDEN — Trump Was Right …”: Liberals have spent the last few days mocking Donald Trump for claims he made that Sweden was suffering violence at the hands of Muslim migrants. The mainstream media claimed that Trump made this up from nothing, but what just happened in Sweden proves the president was right about what he said … The UK Express reported that the city of Stockholm, Sweden was rocked by a terrorist attack when a masked man boarded a subway train and doused liquid on the passengers as the carriage doors slammed shut, trapping everyone inside. The attack occurred at Sankt Eriksplan station in the Swedish capitol. A spokesman for Swedish police confirmed an incident occurred on a train in Stockholm, but it was not related to terrorism and no one was hurt. Swedish newspapers including Aftonbladet published reports on the incident written by TT, a national wire service, stating the incident took place at about 9 p.m. at the Fridhemsplan subway station in central Stockholm, when a person dressed in dark colors sprayed a noxious substance into a train car. Neither the local news report nor the one from Express UK declared that the incident was a “terrorist attack,” much less one of a “massive” scale. The reports noted that victims experienced short-term breathing troubles, and the incident caused a temporary panic on the train: One witness, Alexander, 22, was on his way home from work and sat far back in the subway car when he noticed that people started to scream. He said: “Suddenly lots of people were running back toward me. They kept both their mouth and eyes closed and cried and coughed. “It seemed like pepper spray, or whatever it was that was thrown out, and we got huge respiratory problems. “Then when the train arrived at Fridhemsplan they evacuated it.” The detalis of the incident on Swedish train did not support claims the country had been “rocked” by a “massive terrorist attack.” The claim was reported in what appeared to be an effort by partisan and anti-Muslim publications to shore up statements made by President Donald Trump during a speech in Florida, in which he said: We’ve got to keep our country safe. You look at what’s happening in Germany. You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden. Sweden, who would believe this? Sweden. They took in large numbers. They’re having problems like they never thought possible.
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8155
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Swiss coronavirus cases surge, canton orders seniors to stay home.
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Switzerland on Saturday reported 6,100 coronavirus infections, 25% more than a day earlier, and 56 deaths, the Swiss health ministry said, as the canton of Ticino that borders hard-hit Italy banned seniors over 65 from leaving their homes to shop.
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true
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Health News
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“The situation in Ticino is very tense,” said Daniel Koch, head of the Federal Office of Health’s communicable diseases division. The latest count nationwide is up more than 1,200 cases in a day, while the deaths increased 13 from Friday. The local government in Ticino, with so far 918 reported coronavirus cases and 28 deaths, ordered people aged 65 and over to stay home and only leave if they needed to visit the doctor or for work, Swiss radio SRF reported. The government said that family members or specially organized municipal services should deliver food to older citizens while they are restricted to their homes, newspaper Corriere del Ticino said. Seniors and those with health problems have been vulnerable to the virus that causes COVID-19. Italy, just across the border from Ticino, is the epicenter of Europe’s coronavirus crisis, as deaths in that country surged by 793 in a day, lifting the total death toll to 4,825 of 53,578 infected. Speaking at a press conference in Bern, Koch said he had been in touch with Ticino’s top doctor, who had told him the arrival of patients was taxing hospital resources but that there were still sufficient beds to accommodate the critically ill, for now. The Swiss military took delivery of 50 additional ventilators and deployed them in Ticino on Friday, amid a global race by countries to add more potentially life-saving breathing devices needed by critically ill patients to give them a fighting chance of survival. Koch said the 25% rise in Swiss cases in 24 hours did not come as a surprise, given Switzerland only this week heightened restrictions on events and gatherings, including limits on groups in public to five people, with each keeping a 2-meter (6.6-ft) distance, under threat of a 100 Swiss franc ($101.37) fine. The end of the crisis cannot yet be forecast, Koch said, but he expects at least the rate of increase in new cases to begin flattening out in a week or so, as the new limits on freedom of movement temper spread of the disease that has sickened nearly 280,000 globally and killed more than 11,000 people so far.
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36003
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A photograph shows skeletal remains of an unidentified rodent found in a can of Allens Green Beans.
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Allens Green Beans ‘My Wife Found This’ Facebook Post
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unproven
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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On November 21 2019, a Facebook user shared the following post, claiming the images showed the contents of a can of Allens Green Beans, namely an unpalatable dead creature:Norwood said his wife purchased cans of Allens Cut Italian Green Beans at Walmart, with the intent of using them in a dish for a Thanksgiving potluck at her workplace. His post contained an update, presumably after he received a response from McCall Farms (Allens’ parent company):So my wife found this after dumping the Allens Green Beans into the crockpot. No word back from Allens……….She didnt notice this in the Crockpot until she stirred the beans. The cans were purchased at the Signal Mtn Walmart (TN). I have now included the the pic with the batch numbers. The rest of it has to be somewhere. **update ** We have a response back from Mcalls Farms. They apologize and offer a $20 Walmart gift card and a can of beans of our choice. ( which doesn’t even cover the cost of the ingredients nor the Crockpot) I’ll just stamp it and send it back.This post wasn’t about compensation it was about awareness. Had my wife not stirred the beans in the pot then she would have served this at the Thanksgiving lunch at her work.This a Frog/Toad , not an insect or bug or foreign debris. Not only that its not intact. This is the reason for posting the batch numbers. These WERE our favorite beans and are for many others. Just make sure you check them thoroughly before serving especially during the Holidays. Thanks.Four images were attached to the post: the first depicting an unidentified spine and skeleton, second the mottled underside of the viscera, third two opened cans of Allens Italian Style Green Beans, and fourth the lot codes and “best by” dates for the green beans in the cans. We were unable to locate any official social media accounts for McCall Farms or Allens, but a description page for that brand read:Our authentic southern blend of farm-fresh vegetables isn’t just another ingredient in your meal. It’s a promise that you’re feeding your family a meal made with love and filled with timeless values. So slow down, embrace the traditions and make us part of your home-cooked meal.Norwood was not the first consumer to claim they found rodent or frog pieces in canned green beans. In March 2016, Oklahoma NBC affiliate KFOR reported that a family in Oklahoma had “discovered” the remains of a rodent in their canned vegetables during their Easter meal preparations. The brand in that case was Best Choice, and KFOR reported that “all the cans of green beans have been pulled from that state and there may be further actions in the future following the investigation” following the purported discovery:“We started opening them and putting them in the crock pot and by about the fourth can, something dumped out into the crock pot, and my husband noticed it and said, ‘what is that?’” Chelsea Belflower said.Whatever it was wasn’t green, and it wasn’t a vegetable.“I just noticed there was something black in the green beans and was like that’s not normal. So I picked it up and threw it. [It was a] mouse head!” Andrew Belflower said.It was just the head and leg of a small mouse.But Allens had also come up in the news in previous issues around canned green beans and the unwanted discovery of rodent parts. In 2008, now-defunct consumer issues outlet Consumerist reported:Texas wedding caterer Dale Cane found a dead rat’s head in one of the twenty cans of Allen’s Italian Green Beans he bought at Walmart. Allen’s quickly offered Cane $200 if he agreed to keep quiet, and assured him that “the Pasteurization process renders the product sterile and completely safe for consumption.” Even worse, this isn’t the first time a dead rat’s head popped up in a can of Allen’s Green Beans…[In 2007], a rat head surprised a Utah woman when she opened her can of Allen’s Italian Green Beans. That rat head earned its finder, Marianne Watson, an offer of $100 if she agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which she didn’t.Consumerist obtained a response from a consumer relationship manager at Allens in 2008, addressing the reports of “rat heads” in two separate consumers’ cans of green beans. In the excerpted email, the Allens representative maintained that “due to the stringent cooking process, the complete contents of the can would have been commercially sterile and would not have posed any sort of health hazard or threat to the public.”But they added that “allegations” in the media were “not accurate,” and “none of the allegations were confirmed as fact”:We are aware of the recent allegations regarding our product. However, we can confirm that the details released by the media are not accurate. We have spoken with the gentleman making the allegations but as of this date, none of the allegations have been confirmed as fact. What we can tell you is that because green beans grow out-of-doors and must be harvested by mechanical pickers close to the ground, it is not uncommon that field debris, insects and field pests may be present in the product when it is harvested and delivered to our plant for processing. Realizing this, we have equipped our production lines to rigorously wash and inspect raw product a half dozen times. Before filling the cans, they are inverted and steam flushed to assure cleanliness. The product is then filled into the cans with liquid, capped and cooked to the level of Pasteurization right inside the hermetically sealed cans, rendering the complete contents of the can commercially sterile. We utilize extensive quality control measures including technologically advanced equipment and trained inspectors. Just a few of the processes we utilize are quality checkpoints including blowers, de-stoning equipment, high pressure washers, metal detection and technically sensitive equipment, which scans the product for color and texture variances, rejecting any off-color object. Our company exceeds all FDA Requirements for food processing. In addition, we are constantly exploring new processes to improve our quality.Quite honestly, we are at a loss to explain how something like this could have escaped our quality control measures and could have gotten through the rigorous quality process and into a can of our product. We want to assure you that our plants are extremely clean and our processes quite thorough. Allens places strong emphasis on quality assurance, utilizing competent, well-trained people and the best equipment in our plants and Corporate Laboratory. Our company packs millions of cans of product each year and I want to assure you that an incident such as this is extremely rare.At the time Consumerist published their coverage, another outlet carried additional details about both incidents:The question remains: Is there a problem in the factory, especially with it happening over and over again?” [Utah mother Marianne] Watson said. Watson said she was told the rat’s head was harmless because the can’s contents were commercially treated and sterile. “They definitely have a PR problem,” she said. Cane said that in addition to notifying the health department and media, he also contacted the company. Like the Utah mother, Cane said he was told the can’s contents were “safe enough to eat because (they’re) sterilized.” The company offered Cane $200 and asked him to sign an agreement to not speak to the media. The company also offered “a variety gift-pack” but did not specify its contents. The offer wasn’t enough to wash the rat image from his memory. “Initially, I thought it was a ham hock, but then I remembered that the beans have no meat in them,” he said. “Then I saw the teeth and the eyes.”… At first, the company seemed sympathetic, she said, telling her that field mice make their way into the canning facility. Watson said she also was sympathetic at first. “Then I realized that this was just a line they were giving people. … The thing that upsets me is that they want you to give them the evidence,” she said. “These rats don’t look like field mice, an occasional mouse that pops his head up in a field. These are black, definitely, and the head is the size of a rat.” The company offered $100 and asked her to sign a non-disclosure agreement, which she called “an insult.”Norwood’s claim was also by far not the first of its sort to go viral on social media. Repeated claims of dead mice found in cans of Red Bull or other energy drinks circulated previously; relatedly, a cyclical claim periodically holds that various pictures showed cancer in pork going ignored by butchers.In the end, we found no public acknowledgement from McCall Farms or Allens about the November 2019 Facebook post claiming a consumer found animal parts in a can of Allens Italian Style Green Beans. In 2007 and 2008, consumers in Utah and Texas reported finding “rat heads” in cans of Allens Green Beans, and claimed that they were offered between $100 and $200 not to publicly disclose their experiences. According to Norwood, McCall Farms offered them a $20 Walmart gift card and replacement green beans. As always, the possibility remains that the claim was a hoax, but it was also not the first time consumers reported mouse or rat parts in Allens Green Beans.
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23580
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"About 106,000 soldiers had ""a prescription of three weeks or more"" for pain, depression or anxiety medication."
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U.S. Army report documents problem of suicides in the military.
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true
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National, Health Care, Military, This Week - ABC News, Gen. Peter Chiarelli,
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"Leaders of the U.S. Army need to take more active steps to prevent a growing number of soldiers from committing suicide, according to a major study released by the Army. Gen. Peter Chiarelli discussed the study on This Week with Christiane Amanpour. The study documented complex pressures -- including overly long deployments, more tolerance for high-risk behavior among soldiers and lax standards for leaders keeping tabs on their soldiers. Another complicating factor: increased use of prescription antidepressants, anti-anxiety drugs and pain medications. ""We know that we had over 106,000 soldiers last year who had a prescription of three weeks or more for some kind of antidepressant, anti-anxiety medicine,"" said Chiarelli. A few moments later, he added, ""A portion of those 106,000 soldiers that I told you are on some kind of pain medication, it has nothing to do with a behavior health issue. There are soldiers who have been on two, three, four deployments, hucking a rucksack filled with equipment that may weigh 70 to 80 pounds at 8,000 feet, and they've got a knee injury or a leg injury that is painful. Probably should stay home and get operated on, but they go back for the second deployment, and they're on some kind of a pain medication. We have soldiers who suck it up all the time and hide from their leaders when they're hurt."" Chiarelli was referring to information in the Army's Health Promotion, Risk Reduction, and Suicide Prevention Report, released Aug. 5, 2010. This seemed like an important issue to explore further. The report explains that historically, the Army's suicide rate has been much lower than the civilian population's. But the Army's rate began increasing in 2004 and surpassed the national average in 2008. That year, the suicide rate in the Army was 20.2 per 100,000, compared with a typical civilian rate of 19.2. This increase prompted the study. ""In Fiscal Year (FY) 2009, 160 active duty Soldiers took their lives, making suicide the third leading cause of death among the Army population,"" the study states. ""If we include accidental death, which frequently is the result of high risk behavior (drinking and driving, drug overdose, etc. ), we find that less young men and women die in combat than die by their own actions. Simply stated, we are often more dangerous to ourselves than the enemy."" The report affirms the 106,000 number that Chiarelli uses. ""Latest accounts estimate that approximately 106,000 Soldiers are prescribed some form of pain, depression or anxiety medications. The potential for abuse is obvious,"" it states. The report also discusses whether these and other prescription drugs are being abused by members of the military: ""There is concern that potential prescription drug abuse is masked in our current system. This is the result of the increase in prescriptions which expands the population authorized to use pharmaceuticals. For example, the growing population who has obtained prescriptions for amphetamines has resulted in an increased rate of authorized use. Unfortunately, there is no definitive method to ascertain if the use was authorized or illicit. As a result, we have masked a subset of that population who are either dependent or illicitly use drugs. Ultimately, if left unchecked, this gap facilitates a population of drug addicts and distributors."" The report also notes that many soldiers are aged 18 to 29, and there are continuing questions about the use of antidepressants -- specifically, Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) -- among young people, and whether these medications sometimes increase the risk of suicide. ""The Army Medical Command (MEDCOM) is cognizant of this issue and is investigating the use of these and other medications to better manage care,"" the report states. The report makes additional observations about prescription drug users in the military. Pain medications seem to be more common than antidepressants or anti-anxiety drugs; ""14% of the force is taking some form of opiate medication,"" according to the report. The percentage for antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications appear somewhat lower, with between 3 and 6 percent of the deployed force receiving such medication, according to evidence the report cites. Anecdotal evidence in the report indicates some soldiers receive multiple prescriptions for pain and depression. We should emphasize the study draws no hard conclusions about the role that prescription drugs play in military suicides. ""The impact of increased use of antidepressant, psychiatric and narcotic pain management medications has not been comprehensively studied in a military population,"" the report states. In the interview with Amanpour, Chiarelli rejected the idea that soldiers were overly medicated. ""We know that the drugs that we're talking about are cleared by the CENTCOM surgeon for soldiers to be taking when they're downrange. So we're not sending any soldier into harm's way who is taking a drug that we feel would somehow endanger him or others,"" he said. Finally, we should note that the report links policing potential drug addiction to military leadership in a section titled ""The Lost Art of Leadership in Garrison."" The Army has been transformed in recent years, the report states, so that combat readiness has been emphasized more than ""good order and discipline practices."" Unannounced health and welfare checks and inspections ""have been lost"" as part of that transition. ""There are instances where a leader’s lack of Soldier accountability resulted in suicide victims not being found until they had been dead for three or four weeks,"" the report noted. While the report raises a host of issues, we're only ruling on what the general said about the rate of medication among soldiers. The Army report and other testimony that we found support Chiarelli's statement that approximately 106,000 soldiers had ""a prescription of three weeks or more"" for pain, depression or anxiety medication."
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9081
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Multivitamins in pregnancy may be linked to lower autism risk in children
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This BMJ news release suggests that a new study found a correlation between multivitamin use and reduced incidence of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We commend the release for noting that the study findings show a correlation, not causation, and for making a call for more research. However, the largest drawback of the release is that it doesn’t provide any actual data from the study. The release did call out some limitations of the research but would have been even stronger had it mentioned some very obvious differences between the group of mothers-to-be that took multivitamins and the expectant mothers who did not take supplements. The multivitamin group is more educated, in a higher socioeconomic group, has fewer smokers, are of more normal weight, more were born in Sweden and more were experiencing their first pregnancy. The presence of a higher percentage of women with overweight in the no vitamin group suggests that there are other nutritional factors that are unknown and may influence or increase the risk of having a child with ASD. Environmental factors in autism spectrum disorder are an area of active research as the prevalence of diagnosis has doubled since the year 2000. (Genetic influences are also actively studied.) Because these disorders are developmental in nature, prenatal influences are of particular interest. Ideally, continued research on nutritional influences might someday lead to advice for pregnant women to reduce the chances of having a child with ASD.
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mixture
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autism,BMJ,dietary supplements
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The news release did not mention costs of vitamin supplements. The news release did not describe the size of the benefit, saying only that multivitamin use “was associated with a lower likelihood of child ASD with intellectual disability.” How much of a lower likelihood? And what are the absolute numbers? We would like to know how many of the 273,107 mother-child pairs used vitamins and how many children were diagnosed with ASD in the vitamin-taking moms and the moms who didn’t take vitamins. No mention of potential harms — or lack of harms, if that’s the case — from taking multivitamins or extra iron were mentioned in the release. The news release does a good job at defusing any presumption of cause-and-effect with this second paragraph: “The researchers stress that their findings cannot establish cause and effect, but say they raise questions about a possible association that warrant further investigation.” The release also discusses strengths (large sample size) and limitations (presence of confounding factors and uncertainty about dosing and timing of vitamins) of the study. However, the release omits any actual data, which we already pointed out in the Benefits section. The news release does not engage in disease-mongering. Autism spectrum disorders are simply described. The news release makes no mention of either funding sources or potential conflicts of interest involving the study authors. This information is plainly provided in the journal article’s footnotes which lists the government funding sources and notes that “Researchers were independent from funders.” The news release does not discuss that pregnant woman might achieve recommended vitamin intake via the food they eat. The news release doesn’t mention availability of multivitamins, but we concede that supplements are as widely available as are drug stores. The news release informs readers that previous work on maternal nutrition and ASD have been inconsistent and that this study used different and multiple analyses to assess the link. The news release does not use unjustified language.
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3258
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Telehealth rises as medium increases in validity.
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Jay Berger started by asking Patience Breckenridge how she was feeling. Breckenridge had had a rough night. The seizures continued, as they typically do.
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true
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Health, General News, Frederick
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After hearing about a few more episodes Breckenridge had, Berger suggested she get a gate for the top of the stairs, in case Breckenridge were to fall. She then asked Breckenridge if she had set up Alexa, the virtual assistant developed by Amazon, which she had. They then discussed different exercises they had gone over in the past. Berger asked the patient about her arm mobility — asking her to lift her arm — and stability, prompting her to stand up without holding on to anything. After about a 30-minute session, they said their goodbyes and logged off their computers. Berger, a physical therapist, certified dementia specialist and owner of Rehab Smarter, conducted the entire session online. Rehab Smarter is a local telehealth business that provides comprehensive rehabilitation services to patients over the internet. “This has been a saving grace for me,” Breckenridge said. “It’s not because I don’t want to go to the doctor’s office. It’s because I can’t get to them. If I could, I would be there.” The Brunswick resident turned to telehealth services due to her decreased mobility. She is, for the most part, homebound due to having multiple seizures a day. While she has online sessions with doctors, they still recommend that she come into the office at times to run certain tests and other functions that physicians are not yet capable of completing online. She works with Berger through online sessions about twice a week. Working with her is “completely the same” as if she were sitting with Berger face to-face. “Just because you’re stuck at home doesn’t mean that you can’t get the help that you need,” she said. “People just need to find the help that they need, and sometimes it’s on the internet.” Berger started Rehab Smarter about 18 months ago. She conducts sessions with her patients through an online portal where she can email with them directly, upload videos and add notes for their benefit. Everything is Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, or HIPAA, compliant. She typically doesn’t do a face-to-face assessment with the patient, but she has gone in-home to see the setup and suggested any modifications to help the patient with mobility. She may also do an initial assessment and meet with the caregiver, if there is one, and ask what the patient’s goals are. “Most of what clinicians do is educate and teach the client how to take care of themselves,” she said. She demonstrates different exercises with her patients online and, with her expertise, can detect muscle strength and functionality by just observing them perform simple tasks. “You can test cognition over the internet, you can test sensation,” she said. “You can’t listen to the heart without special equipment, but that exists.” Her average client has COPD, heart failure, diabetes, kidney disease, arthritis, high blood pressure and other conditions, all at once. They turn to telehealth because it’s difficult for them to get out of the home and go to a doctor’s office, although they sometimes do so. “It’s not really home care,” she said. “It’s not really outpatient. It’s a platform for clients that either have maxed out their benefits through traditional means or have prevention and wellness issues that will not be covered. It’s another opportunity for people.” Telehealth can be beneficial to the healthcare provider as well. When Berger provides home care through a company she works for, she can see up to six clients a day and then has hours of paperwork to complete, for insurance purposes. Through virtual care, she can see up to 12 patients with minimal paperwork. Her telehealth service is not covered under insurance, which cuts out a lot of the paperwork. A session can range from $80 to $200. With telehealth, a patient is not limited to one doctor. If Berger finds that a patient needs care in an area in which she’s not an expert, she can consult with a doctor across the country to get the patient the care they need. “So you can now get care by anybody who’s appropriate, wherever you are, at least to a point that you could not have gotten before,” she said. But even with the internet playing such a vital role in the future of medicine, there are still many limitations to telehealth. “You can’t touch a patient,” Berger said. “If you have an abdominal problem and your physician is palpitating your stomach to feel for tension and different things, you can’t do that (over the internet). Blood tests and physical surgeries also can’t be done, at this point in time at least.” Frederick Memorial Hospital is also making headway in telehealth services. The Chronic Care Management Program gives patients tablets, blood pressure monitors, a pulse oximeter and a scale to detect their vitals in the comfort of their own home. They consult with a nurse on the team once a week by phone. By the end of the summer, they plan to have video conferencing, according to Lisa Hogan, a nurse at FMH and the team lead for both the Chronic Care Management and telemonitoring programs. The program took off in 2017 and started with 30 monitors for in-home patients. Today it has 203 in the community. Up to 200 more monitors will be added in 2020. There is already a waiting list to be a part of the program. This past winter, the hospital also launched a separate Virtual Visit Program through Monocacy Health Partners, the hospital’s own physician group. The program is for employees and primary care patients of MHP, according to Alex Nason, director of IT innovation at FMH. Through a series of questions, primary care providers can assess ailments such as upper respiratory infections, flu, cold, rash and pink eye. Although physicians can make diagnoses and write prescriptions after conducting a telehealth session, about 20 percent of the time the provider decides that they would like to see the patient in person. Through these efforts, FMH saw an 84 percent reduction in readmission rates and a 56 percent reduction in emergency room visits in 2018, according to Hogan. “Telehealth as technology has become easier to use, less expensive and more accepted. And the clinical validation is there as more and more parts of health care are embracing it,” Nason said. “I think as the technology advances, the research continues to accrue validation and the economics of healthcare continue to evolve, we’re seeing more and more movement, acceptance and options of telehealth because the stars are starting to align.” ___ Information from: The Frederick (Md.) News-Post, http://www.fredericknewspost.com
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34510
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A Mexican mother's young son was recently poisoned by topical application of Vicks VapoRub.
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What's true: In 1988, an infant of unknown nationality died after ingesting 5ml of camphorated oil. What's false: We found no recorded deaths in or outside the United States attributed to topical application of Vicks VapoRub.
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unproven
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Medical, vicks vaporub, viral facebook posts, warnings
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In November 2016, numerous blog posts claimed a baby died of camphor poisoning after his mother applied Vicks VapoRub to treat a fever: A Mexican mother tells her tragedy to warn other parents and avoid someone else going through what she’s living: the loss of her 2-years-old baby. When she came back from work, she came into her baby’s room. When she got near to kiss him, she felt he had a fever. She imagined it was just a common cold and thought about a home remedy to relieve him. She rubbed Vick VapoRub on his chest, back, and under his nose to help him breathe. She tucked him up and laid down next to him. She was tired, so she fell asleep next to her baby. Hours later, when she woke up, she noticed her son wasn’t breathing. She carried him and took it to the hospital to save him. But, sadly, everything was pointless, the baby had been dead for hours. The medical report stated the child died due to inflammation in the respiratory tract, produced by the camphor contained in the famous ointment. The appended image was not the baby that purportedly died from an overdose of topically applied Vicks VapoRub, but a stock photograph. We found no news articles from November 2016 (or any other time period) indicating that a child had died due to topical use of the remedy. A 2001 study indicated one child of unknown nationality died after ingesting 5ml of camphorated oil (not a topical solution of Vicks): The clinical effects of camphorated oil are gastrointestinal irritation and central nervous system (CNS) depression. Symptoms usually begin within 5 to 10 min of ingestion, and peak within 90 min. The death of a small child occurred after the ingestion of 5 mL of camphorated oil[.] A study published in 2009 demonstrated the respiratory inflammation mentioned in the viral article, but not in human babies: To confirm that the menthol-containing rub was responsible for the patient’s respiratory stress, researchers tested the product on ferrets. Indeed, they found that exposure to VapoRub increased mucous production, thereby causing inflammation in the rodents’ airways. As of January 2009, no mentions were made of any deaths due to the use of Vicks VapoRub (though opinions were mixed on its safety): According to Procter & Gamble spokesperson David Bernens, the market surveillance data obtained by the makers of Vicks does not coincide with the findings of this report. Bernens said they see only about three adverse events per one million units of Vicks VapoRub sold. “For generations Vicks has been shown to be safe and effective if used in accordance with the instructions on the bottle,” Bernens said. “Animal findings have unknown clinical relevance, and the safety of Vicks VapoRub has been shown in multiple clinical trials in over 1,000 children who were studied, ranging in age from one month old to 12 years old.” Other doctors said the study may even cause VapoRub to be lumped in with other cough and cold medications that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) deemed unsafe for children under the age of 2. According to Dr. Diane Pappas, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, this study confirms that Vicks VapoRub, too, “should not be used in children under the age of two.” The only documented cases remotely related to the claim that a baby in Mexico died due to topical application of Vicks VapoRub did not match the details of the viral posts. We found no recorded deaths specifically attributed to topical application of Vicks VapoRub.
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989
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'Brain fever' blamed for India child deaths preventable: doctors.
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Five-year-old Soni Khatun was playing in the midday sun last week when she began to vomit and lose feeling in her hands. Her mother, a poor laborer living in rural India, borrowed money to take her to hospital.
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true
|
Health News
|
Five hours later, Soni was dead, one of more than 100 children to die this month from Acute Encephalitis Syndrome (AES), or ‘brain fever’, in one district of eastern Bihar state. “I still see her in my dreams,” said Sahana Khatun, Soni’s mother. “I can’t accept she is gone.” The deaths were preventable, doctors say, if poor families had access to good food, clean water and better medical care in Muzaffarpur district, 80 km (50 miles) from the state capital Patna. The epidemic has sparked a debate over growing inequality in India and focused attention on a free healthcare scheme for the poor - known as “Modicare” after Prime Minister Narendra Modi - eight months after it was launched. The precise causes of AES, which killed more than 350 in Bihar in 2014, are not known, though a majority of medical professionals say it is linked to a ferocious heat-wave that has gripped Bihar for the last month. Some studies have blamed toxins in lychees, a fruit grown in abundance in orchards around Muzaffarpur, though many families told Reuters their children had not eaten them in recent weeks. The victims come from poor families who often suffer from malnutrition and dehydration, doctors in Muzaffarpur said. If caught quickly, AES patients can often recover with simple rehydration treatment, doctors said, but delayed care can lead to convulsions and eventual death. “It is a preventable disease,” said Dr. Chaitanya Kumar at the district’s Kejriwal Maternity Hospital, one of two treating young AES patients. “Glucose and providing meals to some of the poorest districts – these are not expensive things.” India has world-class hospitals in major cities like New Delhi and Mumbai, but rural facilities like those in Muzaffarpur are overstretched, doctors say. The 600-bed Sri Krishna Medical College Hospital in Muzaffarpur has more than 900 patients, a third of them children with AES. Ninety-three AES patients have died at the facility since the outbreak began. Stray goats roam over rubbish and rubble on the hospital grounds. The building has frequent power cuts and the stench of urine lingers in the hallways. The hospital evicted a group of sick inmates from a ward to accommodate the surge in AES patients, but at times there are still two or three children assigned to one bed. “It is incredibly difficult to be a doctor in a place like this,” said Ravikant Singh, a volunteer doctor from Mumbai who was giving rehydration solutions to patients at the hospital. Other doctors said they felt powerless. “I can’t do anything. It is the social conditions that have to change,” said Rajkumar Goenka, secretary of the trust that operates Kejriwal hospital. “The government – state and national – has to do something,” he added. Nearly half of all children in Muzaffarpur are underweight, and a similar number are stunted, or too short for their age, according to government data. In Marwan, a village of thatched huts where many residents belong to one of the lowest rungs in India’s caste system, some children have swollen stomachs – a common sign of malnutrition. Residents interviewed by Reuters said they were unaware of Ayushman Bharat, the program known as ‘Modicare’ launched in 2018 to give India’s poorest free access to private healthcare. Nand Lal Mandhji, 61, whose four-year-old granddaughter died from AES, said the family was given a flyer about the scheme during a hospital visit in May. The family is illiterate and the program was not explained to them, he said. “They gave us something but we didn’t understand what it meant,” he said, clutching the flyer with Modi’s image. Eight families in Marwan with sick relatives said they had never heard of Modicare, and did not receive warnings from authorities about the dangers of AES. “No one comes here. Not politicians, health workers, no one,” said Sahana Khatun, Soni’s mother. ($1 = 69.6350 Indian rupees)
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9693
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How stem cell therapy may help treat COPD
|
We were thrilled to see this story mention the costs of the treatment, its lack of FDA approval, and the fact that insurance won’t cover it. But that was just one sentence. The rest of the story is so heavily focused on the experiences of one patient who believes she was successfully treated through stem cells that readers would understandably be driven to dial up this doctor based on scant evidence, no real understanding of the potential benefits, no independent assessment of the treatment, no comparison to alternatives, and no mention of risks. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is very common. There are many out there who might be affected by this type of poor reporting.
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false
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anecdotes over evidence,stem cells
|
Costs are presented here as is the fact that the treatment Is not covered by insurance, and so we are marking this as a passing rating. But the cost information is framed as if it’s a bargain: “costs less than $8,000” and is “well worth the price.” That’s language that has no place in a story about an unproven treatment. There is no objective quantification of benefits here. Instead, the story allows the physician who is marketing this procedure to make unproven claims about the treatment, saying that “about two-thirds of his patients see COPD relief within several weeks to about five months, and that those results last for about a year.” There are two big problems with a claim like this. First, the patient pool could be three patients, two of whom were treated successfully for a year. Second, the findings have no objective, independent measurement of improvement and no independent verification. No published studies. No peer review. Not even a group of collaborating physicians seeing the same results from different vantage points. There is no mention of risks in the story. Instead, the story repeats claims of amazing results in one patient. The story skirts any objective evidence – positive or negative – and opts instead to present unproven claims from the physician performing the treatments and the claims of one patient. It says, helpfully, that stem cell treatment for COPD “isn’t approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or covered by health insurance,” but it should have explained why that is. The story presents a single patient with severe symptoms, making it sound like everyone with COPD could become incapacitated unless they resort to this extreme, untested treatment. It also doesn’t mention that most COPD can be avoided by not smoking. There are no independent sources in this story, and it would have benefited from them. There is no real comparison of alternatives here. Stem cell therapy is the unproven treatment, and it is given all the air time. Traditional treatments for COPD are skipped or presented as failures in the case of one patient. The story has too many vague sentences that give the treatment the aura of efficacy. The one relating to the treatment’s availability may be the most dangerous: As Calick ran out of options, she sought help from Dr. David Borenstein in New York City. Borenstein, an integrative medicine physician, is one of numerous doctors in the world who is using stem cell therapy to treat various diseases. Understandably, readers with COPD might be calling their doctor the next minute to make an appointment. There are three main problems with the way the treatment is presented in this part of the story. First of all, integrative medicine is a controversial topic in and of itself, as explained by Dr. David Gorski on the Science-Based Medicine blog. Second, by saying that there are “numerous doctors in the world,” the story gives the impression that using stem cells to treat COPD is an established and now fully global practice, when, in fact, it may be three or it may be 3,000 doctors doing this. There’s very little evidence for the latter. Lastly, by saying “to treat various diseases,” the story misleads readers into believing that stem cells are a proven and established therapy for COPD and a range of diseases. In fact, as the FDA notes on its website: FDA has approved only one stem cell product, Hemacord, a cord blood-derived product manufactured by the New York Blood Center and used for specified indications in patients with disorders affecting the body’s blood-forming system There is no FDA-approved stem cell treatment for COPD or for nearly anything beyond the blood-related conditions that Hemacord is supposed to treat. And that’s because there is very little proof that stem cells are safe and effective treatments. The story makes claims that this is a silver bullet for COPD, but it does not establish those claims. The main novelty here is the incredible naivete of the coverage. We couldn’t find any specific news release that this story may have relied on, but since there are no independent sources, we can’t be sure that the story definitely wasn’t based on such a release. We’ll rule this Not Applicable. And we note that the story is clearly being used to promote the treatment center that is its focus.
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10654
|
Scanner brightens cancer cells
|
In this story we learn of a new scanner, CT/PET, that could potentially improve the ability to correctly stage certain types of cancer. This technology would be most appropriate for cancers that spread to the lymph nodes first, such as lung, breast, and prostate cancer. CT/PET is an improvement on CT, MRI, or X-ray because it can differentiate cancer cells from normal cells based on glucose metabolism. Accurate staging is important because invasive surgery is as stake. Although this story accurately represents the novelty and availability of the technology, avoids disease mongering and quotes multiple sources, it does not provide the reader with enough information on alternative options, the nature of the clinical evidence, the harms/side effects of the test, or the costs. Most importantly, however, the story does not explain what the test entails (what’s involved in the prep, time required, etc) nor does it quantify how much better the test is compared to the alternatives and whether these benefits are clinically significant.
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mixture
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Although the story makes many claims about past and projected future revenues, there is no attempt to compare the costs of the new approach to existing ones. The story claims the new scanners are cost-effective and may even save money by preventing unnecessary surgeries, but there is no evidence presented to support these claims. The story does not present any quantification of the benefits of CT/PET There is no mention of potential harms or side effects There is no mention of the clinical evidence No obvious disease-mongering Multiple sources are quoted. Although the story claims that CT/PET is an improvement over existing scanners, it does not mention what the alternatives are, nor does it present the advantages/disadvantages of the new approach compared to existing. The story says that the scanners went on the market in 2001 The story makes it clear that this is a new technology that’s really a combination of two existing technologies
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9552
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Powerful MS Drug Used Early May Reverse Some Disability
|
While most drugs are studied as a way to demonstrate benefit over other treatment, this trial of what could be described as a “last-ditch” drug–Lemtrada (alemtuzumab)–was studying optimal timing. Basically, is is better to give this drug more quickly, or only after trying other treatments? This is a very important question and while this HealthDay story seems balanced, with numerous mentions of benefits and harms, there was a noted lack of a few key details, including the potential conflicts of interest among those who are pushing for quicker use of this treatment. Readers need reminding that the manufacturer of a drug has an extremely strong interest in getting their drug used as early as possible in a disease process and that measures of “benefit” need to correspond to this early use. While the proponents say they believe giving the drug earlier may “slow and even reverse some disease-related disability,” others may demand a higher level of proof before exposing patients to this therapy.
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mixture
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monoclonal antibody drugs,Multiple sclerosis
|
No mention of costs, which we consider a major oversight. As a Boston Globe story explains: “Genzyme executives said Lemtrada will be priced at $158,000 for two courses of treatment over two years.” For MS patients, this enormous price tag was a major point of discussion when the drug was first approved. “My excitement for Lemtrada’s possibilities as a treatment that brings us close to a cure for MS is dampened by the super inflated drug charges of 900% for each vial of alemtuzamab,” wrote Laura Kolaczkowski in a piece looking at the economics of this drug. The story describes how the researchers assessed disability levels at the start of the study and every three months for two years. By the study’s end, nearly 28 percent of those given Lemtrada had improved by at least one point on a 10-point disability test, versus about 15 percent of those receiving interferon, the researchers found. But the story said the patients randomized to Lemtrada were “2.5 times more likely to have their thinking skills improve compared to those given interferon. And they were more than twice as likely to see improvement in their ability to move without tremor or clumsiness, the findings showed.” We need absolute numbers to compare what the baseline levels (thinking skills, move without tremors) were, and more details on what “improvement” means here, since this description alone doesn’t tell us if patients improved a little bit, or a lot. Additionally, this statement had us scratching our heads: “Giovannoni believes the drug could offer real relief from MS symptoms. Not only does alemtuzumab improve disability, but most patients go into long-term remission of at least five to eight years, he said.” Where did that determination come from? The study was only for two years and nothing presented within it showed remission. The story mentions the risk of infections (including herpes), the need for monthly blood and urine tests for four years after the last dose, the risk of developing “another autoimmune disease,” such as Graves’ disease (a thyroid disorder) and a bleeding/bruising disorder called idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. We’d have preferred to see a statement that long-term harms have not been determined, but this is otherwise a satisfactory description of the harms. Also, the drug was initially refused approval by the FDA for safety reasons, a very revealing fact that would have provided patients with some context on how serious the side effects are. Was the study randomized? Why was the intervention group twice the size of the control group? Were the investigators and patients blinded as to treatment? These are fairly important markers of quality which were missing from this report. We also wanted to know how “newly diagnosed” these patients were, since that was the thrust of the story. All we’re told is “For this study, Giovannoni and colleagues treated 628 patients with relapsing-remitting MS who had not responded to at least one other MS drug.” (We looked it up–and “newly diagnosed” meant anyone who had been diagnosed within the last 10 years before joining the study.) There was no obvious disease mongering. However, industry efforts to push very intense and very expensive drugs onto less-severely-affected patients should always be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. Do the benefits really outweigh the risks, or is this more about expanding the patient base? Several potential conflicts of interest were not disclosed. From other sources, including here, we see that lead researcher Dr. Giovannoni receives consulting fees from Bayer Schering Healthcare, Biogen Idec, Genzyme, GlaxoSmithKline, GW Pharma, Merck Serono, Novartis, Protein Discovery Laboratoires, Teva-Aventis, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, UCB Pharma, Pfizer. And as for the source from the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, the society reported receiving nearly $2.6 million from the drug manufacturers who funded this study (Bayer and Sanofi) in 2015. This study was comparing the new drug against interferon beta-1a, though we don’t get any sense of how it might have fared against the whole range of MS drugs currently being used. The story states that the drug is approved in the U.S. for patients who have failed other treatments. The story establishes the novelty by explaining that this study showed the drug could be used in more newly diagnosed patients: Because of serious side effects, the drug — Lemtrada (alemtuzumab) — is approved in the United States only for patients who have failed other treatments. But the authors of a new study believe giving it early may slow and even reverse some disease-related disability. The story does not appear to rely on a news release.
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10787
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Blood Test for Lung Cancer in the Works
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We would have liked to see more independent assessment of the specific results presented at this scientifiic meeting. Ideally, the story should have touched on the limitations of drawing conclusions from results presented at scientific meetings – results that have not been peer-reviewed. A validated non-invasive test for lung cancer could offer several benefits. The current protocol to diagnose lung cancer frequently includes an X-ray and then a biopsy or other invasive procedure to investigate any X-ray abnormalities, which are common. But X-rays have a high rate of false-positives: 20% or more of those invasive investigations reveal that the abnormality is benign. CT scans may improve specificity, but there have been concerns about the radiation levels in these scans. Thus, a new diagnostic method, if specific and reliable enough, could be an important advance used to confirm abnormalities seen on x-ray before undergoing biopsy, with the potential to reduce patient discomfort, complications, and costs.
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true
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Costs are not discussed, as this is an investigational procedure. The article provides n values and quantifies the results from the first stage of the study. The potential benefits of the test have to do with its ability to rule out malignancy based on X-ray results; thus, the specificity and sensitivity data are particularly relevant. We wish the paragraph on subjects with stage I disease would have quantified the results. It provides no sensitivity or specificity rates to justify the conclusion of the technique’s potential application in early stage disease. Quantified harms are not as pertinent since this a blood test. However, one could infer indirect harms, the false positives and false negatives, from the data provided. The story is up-front about these results being preliminary and from a conference. Ideally, the story should have further described the preliminary nature of these findings, in a way that would have made sense to a lay audience. The results have not been peer-reviewed, and the technique is only being developed based on these data. In other words, the study didn’t assess a technique, they built one to match the data. The strategy hasn’t been tested in a realistic population.As this report was all about a new diagnostic test, is it particularly important to define the groups clearly and the sensitivity/ specificity (and positive predictive value/ negative predictive value). This is where independent expert assessment of these results would have helped clarify their significance and early status. Regarding SomaDX, mentioned offhand, this evidence and its 90% sensitivity isn’t evaluated at all. At the time of this article, the report hadn’t even been officially released by the company, and not independently vetted. The article does not exaggerate the burden of lung cancer, accurately citing ACS statistics and the enormous importance of the disease. It also does not overstate the problem of false positives. An independent source was cited, a meeting attendant, and the SomaLogic quotes were added for context. The latter were good for illustrating that the Dubinett group is not the only game in town working on this type of blood test. Ideally, the article would have had more independent analysis of the specific results. No independent source was used to assess the SomaLogic employee’s claims of their experimental test’s sensitivity. Although the MedPage Today coverage of the study is aimed at a professional medical audience, it provides a good example of some of the critical points outside sources can provide about these type of very early results. Although the article does not identify conflicts of interest, from the MedPage Today article it’s not clear that the investigators disclosed any conflicts of interest in their abstract.
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16433
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"Social Security and Medicare are ""a Ponzi scheme."
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"Curbelo said that Social Security and Medicare are ""a Ponzi scheme."" A Ponzi scheme is by definition an illegal crime and an unsustainable set-up that crashes very quickly. Social Security and Medicare, which have been around for decades, are not criminal schemes. Both programs face the massive challenge of fewer workers paying for the benefits of current retirees, and budget experts say Congress could make changes to make them more sustainable in the future -- though many politicians are reluctant to gamble with the support of current senior voters. Curbelo raises a legitimate point about the need for reform, but that’s entirely different than calling these programs ""Ponzi schemes."""
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false
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Medicare, Social Security, Florida, Carlos Curbelo,
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"Congressional candidate Carlos Curbelo sided with Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s depiction of Social Security and Medicare as a ""Ponzi scheme"" in a talk with college Republicans. ""I speak about both of these programs as one because they both suffer from the same long-term insolvency, meaning that they won't be around for us, meaning that we're paying into a system that, you know, is a Ponzi scheme,"" he told college students at George Washington University in Washington on Sept. 18 . ""Rick Perry said that. That's one of the few things I think Rick Perry contributed when he ran for president last time -- and I worked for him, so I can say that."" The Miami Herald’s Naked Politics blog wrote about Curbelo’s comments captured by a tracker when he was in Washington fundraising. (Many of the students who heard Curbelo speak are from Florida.) Curbelo faces U.S. Rep. Joe Garcia, D-Miami, in a district that includes many seniors from Miami to Key West so his comments drew a lot of attention. PolitiFact has rated several claims about whether Social Security is a Ponzi scheme including two we rated by Perry leading up to the 2012 presidential election. We found some similar problems with Curbelo’s claim about Medicare. Social Security differs from Ponzi schemes We asked Curbelo’s campaign spokesman for evidence showing the programs are Ponzi schemes. Wadi Gaitan emailed us a statement that Curbelo was using ""a figure of speech"" and wants to preserve the programs for current and future generations. He provided no evidence that the programs are Ponzi schemes. Curbelo has made some broad suggestions for reform, including indexing benefits to life expectancy, (which already happens in part in Medicare) and changing how the cost of living adjustment is calculated. But first, what is a Ponzi scheme? The term originates with Charles Ponzi, a Boston swindler who conned investors out of millions in 1920 by promising returns of up to 100 percent in 90 days on investments in foreign postal coupons. After first-round investors harvested those profits, others flocked to Ponzi, unaware his ""profits"" consisted of money paid in by other investors. That strategy is unsustainable. In contrast, Social Security is more like a ""pay-as-you-go"" system transferring payroll tax payments by workers to retirees. A 2009 Social Security Administration online post stated: ""The American Social Security system has been in continuous successful operation since 1935. Charles Ponzi's scheme lasted barely 200 days."" Mitchell Zuckoff, a Boston University journalism professor who has written a book on Ponzi, noted three critical dissimilarities between Social Security and a Ponzi scheme. We will summarize Zuckoff’s comments from an earlier fact-check: • ""First, in the case of Social Security, no one is being misled,"" Zuckoff wrote in a January 2009 article in Fortune. ""Social Security is exactly what it claims to be: A mandatory transfer payment system under which current workers are taxed on their incomes to pay benefits, with no promises of huge returns."" • Second, he wrote, ""A Ponzi scheme is unsustainable because the number of potential investors is eventually exhausted."" While Social Security faces a huge burden due to retiring Baby Boomers, it can be and has been tweaked, and ""the government could change benefit formulas or take other steps, like increasing taxes, to keep the system from failing."" • Third, Zuckoff wrote, ""Social Security is morally the polar opposite of a Ponzi scheme. ... At the height of the Great Depression, our society (see 'Social') resolved to create a safety net (see 'Security') in the form of a social insurance policy that would pay modest benefits to retirees, the disabled and the survivors of deceased workers. By design, that means a certain amount of wealth transfer, with richer workers subsidizing poorer ones. That might rankle, but it's not fraud."" Michael Tanner, an expert on Social Security at the libertarian Cato Institute says that Social Security and Ponzi schemes share some characteristics -- for example, in the early stages there is a huge windfall while those later on get smaller returns. However, Ponzi didn’t have the power of the federal government. ""In the end the Ponzi scheme collapses and can’t make people continue to give him money, but Social Security can always force people to pay,"" Tanner said. ""In theory Social Security can always go out and raise taxes to keep benefits flowing."" Medicare Medicare, which pays for medical care for senior citizens, as well as for younger people with certain disabilities, covers 51 million people. (You can read more detail in a fact-check of U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan’s claim that Medicare is going broke which PolitiFact Wisconsin rated Mostly .) Medicare has two main components and they are funded differently. The primary source of financing for Part A, Hospital Insurance, is the FICA payroll withholding. In other words, it’s pay-as-you-go: the contributions of current workers (and their employers) finance the care for current beneficiaries. Most of the costs for Part B, which helps pay for doctor, outpatient and other services, are covered by the government’s general fund and, to a lesser extent, premiums paid by beneficiaries. Part B also has a trust fund, but it’s different from Part A in that whenever expenditures exceed revenue, the difference is automatically covered by transfers from the general fund. There is also a Part C -- Medicare Advantage, which is a private-insurance alternative to Part A and has no trust fund. And there is Part D, a prescription drug benefit included in Part B. Both Social Security and Medicare face a huge burden in the future and are susceptible to problematic demographic trends as the number of workers supporting every retiree has declined dramatically over decades. However, budget experts say neither are Ponzi schemes. The programs face shortfalls in part because the number of new workers paying into the system grows more slowly than seniors receiving benefits. But both programs get funds from general revenues to bridge the gap, said Edward Lorenzen, senior advisor at the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. ""While a Ponzi scheme is by its nature inherently unsustainable, the Medicare and Social Security programs can be made sustainable with changes in benefits and taxes,"" Lorenzen said. However, ""the longer we wait to make those changes, the magnitude of the changes that will need to be made will be greater."" Josh Gordon, policy director at the Concord Coalition, a group that advocates for balanced budgets, said. ""The only difference with Medicare is that on its face it is even less ‘like’ a Ponzi scheme because for Medicare part B and D the system is designed to have general revenues (not dedicated taxes) pay for 75 percent of costs -- just like any other government program is paid for by the general revenue pool."" Our ruling Curbelo said that Social Security and Medicare are ""a Ponzi scheme."" A Ponzi scheme is by definition an illegal crime and an unsustainable set-up that crashes very quickly. Social Security and Medicare, which have been around for decades, are not criminal schemes. Both programs face the massive challenge of fewer workers paying for the benefits of current retirees, and budget experts say Congress could make changes to make them more sustainable in the future -- though many politicians are reluctant to gamble with the support of current senior voters. Curbelo raises a legitimate point about the need for reform, but that’s entirely different than calling these programs ""Ponzi schemes."""
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10215
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Will you have a heart attack? These tests might tell
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This story touting the benefits of certain screening tests for heart disease concludes with a claim that is simply unbelieveable: that doctors practicing aggressive prevention techniques are seeing heart attacks and strokes “disappear.” Although the story includes a few cautionary comments, it low-balls the costs of screening, ignores many potential harms of inappropriate screening, misrepresents the quality of evidence, and fails to accurately describe existing alternatives. The story gives the megaphone to a doctor who “invented one of the imaging tests” to make over-the-top claims of the benefits of screening. The story also includes, without rebuttal, this sensationalistic and fear-mongering comment from the doctor: “Unless you do the imaging, you are really playing Russian roulette with your life.” Cardiovascular disease is the leading killer in the United States. The demand for better screening tests is strong, but readers of this story are not told that coronary calcium scoring, carotid ultrasound, and LDL particle size screening are not recommended for broad use by leading medical groups. Screening tests are double edged swords. When used in the right context, they can define a person’s risk and improve outcomes. When misapplied, they are wasteful of resources and expose people to unnecessary risks. The coronary calcium score, carotid ultrasound and sophisticated assessment of LDL cholesterol can be important diagnostic tools when applied in the correct patient population, but readers of this story deserved to be clearly informed that their value for most people is yet to be proven.
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false
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CNN,heart disease,Screening
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The story does discuss costs. However, it low-balls what people may be actually charged for the scans, which may include facility fees, reading charges and other costs. For example, one insurance company cost calculator (https://www.alegent.com/body.cfm?id=4735) estimates the cost of heart CT scan for calcium to be more than $600 and a carotid ultrasound to be about $700 for people paying for their own scans, so instead of the “less than $100 for both” figure reported in this story, a person getting both scans might be hit with a bill for well over $1000. Also, the statement that these scans are “often covered by insurance” is misleading, since insurers are likely to cover the scans only for patients considered to have an elevated risk, not for everyone. For example, Aetna, one of the largest insurers in the United States, considers coronary calcium scoring investigational, not medically necessary. See http://www.aetna.com/cpb/medical/data/200_299/0228.html The only quantifiable statement about benefits included in this story is that “doctors who are practicing aggressive prevention are really seeing heart attacks and strokes disappear from their practices.” A claim that any combination of tests and treatments can completely prevent heart attacks and strokes is unbelieveable. The incremental benefits that some recent studies have reported in certain patient groups are not clearly spelled out in this story. Those the kinds of numbers that readers should have been provided. As with costs, this story mentions harms, yet generally misleads readers. While the story emphasizes potential long-term benefits of screening, there is no mention of the downstream risks of tests and treatments triggered by the initial screening scans. For example, someone found to have a high coronary calcium score may be referred for an invasive coronary angiography exam, which in rare cases can cause serious injury or death. This story fails to point out the typical downsides of screening, especially for low-risk individuals who are less likely to gain important benefits. The Aetna insurance company statement mentioned above states that “the definitive value of calcium scoring for assessing coronary heart disease risk has not been established in the peer-reviewed published medical literature.” The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends against scanning for coronary calcium in low risk individuals and says the evidence is insufficient to make a recommendation either way for people at increased risk for coronary heart disease. ( http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/3rduspstf/chd/chdrs.htm) As far as screening for carotid artery stenosis, the USPSTF states emphatically that for the general population: “Do not screen with ultrasound or other screening tests.“ By contrast, this story trumpets the unabashed enthusiasm displayed by Dr. Agatson for the three tests that goes well beyond the general impression of most cardiologists in the United States. The closing line of the story includes an astonishing assertion that screams for documentation: “One of the best-kept secrets in the country in medicine is the doctors who are practicing aggressive prevention are really seeing heart attacks and strokes disappear from their practices. It’s doable,” Agatston says. The claim that a few screening tests can make heart attacks and strokes disappear flies in the face of even the most optimistic interpretations of recent studies that indicate some incremental advantage to adding coronary calcium scoring to risk fact calculations for certain patients. This story exemplifies disease-mongering by highlighting threats of terrible consequences and wildly exaggerating the number of people likely to benefit from these scans. With statements like, “unless you do imaging, you are really playing Russian roulette with your life” and “Agatson thinks that the coronary artery calcium scan should be routinely scheduled at age 50…” provide the uninitiated reader with the impression that everyone needs one of these tests. While the comments of Dr. Michos modify the unabashed enthusiasm, the overall tenor is over the edge. Considering that the United States Preventive Service Task Force and other major medical groups do not recommend coronary calcium scoring or carotid ultrasound screening for most people, this story should have included comments from someone explaining that consensus opinion. The premise of this story is that screening tests can make a dramatic difference in heart disease. In reality, the tests may offer an incremental improvement in predicting risk among certain people who fall into a gray middle zone of risk based on conventional methods. There is a reference to the use of these tests in people with intermedicate risk, but the broad claims at the beginning and end of this story overwhelm any reasonable comparison between the touted tests and established alternatives. The story mentions diet and lifestyle changes only in the context of a claim that these tests “give patients a chance to make major changes in their diet and lifestyle.” The story fails to note that people routinely stick to bad habits even when told they have a high risk of health problems or that since improving diet and lifestyle has benefits for everyone, an alternative approach would be to focus more effort and attention on effective strategies for changing behavior. The story makes it clear that the three tests discussed are available at most hospitals. Coronary calcium scoring has been a hot topic in heart disease prevention for well over a decade. Does it still qualify for the “relatively new” description used in this story? Certainly there is an evolving scientific discussion about which individuals are likely to benefit from these tests, but that sort of nuance is largely missing from this story. The story does not rely on a press release.
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23685
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"Recent data showed Nevada ranks 50th in the money received from"" the stimulus bill."
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American Crossroads ad attacking Reid on stimulus uses out-of-date data
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false
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National, Federal Budget, Message Machine 2010, Stimulus, American Crossroads,
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"One of the most closely watched U.S. Senate races of the year is the match-up between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Reid, the Senate's most powerful member, faces Republican Sharron Angle, a Tea Party favorite. In mid-July, American Crossroads -- a group that's the brainchild of top Republican officials including Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, both former strategists for President George W. Bush -- released one of the latest in a string of hard-hitting ads in the race. The ad said, ""It's bad enough that Nevada has the highest unemployment in the nation. And Harry Reid claims to be helping the jobs situation. Really Harry? Recent data showed Nevada ranks 50th in the money received from Harry's stimulus bill. Thats right. Senate Leader Harry Reid has gotten his own state less help than every other state but one. Along with bailouts, deficits and Obama care, that's what Harry Reid's done for Nevada. Really, Harry? That's not the kind of help Nevada needs."" We thought it would be worth checking to see whether Nevada really ranks 50th in aid from President Barack Obama's economic stimulus bill. Tracking down the source of the claim was easy: The ad includes an on-air citation of a Las Vegas Review-Journal story. But we sat bolt upright when we saw the story's date: Feb. 23, 2009. No, not Feb. 23, 2010. The ad said Feb. 23, 2009. That's less than two weeks after Congress passed the massive bill -- not exactly ""recent"" in our view. Seeking more details, we looked at the story itself. It's a comprehensive article by staff reporter Molly Ball that outlined how Nevada ranked in per capita stimulus aid overall (50th of 51, counting the District of Columbia), as well as for education (51st), transportation (48th), and Medicaid assistance (47th). Because we couldn't find any official document on the Internet that confirmed Nevada's 50th-place rating, we contacted Ball. She said that she calculated the numbers herself using data provided to her at the time. The article cites numerous sources, including the Nevada State Budget Office, the Congressional Research Service, the journalistic outfit ProPublica, the Democratic Policy Committee and CNNMoney.com. It also explains that a large part of the reason why Nevada was poised to receive comparatively little funding was that federal dollars from the stimulus are pegged in part to what the state already pays for programs such as Medicaid, which are low compared to many other states. The rankings attracted attention at the time. A March 1, 2009, column in the Review-Journal's competitor, the Las Vegas Sun, picked up on the raw-deal-on-the-stimulus theme and quoted a spokesman for Republican Gov. Jim Gibbons saying, ""The governor was surprised and a little disappointed we didn’t receive more in the stimulus package for the state."" So we can understand why American Crossroads used these figures. But was it appropriate to describe them as ""recent""? We don't think so. The Obama Administration has made significant efforts to collect and publicize data on where stimulus dollars are going through the website Recovery.gov, run by a congressionally created board independent of the administration. (The Recovery Board collects the data from recipients via FederalReporting.gov,) So we turned to Recovery.gov for the most up-to-date data. There's a state-by-state breakdown that lists ""funds available,"" which is defined as ""funds set aside for release to a recipient either immediately or in the future."" Through July 15, 2010 -- 17 months more recent than the article cited in the ad -- almost $3.2 billion had been set aside for Nevada, about double the amount calculated by the Review-Journal in early 2009. To make an apples-to-apples comparison to the figure cited in the ad, we calculated stimulus funds per capita, by dividing every state's dollar total by its population. Using this measurement, Nevada actually ranked almost exactly in the middle of all states -- 26th from the top. There's also a breakdown for ""funds paid out"" to date. Using this measurement, Nevada has received $2.2 billion, which is even better -- Nevada ranks 16th highest nationally, or well above average. When we asked American Crossroads for comment, spokesman Jonathan Collegio said that it's legitimate to fault Reid based on the original Review-Journal statistics, which reflected the bill immediately after it left his chamber. ""When the Senate Majority leader brags about all the power and the prestige he brings Nevada, while not actually getting anything for Nevada in the stimulus bill he controlled, he has neglected his home state,"" Collegio said. We'll grant that there are a lot of different ways to make this kind of calculation. An ongoing study by ProPublica, an investigative journalism outlet that has tracked stimulus data, found that Nevada ranks 9th from the bottom, using data that is several months older (and possibly different from) than what is found on recovery.gov. Even recovery.gov offers various types of data that can be sliced and diced to produce state rankings. So the authors of the ad had no shortage of data to choose from. It's not surprising that American Crossroads would reach for the most unflattering number, and if they'd framed it carefully -- for instance, saying that the state ranked 50th ""in one study"" -- they would have scored passably on our Truth-O-Meter. However, American Crossroads not only cherry-picked the most damning data but also tried to pass it off as ""recent."" Current data would have showed that Nevada's stimulus haul was no smaller than about average by national standards. This is not a trivial omission."
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23276
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Barbara Boxer voted to cut spending on Medicare benefits by $500 billion, cuts so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether.
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Ad against Barbara Boxer says hospitals might stop taking Medicare. We find that unlikely.
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false
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National, Health Care, Medicare, Message Machine 2010, Retirement, Crossroads GPS,
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"Republicans are using the health care law as a springboard to attack Democrats on Medicare, the government-run health insurance program for seniors. But some ads leave out so many details that they seem intended to simply scare people with threats of lost care. Such is the case in an ad from Crossroads GPS, a Republican-controlled issues advocacy organization that is not required to disclose its donors. Crossroads GPS released an ad targeting California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, who faces Republican challenger Carly Fiorina on Nov. 2, 2010. ""California seniors are worried,"" the ad begins. ""Barbara Boxer voted to cut spending on Medicare benefits by $500 billion, cuts so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether. Boxer's cuts would sharply reduce benefits for some, and could jeopardize access to care for millions of others."" The ad then advises, ""Check the facts and take action. Call Boxer; stop the Medicare cuts."" So we decided to step in. We're checking the ad's claim that Boxer voted ""to cut spending on Medicare benefits by $500 billion, cuts so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether."" We've looked into the claim of $500 billion in cuts to Medicare several times. The health care law --- formally known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 -- does not take $500 billion out of the current Medicare budget. Rather, the bill attempts to slow the program's future growth, curtailing just over $500 billion in future spending over the next 10 years. Medicare spending will still increase -- the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects Medicare spending will reach $929 billion in 2020, up from $499 billion in actual spending in 2009. The health care law tries to change Medicare in a couple of ways. It improves the program for beneficiaries by paying more for prescription drugs and preventive care. It attempts to curb Medicare spending, both to make the program more efficient and to help pay for new programs for the uninsured. (The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation created an easily digestible tutorial on the overall changes to Medicare under health care reform.) Of the $500 billion in reduced spending going forward, some comes from relatively minor changes, such as $36 billion in savings from increased premiums for higher-income beneficiaries and $12 billion for administrative streamlining. The law directs a new national board to identify $15.5 billion in savings, but the board -- the Independent Payment Advisory Board -- is prohibited from proposing anything that would ration care or reduce or modify benefits. More significantly, there's $136 billion in projected savings from changes to the Medicare Advantage program. About 25 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans. Finally -- and here's where we get to the part about hospitals and nursing homes -- there's $220 billion in Medicare savings achieved by reducing annual increases in payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other skilled nursing facilities and home health agencies. The reductions are part of programs intended to improve care and make it more efficient -- for instance, by lowering payments for preventable hospital re-admissions. These reductions have some people concerned, particularly Richard Forster, the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services. Foster has issued several reports warning that the reduced payments will not achieve the cost savings that the law projects. The ad against Boxer throws up the logo of the Washington Post when it runs the words ""could stop taking Medicare altogether"" on the screen. We tracked the quote back to the actuary's November 2009 report. The report says that, over time, health care providers would have a more difficult time finding efficiencies and that some facilities might find it difficult to remain profitable. The actuary repeated that concern after the health care law's final passage in an April 2010 report. The actuary's projections showed that about 15 percent of all providers would become unprofitable during the next decade if the payment reductions stay in place. ""Although this policy could be monitored over time to avoid such an outcome, changes would likely result in smaller actual savings than shown here for these provisions,"" the report concluded. At this point, let's take a minute to note a few factual conclusions: Yes, Boxer voted for the health care bill, but it didn't cut $500 billion out of the current Medicare program. Instead, it slowed growth over the next 10 years. And not all of that $500 billion applied to hospitals and nursing homes. It was only about $220 billion in prospective reduced payments that concerned the chief actuary. That's what the ad calls ""cuts so costly to hospitals and nursing homes that they could stop taking Medicare altogether."" Opinions differ on whether the reductions in Medicare payments are realistic or impossible to achieve. We won't resolve this policy dispute here. However, it's important to note that even those who think the payment reductions are unrealistic don't necessarily expect hospitals to stop taking Medicare. Instead, they expect the law to cost more than is projected. ""Hospitals are not going to stop taking Medicare. It's too big a part of their revenue,"" said Gail Wilensky, who ran the Medicare program under President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s. ""I can say that's not going to actually happen, because someone is going to intervene. And when you intervene, you're not going to have the budget consequences that you originally envisioned,"" she said. This same issue has played out with payments to doctors, who have been scheduled for payment reductions under Medicare for several years. Congress has delayed those payment reductions repeatedly. The current fix will expire Dec. 1, 2010. Wilensky said this is the critical issue Congress will have to address soon. ""You can't really talk sensibly about fixing Medicare unless you address how you pay physicians,"" Wilensky said. ""We're not really addressing what we have to do to fix Medicare in a key, fundamental way."" Boxer's campaign, meanwhile, pointed to her votes on fixes for physicians as evidence that she also wouldn't let payment reductions to hospitals and nursing homes affect patient care. Boxer voted for a bill in October 2009 that would have permanently fixed doctor's payments; the bill failed in the Senate. ""Sen. Boxer has consistently voted against dangerously high pay cuts to doctors that provide services to Medicare beneficiaries, because she is concerned that these cuts would limit seniors’ access to health care,"" said campaign spokesman Matthew Kagan. In our ruling, it's true that Boxer voted for the health care law, and that law includes reductions in payments for hospitals and nursing homes. But $500 billion includes all the cost reductions for Medicare; the reductions for hospitals and nursing homes are about $220 billion. Finally, those warning about the spending reductions say that it's unlikely Congress will allow them to go forward if they affect patient care. Boxer, meanwhile, has voted for similar types of payment fixes in the past. Because the ad leaves out important facts that undermine most of its claims."
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11061
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Calcium scores and heart disease
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This is a story about a method of screening for heart disease. Though the story mentioned that there are some experts who believe that the test is being overused, there was no direct comment about this to explain why overuse of a test is problematic. The story did mention that the test was for individuals who were at high risk, though it did not explicitly define what would put someone at high risk. The story did not provide insight into the evidence about the impact of coronary artery calcium on the risk of heart disease. It did not present information about the magnitude of benefit that might be attained with this test. Although there was some discussion about whether the test is used too often, there was little mention of the population for whom the test might provide useful insight about an elevated risk. The story failed to mention an estimate of how much an elevated calcium score affects risk, for example, of having a heart attack or sudden cardiac death. There was no discussion about the harms of treatment. This test does expose the patient to a small amount of radiation. It would be suggested that a woman who is pregnant or might be pregnant be sure to discuss this prior to the test. There is a chance that the test might appear positive even though there are no blockages of coronary arteries. As a result, the person might have additional testing that is unnecessary and that carries its own potential risks and side effects. Additionally – there may also be the harm of incidental non-cardiac findings. The story did not put the new test into the context of existing tests. The story would have had greater integrity had it included a statement from independent experts who no ties to the procedure or the hardware investment at their own facility.
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false
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"A graphic was presented of the average cost being $300 – $400 for the test. However – this does not include the cost of any testing that might follow (including heart catheterization) It would have been useful to provide information as to whether this test was or was not commonly paid for by insurance companies. This story did not present information about the magnitude of benefit that might be attained with this test. Although there was some discussion about whether the test is used too often, there was little mention of the population for whom the test might provide useful insight about an elevated risk. The story failed to mention an estimate of how much an elevated calcium score affects risk, for example, of having a heart attack or sudden cardiac death. There was no discussion about the harms of treatment. This test does expose the patient to a small amount of radiation. It would be suggested that a woman who is pregnant or might be pregnant be sure to discuss this prior to the test. There is a chance that the test might appear positive even though there are no blockages of coronary arteries. As a result, the person might have additional testing that is unnecessary and that carries its own potential risks and side effects. Additionally – there may also be the harm of incidental non-cardiac findings. The story did not provide insight into the evidence about the impact of coronary artery calcium on the risk of heart disease. The story began by saying that it is ""a new tool for patients to fight off heart disease"". This is actually a misrepresentation because it is simply a diagnostic measure and does nothing to prevent or treat heart disease. It almost sounded like disease mongering – ""Manuel Paz is the picture of health on the outside…."" but in the end, he not only was the picture of health on the outside, but the scan showed nothing to confound this image. Several clinicians involved in providing CT calcium screening were interviewed as a part of this story. But they were both from the same medical center and both appeared to have interests in the CT screening facility at their institution. The story would have had greater integrity had it included a statement from independent experts who no ties to the procedure or the hardware investment at their own facility. Although the story mentions that the healthy appearing man who was having the scan had high cholesterol and a family history of early heart disease, and mentioned at the end that there is some concern that the test is being overused, the story failed to define in a meaningful way, for whom this test would be appropriate. Young individuals for whom there are not other known risk factors of heart disease are not likely to benefit from this test. The test is also not likely to be useful to older individuals who would likely not be treated differently based on the results. The story did not put the new test into the context of existing tests. Although mentioned as a 'new tool', the story did not provide any information about availability of this test. The story reported on a screening tool for cardiac disease that is relatively new. We can't be sure if the story relied solely or largely on a news release, although it did rely on input from only one medical center."
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9129
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Superior Protection by Flublok® Influenza Vaccine in Seniors Documented in New England Journal of Medicine
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The news release, which comes from flu vaccine manufacturer Protein Sciences Corporation, highlights a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on the effectiveness of its vaccine in older adults. The news release does a fair job of describing the study, when the drug will be widely available, and addressing potential harms. However, there are two significant shortcomings: first, the release does not address cost — which is problematic, given that the release comes from the company itself; and second, the release only tells readers about the benefits of the vaccine in terms of relative risk, as opposed to absolute risk. This is an important distinction — which we’ve discussed quite a bit — and we’ll address it at greater length below. Furthermore, the release seems to inflate the reduction in relative risk from 30 percent to 40 percent. Data in the study itself only supports a 30 percent relative risk reduction. The CDC estimates that “influenza has resulted in between 9.2 million and 60.8 million illnesses, between 140,000 and 710,000 hospitalizations and between 12,000 and 56,000 deaths annually since 2010.” What’s more, the CDC also notes that: “While influenza seasons can vary in severity, during most seasons people 65 years and older experience the greatest burden of severe influenza disease.” In other words, the flu is a big deal — and especially so for older adults. This news release is focused on a study that examined the effectiveness of a new flu vaccine in adults aged 50 years and older compared to the conventional flu vaccine in adults of the same age. Even an incremental improvement in efficacy of a vaccine so commonly used and central to prevention of illness is important. This is useful information, and could help older adults — and their doctors — make informed decisions about how they choose to protect themselves against the flu. However, in order to make truly informed decisions, older adults (and their doctors) need to truly understand the difference in protection provided by the two types of vaccine — and they also need to know the difference in cost. Informed decisions can’t be made without a clear understanding of costs and benefits, and this release doesn’t quite meet the bar.
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mixture
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flu vaccine,Protein Sciences Corp.
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Costs aren’t discussed at all. Given that this release comes from the manufacturer, and that the drug was approved by the FDA in October 2016, it’s not clear why this information isn’t available. This is very problematic. The release tells readers that “People who were given [the new vaccine] Flublok Quadrivalent were over 40% less likely to develop culture-confirmed influenza [compared to those who took conventional, egg-based inactivated vaccine].” If you look at the numbers reported in the NEJM article, you’ll see that 96 of the 4303 people who received the new vaccine (or 2.2 percent) were later diagnosed with the flu. That compares to 138 of 4301 study participants who received the conventional vaccine (or 3.2 percent). So the benefit is a reduction of risk from 3.2 to 2.2 percent. That’s a 1 percentage point difference in terms of absolute risk. So where does that “40% less likely” language come from? Theoretically, it refers to the relative reduction in risk between the experimental vaccine group and the conventional vaccine group. But that doesn’t really work either. Here’s how the study authors describe the relative risk reduction in the NEJM article: “thus, in the modified per-protocol population, the probability of influenza-like illness was 30% lower with [the experimental vaccine] than with [the conventional vaccine].” So, where does that “40% less likely” language come from? We don’t know, and the release doesn’t tell us. The release includes a section on the safety of the new vaccine that offers substantial relevant information, as well as how to obtain more detailed information if desired. The release includes a concise, but effective, overview of the study. No disease mongering here. The release is clearly from Protein Sciences Corporation and clearly identifies its own chief medical officer when she is quoted in the piece. The release does not explicitly state that the study was funded by Protein Sciences, but hat can be deduced from the text. But omitting conflicts of interest disclosures in the release is another matter. According to the disclosure in NEJM, journal article authors “Drs. Dunkle, Izikson, and Cox report being employed by and holding stock in Protein Sciences.” That financial connection should have been included in the news release. The release does not list other flu vaccines by name, but does clearly describe the conventional vaccine that was compared to Flublok Quadrivalent in this study. The release also articulates what distinguishes Flublok from conventional vaccines in terms of its manufacturing and components (e.g., Flublok is made without using eggs, etc.). The release explicitly states that: “Flublok Quadrivalent was approved by the FDA in October 2016 and will be available nationwide in prefilled syringes for the upcoming flu season.” As noted above, the release clearly describes how Flublok Quadrivalent differs from other flu vaccines. The release also addresses the novelty of the clinical study in shedding light on the efficacy of Flublok Quadrivalent to a conventional vaccine in older adults. In addition to the findings that inflated the relative risk reduction from 30 to 40 percent (described under benefits), the chief medical officer’s statement includes the following: “Clearly, Flublok represents a major step forward in combating influenza on a global scale.” Stating the the findings are “a major step forward” and “on a global scale” are broad, unjustified claims. This is an incremental improvement, not a major step forward.
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4101
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Virginia officials say deer deaths caused by viral outbreak.
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The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has confirmed that a viral disease has killed a number of deer across the state.
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true
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Health, General News, Infectious diseases, Virginia
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Hemorrhagic disease is a common infectious disease of white-tailed deer. Outbreaks occur annually in the Southeast. Virginia officials said they’ve received reports from 38 counties involving 180 deer. The worst hit area is in and around Bedford and Franklin counties. Outbreaks are characterized by otherwise healthy-looking deer being found dead or dying near or in the water during late summer and early fall. There is no vaccine or medication to combat the disease. The best predictor of the disease activity is drought. The disease does not pose a threat to humans or domestic pets. Outbreaks typically continue until the first frost kills insects that carry the disease.
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8982
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Robotic surgery as effective as open surgery for bladder cancer
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This news release about a trial that randomly assigned people with bladder cancer to either robot-assisted or open surgery buried the real news under a weak lead that garbles the findings. The news here is that, contrary to assertions of many proponents of robot-assisted surgery, it is possible to randomize patients in order to get a valuable comparison instead of relying on weaker study designs that can’t answer the fundamental question about how old and new techniques compare. The release is rated as satisfactory on many criteria because key information was included in the body of the release, but the headline proclaiming that robot surgery is “as effective” as open surgery misses the larger point. The headline and lead also put a pro-robot spin on the results, which could also be summarized as robot surgery is “not clearly worse.” Also not explained: robot-assisted surgery is more expensive. The final sentence of the release, a quote from a researcher, should have been the lead: “It is important to conduct these trials before widespread adoption of technology, as has been the case with robotic prostatectomy (removal of the prostate).” We are bombarded with releases and news stories trumpeting results from studies of robot-assisted surgery that don’t actually compare the new technology to existing practice. These studies often lack any control group or use historical data that may not be truly comparable. The promoters of expensive new devices then claim that they are relying on the best available evidence. This trial shows better evidence can (and should) be gathered. And in this case, good quality evidence indicates little difference in the techniques, despite what all the big hospital billboards about robot surgery proclaim.
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true
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bladder cancer,Loyola University Health System,robotic surgery
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There is no discussion of cost in this release. The journal article says several institutions refused to provide their prices. Nevertheless, the high cost of robotic surgery is an important issue. The researchers wrote they were unable to say whether those high costs might be offset [or not] by certain potential benefits (such as shorter hospital stays), but the release should have at least acknowledged the cost issues. The release does report the percentage of patients in the robot-assisted and open surgery groups that were still alive with no signs of disease progression two years after their procedures: 72.3 percent of patients in the robotic surgery group compared with 71.6 percent in the open surgery group… and it notes the difference was not statistically significant. It also reports that the robot-assisted surgery patients checked out of the hospital after six days on average, compared to 7 days for those in the open surgery group. The release reports only half as much blood loss in the robot surgery group, but does not report the amounts, which averaged 300 mL in the robot-assisted group vs. 700 mL in the open surgery group… that’s a difference of less than one pint. The release reports that patients who had robot-assisted surgery spent more time in the operating room than those having open procedures (seven hours vs. six hours). It also reports overall rates of adverse effects (67 percent in the robot group vs. 69 percent in the open group), along with listing the most common problems: urinary tract infections and intestinal obstructions. It would have helped if the release had pointed out that these complication rates were not statistically different. In a way, the release is satisfactory and yet maddeningly unsatisfactory. It tells readers that the study was a randomly controlled trial with 350 patients, but it buries the most important point: that the ability of these researchers to do this sort of rigorous trial comparing robot-assisted surgery with open techniques highlights how few such trials are done. Deep in the release, the researchers are quoted as saying the findings “underscore the need for further high-quality trials to assess surgical innovation before this surgical technique is widely adopted in clinical practice” and further that “It is important to conduct these trials before widespread adoption of technology, as has been the case with robotic prostatectomy (removal of the prostate).” The quality of the evidence should have been the lead. The release does not exaggerate the prevalence of bladder cancer. It does not push treatment on those who are unlikely to benefit. The release could be interpreted as promoting a newer more expensive form of therapy that doesn’t provide any advantages over the standard therapy. Although the release reports that the study was supported by the National Cancer Institute, it fails to note the financial disclosures several researchers made about money they have received from companies relevant to this study. The comparison of robot-assisted to open surgery was the main point of the release. The release makes clear that both techniques are available… including at the institution that issued the release. The release could have informed readers that, according to the published paper, that all of the operators in this study had done at least 10 robot-assisted cystectomies before being allowed to participate in the study. When widespread adoption of the robot-assisted procedure occurs, it would be possible that many surgeons would not have completed that many robotic cystectomies. While the release does tell readers that what is really new here is the use of randomization to compare robot-assisted surgery to open surgery for bladder cancer, it manages to bury that lead so deep under the poorly worded description of the results of this non-inferiority trial that the thrust of the release is unsatisfactory. The release doesn’t employ unjustified, sensational language.
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17005
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Estimates for adopting Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion show it will cost Virginia taxpayers $902 million through 2022.
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"Campaign for Liberty says estimates show Medicaid expansion will cost Virginia taxpayers $902 million over the next decade. One forecast indeed showed that: A 2012 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation offering broad estimates of the net cost expansion for each state. Kaiser stressed in the report that it did not examine all of the savings states might realize and said its net projections ""should be considered an overestimate of costs or an underestimate of savings."" The Campaign for Liberty ignores the most current and detailed study, released in January by Virginia’s Medicaid agency. This report, which examined all avenues for savings based on updated trends, concluded Medicaid expansion would save the state $604 million through 2022. The campaign’s use of the plural ""estimates"" suggests there’s broad agreement Medicaid expansion will cost Virginia taxpayers $902 million. Not so. So the campaign’s statement has an element of truth, but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."
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false
|
Medicaid, State Budget, Virginia, Campaign for Liberty,
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"An organization founded by former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, is urging Virginia House Speaker Bill Howell to stand firm against expanding Medicaid in the Old Dominion. ""Estimates for adopting Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion show it will cost Virginia taxpayers $902 million through 2022,"" says an online petition to Howell that was posted April 29 by the Campaign for Liberty. Paul, who served 25 years in Congress and ran three times for president, retired from the House last year. He set up the Campaign for Liberty in 2008 to promote limited government, non-interventionist foreign policies and opposition to the Federal Reserve System. We wondered whether the claim about estimates showing Medicaid expansion will cost Virginia taxpayers $902 million is correct. So we took a look. The Affordable Care Act -- also known as Obamacare -- gives states the option of expanding Medicaid eligibility to people earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line. Uncle Sam will pick up the entire tab for new enrollees during the next two years and pay 90 percent of the cost down the road. The expansion could add as many as 400,000 Virginians to Medicaid’s rolls. The Republican-controlled House of Delegates, led by Howell, has twice refused to broaden the program, saying the federal government can’t be trusted to pay its promised share. A stalemate between the House and the Democratic-controlled Senate is delaying passage of a two-year state budget scheduled to go into effect July 1. When we asked the Campaign for Liberty about the $902 million claim, it cited a year-old graph by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative advocacy and research organization, showing the annual costs and savings Virginia would see through 2022 if it expanded Medicaid. Heritage, in a source note under the graph, said its figures came from a November 2012 report by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan organization that researches health issues. The Kaiser report Kaiser estimated the total added costs each state would incur from 2013 through 2022 if it expanded Medicaid. It concluded that Virginia would spend about $52.7 billion on Medicaid during that span if it broadened its program and about $51.4 billion if did not. So the gross cost of expansion would be slightly higher than $1.3 billion. The main reason for the increase is that the state in 2017 would begin to assume a small share of the cost of insuring the new enrollees. Virginia’s share would cap at 10 percent in 2020, with the federal government paying the rest. Kaiser then subtracted the largest single source of savings Virginia would receive from expansion. The state would no longer need to pay hospitals and clinics as much for their losses from treating indigent patients -- adults who can’t afford private insurance but earn too much to qualify for Medicaid. That, Kaiser estimated, would conserve $424 million through 2022. So Kaiser said the net expansion cost to the state -- slightly more than $1.3 billion minus $424 million -- would come out at $902 million through 2022. But Kaiser stressed twice in its report that its net cost estimates had shortcomings because -- outside of considering savings on indigent care -- it did not examine other economies expanded Medicaid offered states. Its source of data did not provide for more detailed research. Kaiser wrote that its net estimates ""should be considered an overestimate of costs or an underestimate of savings if states were to implement the Medicaid expansion."" The Campaign for Liberty, in relying on this 18-month old estimate on Virginia, neglected a more current and deeper forecast released in January by state’s Department of Medical Assistance Services, which oversees the Old Dominion’s Medicaid system. The DMAS report The DMAS report contained figures compiled by its actuaries at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. These figures, based on substantial new research in Virginia and trends found in Medicaid expansion in other states, showed lower costs and much higher savings than previously predicted. Virginia’s cost totaled slightly more than $1.1 billion: The report identified multiple avenues of savings totaling $1.7 billion: The bottom line is DMAS estimated Medicaid expansion would save the state $604 million through 2022. But the longer the state opts out of expansion, the more those savings decline. It should be noted that the expanded coverage will start to cost the state more than it saves during the next decade when Virginia’s 10 percent contribution to cover the added Medicaid enrollees locks in, according to Secretary of Health William Hazel. The state has not released estimates of those long-term costs but Hazel has called them ""manageable."" Finally, you may have noticed a huge difference in Kaiser’s and DMAS’s estimates of the amount Virginia would save on indigent care over 10 years: Kaiser said $434 million; DMAS said $1.1 billion. That’s because Kaiser assumed each state would see a 33 percent drop in their indigent costs if it expanded Medicaid. DMAS estimated Virginia would see an 80 percent reduction in that expense. Our ruling Campaign for Liberty says estimates show Medicaid expansion will cost Virginia taxpayers $902 million over the next decade. One forecast indeed showed that: A 2012 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation offering broad estimates of the net cost expansion for each state. Kaiser stressed in the report that it did not examine all of the savings states might realize and said its net projections ""should be considered an overestimate of costs or an underestimate of savings."" The Campaign for Liberty ignores the most current and detailed study, released in January by Virginia’s Medicaid agency. This report, which examined all avenues for savings based on updated trends, concluded Medicaid expansion would save the state $604 million through 2022. The campaign’s use of the plural ""estimates"" suggests there’s broad agreement Medicaid expansion will cost Virginia taxpayers $902 million. Not so. So the campaign’s statement has an element of truth, but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."
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14019
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"Robin Wright Says Apple products are currently ""90 percent conflict-free,"" and ""Intel is 100 percent conflict-free."
|
"Wright said Apple products are currently ""90 percent conflict-free,"" and ""Intel is 100 percent conflict-free."" The numbers are off. Intel says 100 percent of is processors are conflict-free, but couldn’t vouch for its other products. Apple reported that 100 percent of its supply chain was participating in audits, but rejected the label. While experts commend both companies for leading the sector in moving away from conflict minerals, they cautioned against labeling anything 100 percent ""conflict-free."""
|
false
|
Global News Service, Corporations, Human Rights, Technology, Robin Wright,
|
"As you’re texting away on that snazzy smartphone, you may be ""holding war"" in your hands, says actress and activist Robin Wright. Wright, known for her roles in House of Cards, Forrest Gump, and The Princess Bride, compared minerals extracted in the Democratic Republic of Congo for electronics to blood diamonds in a recent speech and urged consumers to learn more about their electronics. ""I do have an Apple iPhone. And Apple is 90 percent conflict-free currently,"" Wright said May 25. ""Intel is 100 percent conflict-free. They are the biggest distributor of the chip. That’s huge."" Are the vast majority of Apple and Intel products made without financing war in the Democratic Republic of Congo? The answer is complicated. While both Apple and Intel are commended by human rights groups for their leadership in transparency, Wright’s numbers are off. More importantly, experts told us it’s impossible to ensure that anything is completely conflict-free. Conflict minerals, a primer The Democratic Republic of Congo’s rich mineral deposits, worth about $24 trillion, supply the world’s demand for electronics and fund militias that have been warring with each other and the government for decades. Rebel groups like the Lord’s Resistance Army (remember Kony?) and the Congolese military itself loot or seize control of mines in the Kivu region. These mines are notorious for their rampant human rights abuses. The minerals eventually find their way into cell phones, computers, and other products. Armed groups earned an estimated $184 million from just four minerals in 2008 alone. Here’s a video from Enough Project, a human rights group, on how it all works: Corporate reporting Wright may have been thinking of figures in Apple’s and Intel’s filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission, but she misstated a few things. As part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act, publically traded companies are required disclose use of conflict minerals — specifically tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold — annually to the SEC. In 2014, Apple reported 88 percent of its smelters and refineries were verified as conflict-free or participating in third-party auditing programs. That same year, Intel said 100 percent of microprocessors and chipsets were conflict-free, but it couldn’t determine if the label applied to other products. Both companies improved their numbers in 2015, according to their latest SEC filings. About 78 percent of Intel’s smelters and refineries were deemed conflict-free. Apple stated 100 percent of its smelters and refiners are in audits but said it does not believe verification was sufficient to label its products ""conflict-free."" Here’s a chart showing how the two stack up next to other companies: Aspirations vs. reality But experts told us participating in audits or even being deemed in compliance doesn’t guarantee that the minerals are actually conflict-free for several reasons. ""Our position is companies should not be allowed to make those types of statements,"" said Seema Joshi, Amnesty International's Head of Business and Human Rights. Laura Seay, a Colby College professor who studies the African Great Lakes, said ensuring a 100 percent conflict-free global supply chain is near impossible. Carly Oboth, a policy adviser for the watchdog NGO, Global Witness, called the designation ""hypothetical and aspirational."" According to Oboth, smelters and refineries receive verification based on their capacity to do due diligence (i.e. chain of custody documentation and proof of insurance), not whether they’ve taken the steps to ensure their supplies were actually mined humanely. The auditing regiment is currenting being revised, Oboth said, ""but for the time being, there’s no oversight on whether they’re negating risks."" And while Global Witness commended Apple for its decision to reject the ""conflict-free,"" Oboth said it and Intel could be doing more. There are few means to verify in the conflict-ridden eastern part of the country where many mines are located. Beyond issues of accessibility, miners and the armed groups have found ways of circumventing the system. The majority of minerals are being smuggled into neighboring countries with higher profit margins and much less rigorous certification methods, if they exist at all, Seay told us. ITR, a tin auditing firm, prices a kilo of tin at $2 while the same amount would fetch $4 or $5 in Rwanda. ""If you can get your minerals, which may or may not be conflict-free, into Rwanda, you can get it labeled conflict-free,"" she said. ""Do you take the $2 or do you hire a boat and go to Rwanda? It’s a no brainer."" And even if the minerals stay in the country, Seay pointed out, the audit system has spurred a cottage industry for conflict-free labels: ""You can also buy the tag in the markets in Kigali. All the incentives are set up for people to lie."" Labels as lip service Then there’s the question of whether conflict-free labeling actually curbs violence and protects human rights. The evidence is mixed. Dodd-Frank didn’t work out as planned initially. The Congolese government enacted a temporary ban on mining and companies avoided sourcing from the region altogether. For one of the poorest countries in the world where mining employs one sixth of its population, Dodd-Frank ""set off a chain of events that has has propelled millions of miners and their families deeper into poverty."" Meanwhile, there were few signs that it had tempered violence or weakened the militias. But now that the ban has ended and companies are once again buying from the Democratic Republic of Congo, experts view Dodd-Frank a bit more positively. Seay, an initial critic, says it’s draw attention to the issue. ""It got the attention of the Congolese government in a way that nothing else could have,"" she said, adding, ""A lot of is lip service and a lot of is how much facade we should put up."" A 2015 report by the International Peace Information Search, a development research institute, found that armed groups have been cut off from many tin, tantalum, tungsten mines, but still profit from gold. Seay said they’ve savvied up (i.e. by removing guards with machine guns from the mines) while finding funding sources in border crossings, charcoal, ""conflict weed"", wildlife smuggling, etc. The narrow focus of Dodd-Frank also means that ""conflict-free"" isn’t the same thing as abuse-free. Amnesty has documented child labor in the DRC’s production of cobalt, which is not designated as a ""conflict mineral."" Global Witness found lapis lazuli funds the Taliban, but Dodd-Frank doesn’t apply because the mines are in Afghanistan. ""You can have a completely clean mine, as designated by Dodd-Frank, with child laborers and where woman are trading sex with the pit bosses in order to sell lunch around the periphery,"" Seay said. ""There’s no such thing as 100 percent conflict-free anything."" Our ruling Wright said Apple products are currently ""90 percent conflict-free,"" and ""Intel is 100 percent conflict-free."" The numbers are off. Intel says 100 percent of is processors are conflict-free, but couldn’t vouch for its other products. Apple reported that 100 percent of its supply chain was participating in audits, but rejected the label. While experts commend both companies for leading the sector in moving away from conflict minerals, they cautioned against labeling anything 100 percent ""conflict-free.""
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23713
|
"The Obama administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million to pay for health insurance plans that cover ""any legal abortion."
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Abortions in Pennsylvania paid for with federal dollars? Not so.
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false
|
Abortion, National, Health Care, States, National Right to Life Committee,
|
"Anti-abortion groups have long been warning that Democrats would sneak federal abortion funding through the back door into the health reform law passed earlier this year. Now they say in blogs and news reports around the Web that they're being proved right. A typical statement: ""The Obama Administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million in federal tax funds, which we've discovered will pay for insurance plans that cover any legal abortion,"" said Douglas Johnson of the National Right to Life Committee in a statement on the group's website. We fact-checked abortion many times during the health care debate. It's a complicated subject due to the many different parts of the health care law. So yes, this latest controversy takes some time to explain. As you may recall, the major provisions of the new health care plan -- health insurance for everyone and exchanges for buying health plans -- don't kick in for several years. To help people who are uninsured right now, the federal law is encouraging states to create temporary health plans for people who have trouble finding affordable insurance. The government is calling the plans Pre-existing Condition Insurance Plans, or PCIPs, though sometimes they're referred to as high risk insurance pools. The plans would typically be for people who can't get insurance through work but have pre-existing conditions that make it impossible to buy insurance on their own. Policy makers say they're particularly concerned with older people who aren't yet eligible for Medicare. Pennsylvania was among the first states to put together a plan, submitting it to the federal government on June 2. It was approved a few weeks later on June 28. Pennsylvania quickly issued guidelines asking insurance companies to submit bids to run the state plan. On July 12, the National Right to Life Committee sounded the alarm, saying those guidelines for insurance companies revealed the plan to fund abortion. The 60-page proposal from Pennsylvania outlines what looks like a pretty standard health care plan: It says the plan should include preventive care, physician services, diagnostic testing, hospitalization, mental health services, and prescription medications. It will charge people $283.20 a month for coverage and accept people without access to other coverage, regardless of pre-existing conditions. On abortion, the proposal says this: ""Includes only abortions and contraceptives that satisfy the requirements of 18 Pa.C.S. § 3204-3206 and 35 P.S. §§10101, 10103-10105. ... Elective abortions are not covered."" Those statute numbers refer to Pennsylvania's abortion laws, where abortion is, for the most part, legal. We looked up the code and it says that abortions may be performed if a doctor determines that ""in his best clinical judgment, the abortion is necessary."" The only mention the statute makes of forbidding an abortion is when it is ""sought solely because of the sex of the unborn child."" Those statute numbers mean that the proposal intended to include any legal abortion, said Johnson, the legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee. ""We know how this stuff works,"" Johnson told us. ""He'll say 'It's not elective, it's necessary.'"" After the anti-abortion groups made the charge, the Obama administration was quick to say that it had not yet put forward formal regulations for the state plans, and that it would include restrictions so that abortion would only be covered if it met the tests of a well-known restriction known as the Hyde amendment. The Hyde amendment, which traditionally applies to federal dollars used in the Medicaid health plan for the poor, forbids abortion except in the cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. Pennsylvania officials said their plan never intended to cover elective abortion -- hence the ""elective abortions are not covered"" language. The Pennsylvania Insurance Department released a sharp statement after getting questions from PolitiFact and other news outlets: ""This program will provide much-needed assistance for the sickest of the sick. The likelihood that any of those covered will seek abortion services is remote, but if they do need such services, they will have to pay for them out their own pocket. ... Pennsylvania's position is not a statement about the broader abortion debate. It simply recognizes that health care reform, particularly extending health coverage to those with preexisting conditions, is too important a priority to be hijacked by those who seek to turn common-sense health reforms into a rancorous debate about whether the federal ban on abortion funding is too broad or too narrow. These efforts failed to derail health reform this spring and they will fail to stop much-needed coverage for thousands of Pennsylvanians now."" The controversy over the Pre-existing Condition Health Insurance Plan has kicked off a larger debate about how abortion is handled for in lower-profile parts of the health care bill that did not get a full airing during the health care debate. President Obama signed an executive order on abortion, which he had promised to do soon after the law passed, to secure support from anti-abortion Democrats. The executive order says that it should be government-wide policy that federal funds ""are not used for abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered), consistent with a longstanding Federal statutory restriction that is commonly known as the Hyde Amendment."" The executive order then goes into specifics about health care exchanges and community health centers, which were the most talked about provisions before the bill was passed. The lesser known provisions of bill are all up for debate now. Johnson said the executive order is essentially meaningless, and is silent on a host of other provisions in the health bill. ""Each of these things will have its own timeline and its own administrative trajectory,"" Johnson said. ""We're going to have to watch each and every one of them."" We asked Johnson on July 15 if he thought, given the Obama administration's statement, that the Pennsylvania plan would cover any legal abortion. ""If the federal (Health and Human Services Department) does what they now say they're going to do, or at least what they said they would do late yesterday, then I think that Pennsylvania will conform to the directive."" But, he added, ""We will see this episode as part of a pattern where they try to get away with what they can on abortion, and then when a light shines on them they blow smoke and scurry for cover."" Meanwhile, those who favor abortion rights are unhappy that the administration is accepting restrictions on abortion. ""Based on the Obama administration's statement, we are deeply disappointed that the administration has voluntarily and unnecessarily decided to impose limits on private funds used to purchase health insurance coverage for abortion care in the new high-risk insurance pools,"" said Planned Parenthood Federation of America President Cecile Richards in a statement. ""This decision has no basis in the law and flies in the face of the intent of the high-risk pools that were meant to meet the medical needs of some of the most vulnerable women in this country."" Finally, we should also point out that the Department of Health and Human Services is indeed still developing regulations for many aspects of health care, and they're trying to do it with some haste. New Mexico, for example, submitted a plan for the Pre-existing Condition Health Insurance Plan that explicitly included abortion services, but then withdrew it quickly when it learned that the federal government would forbid the services, according to July 14 story from the Associated Press. Getting back to our rating: The National Right to Life Committee said the Obama administration will give Pennsylvania $160 million to pay for health insurance plans that cover ""any legal abortion."" If we had looked at this case before the Obama administration issued its statements, we might have been a little torn. While the Pennsylvania proposal referred to statutes about legal abortion, it also said that ""elective abortions are not covered,"" and that is potentially contradictory. But it's important to keep in mind that this plan is intended to cover older people who have health problems, not young, healthy women who might seek abortions, and that the regulations are being created quickly. In short, we don't see pre-meditated intent to cover elective abortion. And as soon as the issue of abortion was raised, the Obama administration stated that the plans would not be allowed to cover elective abortions and that forthcoming regulations would reflect that. Given those assurances."
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15634
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"Texas agriculture is ""at 98 percent efficiency"" in water use and ""just about maxed out as to what we can do on the conservation end of it."
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"Miller said Texas agriculture is ""at 98 percent efficiency"" in water use and ""just about maxed out as to what we can do on the conservation end of it."" Farmers are not just about maxed out, experts told us, though those who use drip irrigation may be close. Growers using sprinkler methods may get 88 percent to 95 percent efficiency. The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context."
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mixture
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Agriculture, Water, Texas, Sid Miller,
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"Sid Miller, the Texas agriculture commissioner, said at a March 2015 symposium that farmers in the state have little room to save more water. Miller, responding to Evan Smith of the Texas Tribune, prefaced his claim by saying Texas is out of ""surplus water."" He went on to say that as much as the state has urbanized, agricultural production has surged — and all that with farmers needing less water. ""So agriculture is at 98, according to the water development board, we’re at 98 percent efficiency,"" meaning 2 percent of water used to raise crops isn’t going to its intended purpose. ""So we’re just about maxed out as to what we can do on the conservation end of it,"" Miller said. Luke Metzger of Environment Texas heard Miller’s statement and asked us to check it out. He noted too that a skeptical crowd member at the event asked Miller to explain. In reply, Miller said a lot of irrigation occurs underground, most runoff water is recaptured and most traditional irrigation methods have ebbed. ""It’s pretty highly sophisticated,"" Miller said. Miller's basis To get our grip on his ""maxed out"" claim, we asked the Texas Department of Agriculture to elaborate. By email, agency spokesman Bryan Black provided a March 11, 2015, presentation by the Texas Water Development Board, whose mission centers on supporting the conservation and responsible development of water for Texas, stating Texas agricultural ""producers now achieve up to 98 percent irrigation efficiency."" Black later quoted a 2012 report from the Texas Water Resources Institute, based at Texas A&M University, stating: ""Irrigation efficiency has gone from 60 percent to 88–95 percent in much of the state today, allowing Texas to get much more value and agricultural output from its water."" Black said that according to the report’s lead author, the institute’s associate director, Kevin Wagner, ""the most up-to-date number on irrigation efficiency is now around 98 percent."" ‘Significant advances’ An institute press release on the report quoted Dana Porter, an AgriLife Extension agricultural engineering expert, saying that in Texas over the past few decades, ""significant advances have been made in irrigation efficiency, as many irrigators now use high-efficiency advanced irrigation technologies, such as low-pressure center pivot sprinkler systems or subsurface drip irrigation. ""However,"" Porter said, ""challenges remain and there are opportunities for continued improvements in water use efficiency through application of situation-appropriate efficient irrigation technologies and best management practices, including irrigation scheduling, and through use of drought-tolerant crop varieties and integrated crop and pest management practices."" According to the report, as of 2008, more than 6 million acres were irrigated in Texas--mostly in West and South Texas--accounting for more than 10 percent of the nation’s irrigated land. Total annual irrigation water use has remained steady, the report said, averaging approximately 9.5 million acre-feet, since the late 1970s. The report presented one path to a ""98 percent"" statement, saying: ""Historically, most agricultural irrigation was applied using flood and furrow irrigation; however, most of the state has undergone a mass conversion from these systems to more efficient irrigation systems"" topped by low-pressure sprinkler systems that apply water at or below a crop’s canopy, it said. Key section: ""As of 2008, center pivot sprinklers are used on nearly 80% of Texas’ irrigated acres, and 87% of those acres are using low-pressure center pivot sprinklers. Furrow and flood irrigation account for less than 20% of irrigated acres today. Further, the highly efficient subsurface drip irrigation, in which there is minimal evaporative loss, is increasingly being adopted and now comprises almost 3% of irrigated acres. ""Because of this adoption, irrigation efficiency has gone from 60% to 88–95% in much of the state today, allowing Texas to get much more value and agricultural output from its water."" An accompanying chart indicates sprinkler and drip irrigation was in place for more than 80 percent of the state’s farmland in 2008 with less conservative furrow and flood irrigation used in 19 percent. Best efficiency, subsurface drip irrigation Next, we reached out to the institute’s Wagner, who said by phone he would have added a phrase to what Miller said by specifying that farmers can achieve up to 98 percent efficiency ""if they use subsurface drip irrigation"" instead of less conservative methods--and drip irrigation was being used by only 3 percent of Texas farmers as of 2008, he added by email. Significantly, Wagner said, it’s harder to adapt subsurface irrigation in parts of the state where water isn’t always immediately available. That’s because drip systems count on a steady supply of water, he said. ""We can never get 100 percent of our acres to subsurface drip without significantly changing our water delivery system,"" Wagner said. Wagner told us 95 percent efficiency can be achieved by using the most efficient center pivot sprinklers ""but again, not all farms have implemented the most efficient systems on the market."" ""Because center pivots have been adopted in much of the state,"" Wagner wrote, ""most irrigation is in the range of 88-95% efficiency. However, we continue to work with producers to improve irrigation efficiency and timing."" Going forward, he said, ""improvements on the vast majority of irrigated acres are going to be much smaller as we now tweak technology and management. So in a sense, ‘the low hanging fruit’ has been picked."" Earlier, we connected with the water development board’s Robert Mace, who also stressed drip irrigation as key to achieving 98 percent efficiency. ""We don’t think farmers are maxed out,"" Mace said. ""Everybody can do a little better with some advice."" ""Individual ag producers are achieving upwards of 98 percent irrigation efficiency,"" Mace said. ""But there is still work to be done."" Our ruling Miller said Texas agriculture is ""at 98 percent efficiency"" in water use and ""just about maxed out as to what we can do on the conservation end of it."" Farmers are not just about maxed out, experts told us, though those who use drip irrigation may be close. Growers using sprinkler methods may get 88 percent to 95 percent efficiency. The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context."
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30104
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A photograph of a marine saluting a U.S. flag violates Twitter's rules and policies.
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Despite claims that an image of a marine saluting an American flag was deemed offensive by Twitter, we found no evidence that it violated the company's rules.
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false
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Politics, james woods, twitter, U.S. flag
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On 3 April 2003, Master Sgt. James E. Valrie saluted a United States flag flying over a desert airfield in southern Iraq at sunset. A photograph of the moment was captured by his wife, Marine Sgt. Tisha Carter-Valrie: I had two failed marriages before I met James. I thought I was destined to be single. We met through a mutual friend who knew I was getting stationed in San Diego and suggested I contact him. We became the best of friends, crying on each other’s shoulders over other relationships, and eventually became romantically involved. In January 2003, my parents made a trip to San Diego to see me one last time before I deployed to Iraq. They met James for the first time, and without any prior discussion, James looked at my father and told him he would like to marry me. I remember him saying, we don’t know what will happen once we get over there and he did not want to miss the opportunity to have me for his wife. I was totally on the spot, but I said yes. We were married Jan. 25, 2003. Two days later, he left for Kuwait and I deployed shortly thereafter. He always used to joke that he gave me six months of all the sun and sand a girl could want on a honeymoon. We were from different units, so we weren’t sent to the same places. After the war began, I was escorting media, and we flew into a desert airfield in southern Iraq. My husband’s unit was the base air traffic control unit. Coincidentally, it was my husband’s turn to take down the flag and perform the evening colors ceremony. I grabbed my camera and happened to catch the photo you see. That photograph was later released by the U.S. Marine Corps has been widely shared online (often without attribution) in the ensuing years. It has been posted on numerous blogs, web sites, and social media pages, made into tattoos and postcards, and has even been included in multiple Memorial Day messages posted by the rock band KISS. In July 2018, this patriotic and moving photograph became the subject of a small controversy when actor James Woods claimed that he had received a warning about “offensive” content from Twitter after he shared the image with his followers: We attempted to contact Woods about the warning he allegedly received but did not receive a response. It’s possible that he truly did receive such a warning (he didn’t state whether the image was accompanied by any text, which could have been the “offensive” portion of the tweet), but we’re skeptical that the image alone raised any red flags with Twitter, for a number of reasons. For starters, this isn’t the first time this photograph has been shared on the social network. In fact, Woods himself previously used this image in 2015 to call for a boycott of PacSun after the clothing retailer was criticized for selling a t-shirt featuring an upside-down American flag: That 2015 tweet has resided on Woods’ timeline for three years without issue. As of this writing, it is still available. We searched Twitter for other instances of people sharing this photograph over the years and came up with numerous examples, including at least one case in which a user adopted the image as their profile pic, and a tweet from Lara Trump in May 2018. If Twitter truly deemed the image “offensive,” these posts would have likely been taken down. However, we’ve yet to come across any credible instances of the social network removing this photograph for violating its rules. When we reached out to the company to find out why (or if) they had issued a warning to Woods after he allegedly posted the photograph, they told us that they couldn’t comment on the activity of an individual account. They did say, however, that Twitter would never “take action on accounts or content that are not in violation of our rules.” So is the photograph in violation of Twitter’s rules? The social network’s guidelines are extensive, but we couldn’t find any provisions under which images of national flags, soldiers, or patriotic activities would be deemed offensive. Twitter’s rules do cover topics such as copyright infringement, hateful conduct, spam, offensive content, and threats, but this photograph wouldn’t appear to fall under any of those categories: Hateful conduct policy Freedom of expression means little if voices are silenced because people are afraid to speak up. We do not tolerate behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another person’s voice. If you see something on Twitter that violates these rules, please report it to us. How our policy works As explained in the Twitter Rules, Examples of what we do not tolerate includes, but is not limited to behavior that harasses individuals or groups of people with: As it has been repeatedly shared on Twitter without issue for a number of years, it seems safe to say that this photograph of a marine saluting a flag does not violate the social network’s terms of service. Woods’ claim that his posting of the image triggered an offensive content warning is reminiscent of a ploy used by troll Facebook pages to stir up anger over non-existent issues. One popular image of a little boy saluting a flag is frequently shared, for instance, as if its “hateful” content were being removed from Facebook (despite the fact that the “banned” image is included in the very posts claiming it has been removed): We investigated this rumor back in 2015 and found that it, too, was false. It’s possible that Woods received a warning message about “offensive” content after posting an image of a marine saluting a flag, but if so, it’s likely that the warning had more to do with the accompanying text than the image itself. It’s also possible that the warning Woods allegedly received was due to a Twitter user, not the social network itself, flagging the content for being inappropriate for some unexplained reason. The original tweet Woods spoke of is not on his timeline (nor did we find any record of it in archives of Woods’ page, nor in any mentions from his followers, further adding to our skepticism about the claim), and the actor did not provide specifics about the content of the tweet (other than the inclusion of a photograph). Therefore, we’re unable to comment on which part of Woods’ message could have been deemed “offensive.” We can say, however, that the photograph of Master Sgt. James E. Valrie saluting the United States flag is not itself in violation of Twitter’s rules. One final note on this viral photograph: The image shared by Woods (and so many others on Twitter) shows the flag at half-mast, but this is actually a doctored version of the original. Marine Sgt. Carter-Valrie, who took the photograph, told the Los Angeles Times in 2013 that although the image of her late husband (Master Sgt. Valrie passed away in 2009 after a battle with kidney cancer) was a wonderful tribute, she was dismayed at how the image had been manipulated over the years to serve various political purposes: Unfortunately, with all the wonderful ways it has been used, the photograph has also been manipulated and in some cases used in ways I found disrespectful. On Memorial Day, the flag is sometimes moved to appear at half-staff. People have flipped the photograph, I’m sure to make the flag fly in the other direction, but by doing that, it makes my husband look like he is saluting with the wrong hand. In one case, the flag was turned upside down and used on an antiwar site. It makes me so angry when I run across it being used in a manner that does anything less than pay tribute to our country’s service members. This photograph has been a wonderful tribute — kind of me and my family’s own private little tribute, as very few people knew the story behind it, that it was taken of a Marine, by a Marine, and they were married. I am honored when anyone wants to use it. But this photograph has such deep meaning to me, my children and James’ family, that it is often difficult to swallow when we see it abused. Carter-Valrie provided a copy of the original photograph, as well as two subsequent snaps of her late husband as he lowered the flag in Iraq, to the Los Angeles Times:
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11205
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Study: Vegetables may keep brains young
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This story presented the results from a recent study which found a slower decline in mental sharpness in older people who ate 2.5 or more servings of vegetables per day than in people who ate 0 – 1.1 servings of vegetables per day. The story said the effect came with “more than two servings of vegetables per day” – which is too imprecise. In addition, the benefit to be obtained through increased vegetable consumption was characterized as people appearing five years younger at the end of the six-years or having 40 percent less mental decline. It would have been more helpful to frame for the reader the amount of mental decline typically seen in the age group studied, what the decline represents in terms of function, and the amount of potential for benefit to be gained through increased vegetable consumption. The five-year appearance change estimate comes directly from the discussion section of the research paper though the authors of that paper did not provide details on how they arrived at the estimate. It was useful that the story pointed out that the research found an association between vegetable intake but not for fruit intake. Although the standard wisdom is to eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, this story provides a distinction between these two for readers to consider. It would have been useful for the story to provide a little more clarity about the definition of ‘vegetable’ for the reader. This study was interesting in that, unlike the USDA, it did not include potatoes in its vegetable count. In addition, it should be pointed out that whereas the FDA's Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends the equivalent of four to 13 servings a day of vegetables and fruit in a typical 2,000 calorie diet, the benefit in this study was seen at a much lower level – 2.5 servings/day of vegetable consumption.
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true
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"There was no discussion of costs of vegetable consumption. Although this could be considered general knowledge, mention of typical costs for vegetables would have been a nice addition. The research on which this story was based compared increasing amounts of vegetable (or fruit and vegetable, or fruit) intake with intake of 0 – 1.1 servings per day. The study actually only found a statistically significant improvement in the rate of decline for individuals eating 2.5 or more servings of vegetables per day. The story said the effect came with “more than two servings of vegetables per day"" – which is too imprecise. In addition, the benefit to be obtained through increased vegetable consumption was characterized as people appearing 5 years younger at the end of the six-years or having 40 percent less mental decline It would have been helpful to provide some idea of the difference this actually represents. The five-year appearance change estimate comes directly from the discussion section of the research paper though the authors of that paper did not provide details on how they arrived at the estimate. This story was not actually about a treatment per se but rather about the possible association between an eating pattern and age-related decline in function. This story reported on a prospective study of cognitive decline in older individuals. Although it did not explicitly mention the nature of the study design, the story included the caveat that the findings don’t prove that vegetables reduce mental decline, but add to mounting evidence pointing in that direction. The story would have been stronger if it had included information on the methodology for assessing dietary intake. No obvious elements of disease-mongering The story used several different sources. This story did not discuss other means to delay or diminish the rate of cognitive decline with age. This story reported on a study of vegetable and fruit consumption in older adults in the Chicago area – vegetables and fruits that are clearly widely available. The story begins, ""New research on vegetables and aging gives mothers another reason to say 'I told you so.' "" Clearly, this is not a new idea, but the story is about new evidence. Because the story used multiple sources, it does not appear to have relied solely or largely on a news release."
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210
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Letterbox campaign helps Afghans cope with silent war of mental health.
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Hundreds of Afghans, weary of war and unsure of the future, have joined a letter-writing campaign to share their feelings with the powerful few who will decide on peace with the Taliban and, with it, the fate of their country.
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true
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Health News
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The letters from different parts of Afghanistan express a tangled mix of confusion, resignation and fear. “I live in grief but I smile. People think I am brave but I have no choice,” wrote one unidentified person. The letters, part of a project called Dard-e-Dil (a painful heart) are addressed to U.S. diplomats, the Taliban and government officials. They are being written as high-level talks are underway to find a political settlement to end a war that has raged on for 18 years. “I am writing with a hope that we have a better life in Kabul, we live amidst so much tension, I can do nothing to change the situation but I am still writing,” wrote another person from the Afghan capital. The Dard-e-Dil project aims to give ordinary people an outlet to express their feelings at a time when the peace talks among top officials dominate politics, even though the fighting has not subsided. “The prevailing political uncertainty is clearly the most nerve-racking phase for Afghans, most of us are already battling depression and mental health issues,” said artist Omaid Sharifi, who organized the project. Sharifi’s interest in expressing the feelings aroused by the conflict goes back to his work with ArtLords, an art collective he co-founded that has become famous for the dramatic murals it has painted on grim concrete blast walls around Kabul. His team has installed special letter boxes outside cafes, educational centers, hospitals and government offices, encouraging people to try to deal with their anxieties and voice their opinions about the peace talks in letters. The letters are sorted at the ArtLords studio with the aim of sending them on to government authorities, diplomats and the leaders of the insurgency. More important, though, is the need to help people tell their stories, a basic requirement for mental health, said Sharifi, who struggled with anxiety for years. “Everyone has a right to narrate their story. Some of these stories will highlight and reveal human rights abuses and some will offer hope and solidarity,” he said. Afghanistan has been devastated by decades of war, stretching back to the conflict with the former Soviet Union from late 1979. Violence, instability and poverty have touched virtually every family and many Afghans suffer from mental health problems. However, facilities for treating such illnesses are scarce. Wahid Mayar, a spokesman for the public health ministry, estimated that about half of the population will experience mental stress during their lifetime, a consequence of war often overshadowed by daily struggles. “The suffering of mental illness in Afghanistan is a silent war. If peace comes then we will have to accept the new normal, but currently we are in a phase of tremendous uncertainty,” Mayar said. “The prospect of peace brings hope and anxiety. We wonder can peace ever come to embrace us, to calm our minds,” he said. Accurate data on mental health is not available in Afghanistan but the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates more than a million Afghans suffer from depressive disorders and more than 1.2 million from anxiety disorders. The WHO says the actual numbers are likely much higher. Nobody expects the letter-writing campaign to heal the wounds of more than four decades of conflict but it may allow at least some people to start working through their fears and prepare for an uncertain future. “There are times when I want to run away from my country and then I think I should wait for peace and plan my life here,” wrote one person. “Kabul is always the best place to be.”
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31627
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Under the LARK program, Gitmo detainees are being housed with liberals who disagree with the U.S. government's treatment of those prisoners.
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The later cropping of the original closing paragraphs removed a key element from the piece, that of its writer’s indignation over the Gitmo’s decriers’ insistence that a team of observers not allied with or controlled by the U.S. military be tasked with supervising the conditions under which prisoners are housed at that facility.
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false
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Politics War/Anti-War, guantanamo bay, terrorism
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We first encountered this bit of Internet lore (collected in the Example link above) about the government’s offering to send Guantanamo detainees to live with “liberals” who complained about their treatment back in May 2002. It has since circulated in multiple versions, the most recent being cast as a letter sent by James “Mad Dog” Mattis, the recently installed Defense Secretary for the Trump administration: A liberal female from San Francisco wrote a lot of letters to the U.S. government, complaining about the treatment of captive insurgents (terrorists) being held in GITMO. She demanded a response to her letter. She received back the following reply: SECRETARY OF DEFENSE HONORABLE JAMES “MAD DOG” MATTIS PENTAGON WASHINGTON, DC Dear Concerned Citizen, Thank you for your recent letter expressing your profound concern of treatment of the Taliban and Al Qaeda terrorists captured by American Forces, who were subsequently transferred to the GITMO. Our administration takes these matters seriously and your opinions were heard loud and clear here at the Pentagon .. You will be pleased to learn, thanks to the concerns of citizens like yourself, we are creating a new department here at the Defense Department to be called ‘Liberals Accept Responsibility for Killers’ program, or L.A.R.K. for short. In accordance with the guidelines of this new program, we have decided, on a trial basis, to divert several terrorists and place them in homes of concerned citizens such as yourself, around the country, under those citizens personal care. Your personal detainee has been selected and is scheduled for transportation under heavily armed guard to your residence in San Francisco next Monday. Ali Mohammed Ahmed bin Mahmud is your detainee, and is to be cared for pursuant to the standards you personally demanded in your letter of complaint. You will be pleased to know that we will conduct weekly inspections to ensure that your standards of care for Ahmed are commensurate with your recommendations. Although Ahmed is a sociopath and extremely violent, we hope that your sensitivity to what you described as his ‘attitudinal problem’ will help him overcome those character flaws. Perhaps you are correct in describing these problems as mere cultural differences. We understand that you plan to offer counselling and home schooling, however, we strongly recommend that you hire some assistant caretakers. Please advise any Jewish friends, neighbors or relatives about your house guest, as he might get agitated or even violent, but we are sure you can reason with him. He is also expert at making a wide variety of explosive devices from common household products, so you may wish to keep those items locked up, unless in your opinion, this might offend him. Your adopted terrorist is extremely proficient in hand-to-hand combat and can extinguish human life with such simple items as a pencil or nail clippers. We advise that you do not ask him to demonstrate these skills either in your home or wherever you choose to take him while helping him adjust to life in our country. Ahmed will not wish to interact with you or your daughters except sexually, since he views females as a form of property, thereby having no rights, including refusal of his sexual demands. This is a particularly sensitive subject for him. You also should know that he has shown violent tendencies around women who fail to comply with the dress code that he will recommend as more appropriate attire. I’m sure you will come to enjoy the anonymity offered by the burka over time. Just remember that it is all part of respecting his culture and religious beliefs’ as described in your letter. You take good care of Ahmed and remember that we will try to have a counselor available to help you over any difficulties you encounter while Ahmed is adjusting to American culture. Thanks again for your concern. We truly appreciate it when folks like you keep us informed of the proper way to do our job and care for our fellow man. Good luck and God bless you. Cordially, “Mad Dog” Mattis Secretary of Defense Rest assured this was never a letter sent out by anyone representing the White House; it is instead one anonymous author’s idea of what the administration should be replying to those who criticize the conditions under which Taliban and other terrorist detainees were housed at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The Guantanamo Bay facility (abbreviated as GTMO, hence its “Gitmo” nickname) has been decried as inhumane by a number of human rights associations and has been denounced at various times in the American press. As we detailed in our article about a Charlie Daniels essay on the situation at Gitmo, the detainees were initially incarcerated at Camp X-Ray, a temporary holding facility near Guantanamo Bay. Inmates were kept in tin-roofed 8×8 cells that resembled dog runs: chain link fencing on a concrete base, open on the sides to the elements. They slept on foam pads placed on concrete floors in cells containing chemical toilets or buckets. At least every two days prisoners would be taken from their cells for all of 15 minutes of exercise. Those being held were later moved to nearby Camp Delta, a permanent detention center erected for this purpose. The 8×6.66 cells had beds and walls and windows, flush toilets and running water, but could still be described as austere. Some were outraged by the apparent human rights violations found at Gitmo. Others viewed the method of foreign fighters’ detainment at that facility as a necessary evil if those being held were to be prevented from inflicting harm on others. Members of yet another faction regarded the matter as one of severe punishment justly earned by foreign fighters not entitled to the protections afforded under the Geneva code to conventional, uniformed prisoners of war. That divergence of opinion led to members of the first and third groups (and sometimes the second) regarding one another as fool-headed in their assessments and hopelessly out of touch with the core issues at stake. The Internet piece about the fictional LARK program was penned from such a soapbox, its author expressing through the vehicle of humor the opinion that those decrying the condition of the prisoners would quickly change their tune if they were the ones responsible for incarcerating Taliban and al Qaeda detainees. That line of thought was not original to the unknown author of the Internet piece, as evidenced by a Jim Huber “Politically Correct” cartoon published in January 2002. This item (which regardless of one’s viewpoint is nonetheless a well-crafted use of satire — it is a playfully entertaining read that makes its point in none-too-subtle fashion) has gone through a few revisions as it has been spread its 2002 debut, most notably the change of the signature line from “Cordially, George W. Bush” to “Cordially … Your Buddy, Don Rumsfeld.” This shift reflected a then-current societal perception of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as the one responsible for tough treatment of captured foreign fighters, a view that was somewhat subscribed to in 2002 but which gained far wider acceptance in 2004 thanks to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq. Other textual alterations included the elision of this segment of the 2002 version: Ahmed’s meal requirements are simple, but we strongly suggest serving meals that do not require utensils, particularly knives and forks. Also, these should be “one-handed” foods; Ahmed will not eat with his left hand since he uses it to wipe himself after purging his bowels (which he will do in your yard) — but look on the bright side.. no increase in the toilet paper bill. He generally bathes quarterly with the change of seasons, assuming that it rains, and he washes his clothes simultaneously. This should help with your water bill. Also, your new friend has a really bad case of body lice that hasn’t been completely remedied. Please heed the large orange notice attached to your detainee’s cage: “Does not play well with others.” The section on how the fictional prisoner will get along with women in the LARK recipient’s household was changed in later versions: Ahmed will not wish to interact with your wife or daughters (except sexually) since he views females as a subhuman form of property. This is a particularly sensitive subject for him, and he has been known to show violent tendencies around women who fail to comply with the new dress code that Ahmed will recommend as more appropriate attire. I’m sure they will come to enjoy the anonymity offered by the bhurka — over time. Just remind them that it is all part of “respecting his culture and his religious beliefs” — wasn’t that how you put it? Ahmed will not wish to interact with your wife or daughters (except sexually) since he views females as a subhuman form of property. However, he will be eager to assist with the education of your sons; have available for their use several copies of the Q’uran. Oh — and rest assured he absolutely loves animals, especially cats and dogs. He prefers them roasted, but raw is fine, too, if they aren’t more than 2 or 3 days dead. The closing was also altered: Thanks again for your letter. We truly appreciate it when folks like you, who know so much, keep us informed of the proper way to do our job. You take good care of Ahmed – and remember…we’ll be watching. Good luck! Thanks again for your letter. We truly appreciate it when folks like you, who know so much, keep us informed of the proper way to do our job. We think this watching over each other’s shoulder is such a good way for people to interact that we will be sending a team of federal officials with expertise in your line of work to your place of business soon, just to help you do your job better. Don’t be concerned that they have the power to close your business, seize your property, and arrest you for any violation of the 4,850,206 laws, codes, regulations and rules that apply to your profession. They’re really there just to make sure you’re doing everything the proper way. That is what you wanted, right? Well, thank you for this opportunity to interact with such a valued member of the citizenry. You take good care of Ahmed — and remember…we’ll be watching.
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29238
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Parents in California are not allowed to pull their children out of sexual education classes.
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What's true: Parents in California may not remove their children from instruction related to sexual orientation and gender identity due to non-discrimination laws. What's false: Parents in California may remove their children from the entire sex education curriculum as a whole, and they can specifically withdraw their children from instruction related to prevention of sexually transmitted diseases.
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false
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Politics, california, lifesitenews, sex education
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In 2015, the California legislature signed off on the Healthy Youth Act, a new sexual education curriculum for children in kindergarten and first through twelfth grade. In April 2018, web sites reported on the parental consent provisions in the law. For example, in an article with the headline “California School District Says Parents Can’t Pull Kids From New LGBT Sex Ed,” LifeSite News wrote: California is about to implement new abortion- and homosexualty-promoting [sic] sex education lessons, and one school district has told parents they have no choice but to expose their children to them… …The California Healthy Youth Act expressly protects parents’ rights to “excuse their children from participation” in sex education courses without penalty of any kind, because “parents and guardians have the ultimate responsibility for imparting values regarding human sexuality to their children.” The Orange County school district apparently interprets this differently. In a memo dated March 29 to the Orange County Board of Education, Orange County Department of Education general counsel Ronald Wenkart says that the law’s opt-out provision “does not apply to instruction, materials, or programming that discusses gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, discrimination, harassment, bullying, intimidation, relationships, or family and does not discuss human reproductive organs.” The first thing to note here is that California is not “about to” implement the Healthy Youth Act. The new sexual education curriculum has been in place since 1 January 2016. Secondly, as the article suggests (but does not make clear), parents do have the right to specifically opt out of some parts of the curriculum for their children, but not others. They can also opt out of all sexual education, as an entire curriculum. The text of the law, which was passed in 2015 as Assembly Bill (A.B.) 329, has been a source of misunderstandings both sincere and insincere and varying interpretations. It states the primary goals of the curriculum. The first two are: In brief, the law specifies that parents or guardians can withdraw their children from sex education under the Healthy Youth Act: A parent or guardian of a pupil has the right to excuse their child from all or part of comprehensive sexual health education, HIV prevention education, and assessments related to that education through a passive consent (“opt-out”) process. But another section of the law stipulates that the Healthy Youth Act doesn’t relate to classroom materials or instruction about relationships, sexual orientation, or gender identity: This chapter does not apply to instruction, materials, presentations, or programming that discuss gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, discrimination, harassment, bullying, intimidation, relationships, or family and do not discuss human reproductive organs and their functions. This is what has given rise to confusion over the level of control a parent in California has over the sex education their child will or will not receive under the new law. In an e-mail, a spokesperson for the California Department of Education confirmed that the Healthy Youth Act has the following effect on parental consent: If they allowed a parent to specifically target instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, a school or school district could fall foul of non-discrimination laws. The department of education spokesperson told us “it would violate EC 220”, a part of California’s Education Code, which states: No person shall be subjected to discrimination on the basis of disability, gender, gender identity, gender expression, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or any other characteristic…including immigration status, in any program or activity conducted by an educational institution that receives, or benefits from, state financial assistance, or enrolls pupils who receive state student financial aid. So it is wrong to claim that parents in California will be forced to allow their children to receive sex education: they can withdraw consent for the whole curriculum, or for instruction on HIV and STI prevention. What they cannot do is specifically withdraw their consent for classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity.
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4605
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TSA allows flyers to travel with drug derived from marijuana.
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The Transportation Security Administration has changed its cannabis policy to allow passengers to travel with some forms of CBD oil and a drug derived from marijuana that has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
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true
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Health, North America, Politics, Travel, Marijuana
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All forms of marijuana were previously prohibited in carry-on bags and checked luggage. On Sunday, TSA updated its “What Can I bring?” guidance under medical marijuana. The FDA in June legalized a drug called Epidiolex, which is used to treat epilepsy in children. The TSA said in a statement that it was recently made aware of the drug and updated the regulations to avoid confusion on whether families can bring it when traveling. The new policy also includes some CBD oil, “as long as it is produced within the regulations defined by the law” under the 2018 Farm Bill, which legalized hemp and hemp derivatives. Hemp-derived CBD is low in or has no THC, the chemical that produces a high found in marijuana. The TSA’s new rules still ban other forms of marijuana, including CBD oils that have THC, and cannabis-infused products that are still illegal under federal law. It’s not clear how agents will determine the difference. But while agents screen for potential threats to planes and passengers, they do not search for marijuana or other illegal drugs. If they come across anything suspect, they refer it to law enforcement. The change in TSA’s cannabis policy was first reported by Marijuana Moment.
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9381
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New Studies Show Immune Treatments Could Be Key in the Fight Against Lung Cancer
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This story is one of two we reviewed about studies of drugs that activate the immune system to fight lung cancer. The studies involving Keytruda, Yervoy and Opdivo — known as checkpoint inhibitors — were presented at the American Association for Cancer Research meeting. We also reviewed the Washington Post’s coverage. While this story didn’t rely on a news release, it fell short almost everywhere else. Most significantly, it didn’t help readers understand that one of the studies is expected to result in immediate changes to how one common type of lung cancer is treated. It also didn’t give data that would illustrate the scope of the benefits of these drug, study limitations, side effects or costs. More people die from lung cancer than any other cancer, according to the CDC. Treatment advances are big news that will affect hundreds of thousands of people and their families. But giving immunotherapy drugs such as Keytruda to the hundreds of thousand of U.S. patients who might benefit will cost billions of dollars a year. It’s critical for news stories to give a clear picture of the proven benefits, limitations of the evidence, potential side effects, and costs.
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false
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immunotherapy,lung cancer
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The $150,000-plus annual cost of these drugs isn’t mentioned. The story doesn’t give absolute data for two of the three studies it mentions. It says the two-drug combination of Opdivo and Yervoy found that after nearly a year, the lung cancer in people taking the immotherapy was “42% less likely to have progressed than among people getting chemotherapy,” and patients taking Keytruda with chemotherapy were “51% less likely to die after 10.5 months” than people getting just chemotherapy. Absolute numbers would have given a clearer picture of what portions of patients saw a benefit. For example, in the Keytruda study, 69% of patients originally assigned to Keytruda were alive at the end of the study period versus 49% of those who received chemotherapy alone. For the third study, the story says taking Opdivo before surgery “shrunk those tumors drastically and lowered the chances for relapse” and “in about half of the people treated … the growths showed significant destruction by immune cells in the blood and certain targets on the tumor cells.” Here the coverage could have been improved with a quantitative description of what’s meant by terms such as “significant destruction.” Also, this third study was very small and experimental, which we’ll discuss under evidence quality below. No side effects are mentioned, and this is a major oversight of the story. For example, it could have mentioned that in the Keytruda study of patients with a common type of advanced disease, called non-squamous non-small-cell lung cancer, those in the immunotherapy group experienced more of certain adverse events, such as kidney problems, and were more likely to drop out of treatment due to side effects that those receiving chemotherapy alone. Not to mention that in general, immunotherapy can lead to many inflammatory conditions that can occur throughout the body as a result of treatment, such as colitis. The story starts out strong on this point, by discussing the study design and number of patients in the first trial it discusses, known as CheckMate-227; however, it never provided limitations to the data. But less information is given about the second study–how many people? Was it randomized and controlled? What were the limitations? But, the biggest issue is with the third study, in which a handful of patients received an immunotherapy before lung cancer tumor removal. It is a pilot study, so the story should have better conveyed the results as preliminary for patients. It did refer to it as a “small” study, but didn’t explain why that matters. The story does not engage in disease-mongering, but it also doesn’t say how many people get lung cancer and might benefit from these drugs. The story would have benefited from at least one independent expert. All of the experts quoted were authors in the studies being reported. Also, all of the sourced reported conflicts of interest from either funding from a drugmaker or a pending patent that weren’t mentioned in the story. The story mentions chemotherapy, which it says “therapy typically leads to only a 5% improvement in people’s chances of living five years — but an up to 70% chance of being exposed to serious toxicities.” (But, note that the story never provided information on immunotherapy’s serious toxicities.) The story says Keytruda is “already approved for treating about 25% to 30% of people with advanced (non-small cell lung cancer) who have a certain genetic profile that makes their cancer vulnerable to the drug.” More generally it says that “a series of checkpoint inhibitor drugs was first approved in 2011 initially for treating melanoma.” The story could have clarified whether additional FDA approvals are needed to expand uses of these drugs. The story states that these studies amount to “some of the most encouraging results yet for treating lung cancer with the latest immune-based treatments, most of which have been approved to treat other types of tumors.” It also states that researchers have “found innovative ways to weaken lung tumors to improve people’s chances of surviving the disease.” While there is some truth to these statements, the story is misleading because it puts all of the trials on equal footing. In fact, only one is expected to have an immediate impact on patients by changing the way certain types of lung cancer are treated. That wasn’t clear. The story doesn’t appear to rely on a news release.
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27098
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Video footage shows children at a Muslim school in Philadlephia singing a song whose lyrics contained violent imagery.
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Several other national anthems contain violent imagery, either about patriotic self-sacrifice or the infliction of suffering upon enemies, as the Washington Post charted in 2016. The Italian national anthem, “Il Canto degli Italiani” (“the Song of Italians”) contains lines in which the symbolic eagle of the Austrian Empire has its heart burned by drinking the blood of Italy.
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true
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Politics
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In the spring of 2019, video footage recorded at the Muslim American Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania engendered a degree of concern, particularly among right-leaning observers who claimed it showed young children singing songs whose lyrics contained violent imagery. The Daily Caller reported that the videos showed “Philly Muslim children chanting about chopping off heads,” the “Behind the News” web site claimed the footage showed the children ‘calling for Jewish genocide,” Glenn Beck’s “The Blaze” web site reported that the children sang about “beheading Jews,” and Fox News wrote: “Disturbing footage of Muslim kids saying they would sacrifice themselves and kill for the ‘army of Allah’ surfaced from an Islamic center in Philadelphia…In the video, translated by MEMRI [the Middle East Media Research Institute], kids can be heard singing: ‘The land of the Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey is calling us. Our Palestine must return to us.’ “One girl talks about martyrs sacrificing their lives without hesitation to conquer Jerusalem. ‘We will defend the land of divine guidance with our bodies, and we will sacrifice our souls without hesitation,’ a second girl says. ‘We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque. We will lead the army of Allah fulfilling His promise, and we will subject them to eternal torture. '” On 3 May, MEMRI posted portions of the edited video footage along with English subtitles. According to MEMRI, the footage was first published on the Facebook page of the Muslim American Society (MAS) in Philadelphia on 22 April, but that Facebook page was no longer available on 7 May, so we were unable to access the original video footage. However, in a press release on 3 May, MAS said the performance was the result of an oversight, and that it “rejects a statement” made in the video, though the press release did not specify which one: “The Muslim American Society rejects a statement made at an event held in April at a local community center in Philadelphia. The center celebrated ‘Ummah Day’ where children sang songs from their cultural traditions. While we celebrate the coming together of different cultures and languages, not all songs were properly vetted. This was an unintended mistake and an oversight in which the center and the students are remorseful. MAS will conduct an internal investigation to ensure this does not occur again.” The following day, MAS updated its statement to clarify that while the video was recorded at the organization’s building in Philadelphia, the Islamic school responsible for the performance was a separate entity renting the space: The Muslim American Society was alerted yesterday to a disturbing video that came out of Philadelphia. MAS immediately issued a preliminary statement on our website, condemning the words used in the video as we swiftly investigated the matter. MAS’ deep commitment to values of peace, justice, freedom and sanctity of life are clear. As a faith-based organization committed to building a just and virtuous society, we stand strong in our condemnation of hate and violence anywhere, even in the lyrics of a song. Our investigation revealed that the school that organized the event on April 17, 2019 is a separate entity renting space from MAS Philadelphia. The school board has informed us that it has taken immediate actions and dismissed the person in charge of the program. In addition, they will form a local commission to aid in sensitivity training and proper supervision for future programs. Unfortunately, the video from the school was uploaded to the chapter’s Facebook page without verifying the content of the video for appropriateness and making sure it conforms to our hate-free policy and values. The chapter will take further steps in assuring strict adherence to publishing and posting policies. MAS is committed to condemning hate speech everywhere. We reaffirm our commitment to MAS’ core values of justice, peace and protecting the sanctity of human life. We asked MAS several questions about the performance, including whether it regarded the English translation published by MEMRI as fair and accurate, but we did not receive a response to our questions in time for publication. The controversial video footage shows children singing a song and reading something akin to a speech. Snopes engaged a professional Arabic-to-English translator, whose own independent translation vindicated the subtitles published by MEMRI, which were as follows: [Song] Those who accept humiliation – what is the point in their existence? Those who reject oppression are the ones who assert their existence, and they eliminate the injustice from the land of the Arabs. Rebels! Rebels! Rebels! Glorious steeds call us and lead us onto paths leading to the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The blood of martyrs protects us. Paradise needs real men! The land of the Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey is calling us. Our Palestine must return to us. Oh Saladdin, your men are among us – shame will be washed away! [You need] force and the Quran, oh free people! We must persevere no matter what happens, and with the help of the Omnipotent Lord, day will follow night. Take us, oh ships, until we liberate our lands – until we reach our shores and crush the treacherous ones! Blow, oh winds of Paradise – flow, oh rivers of martyrs! My Islam is calling, who is going to heeds its call? Rise, oh righteous ones! [Speech] Our martyrs sacrificed their lives without hesitation. They attained paradise, and the scent of musk emanates from their bodies. They compete with one another to reach paradise. Will Jerusalem be their capital city? Or will it be a hotbed for cowards? We will defend the land of divine guidance with our bodies, and we will sacrifice our souls without hesitation. We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque. And we will lead the army of Allah fulfilling His promise, and we will subject them to eternal torture. Omar Suleiman, professor of Islamic Studies at Southern Methodist University, told Snopes that there was no justification for the lyrics of the song, or the content of the speech recited by the children in the footage published by MEMRI, and described the violent imagery as “horrible.” He explained that the song, entitled “Thuwar” (“Rebels”), has its origins in the Palestinian resistance movement and the First Intifada of the late 1980s. Suleiman emphasized that the performance should not be used to “delegitimize [the Muslim American Society] and the work they have done.” He added: “I can say confidently that those song lyrics and the speech, in particular, don’t represent the views of the broader Muslim community.” Ahmet Selim Tekelioglu, outreach and education director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Philadelphia, told Snopes that the violent imagery in the lyrics of the song was “not appropriate in an American setting or any setting” and had the potential to “create cross-community discord.” In the first week of May 2019, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that several local mosques had received threatening phone calls in response to the nationwide coverage of the controversial video footage, and Muslim community leaders had been advised to increase security measures at places of worship. Popular songs with violent lyrics can be found in many different cultures, especially among countries and peoples with a history of armed revolution, uprising and warfare. For example, the French national anthem “La Marseillaise” contains the following lyrics: Entendez-vous dans les campagnes Mugir ces féroces soldats ? Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes ! Aux armes, citoyens, Formez vos bataillons, Marchons, marchons ! Qu’un sang impur Abreuve nos sillons ! These lyrics translate into English as: Do you hear in the countryside The roaring of those fierce soldiers? They’re coming into your arms To cut the throats of your sons and women. To arms, citizens, Form your battalions, Let’s march, let’s march Let an impure blood water our furrows.
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34570
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"Individuals fleeing danger can request to be ""unlisted"" in a hotel so no one can find them."
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"What's true: Some hotels have procedures in place allowing guests to register under the radar and avoid being found. What's false: ""Unlisted"" is not a code word used in hotels to render guests ""untouchable""; there is no indication any such privacy policies are universal."
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unproven
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Travel, hotel legends, hotels, Tourist Trap
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In October 2015, a post began circulating on Tumblr holding that individuals running or hiding from an abuser could further protect themselves by asking hotel desk staff to register them as “unlisted,” a codeword rendering them “untouchable” and impossible to find: I have someone staying in my hotel tonight that made me think that this would be worth sharing here. If you are running away/trying to hide from someone that is frightening, abusing, harassing you, and you find yourself staying in a hotel to avoid being found, there’s an extra precaution you can take. When you check in, ask the front desk clerk to put you as “Unlisted”. They’ll know what you’re talking about. What this means is that as far as anyone other than you and the front desk clerks are concerned, you’re not there. If someone tries to call for you and your room, “I’m sorry. I don’t have anyone registered under that name.” Same thing goes for it someone shows up at the desk. “Unlisted” means you’re untouchable. Please, please, if you find yourself in trouble and seeking refuge in a hotel, do this. It’s really quick, easy, and painless for the front desk clerk to do, and they are not going to judge you for it. The advice spread like wildfire on the microblogging site. If the directives in the post were accurate, people fleeing dangerous situations could invoke a simple code word to ensure any hotel or motel would serve as something of a safehouse. A second version of the post circulated with much of the initial content crossed out. The individual reblogging the post stated that it was possible to register privately at a hotel but that “unlisted” was not a codeword for being in hiding. The second iteration included comments from two self-identified hotel employees. The first advised taking stronger steps in the scenario described in the rumor, adding that reiteration might be necessary after shifts change: Please use actual words, not just code words. I work in a hotel and have NEVER heard of “Unlisted”. If someone were to come up to me and say that I would just look at you, confused, and ask for clarification. Just flat out tell the front desk that you’re avoiding an abuser, if you say that you’re just avoiding something or someone, we may hesitate to comply, because you may be hiding from the police or law-enforcement. Please tell the front desk what you actually want us to do. Most places sign privacy/non-disclosure type agreements and if you say: “Hey, I’m hiding from a very bad situation and there might be some abusive people following me. Can you please either put me under a different name or make sure that no one contacts me?” we’ll do it and wont speak another word. Most places would even help you look up resources and try to get you transportation. You can make it so most phones will be no contact, put up the do-not-disturb sign, and when shift change happens, if you’re still awake, tell the next person, because sometimes shift change is chaotic and important stuff can fall through the cracks. If you’re staying for multiple days, ask to speak with the general manager about your situation and they’ll make sure everything is enforced. The first commenter raised issues of which those fleeing abuse ought to be mindful — hotel staff are often on the lookout for individuals illegitimately hiding in their properties. Even if a guest took pains to convey their status to the front desk, the clerk would have no way of discerning whether such a request was legitimate (and little recourse if a pursuing abuser was aided by law enforcement in their search). The second commenter noted that ambiguity made it more likely hotel staff would be suspicious of the guest, and not others attempting to contact them: I worked at a hotel for almost 3 years, and I can confirm with the second post. You can additionally tell us at the front desk that no one is allowed to phone you, but you can phone out of your room. Please do not be vague about it, we’ll likely think you’re up to something illegal. Just be upfront about it. No one’s allowed to see the guest list (or your name on the computer) besides the people working behind the counter, it’s a part of the confidentiality agreement. We contacted two major hotels, both of which said some provisions exist to protect the privacy of guests upon request, but neither recognized the “unlisted” codeword. Neither suggested their procedure or policy was as simple as stating you wished to register as “unlisted,” however, making it likely that people in hiding would have to explain why to hotel staff. Moreover, making such a request didn’t appear to constitute any guarantee a guest would be “untouchable” for the duration of their stay, nor was any universal procedure in place to ensure such directives would be adhered to without falter. We also contacted travel expert and consumer advocate Christopher Elliott, who told us he was unfamiliar with the rumor and had never heard of “unlisted” status as a hotel guest. Elliott noted celebrities had a tendency to use aliases and cash payment to avoid paparazzi, but he hadn’t encountered the “unlisted” rumor anywhere, despite possessing in-depth knowledge of the travel and hospitality industries. We were ultimately unable to confirm the “unlisted” claim with any hotel or travel expert. It appears that many hotel chains are willing and able to grant guests various levels of privacy if requested, but need explanations, not code words. Like the QuikTrip Safe Place rumor, this piece of internet lore appeared to originate with a desire to provide useful information to individuals in immediate danger. However, the rumors were also similar in that they vastly overstated the sheltering abilities of hotels or convenience stores in instances where a person is at direct risk of being attacked. It is not a bad idea to inform front desk staff if you have reason to believe you are in danger or wish to be unreachable for the duration of your stay, but we found no guarantee that hotels universally maintain such a policy or that it could be relied on as a safety plan for people fleeing or avoiding a dangerous situation.
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8103
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Panama imposes full-day curfew, Guatemala extends state of emergency.
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Panama’s government said on Tuesday it would widen a curfew to slow the spread of the coronavirus and require people to be in quarantine at all hours beginning on Wednesday, as the number of cases again jumped and two more people died.
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true
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Health News
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Panama’s health minister said the Central American country registered 443 cases of the virus, up from 345 the day before, and there were a total of eight deaths. President Laurentino Cortizo did not specify how long the curfew would be in place, but added there would be “logical exceptions,” including for health workers and certain businesses such as banks and supermarkets. In Guatemala, lawmakers voted on Tuesday to extend the state of emergency due to the coronavirus for another 30 days. The country now has 21 confirmed cases of the infection, the government said.
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8469
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'Bigger than winning the war': WWII vet, aged 99, survives coronavirus in Brazil.
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World War Two veteran Ermando Piveta, aged 99, became the oldest Brazilian to recover from the coronavirus on Tuesday.
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true
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Health News
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Wearing an army cap and saluting from his wheelchair, Piveta left the Armed Forces Hospital in Brasilia to an ovation from medical staff and a soldier’s trumpet homage. “Winning this battle was for me bigger than winning the war,” he said of his fight against an invisible enemy. “In war you kill or live. Here you have to fight to live,” he added. Piveta was a second lieutenant in the Brazilian Army forces during World War Two and served in Africa. He tested positive for the coronavirus two weeks ago and spent two days in the hospital’s intensive care ward after he developed pneumonia. But he never needed a ventilator and recovered due to his good physical shape derived from life in the military and longevity that runs in his family, the hospital’s director said. Piveta’s release from hospital was a bright moment in an otherwise darkening scenario as the epidemic hit Brazil with force this week. The coronavirus has infected 25,262 people and killed 1,532 people, the health ministry said on Tuesday, with 204 deaths just in the last 24 hours.
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5210
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New York to get federal funds for PFAS health study.
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New York is one of six recipients of federal funding to study the health effects of a class of chemicals once used in nonstick cookware, firefighting foam and many other products.
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true
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Health, Charles Schumer, New York, Kirsten Gillibrand
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The study will look at the potential effects of exposure to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, collectively called PFAS. Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand on Friday announced nearly $900,000 in funding to support a New York state health study of the chemicals. Drinking water in Hoosick Falls, Newburgh and Suffolk County has been contaminated by the toxic chemicals. Funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be used to expand a biomonitoring program to assess the impact of PFAS exposure.
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2606
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LA billionaire covets sports teams to promote health.
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Bio-tech entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong, the richest man in Los Angeles, intends to make a bid for sports and real estate firm Anschutz Entertainment Group and wants to bring a National Football League team back to the second most populous U.S. city.
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true
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Health News
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The 60-year-old sports fan, a surgeon who started and sold two pharmaceutical companies for a combined $8.6 billion, told Reuters in an interview this week that he wants to use Anschutz concert tours and sports events, and his NFL team’s players, to encourage L.A. school children to adopt healthier lifestyles. “The NFL can do so much for this city,” said Soon-Shiong in an interview at his west Los Angeles office. “Kids really rally around sports and entertainment and it could be a major catalyst to demonstrate what you can do in life by living better.” Soon-Shiong grew up in South Africa, where he became a doctor in his early 20s and treated tuberculosis victims. After moving to the United States and becoming a surgeon at UCLA, he developed innovative methods to treat diabetes and cancer patients. The sale of his two companies for $8.6 billion made him the wealthiest person in Los Angeles, according to Forbes magazine, although he still is not a household name in the city. Under his plan, players would serve as mentors, encouraging students to eat better and exercise more. The most sophisticated methods used to deal with sports injuries could be shared with local doctors. “It’s important to motivate students in middle and high school. That’s when you can help reduce diabetes and obesity that cause illness,” he said. “Maybe we can turn that illness to wellness.” If he’s successful in L.A., Soon-Shiong said he intends to make it a national program. Sources say the billionaire is assembling a group of other Los Angeles business and civic leaders to buy AEG. Soon-Shiong did not discuss details of his bid. Sources also said his buyer group includes private equity firm Guggenheim Partners, which this spring led a group that bought the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team for $2 billion. AEG, which is owned by Denver billionaire Phil Anschutz, said on September 19 it had hired Blackstone Advisory Partners to sell the company. It is expected to fetch $6 billion to $8 billion, according to investment bankers with knowledge of its assets. Separately, Los Angeles for years has wanted to bring back a professional football team, and Soon-Shiong acknowledged that he has met with the NFL to lay out his plan to buy a team. AEG owns the Los Angeles Kings pro hockey franchise, the L.A. Galaxy soccer club and a 20 percent stake in the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team. It owns or operates sports and entertainment arenas worldwide, including the Staples Center in Los Angeles, and promotes concerts and other live action events. Soon-Shiong’s family foundation has committed $1 billion to transform healthcare and intends to create a national health superhighway by which doctors can share biotech information and other data to improve diagnosis and care. His foundation gave $135 million to the Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica and $100 million to reopen Martin Luther King Hospital, which serves lower income patients in south Los Angeles. A basketball fan who played in pickup games until tearing his Achilles tendon three years ago, Soon-Shiong owns a 5 percent stake in the Lakers, and he said he has become friends with superstar Kobe Bryant and other players, whom he sees as role models for young fans. In March, he and his actress wife, Michelle Chan, endowed the Chan Soon-Shiong Center for Sports Science at Saint John’s, which will focus on sports medicine, physical therapy and stem cell research to help heal injuries. It works with sports medicine doctors, including the Kerlan-Jobe Orthopedic Clinic that treats the Kings, Lakers and L.A. Dodgers. Saint John’s announced the sports science center at a dinner honoring AEG president Tim Leiweke in March, six months before Soon-Shiong showed his interest in the conglomerate.
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365
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Bayer shares slide after latest Roundup cancer ruling.
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Shares in Germany’s Bayer’s fell more than 12 percent on Wednesday after a second U.S. jury ruled its Roundup weed killer caused cancer.
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true
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Health News
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Tuesday’s unanimous jury decision in San Francisco federal court was not a finding of Bayer’s liability for the cancer of plaintiff Edwin Hardeman. Liability and damages will be decided by the same jury in a second trial phase beginning on Wednesday. Bayer, which denies allegations that glyphosate or Roundup cause cancer, said it was disappointed with the jury’s initial decision. Bayer acquired Monsanto, the longtime maker of Roundup, for $63 billion last year. Bayer shares were 12.5 percent lower at 1110 GMT, the biggest intraday loss in 16 years, wiping some 8 billion euros ($9.1 billion) off its valuation. “This looks like 2-0 plaintiffs, and clearly not helpful for the overall payout calculus and resolution of the litigation,” said Bernstein analyst Gunther Zechmann. Glyphosate is the world’s most widely used weed killer. Monsanto’s Roundup was the first glyphosate-based weed killer but is no longer patent-protected and many other versions are now available. Bayer does not provide sales figures for the product. “We are confident the evidence in phase two will show that Monsanto’s conduct has been appropriate and the company should not be liable for Mr. Hardeman’s cancer,” the company said. The case was only the second of some 11,200 Roundup lawsuits to go to trial in the United States. Another California man was awarded $289 million in August after a state court jury found Roundup caused his cancer. That award was later reduced to $78 million and is on appeal. Baader Helvea analyst Markus Mayer noted that Bayer management announced ambitious targets in December. “(It) is now under pressure to deliver and trying to avoid becoming a target for activist or strategic buyers.” Activist investor Elliott already holds a stake of less than 3 percent in Bayer, Reuters disclosed last year. Brokerage Warburg lowered its recommendation to “Hold” from “Buy”, arguing that the with the renewed setback upcoming glyphosate court cases would remain a drag on the share price. Bayer had claimed that jury was overly influenced by plaintiffs’ lawyers allegations of corporate misconduct and did not focus on the science. U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria called such evidence “a distraction” from the scientific question of whether glyphosate causes cancer. He split the Hardeman case into two phases: one to decide causation, the other to determine Bayer’s potential liability and damages. Under Chhabria’s order, the second phase would only take place if the jury found Roundup to be a substantial factor in causing Hardeman’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The jury found that it was on Tuesday. Union Investment fund manager Markus Manns cautioned that it was too early to read anything into individual rulings in courts of first instance. “What will be important for Bayer is the outcome of the appeals hearings,” he told Reuters, adding that Bayer should not yet engage in settlement talks. Chhabria has scheduled another bellwether trial for May and a third trial is likely to take place this year. All three cases will be split into causation and liability phases. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the European Chemicals Agency and other regulators have found that glyphosate is not likely carcinogenic to humans. But the World Health Organization’s cancer arm in 2015 reached a different conclusion, classifying glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
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7044
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Nobel Peace winners urge global action vs. sexual violence.
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The Congolese doctor who shares this year’s Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end the use of rape and sexual violence as weapons of war called Monday for strong international action against the abuse, including reparations for victims.
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true
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Nadia Murad, Denis Mukwege, AP Top News, International News, Middle East, Violence, Africa, Health, Nobel Prizes, Stockholm, Iraq, Europe
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Dr. Denis Mukwege, founder of a hospital in eastern Congo that has treated tens of thousands of victims of the country’s conflicts for two decades, and Iraqi activist Nadia Murad received the prize at a ceremony in the Norwegian capital, Oslo. They split the 9-million-kronor ($1 million) amount. In an address interrupted by frequent applause, Mukwege criticized the international community for allowing Congolese to be “humiliated, abused and massacred for more than two decades in plain sight.” “I insist on reparations, measures that give survivors compensation and satisfaction and enable them to start a new life,” he said. “I call on states to support the initiative to create a global fund for reparations for victims of sexual violence in armed conflicts.” He said countries should take a stand against “leaders who have tolerated, or worse, used sexual violence to take power. ... This red line would consist of imposing economic and political sanctions on these leaders and taking them to court.” Dozens of armed groups in Congo profit from mining the country’s trillions of dollars’ worth of mineral resources, many of which are crucial to popular electronic products such as smartphones. “As consumers, let us at least insist that these products are manufactured with respect for human dignity. Turning a blind eye to this tragedy is being complicit,” Mukwege said. An outspoken critic of Congo’s government, he added: “My country is being systematically looted with the complicity of people claiming to be our leaders.” Murad, a member of Iraq’s Yazidi minority, was kidnapped and sexually abused by Islamic State militants in 2014. She became an activist after escaping and finding refuge in Germany. She told the ceremony that she wants world leaders to translate sympathy for victims into action against the abusers. “The fact remains that the only prize in the world that can restore our dignity is justice and the prosecution of criminals,” Murad said. “Young girls at the prime of life are sold, bought, held captive and raped every day. It is inconceivable that the conscience of the leaders of 195 countries around the world is not mobilized to liberate these girls,” she said. “What if they were a commercial deal, an oil field or a shipment of weapons? Most certainly, no efforts would be spared to liberate them,” she said. Berit Reiss-Andersen, head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee that chooses the peace laureates, also said action was necessary. “This award obligates Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad to continue their vital work. But the award obligates us to stand side by side with them in the struggle to end wartime sexual violence,” she said. Back in Iraq, Murad’s sister and brother who live in a camp for displaced Yazidi people in Dohuk in northern Iraq expressed their happiness for their sibling’s Nobel Prize. “We are very happy, because on this date, Daesh was defeated in Iraq, on the same day Nadia is receiving her award ... This is like a tumor in the chest of Daesh. We are very glad, and very proud,” her sister Khayriya Murad told The Associated Press at the family’s caravan where a photo of Nadia hung on the wall. She was busy receiving congratulations from friends and camp management staff. Daesh is an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. The winners of the medicine, physics, chemistry and economics Nobels received their awards Monday in Stockholm; no winner of the literature prize was named this year. In comments at the awards banquet, William Nordhaus, an American who shared the economics prize for his work studying the consequences of climate change and proposing carbon taxes, took a swipe at those who are unwilling to address global warming. “Some obstacles are unnecessary and manmade, such as those posed by the financial interests of polluters or the ludicrous arguments of some of our politicians,” he said. He shared the prize with Paul Romer, also of the United States, who was honored for studying how economies can encourage innovation. The chemistry prize went to Americans Frances Arnold and George Smith and Britain’s Gregory Winter for work that speeds up the evolution of proteins and enzymes. James Allison of the United States and Japan’s Tasuku Honjo shared the medicine prize for discoveries in activating the body’s immune system to fight cancer. The physics prize was awarded to Donna Strickland of Canada, Gerard Mourou of France and Arthur Ashkin of the U.S. for developments in laser technology. ___ Associated Press writer David Keyton reported in Stockholm and AP writer Jim Heintz reported from Moscow. AP writer Rashid Yahya in Dohuk, Iraq, contributed to this report.
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13311
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"In about three weeks over a half million Floridians are going to lose their coverage again"" through Obamacare."
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"Rubio said in the Senate debate ""in about three weeks over a half million Floridians are going to lose their coverage again"" through Obamacare. That’s a reference to more than 400,000 Floridians who are expected to lose their plans under the Obamacare exchange. However, Rubio omits that they will be offered another plan including by Florida Blue, which will remain in every county in Florida. Rubio also ignores the fact that due to the marketplace, 1.7 million Floridians have signed up for coverage -- larger than the more than 400,000 who will have to switch plans. The percentage of Floridians who are uninsured has been dropping under Obamacare in recent years."
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mixture
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Health Care, Florida, Marco Rubio,
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"U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., continued his attacks on Obamacare during the first U.S. Senate debate against his Democratic rival, U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy. Rubio said that Obamacare has ""enormous problems."" ""No. 1, it is running up our debt. No. 2, people are losing their coverage. In about three weeks over a half million Floridians are going to lose their coverage again,"" he said. ""It is collapsing under its own weight because it doesn’t work."" We will fact-check if that many Floridians are poised to lose their health care plans. Obamacare plans Bloomberg News reported Oct. 14 that nationwide, more than 1 million people will lose plans -- and the largest number of losses will be in Florida with more than 400,000. Bloomberg interviewed state regulators and learned a few health insurance companies are quitting the marketplace where people can shop for policies. Sign up for coverage begins in November. In August, Aetna announced that it would stop selling Obamacare plans in 11 states, including Florida for 2017, due to significant financial losses. UnitedHealth is exiting the individual market, and Humana will withdraw from most of the counties it serves in the individual market. As of May 9, approximately 420,000 enrollees in Florida are expected to lose their plans due to withdrawals in the individual exchange marketplace with additional enrollees losing coverage off-exchange, according to Karen Kees, a spokeswoman for the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation. Floridians who lose their plan can sign up for another one. Fifteen insurance companies have filed requests to sell individual coverage plans in Florida, including 11 insurers that requested to sell plans on the exchange. ""It’s not 400,000 are going to be uninsured. (It’s) 400,000 are going to have to switch insurers,"" said Timothy Jost, author of the Health Affairs Blog and emeritus professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law. And many people each year change plans any way when they seek out a better deal, he said. The premium could be similar for most shoppers since the amount is based on tax credits that are set based on a consumer’s income, Jost said. While the state said that premiums will increase on average 19 percent, Jost said that is before the tax credits that apply to many buying on the marketplace. Jost said the irony in the disruption is that Rubio pushed to defund the risk corridor program that was intended to stabilize the market so that plans that made big profits would pay in and those with big losses would collect. In the end, those funds were limited. ""Rubio has to take a lot of credit for Floridians losing coverage,"" Jost said. ""Had the program operated the way it was intended to operate, a lot more insurers would still be in the marketplace."" Michael Tanner, a health care expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, said while these Floridians will still be insured a new plan could mean changes for them. ""Yes, they will get something of similar price and quality, but it won’t necessarily be in the same network, it may not cover their current doctor,"" he said. However, it is deceptive to say Floridians will ""lose"" coverage without explaining that they will get a new plan, said David Himmelstein, professor in the CUNY School of Public Health at Hunter College. ""Many Floridians will have to change insurers,"" he said. ""Some will likely have worse, or more expensive coverage -- although we don't know how many at present. Is that losing coverage? I don't think most people would characterize it that way."" Nationwide, most consumers will have multiple choices but fewer than in the past, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found. Rubio made a similar misleading statement before about people losing health care. In 2013, Rubio said that ""300,000 people are going to lose their individual coverage because of Obamacare. Now those people next year, they don’t have health insurance."" Since Florida Blue provided assistance with switching plans, we rated Rubio’s statement because he jumped the gun by saying flatly that they wouldn’t have insurance. Ultimately, more than 80 percent of the approximately 300,000 members remained with Florida Blue. This time, Florida Blue is expected to pick up many of those who will lose coverage with another carrier. Florida Blue currently has about 700,000 people covered through the marketplace, which is more than any other carrier, spokesman Doug Bartel said. It will continue to offer plans in every Florida county. ""We fully expect based upon our products, price, network and benefits that we will pick up many of the consumers whose insurance company is leaving the marketplace,"" he said. Rubio’s debate statement also ignores that due to the Affordable Care Act, more Floridians have coverage. More than 1.7 million Floridians purchased plans through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces between Nov. 1, 2015, and Feb. 1, 2016. So that’s more than the 400,000 who will ""lose"" their plan -- and they aren’t actually going to lose insurance. Federal data shows that the percentage of insured in Florida has been steadily dropping. In 2013, 20 percent of Floridians lacked health coverage. In 2014, that number fell to 16.6 percent, and in 2015, it fell again to 13.3 percent. The majority of Americans still get their insurance through their employer -- not the individual marketplace. Our ruling Rubio said in the Senate debate ""in about three weeks over a half million Floridians are going to lose their coverage again"" through Obamacare. That’s a reference to more than 400,000 Floridians who are expected to lose their plans under the Obamacare exchange. However, Rubio omits that they will be offered another plan including by Florida Blue, which will remain in every county in Florida. Rubio also ignores the fact that due to the marketplace, 1.7 million Floridians have signed up for coverage -- larger than the more than 400,000 who will have to switch plans. The percentage of Floridians who are uninsured has been dropping under Obamacare in recent years."
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4195
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Government-funded study says red wolves are distinct species.
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A panel of top scientists concluded Thursday that the endangered red wolf of the southeastern U.S. is a species unto itself, giving the beleaguered canine a scientific and political boost as its numbers plummet in the wild.
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true
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Wildlife, Animals, Coyotes, North Carolina, North America, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Durham, Science, Genetics, Wolves
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The government-funded study by the National Academy of Sciences also found that the Mexican gray wolf of New Mexico and Arizona is a subspecies, which advocates say should support conservation efforts. Another wolf species, the Western gray wolf, is thriving in the Northern Rockies and Great Lakes and could lose federal protections under a proposal released earlier this month. For red wolves, the affirmation of their genetic uniqueness comes after some North Carolina officials and a small but vocal group of landowners pushed the government to abandon recovery efforts, arguing the animal is a coyote hybrid. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service spokeswoman Laury Parramore declined to comment on the agency-funded study beyond a statement saying it was under review. Red wolves once occupied much of the Eastern U.S. but were driven to near extinction by trapping, hunting and habitat loss. Some of the last red wolves in the wild were removed from portions of Louisiana and Texas in 1980 and used in a captive breeding program. Their descendants were later reintroduced to a wildlife refuge along North Carolina’s coast. An estimated 35 wild red wolves remained as of late 2018, down from about 120 a decade ago. Their range is currently limited to five North Carolina counties. Another 200 live in captive breeding programs. Acknowledging longstanding questions among some scientists about red wolf ancestry, federal wildlife officials said last year they would treat it as a distinct species while awaiting Thursday’s report. The nine-member national academy panel found that the red wolf is unique based on its DNA, its behavior and its size, which is larger than a coyote and smaller than a gray wolf. While the red wolf appears more closely related to coyotes than gray wolves, red wolves diverged as their own species long ago, said Joseph Travis, chair of the national academy panel and a biology professor at Florida State University. “There’s clearly been introduction of coyote genes and gray wolf genes into red wolves. But they also have genes not seen in coyotes and gray wolves,” Travis said in an interview. “They must have continuity with some ancestor which was not a gray wolf or coyote.” Ron Sutherland, a biologist with the nonprofit Wildlands Network, said he had been waiting on “pins and needles” to see what the panel decided. “That should be a kick in the butt for the Fish and Wildlife Service to stop the quiet negligence of letting the species go extinct in the wild,” he said. A government plan to further shrink the territory where red wolves roam stalled last year when a judge ruled officials were neglecting their duty to protect the animals under the Endangered Species Act. That same plan would have allowed landowners to kill any wolves that strayed from the proposed smaller territory consisting of federal land in two counties. Conservationists accused the federal agency of neglecting the animals under political pressure and abandoning proven conservation techniques, such as releasing captive bred pups. In 2015, North Carolina’s Wildlife Resources Commission passed a resolution urging an end to the federal program, saying “the purity of the red wolf genome is questionable” after hybridization with coyotes. Republican U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis has also urged its end. The study released Thursday had been ordered by Congress as part of a 2018 appropriations bill. ___ Brown reported from Billings, Montana.
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30546
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Police in Seattle took a man's gun away from him without a warrant.
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The legislation allows a court to intervene in potentially major and intrusive ways on a person’s liberty and property interests without any indication, much less suggestion, that the person has engaged in any criminal conduct – or even that he or she may do so imminently. In that regard, the bill places judges in the unenviable – indeed, impossible – position of trying to predict who may and may not become a mass murderer. Psychiatry and the medical sciences have not succeeded in this realm, and there is no basis for believing courts will do any better. The result will likely be a significant impact on the rights of many innocent individuals in the hope of preventing a tragedy.
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false
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Crime, gun grab, gun rights, guns
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In March 2018, various right-wing blogs seized on a police encounter in Seattle to paint a state gun safety law as an example of “Nazi-Style” gun confiscations. The blog posts typically used language intended to evoke strong emotions: A man in Seattle has had his gun confiscated by police after breaking no laws. The police took his gun without a warrant and without pressing any charges. Tyranny has officially taken hold on American soil. This sets a precedent that government can now forcefully take guns away from an individual without a crime being committed or an arrest being made and without a warrant. In the name of fear and political exploitation of anti-gun rhetoric, a citizen’s Second Amendment rights have been ripped away from him by the government. On 2 March 2018, officers seized a 31-year-old man’s handgun while serving him with an extreme risk protection order (often shortened to ERPO) requiring him to do so. Police said in a statement that the unidentified man had been the subject of “multiple calls” concerning his behavior. Before seizing his handgun, they said, the suspect had surrendered a shotgun to them in May 2017, after being served with an anti-harassment order. Police said he “acknowledged he was experiencing ‘stress’ and did not want it around.” A spokesperson said: Due to his numerous contacts with police and escalating behavior, SPD’s Crisis Response Squad filed for an Extreme Risk Protection Order, requiring the man to turn over all firearms. After the man failed to turn over his firearms or appear in court for a hearing on the order, police obtained a warrant and responded to the man’s apartment in the 2200 block of 2nd Avenue just after 1 p.m. on March 1st and took him into custody. However, many of these blogs misrepresented the statement, claiming that no warrants and no arrests were involved and ignoring the man’s failure to appear in court to address the protection order: A police spokesperson confirmed to us via email that the unidentified man had been reported for harassing people at a restaurant near his home, saying: The suspect in this case had been standing outside of the location while wearing a holstered pistol and threatening individuals exiting the premises, which in turn caused some people to be fearful that he might hurt them. This is a violation of law in Washinginton State. The man was taken into custody for his violation which ended in a warrant being issued by the judge for his arrest. According to state law: It shall be unlawful for any person to carry, exhibit, display, or draw any firearm, dagger, sword, knife or other cutting or stabbing instrument, club, or any other weapon apparently capable of producing bodily harm, in a manner, under circumstances, and at a time and place that either manifests an intent to intimidate another or that warrants alarm for the safety of other persons. According to the department spokesperson, the suspect — who lives directly above the restaurant — stood on a sidewalk in front of the business “yelling obscenities and accusing them of ‘talking to him through the floor. '” He later called officers back to the scene, saying that he could hear “taunting and voices” emanating from the restaurant. While meeting with police, they said, he said that he wanted a restaurant employee “arrested or shot.” He was detained and later taken to receive medical services. Sergeant Eric Pisconski, who heads the unit responsible for carrying out protection order-related seizures, said of the case: We attempted multiple times to get the individual to fulfill that order of turning over their firearms. And he refused multiple times. We were forced, at that point, to take the next step in the ERPO law which is petitioning for a search warrant to go in and enter their home and remove the firearms from them. The involuntary gun seizure was reportedly the first of its kind, though not the first seizure overall, to be done under the auspices of the risk order, which was created by Initiative 1491, a Washington state ballot measure that was approved by voters on 8 November 2016 and also called a “red flag” law. The law allows for orders to be filed against a firearm owner by police or family members if they feel that the firearm owner “poses a significant danger of causing personal injury to self or others by having in his or her custody or control, purchasing, possessing, or receiving a firearm.” The law, which went into effect in 2017, states that confiscations conducted as a result of the orders may last a year. Washington is one of five states with red flag laws. Around 24 other states — including Florida, where a mass shooting attack in February 2018 reignited the gun safety debate throughout the United States — are reportedly considering passing similar legislation. However, the American Civil Liberties Union has opposed such laws; its Rhode Island chapter said in an analysis released on 2 March 2018:
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15162
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Inspections of abortion centers around Virginia have found multiple violations of parental consent laws … but Gov. Terry McAuliffe and his administration have done nothing.
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"Cobb said, ""Inspections of abortion centers around Virginia have found multiple violations of state parental consent laws but, because it’s the abortion industry, Governor McAuliffe and his administration have done nothing."" Inspections since McAuliffe took office in 2014 have turned up consent problems in two of the state’s 18 abortion clinics. Inspectors found one instance where there was no record of parental or guardian consent for a minor who had received an abortion. And there were two instances when the consent forms were not properly notarized. Some might say that the cited problems have been few and accidental. Cobb is technically correct in using the term ""multiple violations."" But Cobb’s claim that McAuliffe did ""nothing"" about the violations doesn’t hold up. The Department of Health followed state regulations by requiring both clinics to adopt procedures to prevent the violations from recurring. The department followed up with an unannounced re-inspection at one of the facilities. The response largely was identical to actions taken under the previous governor, McDonnell, when inspectors in 2012 found a Roanoke clinic had given abortions to one minor for whom there was no parental consent record and to two minors whose forms were not notarized. On the whole, Cobb’s statement contains an element of truth, but it ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."
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false
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Abortion, Virginia, Victoria Cobb,
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"At a recent protest outside Planned Parenthood’s office in Richmond, several hundred anti-abortion activists heard accusations that Gov. Terry McAuliffe is refusing to enforce many abortion laws. Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation -- a socially conservative lobbying and public interest group -- made the charges in a speech. She said McAuliffe, a Democrat, is ignoring the laws as payback to the ""abortion industry"" for contributing to his 2013 campaign. Records from the Virginia Public Access Project show that abortion rights groups, led by Planned Parenthood, backed McAuliffe with nearly $1.8 million in contributions. Among Cobb’s accusations was this: ""Inspections of abortion centers around Virginia have found multiple violations of state parental consent laws but, because it’s the abortion industry, Governor McAuliffe and his administration have done nothing."" Fact-checking Cobb’s statement requires two determinations: Have inspections turned up ""multiple violations"" of the parental consent law for abortions on minors and, if so, did the McAuliffe administration do ""nothing""? Let’s start with some background. For many years, Virginia abortion clinics were regulated under the general category of ""physicians offices,"" and the Virginia Department of Health Professions inspected them only for cleanliness or in response to a complaint. That changed after the General Assembly in 2011 passed a bill -- signed by then-Gov. Bob McDonnell, a Republican -- requiring that the clinics adhere to hospital standards. Regulations passed later that year by the State Board of Health required that all clinics receive at least one unannounced inspection every two years to determine if they were complying with building codes and a variety of rules regarding medical treatment, sanitation, drug storage and record-keeping. When violations are found, the administrator of the clinic is required to implement a plan of correction within 30 days. The Virginia Department of Health may suspend or revoke a clinic’s license if it determines the facility is ""permitting, aiding or abetting"" illegal abortions. The inspections began in 2012, and among the checklist items is determining whether clinics are following Virginia’s parental consent law that requires physicians, before performing an abortion on an unemancipated minor, to receive notarized permission from a parent or legal guardian, or an order from a judge. Inspectors randomly pull the files of three or four minors who received abortions at each center to see whether the requirement is being followed, said Erik Bodin, director of licensure and certification for the Virginia Department of Health. There were 20 abortion clinics in Virginia when the inspection program began. Today, there are 18. Chris Freund, spokesman for the Family Foundation, backed Cobb’s statement by referring us to the inspection reports of three clinics that have been cited for not following parental consent mandates. Let’s explore these citations and see what, if any, corrective action was taken. Roanoke Medical Center for Women On Dec. 18, 2012, inspectors found violations in three of four records of minors they pulled. In one case, no parental consent record was found for a 16-year-old who received an abortion. An unidentified staff member at the clinic said, ""I don’t know how it slipped through the cracks."" In the other two cases, consent letters were on file, but they were not notarized and, therefore, did not properly validate the relationship between the patient and her parent or guardian. Inspectors demanded an immediate correction plan, and the administrator of the clinic obtained certification as a notary public and installed a system of checks to make sure all records are in order before minors get abortions. A March 27, 2013, inspection found the corrections had been carried out. Although the Family Center sent us the original report, it should be noted that all of these actions occurred under McDonnell’s administration, which ended in January 2014. Charlottesville Medical Center for Women Three records of minors were reviewed during a July 9, 2014, inspection. Two of the consent forms were notarized but had no notary seal. A staff member reported ""he/she left the official notary stamp in Richmond,"" according to the citation. The clinic’s administrator promised to correct the problem by having more staff members certified as notaries to ensure a seal always is on hand and by improving the review of patients’ charts before abortions are performed. A subsequent unannounced inspection on Oct. 8, 2014, found no deficiencies with the center’s parental consent procedures. Planned Parenthood Metro Washington-Falls Church A review of electronic records on Oct. 30, 2014, found no parental or guardian consent signature for a 17-year-old who had received an abortion six months earlier. A staff member told inspectors the clinic had experienced ""a problem with the system capturing electronic signatures,"" according to the citation. The administrator promised to create special red files and electronic checklists for minors to ensure required steps are carried out before abortions. Bodin said the clinic has not been re-inspected, because the violations there ""did not require a revisit."" Our ruling Cobb said, ""Inspections of abortion centers around Virginia have found multiple violations of state parental consent laws but, because it’s the abortion industry, Governor McAuliffe and his administration have done nothing."" Inspections since McAuliffe took office in 2014 have turned up consent problems in two of the state’s 18 abortion clinics. Inspectors found one instance where there was no record of parental or guardian consent for a minor who had received an abortion. And there were two instances when the consent forms were not properly notarized. Some might say that the cited problems have been few and accidental. Cobb is technically correct in using the term ""multiple violations."" But Cobb’s claim that McAuliffe did ""nothing"" about the violations doesn’t hold up. The Department of Health followed state regulations by requiring both clinics to adopt procedures to prevent the violations from recurring. The department followed up with an unannounced re-inspection at one of the facilities. The response largely was identical to actions taken under the previous governor, McDonnell, when inspectors in 2012 found a Roanoke clinic had given abortions to one minor for whom there was no parental consent record and to two minors whose forms were not notarized. On the whole, Cobb’s statement contains an element of truth, but it ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. That makes it ."
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2949
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Sanofi MS drug suffers setback in key U.S. market.
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Sanofi’s Lemtrada multiple sclerosis treatment has failed to win approval from U.S. regulators, dealing a setback to a drug which was at the heart of the French drugmaker’s $20 billion takeover of biotech firm Genzyme.
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true
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Health News
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The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) rejected Lemtrada for launch in the world’s biggest drug market on the grounds that Genzyme had not shown its benefits outweighed its “serious adverse effects”, Sanofi said on Monday. The FDA also demanded Sanofi carry out further clinical trials using different designs and methods prior to approval, Sanofi said. The company said it strongly disagreed with the decision and planned to appeal. The FDA ruling could impact the value of Sanofi’s Genzyme takeover, since the latter’s shareholders had received so-called contingent value rights (CVRs) entitling them to future payments of up to $14 a share if certain goals were met. The CVRs, which are traded in the United States under their own stock market quote, slumped 63 percent to an all-time low of 30 cents. They were worth $2.10 in October, but tumbled the following month after a review by an advisory panel to the FDA raised questions over the design of the clinical trial and Lemtrada’s potential to cause cancer and other conditions. Shares in Sanofi were down 0.9 percent at 75.88 euros at 1522 GMT, the biggest losers in a flat CAC 40. Germany’s Bayer, which has an option to co-promote Lemtrada in the United States, saw its shares fall 1 percent. Sanofi said on Monday it did not expect to meet the CVR milestone of U.S. approval for Lemtrada by the end of March. Other milestones are related to the drug’s sales and would likely be hard to reach without the U.S. market. Analysts on average had expected Lemtrada to generate annual sales of $707 million by 2018, according to forecasts compiled by Thomson Reuters. “Genzyme’s takeover was about catching up in biologics, having a greater footprint in the United States, and also largely for Lemtrada,” said Eric Le Berrigaud, analyst at Bryan Garnier & Co. “This is unquestionably a setback, as without a U.S. market such a product doesn’t have the same potential.” The brokerage, which had forecast peak Lemtrada sales of $400 million in the United States, said it was scrapping the U.S. market from its forecasts. It argued it would take Sanofi at least three years to conduct the studies demanded by the FDA, and that, given an increasingly crowded market for MS drugs, it could opt out of what could be a lengthy and costly process. But Renaud Murail, a fund manager at Barclays Bourse, said Monday’s development was no big surprise for investors who had already factored in the risk of U.S. rejection. “Genzyme remains Sanofi’s gem and this is only a half-defeat,” he said. A U.S. law firm acting on behalf of purchasers of the CVRs has launched a class action alleging Sanofi misled investors over Lemtrada’s efficacy, safety and prospects. A Sanofi spokesman said it was reviewing the FDA letter and evaluating its next steps, including the appeal timeline. Genzyme chief David Meeker said: “We strongly believe that the clinical development program, which was designed to demonstrate how Lemtrada compares against an active comparator as opposed to placebo, provides robust evidence of efficacy and a favorable benefit-risk profile.” Lemtrada is designed to treat relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis, the most common form of the disease. It was approved in September by European regulators in a market dominated by rivals Biogen Idec, Novartis and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. Multiple sclerosis is a chronic, autoimmune condition which affects more than 2 million people worldwide and up to 500,000 in the U.S. It attacks the central nervous system and can cause muscle weakness, pain and cognitive difficulties. Lemtrada is given via an intravenous drip and designed to reprogram the immune system, but can make the body more vulnerable to other diseases. The multiple sclerosis market is increasingly moving away from injectable treatments in favor of pills such as Novartis’ Gilenya and Biogen Idec’s Tecfidera. Some analysts expect that Lemtrada, partly handicapped by its risk profile and injectable form, will be reserved for patients for whom other treatments are ineffective. Sanofi also has an oral treatment, Aubagio, developed by Genzyme and which has already been approved in the U.S. and Europe. Analysts on average expect Aubagio sales to reach $854 million by 2018, according to Thomson Reuters data. ($1 = 0.7258 euros)
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31389
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Exercising is counterproductive because it expends more quickly the finite amount of energy a human has.
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Because there is no quantifiable finite amount of energy that determines a person’s lifespan, and because numerous studies have shown that exercise increases longevity in humans.
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false
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Medical, donald trump, health, Medical
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According to an account in the biography Trump Revealed by Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, President Trump has rationalized his lack of physical exercise by saying he doesn’t want to deplete his body’s finite amount of energy. Here is the account provided in Kranish and Fisher’s biography: After college, after Trump mostly gave up his personal athletic interests, he came to view time spent playing sports as time wasted. Trump believed the human body was like a battery, with a finite amount of energy, which exercise only depleted. So he didn’t work out. When he learned that John O’Donnell, one of his top casino executives, was training for an Ironman triathlon, he admonished him, “You are going to die young because of this.” Trump’s view that human longevity is similar to a non-rechargeable battery is demonstrably false, but it brings up two separate claims that can be investigated scientifically: 1) Do humans have a finite amount of energy? and 2) Does exercising reduce a person’s longevity? Do Humans Have A Finite Amount of Energy? The concept of some sort of overarching life-force or “energy,” while at odds with contemporary science, is a notion that puts Trump in the company of thinkers ranging from antiquity to the early 19th century. One could argue that his battery metaphor blends neatly the Ancient Chinese concept of a life-sustaining energy known as qi with the medieval European concept of humors— a collection of four substances (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood) which were thought to be in balance when a person was healthy, but which in depletion were the cause of health problems and death. From a more modern and scientific perspective, Trump’s “finite” amount of “energy” notion is reminiscent of the conclusions made by embryologists Jacques Loeb and J. H. Northrop, who in 1917 demonstrated a relationship between temperature and duration of life in fruit flies. These researchers used that result to argue that longevity was controlled by the presence or absence some unknown substance: The observations […] suggest that [the duration of life] is determined by the production of a substance leading to old age and natural death or by the destruction of a substance or substances which normally prevent old age and natural death. While modern science increasingly supports the notion of an upper limit on human lifespan, it universally rejects the notion that a fixed amount of “vital energy” is the reason for such a limit. During the course of the 20th century, scientists hunted for an elusive single factor limiting the human lifespan. They explored such possibilities as (for example) the cumulative effects of cells unable to replicate, as well as some sort of switch in gene expression later in life. These ideas ultimately gave way to the realization that multiple intertwined and complex systems collectively work to produce the upper limits on aging, as a 2003 review noted: The search for a single cause of aging, such as a single gene or the decline of a key body system, has been replaced by the view of aging as an extremely complex, multifactorial process. Several processes may interact simultaneously and may operate at many levels of functional organization. Similarly, different theories of aging are not mutually exclusive and may adequately describe some or all features of the normal aging process alone or in combination with other theories. So while a majority of scientists may be open to the idea of a biologically determined limit to human longevity (a finite amount of life, if you will), they would argue it is defined by the accumulation of multiple effects which make it increasingly improbable to survive past a certain age. Few, if any, would argue that this limit comes from an finite, internal “energy” that has “run out,” however. Does Exercising Reduce a Person’s Longevity? This too, may seem like a question too obvious to even research, but it wasn’t actually until the 1900s that there was hard scientific evidence to suggest a link between longevity and exercise. A landmark 1953 study compared the occurrence of coronary heart disease across occupations of differing levels of physical rigor and found that, counter to Trump’s claims, more physically active professions lived longer lives as a whole: The results show that the total incidence of coronary heart-disease is lower in the postmen than in the sedentary grades. Their case-fatality is also lower—a third in the postmen, compared with almost a half in the telephonists, executives, and clerks. Again, therefore, as with the transport workers, the early mortality of the physically active group is substantially less than that of the physically inactive. The finding that physically active people tend to live longer is well accepted in the medical community. A 2015 study that included over 600,000 cases concluded that there is both a clear increase in longevity from physical activity, and that it takes an extraordinary amount of exercise to have any negative effect: We observed this benefit threshold around 3–5 times the recommended leisure-time physical activity minimum, and no excess risk at 10+ times the recommended minimum. These findings are informative for individuals at both ends of the physical activity spectrum: they provide important evidence to inactive individuals by showing that modest amounts of activity provide substantial benefit for postponing mortality, while at the same time reassuring very active individuals of no exercise-associated increase in mortality risk. There are various possible mechanisms for how exercise fits into the complex melange of factors that contribute to aging, but no mainstream theory is based on the depletion of a finite resource: Exercise can help “add years to life”, and above all, “add life to years”, by partially counteracting the effects of aging on physiological functions and preserving functional reserve in elderly. Numerous studies have shown that maintaining a minimal quantity and quality of exercise decreases the risk of cardiovascular mortality, prevents the development of some cancers, lowers the risk of osteoporosis and increases longevity.
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5843
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Health experts alarmed by jump in STDs in Idaho.
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A jump in reports of sexually transmitted diseases in Idaho has health experts worried.
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true
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Sexually transmitted diseases, Chlamydia, Health, Pocatello, Gonorrhea, Syphilis, Idaho, United States
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The Idaho State Journal reports that last year there were nearly 6,600 STD cases, including HIV, up from fewer than 6,300 in 2016. Cases are also up nationally, with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announcing last week that nearly 2.3 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis were diagnosed in the United States in 2017. Kimberly Matulonis-Edgar of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare says experts in the state and across the country are struggling to understand what’s driving the increase. The most prevalent STDs reported nationally and in Idaho are gonorrhea and chlamydia. State health officials say that the rate of reported gonorrhea cases in Southeast Idaho fell about 14 percent from a year ago, but jumped more than 200 percent in south-central Idaho. ___ Information from: Idaho State Journal, http://www.journalnet.com
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11076
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Study: You can chew gum and get well at same time
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Any story with a clever headline announcing surprising results of a study involving a simple household item immediately raises concerns that the findings are being distorted, trivialized or sensationalized. But this report on a study suggesting chewing gum may speed recovery after colon surgery is responsible and informative. More specifically: It’s based on a credible study published in a top-shelf medical journal It discusses the results in enough detail so a reader can appreciate the limitations of the findings It quotes an independent expert skeptical about the findings, who describes alternatives to the studied treatment Although it’s based on a meta-analysis, whose findings should not drive treatment decisions, the treatment is one which people are not going to try themselves. This eliminates the risk of people treating themselves based on inconclusive findings. It’s worth pointing out that a 101-word edit of this article, published by the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, fails nearly all of the HealthNewsReview.org criteria. That brief squeezes in all of the positive findings but none of the caveats or context that help a reader determine the value of the study. This is not a failure of editing text so much as it is failure in editorial decision-making. If only 101 words will fit, there’s probably better use to make of that space rather than a provocative, one-sided report on a health issue.
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true
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"The story says gum costs ""a few pennies."" The study itself puts the cost at 4 cents per stick. The report does a good job of handling the statistics, with proper caveats. The story reports: The story does include a comment from a physician who warns that someone chewing gum after surgery may swallow air, which can create problems. The story explains that the findings come from an analysis of five studies, alluding to the fact that this was a meta-analysis. The story could have given a line about the quality of such evidence. The story does not exaggerate the complications following colon surgery. The story is based on a credible meta-analysis published in a top-shelf journal. The report includes comments from both a study co-author and a skeptical independent expert. The independent expert interviewed offers an alternative to chewing gum to speed recovery–introducing liquids and then foods after surgery. He also recommends avoiding the use of pain killers to speed recovery time. The availability of sugarless chewing gum is not in dispute. The story makes no claims for the novelty of the treatment. By indicating the meta-analysis is based on five previous studies, the article implies it’s been used before. The story does not draw excessively from the press release."
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32616
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It was not physically possible for a single gunman at the Orlando nightclub shooting to have fired as many rounds in the time allotted as reported.
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All of the math of the Orlando nightclub shooting holds up; it only fails to total accurately when, as was the case here, all the wrong numbers are input into the equation.
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false
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Uncategorized, mass shootings, omar mateen, orlando nightclub shooting
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Rumors and conjecture fly after every mass shooting, mostly involving speculation that the shootings were faked (or what conspiracy theorists call “false flag” operations), with the end goal of taking away American guns. The theories are fed by the inaccuracies that can surface during breaking news reporting due to the fluidity of the situation or human error, but which are inevitably taken as evidence of a grand conspiracy. The Facebook page RAW Conservative was one of the first to get in on the conspiracy theories after the Pulse nightclub shooting in June 2016, with the following post holding that it simply was not physically possible for a single gunman to have fired as many shots as claimed in the time allotted: A man walks in to a night club with an AR-15, shoots 103 people in under 7 minutes at 2am. The majority of the victims were shot multiple times, some as many as 12 times, with reports of several dozen rounds fired in the air and several dozens of rounds missing. 3 hours later, engages in a gun battle with 9 police officers that lasts nearly an hour. So let me get this straight…one lone shooter in under 7 minutes reloaded his AR-15 30 times with 30rd magazines in under 7 minutes, firing nearly 1,000rds of .223 ammunition while in a nightclub surrounded by 320 people, managing to kill and injure 1/3 of them, takes a 3 hour break, and then engages in another gun battle lasting nearly and hour in what was described as a “hail of bullets” with a SWAT team? Having years and years of experience with AR-15s, it would take me nearly 7 minutes to reload 30 times…let alone having time to aim and shoot 1,000 rounds semi-automatic in between firing dozens of rounds in the air screaming “Aloha Snack Bar”…just saying…something doesn’t add up… Let’s not even mention the fact that he managed to have 30, 30rd AR mags loaded and at the ready in order to do it under 7 minutes. If he is holding an ammo can in one hand (that weighs 40 pounds) and an AR in the other…what was he doing…reloading and firing with one hand at the same time? Either that, or he had a tactical vest from Hell that was able to hold 30 mags!! Something ain’t right folks… This deconstruction of the facts of the shooting would be more convincing if almost all of its aspects weren’t contradicted by more cogent reporting about the details of the shooting. For starters, the gunman, Omar Mateen, wasn’t armed with an AR-15; he brought a .223 SIG Sauer MCX semiautomatic rifle with him to the Orlando nightclub, as well as a handgun (reportedly a 9mm Glock semiautomatic model). Although the SIG Sauer MCX rifle is often outfitted with a magazine that holds 30 rounds, higher-capacity magazines are legal in Florida and reasonably easy to buy online. Other add-ons for the MCX — which is favored for its modularity, firing speed, controllability, and its ease of use — are also readily available. Additionally, Mateen didn’t fire anything close to “1,000 rounds of .223 ammunition,” as claimed. News accounts reported that the total number of rounds expended at the Pulse nightclub by Mateen and police combined was only 202, not upwards of a thousand, and thus Mateen would have needed far fewer reloads than assumed: Channel 9 found out that 202 rounds were fired during the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting, a law enforcement source said. That includes the gun battle between Omar Mateen and law enforcement, the source said. Finally, Omar Mateen didn’t “engage in a gun battle with 9 police officers that lasted nearly an hour.” Shortly after opening fire at the club, Mateen was confronted by an armed security guard and police and retreated to a bathroom, where he holed up for nearly three hours and made phone calls while police attempted to negotiate with him. When police finally breached a wall of bathroom, Mateen emerged from the hole they created and was quickly shot and killed: An off-duty Orlando police officer working at the club was investigating an underage drinker outside when he heard gunshots inside, according to the law enforcement source. The off-duty officer ran inside the club and traded gunfire with Mateen, backed up soon by three other Orlando police officers, the source said. Together, the officers fired at Mateen, who retreated into a bathroom toward the rear of the club. The killer, who claimed allegiance to ISIS hid in a bathroom at Pulse, the gay Orlando nightclub where he had slaughtered scores of people. A wall of cinder block separated him from a team of police officers just outside. For three hours, crisis negotiators tried to end the siege. Then Mateen — whom police said had acted “cool and calm” during discussions — talked about killing more people. Alarmed police placed an explosive device against the block walls and detonated them. The breach failed, the hole not large enough to allow for a successful rescue. A cop rammed his Bearcat armored vehicle through the club wall. Hostages poured out. So did Mateen, guns blazing. With quick efficiency, officers shot him dead. So ended the worst mass shooting spree in American history, with 49 others killed and 53 wounded.
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10111
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Say Aaa! Then Zzz: Tonsillectomy Helps Kids Sleep
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The evidence is really weak on the claim made in the headline, as the story later acknowledges. We wish the story had spent a little more time on costs and quantifying benefits instead of paying so much attention to one anecdotal case where a surgery was done to alleviate snoring. The health care system needs to continue to be critical of interventions that don’t work or are harmful. It’s clear that we haven’t had good evidence for much of how this old procedure has been done. Parents worry when their children can’t sleep well or have other problems related to enlarged tonsils, but surgery, as this story notes, is not without complications. Instead of giving the subject a light touch, the story dug into some of the details necessary to give parents the information they need to make good decisions. Writers should be careful, though, to distinguish between the real health problems related to tonsil problems and mere snoring, which is harmless in most cases. The headline for this story was a real shame, because the story itself contained good information.
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mixture
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NPR
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Oddly, the story mentions physician reimbursements for tonsil surgery but makes no mention of patient costs. “Rosenfeld disputes Obama’s claim, saying that insurers usually pay a surgeon $200 to $300 for tonsil surgery.” The benefits are never quantified, which is a big problem in this case because so much time is spent on the anecdotal family in the lead. We can’t understand why a headline this bold was put on a story that actually takes pains to point out the lack of evidence supporting tonsil surgeries. The story could have done much more to evaluate the quality of the evidence, but we give it points here for addressing the lack of support for tonsil surgeries, which most parents likely assume are a standard part of growing up. “Then doctors started noticing that kids were still getting sore throats, even after having their tonsils taken out. But it wasn’t until clinical trials were completed in the early 1980s that there was proof that tonsillectomy really only helped children with severe, recurrent throat infections.” Later it says, “Despite hundreds of studies, there’s still surprisingly little research on whether tonsillectomy really helps reduce the risk of sore throats. The operation continues to be controversial.” And it says, “There have been very few randomized studies on the effects of tonsillectomy for sleep-disordered breathing. Most of the researchers have asked parents or children if they noticed improvements, and looked at a single measure, like behavior or quality of life. Still, the ENTs recommend tonsillectomy for sleep-disordered breathing, saying it reduces symptoms in most children.” The story does not engage in overt disease-mongering. Good caveats that “not all children with big tonsils have sleep-disordered breathing or frequent throat infections. Because of that, in 2002 the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that children have a sleep study before surgery is considered. About 530,000 tonsillectomies are performed in the United States each year.” The story only quotes one physician, and that source is a surgeon We would have liked to have seen more independent sources tapped – a pediatrician or family medicine doctor would have been helpful. No meaningful discussion comparing alternative treatments. The story was focused on surgery. There was no discussion of prevention – of indoor allergens (and avoiding/treating them with antihistamines) or of obesity. The story does a great job explaining how tonsil surgery as a first resort has evolved over the years. It is clear from the story that surgery is not novel. The story definitely does not rely on a news release.
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9829
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Study Looks at Deep Brain Stimulation in Bipolar Patients
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This solid story on a very small study of deep brain stimulation gives readers a lot of the information they need, but it also likely will lead to some confusion about what the study found. With a little more work clarifying the potential benefits of the treatment and a better discussion of the potential side effects, this story would have provided much more helpful information on a breaking study. Deep brain stimulation has been touted for a number of disorders, including Parkinson’s disease. Because it is expensive and invasive, studies typically only include a few patients at a time, making it difficult to draw broad conclusions from any one study. This story takes the appropriate cautionary tone, giving readers a glimpse of the treatment’s potential while staying well clear of any hype. The treatment of depression and bipolar disorder has improved in the past decades. However despite the relative success of newer medications and a better understanding of the pathophysiology of the disorders, many patients do not obtain either an improvement in symptoms or have relapses while undergoing treatment. Deep brain stimulation has shown some promise in several studies over the past ten years but the jury is still out on its effectiveness and durability. This study is not a landmark but rather one more piece of information.
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true
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bipolar disorder
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We would have liked to have seen a little more information on costs, but we are glad that costs are mentioned up high. In the third sentence, the story says, “The surgery necessary to allow deep brain stimulation is extremely expensive” Later it says, “The cost of the surgery is about $50,000”. It would have been interesting to note whether deep brain stimulation is covered by Medicare or any insurance companies for treatment of any disorders, including Parkinson’s. The story attempts to quantify the benefits in both relative and absolute terms, but it leaves readers confused because of the shifting nature of the study cohort. It looks as if the study started with 17 patients but then later it says that the study looked at 14 patients. It says, “The researchers found that 18 percent of patients went into remission after 24 weeks, 36 percent (of 14 patients) after one year. After two years, of the 12 patients still in the study, seven patients (58 percent) were in remission.” The change in the number appears to be because the researchers stopped doing the deep brain stimulation on three patients, a fact that is not fully explored in the story. This all would have been more easily explained and less confusing if the story had just stuck with the absolute numbers. If you try to do the math on 18 percent of 14 patients, for example, you get 2.52 patients. Was it two patients? Was it three? Why not just tell readers x number out of x number? There’s just one line in the story about harms: “Patients didn’t suffer from side effects, she noted.” The story also says, “The workings of deep brain stimulation as a whole are a mystery, although Mayberg said it may work by changing the brain’s rhythms.” If how it works is a mystery, we think a little more space should have been devoted to potential harms. There were a total of 8 adverse events related to either the surgery or the device, two of which were deemed serious (infection). The story misses these events entirely. The story cautiously explains the evidence and the reasons for the optimism around the evidence. It shows that the study is in a very small group of people — just 17. But it also shows that the study followed them for two years. However, while providing some of the important caveats, it fails to note that there were no control subjects. While the results may appear encouraging, they are by no means definitive without a control group. Nonetheless, we’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt on this one. The story does not engage in disease mongering and makes it clear that it is “too early to know for sure if the treatment is appropriate to be used for any kind of depression.” The story says that the St. Jude Medical Neuromodulation company “provided consulting fees to Mayberg and some of the other study authors” and “is currently recruiting patients for a study that could pave the way for its approval as a treatment for depression.” The story also quotes Samuel James Collier, M.D., assistant professor of psychiatry, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Austin, who provides a welcome dose of skepticism to the story, saying “Medications and ECT — electroconvulsive therapy — are clearly safer, better tolerated, and do not embody a large surgical risk. …I can’t think of a scenario where deep brain stimulation would be considered even remotely before medications and ECT were exhausted.” The story alludes to other treatment options, including medications and electroconvulsive therapy, and it quotes an outside expert saying that these are preferable. The story makes it clear that the treatment is widely available, saying, “Deep brain stimulation has been around for more than 20 years…and is commonly used to treat Parkinson’s disease.” There are no claims of novelty made in the story. The story does not rely on this press release from Emory University.
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1467
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Physics Nobel for laser pioneers includes first woman in 55 years.
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A trio of American, French and Canadian scientists won the 2018 Nobel Prize for Physics on Tuesday for breakthroughs in laser technology that have turned light beams into precision tools for everything from eye surgery to micro-machining.
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true
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Science News
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They include the first female physics prize winner in 55 years. Canada’s Donna Strickland, of the University of Waterloo, becomes only the third woman to win a Nobel for physics, after Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963. Arthur Ashkin of Bell Laboratories in the United States won half of the 2018 prize for inventing “optical tweezers”, while Strickland shared the remainder with Frenchman Gerard Mourou, who also has U.S. citizenship, for work on high-intensity lasers. “Obviously we need to celebrate women physicists,” Strickland said shortly after learning of the prize. The Nobel prizes have long been dominated by male scientists, and none more so than physics. Strickland is the first female Nobel laureate in any field in three years. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said last year it would seek to more actively encourage nominations of women researchers to begin addressing the imbalance. Strickland later spoke of how her predecessor, Goeppert Mayer, had been “allowed to follow her husband from job to job while he ... went up the ranks as a professor”, while she was only allowed to teach or do unpaid research. “Women have come a long way,” she told a news conference in Canada. Her win comes a day after Europe’s physics research center CERN suspended an Italian scientist, Alessandro Strumia, for telling a seminar at the organization’s Swiss headquarters last week that physics was “invented and built by men” and that women were now being favored in hiring for research positions. Jessica Wade, a physicist at Imperial College London who was at the CERN event and unhappy about Strumia’s comments, said having a female Nobel winner was also important given the current fight over U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, who is facing sexual misconduct allegations. “This news could not come at a better time,” Wade told Reuters. “After a week where a woman has been forced to describe her sexual assault to a live television audience of billions, and an academic at a prestigious university has said that women are unfairly promoted into senior positions in physics, even I – the eternal optimist – was starting to lose hope.” The inventions by the three scientists awarded this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics date back to the mid-1980s and over the years they have revolutionized laser physics. “Advanced precision instruments are opening up unexplored areas of research and a multitude of industrial and medical applications,” the academy said on awarding the nine million Swedish crown ($1 million) prize. Ashkin’s work was based on the realization that the pressure of a beam of light could push microscopic objects and trap them in position. A breakthrough came in 1987, when he used the new optical tweezers to grab living bacteria without harming them. At 96, Ashkin is the oldest ever Nobel prize winner, but he is still busy with fresh research. “I am busy working right now, writing an important paper on solar energy,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview. “I’m surprised,” Ashkin said about winning the prize. “A guy called me up on the phone and woke me up.” Mourou and Strickland’s research centered on developing the most intense laser pulses ever created by humans, paving the way for the precision instruments used today in corrective eye surgery and industrial applications. The prizes for achievements in science, literature and peace have been awarded since 1901 in accordance with the will of Swedish business tycoon Alfred Nobel, whose discovery of dynamite generated a vast fortune used to fund the prize. Physics is the second of this year’s crop of prizes and comes after the medicine prize was awarded on Monday for discoveries about how to harness and manipulate the immune system to fight cancer. However, for the first time in decades no Nobel Prize for literature will be given this year after a scandal over sexual misconduct allegations saw a string of members leave the board of the Swedish Academy that awards it. Nobel laureates graphic: tmsnrt.rs/2y6ATVW ($1 = 9.0113 Swedish crowns)
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11135
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Promising new antimicrobials could fight drug-resistant MRSA infection, study finds
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This news release from Georgia State University reports on a study proposing a novel antimicrobial approach for combating methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The news release provides a thorough “big picture” overview of the underlying study and how it fits in with previous work in this area. But while it’s optimistic about the new approach’s potential to fight off MRSA infections in people, the release never establishes that this early-stage research was done in cell culture and not humans. The news release also suffers from an overabundance of technical terms that are left unexplained such as “ATPase,” “efflux pump,” “SecA”, as well as the difference between antibiotic and antimicrobial. Because MRSA is indeed a public health concern, the news release could have included some related statistics. Here’s one from the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Diseases website: “About one-third of people in the world have S. aureus bacteria on their bodies at any given time…The bacteria can be present without causing an active infection. Of the people with S. aureus present, about 1 percent has MRSA, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).” MRSA is a staph bacteria that’s resistant to many types of antibiotics. In some cases it’s life-threatening. MRSA has garnered a lot of attention over the last decades because of its presence in hospitals and communities. Community-acquired MRSA tends to be less severe and located on the skin but when acquired in a hospital or other care facility, infections tend to be more serious since they enter the bloodstream via incisions, wounds and injections. With stricter hospital protocols, life-threatening MRSA is declining. Still, because of the spread of MRSA (and the emergence of even more virulent strains of drug-resistant bacteria) there’s an on-going need for new strategies for fighting drug-resistant infections. Although this strategy to combat MRSA is still in an early stage of development, the work is certainly newsworthy and if it proves effective, it could be important for society-at-large.
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true
|
University news release
|
Even though it’s “early days” for this strategy we’d like to see some mention of costs, if not for the proposed therapy then a related one, or the societal costs of combating MRSA. The release didn’t shy away from forecasting potential treatment benefits based on this early research — so we’d like to see the same approach applied to costs. The news release accurately reports the benefits of the SecA inhibitors over antibiotics. The study considered three traits to be desirable in an antimicrobial. Numerical evidence that SecA inhibitors are preferable over existing antibiotics is reported for two of the traits: potency and inhibiting virulence factor production. However, the news release fails to quantify the advantages of the proposed SecA inhibitors in overcoming the negative effect of efflux pumps on potency. Any new drug developed from this research would have side effects. But whereas the release is optimistic in forecasting that such drugs would be effective treatments for MRSA, it doesn’t also caution that such drugs might cause harm. At the very least, a statement about the fact that potential harms are unknown would have been helpful. The news release makes no attempt to summarize the design of the study nor does it state that the research is based on work in cell cultures and not in patients. In cases where the news value of a release is hinged on the risk the public will perceive of a disease or malady, it is incumbent on the release to point out if this is a cell culture study or a clinical one. And although it is mentioned that the SecA inhibitors are more potent than existing antibiotics on the market, the news release does not seem to grasp that the study is comparing the efficacy in three arenas simultaneously: 1) potency, 2) capability of inhibiting virulence factor production, and 3) overcoming the negative effect of efflux pumps on potency. The release relates to the public’s concern over antibiotic-resistant infections like those caused by MRSA but it doesn’t reach the level of disease-mongering. The release notes the study’s funding sources are the National Institutes of Health and Georgia State’s Center for Biotechnology and Drug Design and Molecular Basis of Diseases Program. No conflicts of interest are disclosed in the release or published study results. The release mentions that there are antibiotics currently used to treat MRSA infections. More detail regarding the effectiveness of these antibiotics and rates of antibiotic resistance would have been welcome. We’ll rate this Satisfactory, since we think most readers will come away understanding that there are no currently available treatments based on this approach. But the release doesn’t explicitly establish the lack of availability of such treatments. Nor does it say how far we might be from having such treatments. Had there been some acknowledgment of the fact that this study was done in cell culture and not people, it would have been clearer that such treatments are not available and won’t be any time soon. The news release does an admirable job framing the context of the study. We are made to understand that the researchers of the study have previously published results on a similar antimicrobial strategy inhibiting SecA for different types of bacteria. The current study examines the efficacy of this strategy for MRSA. The news release concludes with a reference to the most recent study by this same team of researchers, confirming SecA inhibitors are broad-spectrum antimicrobials. We’re rating this Satisfactory for balance and having an objective voice but we think readers would appreciate more explanation of technical terms and concepts.
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22079
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On supporting the budget proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan
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Did Newt Gingrich flip-flop on supporting Paul Ryan's budget?
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false
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National, Federal Budget, Medicare, Newt Gingrich,
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"Jay Newton Small, Time magazine: ""But would you have voted for Ryan’s plan?"" Gingrich: ""Sure."" Small: ""Do you think it would actually save the health care system?"" Gingrich: ""No, I think it’s the first step. You need an entirely new set of solutions."" -- Time magazine interview with Gingrich, April 20, 2011 *** Gingrich: ""... There are things you can do to improve Medicare."" NBC’s David Gregory: ""But not what Paul Ryan is suggesting, which is completely changing Medicare."" Gingrich: ""I, I think that, I think, I think that that is too big a jump. I think what you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options, not one where you suddenly impose upon the -- I don't want to -- I'm against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change."" -- Interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, May 15, 2011 *** Gingrich: ""I made a mistake. And I called Paul Ryan today, who's a very close personal friend and I said that. The fact is that I have supported what Ryan has tried to do on the budget. The fact is that my newsletter strongly praised the budget when he brought it out. And the budget vote is one that I'm happy to say I would have voted for. I will defend and I will be glad to answer any Democrat who attempts to distort what I said. And I made a simple mistake."" -- Interview on Fox News Channel’s On the Record with Greta Van Susteren, May 17, 2011 *** Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., made a splash when he officially entered the 2012 presidential race in mid May. But it wasn’t exactly the splash he was looking for. In addition to a testy exchange with an Iowa voter that was caught on video, a glitter attack by a gay-rights protester, revelations that he had owed a six-figure amount to the luxury retailer Tiffany’s and a series of articles questioning the accuracy of his facts, Gingrich also took heat from conservatives for an alleged flip-flop on whether he supported the budget plan written by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and passed by the GOP-controlled House. Ryan’s budget includes aggressive spending cuts that have energized conservatives, and changes to Medicare that have outraged liberals. Support for Ryan’s plan has become something of a litmus test for Republicans, especially those running for the GOP presidential nomination. So Gingrich’s stance on the plan was bound to become an issue. Gingrich’s views on Ryan’s proposal have indeed varied over time -- and they’ve also been somewhat more nuanced than the popular reaction would indicate. In a Facebook post on March 17, 2010, Gingrich wrote favorably of Ryan’s previous plan, known as the ""Roadmap."" The ""Roadmap"" is broadly similar to the budget resolution passed earlier this year by the House, including in its approach to Medicare. Gingrich’s post called Ryan’s proposal ""a comprehensive, bold solution to America’s serious problem of rapidly rising debt. CBO scores the Roadmap reforms as achieving full solvency for Social Security and Medicare and eliminating all long term federal deficits, balancing the federal budget for the long haul. … I know Congressman Ryan remains committed to improving the quality of life for all Americans, both now and in the future, and this Roadmap represents a comprehensive way to achieve that."" More than a year later, Gingrich told Time magazine reporter Jay Newton Small that he would have voted for Ryan’s latest plan if he’d been serving in the House. Pressed on whether it would ""actually save the health care system,"" Gingrich responded, ""No, I think it’s the first step. You need an entirely new set of solutions."" In other words, Gingrich indicated that the plan was worth voting for but added that it was not a silver bullet. A few days after that, in comments at the Brookings Institution on April 23, 2011, Gingrich once again praised Ryan’s big-picture thinking but added that ""there are details (of the plan) I disagree with."" According to an account in the Daily Caller, one of his reservations involved ""cutting investment in science and research."" Reductions in science funding envisioned under Ryan’s plan are ""essentially like saying I want to save money on your car, we’re not going to change the oil. And for about a year I can get away with it. And then the engine will freeze up, and we’ll have to replace your engine. But if I have a CBO that scores oil but doesn’t score engines, I can annually replace the engine for free, because it won’t count as a budget cost."" This seems to reinforce a view that Gingrich supported the proposal, but not without qualifications. Then came the Meet the Press interview on May 15, 2011. Host David Gregory asked Gingrich, ""Do you think that Republicans ought to buck the public opposition and really move forward to completely change Medicare, turn it into a voucher program where you give seniors … some premium support and -- so that they can go out and buy private insurance?"" Gingrich responded, ""I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering. I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate."" After explaining his desire to instead cut waste and abuse, Gingrich insisted that ""there are things you can do to improve Medicare."" ""But not what Paul Ryan is suggesting, which is completely changing Medicare?"" Gregory suggested. Gingrich said, ""I, I think that, I think, I think that that is too big a jump. I think what you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options, not one where you suddenly impose upon the -- I don't want to -- I'm against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change."" While Gingrich didn’t explicitly tell Gregory, ""I wouldn’t have voted for the Ryan proposal,"" his stance seems pretty clear to us -- that he did not favor the Ryan Medicare overhaul. So we think it’s fair to say that, after the Meet the Press interview, Gingrich had at the very least done a half-flip on the question of whether to implement the Ryan proposal. But that wasn’t the end of it. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page the day after the Meet the Press appearance, Gingrich backtracked somewhat. He said he had ""probably used too strong language"" on the show, though he added, ""I have thought about this for a long time and I am very, very worried. … I think it would be politically catastrophic to pass the bill in its current form,"" at a moment when conservatives have an opportunity ""to break the left for the first time since 1932."" So Gingrich indicated to the Wall Street Journal that he’d overstated his view, but still thought that it would be ""politically catastrophic to pass the bill in its current form."" Yet there was more to come. As a wave of criticism built, mostly from conservatives outraged at his failure to fully back Ryan’s proposal, Gingrich went on Fox News Channel’s On the Record with Greta Van Susteren on May 17, 2011, to extend and clarify his remarks. ""I made a mistake,"" Gingrich said. ""And I called Paul Ryan today, who's a very close personal friend and I said that. The fact is that I have supported what Ryan has tried to do on the budget. The fact is that my newsletter strongly praised the budget when he brought it out. And the budget vote is one that I'm happy to say I would have voted for. I will defend and I will be glad to answer any Democrat who attempts to distort what I said. And I made a simple mistake. ... ""So, let me say on the record: Any ad which quotes what I said Sunday is a falsehood and because I have said publicly, those words were inaccurate and unfortunate. And I'm prepared to stand up -- when I make a mistake, and I'm going to on occasion, I want to stand up and share with the American people, that was a mistake, because that way, we can have an honest conversation."" In other words, Gingrich used the appearance with Van Susteren to back away from any suggestion that he would have voted against the Ryan plan. As we indicated, a close reading of the Meet the Press transcript shows that Gingrich never precisely said that he would have voted against the Ryan plan. But he certainly made clear that he thought a key provision of the plan -- the changes to Medicare -- were ""too big a jump"" for him to support. And by saying on Van Susteren’s show that he ""made a mistake"" in his Meet the Press comments -- a big enough mistake that he felt a need to call Ryan and smooth things over -- it seems like a tacit admission of a flip-flop. We do think that, taken as a whole, there has been more nuance to Gingrich’s stance than some of the coverage has indicated. But his philosophical travels -- from the full-throated Facebook endorsement in 2010, to qualified endorsements in the Time interview and at the Brookings conference, to the downbeat assessment on Meet the Press, to the hasty re-endorsement on Van Susteren’s show -- indicate that Gingrich’s support for the Ryan proposal has ebbed and flowed over time. Gingrich seems to have gone full circle in his views on the proposal, and it qualifies in our book as a ."
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3938
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California Horse Racing Board elects vet as new chairman.
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The California Horse Racing Board has chosen a longtime veterinarian as its new chairman.
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true
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San Diego, Health, Veterinary medicine, California, Gavin Newsom, Horse racing
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Gregory Ferraro was elected Thursday during the board’s meeting at Del Mar racetrack north of San Diego. He was appointed to the governing body five months ago by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Ferraro noted the board has a mandate from Newsom’s office to focus on the health and safety of horses in the wake of 37 horse deaths at Santa Anita since last December. “We have made several important new regulations and changes. There are many more to come,” Ferraro said. “We will gradually eliminate medication. We expect opposition to many of these, but we are determined to carry them out.” Ferraro served as director of the UC Davis School of Veterinary Medicine Center for Equine Health from 1997 to 2014. He owned his veterinary practice from 1972 to 1997. He earned a doctor of veterinary medicine degree from UC Davis and is a member of the American Association of Equine Practitioners and the American Veterinary Medical Association. Ferraro of San Francisco succeeds Chuck Winner, who ended his tenure as board chairman in October. Oscar Gonzales was elected as vice chairman, succeeding Madeline Auerbach, who retired earlier this month.
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