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27869	A teenaged Laura Bush caused the death of a classmate in an automobile accident.	She was barely 17 and she had taken the life of a friend. She has since carried the weight of this, and it changed her, at least according to those who knew her before and after. Only rarely has she spoken of this with the press (although she has often been asked), but even on those occasions her answers have been oblique, almost as if she cannot bear to think of it, let alone speak of it.	true	Politics Politicians, george w bush, laura bush	Driving is one of the most dangerous activities we engage in, and most of us do it every day, little realizing the peril of it. Every year in the U.S. there are approximately 6.5 million traffic accidents, resulting in about 42,000 fatalities. This is the story of one of those accidents. It resulted in the death of someone you’ve never heard of, at the hands of someone you have. In May 2000, a two-page police report pertaining to a fatal accident that had taken place near Midland, Texas, in 1963 was made public. It contained the information that 17-year-old Laura Welch had run a stop sign, causing the death of the sole occupant of the vehicle hers had struck. According to that report, the future First Lady had been driving her Chevrolet sedan to a local drive-in theater on a clear night shortly after 8 p.m. on 6 November 1963 when she entered an intersection without heeding the stop sign and there collided with the Corvair sedan driven by 17-year-old Michael Douglas. Also in the car with Laura Welch was her friend, 17-year-old Judy Dykes. How fast Miss Welch might have been driving is open to question. That part of the police report is illegible, although two biographies of the First Lady refer to her as having been going 50 mph at the time of the collision. The speed limit on that portion of road was 55 mph. According to the police report neither driver had been drinking, but no tests were performed. No charges were filed as a result of the accident. News accounts from 1963 reported the young man as having been thrown from his car and dying of a broken neck; he was pronounced dead on arrival at Midland Memorial Hospital. According to various biographies of Mrs. Bush, the boy’s father had been traveling in a car immediately behind his son’s and witnessed the whole thing. The two teen girls were taken to the same hospital and treated for minor injuries that amounted to bumps and bruises. Michael Douglas, the young man who was killed, had been a member of Laura Welch’s crowd at high school and her friend. He had been a star athlete, excelling in track and football, and was looked up to by his peers not just for his athlete prowess, but for his personality and intelligence too. By all reports, he was likeable, outgoing, and funny. He was nominated as the school’s most popular boy while a junior, an honor that almost always went to a senior. There has always been speculation about the nature of his relationship with Laura Welch. One rumor asserts the two had never dated, but that Laura had been romantically interested in him. Another claims he had been Laura’s boyfriend when he died, and another that he had once been her boyfriend but the couple had subsequently broken up. (The latter theory is advanced in the 2002 biography of the Bushes, George and Laura: Portrait of an American Marriage, which states Laura Welch and Michael Douglas had dated throughout early and mid-1963, but by the fall of that year Michael was going out with Regan Gammon, one of Miss Welch’s closest friends.) The accident is difficult to understand in that it took place on a clear night on dry pavement at a crossroads described as “the middle of nowhere,” where the view was unobstructed and the stop sign that faced Laura Welch was clearly visible. (The intersection was a two-way, not a four-way, stop.) Yet looking to only weather and road conditions to explain what happened is to miss the obvious: there were two teen girls in the car, girls who were on their way to a party and thus who likely would have been bubbling over with chatter about who would be there. Laura Welch, the driver, had turned 17 only two days earlier. She and her passenger were still of an age when they could all too easily shut out everything going on around them, even the approach of another car and the recognition of a stop sign. In her 2010 autobiography, Laura Bush attributed the accident to a combination of a dangerous intersection, the darkness of night, a less than safe car (on the victim’s part), and her own non-optimal eyesight. She acknowledged that the victim, Mike Douglas, was a close friend of hers but stated that he was not her boyfriend: I left Judy’s house and headed to the loop, which back then was a little country road with no streetlights circling around Midland. We talked as I drove along the pitch-black road. I knew in my mind that somewhere ahead was a right turn for Big Spring Street, where the drive-in theater was, because the loop almost dead-ended at Big Spring. Beyond the turn the asphalt stopped, and there was nothing more than a trail of unpaved dirt and dust. Most drivers turned right, toward town. I knew there was a turn, but where that turn was seemed very far away until suddenly, off in the middle of a field, I glimpsed a stop sign with the corner beam of my headlights. At that moment, I heard Judy’s voice: “There’s a stop sign.” And I just couldn’t stop. I was going along, a little below the speed limit, which was fifty-five miles an hour. The next thing I knew, I was in the intersection, and immediately in front of me was another car. It came rushing out of the darkness, and I was right upon it, with a second to turn the wheel. All I heard was the horrible sound of metal colliding, the catastrophic boom that occurs when two hard pieces of steel make contact. [Mike] was a handsome boy with a beautiful smile, and he was a top athlete at Lee. He was not my boyfriend, although for a decade some in the press have claimed that he was. But for years, he was my very close friend. All through high school, Mike and I were good friends; we talked on the phone for hours, and Mike’s circle of close friends included nearly all of my own. And so it was unbelievable to me that it was his car in that almost always empty intersection. It was a small car, a Corvair Monza, Detroit’s version of a compact, economy car designed to compete with the Volkswagen Beetle. It was sporty and sleek, and it was also the car that Ralph Nader made famous in his book Unsafe at Any Speed. He claimed the car was unstable and prone to rollover accidents. I was driving my dad’s much larger and heavier Chevy Impala. So many lives were wrecked that night at that corner, which was known as a particularly dangerous place. Already that year, two other people had lost their lives in crashes where the loop met Big Spring Street. After Mike’s death, the city did install a much bigger stop sign and posted warnings. But it was too late for us. A dangerous intersection, a less than safe car, and me. I don’t see well, I didn’t ever see well, and maybe that played a part. Or perhaps it was simply dark. Judy and I were talking, and I was an inexperienced driver who got to a corner before I expected it. There are those who want to believe the future First Lady deliberately and with malice aforethought murdered her (ex-)boyfriend over some now forgotten teen tiff and who point to what they view as the suspicious circumstances of the accident and the subsequent lack of prosecution as proofs of their supposition. Yet to entertain such a hypothesis is to believe the young woman would have attempted to kill another by doing away with herself. (As the driver of what was intended to be a murder weapon, she would have had no reason to believe she would survive a collision severe enough to be fatal to her prey — that events turned out that way doesn’t mean that outcome could have been reasonably foreseen.) Then there are the circumstances of the crash. It was 8 p.m. on a November night in Texas on roads far removed from any town, so it was dark. With no stop sign facing him, the doomed young man would have had no reason to slow his vehicle even if he had seen another car approaching the intersection. He therefore would have been traveling at least 50 mph. Laura Welch ran the stop sign facing her, so there is reason to assume she too was going approximately 50 mph, the speed she would have been doing if she’d had the right of way. Consider two cars traveling in the dark at right angles to each other, each going approximately 50 mph. The span of time available in which to form murderous intent would have amounted to mere seconds, given the speed at which the event was unfolding and how close the two vehicles had to be to one another before the ill-intentioned would recognize the vehicle of her target. It doesn’t add up. One e-mailed version of the rumor tries to supply an answer to that inconsistency, saying, “She knew it was her boyfriend’s car driving south, because of the unique headlight configuration of his 1962 Corvair Sedan.” The vehicles were traveling at right angles to one another, so an unusual headlight array on one wouldn’t necessarily have been easily visible to the other. (According to automotive experts, the headlight array on the 1962 Corvair Monza was typical of the cars of the day; two headlights on each side, as this photograph shows.) So 17-year-old Laura Welch did cause the death of a friend by running a stop sign, but to see more in the story than that is to surrender oneself up to baseless imaginings. Yes, it is always easier to attribute malice to bad outcomes, but that does not mean malice is an integral component of tragedy, especially those involving people Fate later chooses to exalt. According to George and Laura: Portrait of an American Marriage, Laura Welch did not find out that the driver of the other vehicle had died at the scene until later when she and her girlfriend were being treated at the hospital. And she did not learn his identity until later still, when her parents arrived and broke the news to her. It shattered her.
6306	Maine’s sole med school to boost opioid disorder training.	The federal government’s supporting an effort by Maine’s only medical school to train medical students to treat opioid use disorders.	true	Opioids, General News, Medical schools, Biddeford, Education, Maine	The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s providing the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine with a $450,000 three-year grant to help with the effort. The university says medical students will learn to use federally-approved medications along with counseling and behavioral therapies. University of New England’s interprofessional education coordinator, Jenifer Van Deusen, says there are an estimated 2.5 million people in need of treatment for opioid use disorder in the country. She says the U.S. needs more medical providers who are trained and willing to provide care to address the problem. The effort will also involve updating the school’s medical and physician assistant curriculums.
9979	Topical rub eases kids’ cold symptoms, study says	This story of a clinical trial of a generations-old cough and congestion remedy hits almost all the key points that we would expect of a report on even the most aggressive intervention for a life-threatening condition. Where it falls short is in describing the differences in symptom improvement reported by the groups given VapoRub, petroleum jelly or no treatment. Parents were asked to check boxes on a seven-point scale that went from 1=“not at all” through 4=”moderate” to 7=”very much or very severe.” By using a seven-point scale, instead of a three-point or five-point scale, the trial increased the chances of finding a statistically significant difference, while also increasing the likelihood that the difference would be so slight as to be meaningless. Moreover, in an industry-sponsored trial of which the lead author is a paid consultant skepticism is warranted. When the symptom scale used might detect clinically insignificant differences, and when several key aspects of study design are weak, the consumer should take VapoRub with a grain of salt. The survey questions are available in the journal article posted online at http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/reprint/peds.2010-1601v1 Just because something is statistically significant does not always mean that people can sense a real difference. The big question left unanswered here is whether a one-point shift on a seven-point scale is meaningful.	true	CNN	One could say that the cost of VapoRub is not an important factor, but given how easy it would be to note the price of VapoRub, especially for the amount used in the study, we think the story should have included it. The story does not tell readers how much of a difference there was between the treatment groups. The parents did report improvements, but readers can’t tell from this story just how much. The story would have been better if it pointed out that the parents were asked to rate symptoms on a seven-point scale. For instance, the effect on sleep ranged from 1 or “not at all much” to 7 or “very much” and the VapoRub on average nudged the symptoms just one point more than the petroleum jelly. What does it mean to feel one point better on this scale? The vague description of the relative improvement might lead readers to believe the differences were dramatic. The story reports that almost half of the children who were treated with VapoRub reported side effects including skin irritation or a burning sensation, while none of the children in the other groups reported any side effects. The story briefly describes that the trial had three arms (VapoRub, petroleum jelly, no treatment) and that parents told investigators about their children’s symptoms. But the story failed to report key aspects of the experiment that raise questions about its conclusions.Although parents were instructed to put VapoRub on their upper lips before opening the treatment container (that had VapoRub or petroleum jelly for their child) in order to attempt to mask the treatment, the researchers wrote that the masking effort largely failed. Almost 9 out of 10 parents were able to correctly guess whether their child was treated with VapoRub or petroleum jelly, so the parents’ beliefs about which treatment would be more effective could have influenced their survey responses. For unexplained (and unreported) reasons, the children who got petroleum jelly rubs took more acetaminophen pain reliever, which could suggest that there was some difference in their illnesses. While the story reports that there were differences in responses about sleep, the story does not tell readers that this single question accounted for most of the difference between the treatment groups, indicating that VapoRub may not be superior. The story also does not address the definition of “improvement” used in the statistical analysis, which may be sliced so fine as to be virtually meangingless. The story accurately describes the children in the study as having “symptoms like cough, congestion, runny nose and restless sleep that lasted seven days or more.” The story does include a comment from an independent pediatrician, and the story notes that she works for CNN. It also points out that funding for the trial came from the company that sells VapoRub and that the lead researcher is an advisor to the company. The story points out that there have been growing concerns about other over-the-counter cold remedies for children. It also reports that the children who were not given any treatment also felt better the next day. The availability of VapoRub is well known. Although, there’s nothing new about VapoRub, the story does point out that the product claims have not been tested in this way before. The story does not appear to rely on a news release.
41311	Genetically modified yeast, animal, bacterial and viral DNA in vaccines can be incorporated into the recipient’s DNA causing unknown genetic mutations.	Modified DNA can be used in the production of some vaccines, but is very unlikely to end up in the final product. Even if it did, there’s no evidence it can cause mutations.	unproven	online	Beta-Propiolactone is in vaccines and is known to cause cancer, suspected gastrointestinal, liver, nerve and respiratory, skin and sense organ poison. It may be present in trace amounts of some vaccines. It is potentially carcinogenic, but only in much larger amounts than would be in a vaccine. The antibiotics gentamicin sulfate and polymyxin b are in vaccines and can cause allergic reactions ranging from mild to life-threatening. Traces of these antibiotics can end up in certain vaccines, but would only cause a reaction in someone severely allergic. Genetically modified yeast, animal, bacterial and viral DNA in vaccines can be incorporated into the recipient’s DNA causing unknown genetic mutations. Modified DNA can be used in the production of some vaccines, but is very unlikely to end up in the final product. Even if it did, there’s no evidence it can cause mutations. Glutaraldehyde is in vaccines and is poisonous if ingested and causes birth defects in animals. There are trace amounts in some vaccines from manufacturing, and not enough to cause harm. Formaldehyde is in vaccines and causes cancer in humans among other issues and is banned from vaccines in most European countries. It’s not banned in Europe. There are only trace amounts in certain vaccines and not enough to be carcinogenic. Latex rubber is in vaccines and causes life-threatening allergic reactions. Latex is used in the packaging of some vaccines, which could potentially cause harm if someone’s strongly allergic to it. Human and animal cells from sources like aborted foetuses are in vaccines and are linked to childhood leukaemia and diabetes. They may be used in certain vaccines’ production, but are unlikely to make it to the final product. Mercury (aka thimerosal or thiomersal) is in vaccines and can damage brain, gut, liver, bone marrow, nervous system and kidneys, is linked to autoimmune disorder, autism. Thiomersal isn’t in any UK vaccines any more. This is down to concern around a slightly different mercury-based chemical. MSG is in vaccines and is linked to birth defects, developmental delays, infertility and is banned in Europe. It’s not banned in Europe. It’s used in some vaccines to stabilise them. There’s no strong evidence it causes these problems in humans. Neomycin sulphate, an antibiotic, is in vaccines and can lead to epilepsy, brain damage and allergic reactions. Trace amounts of this antibiotic may end up in certain vaccines. If you are allergic to it could cause an allergic reaction. Phenol / phenoxyethanol is in vaccines and is used as antifreeze. It is toxic to all cells and can destroy the immune system. These chemicals have been used in vaccines as preservatives. They are not in antifreeze. Polysorbate 80 and 20 are in vaccines and cause cancer in animals and are linked to autoimmune issues and infertility. Tiny amounts of Polysorbate 80 is in a type of flu vaccine. There isn’t evidence ingesting it is linked to these issues in humans. Tri(n) butylphosphate is in vaccines and is potentially damaging to the kidneys and the nervous system. We can find no evidence of this being used in vaccines in the UK. Claim 1 of 14
22978	"The cap-and-trade bill before Congress ""prevents you from selling your home without the permission of the EPA administrator."	Chain e-mail claims bill requires EPA permission for homeowners to sell their property	false	Rhode Island, Cap and Trade, Climate Change, Economy, Energy, Chain email,	"""If you own a home, you must read this!"" says the e-mail making the rounds in Rhode Island mailboxes. The message says ""It will come as a huge shock to you if you aren't informed as to what Obama is up to"" and warns that if legislation designated as HR-2454 is approved by Congress, ""a year from now, you won't be able to sell your house. Yes, you read it right."" The reason, according to the e-mail, is that homes, including mobile homes, will be required to meet new federal energy standards before being sold. ""In effect, this bill prevents you from selling your home without the permission of the EPA administrator."" Is there really a plan to require homeowners to get permission from Washington before they can sell their property? It turns out, the authors of this warning aren't reading it right when they discuss the actual legislation, better known as the anti-pollution ""cap-and-trade"" bill that is controversial for other reasons. Here's what PolitiFact found when it looked into the homeowner issue a year ago: There's lots of language in the bill regarding building efficiency. Section 201, for instance, requires building energy codes for new homes to be 30 percent more efficient than current standards when the bill goes into law and 50 percent more efficient by 2016. State and local governments will be responsible for enforcing the new codes, but will receive government allowances to cover the cost of developing and adopting the improvements. And Section 202 of the bill would establish a program that would allow states to help homeowners finance energy-efficient home retrofits; the more energy a retrofit saves, the more money the homeowner would get from the government to subsidize the work. Finally, Section 204 would require the Environmental Protection Agency to develop a model program that individual states could voluntarily adopt to label new buildings for their energy performance. This ""license,"" as the chain e-mail calls it, is only applicable to new construction and would be completely voluntary. In fact, that's a point the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the panel that has jurisdiction over the cap-and-trade bill, makes over and over in its summary of the legislation: ""Nothing would require a homeowner to audit or retrofit their home to ensure that it meets building code requirements,"" the document says. Lane Burt, a building efficiency expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, which supports the legislation, has blogged about the issue. He says the e-mail is false. ""The anti-efficiency crowd have alleged that the [cap-and-trade] bill is going to require Americans trying to sell their homes to undergo some sort of energy inspection or meet some sort of green requirements -- 'or else,' "" he wrote of the supposed requirement in the bill. ""Of course, when I have heard and read this claim there isn't a provision cited, and for good reason -- it doesn't exist!"" he said. William Fay, executive director of the Building Energy Efficient Codes Network -- a coalition including The Alliance to Save Energy, Duke Energy Corp. and the National Association of State Energy Officials among other organizations -- called the e-mail an ""urban myth."" ""The bill certainly does not require a retrofit, or an energy label for an existing home,"" Fay said. ""It does not make them a condition of sale."" This fact-check is clear-cut. There's nothing in the bill that would require homeowners to retrofit their homes to meet new efficiency standards or get a government ""license"" before putting their home on the market. Homeowners who do want to retrofit their homes can do so voluntarily and with the help of government funding. Nonetheless, this e-mail keeps making the rounds, even though it has been debunked by PolitiFact, Snopes.com, and FactCheck.org. There's plenty of debate about the overall bill, which was passed by the House in 2009 on a largely partisan vote and is stalled in the Senate. But there's no debate among the fact checkers, and we invite readers to check one of these sites before blindly forwarding such messages to others."
235	J&J says FTC probing efforts to protect arthritis drug Remicade.	The Federal Trade Commission issued civil subpoenas to Johnson and Johnson in June as part of an investigation into whether contracting practices for its blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug, Remicade, violated antitrust laws, the company said in a regulatory filing on Monday.	true	Health News	Shares of the company traded marginally down at $132.47, after having closed up 1.7% on Monday. (bit.ly/2ZkZGze) J&J said that the FTC had issued a “civil investigative demand,” or CID, the equivalent of a subpoena to determine if the contracting practices were legal. Pfizer Inc filed a lawsuit against J&J in 2017, saying its rival’s contracts with health insurers for blockbuster rheumatoid arthritis drug, Remicade, were anticompetitive and aimed at blocking sales of Pfizer’s biosimilar called Inflectra. Pfizer said in the lawsuit that J&J had contracted with many insurers to give discounts in exchange for giving preference to Remicade, and to only pay for Inflectra in cases where Remicade proved to be ineffective. Inflectra was approved in 2016 while Remicade went on the market in 1998. Remicade is an infused treatment for chronic autoimmune disorders and costs about $4,000 per dose, or $26,000 a year, Pfizer said in the lawsuit. J&J has denied any wrongdoing and is fighting the Pfizer lawsuit. Pfizer said in a statement that it had received a CID in June. “As Pfizer’s complaint alleges, J&J’s unlawful conduct is designed to prevent Inflectra from being able to compete on its primary point of differentiation – price. Today, Inflectra has an average selling price (ASP) that is more than 22% lower than Remicade,” the company said in a statement. “Despite these facts, J&J has not lost substantial volume or share of sales – counter to what should occur in a competitive market.” Biosimilars are intended to be lower-cost alternatives to expensive biotech medicines. But since they are made from living cells and it is not possible to make an exact copy of the branded medicine, they are not automatically substituted for the existing branded drug the way a generic drug would be. The drugs treat ailments like rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis.
7371	South Dakota reports 1 more coronavirus death, 95 new cases.	South Dakota health officials recorded one more COVID-19 death and 95 new confirmed coronavirus cases on Friday.	true	Sioux Falls, Health, General News, South Dakota, Virus Outbreak, Aberdeen, Native Americans, Rapid City	The new figures bring the state’s death toll to 44 and its confirmed case count to 3,887. Health officials have warned the the actual number of infections is higher because many people may not display symptoms or have not sought testing if their symptoms are mild. The death reported Friday was a woman over 80 who lived in Minnehaha County, the state’s most populated area. About 80% of cases in the state have come from the county. Several other areas experienced a rise in confirmed cases this week, with cities like Aberdeen and Rapid City showing small spikes in confirmed cases. Several Native American tribes also reported a handful of cases, which prompted strict lock downs on two reservations. State epidemiologist Josh Clayton warned that infections will increase as people practice less social distancing. Health officials also said 80 people were hospitalized with the disease as of Friday. About two-thirds of people with confirmed cases have recovered, while 1,269 still have active symptoms.
35870	Joe Biden lied in claiming that the accident that killed his wife and daughter involved a driver who had been drinking.	What's true: Biden has at least twice publicly stated or suggested that the driver of the truck that struck his wife's vehicle, killing her and the couple's daughter, had been drinking, even though the driver was not charged with drunken driving (or any other infraction suggesting fault on his part). What's false: No definitive evidence exists to prove or rule out whether the other driver had been drinking, and belief that drinking had contributed to the crash was reportedly prevalent among the local community and not something Biden simply made up on his own.	mixture	Politics	The seminal moment in the career of Joe Biden occurred in November 1972 when, as a 29-year-old lawyer whose only previous political experience was as a member of the New Castle County Council in Delaware, he pulled off an astounding upset victory over a Republican incumbent and won election to the U.S. Senate by a mere 3,162 votes. Six weeks later, however, before he had assumed office, Biden’s life took the most tragic of turns when his wife Neilia and their 1-year-old daughter, Naomi, were killed in an automobile accident. For the ensuing 36 years of his Senate career, Biden famously commuted via Amtrak to Washington, D.C., from the family home in Wilmington, Delaware, daily in order to be home for his sons Beau and Hunter, who had been severely injured but survived the crash that killed their mother and sister. As in any such tragedy, one of the paramount questions is: what caused the fatal accident? Neilia Biden’s station wagon was broadsided by a tractor-trailer truck at an intersection, but who — or what — was the underlying cause of the accident? Social media posts circulated during Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential run declared that Biden had misrepresented the accident as being the fault of a drunken driver, and even that Biden had deliberately lied about it: It is true that at least twice, Biden has publicly stated or alleged that the driver tractor-trailer who hit his wife’s station wagon had been drinking. During a speech he gave at the University of Delaware a week after the 9/11 terror attacks, for example, Biden said: To the loved ones of the victims, there is nothing really we can say to erase this tragedy. And, those of you who think it’s presumptuous of me to say that … in a different circumstance, I got one of those phone calls … I got a phone call saying, “Your wife’s dead; your daughter’s dead.” And I’ve only said that three times in public before. But, I say it here because it’s so important for you to understand. I got one of those phone calls. It was an errant driver who stopped to drink instead of drive and hit a tractor-trailer, hit my children and my wife and killed them. And in December 2007, while stumping for the Democratic presidential nomination in Iowa City, Biden said the following while answering a voter’s question about negative campaigning: “Let me tell you a little story,” Mr. Biden told the crowd at the University of Iowa. “I got elected when I was 29, and I got elected November the 7th. And on Dec. 18 of that year, my wife and three kids were Christmas shopping for a Christmas tree. A tractor-trailer, a guy who allegedly — and I never pursued it — drank his lunch instead of eating his lunch, broadsided my family and killed my wife instantly, and killed my daughter instantly, and hospitalized my two sons, with what were thought to be at the time permanent, fundamental injuries.” The accident took place at the intersection of Limestone and Valley Road in Hockessin, Delaware. At the time, it was a remote, rural section of New Castle County, described as follows by a probationary volunteer fireman who responded to the scene and attended the driver of the tractor-trailer: Limestone Road was a popular trucker shortcut in the Piedmont foothills leading from Delaware into Pennsylvania. The intersection with Valley Road was extremely dangerous, located at the bottom of two steep hills. Truckers traveling in either direction used the momentum coming down one hill, in order to climb the other. The speed limit on Limestone Road, at the intersection, was 35mph and huge REDUCE SPEED signs were posted a half-mile in both directions. Whether Curtis Dunn was speeding is unknown, but he had applied his brakes, which was apparent from twin 150 ft. skid marks. But as Politico noted in a 2009 profile of Biden, the other driver was not charged with drunken driving, or anything else that would indicate fault on his part. Based on evidence and witness accounts, it appeared that Neilia Biden had pulled into the truck driver’s right of way at an intersection with a two-way stop, and the tractor-trailer driver was unable to stop in time to avoid striking her vehicle: The driver of the truck, Curtis C. Dunn of Pennsylvania, was not charged with drunk driving. He wasn’t charged with anything. The accident was an accident, and though the police file no longer exists, coverage in the newspapers at the time made it clear that fault was not in question. For whatever reason, Neilia Biden, who was holding the baby, ended up in the right of way of Dunn’s truck coming down a long hill. “She had a stop sign. The truck driver did not,” Jerome Herlihy told me. He’s a retired judge who then was a deputy attorney general and once was a neighbor to Biden and remains friendly. A pal of Biden at the time asked Herlihy “to go out to the state police troop where the driver of the other vehicle was to make sure everything was going all right,” and so he did. “In the end,” Herlihy said, “I concurred in their decision that there was no fault on his part.” Does this mean Biden was untruthful — even lying, perhaps — when he implied that Dunn had been drinking? According to Lou Angeli, the fireman referenced above who treated Dunn at the scene, observed, no evidence definitively establishes or disproves that point: In regards to intoxication, there was no way to determine if Mr. Dunn had been drinking, since neither of the police officers had breathalyzers aboard their cruisers. His injuries were such that his demeanor was similar to that of someone in a stupor, but those of you who serve in emergency medicine know that such behavior is often presented by victims who are in shock, or perhaps even diabetic. I’ve learned that all of the records pertaining to this accident are lost. It doesn’t surprise me. Back then our ambulance incident report was filled out on a 5×7 card and filed away in a box. Once a month the information was transferred to a master list, which was later placed in storage. If Mr. Dunn was intoxicated, there was no way to determine that at the hospital either, since alcohol blood tests were not mandatory in 1972. The hospital records are missing, as well as the police reports. Angeli asserted that this alleged aspect of the accident wasn’t a “lie” Biden simply made up out of whole cloth, and that right or wrong, rumor and belief that drinking had contributed to the crash was prevalent among the local community: To be honest, those of us in fire-rescue here in Delaware assumed that Mr. Dunn had been drinking, based on comments made by police officers at the scene. And in the Delaware fire service, rumors travel from station to station like wildfire. Until he remarried in 1977, whenever Joe Biden attended a public safety event, parade or spoke during a firehouse banquet, police officers and firefighters would approach him and discuss the accident and the tragedy of his wife Neilia and daughter Naomi falling victim to a drunken driver. Imagine how those discussions must have affected the young Senator. Either way, we didn’t turn up any instances of Biden’s having publicly raised the issue in the last 13 years, and Biden has since apologized to Dunn’s daughter, while his spokesman declared that Biden now “fully accepts the Dunn family’s word that these rumors were false”:
14475	As a legislator, (Marco Rubio) flipped on a key vote after making a quick $200,000 from selling the house to the mother of the bill's lobbyist.	"Trump said of Rubio, ""As a legislator he flipped on a key vote after making a quick $200,000 from selling the house to the mother of the bill's lobbyist."" There’s no evidence Cereceda met the state’s strict definition of lobbying, and he was not registered as a lobbyist. He did, however, pressure Rubio to extend a PIP insurance mandate the then-speaker of the House opposed. His mother also bought Rubio’s house in the middle of a legislative session that could have dealt with the issue, at more than $200,000 what Rubio paid for it. Both men deny the sale influenced debate in Tallahassee, and no one can prove otherwise. Rubio didn’t really have a change of heart on any insurance vote. Months after the 2007 session ended, the House and Senate overwhelmingly agreed on new PIP terms that included fraud protections meeting Rubio’s expectations. Trump’s claim has a basis in real events, but there are several problems with the ethical implication he’s making about Rubio’s time in the Legislature."	false	Candidate Biography, Ethics, Florida, Donald Trump,	"Billionaire Donald Trump likes to talk about his money-making prowess, but lately he’s taken to the airwaves to imply GOP presidential primary rival Marco Rubio has cut deals of his own as a Florida lawmaker. In an ad we first saw on March 7, 2016, Trump’s campaign said Rubio had a history of shady shenanigans as Florida’s speaker of the House. The commercial included a dig about Rubio suspiciously changing his stance on an issue after money changed hands. HELP US RAISE $15,000 TO HIRE AN EXTRA FACT-CHECKER ""As a legislator he flipped on a key vote after making a quick $200,000 from selling the house to the mother of the bill's lobbyist,"" the ad said. The ad hints that Rubio was caught in some kind of pay-to-play scandal without outright accusing him of wrongdoing. Trump’s campaign didn’t elaborate for us, but it appears Rubio wasn’t guilty of much more than a somewhat odd coincidence in the middle of some protracted legislating. The PIP battle Let’s start by going back to 2007 and introducing Rubio’s former West Miami neighbor, a chiropractor named Mark Cereceda. Cereceda was the lobbyist in question here, although calling him that is technically incorrect. We could find no record of him being registered as a lobbyist with the state in 2007 or any other year. He did, however, have a vested interest in the renewal of a type of auto insurance called personal injury protection, or PIP. And he let Rubio know about it. In 2007, when Rubio was House speaker, the state’s mandated PIP coverage was going to expire. The law required $10,000 in coverage that paid for accident injuries to drivers and passengers, no matter who was at fault. It cost about $100 or $200 per year. Then-Gov. Charlie Crist and the state Senate wanted to extend coverage when they met for the 2007 legislative session. The coverage was popular among health insurers and hospitals, which wanted to control costs. But Rubio and some House members weren’t fans, saying the PIP system encouraged too much fraud. Rubio demanded extensive fraud reforms and balked at a Senate proposal that he felt didn’t go far enough. ""We have to wipe out fraud. The current PIP system has so much fraud built into it,"" Rubio said during the 2007 session. ""An entire fraud industry has been created and unless that's addressed, there's no need to do anything."" Clearly, Rubio wasn’t going to budge on PIP without what he considered substantial fraud protections. Cereceda, who had many patients who paid for treatment with insurance, made it a personal mission to change Rubio’s mind. He joined other doctors and chiropractors in a campaign to pressure Rubio to keep the PIP mandate alive. He went to Tallahassee to meet with Rubio. He organized demonstrations at Rubio’s West Miami office. He hired planes to fly banners over Rubio’s home and office. And, curiously, he was tied to Rubio another way at the same time: His mother, Nora Cereceda, was buying Rubio’s house. The house sale Back in February 2003, Rubio paid $175,000 for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in West Miami that was 1,340 square feet. He sold it to Nora Cereceda in April 2007 for $380,000 in a cash sale. That accounts for the $200,000 to which Trump’s ad is referring. Interesting, right? Well, the amount itself wasn’t so bizarre. Keep in mind this is after the housing bubble made home prices go haywire. Paying $380,000 wasn’t unheard of for a house that size within a square half-mile that year. According to property records, a 1,413-square-foot house with three bedrooms and two baths sold for $332,500 in June 2007. Three blocks away, a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home that was 1,960 square feet sold for $373,000 in May 2007. The Miami-Dade Property Appraiser considered it a qualified sale at fair market value. Qualified simply means neither the buyer nor the seller were under any constraints or incentives, like selling a house to a family member. (The price is not such a great deal now, of course; the house had a fair market value of about $213,000 in 2015.) Both Rubio and Mark Cereceda have insisted the transaction was completely unrelated to the PIP issue. It just so happened that Cereceda and Rubio were neighbors, and Rubio’s house was for sale. Nora Cereceda’s husband had died and she wanted to live near her son. She was a retiree with money from a life insurance policy, so the cash sale isn’t so unusual. That’s especially true in Florida, which routinely is among the leading states in cash real estate transactions. The house sale closed April 13. Three weeks later, on May 4, the Legislature adjourned with no deal on PIP. Rubio didn’t budge on his demands for more fraud protections, and state mandates for coverage were scheduled to sunset on Oct. 1. But about that flipped vote … Rubio wrote a letter to Crist on Sept. 28, months after the sale, asking the governor to include ""property tax reform and mandatory auto insurance"" to the list of issues to address at a previously called Oct. 3 special session, the third special session of that year. Rubio said in the letter that both the House and the Senate had worked on reforms that would foster an agreement on PIP. He credited then-House majority whip Ellyn Bogdanoff for creating ""sensible and comprehensive anti-fraud legislation."" Crist agreed, and legislators reached a compromise on Oct. 5, adding three measures to defray fraud. The final bill limited the prices that some medical facilities and doctors could charge for nonemergency care. It also required PIP clinics be owned or supervised by licensed doctors, and added $2 million to the state budget to hire more anti-fraud investigators. The House passed the bill 105-4, with Rubio voting yes. The Senate voted 37-0. He later noted that he considered the fraud protections sufficient, although we now know they didn’t do much to curb the problem. Fraud claims actually increased in the years immediately after lawmakers passed the 2007 PIP bill. They have since dropped after new legislation in 2012. Rubio’s campaign didn’t comment on the ad to PolitiFact Florida, other than to point out the accusation had been proved incorrect years ago when Crist tried to use it against him during the 2010 U.S. Senate campaign. Technically, it’s impossible to say Cereceda had no influence on Rubio. But Rubio didn’t say he would never approve a PIP extension, just that he wanted more protections. The near-unanimous vote in the House shows lawmakers overwhelmingly approved of the changes. Before we issue our rating, a brief afterword on Cereceda: In 2013, he pleaded guilty to charges he made his employees give illegal donations to political campaigns statewide. He and his brother Kemel Cereceda were given 60 days house arrest, three years of probation and fined more than $100,000. A Hialeah judge also lost her seat after taking a bribe from Cereceda. Our ruling Trump said of Rubio, ""As a legislator he flipped on a key vote after making a quick $200,000 from selling the house to the mother of the bill's lobbyist."" There’s no evidence Cereceda met the state’s strict definition of lobbying, and he was not registered as a lobbyist. He did, however, pressure Rubio to extend a PIP insurance mandate the then-speaker of the House opposed. His mother also bought Rubio’s house in the middle of a legislative session that could have dealt with the issue, at more than $200,000 what Rubio paid for it. Both men deny the sale influenced debate in Tallahassee, and no one can prove otherwise. Rubio didn’t really have a change of heart on any insurance vote. Months after the 2007 session ended, the House and Senate overwhelmingly agreed on new PIP terms that included fraud protections meeting Rubio’s expectations. Trump’s claim has a basis in real events, but there are several problems with the ethical implication he’s making about Rubio’s time in the Legislature."
32562	The bitter almond tree was banned in America in 1995 because it treats and prevents cancer.	It is neither true that the FDA has banned bitter almond trees nor suppressed use of the fruit they yield. Bitter almond trees are grown agriculturally in California, and although the sale of their seeds is somewhat restricted, that restriction is aimed at both preventing the peddling of an ineffective derivative to cancer patients and to protect consumers from ingesting high levels of toxic hydrocyanic acid.	false	Medical, cancer	In June 2016 an image macro became newly popular (likely due to a concurrent cancer conspiracy rumor) on social media, holding that the bitter almond tree had been banned across the United States since 1995 because it contains high levels of the cancer-fighting vitamin B17 (also known as Laetrile): The claim was an old and deceptively multi-layered one, asserting that the bitter almond tree had been banned across the United States, that the ban was enacted in a particular year (1995), that the banned substance contained levels of Vitamin B17 sufficient to prevent and treat cancer, and that the unspecified powers that be explicitly and unquestionably banned the plant solely because it could save people’s lives by fighting cancer. First at issue is whether bitter almond trees have been banned in the U.S. (by the Food and Drug Administration or any other agency) since 1995. We found no evidence corroborating that claim outside its widespread repetition. A 2002 Los Angeles Times item referenced that rumor and concluded by stating that the FDA had only prohibited the marketing of bitter almond products for “unrestricted use”: Paul Schrade … fell in love with [the bitter almond’s] powerful, unique flavor, which gives marzipan and almond milk their characteristic taste. Even after he was told that raw bitter almonds contained a form of cyanide and were illegal in the Unites States, Schrade was fascinated. In the United States, the lack of clear information about bitter almonds’ legal status has squelched their cultivation, trade and use. No stores regularly stock bitter almonds, so cooks seeking them have had to rely, like Woods, on seedling trees growing wild along streams, roads and railroad tracks. Over the years, Schrade made dozens of inquiries to federal and state health authorities about the legality of bitter almonds, but never received a definitive answer. Recently, however, a friend steered him to a Food and Drug Administration Web site that states, “Because of their toxicity, bitter almonds may not be marketed in the United States for unrestricted use.” The agency’s regulations do, however, allow almond paste and extract manufacturers to use the nuts as long as their products do not contain more than minute, safe levels of hydrocyanic acid. The FDA clarified the agency’s position recently, saying that it would allow bitter almonds to be shipped interstate to professional chefs and bakers, as long as their dishes were cooked to be nontoxic. But the agency said it would take “appropriate action” against vendors found to be selling bitter almonds to the public in such a way that they could easily be confused with regular almonds. These actions might include issuing a warning, or seizing the product. That article also noted that California’s Department of Health Services (not a federal agency) regulates the cultivation and sale of bitter almonds within the state, and that both are allowed (with some caveats): The FDA regulates interstate commerce in foodstuffs, but bitter almonds grown and sold within California fall under the jurisdiction of the state’s Department of Health Services, which takes a less restrictive approach to retail sales. James Waddell, acting chief of the department’s Food and Drug Branch, says that the agency has no specific regulation covering bitter almonds, but that the nuts could be sold in accordance with its rule for bitter apricot kernels, which requires packages to bear labeling stating: “may be toxic; very low quantities may cause reactions.” The upshot is, California growers and vendors are permitted to sell properly labeled packages of bitter almonds to California consumers. This is good news to Rusty Hall … who grows both sweet and bitter almonds, which he sells at farmers markets and by mail order … It’s not hard to find bitter almond trees in local orchards, he added, but tough to convince a processor to hull and shell the nuts: California sweet almond growers, who harvested 525,000 acres last year, regard bitter almonds as contaminants. Therefore, said Hall, he’d have to wait until the end of the season to pick and process his bitter almonds separately. In fact, the rumor that bitter almond trees have been banned (rather than any actual governmental ban on them) appears to be more of a hindrance to the growth and availability of them than any real legal prohibition does: Because of the almond industry’s fear of bitter nuts, it seemed impossible that anyone would dare to grow them commercially in California. But a little more than a year ago, Schrade announced triumphantly that he had found such a source: Thomas Vetsch, a Swiss American grower from Bakersfield, had a small planting of 3-year-old bitter almond trees, which were just starting to bear, as a sideline to his 1,200 acres of sweet almonds … Vetsch and his wife, Kim, had fallen in love under an almond tree, he said. The almond project was their dream. In addition to selling bulk almonds commercially, they have a smaller venture, Mandelin, that manufactures almond pastes. A perfectionist, he had originally planted some bitter almonds so as to be able to control all the ingredients for the pastes, normally made with imported oil of bitter almond. But when he was asked to show a visitor his bitter almond trees, his expression darkened. At a recent almond industry conference, rumors that someone in Kern County was growing bitter almonds had caused a sensation. Soon thereafter, Vetsch had fired up the chain saws. That interest in bitter almonds is centered in California is unsurprising, as 82% of all almonds consumed around the world are grown in this state. We contacted the Almond Board of California for clarification about the ostensibly murky status of bitter almond trees, and that agricultural trade group affirmed that bitter almond trees continue to grow in the state of California (albeit largely ornamentally rather than commercially): In short, in California all almond trees growing in commercial orchards produce “sweet” varieties of almonds. The sweet or bitter flavor of an almond variety depends on the genetics of the parent tree in the orchard. A “sweet” almond tree produces sweet almonds. A “bitter” almond tree produces bitter almonds, which are extremely bitter! Bitter almond trees are sometimes planted as ornamental trees in home gardens in California. In other parts of the world, bitter almond trees are more common and are harvested commercially. Bitter almonds are used mainly in the production of almond pastes and almond flavor extracts. The retail sale of bitter almonds is illegal in the U.S.; almond snack products sold at retail would all be sweet varieties. What the FDA has targeted is not bitter almond trees themselves, but those who use its derivative products to peddle Laetrile to cancer patients, as a 2004 agency press release explained: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced the outcome of its investigative efforts by the Office of Criminal Investigations, conducted jointly with the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the Eastern District of New York and the New York Division of the United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), to bring to justice a businessman who had victimized cancer patients by heavily advertising and selling Laetrile, a highly toxic product that has not shown any effect on treating cancer. Jason Vale, president of the New York-based Christian Brothers Contracting Corp., was sentenced on June 18, 2004 to 63 months in prison and 3 years of supervised release by a United States District Court in the Eastern District of New York. “There is no scientific evidence that Laetrile offers anything but false hope to cancer patients, some of whom have used it instead of conventional treatment until it was too late for that treatment to be effective,” said Dr. Lester M. Crawford, Acting FDA Commissioner. “This sentence sends a strong message that we will not tolerate marketing of bogus medicines.” Following the investigation by FDA, the USAO, and the USPIS, the U.S. District Court for Eastern District of New York placed Vale’s illegal sales and promotion of Laetrile — also known as amygdalin, “Vitamin B-17”, or apricot pits — under injunction in April 2000. Defying the court order, Vale set up a shell corporation in Arizona, and continued to ship the product from the basement of his own home to customers passed on to him by his New York firm. For these activities, Vale was found guilty 11 months ago of three counts of criminal contempt, and ordered to be held without bail pending his sentencing. Last week, the court also found that Vale, who had made at least $500,000 from his illegal sales of Laetrile, had committed fraud in his marketing of Laetrile. In addition, Vale defrauded the U.S. government by claiming that he qualified for Legal Aid. As a result, Vale was ordered to reimburse the government $31,000 for the costs of his appointed defense attorney. Coincidentally, the rumor that the FDA had “banned bitter almond trees” expressly because “they contain an [anti-cancer compound]” cropped up around the same time that particular crackdown occurred. As as the FDA’s press release made quite clear, the compound issue of toxicity and false information about cancer treatments and cures were their issues of concern. In the 2004 release, the FDA highlighted instances wherein cancer patients had relied on Laetrile to a point where their illnesses were no longer treatable, and prosecution of those peddling the substance were aimed at preventing poisoning and ensuring cancer patients weren’t duped into purchasing ineffective supplements. The National Cancer Institute similarly holds that “Laetrile has shown little anticancer effect in laboratory studies, animal studies, or human studies,” and as far back as 1981 researchers noted that: Despite the promoters’ contrary claims, laetrile must be one of the most thoroughly studied compounds never to have qualified for FDA approval for human investigation under the provisions of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. In 23 different animal tumor models, laetrile has consistently failed to demonstrate any reproducible benefit. These represent all of the standard animal tumor systems and many of these studies have been carried out with extraordinary meticulousness. All currently recognized anticancer drugs have shown effectiveness in at least some of these models … it would implicitly seem [laetrile proponents] agree laetrile cannot be shown to be effective in animal studies. The goverment’s enacting a nation-wide ban on an agricultural product simply because its derivatives could be useful in preventing or fighting cancer makes no sense whatsoever outside of alternative medicine conspiracy circles who regularly assert that a power “cancer industry” suppresses cancer cures from reaching the public in order to generate more profits for those involved in current forms of cancer diagnosis and treatment. If the U.S. had outlawed bitter almonds solely because of their efficacy in treating cancer, then we would be seeing streams of American cancer patients heading for foreign countries with no such regulation to receive treatment, but we don’t. Laetrile has long since been exposed as a quack cure, not a legitimate cancer treatment. On 1 July 2016, an FDA representative responded to our inquiry and confirmed that agency doesn’t have the authority to “outlaw” vegetation of any description from growing inside the United States. The scope of their regulatory practice pertains solely to foods, drugs, and the manner in which substances are marketed, with a 2014 voluntary recall of organic raw almonds (for elevated content of naturally-occurring hydrogen cyanide) serving as an example of the jurisdiction the FDA exercises with respect to food safety.
29336	"Adorable Drug Kingpin"" Sarah Furay avoided charges due to her father's connection to the DEA."	A trial date for Furay has not been set as of May 2017.	false	Crime, america first news, death and taxes, drug enforcement agency	In May 2017, several unreliable web sites (such as America Flash News) published articles with the claim that Sarah Furay, the young woman called the “adorable drug kingpin” after Texas officials found large amounts of methamphetamine, ecstasy, cocaine, and marijuana in her apartment in 2015, had been released due to a family connection with U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration: At the age of 19, you are an adult. You can be charged as an adult if you commit a crime – right? Well, not always, sometimes, it just depends on who your dad is. Sarah Furay was arrested when Texas authorities found methamphetamine, ecstasy, cocaine, and marijuana in her apartment. Furay also had packaging material, two digital scales, and a drug price list in her bedroom. She was charged with one count of possession and three counts of manufacturing and delivery of controlled substances; her bail was set at $39,000. After having spent just one day in jail, Furay was released. Turns out that this young woman’s father is Bill Furay – a DEA agent who has been working with that agency since 2008. This is not an original piece of reporting by America Flash News. The text, which has been on the Internet since at least January 2017, is based on a 2015 blog post on music and culture site Death and Taxes. That post, however, didn’t say that Furay had been let off scot-free. Rather, Death and Taxes took issue with the media’s treatment (including their own reporting) of Furay — making light of her crimes by labeling her “adorable”, for example — and noted that Furay had been released on a “remarkably low bond”, possibly due to her familial connections: As mentioned in our letter of apology for our flippant coverage of Furay’s arrest, you don’t see 19-year-old men and women of color described in reports as “cute” or “adorable.” For that matter, you don’t see them smiling in mugshots. One needn’t wonder why. The criminal justice system and mainstream media are fixed in favor of profiles such as that of a lily-white, college-age girl — and particularly Furay. New information brought to the attention of Death and Taxes reveals that Furay’s father is Bill Furay, a supervisory special agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. He is currently serving as the DEA’s diplomatic attaché at the U.S. Ambassador’s office in Panama City, Panama, and was previously Resident Agent in Charge at the DEA office in Galveston, Texas. However, Furay’s saga didn’t end after she posted bail in 2015. The “adorable” drug kingpin was indicted on four counts of possession with intent to distribute in October 2016: Just under a year after 19-year-old Sarah Furay was arrested on suspicion of dealing drugs from her College Station apartment, the “adorable drug kingpin” has finally been indicted and charged with four counts related to dealing drugs. A Brazos County Grand Jury, convened in July, handed down the indictment last Thursday, charging Furay with four felony counts including: The Houston Press also cleared up why so much time passed between Furay’s arrest and indictment. While outlets such as Death and Taxes attributed this to her DEA father, Lt. Steve Brock, the College Station Police Department spokesman, said that the wait was due to a state issue involving ill-equipped crime labs: When it came out shortly thereafter that Furay is the daughter of Bill Furay, a supervisory agent for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency now stationed in Panama City, Panama who had previously made a ton of arrests of major Houston drug dealers, the story whipped up even more outrage. After all, perhaps Furay had the nerve to grin for the camera because she thought she was going to avoid any serious repercussions from her alleged dealing through her father’s connections, the reasoning went. And the idea didn’t seem far-fetched. Furay only spent a single night in jail before making her $39,000 bond and weeks then months ticked by without any word of an indictment or charges filed against her. However, there was a reason behind the slow pace that had nothing to do with who Furay or her father, according to Lt. Steve Brock, the College Station Police Department spokesman. In fact, Brock explained the hold-up was actually a state issue. Law enforcement organizations not equipped with their own crime labs have to send the evidence off to the Texas Department of Public Safety’s labs, and those state labs are so backed up it takes months to get evidence analyzed and processed. It took at least eight months for the state lab to test and confirm the drugs collected in Furay’s apartment are the real deal. “I know DPS did everything they could to get this stuff processed as quick as possible,” Brock says. “As soon as we got the results we confirmed that with the district attorney and they’re the ones who convene the grand juries.”
2650	Gravity-defying workouts lift fitness routines.	More exercisers are taking their fitness to the air these days, held aloft by technology borrowed from sources as far-flung as the space program and the circus.	true	Health News	"A student takes part in an ""antigravity"" yoga class at the Om Factory in New York August 16, 2011. REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton Experts say if you adhere to the learning curve, going anti-gravity can be just the thing to relieve overused joints and revitalize an earthbound routine. Stephen Csolak, fitness manager at a Manhattan branch of Equinox, the national chain of luxury fitness centers, uses an anti-gravity treadmill, called Alter-G, on a range of clients, from marathoners to the morbidly obese. “You have this bubble around you and you’re floating on top,” he said, describing how the Alter-G, which was developed from NASA technology, uses air pressure to gently lift the user. “If we remove a percentage of someone’s body weight by altering the effect of gravity, we come up with a lot of different benefits for a lot of different populations,” he said. So marathoners can train for speed and endurance with reduced risk of injury, older adults can exercise with reduced pressure on their joints and the obese can work out unencumbered by their extra pounds. “Being on the anti-gravity treadmill allows the obese client to feel their target weight, what they’d feel like if they were 20, 30 or 40 pounds (nine, 14 or 18 kilograms) lighter,” Csolak said. First lessons on the Alter-G are supervised, he said, and clients get hooked easily because it’s such fun. “I don’t believe there’s anything like it, other than swimming,” he said. “Swimming’s also a zero-to-minimal impact cardiovascular workout.” Jessica Matthews, a spokesperson for the American Council on Exercise, said she’s seeing more anti-gravity group fitness classes. “I think of anti-gravity as anything where you’re physically suspended,” said Matthews, a California-based exercise physiologist. Offerings range from yoga classes where participants hang from hammocks, to group instruction in executing Cirque du Soleil-style stunts. “There can definitely be a place for this,” she said. “But in a group setting, when you have 30 to 40 people hanging upside down in a room, safety is key.” Sabrena Merrill, a Kansas City, Missouri-based fitness expert, has developed a fitness program that uses aerial silks suspended from the ceiling. She said her goal is to bridge the gap between the performance and fitness worlds. “Climbing silks, doing foot locks and body wraps twice a week in lieu of resistance or weight training, definitely works the body hard,” Merrill said. The mechanics of being in the air forces your core to work differently, she explained, but the focus of her workout remains on the basic components of strength, flexibility and endurance. “Most women can’t imagine doing a pull up,” she said, “But after this training, they will do a pull up. Upper body strength will change.” Merrill, who trains fitness professionals in the class, agrees that safety is crucial. Clients are screened for pregnancy, high blood pressure and medication. “We just don’t go very high off the ground, about one foot off the ground for most. And there’s a protective mat underneath,” said Merrill. She doesn’t contend that the aerial silks workout is superior resistance training, but it might be more fun. “It’s not better or worse, just different,” she said. “I can’t stress enough the enjoyment of the play. You feel like you’re a circus performer.”"
13032	Since the Sandy Hook tragedy, more than seven children PER DAY have died from gun violence.	"California Congresswoman Jackie Speier recently claimed: ""Since the Sandy Hook tragedy, more than seven children PER DAY have died from gun violence."" Speier’s claim is backed up by the CDC’s fatal injury report data, which shows an average of 7.15 young people per day, aged 0 to 19, died in connection with firearms between 2013 and 2015. It’s important to note these include all types of gun deaths: accidents, homicides and suicides. All gun deaths are violent, but Speier’s statement could be interpreted as only including homicides or accidents. Finally, Speier’s claim might also lead some to think she’s talking about young school aged children, given that she invokes an elementary school shooting. The data show teenagers and young adults make up the vast majority of deaths due to guns in America, while elementary aged children account for a small fraction. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the source Speier relied on, offers a more complete look at this statistic on its website. It notes that children ""and teens"" are included in the seven deaths per day. Speier’s statement is on the right track. But it could have used some clarifications."	true	Children, Crime, California, Guns, Jackie Speier,	"U.S. Rep. Jackie Speier, D-San Mateo, is one of California’s most prominent advocates for gun control -- and one of the few members of Congress to personally experience and survive gun violence. Speier was shot five times at point blank range in 1978 on a trip accompanying Rep. Leo Ryan to Jonestown, the remote commune in Guyana where 909 people died from cyanide poisoning and other means. Speier was a legal adviser to Ryan, who along with four others were shot and killed in an ambush near the compound. Speier was rescued a day later. Since then, she’s spent much of her career in politics leading the call for gun safety. It was no surprise Speier spoke out against gun violence on Dec. 14, 2016, the fourth anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The shooter killed 20 students, ages six and seven, along with six adult staff members in what’s considered the deadliest mass shooting at a school in U.S. history. On the anniversary, Speier posted an image on Twitter of herself holding a card reading #EndGunViolence. Above the image she claimed: ""Since the Sandy Hook tragedy, more than seven children PER DAY have died from gun violence."" We wanted to know whether the startling and somber statistic was true. We set out on a fact check. Our research A spokeswoman for Speier cited the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence as the source of the statistic. She said the campaign used information from an online database of fatal injury reports maintained by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We did not hear back from a spokesman for the Brady Campaign. But we found a similar statistic on the organization’s website: ""Every day, 7 children and teens die from gun violence."" The website notes that it crunched CDC data for children and young people through age 19. The federal agency is considered a leading authority on mortality and injury statistics. It includes data through 2015. To examine Speier’s claim, we searched the database for the number of young people who died in connection with guns from the start of 2013 through 2015. Those are the most recent available years following the Sandy Hook shooting. We found 7,838 deaths in connection with firearms for people ages 0 through 19. That works out to 7.15 deaths a day during this three-year period -- which matches Speier’s claim of ""more than seven"" per day. These include all types of gun deaths from accidents to homicides to suicides. About 36 percent resulted from suicides. Some might take issue with Speier lumping in 18 year-olds and 19 year-olds as children. Gun deaths for these two ages accounted for nearly half of the 7,838 young people killed in the two-year period. Here’s a look at the breakdown of deaths by age group: 0-4 years: 247 5-9 years: 218 10-14 years: 847 15-19 years: 6,526 The National Institute of Justice, a research arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, has stated that young people aged 15 to 24 are the group most at risk for gun violence. If considering only elementary school aged children, the total who die in connection with guns would be roughly one every four days -- still a tragic number, but not close to seven per day. We interpreted Speier’s use of the word children, however, to include a broader group of young people, including teenagers. Our ruling California Congresswoman Jackie Speier recently claimed: ""Since the Sandy Hook tragedy, more than seven children PER DAY have died from gun violence."" Speier’s claim is backed up by the CDC’s fatal injury report data, which shows an average of 7.15 young people per day, aged 0 to 19, died in connection with firearms between 2013 and 2015. It’s important to note these include all types of gun deaths: accidents, homicides and suicides. All gun deaths are violent, but Speier’s statement could be interpreted as only including homicides or accidents. Finally, Speier’s claim might also lead some to think she’s talking about young school aged children, given that she invokes an elementary school shooting. The data show teenagers and young adults make up the vast majority of deaths due to guns in America, while elementary aged children account for a small fraction. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, the source Speier relied on, offers a more complete look at this statistic on its website. It notes that children ""and teens"" are included in the seven deaths per day. Speier’s statement is on the right track. But it could have used some clarifications. – The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
17823	Eighty percent of the antibiotics in this country are fed to livestock.	"Slaughter said ""80 percent of the antibiotics in this country are fed to livestock."" The statistic comes from a comparison of FDA sales data for food-producing animals and private sales data for humans since 2009 — not all antibiotics sold in the United States. A letter from the FDA to the congresswoman confirms that most of the drugs for livestock are consumed in food and water. That means the percentage ""fed"" to animals may not be quite as high as 80 percent, though it would be close. Slaughter could have said more clearly that of all the antibiotics sold for use by people and livestock, 80 percent are for animals. But she was close."	true	Environment, Agriculture, National, Animals, Consumer Safety, Drugs, Food Safety, Public Health, Science, Louise Slaughter,	"A salmonella outbreak traced to California chicken processing plants recently prompted Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., to raise a pet issue on MSNBC: antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The federal shutdown was limiting government’s ability to track infection, she said. But then she pointed to a deeper issue: ""the overuse and ruination of antibiotics."" An advocate for tougher requirements for farm use of such drugs, Slaughter told host Joy-Ann Reid that she’s been ""trying to save antibiotics for persons — for human beings."" ""Eighty percent of the antibiotics in this country are fed to livestock every single day, and it's creating a terrible problem of resistant bacteria,"" she said. Eighty percent is an awfully big number, and we were curious: Do livestock consume the bulk of the nation’s antimicrobial drugs? It’s an important question, because according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wide use of antibiotics in food-producing animals ""contributes to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in food-producing animals."" Emergence of resistant bacteria means if you get infected with bacteria from the food you eat, it might be harder to fight that infection with antibiotics. Drug resistance may be contributing to higher hospitalization rates in the recent salmonella outbreak, for example, the Los Angeles Times reported. Here’s how it works, according to the CDC: Ranchers give animals antibiotics, which kills off or suppresses susceptible bacteria, but allows antibiotic-resistant bacteria to thrive. Those resistant bacteria may be transmitted to people through the food supply, such as by eating undercooked salmonella-tainted chicken. Since the bacteria are resistant to some antibiotics, the infections may be harder to fight, causing ""adverse human health consequences."" So CDC ""encourages and supports efforts to minimize inappropriate use of antibiotics in humans and animals."" You’re probably aware of this effort in humans — it’s why doctors are discouraged from giving their patients antibiotics to treat nonbacterial infections such as cold and flu. Widespread use of antibiotics when they’re not required helps bacteria develop defenses to the drugs in a sort of microscopic arms race. It’s also the reason the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has asked farmers to phase out certain antibiotics important to human medicine when used merely to promote growth in animals. (The industry says this accounts for a small amount of antibiotic use. The FDA says it’s hard to say.) So, back to the 80 percent number. It turns out it has been a popular talking point since 2010 among those who advocate for restricting use of antibiotics on farms. That’s the year the FDA released newly required data on sales of antibiotics by manufacturers for food-producing animals. The FDA didn’t release sales information on antibiotics for human use, but pointed to national projections from IMS Health, a Connecticut company that compiles proprietary health data. The numbers let folks compare the millions of kilograms of drugs sold by manufacturers for use by food-producing animals (13.1 million kilograms) in 2009 with those sold for use by people (3.3 million kilograms). The 13.1 million kilograms of antibiotics sold for animals was 80 percent of the total amount of drugs sold for both humans and animals, which was 16.4 million kilograms. We should note this comparison doesn’t account for all antibiotics sold in the United States. For example, it doesn’t count antibiotics sold for household pets. A researcher with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health’s Center for a Livable Future first did the math for a 2010 blog post that’s been widely cited. (The most recent reports reveal a similar proportion, as calculated by the Pew Campaign on Human Health and Industrial Farming.) Pharmaceutical company lobby groups such as the Animal Health Institute, though, have cried foul. It says the number is ""wrong and misleading, for several reasons,"" and cites the FDA. The FDA has indeed offered a ""caution regarding comparisons of human and animal antibacterial drug sales data."" It repeated some of those cautions in a 2012 letter to Slaughter herself. But while it offers a series of caveats about drawing ""definite conclusions"" from ""direct comparisons"" about the drug sales data — such as differences in dosages between different drugs and in the sizes of human and animal populations — it confirms both sets of sales data essentially measure the same thing. Both show the volume of antibacterial drugs, by weight, being sold to various outlets from the manufacturer. So, while they don’t offer a direct estimate of human or animal use, they do offer a comparison of sales by manufacturers for both groups. In 2011, the FDA provided the IMS Health sales estimates directly to Slaughter, describing the sales numbers as ""a surrogate for human use to compare to antibacterial drug use in animals."" We should note that about a third of the antibiotics used in food-producing animals are ionophores, a type not used in humans. (The agriculture industry argues this means they have nothing to do with antibiotic resistance in humans; Lawrence at Johns Hopkins says they may still contribute.) If you remove ionophores from the sales data comparison, the proportion of antibiotics that go to food-producing animals vs. humans drops to around 70 percent. There are also also plenty of limits, as the FDA points out, on the usefulness of the publicly released sales data to inform public policy on antibiotics on farms. They don’t illuminate the reasons animals get the drugs (to promote growth? to treat infection? both?). They don’t specify how the antibiotics are administered (injection? food?). The FDA’s asking for comments on how it might release more of the information it collects from animal drug companies, and says it will update reports from previous years with that new data. That might include, for example, a detail it confirmed to Slaughter’s office in a 2011 letter — that nearly all antibiotics reported for animal use to the FDA were delivered in food and water, as opposed to by injection. Meanwhile, the industry uses the current lack of detail to downplay the usefulness of the statistic, even as it fights efforts to gather and release more information. Sales data is ""not at all useful for understanding the benefits or the risks of using antibiotics to keep animals healthy,"" Ron Phillips of the Animal Health Institute told PolitiFact. Others disagree and argue that the data is actually quite revealing. ""There is some uncertainty in these data, but not enough to escape the fact that the vast majority of antibiotics in this country are used in food animals, not to treat sick people,"" wrote Robert Lawrence, a doctor who directs the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins. Slaughter, meanwhile, is sponsoring two bills, the Delivering Antimicrobial Transparency in Animals Act and the Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act, to require more detailed monitoring and to limit the use of antibiotics to sick animals. Among those lobbying against both: the Animal Health Institute. Our ruling Slaughter said ""80 percent of the antibiotics in this country are fed to livestock."" The statistic comes from a comparison of FDA sales data for food-producing animals and private sales data for humans since 2009 — not all antibiotics sold in the United States. A letter from the FDA to the congresswoman confirms that most of the drugs for livestock are consumed in food and water. That means the percentage ""fed"" to animals may not be quite as high as 80 percent, though it would be close. Slaughter could have said more clearly that of all the antibiotics sold for use by people and livestock, 80 percent are for animals. But she was close."
16653	"In the ""do-nothing Senate,"" there are 352 House bills ""sitting on Harry Reid’s desk awaiting action,"" including 55 introduced by Democrats."	"Jenkins said that in the ""do-nothing Senate,"" there are 352 House bills ""sitting on Harry Reid’s desk awaiting action,"" including 55 introduced by Democrats. In some cases, committee chairs -- not Reid -- may be blocking or moving slowly on these bills. In other cases, senators are working on their own alternative bills on the same topic. Meanwhile, the claim oversells the degree of bipartisanship in the House; a majority of the Democratic-sponsored bills she cites are relatively minor pieces of legislation. Ultimately, Jenkins places all the blame on the Democrats and the Senate, but experts agree that it takes two to tango. Both parties and chambers have played a role in creating the current legislative dysfunction."	mixture	National, Congress, Lynn Jenkins,	"Members of Congress recently decamped to their home districts for the August recess, but the never-ending partisan skirmishing on Capitol Hill continues. Many readers told us they saw references on social media to a comment by Rep. Lynn Jenkins, R-Kan., about House-passed bills dying on the doorstep of the Senate. They asked us to take a closer look, so we did. Here’s the full text of Jenkins’ comments, made at a press conference on July 29, 2014, as the final week of the congressional session was winding down: ""The president is fond of referring to the House as the ‘do-nothing Congress.’ But we have 352 reasons why it’s a ‘do-Nothing Senate.’ ""352 bills are sitting on Harry Reid’s desk, awaiting action. ""98 percent of them passed with bipartisan support -- Republicans and Democrats working together to pass legislation. ""50 percent of the bills passed unanimously, with no opposition. ""70 percent of the bills passed with two-thirds support in the House. ""And over 55 bills were introduced by Democrats. ""352 bills. Why won’t Harry Reid act? These are good bills; bills that put the American people back to work, put more money in hardworking Americans pockets, help with education, and skills training. We call upon Harry Reid to get to work before he adjourns in August to pass some of these bills. The American people deserve better."" Jenkins offered a lot of statistics in a short statement, so to keep this fact-check manageable, we’ll focus on her claim that in the ""do-nothing Senate,"" there are 352 House bills ""sitting on Harry Reid’s desk awaiting action,"" including 55 introduced by Democrats. Have 352 bills passed the House but await action in the Senate? Basically, yes. We used the THOMAS congressional database to pluck out the 733 measures that have passed the House so far this year. We then weeded out a few categories of bills -- ones that, for procedural reasons, were never intended to go to the Senate (such as election of the Speaker, assignment of lawmakers to committees, and procedural motions) or ones that were subsequently taken up by the Senate (either being passed or rejected). What remained were 342 individual bills. That’s 10 fewer than what Jenkins claimed, but we have no quarrel with her number, since the difference likely stems from additional bills being passed in the couple of days between when she spoke and when we looked through the database. Are these bills ""sitting on Harry Reid’s desk awaiting action""? Resolving this claim is murkier. First, a technical problem. It’s an oversimplification to say that these bills are ""sitting on Harry Reid’s desk."" Many have been assigned to committees, where they would need to be approved before being taken up on the floor. While Reid has influence over what committee chairs do, a chair can -- using their own powers -- decide to either fast-track or stall a bill coming over from the House. Another complication: In at least some cases, the Senate is working on a bill on the same topic, but without using the House bill as a starting point. ""The disposition of a House bill is not particularly relevant to measuring Senate legislative activity,"" said Steven Smith, political scientist and Senate specialist at Washington University in St. Louis. We should also note that in the Senate, one member -- either from the majority or the minority -- can stop a bill in its tracks by threatening to filibuster -- a delay that requires 60 votes to break. Reasonable people can disagree about whether Reid or Senate Republicans are the biggest offenders -- we previously addressed some of those issues -- but the experts we checked with said both parties share at least some of the blame. ""There's plenty of blame to go around,"" said Donald Wolfensberger, a former Republican House aide now studying Congress at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Wolfensberger sees Reid as the bigger offender by blocking bills and amendments ""to protect his vulnerable members who are up for re-election in November. You can blame the threat of filibusters and politically sensitive amendments from Republicans, but politics ain't bean bag. Senators were sent there to cast the tough votes, not to be pampered, protected and coddled by their leaders."" Others see Republican threats as the bigger problem. ""It is true that some bills, including some of substance, are being blocked by Reid from action because he wants to avoid Republican amendments of the ‘gotcha’ variety that could work against some of his endangered incumbents up this fall,"" said Norm Ornstein, a congressional scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. ""You can make a case that the role of the majority is to suck it up and do votes, even if some are uncomfortable. But on the balance sheet, the bigger reality is that very few of the bills passed by the House were aimed at compromise or agreement with the Senate."" A spokesman for Jenkins, Thomas W. Brandt, told PolitiFact, ""Only Sen. Reid can bring these bills up for a vote, and if he did, it would go a long way in ending the legislative gridlock currently plaguing Washington."" Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Reid, countered by noting that there are 50 bipartisan Senate-passed bills awaiting House action. (Here's the list.) Do the House-passed, Senate-stalled bills include 55 introduced by Democrats? On the number, Jenkins is basically right -- we counted 54. But if this statistic is intended to communicate how generously the House treats its minority caucus, Jenkins’ talking point is somewhat overblown. Unlike the Senate, where the minority party and individual lawmakers hold notable leverage, the House is structured -- regardless of which party is in power -- as a tyranny of the majority. Whoever has the most votes and holds the Speaker’s gavel determines which bills get considered, and precisely how they get considered. Minority-party preferences are granted, if at all, as a favor from the majority. The number of Democratic-sponsored bills Jenkins mentions -- 55 -- accounts for just 16 percent of all House-passed bills now awaiting consideration in the Senate. But even that figure is misleadingly high. When we took a closer look at the 55 Democratic-sponsored bills that passed the House, we found that fewer than half -- 24 -- could reasonably be described as substantive. And many of these were the kinds of measures lawmakers would be hard-pressed to vote against -- for instance, the National Pediatric Research Network Act of 2013, the Homes for Heroes Act of 2013, the Traumatic Brain Injury Reauthorization Act of 2014, the Newborn Screening Saves Lives Reauthorization Act of 2013, the Protecting Students from Sexual and Violent Predators Act and the Human Trafficking Prevention Act. The remainder of the 55 Democratic-sponsored bills -- a majority -- aren’t exactly the most high-profile measures pending in Congress. Thirteen were technical changes to local federal lands; five approved honorific names for postal or other buildings; four addressed federal studies or advisory committees; three were bills sponsored by a non-voting territorial delegate; three concerned narrow technical corrections to existing legislation; one concerned U.S. coinage; and one was a private bill granting an immigrant visa to an individual. So House bipartisanship lives, but let’s not oversell it. Why the numbers don’t tell the whole story Experts say this bill counting merits a grain of salt. As the breakdown of the 55 Democratic-sponsored bills suggests, many of the measures that pass the House -- and some that go on to pass the Senate -- are noncontroversial bills. Wolfensberger crunched the numbers for us and found that of the 570 bills and joint resolutions that have passed the House in the current Congress, 377, or 74 percent, originated as suspension bills -- a streamlined process used for non-controversial measures that requires two-thirds approval. And of the 142 measures signed into law by Obama, 118, or 83 percent, were approved by that same two-thirds requirement. Meanwhile, many of the other bills that pass the House in today’s environment are bills that are intended to make a statement, not a law. Ornstein contrasted bills that are ""designed to lay the predicate for action via compromise"" or consensus, which are declining, and those ""designed for show or as a political statement, where there is neither intention nor expectation that the other house will act on them."" Where substantive, contentious legislation is concerned, the odds of passage are poor. One example is the Senate-passed (and bipartisan) immigration bill, which remains stuck in the House. Another sign is the fact that the Senate has not yet passed any of the 12 annual appropriations bills -- even though the House has passed seven and the Senate Appropriations Committee has approved eight. By contrast, the second category of ""show"" bills includes dozens of full or partial repeals of the Affordable Care Act passed by the Republican House. Sarah Binder, a congressional scholar at the Brookings Institution, said a fundamental reality of today's political landscape is that ""the two chambers' majorities have different agendas and priorities and different ideas of what constitutes a 'problem.' And even when the parties agree on the need to address an issue, their prescriptions differ. That complicates the legislative process, and in the current period of high partisanship, it seems most often to bring the legislative process to a halt."" Our ruling Jenkins said that in the ""do-nothing Senate,"" there are 352 House bills ""sitting on Harry Reid’s desk awaiting action,"" including 55 introduced by Democrats. In some cases, committee chairs -- not Reid -- may be blocking or moving slowly on these bills. In other cases, senators are working on their own alternative bills on the same topic. Meanwhile, the claim oversells the degree of bipartisanship in the House; a majority of the Democratic-sponsored bills she cites are relatively minor pieces of legislation. Ultimately, Jenkins places all the blame on the Democrats and the Senate, but experts agree that it takes two to tango. Both parties and chambers have played a role in creating the current legislative dysfunction."
12361	When Obamacare was signed into law, CBO estimated that 23 million people would be covered in Obamacare’s exchanges in 2017. They were off by more than 100 percent. Only 10.3 million people are covered by Obamacare.	The White House tweet was correct in saying that the CBO had originally estimated that 23 million people would participate in the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges, and that only 10.3 million people currently are participating in these. The White House chose to cite a report that has been updated by the CBO following significant legislation affecting its predictions. To make its case that the CBO is unreliable, the Trump administration cherry-picked a statistic that CBO got the most wrong. The forecasters were closer to actual results on other major components of Obamacare, including Medicaid and employer changes.	mixture	National, Corrections and Updates, Health Care, Donald Trump,	"Seeking to bat down the news in a Congressional Budget Office report about the Senate’s Better Care Reconciliation Act, President Donald Trump’s administration attempted to undermine the CBO’s credibility in a tweet. The official White House account tweeted an image that said, ""When Obamacare was signed into law, CBO estimated that 23 million people would be covered in Obamacare’s exchanges in 2017. They were off by more than 100 percent. Only 10.3 million people are covered by Obamacare."" Trump retweeted the message. FACT: when #Obamacare was signed, CBO estimated that 23M would be covered in 2017. They were off by 100%. Only 10.3M people are covered. pic.twitter.com/A7Kthh3gDQ We wanted to start by addressing that CBO was ""off by more than 100 percent,"" which wasn't very specific. The original prediction was 123 percent higher than actual marketplace enrollment. Another way to put it: Marketplace enrollment was 55 percent lower than what CBO estimated. (This would be the most natural way to calculate the projection accuracy, said Matt Fiedler, a fellow with the Center for Health Policy at Brookings.) In this fact-check, we wanted to look at the broader attack on CBO’s accuracy. Was the nonpartisan agency’s original look at who would gain insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces off by 12.7 million people? We found that the CBO report written after Obamacare was signed into law in March 2010 indeed estimated 23 million people would participate in Marketplace exchanges. According to the latest figures, only 10.3 million currently participate in those marketplaces. The talking point neglects to mention, however, the CBO report’s accuracy in predicting the uninsured population at a historic low, which is what occurred. Given the information available at the time, the agency offered projections closer to reality than any other forecaster. The Obamacare exchanges are online marketplaces for health insurance, designed to give those who are not covered by employers, Medicaid or Medicare access to coverage from competing private health care providers. Some states set up their own marketplaces, while others defaulted to a federal-run Healthcare.gov shop. The CBO’s estimate for exchange enrollment was too high for a number of reasons, experts told us. The CBO originally predicted people would drop employer and non-group coverage to move into the exchanges, and that fewer people would enroll in Medicaid. Instead, fewer employers than expected dropped coverage. And the Republican-led Congress blocked funding for the risk corridor program, leading some insurers to exit the marketplace and to increases in some premiums. More people than expected also enrolled in Medicaid. Republican-led states also passed restrictions on some of the features designed to boost marketplace enrollment, including enrollment assistance and outreach efforts. The Trump administration continued in this vein, putting an end to all media outreach intended to boost last-minute signups prior to the Jan. 31, 2017 deadline. Already paid-for ads and emails to HealthCare.gov visitors were cut. ""It would have been hard for CBO to accurately anticipate how persistently hostile GOP state and federal politicians would be towards the ACA, which undoubtedly has helped suppress Marketplace enrollment,"" said Ben Sommers, an associate professor of health policy and economics at Harvard University. The courts also threw a wrench in the CBO estimate about exchange enrollment. When CBO researchers made their original prediction about the Affordable Care Act, they did not know that the Supreme Court would rule against the law’s mandatory Medicaid expansion in 2012. The court determined it was up to the states to decide whether to expand coverage, and 19 states decided against the expansion. This affected the CBO’s estimate for the uninsured population. (Instead of a reduction of 32 million uninsured by 2016, the count was closer to 20 million.) But it had ramifications for the exchanges, too. ""The Supreme Court decision slightly changed the exchange estimates and substantially changed the overall estimates,"" said Sherry Glied, the dean of New York University’s graduate school of public service. One reason was that the growth of health care costs was lower than expected. ""Because of the way the subsidies were designed, lower costs meant that fewer people were eligible for subsidies (since subsidies depend on the ratio of premiums to incomes),"" Glied said. ""That, in turn, likely meant that fewer people switched from employer coverage to the exchanges."" The CBO made another adjustment to its exchange enrollment projection in January 2016, from 21 million predicted at that time to 13 million. The estimate followed the Obama administration’s transitional policy that allowed people to hang onto their pre-ACA health plans through 2017. ''Most of the unsubsidized people who are no longer expected to purchase insurance through an exchange are expected to purchase insurance directly from an insurer instead,'' said the adjusted 2016 report. The Obama administration at the time said enrollment fell below projections because fewer employees went to the exchanges for insurance as more employers maintained coverage of employees. The 13 million-enrollment estimate is closer to the most recent estimate from a June 2017 news release from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. ""The Effectuated Enrollment Report shows that 12.2 million individuals selected a plan at the end of Open Enrollment, but only 10.3 million followed through to pay the premiums necessary to maintain coverage as of March 15, 2017,"" according to the release, to which White House spokesman Steven Cheung referred in response to our query. In addition to the tweet pointing at the CBO’s inaccurate projection on exchange enrollment, the White House criticized the office for a ""history of inaccuracy"" on ""coverage, premiums, and predicted deficit arising out of Obamacare"" in a statement. While the CBO overestimated enrollment in the exchanges, it still offered projections closer to reality than any of the four other forecasters (the Office of the Actuary of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the RAND Corporation, the Urban Institute; and the Lewin Group). ""The tweet is inaccurate in equating the exchanges with Obamacare, which implies that these numbers refer to the full coverage effects of the ACA. That ignores the role of Medicaid and employer changes, and CBO’s estimates on those were much closer,"" Sommers said. It also correctly estimated a significant drop in the uninsured population, leaving it at a historic low. ""The CBO's estimates of the overall change, and of each element of it, were closer to the mark than all other researchers who released comprehensive estimates at the time of enactment,"" Glied said. ""Nobody does it better."" The White House tweet was correct in saying that the CBO had originally estimated that 23 million people would participate in the Affordable Care Act’s exchanges, and that only 10.3 million people currently are participating in these. The White House chose to cite a report that has been updated by the CBO following significant legislation affecting its predictions. To make its case that the CBO is unreliable, the Trump administration cherry-picked a statistic that CBO got the most wrong. The forecasters were closer to actual results on other major components of Obamacare, including Medicaid and employer changes. Editor's note: We've updated this fact-check to clarify a point about the difference between CBO's projections and actual exchange enrollment."
6936	Quarantines at 2 LA universities amid US measles outbreak.	More than 200 students and staff at two Los Angeles universities have been placed under quarantine because they may have been exposed to measles and either have not been vaccinated or cannot verify that they are immune, officials said Thursday.	true	Los Angeles, University of California, Health, Measles, North America, AP Top News, California, Travel, California State University, U.S. News, Public health	The order issued late Wednesday in connection with the University of California, Los Angeles, and California State University, Los Angeles, requires that affected people stay home, avoid contact with others and notify authorities if they develop measles symptoms. Los Angeles County public health officials issued quarantines of 24 to 48 hours until proof of immunity is established, according to a statement from UCLA. Some people may need to be quarantined for up to a week. “Please be assured that we have the resources we need for prevention and treatment, and that we are working very closely with local public health officials on the matter,” UCLA Chancellor Gene Block in the statement. Measles in the United States has climbed to its highest level in 25 years, closing in on 700 cases this year in a resurgence largely attributed to misinformation that is turning parents against vaccines. Roughly three-quarters of this year’s illnesses have been in New York state. A UCLA student who was diagnosed with measles possibly exposed 500 people on campus to measles in early April, according to a statement from the school. As of Thursday afternoon, 79 of those students and faculty members had not provided medical records showing that they are immune to measles, the university said. Meanwhile at Cal State, a person infected with measles visited a library and possibly encountered hundreds of employees, some of whom were students. A total of 156 of them could not provide their immunization records as of Thursday afternoon, according to a statement from the Cal State. Health officials determined that there is “no known current risk related to measles at the library at this time,” Cal State said in its statement. The orders come as a small outbreak of measles occurs in Los Angeles County involving five confirmed cases linked to overseas travel. The state recorded 38 measles cases as of Thursday; there were 11 around the same time last year, said Dr. Karen Smith, director of the California Department of Public Health. The state typically sees fewer than two dozen cases a year, she said. This year, California’s cases stretch across 11 counties and affect patients from 5 months old to 55. More than 76% of patients were not vaccinated or did not receive the recommended two doses of vaccine, Smith said. Fourteen of those infected had traveled overseas to countries including Philippines, Thailand, India and Ukraine. Measles in most people causes fever, runny nose, cough and a rash all over the body. However, a small fraction of those infected can suffer complications such as pneumonia and a dangerous swelling of the brain. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the vaccine for everyone over a year old, except for people who had the disease as children. Those who have had measles are immune. The vaccine, which became available in the 1960s, is considered safe and effective, and because of it, measles was declared all but eliminated in the U.S. in 2000. ___ Associated Press Writer John Antczak contributed to this report. ___ Follow Weber at https://twitter.com/WeberCM
25642	When I was vice president, violent crime fell 15% in this country. ... The murder rate now is up 26% across the nation this year under Donald Trump.	The violent crime rate fell nearly 16% from 2008, before Biden’s vice presidency, to 2016, his last full year as vice president. An analysis found that in some cities, the total number of murders went up at least 26% in 2020 compared to the same timeframe in 2019. The murder rate increase would also be around 26%. But Biden’s comparison is based on snapshots of different crime data taken at different time intervals during each presidency.	mixture	National, Crime, Joe Biden,	"Joe Biden told voters that President Donald Trump doesn’t have his facts straight when it comes to public safety, despite Trump’s attempts to cast himself as a law-and-order candidate and Biden as the symbol of chaos. ""If Donald Trump wants to ask the question: Who will keep you safer as president? Let’s answer that question. First, some simple facts,"" Biden said in Pittsburgh on Aug. 31. ""When I was vice president, violent crime fell 15% in this country. We did it without chaos and disorder. And yes, we did it with Democratic mayors in most of the major cities in this country. The murder rate now is up 26% across the nation this year under Donald Trump. Do you feel really safer under Donald Trump?"" PolitiFact decided to fact-check Biden’s ""simple facts."" We found that his claim is partly accurate and needs context. Biden’s claim of a 15% decrease is supported by the change in the rate of violent crime; the decline in the total number of crimes was less than 15%. Biden’s campaign cited as evidence a 2017 story from FactCheck.org, which summarized key statistics related to President Barack Obama’s eight years in office. Based on data collected by the FBI, the fact-checking organization found that the number of violent crimes per 100,000 people in Obama’s last full year in office, 2016, was nearly 16% lower than the rate in 2008, the year before Obama took office. Likewise, the total number of violent crimes in 2016 was about 10% lower than the total number in 2008. In discussing what Biden says has happened to the murder rate under Trump, Biden’s campaign cited an analysis by crime analyst Jeff Asher that pointed out a 26% increase in the number of murders. The analysis was not adjusted for population and did not specify the rate change. (For instance, the FBI calculates the murder rate as being per 100,000 people.) But Asher and two other criminologists not involved in the analysis told PolitiFact that since the population changes very little from one year to the other, the murder rate increase would also be around 26%. Asher analyzed violent crime data in 25 U.S. cities. He looked at the number of murders in 2019 from January through at least July and compared it with the number of murders in 2020 from January through at least July. (He used comparable August data for some cities.) While Asher’s analysis focused on select cities, not nationwide data, he said it can be useful for estimating the national trend. Usually, the FBI in late September releases a final report on nationwide crime statistics from the previous year. Biden touted a decrease in violent crime during his vice presidency and denounced a 2020 spike in murders under Trump. But he highlighted different metrics and different time sets for each administration. By doing so, Biden presented an incomplete and skewed picture of the crime data. A more accurate examination of crime would focus on the same set of data and comparable time periods, said Jay Corzine, a criminologist at the University of Central Florida. The FBI figures on violent crime include the offenses of murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Biden focused on this broader number for the claim about his vice presidency, and flagged only murder data for the claim on Trump’s record. Biden focused on numbers before and at the end of his 8-year tenure, 2008 and 2016. For Trump, he focused on about seven months for 2019 and 2020. For the claim about his own record, Biden did not mention the murder rate. The murder rate in 2008 was the same as it was in 2016, 5.4 murders per 100,000 people. Both the violent crime and murder rates went down in 2017 and in 2018, Trump’s first two years in office. (The FBI has not released final data for 2019.) Asher said that while murders so far were up in 2020 compared with 2019, ""violent crime is roughly even."" Most of the influence any presidential administration has on crime statistics is indirect, based on their support for anti-crime measures and funding assistance, criminologists told PolitiFact. ""Most crime is local and what really impacts crime rates are local policing, state laws — what states and cities do,"" said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. Homicide numbers are also volatile, there’s wide fluctuation from year to year that has nothing to do with laws or policies, Fox said. Built into the homicide figures are a lot of chance factors, such as where a bullet hits and whether the person is taken to a hospital on time, he said. Murders in some cities have spiked this year amid the coronavirus pandemic, yet violent crime across the board (including property crime) hasn’t similarly increased, Corzine noted. It’s unclear exactly why murders are up in some places. However, ""bad things can happen in the course of idle time,"" Fox said, noting that the pandemic caused many people to be out of work and out of school with no summer activities. Biden said, ""When I was vice president, violent crime fell 15% in this country. ... The murder rate now is up 26% across the nation this year under Donald Trump."" The violent crime rate fell nearly 16% from 2008, before Biden’s vice presidency, to 2016, his last full year as vice president. A crime analyst found that in some cities, the total number of murders has gone up at least 26% in 2020 compared to the same timeframe in 2019 (experts said the crime rate likely would also be up about 26%). But Biden’s comparison is based on snapshots of different crime data and at different time intervals during each presidency. There’s data to support Biden’s claim, but his statement leaves out important details or takes things out of context."
27916	An Arizona sheriff dismissed prisoners' bellyaching about the heat by pointing out that soldiers serving in Iraq cope with similar conditions.	A popular online piece about an Arizona sheriff's dismissing prisoners' bellyaching by pointing out soldiers serving in Iraq cope with similar conditions.	true	Crime, Just Deserts, Vigilante Justice	A much e-mailed piece about pink-clad prisoners of the Maricopa County Jail was extracted from a July 2003 Associated Press offering about the Summer 2003 heat wave’s effect on the Phoenix area. Those few paragraphs devoted to describing the condition of the inmates held in that jail went on to be widely circulated on the Internet although they formed only the smallest portion of the original piece, an article that described the air’s heat creating turbulence for airplanes overhead, car windshields shattering or falling out, dogs burning their paws on the pavement, and candles melting indoors: It’s even hotter than usual in Phoenix, the Associated Press reports: About 2,000 inmates living in a barbed-wire-surrounded tent encampment at the Maricopa County Jail have been given permission to strip down to their government-issued pink boxer shorts. On Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing boxers were either curled up on their bunk beds or chatted in the tents, which reached 138 degrees inside the week before. Many were also swathed in wet, pink towels as sweat collected on their chests and dripped down to their pink socks. “It feels like you are in a furnace,” said James Zanzo’t, an inmate who has lived in the tents for 1 1/2 years. “It’s inhumane.” Joe Arpaio, the tough-guy sheriff who created the tent city and long ago started making his prisoners wear pink, is not sympathetic. He said Wednesday that he told the inmates: “It’s 120 degrees in Iraq and the soldiers are living in tents and they didn’t commit any crimes, so shut your mouths. ” KIND OF PUTS THINGS IN PERSPECTIVE DOESN’T IT? A clue as to the ‘why’ of the selective quoting is contained in the tagline now often part of the forwards: “Kind of puts things in perspective doesn’t it?” Someone was struck by the comparison of the kvetching prisoners to the (presumed uncomplaining) troops serving in Iraq, and was moved to excerpt only that portion of the article to share with others. That the forward has proved as popular as it has shows the comparison resonates with a great many. The U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq may well be bona fide tough-as-nails servicemen, but at least in our mental image of them we also need them to be larger than life. We like to think of them as lantern-jawed heroes coolly dealing with the impossible situation that is Iraq without giving so much as a thought to their personal safety or even letting as little as a complaining word fall from their lips about the miserable conditions they must endure during that tour of duty. The juxtaposition of these brave soldiers to the societal dregs that wash up into a county jail is thus eminently satisfying to contemplate — it’s the comparison of giants to ants, working to exalt the one even as it makes the other look petty and small. Yet if the prisoners housed in Arizona’s Maricopa County tent city jails were complaining, they had some good reasons. At that facility the incarcerated were fed only two meals a day, with green bologna sometimes appearing on the menu. They were quartered in outdoor tents under sweltering conditions, and they slept on cots which lack pillows. They worked on chain gangs. And they wore pink underwear. Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, of the “It’s 120 degrees in Iraq and the soldiers are living in tents and they didn’t commit any crimes, so shut your mouths” quote, reveled in the sobriquet ‘America’s Toughest Sheriff.’ He enjoyed a very high voter approval rating for a time and had little trouble being re-elected to his post multiple times. He was a controversial figure, vilified by some and worshipped by others. In June 2004 the e-mailed excerpt from the July 2003 Associated Press article circulated anew on the Internet, this time prefaced as follows: This is the way he is, and he has been re-elected several times … Sheriff Joe Arpaio (in Arizona) is doing it RIGHT!! : He has jail meals down to 40 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them. He stopped smoking and porno magazines in the jails. Took away their weights. Cut off all but “G” movies. He started chain gangs so the inmates could do free work on county and city projects. Then he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn’t get sued for discrimination. He took away cable TV until he found out there was a federal court order that required cable TV for jails. So he hooked up the cable TV again but only let in the Disney channel and the weather channel. When asked why the weather channel he replied, so they will know how hot it’s gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs. He cut off coffee since it has zero nutritional value. When the inmates complained, he told them…. this is a good one……”This isn’t the Ritz/Carlton. If you don’t like it, don’t come back.” He bought Newt Gingrich’ lecture series on videotape that he pipes into the jails. When asked by a reporter if he had any lecture series by a Democrat, he replied that a democratic lecture series might explain why a lot of the inmates were in his jails in the first place. You have to love this guy!! More on the AZ Sheriff … [at this point, the text quoted above was repeated] With one exception (which could simply amount to no more than our not having yet found the right supporting articles), the claims made in the 2004 preface checked out. Sheriff Joe Arpaio did ban smoking, coffee, pornographic magazines, movies, and unrestricted television in all his jails. Those incarcerated in his tent city jail did indeed work on chain gangs, pull weeds for the city and county, clear brush, and the like. In 1996 the Sheriff put the nation’s first female chain gang to work. Although the e-mailed account made it sound as if he did so out of fear of prosecution for discrimination, there was no such threat lurking in the background — he chose that course of action because it suited his beliefs: “I don’t believe in discrimination in my jail system. Crime knows no gender and neither should punishment,” he said. Regarding the claim about his airing a Newt Gingrich lecture series on the jail’s television system, in 1995 the controversial lawman used canteen funds to buy the Republican House speaker’s 10-part, $150 video lecture series with the intent of piping it into the inmates’ cells. When asked if he’d also be providing those in his charge with a lecture series done by a Democrat, he replied in the negative. “For one thing I don’t know of any,” he said. “And some people might say these guys already got enough of those ideas.” He was also proud of having lowered the cost of feeding inmates in his care. Though assorted news articles quoted slightly differing figures, a 40¢ per serving expenditure was the one most often touted. “It costs more to feed our police dogs than our inmates. The dogs never committed a crime, and they’re working for a living,” Arpaio said. In 1998 Arpaio instituted a policy of charging inmates for their meals, levying a dollar-a-day tariff against each of those incarcerated. In 1994 he banned coffee from the Maricopa County Jail, but he did so not because of its lack of nutritional value, but to protect inmates and guards from hot-coffee assaults by other inmates and to lower costs. (By eliminating the estimated 5,000 cups of coffee served daily for 5,400 inmates, it was expected the county would save $94,158 a year.) The one item we have yet to validate is the assertion that Arpaio deprived inmates of cable TV until discovery that such act was in violation of a federal court order. We’ve yet to locate this order or to confirm that television programming was ever denied those in his care. It is on record, however, that inmates in his charge view only selected programming, such as what’s on The Weather Channel. (“I think my chain gang deserves to know how hot it is when they hit the streets,” said Arpaio.) In September 2007 the following e-mail forwards about Sheriff Arpaio began to circulate: Sheriff Joe is at it again. Maricopa County was spending approx. $18 million dollars a year on stray animals, like cats and dogs. Sheriff Joe offered to take the department over, and the County Supervisors said “Okay.” The animal shelters are now all staffed and operated by prisoners. They feed and care for the strays. Every animal in his care is taken out and walked twice daily. He now has prisoners who are experts in animal nutrition and behavior. They give great classes for anyone who’d like to adopt an animal. He has literally taken stray dogs off the street, given them to the care of prisoners, and had them placed in dog shows. The best part? His budget for the entire department is now under $3 million. Now he’s in trouble with the ACLU again. He painted all his buses and vehicles with a mural that has a special hotline phone number painted on it, where you can call and report suspected illegal aliens. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement wasn’t doing enough in his eyes, so he had 40 deputies trained specifically for enforcing immigration laws, started up his hotline, and bought 4 new buses just for hauling folks back to the border. Although Sheriff Joe Arpaio did not (as implied above) take over the operations of the entire Maricopa County Animal Care & Control (MCACC) department, he was instrumental in the opening of the Maricopa Animal Safe Hospice (MASH), a no-kill animal shelter operated by the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) in what was formerly Phoenix’s First Avenue Jail. The MASH is a facility dedicated to caring for rescued animals that have been abused or neglected (as well as temporarily caring for the pets of owners who have checked into domestic violence shelters): Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s no-kill animal shelter, MASH, was created to house and care for animals that have been abused or neglected by their caretakers and rescued by the Animal Cruelty Investigative Unit. The purpose of the shelter is to provide a safe, healthy and healing shelter for these tragic animals, who must necessarily await the outcome of their owners’ cruelty cases in court. Hopefully, their ultimate outcome will be adoption into loving, permanent homes. The first shelter opened by Sheriff Arpaio is in the First Avenue Jail, located at First Avenue and Madison Street, Phoenix, Arizona. This 30-year-old jail previously held inmates, but was closed for repairs to plumbing in December 1999. Though no longer suitable for housing inmates, the jail looks like paradise to the four-footed victims now housed and recovering there. The MASH location in the First Avenue Jail is air-conditioned, and the cells have been reconditioned to comfortably house animals. In July 2007 Sheriff Arpaio launched a hot line for calling in tips and information about people living and working in Maricopa County illegally. Then in September 2007 he unveiled “moving billboards” in the form of four trucks and eight inmate passenger vans plastered with the hot line number and signs reading “Do Not Illegally Enter” and “Help Sheriff Joe Arpaio Fight Illegal Immigration and Trafficking.” Critics contend that this move constitutes racial profiling; Sheriff Arpaio maintains that his signs say nothing about ethnic backgrounds: “It says illegal immigration and trafficking. I don’t care where they’re from.” Sheriff Arpaio finally stepped down after losing a re-election bid to Democrat Paul Penzone in 2016.
39142	The eRumor is a protest of the choice of Dr. David Hager to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Committee. It says he is a religious pro-life physician who refuses to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women and opposes the use of RU-486, the pill that ends a pregnancy.	Dr. David Hager nominated for FDA panel.	true	Health / Medical, Medical	Dr. David Hager is a part of the teaching staff of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine and has developed a reputation as an expert on gynecologic infections. This eRumor was circulated before Dr. Hager actually became a member of the committee. He is now a part of the panel, although he did not become the chairman of it. He is a conservatively oriented physician and is a speaker and author in the Christian community who describes himself as pro-life. He objected to this eRumor saying that he does not know who wrote it and that no one had interviewed him for it and that some of it is not accurate. He says that he does not refuse to prescribe birth control for unmarried patients. He is an advocate of abstinence but for patients who do not make that choice, he is not opposed to birth control prescription. He also says that his opposition to RU-486 was based on his concerns about the safety of the drug. He says RU-486 was approved under an “Accelerated Approval Process” reserved exclusively for anti-AIDS and anti-cancer drugs and an antihypertensive agent. He says that normally the FDA requires one or more than one randomized, controlled trials before approving a drug, which was not done for RU-486. He also says that he does not believe that standard birth control pills are abortifacient and has never written it. He says he co-edited a book that referenced various views about birth control pills but that not all of those views were his own. Regarding his views of how to deal with stress-related disorders in women, he says “I have always offered a holistic approach to therapy. I suggest diet/exercise changes, medications as needed, counseling when required, and meditation/prayer.” Last updated 11/30/03 Comments
7117	Duke University pays $112M to settle faked-research lawsuit.	Duke University will pay $112 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit after federal prosecutors said a research technician’s fake data landed millions of dollars in federal grants, the school and the government said Monday.	true	U.S. News, Health, Lawsuits, Durham, U.S. News, Duke University	The private university in Durham submitted claims for dozens of research grants that contained falsified or fabricated information that unjustly drained taxpayer money from the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency and other federal agencies, the U.S. Justice Department said. The school said it is repaying grant money and related penalties. “Taxpayers expect and deserve that federal grant dollars will be used efficiently and honestly,” local U.S. Attorney Matthew G.T. Martin said in a statement. “May this serve as a lesson that the use of false or fabricated data in grant applications or reports is completely unacceptable.” The lawsuit was first filed in 2015 by whistleblower and former Duke employee Joseph Thomas. The Justice Department took it over afterward. The suit claims the faked research was conducted by former research technician Erin Potts-Kant, who was supervised by pulmonary medicine researcher William Michael Foster. Foster’s lab experimented with mice, seeking to determine the effects of inhaling diesel exhaust, among other tests. Several research papers by Foster’s team were later retracted. “We expect Duke researchers to adhere always to the highest standards of integrity, and virtually all of them do that with great dedication,” university President Vincent Price said in a statement. “When individuals fail to uphold those standards, and those who are aware of possible wrongdoing fail to report it, as happened in this case, we must accept responsibility, acknowledge that our processes for identifying and preventing misconduct did not work, and take steps to improve.” The settlement was announced on the same day that U.S. District Judge Catherine Eagles had scheduled a hearing on why the deal supposedly struck in November hadn’t been finalized by the Justice Department. The government alleged that between 2006 and 2018 Duke knowingly submitted faked data to federal agencies in 30 grants. The university had warning signs that some of the research was fraudulent but didn’t act until discovering in 2013 that Potts-Kant had siphoned off money for spending on clothes and other items, the lawsuit said. Duke University said the technician pleaded guilty to two counts of forgery in state court and paid the school restitution. Foster retired in 2015, university spokesman Michael Schoenfeld said. Thomas, the whistleblower, will get $33.75 million from the settlement, the government said. Duke is still dealing with a different research scandal dating back more than a decade. Duke medical professor Dr. Anil Potti engaged in misconduct while researching treatments in human cancer patients, U.S. Health and Human Services Department investigators said in 2015. Potti’s studies were published in top medical journals including the New England Journal of Medicine and Lancet Oncology between 2006 and 2009. In a settlement reached with the federal health agency, Potti did not acknowledge liability but agreed to have all his research supervised until 2020. Potti left Duke in 2010. Duke settled lawsuits brought by patients and estates of patients who participated in those medical trials. As a result of both cases, the National Institutes of Health last year required Duke University researchers to increase their reporting of how federal grant money was being spent. ____ Follow Emery P. Dalesio on Twitter at http://twitter.com/emerydalesio . His work can be found at https://apnews.com/search/emery%20dalesio.
1923	Do EU summits need a health warning?.	In the small hours of Thursday, George Papandreou thanked his aides for helping clinch a second bailout deal for debt-ridden Greece, and admitted the strain had almost killed one of them.	true	Health News	Greece's Prime Minister George Papandreou (C) arrives at a news conference at the end of a euro zone summit in Brussels, October 27, 2011. REUTERS/Yves Herman “Some were under such pressure that they needed medical attention. I see George Zanias, thankfully with us. But George Glynos was unable to join us after suffering a heart attack,” Papandreou told a news conference in Brussels after an 11-hour EU summit. Like many of their EU counterparts, Greek officials have worked punishing hours under enormous stress for months. The debt crisis has taken its toll not only on their country and the euro, but on their health. Government officials said Greece’s chief economic adviser, Zanias, developed very high blood pressure during Sunday’s summit and was ordered to stay in his room all day Monday. Papandreou’s aide Glynos suffered a heart attack in Athens after Sunday’s summit and missed Wednesday’s meeting. “Your body revolts. You go from a plane to meeting after meeting with little sleep, you drink too much coffee and you are forced to eat bad food. It’s an unnatural life and there comes a point when we’ll all pay for it,” said a Greek Finance Ministry official who did not want to be named. While leaders dined on giant shrimp with aubergines followed by roast turbot and a trio of sorbets, for the delegations, usually waiting anxiously to be briefed on a different floor, the dining is not as exciting. “The food is terrible. You eat sandwiches and junk food all day. I got really sick from it Sunday,” said one Greek delegate who declined to be named. But even after a meal of roast turbot, the tension is just as high for the leaders meeting in a vast, windowless conference room in the upper reaches of the European Council’s headquarters in Brussels. They entered the building at around 5 p.m. Wednesday, and were still bargaining over a deal to rescue the euro zone from its debt crisis almost 11 hours later. At around 2 a.m., when negotiations were at their peak, a team of around 15 medics gathered in the lobby of the brown marble-fronted Justus Lipsius building, although the reason was not immediately clear. EU officials said the talks were extremely intense, with hard-nosed negotiation over very specific numbers before leaders would agree on the outline of a plan to reduce Greek debt and convince banks to take losses. They knew their decisions had to reassure edgy financial markets, but could also cause big losses for financial institutions and perhaps lead to the nationalization of Greek banks. One senior EU official said the talks progressed extremely slowly. In the early hours of Thursday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the IMF’s Christine Lagarde entered into direct negotiations with representatives of private sector banks and insurers to persuade them voluntarily to accept heavy losses on Greek debt. At one point, euro zone negotiators said it might be necessary to force the banks and insurers to take losses if they didn’t accept at least a 50 percent loss on their investments — a move that would constitute an immediate default on Greek debt, with unpredictable fallout for Greece and the European economy. Such a threat is likely to have caused enormous stress to the Greek team, which repeatedly said ahead of the summit that it wanted to do everything to avoid defaulting on its 210 billion euros of private sector debt. “It is hugely tiring. You have to stay mentally focused, and it helps to be physically fit. You go to bed at maybe two in the morning and are up early. There’s a huge amount of information you have to be able to process,” said Michael Denison, special adviser to David Miliband when he was Britain’s foreign secretary, and now research director for the London-based consultancy Control Risks. EU summits are frequently high-pressure events. The leaders gather on the restricted upper floors of the building and barely move from the negotiating room until agreements are reached. “It’s a very unhealthy room, with no fresh air, and you don’t know if it’s day or night outside,” the Greek delegate said. “During 11 hours of talks, the leaders took two half-hour breaks — and that was not to rest, but to brief delegations.” The leaders usually sit around a vast oval table in the low-ceilinged wood-paneled room. Behind them is a separate table for aides and advisers, and on one side of the room a wall of glass booths contains the interpreters. Summits are frequently heated and exhausting, with diplomats telling of heads of state who lose their temper or even fall asleep at critical moments. Not infrequently, they may go to change a shirt or freshen up when the strain begins to show. One official half-jokingly said that supplies of fresh bottles of water to the meeting room are sometimes halted in order to add extra pressure on the negotiators to wrap it up. “Part of the trick is to be able to move on from a topic immediately once a decision has been made,” Denison said. “But, however you do it, you need ministers who can keep the pace at these kind of meetings.”
37889	People are ... forgetting that in 1918 the second wave of the Spanish Flu reportedly killed 20-50 million. The first wave only killed 3-5 million.	Did the Second Wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu Kill 20 to 30 Million, While the First Wave Killed 3 to 5 Million?	mixture	Fact Checks, Viral Content	Against the backdrop of spreading (but engineered) COVID-19 anti-lockdown protests in April 2020, a tweet claiming that a “second wave” of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was far deadlier than the “first wave” attracted a large number of likes and shares:People are so ready to get back to life forgetting that in 1918 the second wave of the Spanish Flu reportedly killed 20-50 million. The first wave only killed 3-5 million. History does indeed repeat.— Alvin C. Jacobs Jr. (@acjphoto) April 17, 2020In its entirety, the tweet addressed calls to lift lockdown, quarantine, shelter in place, or stay at home orders:People are so ready to get back to life forgetting that in 1918 the second wave of the Spanish Flu reportedly killed 20-50 million. The first wave only killed 3-5 million. History does indeed repeat.The Spanish Flu PandemicCOVID-19 prompted ongoing interest in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic in a variety of ways, as discussed on an earlier page:Spanish Flu 1918 Family Portrait Shows Cat with Face MaskA Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “Past Pandemics” page began by explaining that in all, that pandemic resulted in an estimated 50 million deaths worldwide:The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most severe pandemic in recent history. It was caused by an H1N1 virus with genes of avian origin. Although there is not universal consensus regarding where the virus originated, it spread worldwide during 1918-1919. In the United States, it was first identified in military personnel in spring 1918. It is estimated that about 500 million people or one-third of the world’s population became infected with this virus. The number of deaths was estimated to be at least 50 million worldwide with about 675,000 occurring in the United States.As is the case with COVID-19 as of April 2020, the world in the early twentieth century was faced with a pandemic for which no pharmaceutical interventions existed:While the 1918 H1N1 virus has been synthesized and evaluated, the properties that made it so devastating are not well understood. With no vaccine to protect against influenza infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections that can be associated with influenza infections, control efforts worldwide were limited to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public gatherings, which were applied unevenly.The CDC’s “Pandemic Influenza Storybook” was, despite its depressing title, a useful and interesting read for those with time on their hands.An undated History.com page addressed the common nomenclature for that previous pandemic, and explained that its novel features left the young and healthy unexpectedly vulnerable:It’s unknown exactly where the particular strain of influenza that caused the pandemic came from; however, the 1918 flu was first observed in Europe, America and areas of Asia before spreading to almost every other part of the planet within a matter of months.Despite the fact that the 1918 flu wasn’t isolated to one place, it became known around the world as the Spanish flu, as Spain was hit hard by the disease and was not subject to the wartime news blackouts that affected other European countries. (Even Spain’s king, Alfonso XIII, reportedly contracted the flu. )One unusual aspect of the 1918 flu was that it struck down many previously healthy, young people—a group normally resistant to this type of infectious illness—including a number of World War I servicemen.The Spanish Flu’s ‘First Wave’ Versus its ‘Second Wave’In a separate part of the History.com page, the “waves” of the 1918 pandemic were mentioned.The description didn’t really address why a first and second wave might have been different, instead just acknowledging that there were two waves and describing them. That explainer described the waves as distinct, with the first a mild version of Spanish flu, and a second wave that was both more contagious and more deadly:The first wave of the 1918 pandemic occurred in the spring and was generally mild. The sick, who experienced such typical flu symptoms as chills, fever and fatigue, usually recovered after several days, and the number of reported deaths was low.However, a second, highly contagious wave of influenza appeared with a vengeance in the fall of that same year. Victims died within hours or days of developing symptoms, their skin turning blue and their lungs filling with fluid that caused them to suffocate. In just one year, 1918, the average life expectancy in America plummeted by a dozen years.Although the excerpt above described a “first wave” and “second wave” of Spanish flu in 1918, it didn’t immediately explain the difference in casualties or what may have caused a deadlier second wave. However, there are analyses which include pertinent details about the 1918 pandemic, and how its study informed the approach to future pandemics. Specifically:A CDC chart illustrated the three waves of the 1918 influenza pandemic, where the “second wave” was clearly the deadliest:Although the chart’s vertical axis was not labeled, it was clearly measured in orders of five (millions); the first wave came in at around five, and the second between 25 and 30. Those peaks appeared to be aligned with the ratios in the tweet above.Applying the ‘Waves’ of Spanish Flu to COVID-19A cited piece of 2013 research, “Inferring the causes of the three waves of the 1918 influenza pandemic in England and Wales,” indicated that modern researchers endeavored to piece together the causes behind the various waves of influenza for the duration of the pandemic, as its abstract explained:Past influenza pandemics appear to be characterized by multiple waves of incidence, but the mechanisms that account for this phenomenon remain unclear. We propose a simple epidemic model, which incorporates three factors that might contribute to the generation of multiple waves: (i) schools opening and closing, (ii) temperature changes during the outbreak, and (iii) changes in human behaviour in response to the outbreak. We fit this model to the reported influenza mortality during the 1918 pandemic in 334 UK administrative units and estimate the epidemiological parameters. We then use information criteria to evaluate how well these three factors explain the observed patterns of mortality. Our results indicate that all three factors are important but that behavioural responses had the largest effect. The parameter values that produce the best fit are biologically reasonable and yield epidemiological dynamics that match the observed data well.In the body of that research, researchers indicated social distancing in some areas appeared to impact overall mortality rates:Restriction of human contact patterns affects infectious disease transmission. In the USA in 1918, regions that differed in the public health measures that were employed also differed in the temporal pattern of mortality. In Australia in 1918, social distancing measures appear to have substantially reduced the influenza clinical attack rate.In its conclusion, researchers posited that the three factors examined (schools opening or closing, temperature changes, and changes to patterns of human behavior) were all factors in the rises and falls of infection rates:We found that the observed three-wave pattern of pandemic influenza in the UK in 1918 is best explained by accounting for all three factors. Without behaviour change, the model is unable to explain the occurrence of all three waves. In particular, the decline of the second wave in the winter followed by a resurgence can only be explained by behavioural response, at least in our framework. The end of the first wave, after a relatively small number of deaths, on the other hand, is more likely to be due to climate or school-term effects. These two effects can substitute for each other to a certain extent, but our model shows that accounting for both does a much better job of explaining the observed patterns, suggesting that both mechanisms were in fact important.How Many People Died in Each Wave?A notable feature of modern research into the 1918 Spanish Flu outbreak involved the use of speculative language — “inferring,” or “estimating.” A March 2020 Washington Post infographic about pandemics in general placed the number at around 50 million in total — higher than at least the two waves described in the tweet:The flu came in two waves, starting in 1918 and ending in 1920. The number of infected is staggering —as many as 500 million, with estimates of 50 million deaths worldwide, according to the CDC. Isolation and quarantines were used to slow down transmission. Even President Woodrow Wilson was stricken, nearly derailing talks at the Paris Peace Conference, where the flu left him bedridden for days.Once again, historical epidemiology relied heavily on best estimates due to the limitations of medical literature at the time (as well as an ongoing world war.) History.com also provided a very broad range:The horrific scale of the 1918 influenza pandemic—known as the “Spanish flu”—is hard to fathom. The virus infected 500 million people worldwide and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims— that’s more than all of the soldiers and civilians killed during World War I combined.Is the Tweet Accurate?To recap, we began with a very popular April 2020 tweet:People are so ready to get back to life forgetting that in 1918 the second wave of the Spanish Flu reportedly killed 20-50 million. The first wave only killed 3-5 million. History does indeed repeat.That tweet cautioned people “so ready to get back to life” and end quarantines and lockdowns that the second wave of the Spanish flu pandemic killed 20 to 50 million, versus a first wave which killed three to five million. It was definitely true that the 1918 influenza pandemic involved three distinct waves, and the second of the three was clearly the deadliest.It is also true that modern scientists and historians have endeavored to piece together the science of the 1918 pandemic in an effort to understand how it happened and how it stopped. Researchers credited, among other factors, the use of physical distancing as a factor in regions that were less severely affected.Additionally, the second wave is believed to have been exacerbated by great upheavals during that time — World War I essentially directed the flow of the virus’ spread. A mutation of the virus between the first and second wave also caused additional mortality, as the second wave was more aggressive and deadly than the first (and those exposed and sickened in the first wave appeared to be immune. )Finally, estimates for how many people died in the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic fluctuated widely, with some as low as 17 million and some as high as 100 million. A CDC chart measuring the waves in units of five million hewed fairly close to the figures in the tweet. But because of the depth of the ancillary details.
3653	Indonesia’s flooded capital disinfected to fend off disease.	Soldiers and health workers sprayed Indonesia’s capital with disinfectant on Sunday to fend off possible diseases spread by massive flooding that has killed 60 people and affected hundreds of thousands.	true	Monsoons, Health, Floods, General News, Indonesia, Jakarta, Asia Pacific	Monsoon rains and rising rivers submerged a dozen districts in the greater Jakarta area starting Wednesday after extreme torrential rains hit on New Year’s Eve, causing landslides in hilly areas on the outskirts of the capital that buried scores of people. It’s the worst flooding in the area since 2007, when 80 people were killed over 10 days. More than a thousand soldiers and health workers sprayed disinfectant in hard-hit areas on Sunday to anticipate possible diseases spread by flooding, such as dengue and leptospirosis, a potentially fatal disease spread by rat’s urine, said Ridwan Carman, who is in charge of emergency response and recovery for the Indonesian Red Cross. About 11,000 health workers were deployed to provide medical care for people affected by the flooding, Health Minister Terawan Agus Putranto said in a statement. He said there had been no recorded cases of leptospirosis, tetanus or serious waterborne diseases. In Lebak, a district in neighboring Banten province, where flash floods and mudslides swept away more than 1,700 houses and destroyed several villages, rescuers were still searching for a 7-year-old boy reportedly dragged away by flash flooding that killed at least nine people, said Zainal Arifin, a local search and rescue agency chief. He said mudslides that covered much of the area, blackouts and lack of telecommunications were hampering the search efforts. Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Sunday failed to meet survivors in the devastated village of Sukajaya, where the highest number of deaths were reported, as his helicopter was unable to land due to bad weather, the presidential secretariat said in a statement. The village is in the hardest-hit district of Bogor, where 16 people were killed by flash floods and landslides. Waters have receded in most parts of greater Jakarta, allowing many residents to return and clean up, but scores of tightly packed settlements close to rivers that often suffer from floods during the rainy season remained inundated or covered in mud and debris. Tens of thousands of people remained crammed in damp shelters, mostly in western Jakarta and its satellite city of Bekasi. Government data on Sunday showed that some 92,200 people were still unable to return home as the filthy waters submerged their houses up to 1.5 meters (5 feet) high. In a cramped and damp emergency shelter at a sports center in south Jakarta, mothers breast fed their babies near piles of smelly wet garbage. “My baby is not sleeping as the rain comes in, the wind comes in,” Yuyun Yuniarti said while holding her 7-month-old baby in a sling. “It is disgusting here, but we are stuck.” Yuniarti said food and medicine appeared to be sufficient, with most shelters visited in recent days by authorities and private organizations delivering regular supplies of food. A temporary clinic was treating patients close to where Yuniarti was sleeping, including many suffering from respiratory illnesses. Save the Children, an international child rights organization, expressed its concern about the dire situation for children. At least six kids have died from the floods and tens of thousands have had to leave their homes in Jakarta. “We call on all involved to make sure children are kept safe and have a roof over their heads, and food to eat,” Dino Satria, Save the Children’s humanitarian director in Indonesia, said in a statement. He said his organization would provide school kits, tents and hygiene kits to prevent the outbreak of diseases. Indonesia’s Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency said that more downpours were forecast for the capital in the coming days, and that the potential for extreme rainfall would continue until next month across the vast archipelago nation. The government on Friday started cloud seeding in an attempt to divert rain clouds from reaching greater Jakarta to prevent possible flooding, the agency said. Indonesia is hit by deadly floods each year, and Jakarta, the capital of Southeast Asia’s largest economy, is not immune. But this year’s floods have been particularly bad, with nearly 400,000 people seeking refuge in some 270 shelters across the greater metropolitan area as floodwaters reached up to 6 meters (19 feet) in some places.
2133	"Male Brain"" book sheds light on how men think."	Men are built to have a lustful, wandering eye but women should not worry that their partners will stray like Tiger Woods.	true	Health News	"The cover of ""The Male Brain"" by psychiatrist Louann Brizendine, known for her bestseller ""The Female Brain."" REUTERS/Broadway Books So says the author of the new book “The Male Brain,” psychiatrist Louann Brizendine, known for her bestseller “The Female Brain.” “The way Mother Nature made us, the man’s job on the planet is to look for, search for and seek out fertile females to mate with,” she told Reuters in an interview. The biggest misunderstanding women have about men is their complaints about men peeking at a woman’s figure or watching an attractive woman walk by, Brizendine said. “She doesn’t understand that this is how he is wired,” she said. “It’s not that he doesn’t love you.” Just because men ogle women, she said, it does not mean they will have extramarital dalliances like top golfer Tiger Woods or Jesse James, the husband of actress Sandra Bullock. “There is the normal range of behavior and then there is pathological behavior,” Brizendine said. “Clearly Tiger crossed over the line,” she said. “A few men like that give all men a bad name.” The best indicator to whether a man will be faithful is whether his father was faithful, as genes that cause monogamy are passed from father to son, according to “The Male Brain.” After making a name for herself as an expert on gender differences with “The Female Brain” in 2006, Brizendine said she wanted to write a bookend to that in hopes it will help couples having trouble talking or understanding each other. She says in the book’s introduction that when she told friends of her plans to write about the male brain, almost everyone replied “That will be a short book!” Indeed, the book is shorter than her previous one. While “The Female Brain” was 180 pages excluding notes and references, “The Male Brain” is a more concise 135 pages. Still, the book reveals men’s minds to be every bit as complex as women’s, as evidenced by the 124 pages of notes and references. The cover shows a brain made from duct tape — an homage to her claim that men are problem solvers. “The male brain is more of a fix-it brain,” Brizendine said. When a woman tells a man something has upset her, he is likely to tell her what she should do, she said. Instead he should say “Honey, I know how you feel,” Brizendine said. “She wants that resonance of emotional empathy.” But rather than get annoyed, women should learn the typical response is men’s way of expressing love and care, she said. Even men like Brizendine’s husband, a renowned neuroscientist, fall down in the empathy department but she has trained him well. “I put on my husband’s computer a little yellow sticky that says ‘Honey, I know how you feel,’” she said. “He says the words out loud and even though we know the words are scripted, we laugh and it does feels better.” Brizendine says she wrote both books to help patients — she runs the Women’s Mood and Hormone Clinic in San Francisco and teaches at the University of California at San Francisco — and she has been surprised by their commercial success. With both sides of the gender divide now covered, she said she has no ideas yet for another book. Her writing has led to unusual offers that she has rejected — working as a marketing consultant on selling to women, hosting a television show giving advice and endorsing women’s products from clothing to soap. Brizendine is not sure what endorsement offers will emerge after her latest book. “Let’s hope it’s not Viagra,” she said."
11513	It may be time to can the cola	First, we want to acknowledge that this story was a “brief” in the magazine – one of three such briefs in this particular issue of the magazine. In total, the three health briefs consumed less than 500 words. This particular story was only 106 words. There is a price to pay for brevity, one that was observed in this story. It’s not the reporter’s fault; this is the assigned format. The magazine should reconsider the value of such briefs, for the following reasons. The story reported that “Women who drink cola-regular, decaffeinated, or diet-may be putting themselves at risk for osteoporosis.” The brevity of the story gave it a feel of sensationalizing the results of a single scientific study rather than attempting to place the results of that study within a context that would inform the reader. The data only show an association between a dietary parameter (cola consumption) and an intermediary measure (bone mineral density) rather than for the disease (osteoporosis) itself. Bone density is an imperfect predictor of osteoporosis. Secondly, the study reported a dose response between bone mineral density and cola consumption and only found statistically significant lower bone mineral density for those women drinking more than 3 servings of cola per week. The story made it sound as though any cola intake put a woman’s bones at risk. Without providing background about the type of study from which the information was derived, the link between the measures used and the disease outcome of interest, or a clear indication of the magnitude of potential harm or benefit that can be obtained through dietary change, this story provided little information for a reader to follow up on.	false		The price of cola products is well known. The story did not include information for the reader that the observed association between bone mineral density and cola consumption exhibited a dose response. In addition, since there is no known biologic basis for finding this association in women but not men, the relationship needs to be examined further to be sure that the association is real and robust, and that other confounding factors aren’t at play. There was no mention of any effects, either positive or negative, of decreasing or eliminating cola consumption. This story reported on a study that found an association between cola intake and bone mineral density in women but not men. The results of the study do not imply that decreasing cola intake will improve the bone mineral density of an individual. The nature of the data in the study was not specified. The study authors were careful to point out that total calcium intake, a factor well-documented to affect bone mineral density, was lower in women with the highest cola intake. It is valuable for readers to know when observations come from a single study (as in this case) or have been replicated in numerous studies in large groups of people. It would also have been valuable to explain that the association observed between cola consumption and bone mineral density in the group of women studied could have come from other differences between the groups consuming more and less cola. The assertion that “Women who drink colaâ€¦. May be putting themselves at risk for osteoporosis” is more than a little over blown. First the data only show an association between a dietary parameter (cola consumption) and an intermediary measure (bone mineral density) rather than for the disease (osteoporosis) itself. Bone density is an imperfect predictor of osteoporosis. Secondly, the study reported a dose response between bone mineral density and cola consumption and only found statistically significant lower bone mineral density for those women drinking more than 3 servings of cola per week. The story made it sound as though any cola intake put a woman’s bones at risk. This story included a comment from the first author of the study from which the results were derived. There was no obvious attempt to get independent insight about the study results. A quote from a nutritional epidemioloigst not associated with the study would have given some perspective on the observations reported on in the story. There were no options presented for either maintaining bone mineral density or for treating low bone density. The only treatment recommendation within the story was for balancing phosphoric acid consumption with calcium rich foods; it would be more useful to present this in a more readily understandable format for readers to act upon if they so desired. This story reported on a common dietary component and its association with bone mineral density. This story reported on the results of a study that found that bone mineral density in women’s’ hips had an inverse relation to self reported levels of cola consumption. We can’t be sure if the story relied solely or largely on a news release, although only the study author is quoted and no independent source was used.
7018	Mississippi city rejects mental health facility despite need.	Officials in southwest Mississippi have denied a rezoning request for a mental health facility, despite complaints that the area is underserved.	true	Mississippi, Mental health, Health, General News, Natchez	Natchez aldermen on Tuesday unanimously rejected rezoning property to allow a crisis stabilization unit, a small mental hospital meant to keep people from being sent to faraway state hospitals or jail. Opponents said the facility is inappropriate for a mostly residential neighborhood. Crisis stabilization services were one of the flash points in a recent trial in which a federal judge ruled Mississippi was violating the rights of mentally ill people by relying too much on state hospitals to confine them. Adams County Sheriff Travis Patten testified in that trial that Natchez and surrounding Adams County have few resources to help mentally ill people, saying he padded a jail cell to hold people. Patten testified that he rarely got help from Southwest Mississippi Mental Health because many of its employees were more than an hour away in McComb. Southwest Mississippi Mental Health Executive Director Sherlene Vince told The Natchez Democrat that city documents improperly labeled the unit as a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center. “It is not a drug treatment program or detox unit and we are not able to treat anyone who has criminal charges,” Vince said. Alderwoman Sarah Carter Smith says Natchez needs the unit, but says “there has to be a better place for it.” “It should not be in a neighborhood,” Smith said. Lawyer Scott Slover, representing Southwest Mississippi Mental Health, said that because the facility is being funded with grants from the state Department of Mental Health, the local mental health board can’t build or buy a building. The requirement to lease limits its options, Slover said. “They would have to find someone who owns a piece of property, would invest anywhere from half a million to $750,000 into the property and then would take some sort of lease payment over time to recoup the cost and make a profit,” he said. “That is easier said than done.” Slover warned that if Natchez couldn’t approve a location, the crisis stabilization unit could also end up in McComb. At least three other Mississippi cities have settled lawsuits alleging illegal discrimination against people with disabilities in recent years after they barred or tried to close facilities serving people with mental illness. ___ Information from: The Natchez Democrat, http://www.natchezdemocrat.com/
24181	We are the only industrialized nation that relies heavily on a for-profit medical insurance industry to provide basic health care.	Feinstein says U.S. is only nation to rely heavily on for-profit insurers for basic health care	true	National, Health Care, Dianne Feinstein,	"In February, amid the heated debate over health care reform, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., introduced legislation to bar insurance companies from implementing ""unfair"" hikes in health plan premiums. In a March 8, 2010, New York Times story, Feinstein explained why she cares so much about the issue. ""We are the only industrialized nation that relies heavily on a for-profit medical insurance industry to provide basic health care,"" Feinstein said. ""I believe, fundamentally, that all medical insurance should be not-for-profit."" We thought it would be worthwhile checking if Feinstein was right that no other nation ""relies heavily on a for-profit medical insurance industry to provide basic health care."" As it turns out, some other countries do have private, for-profit insurance companies operating in their health care sector, and there are some indications that this sector is growing. But the business, legal and regulatory environment in which they operate is quite different than it is in the United States. A good example is the Netherlands. Dutch plans may be either non-profit or for-profit, as in the U.S. But children are fully covered using public funds, and premiums for adults are set at 50 percent of the expected costs, with the remainder paid through a national ""risk equalization fund"" -- essentially funds collected from the public at large. As a result, health insurers in the Netherlands aren't really able to compete for adult customers on price. By law, insurers must accept and renew all applicants, and a basic package of services must be offered. By contrast, U.S. insurers are free (for now, at least) to reject applicants on the individual market if they have pre-existing conditions, and insurers offer a panoply of plans with different premium levels and benefit packages. So, in the Netherlands, even the for-profit insurers don't typically make much of a profit on their basic health care lines. Meanwhile, in Switzerland, any profit that insurers make on basic services must be plowed back into reducing premiums. So why even call these companies for-profit? In many of the European countries with a for-profit health insurance sector, the companies make their profits not on basic health care -- the kind that Feinstein specifically referred to -- but by up-selling their health care customers on supplemental health coverage, such as dental care, eyeglasses, cosmetic surgery or more luxurious hospital rooms, or other product lines altogether, such as life or homeowner's insurance. ""There's no developed country where insurers can make a profit on basic coverage,"" said T.R. Reid, the author of The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care. ""Their mission is to pay for health care, not to pay investors."" Maggie Mahar, a fellow who specializes in international health care policy at the Century Foundation, agrees. ""I usually say that the U.S. is the only country in the developed world that has chosen to turn health care into largely unregulated, for-profit enterprise,"" she said. Technically, for-profit companies do provide basic medical care in countries such as the Netherlands, and there's enough of it going on to say that such countries ""rely"" on those insurers to serve that need. But the profit these companies make -- or at least the vast majority of it -- is made from lines of business other than basic health care. Because there is no official definition of ""basic health care"" in the U.S. system, it is hard to calculate exactly how much profit American insurers are making off basic services. But whatever it is, most experts expect that it is higher than the margins being made on basic health care by for-profit insurers in other countries. We believe that Feinstein is right that the U.S. for-profit insurance industry's role in basic health care is fundamentally different than what goes on in other countries, and that this outweighs her technical error in saying that no other country relies heavily on a for-profit medical insurance industry to provide basic health care."
16273	"Six convictions are connected to an allegation by prosecutors ""that Gov. Scott Walker is at the center of a criminal scheme."	Pope Francis said on Saturday rapid deforestation and the loss of biodiversity in individual countries should not be treated as local issues since they threaten the future of the planet.	false	Crime, Negative Campaigning, Wisconsin, Mary Burke,	Francis made his appeal on a visit to Madagascar, the world’s fourth-largest island, which research institutes and aid agencies say has lost about 44% of its forest over the past 60 years, abetted by illegal exports of rosewood and ebony. Francis zeroed in on endemic corruption, linking it with persistent, long-term poverty as well as poaching and illegal exports of natural resources. Addressing Madagascar’s president, Andry Rajoelina, his cabinet and other officials, Francis said some people were profiting from excessive deforestation and the associated loss of species. “The deterioration of that biodiversity compromises the future of the country and of the earth, our common home,” he said. Following recent huge fires in the Amazon region, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro rejected international criticism about his policy to expand farmland, saying it was a domestic issue. “The last forests are menaced by forest fires, poaching, the unrestricted cutting down of valuable woodlands. Plant and animal biodiversity is endangered by contraband and illegal exportation,” Pope Francis said. Jobs must be created for people whose livelihood harms the environment so they will not see it as their only means of survival, the pontiff added. “There can be no true ecological approach or effective efforts to safeguard the environment without the attainment of a social justice capable of respecting the right to the common destination of the Earth’s goods, not only of present generations, but also of those yet to come,” he said. The Amazon fires have lent new urgency to Francis’s calls to protect nature, tackle climate change and promote sustainable development — all themes enshrined in his 2015 encyclical on environmental protection. Madagascar is one of world’s poorest countries. The U.N. Nations World Food Program estimates that more than 90% of its population of 26 million live on less than $2 a day, with chronic child malnutrition widespread. Corruption is also rampant, Transparency International says. Francis urged the nation’s leaders “to fight with strength and determination all endemic forms of corruption and speculation that increase social disparity, and to confront the situations of great instability and exclusion that always create conditions of inhumane poverty”. Conservation groups say that during Rajoelina’s first stint in power, his cash-strapped administration presided over a spike in deforestation to supply rosewood and ebony to China despite a national ban on such exports. Environmental campaign group TRAFFIC estimates that at least one million rosewood logs have been illegally shipped from Madagascar since 2010. As Asian supplies of valuable hardwoods including rosewood used to make luxury furniture have been depleted, Chinese importers have shifted to Africa, according to Chinese customs data cited by U.S.-based non-profit group Forest Trends. Later on Saturday, Francis visited a convent of cloistered nuns and joked about the challenges of dealing with strict superiors. In the evening, he addressed some 100,000 young people at a rally in a field on the outskirts of the capital, urging them to help bring social justice to their country.
2813	Pig-killing PEDv virus moves into Canada.	Canada has discovered its first two cases of the Porcine Epidemic Diarrhea virus (PEDv), which has already killed more than 1 million pigs in the United States, government and industry officials said on Thursday.	true	Health News	The Ontario government is investigating a hog farm in the province’s Middlesex County after a laboratory finding of the virus, Dr. Greg Douglas, chief veterinary officer for Ontario, said at a news conference. Middlesex County is in southern Ontario near the city of London. Separately, one of Canada’s biggest pork processors, Olymel LP, said tests also confirmed the virus at an unloading dock of its Saint-Esprit slaughter facility northeast of Montreal, Quebec. “What they have found in the U.S. is this virus is highly contagious,” Douglas said. “It has been very difficult for producers to absolutely mitigate the threat.” PEDv - which causes diarrhea, vomiting and severe dehydration in hogs - has turned up in 23 of the 50 states since its discovery in the United States last April. The virus, which is already established in Europe and Asia, poses no threat to humans and is not a food safety risk, according to the Canadian Swine Health Board. Canada is the world’s third-largest pork shipper. There are no official figures for pigs lost to the disease, but U.S. hog industry analysts estimate 1 million to 4 million have died. The virus continues to spread in the United States, with a total of 2,394 confirmed cases in 23 states as of the week ended January 18, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN). As defined by the USDA, each diagnostic case could represent multiple animals at either a single farm site or several locations. An undisclosed number of pigs have died at the Ontario farm. Douglas said the farm is not under quarantine, but the farmer has agreed not to move pigs off it in the near term. Quebec and Ontario are Canada’s two biggest hog-producing provinces. Canadian hog farmers have been on high alert since the virus reached the United States last year, taking additional biosecurity measures such as washing out trucks returning from south of the border. But the spread to Canada was seen as just a matter of time. The virus can spread through contaminated pig feces on pigs, trucks, boots and clothing. Olymel spokesman Richard Vigneault said that, as a result of extra testing, the PED virus was discovered on Tuesday at the Quebec slaughter plant. The confirmed case did not affect production, he said in an interview with Reuters. PEDv has no known implications for international pork trade, said Martin Rice, executive director of the Canadian Pork Council. In June, however, Mexico restricted imports of live hogs from the United States because of the deadly virus.
11570	Landmark Surgery: Spinal Fusion Procedure Relieves Back Pain	This major network broadcast–-about a surgical procedure that is purported to quickly relieve pain in hundreds of thousands of people with common low back pain–is devoid of evidence and sound reporting. Among the questions it fails to answer: Is there any evidence suggesting that fusion is an effective treatment for chronic low back pain? If so, in whom? What does the research say about pain relief and improvement in disability after the procedure? What does it say about the length of hospital stay and return to activity? Is FDA approval of minimally invasive surgery based on a device application? If so, were the results durable over a long period of time? Was it compared to “usual” treatment (e.g. standard fusion)? What do randomized trials say about the comparative effectiveness of fusion versus nonsurgical programs that combine graded exercise and cognitive therapy? (Answer: results of fusion and nonsurgical care are often the same. See “Treatment Options” below.) What is the cost of this procedure (likely more than $50,000)? What are the costs of alternative treatments that are just as effective (e.g. graduated exercise and cognitive therapy)? Are there no serious potential harms other than colon perforation associated with the new procedure? What about pulmonary embolism, cardiac arrest, stroke, nerve damage and other complications historically associated with fusion? Is exposure to “more than 200 x-rays” harmless because it is purportedly less radiation than a CT scan? Are there no surgical failures? (About 1 in 5 fusions fail.) Are there no experts to provide a balanced discussion of this procedure and its nonsurgical alternatives? There are a number of high-quality studies and commentaries on spinal fusion. Reporters have an obligation to their readers and viewers to become familiar with them. Here is just one recent excerpt (November 15, 2008) of the type of commentary available. A search of randomized trials comparing treatments or observational studies about complications will quickly turn up others. It is the reporter’s job to find reliable sources who can accurately represent the clinical evidence. “The term invasiveness in surgery is frequently misused in clinical medicine. Often minimally invasive surgery suggests to the patient that the surgical intervention is minimized in comparison to a standard procedure. Recently, orthopedic surgeons have begun to replace the hip joint but are confusing minimally invasive with minimal access surgery. Although there may be increasing evidence that hospitalization time, postoperative pain, and rehabilitation can be reduced by a smaller incision with less collateral tissue damage, the actual surgical intervention, ie, replacing the hip joint by a total joint arthroplasty is not minimized. Similarly, minimally invasive spine fusion is a misnomer because the final result is an arthrodesis [fusion], which can only cynically be regarded as minimally invasive. Minimally invasive surgeries are often associated even with higher perioperative risks at least in the learning curve…” Norbert Boos, MD. Spine 2008;33(24): 2662	false		The story makes no mention of costs. The average hospital charges for a single-level fusion is about $50,000, exclusive of surgeon fees, rehab costs, and related costs such as time lost from work. The addition of screws or and a “bone growth material” adds thousands more. Not trivial issues. This broadcast falls down in virtually every possible way, but stands out for failing to address the most important reason for having spine surgery. The story doesn’t say what the outcome of surgery was for the patient interviewed or anyone else in the medical literature, other than to point out that the operation went like clockwork and the patient was heading home by 2:00 in the afternoon of the day she had the surgery. Although this is one outcome that some people care about, it says nothing about the reason she had the operation—to improve daily, disabling pain. The fusion procedure described in this story would appear to be nearly risk-free. Is exposure to “more than 200 x-rays” harmless because it is purportedly less radiation than a CT scan? Is there independent evidence to support the broadcast’s claim that a minimally invasive procedure cuts “no muscles or nerves”? Is there any evidence to suggest colon perforation is the only potentially serious complication? It seems unlikely, even if colon perforation is more common with the new procedure than with traditional fusion. What of the other complications that afflict people who have standard fusions? A large body of evidence has documented serious complications, including blood clots in the lung (pulmonary embolism), respiratory failure, cardiac arrest, stroke, nerve injury, and death. On average, these affect between 2% and 5% of patients (sometimes less, sometimes much more). Less serious complications abound (10% to 20% of fusions require a transfusion, another 10% tear the protective cover around the nerves). About 1 in 5 fusion operations fail. When it comes to minimally invasive surgery in other areas of orthopaedic and spine surgery, past is often prologue. It’s fine that the benefits outweighed the risks for the patient in this broadcast, but we hope she had a better understanding of the potential risks and benefits than the people watching this news segment. This major network broadcast–-about a major surgical procedure that is purported to help people hundreds of thousands of people with common low back pain–is devoid of evidence. The story says 250,000 Americans have fusions annually, and clearly suggests that chronic low back pain is an appropriate indication for fusion surgery. This conflicts with the evidence and expert consensus. Many leading researchers now say that nonspecific chronic low back pain is not an indication for surgery. Indeed, they say the indications are usually narrow—perhaps helpful in people with relatively uncommon conditions such degenerative spondylolisthesis (in which the vertebra shifts forward over the disc) and spinal deformities such as scoliosis. The broadcast includes interviews with one patient and three doctors. It makes no attempt to identify the experts’ potential conflicts of interest or balance their enthusiastic support for minimally invasive fusion with the views of other experts. The story mentions one alternative (standard fusion) once. It describes differences in surgical approaches and recovery time (hours vs. days). But the story overlooks arguably the most important alternative treatment—nonsurgical care. Randomized trials since 2003 have compared fusion to nonsurgical programs that combine a graduated exercise program with cognitive behavioral therapy. They suggest that people with chronic low back pain often do as well with nonsurgical care as with fusion, with fewer complications and lower costs. Recent international evidence-based guidelines recommend that all patients participate in such a program before they consider surgery. The story says minimally invasive fusion is FDA approved. Unfortunately, it fails to say precisely what that means. Is the FDA approval for a device? If so, which device—the screws used to reinforce the fusion, or the “bone growth material” that purportedly aids the fusion? Was the approval based on the procedure being no worse than the usual treatment (standard fusion)? Was the approval based on durable results over a long period of time? If it was compared against “usual” treatment (e.g. standard fusion), has the usual treatment be shown to be safe and effective? If so, in whom? The broadcast explains that the new, less invasive fusion procedure uses a different surgical approach than standard fusion. This story does not appear to rely solely or largely on a news release.
33727	Disney can legitmately claim that no one has ever died at one of their theme parks, because they always ensure that accident victims are removed from park property before being declared dead.	Disney is, of course, well known for their image consciousness. They have been criticized in the past for policies such as not allowing marked emergency vehicles into their parks (so as not to upset park guests), and so many people perceive them as being willing and overzealous enough to stretch a semantic point for a minor public relations advantage.	false	Disney, ASP Article, disney parks, Theme Parks	This legend is a tricky subject to tackle, because it’s based upon the fine (and often confusing) distinction between actual death and declared death. For example, if a seriously-injured victim of an automobile accident were loaded into a ambulance and died en route to the hospital, he generally would not be officially declared dead until he arrived at the hospital and was examined by a doctor. The difference in time between the actual physical death of the patient and the declaration of death by the doctor is the discrepancy on which this legend turns. So, the claim here is not that no one has ever actually died on Disney theme park property, but whether Disney can legitimately make the claim that “no one has ever died at a Disney park” because they ensure that any declaration of death takes place outside of park property. As such, there are really two questions which must be answered: The first question is difficult to answer, because obviously Disney isn’t going to discuss such a sensitive issue. Some former Disney employees have reported that the “no one dies on Disney property” maxim is indeed a company policy; that, as suggested in the book Inside the Mouse, “if guests have the nerve to die, they wait, like unwanted calories, until they’ve crossed the line and can do so safely off the property”: We had a guy last summer who went to EPCOT, stood in front of the golf ball, took a gun, and blew his head off. But he didn’t die. He stood right there in front of all those tourists and went “cluck” and brains blew everywhere. But he didn’t die there. The medic told me that they are not allowed to let them die there. Keep them alive by artificial means until they’re off Disney property, like there’s an imaginary line in the road and they go, “He’s alive, he’s alive, he’s dead.” In all fairness, however, it should be noted that in some jurisdictions once paramedics begin life-saving efforts they cannot discontinue those efforts until the patient has been transported to a medical facility, even if the patient is obviously dead; therefore, what someone might interpret as “flogging a dead body” to delay a determination of death could actually be a legally required procedure. Moreover, the sprawling size and relative isolation of the Walt Disney World complex in Florida make it imperative that persons in need of urgent medical attention be loaded into helicopters and transported to hospitals as quickly as possible. The combination of these two factors makes it rather unlikely that anyone would actually be declared dead on Walt Disney World property, regardless of how The Walt Disney Company felt about the matter. Declared deaths on Disney property apparently have happened before, however, as reported by the New York Times in an article about a 1984 plane crash in the EPCOT parking lot: A man was pronounced dead at the scene. A woman and a 2-year-old child died after being taken to a hospitals. The two survivors, a 3-year-old girl and a 5-year-old boy, were listed in critical condition at Orlando Regional Medical Center. In California as well, news accounts have mentioned instances where accident victims were declared dead while on Disneyland property, as in this 1985 Los Angeles Times report of a girl who was crushed to death under the wheels of a tour bus in the Disneyland parking lot: The identity of the girl, who was pronounced dead at the scene, was not released pending notification of her parents, according to Sgt. Larry Kurtz. The driver of the bus was not held.
29989	A man was hospitalized in December 2018 after an Apple Airpod exploded in his ear.	The included image of the supposed Airpods “victim” can be traced to an article about managing external burns of the ear which was published in the Indian Journal of Burns in May 2013, three years before Apple released the first generation of their Airpods.	false	Junk News, huzlers	A few days before Christmas of 2018, the entertainment website Huzlers published an article reporting that one of the season’s hottest gifts, Apple Airpods, were responsible for putting a man in the hospital after one “exploded” in his ear: An Arizona man is being hospitalized after his brand new Apple AirPod earphones allegedly exploded in his ear. Josiah Johnson, 21, is being hospitalized with 2nd degree burns on his face after his Airpods exploded. According to Josiah, who admitted to have been watching pornography when his Airpods exploded, also has 1st degree burns on his penis and tesitcles. This was not a genuine news article, of course. Huzlers is an entertainment website with a long history of publishing junk news. A disclaimer at the bottom of the site states that “Huzlers is the most infamous fauxtire & satire entertainment website in the world. If it’s trending on social media you’ll find it here!”
538	Nuclear energy needs greater safety guarantees, pope says.	Pope Francis, who met victims of the Fukushima nuclear disaster while in Japan, said on Tuesday that nuclear energy should not be used until there are ironclad guarantees that it is safe for people and the environment.	true	Environment	Speaking to reporters aboard the plane returning to Rome from his trip to Asia, Francis renewed a call for a total ban on nuclear weapons, including their possession for the purpose of deterrence. Francis said declarations on the immorality of the use or possession of nuclear weapons would be incorporated in the Church’s universal catechism, a compilation of Catholic teachings and rules. The pope comforted victims of the 2011 Fukushima disaster on Monday in Tokyo and noted a call by Japan’s Catholic bishops to abolish nuclear power outright. Around 18,000 people died or were classified as missing after the so-called Triple Disaster, when a massive earthquake set off a tsunami - in some places 30 meters high - destroying a wide swathe of Japan’s northeastern coast and triggering a nuclear meltdown at the plant. “The use of nuclear energy is at the limit (of safety) because we still have not managed to achieve total security,” Francis said. “In my personal opinion, I would not use nuclear energy until there is total security. There is not enough security to guarantee that there will not be a disaster,” Francis added. Francis said assertions that nuclear accidents were rare were insufficient because effects of radiation are felt for decades on people and the environment, such as in the area around the Chernobyl reactor in Ukraine which was crippled by a meltdown in 1986. Francis, who wrote a major encyclical in 2015 on protection of the environment and the effects of global warming, said humanity had gone beyond the limit in violating nature. As examples, he listed the overuse of pesticides and dispensing growth hormones to animals destined for human consumption. “The (need for the) protection of the environment has gotten to the point where it is either now or never,” he said. Without naming countries, Francis accused states of practicing ‘armament hypocrisy’, saying nations of Christian tradition “speak of peace but live off weapons. This is called hypocrisy”. Francis said the United Nations does much good around the world but criticized the system that gives veto power to only a few nations in the Security Council. “Without meaning any offence to anyone, think of the (UN) Security Council: if here is a problem with weapons and everybody votes in favor of avoiding a bellicose action ... and one with veto power votes no, everything stops,” he said. The Security Council has five permanent members with veto power - the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China. “I have heard people say that the United Nations should move forward and give up the right of veto of some nations ... It would be beautiful if everyone had the same right,” Francis said.
2503	Spanish austerity cuts put lives at risk, study finds.	Austerity cuts in Spain could lead to the effective dismantling of large parts of its healthcare system and significantly damage the health of the population, according to a study published on Thursday.	true	Health News	Researchers who analyzed the situation warned that if nothing was done to reverse the trend, Spain risked spiraling health problems and could see increases in infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and the virus that causes AIDS. As part of the analysis, interviews were conducted with 34 doctors and nurses across Catalonia in northern Spain. Many reported feeling “shocked”, “numbed” and “disillusioned” about the cuts, and some expressed fears that “the cuts are going to kill people”, the researchers said. “For five years, policies to address the financial crisis have focused almost entirely on economic indicators,” said Martin McKee, professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), who co-led the study. “Our paper sheds light on the burden of human suffering that has followed from these policies.” The study published in the British medical Journal (BMJ) found that Spain’s national budget cuts of almost 14 percent and regional budget cuts of up to 10 percent in health and social services in 2012 have coincided with increased demands for care, particularly from the elderly, disabled and mentally ill. The researchers also noted increases in depression, alcohol-related disorders and suicides in Spain since the financial crisis hit and unemployment increased. “If no corrective measures are implemented, this could worsen with the risk of increases in HIV and tuberculosis — as we have seen in Greece where healthcare services have had severe cuts — as well as the risk of a rise in drug resistance and spread of disease,” said Helena Legido-Quigley, a lecturer in Global Health at LSHTM who worked with McKee. The findings in Spain chime with other studies in Europe and North America which found budget cuts had a devastating effect on health, driving up suicides, depression and infectious diseases and reducing access to medicines and care. In a book published in April, researchers said around 10,000 suicides and a million cases of depression had been diagnosed during what they called the “Great Recession” and the austerity measures that have come with it across Europe and North America. The BMJ study noted that Spain already had one of the lowest public expenditures on healthcare relative to GDP in the European Union. It said planned further cuts to a dependency fund for the elderly and disabled this year would put these vulnerable people even more at risk. Other changes in health provision include excluding unofficial immigrants from accessing free health services and increasing payments by patients for extra treatments such as drugs, prosthetics and some ambulance trips. In Madrid and Catalonia, regional cuts have led to a move towards privatization of hospitals, longer waiting times, cutbacks in emergency services and fewer surgical procedures, the researchers found.
16253	"Doug Muder Says Sen. Rand Paul’s 2011 budget ""included a big cut in the CDC."	Muder said that in 2011 Sen. Paul proposed cutting the CDC budget by $1.165 billion. Budget documents confirm that. In fact, Paul’s most detailed budget that year would have trimmed CDC spending by slightly more, about $1.2 billion. While the Senate approved two broad spending measures to fund the CDC in 2014, Paul voted against both.	true	Ebola, Federal Budget, Public Health, PunditFact, Doug Muder,	"We don’t know yet if the Ebola scare will help either party or be an afterthought in the midterm elections, but liberal blogger Doug Muder argued that confronting Ebola shows that it makes sense to vote Democratic. For Muder, Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul is the poster child for a distinct partisan contrast. ""Ebola points out why we need a fully funded government,"" Muder wrote. ""When there’s no immediate threat of disease, government agencies like the CDC look like bureaucratic waste. When Rand Paul put out a ‘Tea Party budget’ in 2011, it included a big cut in the CDC, and virtually no explanation as to how this would affect its mission."" In this fact-check, we look at whether Paul proposed a ""big cut"" in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Muder had blogged about Paul’s budget in 2011. Back then, Muder asked how the CDC would be able to fulfill its mission if, as Paul wanted, its budget was cut by $1.165 billion. We went back to Paul’s original budget documents. One posted January 2011 called for the $1.165 billion reduction that Muder mentioned. Paul then assembled a more complete budget plan in May 2011. It would cut the CDC budget by 20 percent from its Fiscal Year 2008 levels. Depending on whether you include special funds to evaluate federal health programs, Congress appropriated between $6.049 billion and $6.375 billion for the CDC in FY 2008. So Rand’s 20 percent reduction amounts to either $1.209 billion or $1.275 billion in cuts. That’s slightly more than Muder described. Paul wrote in his plan, ""The center is often mentioned in media reports highlighting their lavish accommodations. For example, in 2005, the CDC built a conference center for $106 million, complete with large-screen plasma TVs. They also spent tens of millions of dollars on state-of-the-art anti-gravity seating for employees, as well as luxury furniture. Taxpayers can no longer afford the luxury working atmosphere of the CDC."" That budget plan remains posted on the website randpaul2016.com, Paul's Senate re-election website. Brian Darling, a Paul spokesman, agreed that the senator has proposed these cuts in the past, but said that funding and the ability to fight Ebola don’t inevitably go hand-in-hand. ""If you look closely at the CDC budget, there are funds that have been wasted on projects that have nothing to do with disease prevention,"" Darling said. Darling then noted that Congress has been at least as supportive of the CDC as the Obama administration. Darling said that in an omnibus spending bill, Congress appropriated $6.9 billion for the CDC, about $240 million more than the administration requested. Darling highlighted another $88 million for Ebola in a continuing resolution bill approved in September. However, neither action undercuts Muder’s point, and Paul voted against both measures. It’s important to remember that those bills doled out money across many government agencies, not specifically for the CDC alone. Sometimes reasonable people can quibble over whether a cut is ""big"" or not. In this case, Paul himself called his cuts ""serious"" in a 2011 op-ed he penned for the Wall Street Journal. ""My proposal, not surprisingly, has been greeted skeptically in Washington, where serious spending cuts are a rarity,"" Paul wrote. ""But it is a modest proposal when measured against the size of our mounting debt."" Our ruling Muder said that in 2011 Sen. Paul proposed cutting the CDC budget by $1.165 billion. Budget documents confirm that. In fact, Paul’s most detailed budget that year would have trimmed CDC spending by slightly more, about $1.2 billion. While the Senate approved two broad spending measures to fund the CDC in 2014, Paul voted against both."
30837	"A nineteenth-century British man named Edward Mordrake (also spelled ""Mordake"") was born with a rare medical condition in the form of a extra face on the back of his head."	Boese concludes — convincingly, we find — that Edward Mordrake was the literary creation of Charles Lotin Hildreth. He never really existed.	false	Medical, craniofacial duplication, craniopagus parasiticus, Diprosopus	One of the more interesting historical nuggets to cross our transom in recent years is the claim that a certain English gentleman of the nineteenth century named Edward Mordrake (or “Edward Mordake,” according to older sources) was born with a bizarre medical condition so troubling that it drove him to suicide: Albeit popularized in the 2000s via memes, songs, and TV shows, the story isn’t of recent origin, having aroused the morbid interests of Victorian readers more than a century ago in Gould and Pyle’s Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, first published in 1896. This is how the authors of that hefty volume recounted it: The following well-known story of Edward Mordake, though taken from lay sources, is of sufficient notoriety and interest to be mentioned here: — “One of the weirdest as well as most melancholy stories of human deformity is that of Edward Mordake, said to have been heir to one of the noblest peerages in England. He never claimed the title, however, and committed suicide in his twenty-third year. He lived in complete seclusion, refusing the visits even of the members of his own family. He was a young man of fine attainments, a profound scholar, and a musician of rare ability. His figure was remarkable for its grace, and his face – that is to say, his natural face – was that of Antinous. But upon the back of his head was another face, that of a beautiful girl, ‘lovely as a dream, hideous as a devil.’ The female face was a mere mask, ‘occupying only a small portion of the posterior part of the skull, yet exhibiting every sign of intelligence, of a malignant sort, however.’ It would be seen to smile and sneer while Mordake was weeping. The eyes would follow the movements of the spectator, and the lips would ‘gibber without ceasing.’ No voice was audible, but Mordake avers that he was kept from his rest at night by the hateful whispers of his ‘devil twin,’ as he called it, ‘which never sleeps, but talks to me forever of such things as they only speak of in hell. No imagination can conceive the dreadful temptations it sets before me. For some unforgiven wickedness of my forefathers I am knit to this fiend – for a fiend it surely is. I beg and beseech you to crush it out of human semblance, even if I die for it.’ Such were the words of the hapless Mordake to Manvers and Treadwell, his physicians. In spite of careful watching he managed to procure poison, whereof he died, leaving a letter requesting that the ‘demon face’ might be destroyed before his burial, ‘lest it continues its dreadful whisperings in my grave.’ At his own request he was interred in a waste place, without stone or legend to mark his grave.” Despite the credulous reception the story has frequently received, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical. For one, the entire passage about Mordrake was quoted from what the authors describe as “lay sources” (more about which later), which sets it apart from other entries (such as their account of the life of Joseph Merrick, the “Elephant Man”) drawn from actual medical case histories. For another, it is heavy on melodrama (e.g., “he was kept from his rest at night by the hateful whispers of his ‘devil twin,’ as he called it”), while giving only the slightest nod to science (apart from applying the now-antiquated medical classification “bicephalic monsters,” there is really no scientific verbiage at all). And although it purports to cite two attending physicians, “Manvers and Treadwell,” a critique of the entry in the 1906 edition of The Theosophical Review reported that the names appeared nowhere in the Dict. of National Biography (a Victorian-era Who’s Who). The origin of the black-and-white photograph purporting to show Mordrake and his “devil twin” in profile (which has appeared in Internet postings since 2007) is unknown. Despite its “vintage” appearance, the image exhibits greater resolution and clarity than what is typically seen in photographic reproductions of the mid-to-late Victorian era (e.g., the 1889 photograph of Joseph Merrick published in the British Medical Journal). It appears, in fact, to be a retouched photo of a wax figure in the Panoptikum Wax Museum in Hamburg, Germany: A Case of Asymmetrical Conjoined Twins? There does exist a real medical condition, Craniopagus parasiticus, whose symptoms bear a very basic resemblance to those described in this case. It’s an extremely rare complication in conjoined twins wherein one of the pair is underdeveloped and less than fully functional (hence “parasitic”), and takes the form of a vestigial head attached to the cranium of the “autositic” (dominant) twin. According to a 2016 case report, there have only been ten or fewer recorded cases of Craniopagus parasiticus in history, “of which only three survived past birth and were documented in the literature.” Of those three, two died before the age of two, despite surgical attempts to save the life of the autositic twin. The third, known famously as the “two-headed boy of Bengal,” lived to be four years old and was reported to be in good health until he was bitten by a cobra and died. Most significantly, as regards the Mordrake case, conjoined twins are by definition genetically identical, so they are always of the same sex. The “devil twin” described in that case was female, while the autositic twin was male (though it could be argued, of course, that the vestigial face was misidentified as female). That the “sneering” face had no audible voice comports with such information as we have on real cases of Craniopagus parasiticus, but the claims that it exhibited “every sign of intelligence” and taunted the poor man with “hateful whispers” do not. Accounts of the two-headed boy of Bengal said the vestigial face in that case could “grimace” and its eyes were observed moving, for example, but though there could have been some sort of rudimentary consciousness present there were no signs of intelligence. Alternatively, it has been suggested that Mordrake might have suffered instead from a congenital defect known as Diprosopus (or craniofacial duplication), in which facial features are duplicated to a greater or lesser extent on other areas of the head (in the rarest cases, the full face is duplicated). The mechanisms behind this deformity aren’t fully understood, although many researchers believe it to be another rare form of conjoined twinning. Although somewhat more common than Craniopagus parasiticus (with just under 50 instances documented since the mid-nineteenth century), Diprosopus has a similarly poor survival rate, with most cases ending in stillbirth. In short, although science does offer theoretical explanations for Mordrake’s condition, they are few and only marginally plausible. About Those “Lay Sources” Gould and Pyle reported in 1896 that the “well-known story of Edward Mordake” they quoted was taken from “lay sources” — plural — despite the fact that there was really only one. Science historian Alex Boese has traced the quoted text, verbatim, to a syndicated newspaper article written in 1895 by Charles Lotin Hildreth, a poet and author of speculative fiction: The article, titled “The Wonders of Modern Science: some half human monsters once thought to be of the Devil’s brood,” describes a variety of remarkable “human freaks” whose cases Hildreth claims to have found in old reports of the “Royal Scientific Society” (the “musty old pages” of which, he tells us, are characterized by their “long S’s and their turgid phraseology”). Among the cases Hildreth details are the “Fish Woman of Lincoln” — a young girl whose legs, from the hips downward were “covered with shining scales and terminated in the most exact tails of fish.” There’s a “half human, half crab” whose hands and feet end in enormous, hard-shelled claws. The “melon child of Radnor,” we learn, had a head the size and color of a melon, with no perceptible organs of sense except a vertical slit for a mouth. Mr. Pewness of Stratton had feet where his hands should be, “and vice versa.” The “four-eyed man of Cricklade” had two sets of eyes, one above the other. “Jackass Johnny” was cursed with “a pair of enormously long, furry ears, exactly like those of an ass.” The “Norfolk spider” was a monstrous thing that crawled upon its belly with six hairy jointed legs with claws and a human head. What all these “wonders of science” had in common, Boese points out, is that no mention of them is to be found in any previous sources. None. It appears, in other words, that Hildreth simply made them up. Albeit couched as nonfiction, the article was actually a work of speculative fiction in the spirit of other scientific hoaxes of the time, such as the infamous life-on-the-moon hoax of 1835 and the Cardiff Giant hoax of 1869.
2571	Marijuana goes legal in Washington state amid mixed messages.	Hundreds of marijuana enthusiasts huddled near Seattle’s famed Space Needle tower on Thursday night with pipes, bongs and hand-rolled joints to celebrate Washington’s new status as the first state in the nation to legalize pot for adult recreational use.	true	Health News	The public gathering at the downtown Seattle Center, like a smaller turnout at a nearby spot hours earlier, defied a key provision of the state’s landmark marijuana law, which allows possession of small amounts of cannabis but forbids users from lighting up outside the privacy of their homes. Police kept their distance from both gatherings, underscoring mixed law enforcement messages about the new statute, known by its ballot designation as Initiative 502. The measure took effect on Thursday. Seattle’s city attorney issued a stern warning on Wednesday that public pot puffing would not be tolerated and that violators faced citations with $100 fines. But the Seattle Police Department said its officers had been directed to limit any enforcement actions related to Initiative 502 to verbal warnings only, at least for now. The new law, passed by voters last month in a move that could set the state up for a showdown with the federal government, removes criminal sanctions for anyone 21 or older possessing 1 ounce (28.5 grams) or less of pot for personal use. Colorado voters likewise chose to legalize pot for personal recreational use, but that measure is not due to take effect until next month. Both states are among 18 that have already removed criminal sanctions for medical use of marijuana. The Washington law also legalizes possession of up to 16 ounces (0.45 kg) of solid cannabis-infused goods - such as brownies - and up to 72 ounces (2.4 kg) of weed in liquid form. But driving under the influence of cannabis or imbibing in public places where the consumption of alcohol is already banned remain illegal. The new law ultimately will permit cannabis to be legally sold and taxed at state-licensed stores in a system to be modeled after those in many states for alcohol sales. The state Liquor Control Board, along with agriculture and public health officials, have until next December to set up such a system. For now, it remains a crime to sell, cultivate or even share one’s own stash, even though the law allows individuals to purchase a limited amount for personal possession. Ironically, the first known court challenge of the law came from a medical marijuana patient in Olympia, who filed suit last week seeking to block enforcement of a new standard for marijuana impairment while driving, similar to the blood-alcohol standard for drunken driving. The plaintiff, Arthur West, says the new legal limit - 5 nanograms per milliliter of blood of THC, pot’s active ingredient - would unfairly subject him to prosecution for a THC level at which he routinely drives without impairment. A hearing on his request for an injunction was set for Friday. Little if any of the law’s fine points seemed to matter to the mellow group of about 300 people - from college-age tokers to middle-aged Baby Boomers - who assembled at the Seattle Center fountain, a short distance from the Space Needle. Convivial laughter, laid-back conversation and occasional coughing filled the air as the pungent smell of marijuana wafted through the crowd, many wearing sweatshirt hoodies to ward off the chill, on a cold, crisp evening. Carrying a sign, “marijuana is safer than alcohol,” Jared Allaway, 30, described the night as “iconic.” “Seattle’s always been friendly to cannabis,” Allaway said. “Hopefully this will spread to eastern Washington. You get outside of Seattle, it’s a different world.” Seated in a wheelchair that sported a “Goddess” sticker, medical marijuana patient Penny Simons, 52, said she traveled with friends from Renton, Washington, south of Seattle, to attend the smoke-in. “It’s history,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about the people across the country who are jailed for this. It’s nice to see things change.” A smaller crowd of about 100 pot-smoking celebrants had assembled about 19 hours earlier nearby for a count-down to the law taking effect at the stroke of midnight, blaring the music of reggae legend Bob Marley from loudspeakers. Both gatherings were peaceful, with no reports of arrests.
2111	Gates Foundation gives $1.5 bln for women's health.	The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pledged $1.5 billion on Monday in a joint push with the United Nations to improve the health of women and children, while launching a lobbying effort to get governments and other non-profit groups on board.	true	Health News	The program aims to cut across the “silos” of health initiatives focused on one thing — AIDS, for example, or nutrition — and get broader initiatives into place. “That is in addition to grants that we already make in vaccines, diarrhea, malaria,” Melinda Gates told reporters. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he would try to focus the Group of 20 meeting in Toronto later this month on the subject, adding the goal is to raise $15 billion. “We may need an additional $45 billion by 2015,” Ban said. Ban and Gates described a comprehensive approach through 2014 to help women deliver babies safely and plan healthy families with access to contraception, while incorporating current vaccination and nutrition programs. “The women and children are always last in line for health issues,” Ban said. “It’s just morally unacceptable ... This is a real human rights issue.” Ban said the United Nations would lean on developed nations and non-profits alike. “We need all of the actors,” he said. “Getting strong support from a foundation like Melinda and Bill Gates is a strong political tool for me.” Ban, in Washington for the international Women Deliver conference, said he hoped the United States would provide money and political push. “I know the current economic situation is quite difficult. But the current economic situation should not give any excuse to pay less attention to this,” he said. Nor are poorer nations off the hook. Developing countries should devote at least 15 percent of their national budgets to health issues, Ban said. “They can make policy changes that make an enormous difference to women and children,” Gates said. “This is a government issue and it is going to take large-scale government funding to make it work.” She praised the Ethiopian government for opening 15,000 clinics, for instance, and hiring 30,000 visiting health workers. The foundation, set up by billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates with his wife Melinda, said it would provide initial grants of $94 million for work in India and $60 million for Ethiopia. Some of the first groups funded include the non-profit Save the Children and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition. Gates cited recent statistics showing it is possible to make progress. In April, Dr. Christopher Murray of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington found that deaths of women in and around childbirth have gone down by an average of 35 percent globally. And last month, the same group found that deaths among children under age 5 fell from 11.9 million in 1990 to 7.7 million in 2010. World Bank managing director Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said she hoped her institution could work with Gates on the program. “The reason why I think this could work is this is one area where we do have solutions,” she told Reuters at the conference. “We do know what works. Some of it has proven to be quite successful.”
9734	Powdered Ginger May Ease Seasonal Allergy Symptoms	A mouse study from Japan showed that rodents that had been fed powdered ginger responded with fewer sneezes and had a lower level of immune response to an allergen. This short piece about the research earns praise for stating clearly in the subheadline and in the lead sentence that the study was conducted in mice. We wish more stories would take that simple step, so crucial to understanding these results. And while the story fell short of our standards by not including any context or independent sources, it did a pretty good job of explaining the science of measuring an allergic response and quantifying rodent sneeze rates. Overall, this was a pretty good effort at briefly summarizing rodent research in a way that’s accessible and useful for readers. Allergies strike as many as 10-30 percent of the world population, according to the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology. And this article suggests that a readily available food product may alleviate these irritating symptoms felt by millions around the world, which is great in theory. But a small study of mice is not the basis for a headline implying that ginger will ease symptoms in people. We’re glad this story quickly recovered from that headline to clarify that the study involved mice, and that ginger hasn’t been tested for allergy symptom relief in people.	true	allergies,ginger,mice studies,rhinitis	The story did not talk about the cost of adding a daily dose of ginger to one’s diet. But since that cost can’t be very significant, we’ll rate this Not Applicable. The story did a good job of sharing the limited results of the rodent study. Mice sneezed less (2.1 rather than 15.2 times) in the group that swallowed ginger, and had lower levels of immunoglobulin E, after exposure to an allergen. It was good to see that story used absolute numbers to quantify the benefits rather than stating the results as a percentage decrease. It seems that harms to the mice were not discussed in the research paper (not surprising as the mice were all killed as part of the study) that’s the basis for the story. A brief search didn’t turn up anything overly concerning regarding the harms of ginger, but then again, it’s not clear what the dosage given to the mice would translate to in human terms. A high-enough dose of anything can be dangerous. But while it might have been helpful to mention harms to humans attributed to powdered ginger, this may also have propagated the questionable notion that the findings are applicable to humans. We’ll rate this Not Applicable. To its credit, the story explains high up that the study involved mice, and it includes a closing caveat that ginger has not been tested in humans. But while many people will likely understand that the results have limited application to humans, other readers may not appreciate just how tenuous the link is between animal and human research. (Here’s some background on that issue if you care to read more.) The story falls short of warning that rodent studies frequently do not correlate well with human health. We’ll rule this close call in favor of the story and rate it Satisfactory. There was no disease mongering. The story does not quote any sources, either independent or connected to the scientific paper. We realize that space and length limitations may make it difficult to include such sources in a brief story such as this one. Nevertheless, we wanted to hear more context for this study. Ginger has already been studied for relationships to cardiovascular disease and cancer. A comment from someone in nutritional biochemistry, or an allergist, might have helped readers take better stock of the findings. The story does not talk about existing ways to reduce symptoms of allergies. One could argue that such discussion would be propagating the idea the study might apply to humans — not necessarily a good thing. But then again, the whole underlying point of the story is that there’s some relevance here to people. On balance, we’d rather see the story include this information, which might be more useful for readers than the sneezing rates of mice anyway. The story mentioned that the study used powdered ginger, which it notes is used in cooking. People can deduce from this that powdered ginger is widely available. As the story says, ginger has never been given to human patients for allergic rhinitis. We couldn’t find any news release related to this study. And since the story doesn’t include any independent perspective — which would indicate that it went beyond any such news release — we can’t be sure whether the story meets our standard here or not. We’ll rate it Not Applicable.
32057	A groundbreaking study showing that algae can draw an alternative source of energy from other plants suggests that humans might be able to draw energy from each other in a similar way.	This viral news story is a good example of a poorly executed bait and switch. It provides results of an actual study to gain credibility before switching into unsubstantiated, unverifiable, and illogical claims, forcing a connection that — like “Dr. Olivia Bader-Lee” herself — will not appear, no matter how hard you look for it.	false	Science, algae, energy, prevent disease	In August 2016, web site Simple Capacity posted a curious story (“Science Finally Confirms that People Absorb Energy from Others”) which subsequently went viral on a number of meditation or alternative health and science social media pages. The article is a reprint of something first written on 22 November 2012, and published on web site PreventDisease.com. That author’s main claim is well summarized by the first two sentences of the article: A biological research team at Bielefeld University has made a groundbreaking discovery showing that plants can draw an alternative source of energy from other plants. This finding could also have a major impact on the future of bioenergy eventually providing the evidence to show that people draw energy from others in much the same way. This article distorts the findings of an actual scientific study about a species of green algae called Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. That research, published in the journal Nature Communications on 20 November 2012, demonstrated that — in addition to photosynthesis — this species of green algae, under sub-optimal growing conditions, can derive energy by breaking down and consuming the cellulose (the main molecule of a green plant’s cell walls) of other nearby plants, too. As reported in a Universitaet Bielefeld press release: “This is the first time that such a behaviour has been confirmed in a vegetable organism,” says Professor Kruse. “That algae can digest cellulose contradicts every previous textbook. To a certain extent, what we are seeing is plants eating plants.” The paper also speculated that this technology could be used to convert cellulose waste (e.g. crops, paper, et cetera) into a form of carbon that could be used as a biofuel, a process that currently relies on a type of fungi that needs additional sources of energy to grow. The press release continued: If, in future, cellulose enzymes can be obtained from algae, there would be no more need for the organic material to feed the fungi. In the case of the Simple Capacity viral story, the major leap from the scientific study to pseudoscience occurred when “psychologist and energy healer” Dr. Olivia Bader-Lee (who may be a fictional character created for the purpose of promoting this one claim) commented on the study. The logic of the transition was not subtle: Flowers need water and light to grow and people are no different. Our physical bodies are like sponges, soaking up the environment. “This is exactly why there are certain people who feel uncomfortable in specific group settings where there is a mix of energy and emotions,” said psychologist and energy healer Dr. Olivia Bader-Lee. Bader-Lee’s claim is that this study of a specific species of algae reinforces a mystical notion that humans can sense and “feed” from one another’s energy: Bader-Lee suggests that the field of bioenergy is now ever evolving and that studies on the plant and animal world will soon translate and demonstrate what energy metaphysicians have known all along — that humans can heal each other simply through energy transfer just as plants do. “Human can absorb and heal through other humans, animals, and any part of nature. That’s why being around nature is often uplifting and energizing for so many people,” she concluded. If, however, humans did act like Chlamydomonas reinhardtii when they couldn’t create food for themselves, it would be a macabre undertaking. The algae literally consume the physical organic matter of other plants, not some unseen, untapped metaphysical form of energy. The analogous concept for humans would be cannibalism. To be consistent with the study, humans would also be required to be built of cellulose (which we are not), as the algae’s mechanism for deriving energy from other plants is to produce an enzyme that breaks down the cellulose and converts it into a form that can be consumed by its own cells.
17210	Kesha Rogers is not a Democrat.	Hinojosa said Rogers isn’t a Democrat. We don’t see how to factually reconcile this statement, tied to disagreement with Rogers’ anti-Obama views, with Rogers twice winning primaries to become the party’s nominee for a House seat. Under state law, too, a voter affiliates with a party by voting in its primary, which Rogers has done repeatedly.	false	Candidate Biography, Voting Record, Texas, Gilberto Hinojosa,	"Kesha Rogers of Houston, whom we’ve described as a Lyndon LaRouche Democrat, isn’t even a Democrat, according to the chairman of the Texas Democratic Party. Gilberto Hinojosa said in a Feb. 25, 2014, email blast, ""Kesha Rogers is one of the candidates on the ballot for U.S. senator in the Democratic primary -- but do not be fooled. Kesha Rogers is not a Democrat."" In the email, Hinojosa pointed out that Rogers favors the impeachment of President Barack Obama. He also said she has ""paraded around Texas with a poster of the president with a Hitler mustache. Rogers believes that the U.S. economy is secretly controlled by London financial institutions,"" Hinojosa wrote, ""and she has advocated for colonizing Mars,"" charges the party told us came from Rogers’ campaign website and a Dec. 6, 2013, news blog post by the Dallas Morning News. ""That’s not what real Democrats stand for,"" Hinojosa wrote. Rogers subsequently placed second to Dallas investor David Alameel in the party’s March 4 primary. She garnered 110,160 votes, or 22 percent of the vote, behind Alameel’s 238,618 votes, or 47 percent. The winner of their May 27, 2014, runoff stands to face Republican Sen. John Cornyn in November. A Rogers adviser, Harley Schlanger, the Western States spokesman for the Lyndon LaRouche PAC, urged us to check Hinojosa’s not-a-Democrat declaration, pointing out that thrice before Rogers has run as a Democrat for a Texas post. The state party has been emphatic about LaRouche Democrats not being mainstream. An example of that: In a March 19, 2014, commentary, LaRouche--a longstanding conspiracy theorist and former presidential candidate--called Obama a lackey for the queen of England intent on global thermonuclear warfare. LaRouche also speculated about Obama’s imprisonment or suicide. Party resolved not to help her Asked for Hinojosa’s back-up evidence, party spokesman Emmanuel Garcia shared a web link to a party-written ""fact check"" stressing reasons not to consider Rogers a valid Democrat, led by her desire to see Obama impeached. The document includes a resolution approved in December 2013 by its governing body, the State Democratic Executive Committee, stating that party members, officers and candidates are neither required nor encouraged to support the candidacy of any person self-identifying in alignment with the LaRouche movement or LaRouche himself, though they are free to ""relate to, describe and interact with any such candidates or campaigns as they individually deem."" The resolution closes by stating the party ""will have no relationship with the campaign of any person identifying him or herself as aligned with the LaRouche Movement or Lyndon LaRouche; no such campaigns will have access to party materials or data, no listing on the party website and no position of privilege, recognition, or credentialing at party meetings or conventions."" Rogers' past candidacies Texas Democrats twice nominated Rogers as the party's candidate to represent the Houston-area 22nd Congressional District and Rogers previously ran for state party chair. In 2010, Rogers carried 53 percent of the primary vote to capture the Democratic nomination for the House seat representing CD 22, according to the Texas Secretary of State’s office, and she won the party’s 2012 nod to represent the district by carrying 51 percent of the primary vote, defeating the other hopeful. At the 2006 Democratic state convention, Rogers finished last among candidates for party chair, attracting 98 delegate votes, or 1.5 percent, according to a June 11, 2006, blog post by the pro-Democratic Burnt Orange Report. So, Rogers is making her fourth run for a post as a Democrat. We turned next to Texas laws touching on party identification. 'Affiliating' with a Texas party Unlike in many states, Texans do not commit to a partisan or independent affiliation when they register to vote. But state law includes language about affiliating with a party. According to chapter 162 of the Texas Election Code, a ""person becomes affiliated with a political party when the person: (1) is accepted to vote in the party's primary election; or (2) applies for and is provided an early voting or limited primary ballot to be voted by mail."" Also, according to the law, a person affiliates by taking an oath at a precinct convention or a person may affiliate by taking an oath at any time, the law says, while an affiliation expires after the end of an election year or at the start of a subsequent election year, whichever comes first. Rogers' voting history This leads us to a traditional though crude way of gauging a Texan’s lean: their history of voting (or not) in party primaries. Any registered voter can vote in any primary (though they can't switch to the other party's runoffs). Still, as we wrote in a 2010 fact check, voting in a primary doesn't always mean a person sees himself as belonging to that party. Most voters abstain from primaries. To our query, Democratic pollster Jeff Smith of Austin, citing data he jointly owns with the party, said Rogers voted in Harris County in the 2002 through 2008 Democratic primaries and November general elections. He said Rogers voted in the county’s 2014 Democratic primary after voting in Fort Bend County in the 2010 and 2012 Democratic primaries and general elections. He said the records show no instances of Rogers voting in a Republican primary. For her part, Rogers told us she's been a life-long Democrat. ""I’m a Democrat because I represent the true traditions of the Democratic Party,"" Rogers said by phone. ""I don’t represent the Wall Street leg of the Democratic Party, which has now taken control."" Expert observers Finally, we asked close observers of Texas politics including Mark Jones, an oft-quoted Rice University political scientist, to weigh in. By email, Jones said that it’s inaccurate to say Rogers isn’t a Democrat. ""While Kesha Rogers without question holds positions on many issues that are sharply at odds with those of most Democrats,"" Jones wrote, ""she has the right to profess to be a Democrat and run for public office as a Democrat... In the United States in general, and in Texas in particular, anyone can claim to be a Democrat or Republican and compete in that party's primary,"" Jones said, ""even if they hold positions that are anathema to an overwhelming majority of people that identify with and support the party. ""Thus, just as Louisiana Republicans two dozen years ago could not prevent former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke from publicly identifying himself as a Republican and running for office as a Republican,"" Jones said, ""Texas Democrats cannot prevent Kesha Rogers from publicly identifying as a Democrat and running in the Democratic primary."" Jones added: ""While she is clearly in a fringe faction within the Democratic Party, a faction with longstanding roots in the party whose views on many (though not all) major issues are clearly far outside of the Democratic mainstream, her self-identification and political participation are consistently Democratic."" Austin lawyer Buck Wood, an expert on election law, said by phone that Hinojosa must have meant Rogers isn’t a genuine Democrat, which the party has often said. (Separately, party spokesman Garcia said Hinojosa wasn't backing off his reference to Rogers as not a Democrat.) Rogers’ filing as a candidate and voting in the 2014 party primary makes her a Democrat, legally speaking, Wood said. Ed Sills, spokesman for the Alameel-backing Texas AFL-CIO, suggested Hinojosa has a case. By email, Sills said the ""totality of one’s beliefs, platform and behavior need to be considered in evaluating whether someone is really part of a political party or not."" He likened Rogers to the late Gene Kelly, a San Antonio-area resident who repeatedly sought party nominations (sometimes successfully) without showing signs of wanting to help the Democratic ticket. On her campaign website, Sills said, Rogers doesn’t refer to herself solely as a Democrat, instead saying ""LaRouche Democrat."" But we noticed her site also includes positive references to John F. Kennedy, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and other Democratic heroes. Rogers says on the site: ""Texas already has a tradition of FDR-JFK Democrats fighting for the forgotten man, against Wall Street, including: Barbara Jordan, Wright Patman, Henry B. Gonzalez, Jim Wright, and Ralph Yarborough,"" referring to influential U.S. House members through history and the late liberal senator. Our ruling Hinojosa said Rogers isn’t a Democrat. We don’t see how to factually reconcile this statement, tied to disagreement with Rogers’ anti-Obama views, with Rogers twice winning primaries to become the party’s nominee for a House seat. Under state law, too, a voter affiliates with a party by voting in its primary, which Rogers has done repeatedly.s . – The statement is not accurate."
276	India asks its states not to partner with Philip Morris-funded foundation.	India’s health ministry has asked all state governments in the country not to partner with the Foundation for a Smoke-Free World (FSFW) because of its links to tobacco giant Philip Morris International Inc (PM.N), a letter seen by Reuters showed.	true	Health News	Established in 2017, the FSFW focuses on eliminating usage of cigarettes and works toward smoking cessation using new technologies and alternative products. It says it works independently, but the World Health Organization (WHO) has said there are “clear conflicts” due to the $80 million in annual funding the foundation receives from Philip Morris. At least three Indian anti-tobacco groups earlier this year wrote to the federal health ministry in New Delhi calling for the rejection of any possible partnerships with FSFW, according to copies of their representations seen by Reuters. India’s federal health ministry has sent a letter, dated June 24, to chief secretaries of all states, saying they should not partner with FSFW and also advise other departments and institutions in their region accordingly. The ministry said Philip Morris was funding FSFW as well as manufacturing and promoting harm-reduction smoking devices. Reuters has previously reported Philip Morris has plans to launch its iQOS smoking device in India which it says is less harmful than conventional cigarettes. “Any collaboration with the Foundation for a Smoke Free World should be avoided in the larger interest of Public Health,” senior health ministry official, Sanjeeva Kumar, wrote in the letter, which was reviewed by Reuters. The Foundation for a Smoke-Free World, which is led by former WHO official Dr. Derek Yach, said it “operates with complete independence from Philip Morris” and was committed to full transparency about who its funders were. Philip Morris, which has a stated longer-term vision to replace cigarette sales with products such as its iQOS device, in a statement said FSFW was “an independent body governed by its own independent Board of Directors”. In recent years, the Indian government has intensified its tobacco-control efforts, raising cigarette taxes and ordering companies to print bigger health warnings on cigarette packs. India has 106 million adult smokers, second only to China, and more than 900,000 people die each year in India due to tobacco-related illnesses. A federal health ministry official said on Sunday the letter on FSFW had been sent as a preventive measure to dissuade states from any collaboration with the foundation, and similar instructions were likely to be sent to other federal ministries. The FSFW said there were no projects with any state government institutions in India. “We seek partnerships with all who share our goal to end smoking in the world,” a spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters. In May, FSFW said its team was committed to working with others “to accelerate an end to smoking in this generation” in India. It also invited people to study its strategic plan. That same month, Philip Morris in a press statement said it had urged the Indian government to create a regulatory environment for devices such as its iQOS. When the FSFW was launched in 2017, the WHO had said it will not partner with the foundation and asked governments around the world and public health communities to follow the agency’s lead. (Story refiled to fix grammar in paragraph 4)
4893	Librarians facing new tasks say crisis isn’t in the catalog.	When Jackie Narkiewicz switched careers and became a librarian, she thought she’d spend her workdays “drinking hot beverages and discussing literature with people.”	true	Mental health, Opioids, Health, General News, Homelessness, Libraries, New York, Poverty, U.S. News, Careers	But during her 16 years as a librarian on New York’s Long Island, Narkiewicz has also faced a man threatening to kill her and a patron screaming while cutting her own hair in the bathroom. For her job, Narkiewicz has been trained in CPR and mental health crisis response and carries the opioid overdose antidote naloxone with her. As libraries nationwide contend with a surge in patrons seeking refuge in the stacks because of poverty, drug addiction or mental illness, a growing number of institutions have social workers on staff. It’s the latest step in an evolution that libraries have been dealing with for years as homelessness and the opioid crisis reach emergency levels and patrons have come to rely on libraries as free, safe spaces open to all. Though homelessness has seen some declines in the U.S. since the recession, it has surged in cities like Seattle, where a homelessness state of emergency and a spike in questions from library patrons about things like housing, transportation and food led the public library system to hire its first full-time social worker in 2018. Other libraries, unable to afford such a step, have trained librarians to handle certain emergencies themselves. That’s caused some debate among library workers about whether they’re being asked to adapt to an evolving job or to do work that goes too far beyond their expertise. “I can get you a phone number, I can get you a book you want ... but when you’re dealing with mental health issues, I don’t feel appropriately trained for it,” Narkiewicz said. A few master’s degree programs for aspiring librarians have classes on mental health, but most don’t. To help fill in the gaps, an estimated 40-plus library systems have full-time social workers on staff, according to Whole Person Librarianship, an organization that tracks such partnerships. At the Queens Public Library in New York City, resident social worker Shantel Johnson oversees a team of library case managers, but she’s also available to help librarians communicate with struggling patrons, connect visitors to services or just listen to people. “They’ll open up to staff, and staff is doing 14 different things,” Johnson said. She says she regularly helps patrons who are homeless, experiencing abuse or having trouble applying for jobs. The Queens Public Library also started stationing New York University social work interns in some branches last year, as does the New York Public Library, which got its first interns two years ago. Library patron Sofia Ciniglio was meeting twice weekly with an intern at a Manhattan branch last year for career advice. But their conversations eventually involved her family, feelings and personal life. The intern introduced Ciniglio to a library where she could learn Braille, which she’d been curious about. “She was very much a good listener, very attentive, and she knew who I was and the nuances of how I go about things,” Ciniglio said. The NYPL’s librarians, meanwhile, are trained to de-escalate conflicts but aren’t asked to do more in-depth mental health crisis training. Spokeswoman Amy Geduldig notes that the library “is not a social services organization, and its staff are not medical or mental health professionals.” The NYPL, the nation’s busiest library system, still hasn’t hired a full-time licensed social worker, though Brooklyn did in 2015 and Queens did in 2018. In some libraries without professional social work help, employees are being asked to take on new tasks. At the San Diego Public Library, a state library grant has funded employee trainings in mental health first aid since 2016. Librarian Joseph Miesner says the training helped him personally when he came across a suicidal patron. In small town Titusville, Pennsylvania, library director Justin Hoenke recently agreed with his library’s board that all staffers should be trained to administer naloxone if needed. “This is a new requirement of the job,” Hoenke said. “If they’re not comfortable with it, they kind of have to reevaluate their life and their job. You have to change with the times.” Fobazi Ettarh doesn’t see it that way. An academic librarian at Rutgers University in Newark, she says too many expectations can distract librarians from their work, and she personally wouldn’t feel comfortable as a first responder to an overdose. “It would just be a lot for my mental health,” she said. Research suggests other librarians feel the same way. A 2018 survey of librarians in Pennsylvania found many reported they already felt stressed from trying to answer questions from patrons about mental health and social services, even without handling acute emergencies in the library. Meanwhile, some librarians, like Amanda Oliver, have begged in vain for more preparation. Oliver said she quit her public library job in Washington when she asked supervisors for more training and “was largely ignored.” District of Columbia Public Library Executive Director Richard Reyes-Gavilan says Oliver’s branch offered at least two trainings related to mental health during her tenure, but the library is also “committed to doing even more” to support staff. Despite fraught encounters with people in crisis, Narkiewicz, who works part time right now, still hopes to find a full-time job in the library field. “Some days are really difficult. Some days are amazing and terrific,” she says. “It’s quite an eye-opening, but an amazing, wonderful career.”
3383	Washington’s Clark County reports 1st vaping-related illness.	Health officials say the first case of severe lung illness associated with vaping has been reported in Vancouver’s Clark County.	true	Health, General News, Washington, Vancouver, Vaping, Public health	KGW-TV reports a woman in her 40s was hospitalized for a lung injury after she reportedly vaped products containing nicotine and THC. The products were purchased at local licensed retailers, Clark County Public Health said. A medical provider reported the illness to health officals. As of Dec. 10, the CDC reports 2,409 hospitalized cases of vaping-associated lung injury and 52 deaths. In Washington, 21 cases have been reported in nine counties. “We still don’t know what is causing this outbreak, and there may be more than one cause,” said Dr. Alan Melnick, Clark County health officer and Public Health director. “People should not use any vapor products.” In Oregon, two people have died from a vaping-related illness, according to the Oregon Health Authority.
8705	UK's Prince William and Kate say: look after mental health in coronavirus crisis.	Britain’s Prince William and his wife Kate urged people to look after their mental health during the novel coronavirus outbreak and drew attention to the particular psychological strain felt by frontline health workers.	true	Health News	“We can feel frustrated, miss loved ones or get anxious,” William, the grandson of Queen Elizabeth, and Kate said in an interview promoting a government Every Mind Matters online platform which gives tips on mental health. “There are things we can all do to look after our mental wellbeing at this time.” Prince William told the BBC he was especially worried about front-line health workers who were putting their lives on the line on a daily basis to save others, while absorbing the pain of their patients. “The experiences the front-line workers are going through now is like nothing that anyone has ever seen,” William said. “A lot of them are putting their lives and their health on the line for all of us.” He noted that while health workers had rightly been praised as heroes, the country should be careful not to alienate those nurses, doctors and support staff “who do genuinely worry and are scared going to work every single day”. “We’re not superhuman, any of us. So to be able to manage those emotions and that feeling is going to take some time after all this is over as well.” The members of Britain’s royal family, who are keeping in touch via online video calls, have experienced COVID-19 first hand, when William’s 71-year-old father, Prince Charles, tested positive and suffered mild symptoms last month. “I have to admit at first I was quite concerned: he fits the profile of somebody at the age he is at which is fairly risky,” said Prince William, adding that the hardest challenge for Charles was to stay at home and not go walking. He also expressed concern for the monarch, his 93-year-old grandmother, and his 98-year-old grandfather, Prince Philip, who are isolating at Windsor. “I think very carefully about my grandparents, who are at the age they’re at and we’re doing everything we can to make sure they’re isolated away and protected from this.” The couple also discussed the challenges of remaining at home with three young children between the age of 6 and 2, with Kate admitting that they had maintained the home schooling routine through the Easter holiday. “I feel very mean,” she added.
10934	FDA rejects green tea health claims	This story reports on the FDA’s recent rejection of a petition to allow sellers of green tea to make claims that the product can lower heart disese risk. Oddly, the story gave almost equal time to the supposition of benefit from green tea as it did to an explanation of the science behind the FDA’s decision. This story had the opportunity to help educate consumers about how to assess unsubstantiated claims made about products. Although there have been a number of benefits suggested from consumption of green tea, informed consumers should be aware of the differece between these and health claims supported by scientific evidence. The story also could have presented evidence on the potential harms of green tea and on alternative evidence-based ways to reduce heart disease risk.	true		Although it was mentioned that the largest maker of green tea had profits last year of $14 million, there was no estimate for the cost of green tea for the consumer. This was a report on the lack of evidence to support the contention that green tea consumption provided benefit in terms of heart disease risk. This report revealed that the assumed benefit of green tea for reducing heart disease was not supported by the scientific evidence. It did not, however, discuss the potential adverse effects of green tea, particularly caffeine, on patients with known cardiovascular disease. This story mentioned that the FDA reviewed the results from 105 studies in order to reach its conclusion that there was not sufficient evidence to support the health claim that green tea reduces the risk of heart disease. It ended with mention of the plans by the company marketing green tea to conduct future studies to try and prove the health benefits. This story presents the conflict between what people believe to be true – bits of scientific evidence that drift into public consciousness (i.e. Green tea has antioxidants, therefore it is good for you) – and demonstsration of clinicial benefit. This story contained interviews with several people on the street to support the contention that consumption of green tea is common place; as well as a quote from a marketing manager from what is reported to be the largest maker of green tea. For perspective on why the FDA was petitioned for this health claim, quotes from scientists working in the area of heart disease risk or the biochemistry of antioxidants might have been useful. There was no mention of lifestyle changes or drugs that have been demonstrated to decrease heart disease risk. This story mentions that millions of Americans drink beverages containing green tea. There was no claim made of novelty associated with consumption of green tea. Just the opposite. Though green tea is recently popular in the United States, mention was made of its consumption in Asia for thousands of years. This piece does not appear to rely on a press release.
12027	"Steve Israel Says the Dickey Amendment ""prevents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from even researching the relationship between gun violence and public health. ... The government can’t study gun violence but is spending $400,000 analyzing the effects of Swedish massages on rabbits."	Israel said the Dickey Amendment prevents the CDC from researching the relationship between gun violence and public health. As a matter of law, it only prevents money going toward research aimed at promoting gun control. But as a matter of politics, that distinction is murky, and as a result, research has been limited. Israel’s point about Swedish massage on rabbits is off on the timing, but right on the substance. Israel’s statement has some technical flaws, but the broader thrust is accurate.	true	National, Guns, Steve Israel,	"The mass shooting in Las Vegas prompted former Democratic Congressman Steve Israel of New York to write that these horrific events have little impact on public policy. In a New York Times op-ed, Israel walked through a list of shootings -- the murder of 26 children and adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, the June 2016 mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub, and others -- and noted that despite the hand-wringing after each one, nothing changed. Israel said Democrats were unable to enact reforms, including ""our attempts to rescind the infamous Dickey Amendment, which prevents the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from even researching the relationship between gun violence and public health."" ""The result?"" Israel wrote Oct. 2. ""The government can’t study gun violence but is spending $400,000 analyzing the effects of Swedish massages on rabbits."" There are two elements to sift through here: Does the Dickey Amendment block government research into gun violence and public health? And is Washington studying Swedish massage on rabbits? In 1996, with strong support from the National Rifle Association, Congress included an amendment by Rep. Jay Dickey, R-Ark., in its omnibus spending bill. The amendment said ""none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control."" In the same bill, Congress pulled $2.8 million aimed at gun injury research and assigned it elsewhere in the CDC. Ever since, Washington and the CDC have steered clear of funding research that could run afoul of that amendment. Israel said the provision prevents government-funded studies of the ties between guns and public health, but plenty of people say the rule is not binding. Dickey himself joined with the former head of the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control Mark Rosenberg to challenge that long-held assumption. ""We believe strongly that funding for research into gun-violence prevention should be dramatically increased,"" they wrote in a 2016 public letter. ""We do not see the congressional language against using federal funds ‘to promote or advocate gun control’ as a barrier to this research."" An article on the Harvard Law Petrie-Flom Center blog argued that the amendment bars research aimed at promoting gun control and not all research. U.S. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., echoed that point in a letter to the CDC, saying the meaning had been ""misconstrued."" But that belief had its own consequences. ""As a result, public health researchers at the CDC and other federal agencies have been discouraged from conducting scientific research on gun violence,"" Carper wrote March 17, 2016. ""Although the CDC self-directs a portion of its nearly $6.2 billion annual budget to a wide variety of intra- and extramural research, the CDC has been reluctant to devote funding to gun violence research without a specific appropriation from Congress."" Carper offered proof that the Dickey Amendment can co-exist with government gun violence studies. He noted that in 2015, the CDC assessed the causes of a rise in gun violence in Wilmington, Del. In general, the impact of the Dickey Amendment is more political than legal. Research could move forward, but without an explicit signoff from Congress, there’s been limited activity. After the 2012 Newtown slayings, President Barack Obama directed the CDC to conduct or fund research into the causes of gun violence. The impact was modest. ""As far as I can tell the CDC still correctly believes that gun research, or even mentioning guns, is too hot to handle,"" said director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center David Hemenway. Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research director Daniel Webster also said there’s been no new funding from CDC or the National Institutes of Health. Rosenberg told us, ""The research scientists at CDC are very anxious to do this research, but the recent directors of CDC have been willing to let this eminently solvable problem fester because they fear that the NRA will prod Congress into cutting public health programs that are viewed as more central and critical to CDC's mission."" As for the $400,000 spent on studying the effects of Swedish massages on rabbits that Israel mentioned, yes, the government did that. (The exact amount was closer to $387,000.) It gave the Ohio State University Sports Medicine Center money to build a small device that mimics the action of Swedish massage to see if the treatment reduced pain and inflammation. Rabbits were the test subjects. The treatment helped, by the way. Researchers found that with the right mix of force, duration and frequency, there was ""maximal recovery of muscle and joint function."" However, there’s an issue of timing with Israel’s statement. He said the government is currently spending money on this research. In fact, the study ended in 2014. Israel spokesman Harrison Feuer didn’t argue that detail. ""The larger point that Congressman Israel was looking to accurately make is that the government has funded studies into various endeavors that are less impactful than guns on public health,"" Feuer said. Israel said the Dickey Amendment prevents the CDC from researching the relationship between gun violence and public health. As a matter of law, it only prevents money going toward research aimed at promoting gun control. But as a matter of politics, that distinction is murky, and as a result, research has been limited. Israel’s point about Swedish massage on rabbits is off on the timing, but right on the substance. Israel’s statement has some technical flaws, but the broader thrust is accurate."
11070	Scientists develop blood test for Down’s Syndrome	This was a single-source story that didn’t adequately explain availability, costs, limitations of the evidence, or potential harms. The researchers wrote: “Such a noninvasive approach will avoid the risk of miscarriages of normal pregnancies caused by current, more invasive procedures.” That would be a big step. But there are many big steps that must be taken in the research process before that prediction can play out in reality.	false	Reuters Health	No discussion of cost. If a story can claim that something “may soon be” available, it ought to be able to project cost. Of course, it’s probably way too early to project anything meaningful on either count, but therein lies the weakness in such story framing. The story stated that the researchers “were able to correctly diagnose 14 cases where there were extra copies of the chromosome and 26 normal fetuses.” No discussion of potential harms – of sensitivity and specificity issues that can only be established in a much larger trial. The need for a larger trial was mentioned, but no hint of unestablished potential harms. The story never mentioned the limitation of drawing conclusions from such a small study. Granted, it stated that “the test now needed to be trialed in a larger study of about 1,000 pregnancies” but then concluded “that could lead to changed in clinical practice within two years. That’s a very enthusastic claim for a very aggressive timetable. No disease mongering. No independent perspective, which was sorely needed – especially regarding predictions of availability and impact on the field. The story didn’t even mention any of the other research being done in this field to improve prenatal diagnosis. Allowing researchers to claim that a test “may soon be” available after a study in just 40 pregnancies is not wise journalism. If the story had turned to an independent expert, perhaps this enthusiasm may have been put into a better perspective. The path to commercialization is likely years in the making. The story didn’t explain that the test used in the study is actually a group of existing tests. And it didn’t even mention any of the other research being done in this field to improve prenatal diagnosis. Not applicable because we can’t judge the extent to which the story relied on a news release. We do know it quoted only one of the researchers.
3871	Site chosen for veterans’ clinic expansion in Traverse City.	U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow says the federal Department of Veterans Affairs has chosen a site for an expanded health clinic in Traverse City.	true	Michigan, Debbie Stabenow, David Shulkin, Health care services, Veterans, Veterans affairs, Traverse City	The Michigan Democrat says the expansion will cover about 22,000 square feet and help alleviate crowding at the existing clinic. Plans for the expansion have been in the works for years. Stabenow says former VA Secretary David Shulkin selected the site before his recent departure. The VA clinic in Traverse City provides health care services for thousands of northern Michigan veterans every year. They include primary care, women’s health, disease prevention and telehealth services. A new facility also will offer mental health, physical therapy and home-based primary care services.
9777	MD Anderson researchers find potential way to detect pancreatic cancer early	This brief article announces the discovery of a potential new and highly effective way to detect pancreatic cancer by looking for the presence of a certain type of protein in the blood. The article would have been much stronger had it included interviews with independent sources, and provided attribution for some of the statistics provided. Like the competing NBCNews.com and Los Angeles Times stories that we reviewed, this story passes along the claim that this test is 100% accurate. However, unlike those competing stories, this piece doesn’t in any way try to qualify that claim or address the study’s important limitations. That probably shouldn’t come as a surprise given evidence that the story leaned heavily on a news release. Editor’s note 6/29/15: The story we reviewed herein was complemented by a more complete story published by the Houston Chronicle hours later. One thing that was better in the later piece was the addition of an independent perspective. That piece also went beyond the news release and included interviews with key experts. We wish the newspaper had alerted online readers that another version would be forthcoming. Even after learning of the later version today — 5 days after it was published — we revisited the original story and there’s still no mention of, nor link to, a later, more complete story. (At 11:48 a.m. on June 29, the newspaper did finally add a link at the top of the first story, reading, “An updated version of this story is available here.”) Health news stories should attempt to critically analyze the results they report on, especially when those results involve extraordinary claims such as “100% accuracy” in a screening test. But it’s hard to provide critical evaluation when the coverage is based on a news release and independent sources are not consulted.	false	pancreatic cancer	The study includes no mention of costs for the screening test. While it’s noted that the test has not yet been developed, it would be possible to give a ballpark figure based on similar screening tests. The benefits of the tests are presented only in vague terms. The expert quoted claims that earlier diagnosis of pancreatic cancer would reduce death rates, but in the next sentence he states that a new screening tool also offers an “unprecedented opportunity” to design “potential curative surgical options.” That doesn’t give us a lot of confidence that curative surgical options currently exist. As we discussed in the competing NBC and LA Times reviews, patients whose cancers are caught early may still face long odds for survival. And the 100% accuracy figure touted in the story is based on a very small number of subjects. The story didn’t hint at any of this context. Not only does the story neglect to mention harms, it asserts that the still-to-be-developed test is 100 percent accurate. But as the competing stories on this study pointed out, that figure is based on testing in a very small number of people under favorable conditions. We now know from many decades of increased use of screening tests that these tests are fallible and there’s no reason to to expect a new test would not offer up false positives and negatives when used in a broader population. Inconclusive and incorrect tests can lead to more invasive tests, increased patient anxiety and expensive and debilitating surgeries. The story is bereft of any details of the study and its findings. It doesn’t tell us how many patient and control volunteers were in the study, volunteer demographics, what type of study it was, or any potential limitations of the research. The story does not promote disease mongering. The only expert quoted in the story is a coauthor of the study. We think it’s always prudent to consult an independent third party to vet claims. In addition, while the story includes some background on the prevalence and outcomes of pancreatic cancer, these reviewers were disappointed to see that these statistics were not sourced. There are a couple reasons why attributing sources of claims and statistics is important. Obviously, readers may want to do additional reading and providing a source points them in the right direction. Another reason it’s important to provide attribution is that statistics have been known to vary among advocacy groups, medical associations, companies, foundations and government institutions. It’s not unheard of for groups pushing for more awareness and funding to select a higher number – among those available – to further their cause. The article refers to “various markers” that are used to detect pancreatic cancer in a blood test but calls them too unreliable for widespread screening. The article is consistent with others in stating there currently is no reliable test available. The article is clear that the test is not yet available. In reporting on the finding, the story states that “If such a test were developed, it would likely be used first to test patients at high risk for pancreatic cancer” and adds that it still needs to be shown that the screening would improve outcomes for patients with pancreatic cancer. The story contains a lot of conjecture for a test not yet developed. The story suggests that if the screening test were developed, it would be a more effective tool for detecting pancreatic cancer. Again, it’s a big “if,” but the story doesn’t hide that fact – to its credit. Because the story quotes just one source, the chair of MD Anderson’s Cancer Biology department (the institution that issued a news release for the study), and those quotes can be found in the news release, we believe the story relied too heavily on the release.
3891	Tax changes, mental health parity among new Connecticut laws.	As revelers ring in the new year, a host of new laws will take effect in Connecticut, including expanded sales taxes, mental health parity requirements for insurers, an effort to help rehabilitate more blighted properties, and extended periods between driver’s license renewals.	true	Ned Lamont, Mental health, Health, Connecticut, Sales taxes, Laws	Wednesday marks one of several dates when large blocks of new laws take effect in Connecticut. Some of the latest new laws: ___ TAX CHANGES A handful of items and services will be subjected to the state’s 6.35% sales tax as of Jan. 1. They include safety apparel, metered and other previously exempt parking, dry cleaning and laundry, other than coin operated. Interior design services for individuals will also become taxable in 2020. Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont originally unveiled plans in early 2019 to create a level playing field and expand Connecticut’s sales tax base by repealing various exemptions and imposing the tax on certain tax-free goods and services, from haircuts to child car seats. He told lawmakers that expanding Connecticut’s tax base “helps to make the sales tax more robust, fairer, and raises the revenue we need to get our budget into balance.” But like past governors who tried the same thing, Lamont faced strong opposition and ultimately agreed to this much shorter list of sales tax changes. Lamont and lawmakers did agree to repeal the state’s biannual $250 business entity tax, an unpopular fee charged to most businesses in Connecticut. ___ MENTAL HEALTH Certain health insurance policies will no longer be able to impose more stringent limits on mental health and substance abuse, compared to other illnesses, beginning Jan. 1. Also under the state’s new Mental Health Parity Act, substance abuse services must be covered if they are required by a court. “Diseases of the brain should not be treated any differently than diseases of the body, and Connecticut’s laws should reflect that,” Lamont said when he signed the bill into law in July. Beginning in March 2021, insurance companies will be required to file annual reports with the state, certifying they’re complying with the new parity law. Required coverage under certain policies for breast ultrasounds and hearings aids will also be expanded in the new year. ___ BLIGHTED BUILDINGS A new law authorizes a Superior Court judge to appoint a “receiver,” an entity or a person, to take over rehabilitating or disposing abandoned properties — industrial, residential or commercial — in communities with at least 35,000 inhabitants. Interested parties can petition the court to take over a property that has been abandoned for at least a year. The legislation is considered to be another tool for municipalities to address blight. Among other things, Connecticut’s cities and towns can impose fines and special assessments on owners of blighted properties, and create agencies that can condemn abandoned and blighted buildings and transfer ownership to qualified homesteaders. ___ DRIVER’S LICENSES Connecticut drivers may not have to spend as much time in the Department of Motor Vehicles as they used to. A new law allows the DMV commissioner to renew driver’s licenses up to every eight years, instead of every six years. The legislation also extends the length of time between registration renewals from two years to three years. Fees for an initial license, which is limited to seven years, are $84. For an eight-year license renewal, they will be $96, which is proportionate to the $72 fee for previous initial and renewed six-year licenses. It works out to be $12 a year. Lamont has predicted the changes will lead to shorter wait times for those who need to conduct business in person at the DMV. It is part of the administration’s efforts to streamline interactions residents have with state government. ___ POLICE TRAINING The Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection will now be required to expand its free training on juvenile matters for state and local police. Beginning Jan. 1, it must include techniques for handling incidents involving juveniles and adults with autism spectrum disorder, nonverbal learning disorder or cognitive impairment. Emergency medical services personnel, firefighters, police officers and others will also be required to keep a paper or electronic copy of a “communication aid” that describes techniques to serve and interact with juveniles with such impairments.
4891	Niagara Falls school district adopts new health curriculum.	School officials in the city of Niagara Falls have voted to approve a new health and sex education program.	true	Health education, Health, Niagara Falls, Sex education, Education	The Niagara Falls City School Board voted 8-1 in favor of the overhaul at a meeting Thursday night. Superintendent Mark Laurrie says the new curriculum will include physical, mental and emotional health education. Under the new program, students will learn about contraception and sexually transmitted diseases. The Community Health Center will also offer contraceptives and mental health services at Niagara Falls High School. Laurrie says he was concerned with teen pregnancy rates in the city. He says the new program represents a “cultural shift” in the way educators approach teens. Parents can choose to have their children opt out of a course. The district hopes to start the program in February.
26557	"Daniel Kelly Says rival Jill Karofsky wants ""to disarm law abiding citizens."	The Kelly campaign said Karofsky, in tweets, called for increased gun control laws following two incidents in Wisconsin schools. The Kelly campaign equated a tweet calling on lawmakers to “step up to the plate” to wanting to “disarm law abiding citizens” But it is a major overreach to equate the two.	false	Elections, Legal Issues, Wisconsin, Daniel Kelly,	"In the race for a seat on the state Supreme Court, Justice Daniel Kelly and challenger Dane County Circuit Judge Jill Karofsky have clashed on many fronts, but perhaps especially so on guns and the Second Amendment. Kelly faced criticism after hosting a fundraiser at a Brookfield gun range the day after the Molson Coors shooting. At a March 12, 2020, forum hosted by the Milwaukee Bar Association, Kelly called the criticism a cheap political hit. Meanwhile, at the same forum, Karofsky called Kelly posing with an assault-style rifle ""a clearly partisan move."" Even before that, Kelly’s campaign made a stronger accusation in a March 3, 2020 email sent to supporters, in which Kelly claimed: ""Judge Karofsky and her radical liberal allies want to disarm law abiding citizens."" Is the assertion correct? When asked to back up the claim, Kelly campaign manager Charles Nichols first pointed to a series of Karofsky tweets. ""In December 2019, Jill Karofsky called for increased gun control laws on Twitter following two incidents in Wisconsin schools,"" Nichols said in an email. ""Law enforcement later revealed that the weapons used in both incidents weren’t actually guns. Karofsky’s tweet called on lawmakers to put forward stricter gun laws."" But putting forward stricter gun laws is not the same as wanting to ""disarm law abiding citizens."" For instance, one often-discussed legislative proposal is to tighten background checks, which would fall far short of disarming citizens. Let’s take a closer look. On Dec. 2, 2019, at Waukesha South High School, an ""angry"" 17-year-old student pointed a pellet gun at the head of a fellow student, pulled a pellet gun again later when officers arrived, and then was shot three times by police, according to news reports. The following day, at Oshkosh West High School, a 16-year-old student with an ""edged weapon"" stabbed a school resource officer, and the officer shot the student. The Karofsky tweets in question all came on Dec. 3, 2019, beginning with this one: ""As a mom of two teenagers, my heart races every time I hear about yet another school shooting. I'm relieved that no one was killed in yesterday’s shooting at Waukesha South High School, and today’s shooting at Oshkosh West High School."" She went on to refer to families in Sparta and at Waukesha North who ""had to deal with lockdowns"" and a ""hit list in Shorewood."" She thanked first responders, and said parents should not have to worry about the safety of their kids at school. Pretty straightforward. Then she got to what the Kelly campaign is citing. ""It's up to the policy-makers to decide what the law should be, and judges like me are here to apply and interpret the law. But I know action is needed,"" she tweeted. Then she added this: ""We can respect constitutional rights and at the same time take steps to make every family safer. It’s way past time for lawmakers to step up to the plate."" So, as evidence, the tweets don’t really stand up. Karofsky did not advocate any specific changes, noted it’s up to policymakers to decide what laws to advance, and talked explicitly about respecting constitutional rights in the process. As in a trial, we view the burden of proof as falling on the one who makes the charges. So far, Kelly clearly falls short. Nichols, the Kelly campaign manager, also pointed to a Jan. 24, 2020 Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article that laid out the views and records of the candidates on a series of hot-button issues. In a section on guns, the article described the candidates and their views on a 2008 U.S. Supreme Court decision known as Heller, which held the right to bear arms in the Second Amendment of the Constitution is an individual right, rather than a collective right for groups like militias. ""I've read it carefully, and I've not identified any errors,"" the article quoted Kelly as saying of the decision. Meanwhile, the article offered this position from Karofsky: ""I think that there are ways that are constitutional that we are able to limit people's possession of firearms so that we're able to live in a country where we don’t have to send our kids to school for code-red drills."" As with the tweets, that stops well short of what Kelly claimed. What’s more, it specifically describes finding ways that are constitutional to make any changes. ""Judge Karofsky has made it clear throughout this campaign that she supports the Second Amendment and the precedent established in the Heller decision,"" Karofsky spokesman Sam Roecker said in an email. ""Dan Kelly knows this precedent requires judges to uphold the law and an individual's right to own a gun."" Kelly claimed Karofsky wants ""to disarm law abiding citizens."" Rather than cite any past rulings as evidence, Kelly points to a series of tweets and a Karofsky quote in a newspaper story on the race. In both cases, Karofsky indicates she feels lawmakers should take steps to reduce gun violence -- even calling on them to ""step up to the plate."" But nowhere did she call for disarming residents. Indeed, in both places she framed the comments around abiding by the constitution, even noting it’s up to policy-makers to ""decide what the law should be."" As evidence, that’s pretty thin."
8812	Cilostazol found may be safer than aspirin post-stroke.	The anti-platelet drug cilostazol is as effective as aspirin at preventing recurrent stroke and appears to be linked to fewer bleeding events, a study in China has shown.	true	Health News	Published in the online version of The Lancet Neurology, the study suggests that cilostazol could be a safer alternative to aspirin for post-stroke Chinese patients, who seem to be at higher risk of cerebral hemorrhage, according to previous studies. Anti-platelet drugs have an “anti-clotting” effect and long-term, low doses may prevent heart attacks and blood clot formation in people at high risk for developing blood clots. In the study, 719 patients around the age of 60 were divided into two groups, with the first given cilostazol and the second given aspirin for 12 to 18 months. Twelve patients in the cilostazol group suffered subsequent stroke, compared to 20 people in the aspirin group. Brain bleeding was detected in 1 patient in the cilostazol group versus 7 in the aspirin group. While the researchers said cilostazol appeared to be more effective and a safer alternative to aspirin for Chinese patients, they called for a larger clinical trial. Manufactured by Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., cilostazol is known by its brand name Pletal. Stroke is the second leading cause of death in China, with about 7 million people affected in the country.
15537	"The Texas Senate ""approved a bill to put a special label on the insurance cards of anyone who bought a plan through Obamacare"" that includes the letter ""S"" for subsidy."	"Sharpton said that the Texas bill would add a label to insurance cards for coverage purchased through the federal exchanges and that people receiving a subsidy would see the letter ""S"" on their insurance card. That provision was dropped more than two weeks before Sharpton said it. The bill that passed the Legislature and has been sent to the governor would add the letters QHP to any insurance card tied to a health care plan on the federal exchange. But it wouldn’t differentiate between those purchased with or without a federal tax credit. Special label? Yes. Scarlet ""S""? No."	false	Health Care, PunditFact, Al Sharpton,	"MSNBC host Al Sharpton accused Texas Republicans of trying to slap a ""scarlet letter"" on people who use private health insurance under Obamacare. ""The Texas Senate just approved a bill to put a special label on the insurance cards of anyone who bought a plan through Obamacare,"" Sharpton said on PoliticsNation on May 29. ""But if those labels weren't absurd enough, anyone who receives financial assistance for insurance would have a letter 'S' on the cards, too. 'S' for subsidy."" Sharpton said critics of the move worry that it might lead hospitals and doctors to turn away patients who use tax credits to make their insurance more affordable. We wondered: Did the Texas Senate approve a new ID card that includes an ""S"" for subsidized Obamacare plans? The missing 'S' The bill in question, HB 1514, started in the Texas House. The original language indeed included reference to the letter ""S."" Here’s that text: An identification card or other similar document issued by a qualified health plan issuer to an enrollee of a qualified health plan in this state must ,... display on the card or document in a location of the issuer’s choice: (1) The acronym ""QHP""; or (2) If the enrollee receives advance payment of the premium tax credit, the acronym ""QHP-S"". The bill’s language is in government-speak, but basically any enrollee in a qualified health plan (more on that in a bit) who gets a premium tax credit through the federal health care exchange would receive a card that includes the letter ""S."" That would be a clear cue to a doctor or hospital that a person’s health insurance is being subsidized by the federal government. But before the bill passed the House (by a vote of 129 to 8 margin) on May 11, that language was amended. The revised bill dropped the letter S. Here’s the text the Senate passed on May 26, 2015: An identification card or other similar document issued by a qualified health plan issuer to an enrollee of a qualified health plan purchased through an exchange must... display on the card or document in a location of the issuer’s choice the acronym ""QHP."" So Sharpton was more than two weeks out of date. The Texas bill requires that insurance through the online exchange be labeled as such, but the precise identification of those who use the federal tax credits is not part of the bill. An MSNBC spokeswoman said Sharpton would address this issue on his June 3 show. What the QHP label tells providers So all plans purchased through the federal exchange -- whether they include a subsidy or not -- would have ID cards marked QHP. Why is that? Hospitals and doctors say the issue is that people who buy their insurance through the federal government’s exchange have 90 days to stay current with their premiums. That’s two months longer than the industry standard. If a patient goes to the hospital during the first month that they have failed to pay, even if they never pay another dime of their premium, the insurance company will cover the cost. But for care given in the second and third months, federal law allows the insurance companies to make the providers pick up the tab retroactively. That’s what the providers want to avoid. The Texas Medical Association, the Texas Hospital Association, the Texas Academy of Family Physicians, and other trade groups supported the bill. Neurologist Sara Austin, a medical association member, testified that seeing the QHP designation would create a teachable moment with such patients. It would be an ""opportunity to stress the importance of continuing to pay their portion of the premium that is not subsidized by the federal government,"" she said. Austin said the change would reduce the number of times that providers have to go after patients to collect on a bill. But it’s unclear how much the current bill will accomplish. Sabrina Corlette, director of Georgetown University's Center on Health Insurance Reforms, thinks it won’t do much. ""That label wouldn't tell a provider whether the patient is actually in the grace period,"" Corlette said. ""It also doesn't tell the provider whether the patient is subsidy eligible. So I wouldn't think it provides much in the way of useful information."" However, Corlette said there is a possibility that the QHP label might prompt providers to call insurance companies before they provide care, rather than afterward. According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 85 percent of plans purchased through the federal exchange in Texas receive a tax subsidy. There’s also room for a tug-of-war between the providers and insurers. Federal regulations require the insurance companies to put hospitals and doctors on notice when there is a possibility that claims might be denied because the patient is in the second or third month of the grace period. In other words, under existing law, the providers have another option to seeking collection from the patient who fails to pay his premiums. They can go after the insurance companies. Our ruling Sharpton said that the Texas bill would add a label to insurance cards for coverage purchased through the federal exchanges and that people receiving a subsidy would see the letter ""S"" on their insurance card. That provision was dropped more than two weeks before Sharpton said it. The bill that passed the Legislature and has been sent to the governor would add the letters QHP to any insurance card tied to a health care plan on the federal exchange. But it wouldn’t differentiate between those purchased with or without a federal tax credit. Special label? Yes. Scarlet ""S""? No. Sharpton’s claim rates ."
33898	A transcript reproduces '60 Minutes' commentator Andy Rooney's explaining his political views.	The final two items on the list are probably a good tipoff that either this collection was written (by an as-yet unidentified author) as a parody of the “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney” spots on 60 Minutes or that someone appended Andy Rooney’s name to an unattributed piece because it “seemed like something he would say.” Either way, whoever created this version appears to have lifted some parts from an earlier piece known as “Yes, I Guess I am A BAD American” that is falsely credited to comedian George Carlin.	false	Politics Soapbox, andy rooney	Andy Rooney, the 60 Minutes commentator “known to generations for his wry, humorous and contentious television essays” passed away in 2011 at the age of 92. Although the curmudgeonly commentator Andy Rooney may have delivered some vituperative essays during his time (such as a 2003 piece on French politics), a popular online piece in which he supposedly elaborated on his own politics was not his creation: BRAVO ANDY ROONEY!!!! Right on, Andy Rooney! Andy Rooney said on 60 minutes a few weeks back: (for those of you that don’t know Andy Rooney, he is an 82 year old US TV commentator) I like big cars, big boats, big motorcycles, big houses and big campfires. I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family, not some governmental stooge with a bad comb-over who wants to give it away to crack addicts for squirting out babies. Guns do not make you a killer. I think killing makes you a killer. You can kill someone with a baseball bat or a car, but no one is trying to ban you from driving to the ball game. I believe they are called the Boy Scouts for a reason, that is why there are no girls allowed. Girls belong in the Girl Scouts! I think that if you feel homosexuality is wrong, it is not a phobia, it is an opinion. I don’t think being a minority makes you a victim of anything except numbers. The only things I can think of that are truly discriminatory are things like the United Negro College Fund, Jet Magazine, Black Entertainment Television, and Miss Black America. Try to have things like the United Caucasian College Fund, Cloud Magazine, White entertainment Television, or Miss White America and see what happens. Jesse Jackson will be knocking down your door. I have the right NOT to be tolerant of others because they are different, weird, or tick me off. When 70% of the people who get arrested are black, in cities where 70% of the population is black, that is not racial profiling, it is the law of statistics. I know what sex is, and there are not varying degrees of it. If I received sex from one of the subordinates in my office, it wouldn’t be a private matter or my personal business. I would be “FIRED” immediately! I believe that if you are selling me a milk shake, a pack of cigarettes, a newspaper or a hotel room, you must do it in English! As a matter of fact, if you want to be an American citizen you should have to speak English! My father and grandfather shouldn’t have to die in vain so you can leave the countries you were born in to come over and disrespect ours. I think the police should have every right to shoot your sorry ass if you threaten them after they tell you to stop. If you can’t understand the word “freeze” or “stop” in English, see the above lines. I feel much safer letting a machine with no political affiliation recount votes when needed. I know what the definition of lying is. I don’t think just because you were not born in this country, you are qualified for any special loan programs, government sponsored bank loans or tax breaks, etc., so you can open a hotel, coffee shop, trinket store, or any other business. We did not go to the aid of certain foreign countries and risk our lives in wars to defend their freedoms so that decades later they could come over here and tell us our constitution is a living document and open to their interpretations. I don’t hate the rich. I don’t pity the poor. I know wrestling is fake, but so are movies and television, and that doesn’t stop you from watching them. I believe a self-righteous liberal or conservative with a cause is more dangerous than a Hell’s Angel with an attitude. I think Bill Gates has every right to keep every penny he made and continue to make more. If it ticks you off, go and invent the next operating system that’s better and put your name on the building. Ask your buddy that invented the Internet to help you. It doesn’t take a whole village to raise a child right, but it does take a parent to stand up to the kid and smack their little ass when necessary and say “NO.” I think tattoos and piercing are fine if you want them, but please don’t pretend they are a political statement. And . . . Please stay home until that new lip ring heals, I don’t want to look at your ugly infected mouth as you serve me french fries! I am sick of “Political Correctness” and of all the suck ups that go along with it. I know a lot of black people, and not a single one of them was born in Africa, so how can they be “African-Americans”? Besides, Africa is a continent. I don’t go around saying I am a European-American because my great, great, great, great, great, great grandfather was from Europe. I am proud to be from America and nowhere else. And if you don’t like my point of view, tough! Andy is 83 and entitled to his opinion. The text quoted above was too reactionary in tone even for the acerbic Rooney, and the language used didn’t sound like him. (“Shoot your sorry ass” just wasn’t the kind of phrase Andy Rooney employed on television.) Just to be thorough, we checked the transcripts of all of Andy Rooney’s 60 Minutes pieces from the previous ten years, and nothing like this item turned up among them. Moreover, Andy Rooney himself denied that this polemic originated with him, saying in 2003 that: About a year ago, I became aware of a more serious theft of my name and it is so hurtful to my reputation that it calls for legal action against the thief. Hundreds of people have written asking if I really wrote the 20 detestable remarks made under my name that have had such wide circulation on the Internet. Some of the remarks, which I will not repeat here, are viciously racist and the spirit of the whole thing is nasty, mean and totally inconsistent with my philosophy of life. It is apparent that the list of comments has been read by hundreds of thousands of Americans, many of whom must believe that it accurately represents opinions of mine that I don’t dare express in my column or on television. It is seriously damaging to my reputation. Mr. Rooney disclaimed the above-quoted piece again in his 60 Minutes segment of 23 October 2005, saying of it: There’s a collection of racist and sexist remarks on the Internet under a picture of me with the caption ‘ANDY ROONEY SAID ON 60 MINUTES.’ If I could find the person who did write it using my name I would sue him. And he denied it yet again to the Associated Press in December 2006: Rooney said that a racist commentary falsely attributed to him is circulating over the Internet and through e-mails. The “60 Minutes” essayist wants anyone who might have seen it to know he had nothing to do with it. “I suppose it’s not important, but I hate the fact that people think I’ve been writing these things,” he told The Associated Press. “That’s hurtful to me.” The missive, which Rooney said had been passed along to him via e-mail several times, is a list of several anti-minority statements. One of the printable ones: “I have the right not to be tolerant of others because they are different, weird or tick me off.”
9769	Weight-Loss Surgery Better Than Diet and Exercise in Treating Type 2 Diabetes, Study Finds	A model depicting the adjustable gastric band device. This article describes a small randomized clinical trial comparing the results of weight-loss surgery (with either the gastric bypass procedure or placement of an adjustable gastric band) to dietary and exercise (“lifestyle”) treatments to rid people of type 2 diabetes. The 61 obese adults in the study were taking either insulin or oral anti-diabetic medication, were mostly women and Caucasian, and were followed for three years. Overall, the story does a good job of laying out the benefits and goes to great lengths to put the results in context, noting in the lede sentence that this study is merely “adding” to the “growing body of evidence” favoring surgery over life style treatments for diabetes resolution. It also quotes those who caution readers about some limits of the study and warn against a willy-nilly rush to the operating room. The article would have benefited from some information about the costs and potential harms of bariatric surgery, as well as details on availability and barriers to access for these procedures. Several types of surgery that essentially restrict stomach size and bypass portions of the intestine that absorb nutrients have been shown to result in long-term weight loss. These bariatric surgeries are not without risk, but have become increasingly popular, particularly for the severely obese. And as this new study suggests — and for reasons the article makes clear are not completely understood — the surgical treatments appear to not only significantly reduce weight, but also alter the biology of glucose and diabetic risk. They seem to do this better than lifestyle -based interventions, which often produce limited reductions in weight that returns all too quickly. Stories like this matter, not only because of the potential impact on public health, but also because bariatric surgery is expensive and has become a marketing opportunity for many medical centers and clinics. Readers need good, evidence-based reporting to distinguish help from hype.	mixture	bariatric surgery	The article carries no information about the cost of bariatric surgery, particularly some of the newer, more minimally invasive procedures. Costs are not trivial, particularly because the overall economic costs of type 2 diabetes aren’t either. The piece cries out for some dollar signs. The story quantifies overall outcomes and benefits for the 61 patients followed for three years in absolute terms. It notes that “Forty percent of those who had received a gastric bypass procedure and 29% who received a gastric band were considered in remission from diabetes and no longer needed to take medication after three years. In comparison, no one in the group who received intensive lifestyle intervention resolved their diabetes.” The story would have benefited from more information about the participants’ full spectrum of risk factors and the impact of the surgery on those markers (e.g. blood pressure). It also would have been more enlightening if it had stated clearly how many of the 61 study subjects got what kind of bariatric surgery and supplemental therapy. But the story does a good job of covering the necessities here. This is a big hole. As noted earlier in this review, bariatric surgery is not without risk of complications, particularly in people with multiple morbidities and older age or very young age. It behooved the story to say something about this, including the risks and harms of untreated diabetes or diabetes and obesity in people who have tried everything and failed to resolve either condition. The article does a good job of noting the strengths of the study and addresses important study limitations with a quote about needing a longer-term, multi-site study. One limitation not addressed, but which seems important to us, is the fact that the bariatric procedure discussed here is a very invasive, life altering surgery that carries a risk of serious complications, whereas the lifestyle intervention was comprised mainly of twice-monthly talk therapy sessions for 30-45 minutes. Is this a fair comparison? One could argue that a much more intensive and demanding lifestyle program — including gym membership, trainer, meals, etc. — would be needed to make this a fair test of the two approaches. No mongering detected, but the article could arguably have used a bit of it, at least to note the increasing public health threat of diabetes and obesity in the young. Then again, the uncertainty about long-term benefits for these procedures is concerning given marketing that targets adolescents. The Not Satisfactory rating here doesn’t tell the whole story. The article makes good and broad use of sources, beyond the authors of the research publication. The article has some input from those who point out the need for longer term follow-up. And it does an especially good job of bringing out information about clinical guidelines and how they might change in response to the growing evidence for the benefits of weight loss surgery. Alas, the editorialist quoted at the end of the study, who very enthusiastically endorses wider use of bariatric surgery, acknowledged speaking fees from a number of companies who manufacture bypass surgery equipment. The story does not alert readers to this conflict of interest, which triggers an automatic Not Satisfactory rating here. This is a tough call. The study in question was designed to compare bariatric surgery against specific lifestyle therapies. And the story capably provides that comparison. But while it’s a splendid thing to be able to “cure” diabetes in some obese patients who have weight loss surgery, it’s also important to mention the role of medication and diet in maintaining good management of the disease and preventing complications. The story doesn’t really address this. A word about strategies for preventing diabetes in the first place would also have been welcome here. Readers would have benefited from some information about the availability of weight loss surgery in the U.S. Is the newer sleeve gastrectomy procedure available everywhere across the country? What are the criteria for insurance coverage? The article does a good job of noting that there are other studies past and planned designed to test the value of bariatric surgery compared to other interventions for obesity and diabetes. The article quotes a variety of sources who were not involved with the research, so we can be sure it went beyond any news release.
26615	Huge! Results From Breaking Chloroquine Study Show 100% Cure Rate For Patients Infected With The Coronavirus.	A French study of 20 COVID-19 patients indicates the drug might help treat the coronavirus. But it is no “100% cure.” U.S. health officials stress the evidence is only anecdotal and that much more study is needed.	false	Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,	"Along with sheltering in place, social distancing and immunocompromised, you can add this word to the lexicon of COVID-19: chloroquine. The drug ""could be a game changer"" in the fight against the new coronavirus, President Donald Trump has said, raising hopes as the nation ramped up its lockdown. This post shared on Facebook went even further. It virtually screams of a miracle antidote, claiming: ""Huge! Results From Breaking Chloroquine Study Show 100% Cure Rate For Patients Infected With The Coronavirus."" The 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.) There is a new French study that indicates chloroquine might help. But even its authors acknowledged the study is small and the findings are preliminary. And Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most visible U.S. government expert on coronavirus, said evidence for chloroquine is only anecdotal and much more research is needed. Chloroquine tablets are available in the United States by prescription only, sold under the brand name Aralen, as well as generic. The medicine is prescribed to prevent or treat malaria; it is often taken by Americans before they travel to countries where malaria occurs. Another prescription tablet, hydroxychloroquine, sold under the brand name Plaquenil and as a generic, also can be used to prevent malaria, although it is more of an arthritis medicine. The claim on Facebook repeated a headline from, and linked to, an article on TeaParty.org from the Gateway Pundit. The Gateway Pundit, a conservative website, published its article on March 19, 2020, the same day as the Facebook post. It turns out, the headline goes further than the article does, although the article has its own problems. The article reported on an interview Fox News talk show host Laura Ingraham did three days earlier with Gregory Rigano about a chloroquine study. The article said a study Rigano co-authored found that ""COVID-19 patients who took hydroxy-chloroquine were found free of the disease in six days,"" and that the drug also ""could act as a preventative."" There are several things about this that are inaccurate. The article said Rigano is co-author of the study. But Rigano tweeted it and is not listed as a co-author. The article identified Rigano as a doctor, but he is not. Rigano’s website identifies him as a lawyer in Melville, N.Y., whose ""experience includes advancing various pharmaceutical assets through laboratory, animal, formulation, manufacturing, clinical trials (Phase I - III) as well as commercialization."" Rigano’s website also says he is an adviser to a drug program at the Stanford University School of Medicine. But Stanford denied in a WIRED article that Rigano is an adviser. Unlike the headline, the article does not state there is a 100% cure for coronavirus. As for the French study itself, it does indicate chloroquine has some promise for treating the coronavirus. The authors included researchers from universities in France and Vietnam. They reported a few days before the article was published on their study of 20 people in France with COVID-19. They concluded that the use of chloroquine sped up healing, and the effect was reinforced by adding azithromycin, an antibiotic. Six of the patients were treated with both hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin. After six days, all six were ""virologically cured."" But U.S. government experts quickly put the possibilities for chloroquine in perspective. The day after the article was published, Trump and other federal officials held a news conference about the coronavirus. A reporter posed a question about chloroquine to Fauci, who has served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984. The question referred to a coronavirus news conference the previous day, when Trump had spoken positively about chloroquine. In his answer, Fauci made reference to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Here was the exchange: Reporter: ""Dr. Fauci, it was explained yesterday there has been promise with hydroxy-chloroquine, this potential therapy for people who are infected with coronavirus. Is there any evidence to suggest that, as with malaria, it might be used as a prophylaxis against COVID-19?"" Fauci: ""The answer is no. And the evidence that you’re talking about, John, is anecdotal evidence. So, as the commissioner of FDA and the president mentioned yesterday, we’re trying to strike a balance between making something with a potential of an effect to the American people available, at the same time that we do it, under the auspices of a protocol that would give us information to determine if it’s truly safe and truly effective. But the information that you’re referring to specifically is anecdotal. It was not done in a controlled, clinical trial. So, you really can’t make any definitive statement about it."" The FDA also tempered expectations, saying in a news release is is working closely with other government agencies and academic centers that are studying chloroquine ""to determine whether it can be used to treat patients with mild-to-moderate COVID-19 to potentially reduce the duration of symptoms, as well as viral shedding, which can help prevent the spread of disease. Studies are underway to determine the efficacy in using chloroquine to treat COVID-19."" Based upon limited data, chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine are currently recommended for treatment of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in several countries, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A Facebook post claimed results from a chloroquine study show a ""100% cure rate for patients infected with the coronavirus."" The French study of the drug on 20 patients with COVID-19 indicates it could help with treatment, but it is no sure cure. U.S. health experts stress the results are preliminary and much more research is needed."
2935	Hospital, family agree on moving brain-dead girl.	The family of a 13-year-old girl declared brain dead after a tonsillectomy gone wrong will be allowed to take their daughter to a new facility without removing the ventilator that is keeping her heart and lungs working.	true	Health News	The agreement on Friday between Children’s Hospital and Research Center in Oakland and the family of Jahi McMath would allow relatives to move the child if they do so before 5 p.m. PT Tuesday (0100 GMT Wednesday), when a restraining order keeping the hospital from removing her from life support is set to expire, said hospital spokesman Sam Singer. McMath was admitted to Children’s Hospital on December 9 to have her tonsils removed as well as other procedures performed in an effort to treat her sleep apnea. After the surgery, the girl began to bleed profusely, went into cardiac arrest and suffered brain swelling. The hospital declared her brain dead three days later, and made plans to remove her from the ventilator, but her family has fought in state and federal court to keep her on life support. The case has drawn international attention, as well as support from relatives of Terri Schiavo, who died in 2005 after a 15-year battle over whether to keep her body alive in a persistent vegetative state. On Friday, Singer reiterated the hospital’s position that doctors would remove McMath from the ventilator on Tuesday evening, barring a court order to the contrary. To move the girl, her family would need to provide transportation and find a facility willing to take her, both sides said. The agreement came shortly after Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo on Friday denied the family’s request to force the hospital to insert breathing and feeding tubes into McMath. The procedures would likely be needed for an extended care facility to accept the girl, family attorney Christopher Dolan said. Evelio also refused a request by the family to require Children’s Hospital to allow an outside physician to perform the surgeries on its grounds. Dolan said if McMath was not transferred before the new deadline, her family would proceed with a federal lawsuit, filed on Monday, again seeking an order forcing the hospital to insert breathing and feeding tubes into the girl. McMath’s lungs and heart are only continuing to function because of air being forced in and out of her body by the ventilator, without which her breathing and heartbeat would cease, according to medical experts. Unlike a person in a coma or a vegetative state, McMath lacks any brain activity, rendering her unable to breathe on her own, doctors said. Hospital officials have said the facility and state health officials are investigating how a routine operation led to McMath’s death and that they understand the family’s anguish.
12375	"A waiver in the American Health Care Act ""doesn’t apply to things like maternity coverage."	"Faso said a waiver in the American Health Care Act ""doesn’t apply to things like maternity coverage."" The waiver applies specifically to maternity coverage. If a state does not require maternity coverage and is approved for a waiver, insurers there would not be required to cover maternity care."	false	Health Care, New York, John Faso,	"The U.S. Senate health care bill would allow states to waive federal requirements for what insurance plans must cover. With state waivers, insurers could skip coverage of what the current Affordable Care Act now requires to be covered, known as essential health benefits like prescription drugs, laboratory services and hospitalization. Health insurance companies in those states would be able to sell lower-priced plans with less coverage. The House included the same provision in its Obamacare replacement bill, the American Health Care Act. Rep. John Faso, a Hudson Valley Republican, defended the provision in a radio town hall before the Senate version was released. ""I read this provision extremely closely, and I don’t believe many, if any, governors will actually seek these waivers. It’s an extraordinarily limited waiver,"" Faso said. ""It doesn’t apply to things like maternity coverage."" A spokesperson from Faso’s office said he was talking about how coverage for maternity care would still be required in New York state even if the state sought a waiver. Iinsurers are required to cover maternity care under New York state law, a distinction Faso did not make in his claim. Is Faso right that the new waivers would not apply to coverage for maternity care? Law on maternity care coverage Maternity care is included in one of ten health care categories insurance plans have to cover under federal law. Those categories, the essential health benefits, were established in 2010 as part of Obamacare. The benefits only apply to individual and group plans with 100 or fewer members, known as small group plans in New York state. Most states define small group plans as those with 50 or fewer members. The House and Senate bills would allow states to waive the essential health benefits requirement. Insurers in those states would not have to cover any benefit not mandated by that state’s law. ""The waiver that was included in the American Health Care Act allows states to redefine essential health benefits as it applies to individual and small market groups in their state,"" said Matthew Fiedler, a fellow in the Center of Health Policy at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit public policy organization. ""Maternity coverage is one thing that’s considered an essential health benefit today so a state could eliminate maternity care coverage in their state,"" Fiedler said. Maternity coverage was not federally mandated before Obamacare. Only 18 states required it in small group and individual plans prior to the 2010 health care law according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health policy research organization. Large group plans, those with more than 100 members in New York state, have been required to cover maternity care since the federal 1978 Pregnancy Discrimination Act. Will could happen? The Congressional Budget Office, a federal agency that provides nonpartisan fiscal analyses for Congress, predicted maternity care coverage would be lost in states that seek a waiver. ""Services or benefits likely to be excluded from the EHBs in some states include maternity care, mental health and substance abuse benefits, rehabilitative and habilitative services, and pediatric dental benefits,"" the agency said in a report on the American Health Care Act. ""If a state only waives the requirement that plans offer maternity coverage, then it’s unlikely any plan would voluntarily offer maternity coverage,"" said Cynthia Cox, associate director for health reform and private insurance at the Kaiser Family Foundation. The CBO said maternity care may be offered by insurers in those states as a rider, or addition, to a plan. But that would not come cheap. ""Without maternity coverage, new moms could expect to pay about $17,000 out-of-pocket,"" Cox said. ""Or, if they tried to buy a rider, they could expect to pay more than $1,000 per month."" Congress included $15 billion in the American Health Care Act for maternity care, mental health care, and substance use treatment. The CBO predicts that money will go to health care providers to reduce costs for patients instead of insurers. Our ruling Faso said a waiver in the American Health Care Act ""doesn’t apply to things like maternity coverage."" The waiver applies specifically to maternity coverage. If a state does not require maternity coverage and is approved for a waiver, insurers there would not be required to cover maternity care."
26295	Facebook post Says only certain face masks are effective and others, such as cloth masks, are not.	N95 masks offer the most protection from viral particles, health officials say, but they should be reserved for health care workers who are in direct contact with infected patients. Mask effectiveness varies, but claims that cloth masks provide 0% protection aren’t accurate. More studies need to be done to examine variables such as the material and fit of the mask, the wearer, and the environment. Health officials largely agree that wearing any kind of face mask, coupled with social distancing and frequent hand-washing, is more protective than going unmasked.	false	Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,	"Face masks have become a controversial symbol of the fight against COVID-19. Varying state rules and shifting guidance from leading health officials has caused confusion over who should be wearing masks and whether some types are effective at slowing disease transmission. Take this Facebook post, for example. It displays an image of four different masks: An N95, a surgical mask, a sponge and a cloth mask. It claims that N95 and surgical masks both provide 95% protection, while sponge and cloth masks offer none. Let’s just get to the point: This isn’t true. The 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.) Medical masks, like the N95, offer the most protection, but experts widely agree that several types of facial coverings, including ones made of fabric, are effective at slowing virus spread. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initially deterred people from wearing face masks unless they had COVID-19 and were showing symptoms. But that guidance changed on April 3, after studies found that the virus can be spread by asymptomatic individuals, or before symptoms start to show. Now, the CDC recommends that nearly everyone wear a facial covering in public and in areas where social distancing isn’t possible. Officials say the most effective homemade masks should fit snugly and be made of thick cloth. First, the N95, and other medical masks, are in high demand and officials say they should be reserved for health care workers who are in direct contact with infected patients. Second, multiple studies that look at the efficacy of lower-grade fabric masks have shown that they, too, help block particles. ""The protection from cloth masks isn’t 0, and it’s definitely not 100, but the way to think about any of the masks and our overall approach is how do you put together all the pieces of the puzzle to give you a complete picture of minimizing the risk of transmission of COVID-19?"" said Dr. Thomas Tsai, a surgeon and health policy researcher at Harvard’s school of public health. ""Hand washing, wearing masks, and social distancing is part of it, but none of them alone. It’s how you put together these different tools to meet the task at hand. Wearing any mask is a very, very small price to pay to be safe and return to society."" Linsey Marr, an expert in airborne disease transmission at Virginia Tech, told PolitiFact that masks provide some protection but the amount can vary widely depending on the type and how it's worn. Masks reduce the amount of virus spread and also the amount one might inhale, she said. It’s not true, she said, that cloth masks provide 0% protection. ""There have been measurements showing that homemade mask materials offer up to 80% protection,"" Marr said, ""which is much better than 0%, although not as good as an N95. Still, reducing the amount of virus that we inhale by 80% is better than nothing."" A smattering of studies have looked at the efficacy of different masks in different ways. One experiment from researchers at the National Institutes of Health used lasers to illuminate and measure how many droplets of saliva were released into the air by a person talking with and without a cloth facial covering. As can be seen in a video of the experiment, a cluster of droplets appear in the air when the researcher speaks without a mask, but nearly all the particles are blocked when he does the same with a mask. The study didn’t capture micro-droplets, and more research needs to be done on how many viral particles these smaller droplets can contain, but it demonstrated that a cloth mask is better than no mask. Scientists from the University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health conducted a study in patients with seasonal coronaviruses. The report found that surgical face masks significantly reduced detection of viral RNA in aerosols and shows a trend in reducing viral RNA in respiratory droplets. Arizona State University mathematicians recently developed a model for assessing the community impact of mask use by the general, asymptomatic public. That study found that a broad adoption of even relatively ineffective face masks ""may meaningfully reduce community transmission of COVID-19 and decrease peak hospitalizations and deaths,"" and said masks are useful to both prevent illness in healthy persons and prevent asymptomatic transmission. ""Typical protection (of fabric masks) is probably at least 50%, high quality masks could be 80–95% protective, and even low quality masks made of very thin materials could still be 10–20% protective,"" said Steffen Eikenberry, a postdoctoral scholar in the school of mathematical and statistical sciences and one of the main authors of the study. ""While evidence is still very limited, several laboratory studies indicate that the majority of homemade mask materials, including cotton fabric, cotton T-shirts, tea cloth, flannel, silk, linen, scarves, and chiffon offer at least 50% protection. Higher quality, more tightly woven fabrics are better, and multiple layers improves protection."" Jeremy Howard, a data scientist at the University of San Francisco, wrote an article in the Conversation in favor of universal mask wearing. Howard says that researchers were looking at the wrong question at first – how well a mask protects the wearer from infection – and not how well a mask prevents an infected person from spreading the virus. He said masks function very differently as personal protective equipment versus ""source control."" ""Masks are very good at blocking larger droplets and not nearly as good at blocking tiny particles,"" he wrote. ""When a person expels droplets into the air, they quickly evaporate and shrink to become tiny airborne particles called droplet nuclei. These are extremely hard to remove from the air. However, in the moist atmosphere between a person’s mouth and their mask, it takes nearly a hundred times as long for a droplet to evaporate and shrink into a droplet nuclei."" He continued: ""This means that nearly any kind of simple cloth mask is great for source control. The mask creates humidity, this humidity prevents virus-containing droplets from turning into droplet nuclei, and this allows the fabric of the mask to block the droplets."" Social media posts claim that certain face masks are ineffective and provide ""0% protection."" More research needs to be done but we found that medical experts widely refute the claim. Higher medical-grade masks offer the most protection, but homemade masks are also effective, particularly when they fit snuggly and are made of multiple layers. No mask is 100% effective, but health care officials stress that face masks increase their effectiveness when combined with other measures, such as social distancing and regular hand washing."
37708	"In an interview that aired August 3 2020, President Trump said ""when I took over, we didn't even have a test"" for COVID-19."	A popular Imgur post purporting to be a “real quote” from an Axios interview, in which Trump says “when I took over, we didn’t even have a test” for COVID-19 is accurate, based on the video and transcript of the July 28 2020 segment. Trump turned the discussion back to testing, and claimed that no test existed when he “took over.” Swan responded by asking why such a test would exist if the virus did not.	true	Fact Checks, Viral Content	On August 5 2020, a quote meme was shared to Imgur referencing an Axios interview which August 3 2020, and it quoted United States President Donald Trump as saying that when he “took over … we didn’t even have a test” for COVID-19:Cart Before The HorseThe meme showed Trump sitting on the left and interviewer Jonathan Swan on the right side. Both men had speech bubbles, which read:Trump: When I took over, we didn’t even have a test. Swan: Why would you have a test? The virus didn’t exist.In the body of the Imgur post, the poster added, “This is an actual quote.”The Axios InterviewPortions of an interview of Trump, conducted by Swan and produced by Axios, went viral after it initially aired on August 3 2020. In a description, Axios explained:In this episode of “Axios on HBO”, President Trump discusses his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the upcoming election and much more with National Political Correspondent Jonathan Swan.The interview was filmed on July 28 2020 and clocked in at just under 38 minutes.The TranscriptOn August 3 2020, Rev.com published a full transcript of the Axios interview.According to the transcript’s timestamps, the exchange began just before the 12-minute mark, when Swan says he wants “to talk about the federal intervention.” Leading up to that moment, Trump and Swan discussed coronavirus testing.After Swan brings up “federal intervention,” Trump goes back to the topic of testing, maintaining once again that the United States’ COVID-19 case rate is only high because “we test so much.” In response, Swan says he’s aware Trump has made such claims before:Jonathan Swan: (11:37) Mr. President, I want to talk about the federal intervention.President Donald J. Trump: (11:40) Excuse me. One thing I would say about testing.Jonathan Swan: (11:42) Yeah. Yeah.President Donald J. Trump: (11:43) Because we test so much, we show cases. So, we show many, many cases. We show tremendous number of cases. I know you’re smiling when I say that, but I’m telling you.Jonathan Swan: (11:52) Well, I mean, I’ve heard you say this.President Donald J. Trump: (11:54) I know. Other countries don’t test like we do. So, they don’t show case[s].Jonathan Swan: (11:58) Just a couple points on that. I wasn’t going to continue on the testing, but you said it. So, we’re testing so much because it’s spread so far in America. And, when you-President Donald J. Trump: (12:06) We’re testing so much because we had the ability to test.Jonathan Swan: (12:08) Okay.From there, Trump continues advancing his claims about testing. At that point, the exchange in the meme takes place:President Donald J. Trump: (12:09) Because we came up with test-Jonathan Swan: (12:10) But South Korea-President Donald J. Trump: (12:11) Jonathan, we didn’t even have a test. When I took over, we didn’t even have a test. Now, in all fairness-Jonathan Swan: (12:17) Why would you have a test?President Donald J. Trump: (12:21) There was no test for this-Jonathan Swan: (12:23) The virus didn’t exist.President Donald J. Trump: (12:23) Excuse me. I was going to say-Jonathan Swan: (12:23) Okay.President Donald J. Trump: (12:23) There was no test for this. We didn’t have a test because there was no test.Jonathan Swan: (12:26) Of course.President Donald J. Trump: (12:27) And, in a very short order, we got one test. We got another test.Jonathan Swan: (12:30) It was broken, the first one.President Donald J. Trump: (12:31) We got another. Many of those tests are now obsolete because it’s called science.Jonathan Swan: (12:34) Right.President Donald J. Trump: (12:34) And, all of a sudden, something is better. But, because we tested so many people, 55, 60 million people, very soon, we get cases. You test. Some kid has even just a little runny nose. It’s a case. And then, you report many cases. So, we look like we have more cases than massive countries like China, which by the way, doesn’t report, as you know.Video of the exchange is embedded on Axios’ site; the exchange roughly matches the timestamps in the transcript.‘The Virus Didn’t Exist’In the exchange, Trump references when he “took over” in January 2017, as he refers to his inauguration as president. Swan responds that the virus didn’t exist when Trump “took over,” which is true.The World Health Organization’s COVID-19 timeline begins on December 31 2019, with the identification of “pneumonia of unknown cause” identified in Wuhan, China:Pneumonia of unknown cause reported to WHO China Office31 December 2019At the close of 2019, the WHO China Country Office was informed of a pneumonia of unknown cause, detected in the city of Wuhan in Hubei province, China. According to the authorities, some patients were operating dealers or vendors in the Huanan Seafood market.Staying in close contact with national authorities, WHO began monitoring the situation and requested further information on the laboratory tests performed and the different diagnoses considered.#China has reported to WHO a cluster of #pneumonia cases —with no deaths— in Wuhan, Hubei Province 🇨🇳 . Investigations are underway to identify the cause of this illness.— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 4, 2020That information was relayed in a January 5 2020 WHO update:On 31 December 2019, the WHO China Country Office was informed of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology (unknown cause) detected in Wuhan City, Hubei Province of China. As of 3 January 2020, a total of 44 patients with pneumonia of unknown etiology have been reported to WHO by the national authorities in China. Of the 44 cases reported, 11 are severely ill, while the remaining 33 patients are in stable condition. According to media reports, the concerned market in Wuhan was closed on 1 January 2020 for environmental sanitation and disinfection.The causal agent has not yet been identified or confirmed. On 1 January 2020, WHO requested further information from national authorities to assess the risk.National authorities report that all patients are isolated and receiving treatment in Wuhan medical institutions. The clinical signs and symptoms are mainly fever, with a few patients having difficulty in breathing, and chest radiographs showing invasive lesions of both lungs.At that point, the WHO’s risk assessment was based on limited information on a small cluster of cases:There is limited information to determine the overall risk of this reported cluster of pneumonia of unknown etiology. The reported link to a wholesale fish and live animal market could indicate an exposure link to animals. The symptoms reported among the patients are common to several respiratory diseases, and pneumonia is common in the winter season; however, the occurrence of 44 cases of pneumonia requiring hospitalization clustered in space and time should be handled prudently.On January 11 and 12 2020, the World Health Organization reported that China shared “the genetic sequence of the novel coronavirus, which will be very important for other countries as they develop specific diagnostic kits.” At the time, testing was not yet developed or scaled to a global level.On January 24 2020, research was used to diagnose Malaysia’s first documented case of COVID-19:Scientists from China first released information on the viral genome on 11 January 2020. That day the Malaysian Institute for Medical Research (IMR) produced “primers and probes” specific to a SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test. The IMR’s materials were used to diagnose Malaysia’s first patient on 24 January [2020]. BGI Group was one of the first companies to receive emergency use approval from China’s National Medical Products Administration for a nucleic acid test.In short, SARS-CoV-2 was first reported on December 31 2019, China released sequencing information on January 11 2020, and Malaysia documented testing occurred on January 24 2020. All of these events occurred sequentially following Donald Trump assuming office in January 2017, three years before.SummaryA popular Imgur post purporting to be a “real quote” from an Axios interview, in which Trump says “when I took over, we didn’t even have a test” for COVID-19 is accurate, based on the video and transcript of the July 28 2020 segment. Trump turned the discussion back to testing, and claimed that no test existed when he “took over.” Swan responded by asking why such a test would exist if the virus did not.Comments
35228	Ingestion of hand sanitizer by children can result in alcohol poisoning.	What's true: Hand sanitizer gels and wipes include enough alcohol that, if ingested, could possibly lead to alcohol poisoning. What's false: Such poisonings are rare due to the relatively large amount of sanitizer that a toddler would have to ingest.	mixture	Medical, Toxin Du Jour	Two emails hit our inbox in 2007: Hi All- Just wanted to send you a quick email and warn you about using hand sanitizers wtih your young kids. We have been using that with Sydney in place of hand washing for convience sake. Today she told me she was going up to her room to get a toy, while I was downstairs feeding Griffin, and after taking longer then it should I called for her. When she didn’t answer I knew she was up to something and the bathroom door was closed. She got into the hand sanitizer and had ingested some of it. There wasn’t a large amount missing from the bottle but I could smell it on her breath. Within approx. 10 min. she was all glassy eyed and wobbly in her feet. As the minutes passed, she continued to get worse and got to the point where she couldn’t even stand up or walk, it was awful!! I called poison control immediately and they told me to take her to the ER right away due to the alcohol level in hand sanitizers. As we were driving there her speech became slurred and harder to understand and her eyes looked awful. They admitted her and did urine and blood tests and it turns out that her blood alcohol level was .10 — which is legally drunk. It turns out that the hand sanitizers (Purell) have 62% alcohol in them and the dr. compared it to her drinking something that is 120 proof. We had a VERY scary afternoon but thankfully she is ok. We were in the ER until this evening, after spending the whole afternoon there, so they could monitor her and make sure her blood sugars were stable. They said that someone her size would only need to have 3 squirts of it to get to the point of being .10 blood level. She has always wanted to lick her hands after we use it and we have warned her that it is dangerous and something that kids can’t do or they will end up in the hospital. Needless to say, we are going to go back to washing hands with soap and water because it is way to risky and scary to use this stuff seeing how little a child needs to be affected by it. We asked about long term affected with the liver, brain, etc and the dr. said we have nothing to worry about but we need to get rid of all the hand sanitizer in the house. Just wanted to let you all know so you can learn from our lesson and not have to go through something as scary as this… Ok. I don’t know where to begin because the last 2 days of my life have been such a blur. Yesterday, My youngest daughter Halle who is 4, was rushed to the emergancy room by her father for being severely lethargic and incoherent. He was called to her school by the school secretary for being “very VERY sick.” He told me that when he arrived that Halle was barely sitting in the chair. She couldn’t hold her own head up and when he looked into her eyes, she couldn’t focus them. He immediately called me after he scooped her up and rushed her to the ER. When we got there, they ran blood test after blood test and did x-rays, every test imaginable. Her white blood cell count was normal, nothing was out of the ordinary. The ER doctor told us that he had done everything that he could do so he was sending her to Saint Francis for further test. Right when we were leaving in the ambulance, her teacher had come to the ER and after questioning Halle’s classmates, we found out that she had licked hand sanitizer off her hand. Hand sanitizer, of all things. But it makes sense. These days they have all kinds of differents scents and when you have a curious child, they are going to put all kinds of things in their mouths. When we arrived at Saint Francis, we told the ER doctor there to check her blood alcohol level, which, yes we did get weird looks from it but they did it. The results were her blood alcohol level was 85% and this was 6 hours after we first took her. Theres no telling what it would have been if we would have tested it at the first ER. Since then, her school and a few surrounding schools have taken this out of the classrooms of all the lower grade classes but whats to stop middle and high schoolers too? After doing research off the internet, we have found out that it only takes 3 squirts of the stuff to be fatal in a toddler. For her blood alcohol level to be so high was to compare someone her size to drinking something 120 proof. So please PLEASE don’t disregard this because I don’t ever want anyone to go thru what my family and I have gone thru. Today was a little better but not much. Please send this to everyone you know that has children or are having children. It doesn’t matter what age. I just want people to know the dangers of this. Thank you Lacey Butler and family The first alert quoted above (which began circulating via e-mail in mid-January 2007) was written by Jennifer Moe, the mother of a 2-year-old girl who had ingested some hand sanitizer. The second example (May 2007) was written by Lacey Butler, the mother of a 4-year-old girl who had done the same; although it contains some errors of fact or transcription (e.g., a “blood alcohol level [measured at] 85%”), it is a true tale in the sense that 4-year-old Halle Butler, a pre-kindergarten student at Okmulgee Primary School in Okmulgee, Oklahoma, was treated at an area hospital after eating a small amount of hand sanitizer squirted into her palm by a teacher. While the stories as related in the e-mailed accounts fortunately did not result in death or serious injury, they are cautionary tales worth heeding because they present a scenario that can all too easily be repeated in other households, schools, or daycare centers with small children. Hand sanitizer gels and wipes include a surprising amount of alcohol (e.g., Purell and Germ-X contain 62% Ethyl Alcohol), and a child who swallowed enough of such products could experience what 2-year-old Sydney and 4-year-old Halle went through: intoxication, possibly even alcohol poisoning. However, although such poisonings are possible, they are still quite rare due to the relatively large amount of bad-tasting sanitizer that a toddler would typically have to ingest to experience such harmful results: “Typical exposure by a small child involves a squirt or two from a pump of 70 percent alcohol [sometimes labeled as ethanol] hand sanitizer [and] really isn’t usually a problem,” [Dr. Edward] Krenzelok [director of the Pittsburgh Poison Control Center & Drug Information Center and a professor of pharmacy and pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh] explains. “They cry because it tastes bad and maybe it irritates their tongue,” he says. According to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, centers are receiving more of these calls as the use of hand sanitizers increases. Combined data from 2005 and 2006 found that poison-control centers reported more than 20,000 exposures to hand sanitizer, with more than 17,000 cases involving children under the age of 6. None of the calls resulted in death, with no major medical problems reported in the children. In fact, more than 9,500 cases resulted in little or no effect. Bottles of topical anti-bacterials do carry explicit warnings about the danger they pose (e.g., bottles of Purell hand sanitizer caution: “Keep out of reach of children. If swallowed, get medical help or contact a Poison Control Center right away.”) However, unlike cleaning supplies and numerous other products commonly used in the home, hand sanitizer isn’t generally thought of as something that presents a poisoning danger to children — folks unthinkingly tend to regard it the way they do hand lotion, as something that can be safely left on a counter or nightstand. Yet such products shouldn’t be left within easy reach, not if one has a small child about. While one might think the taste of the product (which in Purell’s case is akin to a slightly flowery version of vodka) would keep children from swallowing too much of it, kids can and do get into the darnest things. Youngsters are especially at risk of ingesting poisons from ordinary household products due to four factors, notes a 1993 Clinical Pediatrics article:
28579	A home pregnancy test can detect testicular cancer.	A home pregnancy kit can detect testicular cancer in some circumstances, but it's not a reliable diagnostic test.	mixture	Medical, pregnancy test, reddit, testicular cancer	Back in November 2012, a Reddit user with the screen name ‘CappnPoopdeck’ posted a humorous rage comic to that site, one that detailed the experiences of a male friend who had jokingly taken a pregnancy test left in his medicine cabinet by an ex-girlfriend and surprisingly obtained a positive result: Although the post was intended as nothing more than a joke, the responses on Reddit soon took a serious turn, with CappnPoopdeck being advised, “If this is true, you should check yourself for testicular cancer. Seriously. Google it.” In fact, it turned out that pregnancy tests will record a positive result upon the detection of the hormone human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), which is produced not only by pregnant women but also by some men with testicular tumors. CappnPoopdeck posted a follow-up comic informing Redditors that her friend had visited a doctor and found a small tumor in his right testicle (caught early enough to be treated immediately), and she thanked them for their helpful advice: However, although a home pregnancy test may be able to detect some forms of testicular cancer, this Redditor’s experience should not be taken to mean that such tests are a reliable method of detecting that disease. As the American Cancer Society has noted, they reliably apply in only a small minority of testicular cancer cases: Just because the test helped this man get a positive cancer diagnosis doesn’t mean it’s a reliable tool everyone should use, according to the American Cancer Society.The organization put the question to Ted Gansler, director of medical content, who wrote that “only a small minority of men” with testicular cancer have HCG levels high enough to be detected by a home pregnancy test. He added that “several non-cancerous conditions can cause false positive results.” According to Gansler, “current evidence does not indicate that screening the general population of men with a urine test for HCG (or with urine or blood tests for any other tumour marker) can find testicular cancer early enough to reduce testicular cancer death rates.” One thing men can do is be on the lookout for lumps in the testicles and see your doctor if you find one. Testicle pain or swelling and heaviness or aching in the lower abdomen are also possible signs of testicular cancer. In February 2014, a 21-year-old student also discovered he had testicular cancer, and obtained a potentially life-saving diagnosis, due to information about the disease he found on Reddit: A 21-year-old student is thanking Reddit for saving his life, after a post on testicular cancer led to a life-saving diagnosis.Taylor “Chase” Tyree, a computer science major at the Colorado School of Mines, was reading the social media site Reddit when he came across a post from a user called “uniballer,” who talked about being diagnosed with testicular cancer and posted a photo of his removed testicle. Tyree found that the symptoms “uniballer” described were similar to ones he had been experiencing for months. Symptoms of testicular cancer can include swelling or finding a mass in the testicles. Testicular cancer is the most common cause of cancer for American males between the ages of 15 and 34, according to the Mayo Clinic. The day after reading the post Tyree went to the doctor to be checked and was immediately sent in for further tests. After giving Tyree an ultrasound, doctors found that Tyree had a cancerous mass in his left testicle. Just four days after seeing the Reddit post, Tyree had surgery to have his left testicle removed.
41919	1 in 5 children in America goes to sleep hungry at night.	In talking about the importance of the 2018 midterm congressional elections, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi misrepresented government data to claim that “1 in 5 children in America goes to sleep hungry at night.”	unproven	childhood poverty, hunger,	In talking about the importance of the 2018 midterm congressional elections, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi misrepresented government data to claim that “1 in 5 children in America goes to sleep hungry at night.”There is no precise measurement for childhood hunger in the United States. But the Census Bureau’s most recent household food security survey found that about 6.5 million children, or 8.8 percent, “lived in households in which 1 or more child was food insecure” in 2016.Also, the federal definition of “food insecurity” includes households with “low food security” and “very low food security” at any point during the previous 12 months. Until 2006, “low food security” was known as “food insecurity without hunger” and “very low food security” was called “food insecurity with hunger.”“Very low food security among children was 0.8 percent in 2016, essentially unchanged from 0.7 percent in 2015,” said the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2017 report on food security.Pelosi made her remarks at her weekly press conference on April 26, which was “Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day.” At her press conference, the California Democrat was joined by the children of Capitol Hill staffers and the media.The Intercept released a tape recording that day of House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer urging Levi Tillemann, a progressive candidate in Colorado’s 6th Congressional District, to drop out of the Democratic primary to clear the field for the party’s preferred candidate, Jason Crow. Asked if the Democratic leaders in Washington should get involved in primaries, Pelosi pivoted to the issue of childhood poverty and hunger.Pelosi, April 26: What is important in all of this is that 1 in 5 children in America lives in poverty and goes to sleep hungry at night. That is what makes this election so urgent for our country and for our children.Later in the news conference, Pelosi repeated that “1 in 5 children in America goes to sleep hungry at night because they are so poor.”Do 20 percent of the children in the United States go to bed hungry?Pelosi’s office referred us to Table 1B of the USDA’s September 2017 report, “Household Food Security in the United States in 2016.” The USDA administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, once known as the food stamp program, and several child nutrition programs for low-income Americans in an attempt to combat hunger.The USDA report is based on the 2016 Current Population Survey Food Security Supplement, an annual survey conducted by the Census Bureau. And, as Pelosi’s office told us, the report says 16.5 percent of U.S. households with children were food insecure at some point during 2016. But that doesn’t mean that the children in those households go to bed hungry.In an attempt to identify the number of “food-insecure children,” the federal government differentiates household food insecurity “by whether it affected the dietary intake of adults only or adults and children.” “Parents and guardians try to shield children from experiencing food insecurity to the extent possible, and they are often able to maintain adequate food intake and normal meal patterns for their children even when parents themselves experience food insecurity,” the USDA says in a separate June 2017 report on children’s food security. There were nearly 3.1 million “households with food-insecure children,” which is 8 percent of U.S. households with children, according to the September 2017 report. Of course, some of those households have more than one child.So, how many U.S. children were “food insecure” in 2016?“About 6.5 million children (8.8 percent) lived in households in which 1 or more child was food insecure,” according to the USDA report cited by Pelosi’s office.There are also ranges of food security that help the USDA determine “the severity of food insecurity experienced” by children. Here’s the definition of “food insecurity,” as described on the USDA website:“In 0.8 percent of households with children (298,000 households), food insecurity among children was so severe that caregivers reported that children were hungry, skipped a meal, or did not eat for a whole day because there was not enough money for food,” the September 2017 report says. “These households are described as having very low food security among children.”As noted by the USDA, “low food security” was once known as “food insecurity without hunger” and “very low food security” was known as “food insecurity with hunger.” But the USDA in 2006 stopped using the “with hunger” and “without hunger” labels, and combined those categories into a single “food insecurity” category. As the USDA explains on its website, the Committee on National Statistics at the time recommended that the USDA stop using those labels because “hunger is not adequately assessed in the food security survey.”USDA, “Definitions of Food Security,” Oct. 4, 2017: The word “hunger,” the panel stated in its final report, “…should refer to a potential consequence of food insecurity that, because of prolonged, involuntary lack of food, results in discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation.” To measure hunger in this sense would require collection of more detailed and extensive information on physiological experiences of individual household members than could be accomplished effectively in the context of the CPS [Current Population Survey].That means the USDA does not use the food security survey to measure hunger, even though Pelosi does.Henry Connelly, a spokesman for Pelosi, told us: “A child in a household without enough food on the table is in danger, and that’s the point Leader Pelosi is making.”Fair enough. But the statistic she cited to make her point misrepresents the government data.
32849	Milk-Bone dog treats cause cancer in one of every two dogs that eat them.	We were unable to substantiate claims that BHA, which is commonly used as a preservative in Milk-Bones (and many other dog treats), posed a risk to pets. Decades of research indicated that BHA was generally regarded as safe in both human and animal food products, and the only information cited by sites claiming otherwise was speculative and published in 1991. While data was insufficient to prove a link between BHA (a preservative) and cancer in dogs, it was worth bearing in mind that a lack of preservatives often posed a far greater immediate health risk due to potential growth of mold and bacteria.	false	Uncategorized	"On 22 March 2016, the Facebook page “Planet Paws” published a video claiming that Milk-Bone dog treats contained a known canine carcinogen, butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA): // <! [CDATA[ (function(d, s, id) { var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id; js.src = ""//connect.facebook.net/en_US/sdk.js#xfbml=1&version=v2.3""; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs);}(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk')); // ]]> Posted by Planet Paws on Tuesday, March 22, 2016 In just under one week, the video achieved nearly half a million shares and scores more views, causing worry to dog lovers across the social network. On an initial watch, we noticed a brief portion that cited the unreliable health site Mercola: The viral Facebook video wasn’t the first claim that BHA was a danger to dogs due to its purported carcinogenic effects. A blog about dogs featured several posts claiming that the National Institutes of Health had pegged BHA as a canine carcinogen, but only linked back to its own posts rather than any documentation from the NIH. We located a 1991 report [PDF] from the NIH on possible carcinogenic effects of BHA, but the most conclusive part simply stated: The data available from epidemiological studies are inadequate to evaluate the relationship between human cancer and exposure specifically to BHA. Since BHA was listed in the Sixth Annual Report on Carcinogens, one epidemiological study of BHA has been identified. A population-based nested case-control study of stomach cancer in men and women within the Netherlands Cohort Study of dietary intake found no increase in risk at typical levels of dietary intake of BHA[.] While “experimental animals” (presumably rats or mice) were mentioned, dogs did not appear in that NIH document. The Food and Drug Administration listed BHA as a “generally recognized as safe,” or GRAS, additive; with respect to carcinogenic properties, the FDA said: Data from several studies indicate that BHA is not a carcinogenic substance. There is evidence that BHA may interfere with synthesis of natural carcinogens and suppress or retard growth of tumors induced by known chemical carcinogens. A 2000 study on BHA as a carcinogen published in the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology concluded: The association between dietary intake of BHA and BHT and stomach cancer risk was investigated in the Netherlands Cohort Study (NLCS) that started in 1986 among 120,852 men and women aged 55 to 69 years … After 6.3 years of follow-up, complete data on BHA and BHT intake of 192 incident stomach cancer cases and 2035 subcohort members were available for case-cohort analysis. Mean intake of BHA or BHT among subcohort members was 105 and 351 microg/day, respectively. For consumption of mayonnaise and other creamy salad dressings with BHA or BHT no association with stomach cancer risk was observed. A statistically non-significant decrease in stomach cancer risk was observed with increasing BHA and BHT intake [rate ratio (RR) highest/lowest intake of BHA = 0.57 (95% confidence interval (CI): 0.25-1.30] and BHT = 0.74 (95% CI: 0.38-1.43). In this study, no significant association with stomach cancer risk was found for usual intake of low levels of BHA and BHT. We contacted Milk-Bone about the rumors, and the company responded: Thank you for contacting us as we also would like to debunk the myth surrounding the video and BHA. We are a company of pet lovers, so we certainly take claims like this seriously. Let me assure you that all of the ingredients in our treats are completely safe for our consumer’s pets. As you’re likely aware, standards for pet food ingredient safety are set by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Association of American Feed Control Officials, and all of our ingredients meet or exceed these standards. We add a very small amount of BHA to our treats as an anti-oxidant that helps to preserve fats and protect against staleness. At these trace amounts, it is completely harmless. We hope this information helps put your reader’s minds at ease. Dr. Jessica Vogelsang of Pawcurious told us: Cancer is a complicated problem with multi-factorial origins, including a large heap of genetics and luck of the draw. While nutrition is important for health and all treats should be given in moderation, people shouldn’t blame their pet’s cancer on a Milk Bone they fed it in 2005. It’s not health food, but it’s not exactly a bucket of radioactive sludge either. The “experts” in these videos substitute Google searches and scary sound bites for actual science. They are much better videographers than scientists. In that vein they’re most like the Food Babe of the pet world."
9237	Male birth control shots prevent pregnancy	This news release describes an efficacy and safety study of an injectable hormonal contraceptive for men that involved 320 men in seven countries. The news release quantified benefits and described adverse effects in some detail while emphasizing the need for more research. However, it did not discuss an important study limitation — the absence of controls — or costs. A comparison with the efficacy and safety of other forms of birth control would have made the release much stronger. The development of new forms of birth control including male hormonal contraceptives has been stalled for years, partly due to lack of interest on the part of drug companies. That’s despite the fact that many men have indicated a willingness to use hormonal contraceptives, while some women are reluctant to use available birth control methods due to their own experiences with side effects. Better male birth control options could erode cultural and economic barriers to contraception and reduce unintended pregnancies, fostering better economic and health conditions worldwide. This study, funded by the United Nations and other governmental and foundation sources, is the first large multi-center study to test a combination of testosterone and progestogen in men. According to the researchers, it establishes a much-needed reference point for future trials of male contraception. We would have liked to see some discussion of the economic, cultural and logistical barriers that could impede the introduction of a new form of birth control in the release.	true	hormonal contraceptive,male birth control	The cost of these hormone injections isn’t mentioned, and there’s no assessment of how the cost might compare with other forms of birth control. It should be noted that people interested in using this injection for birth control would also need to factor in clinic visit costs and potential treatment of side effects. The news release states that hormone shots were effective at reducing sperm count to less than 1 million/mil within 24 weeks in 274 participants and was effective in nearly 96 percent of continuing users, with four pregnancies occurring among the men’s partners during the efficacy phase of the study. It also stated that more than 75 percent of participants reporting being willing to use this method of contraception at the conclusion of the trial. That’s the plus side. One omission from the release was the absence of a control group. Without a control group it’s not possible to accurately calculate the effectiveness. The study reported four pregnancies among the men taking the injection. How many pregnancies would be expected for a similar group not getting the shots? The news release doesn’t say. The news release discusses adverse effects. It says researchers stopped enrolling new participants in 2011 due to the rate of reported side events, particularly depression and other mood disorders. It also mentions that men reported having injection site pain, muscle pain, increased libido and acne, and that 20 men dropped out due to adverse effects. It also says serious adverse events that were assessed as probably or possibly related to the study included one case of depression, one intentional overdose of acetaminophen, and a man who experienced an abnormally fast and irregular heartbeat after he stopped receiving the injections. Further, it quotes a researcher saying that “the combination of hormones needs to be studied more to consider a good balance between efficacy and safety.” Despite the attention to side effects there were a few gaps. The release didn’t quantify the number of men who developed depression. It noted there was one suicide among the study group, but stated it was determined not related to the hormones. How was it determined that the injection did not contribute to the suicide when the hormone shots did contribute to mood disorders? The release doesn’t say. The news release also doesn’t adequately explain the need to cancel the study due to harms. When compared to the side effects of other hormonal contraceptives used by women it appears to be safer. The news release describes study methods in detail. However, it could have pointed out then lack of a control group and the limitations of hormone injections. For example, this study included only men who reported being in monogamous relationships for at least a year. Presumably, these men were open to the idea of taking hormone injections while other men in the general population might not be. Injections require advance planning and access to medical resources, unlike other reversible methods of condom use and withdrawal. In this study, couples were required to use another form of birth control for as long as 26 weeks while the hormone injections took effect. The news release also does not mention that it took eight of the men more than a year to recover their sperm counts, which could be a drawback for some couples. The news release does not appear to be disease-mongering. It states that better birth control options are needed for men, citing data from the Guttmacher Institute that 40 percent of pregnancies worldwide in 2012 were unintended. Of course, expanding contraceptive use would not eliminate all unintended pregnancies. The news release states that the research was co-sponsored and funded by UNDP/UNFPA/UNICEF/WHO/World Bank Special Program of Research, Development, and Research Training in Human Reproduction in Geneva, Switzerland, and CONRAD, using funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the U.S. Agency for International Development. It also states that the hormones were provided by drugmaker Schering, which has since merged with Bayer. The news release mentions other available birth control methods for men including condoms, vasectomies and withdrawal. However, it should have given readers an idea of how the efficacy rate of injectable hormones compares with other available methods of birth control. According to the study, the efficacy of male injectible hormones is high when compared with other reversible methods available for men, and is comparable with the efficacy of female oral contraceptives. Also, the news release did not mention other approaches to male birth control under study, which include hormone-containing gels applied to the skin and the synthetic hormones that could be formulated into a pill as well as non-hormonal mechanisms to prevent sperm development, according to the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. The study does not give the impression that injectable hormones for men are readily available. In fact, it quotes a researcher stating that “more research is needed to advance this concept to the point that it can be made widely available to men as a method of contraception.” However, it could have mentioned that in addition to safety issues, there are other barriers to making male injections widely available. For example, a drug company would have to be willing to make it and sell it at an affordable price. The news release does not overstate the novelty of this research, quoting a researcher who says the findings “confirmed the efficacy of this contraceptive method previously seen in small studies.” The news release does not engage in sensational language.
4100	A third of Kentucky students haven’t had Hepatitis A vaccine.	The Kentucky Department for Public Health says more than a third of students haven’t received the mandated Hepatitis A vaccination.	true	Immunizations, Health, General News, Hepatitis, Infectious diseases, Kentucky, Public health	The Lexington Herald-Leader reports immunization rates released Tuesday show about 65% of the 209,904 mandated students have received the shot. The state’s target compliance rate is 85%. Results show seniors had the lowest compliance rate at 46% and kindergartners had the highest with 84.3%. University of Kentucky infectious disease pediatrician Dr. Sean McTigue says the compliance lag is because of general hesitancy regarding vaccines and the need for two shots. McTigue believes it’ll take “at least two years” to get everyone onboard. Kentucky experienced a Hepatitis A outbreak in 2017, prompting the mandated vaccination. As of September, the health department says 4,943 people are infected and 61 people have died. ___ Information from: Lexington Herald-Leader, http://www.kentucky.com
9010	Screenings miss half of diabetic, prediabetic patients	The head of the largest U.S. energy industry group on Tuesday warned that Americans risk choosing the “wrong path” in the 2020 presidential election if they vote for a candidate seeking to fight climate change by banning drilling.	false	diabetes screening,Northwestern University	The chief executive of the American Petroleum Institute said such proposals from Democratic candidates seeking to unseat Republican President Donald Trump pose a threat to the economy, and urged a room filled with nearly 800 energy executives to push back against them. The industry group also announced a multi-million dollar advertising campaign, focused on U.S. political swing states, that bills the oil and gas industry as a leader in cutting greenhouse gas emissions through improvements in technology. “We know many candidates now are talking about this industry and we want to make sure the American people hear our story,” said API President and CEO Mike Sommers. U.S. Democrats hoping to run against Trump in November’s election have vowed to rapidly shift the country away from planet-warming fossil fuels if elected to help avert the worst impacts of global climate change. To do so, several candidates here have promised to end new drilling on public lands, and some have proposed a national ban on hydraulic fracking - a controversial drilling technology that pumps water and chemicals into rock formations to access petroleum deposits. They argue that transitioning to a zero-emission economy would create millions of new jobs in clean energy industries like solar and wind that would compensate for jobs lost in drilling and mining. The United States has become the world’s top oil and gas producer thanks to a fracking-led drilling boom. The API will release a report later this week showing that a fracking ban would put over 7 million jobs at risk by 2022 and cost the economy $7.1 trillion by 2030, Sommers said. U.S. emissions here of the gases that scientists blame for climate change, meanwhile, have been declining for about a decade, thanks mainly to the replacement of scores of old and inefficient coal-fired power plants with natural gas facilities. But the future of U.S. emissions has been cast into doubt as the Trump administration seeks to boost domestic fossil fuels development by rolling back Obama-era climate protections and other environmental regulations. While the oil industry has been a vocal supporter of the Trump administration’s regulatory rollbacks, the API’s ad campaign will cast the industry as an ally of Democrats and environmentalists seeking to cut emissions. “On issues that matter, like climate change, we are more alike than we think,” according to one of the ads here
705	U.S. scientists join effort to solve mysterious vaping-related illnesses.	The U.S. investigation into hundreds of cases of life-threatening lung illnesses related to vaping has turned up a curious abnormality: Many of the victims had pockets of oil clogging up cells responsible for removing impurities in the lungs.	true	Health News	Dr. Dana Meaney-Delman, who has been leading the inquiry at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, wants to know where that oil came from. The answer will help explain whether these cells play a key role in the vaping-related outbreak that has killed seven people and sickened 530 so far. It may also reveal whether some of these cases have been occurring all along, undetected. “We’re looking to partner with any lab that can assist in the identification of what those lipids (fats) are,” Meaney-Delman said in a telephone interview. A group of researchers who have been studying the long-term effects of vaping told Reuters they have taken up the challenge. They have begun to re-examine lung cell samples they have collected in recent years for evidence of these oil-filled immune cells in people who vaped but didn’t get sick. One possibility: The deposits are residue from inhaling vaping oils, such as those containing the marijuana ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) or vitamin E acetate. Both are considered possible contributors to the current illnesses. Some researchers suspect the oils are formed inside the lungs as part of the body’s natural response to chemicals found in many commercial vaping devices. One theory is that vaping these chemicals may impair the immune system, and make people who vape more vulnerable to respiratory distress, they say. A study published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation earlier this month has fueled the latter theory. It found that mice exposed to aerosols of propylene glycol and vegetable glycerin - common solvents used in conventional nicotine vaping devices - developed these same fat-clogged immune cells even though they were never exposed to vaping oils. These mice also had impaired immune systems compared to mice exposed to room air. The study set off alarm bells for Thomas Eissenberg, co-director of the Center for Tobacco Products at Virginia Commonwealth University. For years, doctors have reported isolated cases of pneumonia-like illnesses in people who vaped. In many cases, patients also had these fat-filled immune cells - called lipid-laden macrophages. Now, these same abnormalities have been found in mice, and in at least some of the people who have fallen ill recently. “For me, the implication is there may be some underlying level of disease, like what we’re seeing in this cluster, that’s been going on all along,” Eissenberg said in a phone interview. Early last week, Eissenberg joined some 25 vaping experts on a hastily arranged conference call. At least three researchers who have already collected lung cell samples from otherwise healthy vapers told Reuters they would see whether these people also had fat-laden pockets within their immune cells. Other researchers, like Eissenberg, are seeking funding to collect new samples of their own. They want to help determine whether these abnormalities have been present for years, and whether they have made vapers generally more vulnerable to severe disease, possibly triggered by some new vaping substance. The group’s members say they have been in regular contact with officials at the CDC and the National Institutes of Health on how they can best help with the multistate investigation. They include Robert Tarran, a physiologist and vaping expert at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, and Dr. Peter Shields, a lung cancer specialist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, who has one of the country’s largest sets of lung samples from vapers, smokers and never-smokers. “It could be that we’ll see something in the general, normal population of people who are using e-cigarettes,” Shields said. Investigators at the CDC and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have pointed to THC vaping oils or vitamin E, a substance used in some THC products, as a possible cause of these illnesses. But they have not ruled out anything yet, including conventional nicotine liquids. CDC pathologists are examining hundreds of lung cell samples gathered from patients in the outbreak. Meanwhile, forensic chemists at the FDA are testing more than 150 products to determine whether there is a common ingredient that may help explain the illnesses. “We need to parlay what we’re seeing in product samples with what we’re seeing in lung tissue,” Meaney-Delman said. Dr. Laura Crotty Alexander, a lung specialist at the University of California at San Diego, has been studying vaping’s effect on health since 2013. Two years ago, she treated a patient with the same set of symptoms that are now being described across the country, and is now checking her lung cell samples to look for clues. “It’s possible that everybody who is vaping is at risk,” she said.
15269	If you look at the results of Obamacare, what you see is emergency room visits are up over 50 percent.	"Fiorina said, ""If you look at the results of Obamacare, what you see is emergency room visits are up over 50 percent."" Fiorina has raised a legitimate concern about the health care law, but the eye-popping statistic she cites is not supported either by official federal data or by a recent survey of members of the American College of Emergency Physicians."	false	National, Polls and Public Opinion, Carly Fiorina,	"The Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, may have been signed in 2010, but it continues to shape the 2016 Republican presidential campaign. Carly Fiorina -- fresh off what many commentators considered a strong debate performance on Aug. 6 -- discussed her opposition to the health care law in an interview with host Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union. Tapper noted that Fiorina is a breast cancer survivor, ""and we're all very grateful for that. Didn't your experience show you that the pre-existing condition part of Obamacare is crucial, that there are so many people out there like you, but without your means, who wouldn't be alive if it were not for the part of the law that says, insurance companies have to take on people with pre-existing conditions?"" Fiorina responded, ""I absolutely endorse that goal. I did at the time. But guess what? None of that has worked. Demonstrably, if you look at the results of Obamacare, what you see is emergency room visits are up over 50 percent."" A reader asked us to check whether this is correct, so we took a look. The Fiorina camp didn’t respond to inquiries. A look at a recent survey Reducing the influx of patients in emergency rooms was always a significant goal of the Affordable Care Act. Because hospitals by law cannot refuse emergency care, uninsured patients may be left with no option beyond the E.R. even to treat minor health issues. Yet this is an expensive solution for the health care system, since E.R. care costs much more than routine medical care dispensed by general practitioners. By increasing insurance coverage, the thinking went, patients would be steered toward providers who charge less than emergency rooms, saving money for insurers and, ultimately, for patients and taxpayers. So has it worked? The official statistics on emergency-room visits are published on an annual basis by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. However, the most recent report -- released in 2014 -- covers 2011, which was well before most elements of the health care law kicked in. So that data set is not helpful in judging the accuracy of Fiorina’s claim. Failing that, the best data we have comes from a survey conducted by the American College of Emergency Physicians in March 2015. The most relevant question in that survey was: ""Since January 1, 2014, when the requirement to have health coverage took effect in the Affordable Care Act, the volume of emergency patients in my emergency department has … increased greatly? increased slightly? remained the same? decreased slightly? decreased greatly?"" Here’s the breakdown, based on the responses of 2,098 member physicians of the American College of Emergency Physicians: Response Percent of surveyed giving this response Increased greatly 28 percent Increased slightly 47 percent Remained the same 17 percent Decreased slightly 5 percent Decreased greatly 0 percent Not sure 3 percent The finding that only 5 percent of respondents saw any decrease in patients in their emergency room provides some validation for Fiorina’s claim. If this is a valid finding, then the health care law isn’t only failing at one of its main missions, but it’s actually making things quite a bit worse. But Fiorina seems to have garbled her talking point. Fiorina said emergency room visits ""are up over 50 percent"" -- not that a majority of emergency room doctors say they are seeing more patients come for treatment. In reality, the survey does not offer specifics on how many more visits there have been after implementation of the law. And a plurality of respondents suggest that the increases they’ve seen are ""slight,"" which doesn’t sound like a word most people would use to describe a 50-percent increase. Another concern: The American College of Emergency Physicians, as the sponsor of a survey, is not a neutral party in the same way a media pollster is. Also, the survey is what is known as an ""opt-in survey."" Unlike a poll in which the survey company reaches out to a random selection of the desired population, the emergency physicians’ poll is one in which individual respondents have chosen whether or not to participate. Still, the point Fiorina raises is a concern among health-care policy specialists. The magazine Health Affairs noted in July that between 1992 and 2012 the number of patient visits to hospital emergency rooms has risen 47 percent -- from 91 million to 133 million -- even as the number of facilities serving them fell by 11 percent, from 5,035 to 4,460. Given this, 39 percent of E.R.s report daily overcrowding. Again, though, this data is from before the law fully went into effect. Such figures suggest a problem many years in the making, but there’s also concern that the Affordable Care Act specifically has made the problem worse. One theory is that insurance rates have increased faster than the number of doctors available to serve the newly insured patients. This may have led some newly insured patients to fall back on old habits and make the E.R. their first option even for non-emergency care. Our ruling Fiorina said, ""If you look at the results of Obamacare, what you see is emergency room visits are up over 50 percent."" Fiorina has raised a legitimate concern about the health care law, but the eye-popping statistic she cites is not supported either by official federal data or by a recent survey of members of the American College of Emergency Physicians."
8674	Venezuela confirms coronavirus cases amid public health concerns.	Venezuela on Friday confirmed its first two cases of coronavirus amid concerns that the economically struggling South American nation is unprepared to confront a pandemic that is spreading rapidly around the globe.	true	Health News	“We are declaring a state of alarm,” President Nicolas Maduro said in a televised appearance Friday night, urging Venezuelans to take precautionary measures and asking those over 65 to stay inside. Speaking with a blue mask covering his mouth, he encouraged people to wear face masks - even if it means making their own - and said no one would be allowed to board the metro or take trains without one. Hospitals in Venezuela have lost huge numbers of medical professionals and are so dilapidated that, in some, staff use paint buckets as improvised toilets and reuse surgical gloves. Maduro insisted Venezuela is prepared for a COVID-19 outbreak, but health workers have expressed concern that the country’s health system will be quickly overwhelmed. Maduro said that all restaurants in the country would be permitted to make orders to-go, but would no longer be allowed to serve patrons on-site, along with bars, clubs and movie theaters. He added that he was evaluating whether or not to suspend work. Earlier in the week, he suspended flights from Europe and Colombia and said public gatherings would be canceled. Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said earlier Friday that schools will be closed as of Monday. Rodriguez said the two people with confirmed cases of COVID-19 had arrived from Spain and had been placed in quarantine. Maduro added that those who had come on the flight were also in quarentine. Earlier in the day shoppers flocked to pharmacies in search of hygiene products such as alcohol to sanitize hands, which is a struggle due to lack of running water that has resulted from the decay of public services. “People in Venezuela are accustomed to crisis situations, we move quickly in reaction to anything that happens,” said Juan Silva, 23, a chef who shopping at a Caracas pharmacy for soap and hand gel. He said he wasn’t overly worried about the disease due to the low mortality rate, but added “I don’t trust the government as a source of information.” Maduro says his government has been hindered in fighting the virus because U.S. sanctions, meant to force him from office, have led banks and foreign businesses to refuse services. The Pan American Health Organization said last week it would be prioritizing Haiti, Venezuela and a handful of other Central and South American countries who have “challenges to their health systems.” Hania Salazar, head of the nurses’ association for the western state of Zulia, said hospitals are not even guaranteeing that employees will have access to face masks. Interior Ministry Nestor Reverol on Friday said the government would provide border control authorities with face masks, gloves and thermometers, without mentioning supplies to for citizens and hospitals. On the street, citizens were already figuring improvised ways to handle the situation. Neima Arocha, 46, managed to buy the last bottle of cough suppressant at a Caracas pharmacy but got there too late to buy alcohol for hand sanitation. As a substitute she planned to buy cocuy, an artesanal cactus liquor similar to tequila. “There’s no (rubbing) alcohol,” said Arocha. But in the liquor stores they still have all kinds of things.”
33531	The acids in Coca-Cola make it harmful to drink.	The rest of the claims offered here are specious. Coca-Cola does contain small amounts of citric acid and phosphoric acid; however, all the insinuations about the dangers these acids might pose to people who drink Coca-Cola ignore a simple concept familiar to any first-year chemistry student: concentration. Coca-Cola contains less citric acid than does orange juice, and the concentration of phosphoric acid in Coke is far too small (a mere 11 to 13 grams per gallon of syrup, or about 0.20 to 0.30 per cent of the total formula) to dissolve a steak, a tooth, or a nail overnight. (Much of the item will dissolve eventually, but after a day or two you’ll still have most of the tooth, a whole nail, and one very soggy T-bone.) By comparison, the gastric acid in your stomach’s digestive fluids is much stronger than any of the acids found in Coca-Cola.	false	Cokelore, coca-cola, cokelore	Many of the entries below are just simple household tips involving Coca-Cola, as provided by Joey Green in his 1995 book Polish Your Furniture with Panty Hose and on his web site: Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2001] 1. In many states the highway patrol carries two gallons of Coke in the truck to remove blood from the highway after a car accident.2. You can put a T-bone steak in a bowl of coke and it will be gone in two days. 3. To clean a toilet: Pour a can of Coca-Cola into the toilet bowl . . . Let the “real thing” sit for one hour, then flush clean. 4. The citric acid in Coke removes stains from vitreous china. 5. To remove rust spots from chrome car bumpers: Rub the bumper with a crumpled-up piece of Reynolds Wrap aluminum foil dipped in Coca-Cola. 6. To clean corrosion from car battery terminals: Pour a can of Coca-Cola over the terminals to bubble away the corrosion. 7. To loosen a rusted bolt: Applying a cloth soaked in Coca-Cola to the rusted bolt for several minutes. 8. To bake a moist ham: Empty a can of Coca-Cola into the baking pan;rap the ham in aluminum foil, and bake. Thirty minutes before the ham is finished, remove the foil, allowing the drippings to mix with the Coke for a sumptuous brown gravy. 9. To remove grease from clothes: Empty a can of coke into a load of greasy clothes, add detergent, And run through a regular cycle. The Coca-Cola will help loosen grease stains. It will also clean road haze from your windshield. FYI: 1. The active ingredient in Coke is phosphoric acid. It’s pH is 2.8. It will dissolve a nail in about 4 days. 2. To carry Coca Cola syrup (the concentrate) the commercial truck must use the Hazardous material place cards reserved for Highly Corrosive materials. 3. The distributors of coke have been using it to clean the engines of their trucks for about 20 years! Drink up! No joke. Think what coke and other soft drinks do to your teeth on a daily basis. A tooth will dissolve in a cup of coke in 24-48 hours. That you can cook and clean with Coke is relatively meaningless from a safety standpoint: you can use a wide array of common household substances (including water) for the same purposes; that fact alone doesn’t necessarily make them dangerous to ingest. Nearly all carbonated soft drinks contain carbonic acid, which is moderately useful for tasks such as removing stains and dissolving rust deposits (although plain soda water is much better for some of these purposes than Coca-Cola or other soft drinks, as it doesn’t leave a sticky sugar residue behind). Carbonic acid is relatively weak, however, and people have been drinking carbonated water for many years with no detrimental effects.
7423	Battling exhaustion and trolls, Fauci says he’s OK.	Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease expert, owns up to doing some not-so-smart things as he helps lead the White House effort to stem the spread of the new coronavirus. Things like forgetting to eat and not getting enough sleep.	true	AP Top News, Technology, Anthony Fauci, General News, Politics, Health, Infectious diseases, Virus Outbreak	The blunt-speaking Fauci also has had to contend with a deluge of online threats and uncomfortable personal encounters with admirers as the pandemic consumes his every waking hour. Nevertheless, the 79-year-old epidemiologist insists he’s doing just fine. “I’ve chosen this life. I mean I know what it is,” Fauci said Thursday on NBC’s “Today” show. “There are things about it that are sometimes disturbing. But you just focus on the job you have to do, and just put all that stuff aside and try as best as possible not to pay attention to it.” Still, concerns about his safety are serious enough that Fauci now has security. The Department of Health and Human Services requested the U.S. Marshals Service authorize special agents from the HHS inspector general’s office as part of Fauci’s protection, according to a person familiar with the arrangements. The Justice Department approved a request to deputize nine agents, the person said, speaking on condition of anonymity because there has been no official announcement. Fauci, who has advised every U.S. president on public health issues dating back to Ronald Reagan, has been put on a pedestal by Trump critics. They see him and, to a lesser degree, White House coronavirus task force coordinator Dr. Deborah Birx, as the voices of science who used cold data to steer Trump away from opening up the economy by Easter Sunday. At the same time, Fauci has been vilified by some conspiracy peddlers on the far right as a part of the anti-Trump deep state. Conservative media commentators like Fox Business host Lou Dobbs and talk show host Rush Limbaugh have viewed Fauci with suspicion as the plain-speaking Fauci hasn’t shied away from publicly correcting Trump’s erroneous statements about the virus. “President Trump seems to have profound respect for both these people, so that’s fine,” Limbaugh said during his Monday broadcast about Fauci and Birx. “I just can’t, I can’t erase what I’ve seen from the so-called Deep State and the attempt to undermine the entire election of 2016. “ Some have accused Fauci of playing up the threat of COVID-19, while others have pointed to emails in which he praised Democrat Hillary Clinton. Still others have dismissed him as a “deep state” operative because of his 36-year leadership of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Anti-vaccine groups have blasted Fauci’s long support for immunizations and accused him, without evidence, of talking up the value of a coronavirus vaccine to enrich pharmaceutical companies. Asked during Wednesday’s White House briefing about threats, Fauci demurred. But Trump jokingly chimed in that he was not overly concerned about the doctor’s safety. “He doesn’t need security,” Trump said. “Everybody loves him. Besides, they’d be in big trouble if they ever attacked.” Trump has shown an unusual amount of deference to Fauci in public, even as the doctor has repeatedly corrected the president on his faulty science. Last month, as Trump continued to suggest that the virus was under control, Fauci warned Americans that the worst was yet to come. As administration officials repeatedly assured the public that coronavirus tests were rapidly becoming available, Fauci said at a congressional hearing that the lack of widespread testing was “a failing” of the system. And when Trump heralded a French study suggesting that hydroxychloroquine plus azithromycin, a common antibiotic, might be an effective treatment for COVID-19, Fauci reminded people that there was only “anecdotal” evidence for the idea. At another briefing, Fauci set off Trump backers on social media when he was caught by cameras looking down and rubbing his forehead after Trump referred to the State Department as the “Deep State Department.” Fauci has acknowledged to reporters that the cadence of the rapidly growing disaster has been exhausting. When Trump named him to the coronavirus task force, Fauci was initially getting three to four hours of sleep. Now he’s trying to get at least five hours a night. In a recent interview for CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s podcast, the doctor acknowledged that his wife, Christine Grady, who heads the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health, has been giving him sound medical advice while he’s been doling out his own guidance to Trump and Americans during the crisis. Grady’s advice, Fauci acknowledged, was pretty straightforward: Eat, Tony. “I would go a whole day without eating anything just because I was so busy, I just didn’t have time to eat,” Fauci said. “And then I find that at the end of the day, I’m feeling hypoglycemic and I don’t know why. And then my wife goes, ‘Duh, you’re hypoglycemic because you didn’t eat anything.’” ___ Madhani reported from Chicago. Associated Press writer David Klepper contributed reporting from Providence, Rhode Island.
31156	"Justine Damond became one of dozens of holistic doctors fighting ""Big Pharma"" who suspiciously died."	Although questions have been raised in news reports about Noor’s and Yanez’s training in relations to the deaths of the two Minnesota residents, there is no evidence to suggest that “Big Pharma” somehow influenced the two officers who responded to Damond’s 911 call to target her for assassination in an ongoing conspiracy to kill off holistic healers.	false	Uncategorized, health nut news, holistic doctors conspiracy, justine damond	On 16 July 2017, alternative health blogger Erin Elizabeth reported on her web site Health Nut News that Justine Ruszczyk (who primarily used her fiance’s surname, Damond), a 40-year-old Australian woman living in the U.S. who was shot and killed in mid-July 2017 by Minneapolis police, was among a growing list of holistic doctors who had died under suspicious circumstances. That narrative was further twisted by the disreputable conspiracy site YourNewsWire with the headline, “Holistic Doctor, Working Against Big Pharma, Shot Dead By Police.” Elizabeth compiled a list in 2016 of what she characterized as more than sixty holistic doctors that died between June 2015 and August 2016, asserting that the deaths were somehow connected. Although Elizabeth stopped short of saying who the culprit was, the implication was that the healers were being systematically killed because of their occupations. As we noted in May 2017, the tragedies are unrelated to each other — there is no evidence of a conspiracy to wipe out holistic doctors. Elizabeth’s list was a sloppy compilation of natural deaths, accidents and crimes. Ten of the people on the list, in fact, had no connection to holistic medicine. That didn’t stop YourNewsWire (and others) from turning the Damond shooting into yet another tragedy blatantly exploited by conspiracy theorists: According to reports, the police who arrived (including the one who shot her) had their body cameras turned off. The well-known health and lifestyle coach, who was actively campaigning for people to take control of their lives and reject Big Pharma’s crippling products, joins the long list of holistic doctors and healers who have been killed in suspicious or unsolved circumstances during the past two years. There are subgroups of Americans who are disproportionately killed by police, but holistic healers as a group are not among them. African-American people and mentally ill people, for example, have higher likelihoods of being victims in such incidents. To say that Damond’s death is the result of her occupation as a holistic healer is to disingenuously supplant a factual social problem with a fictional one. The Sydney, Australian native’s 15 July 2017 death could be linked instead to an actual pattern in the United States in which civilians are extrajudicially killed while interacting with police officers. As of 24 July, 688 people have been killed by American law enforcement in 2017, according to the tracking site KilledByPolice.net. The web site tallied 1,162 law enforcement-related deaths in 2016. (Because the federal government has fallen short in tracking such killings, volunteers have stepped up to the plate with databases like Killed By Police and Fatal Encounters.) According to the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office, Damond did die from a gunshot wound to the abdomen, and her death was ruled a homicide. But contradicting the suspicion that Damond was the target of an assassination due to her alternative health practices, she herself dialed 911 at 11:30 P.M., because she heard what she believed to be a sexual assault outside her Minneapolis, Minnesota home — and her call for emergency services ended with her death. According to the Minneapolis Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, which is investigating the incident, two Minneapolis Police Department officers, Matthew Harrity and Mohamed Noor, responded to the call. Harrity was driving and Noor was in the passenger seat. According to the BCA’s preliminary investigation, Harrity said he was startled by a loud noise just as Damond approached the squad car. Noor opened fire through Harrity’s open driver’s side window, striking Damond in the abdomen. Further contradicting the notion that Damond’s death was an assassination, both officers tried to revive her. They “immediately exited the squad and provided medical attention until medical personnel arrived,” according to the BCA. The case is part of an ongoing — and wrenching — public discourse over police killings. Neither Harrity or Noor’s body cameras filmed the shooting, nor did the squad car’s camera. Police killings of people like Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Manuel Diaz, and Kelly Thomas have resulted in civil unrest in recent years. Almost exactly one year before Damond’s death, St. Anthony, Minnesota police Officer Jeromino Yanez killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop. Castile was a licensed gun owner who had told Yanez he had his permitted weapon with him in the car; he was shot while trying to comply with the officer’s orders. The grim aftermath of the shooting was broadcast live on social media by his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, who was in the car with him along with her 4-year-old daughter. Yanez was charged with manslaughter, but was acquitted in June 2017.
34553	A person's intelligence is genetically determined by the mother alone.	Looking at the even bigger picture, we find that none of the assertions provided in any of the viral news stories took into account the interplay between genetics and environment, which scientists view as intrinsically important.	unproven	Uncategorized, intelligence	The factoid that intelligence is passed down only through your mother has been carelessly meandering across social media users’ trending bars after a September 14th, 2016 article published on a site called “Second Nexus” was reposted bynotable accounts, including George Takei‘s Facebook page: As savagely reported by Forbes’ Emily Willingham, the Second Nexus article’s main source of information for this “new research” was a woefully unintelligible March 2016 post from “Psychology Spot,” which cited a collection of studies that are decades old: The post itself took its trash can spark from two places, the first a blog at a site called Psychology Spot. The Psychology Spot post is in turn a dumpster fire of poor information about genetics and embryonic development, citing 14 references to support its hodgepodge of claims. Of these citations, only one was published this decade (in 2012) and relates to maternal support in the first years of life, not brain genetics. There is no “new research” at all here. The other source alluded to was a Cosmopolitan/Good Housekeeping article (the same article with the same byline appeared on both web sites) that circularly led with the same misleading suggestion that new research had been performed, citing that same problematic post as their source: When it comes to your IQ, “I got it from my mama” couldn’t be more accurate. New research featured in Psychology Spot says people are born with conditioned genes that work differently depending on if they’re from your mother or father — and when it comes to your intelligence, those genes are from mother dearest. These articles threw around a variety of impressive-sounding terms such as “conditional” genes but failed to make a coherent case from the outdated studies they cited. To reach their conclusions, they made the following assumptions: The first notion to untangle is the existence of discrete “intelligence genes” in the first place. Researchers can point to decades of work showing that a large part of what they refer to as general intelligence (a psychometric they call g) variability can be explained by genetic variability. In a 2010 Molecular Psychiatry paper covering this topic, scientists stated: [M]eta-analysis of [studies comparing identical and fraternal twins] yield heritability estimates of about 50%, indicating that about half of the total variance in g can be accounted for by genetic differences between individuals. However, this does not mean we have a detailed understanding of which specific genes reliably relate to intelligence, nor do we have a great idea of how a variety of different genes would work in concert to build what we conceive of as intelligence. A 2012 article published in Psychological Science attempted to replicate the results of studies citing specific genes as predictors of intelligence. Failing to do so in almost every case, they concluded: Associations of candidate genes with psychological traits and other traits studied in the social sciences should be viewed as tentative until they have been replicated in multiple large samples. Failing to exercise such caution may hamper scientific progress by allowing for the proliferation of potentially false results [… which may lead to] incorrect perceptions about the state of knowledge in the field, especially knowledge concerning genetic variants that have been described as “genes for” traits on the basis of unintentionally inflated estimates of effect size and statistical significance. The second notion to dispel (already compromised by the fact that we don’t have a good handle on which genes work together to drive intelligence) is that these “intelligence genes” are all located on the X chromosome. This view comes primarily from the observations that: Psychologist Wendy Johnson and her colleagues make a summary of the latter argument in a 2009 paper published in Perspectives in Psychological Science: In heterozygous females, the effects of any activated deleterious allele from one X chromosome in some cells of the body are likely to be offset toward the population mean by the effects of the corresponding allele on the other X in other cells of the body. Males experience no such buffering effects: any deleterious alleles on their single X chromosome are expressed in all cells throughout the body. While an interesting explanation for this potential variability in intelligence, the authors of this same study (and subsequent others) do not conclude that all genes for intelligence lie on the X chromosome: To date, conventional genetic linkage and association (including genome-wide association) studies have been singularly unsuccessful in identifying the genes associated with general intelligence (e.g., Butcher et al., 2008). Many candidate genes have been identified, but replication across samples has been poor. None of the candidates proposed to date is on the X chromosome. We suggest that the X chromosome be targeted for chromosome-wide (as opposed to genome-wide) association studies. The last bit that needs clarification is the idea that any gene on the X chromosome, de facto, would come from the mother. Sex is determined by which set of sex chromosomes you are given by your parents, as the genetic testing company 23andMe explains: One chromosome pair — the sex chromosomes — is unique. You don’t necessarily end up with a matching pair. Typically females have two X chromosomes and males have an X and a Y. Mothers always pass an X chromosome on to their children. Whether your father passes on his X chromosome (leading to a pair of X chromosomes) or his Y chromosome (making a mixed set) determines your sex. So for biologically female individuals, one of your X chromosomes is coming from your dad, and in that case it is just as likely (going along with the unproven assertion that “intelligence genes” lie solely on the X chromosome) that any genetic coding for smarts comes from either parent’s X chromosome. The three arguments used to make the claim about intelligence coming solely from your mother each fail as all-encompassing statements and rely on a flawed understanding of science, a misrepresentation of scientific consensus, or both. It is misleading, at best, to say that we know anything about which parent is (more) responsible for an offspring’s intelligence, let alone which genes.
9191	New method reduces adverse effects of rectal cancer treatment	This brief news release describes a lengthy randomized trial at Sweden’s prestigious Karolinksa Institutet that compared various treatment regimens for patients with rectal cancer and concluded that delaying surgery after radiation therapy resulted in fewer postoperative complications. The study, published in The Lancet Oncology, also found no difference in outcomes between short-course and long-course radiation therapy prior to surgery. The news release refrains from disease mongering and is forthcoming about the fact that the study springs from a need to address adverse effects associated with radiation therapy. But it’s missing quantified benefits, cost data and a few other details that would help readers grasp the significance of the findings. The American Cancer Society estimates there will be 39,910 new cases of rectal cancer diagnosed in the U.S. this year. Colon and rectal cancer together constitute the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S. and the third most common cancer in both men and women. Administering radiation to shrink a tumor before it is removed surgically was found to reduce recurrence and death versus surgery alone, but questions remained about how to pace radiation and how long to wait between radiation and surgery. According to these researchers, delaying surgery by several weeks not only results in fewer complications with no compromise in outcomes, but also gives patients time to adopt healthier lifestyles in preparation for surgery and undergo chemotherapy if there’s a high risk that the cancer will spread.	mixture	Karolinska Institutet,rectal cancer	There’s no discussion of costs. Perhaps just changing the timing of the same treatments is cost neutral, but maybe not. It would be interesting to know if delaying surgery affects total treatment costs, particularly if it results in fewer complications. One 2009 study put the mean total colon cancer cost per U.S. Medicare patient at $29,196, noting that the cost for rectal cancer is substantially higher. The news release itself does not quantify benefits. But according to the study, short-course radiation therapy with no delay in surgery resulted in postoperative complications 53 percent of the time, versus 41 percent of cases in which surgery was delayed. The release would have been much stronger had it provided the outcomes of this randomized trial of 840 patients who were divided into different treatment arms. We give the release credit for trying to convey what the study’s findings mean for patients through these statements: The results of the study show that patients with delayed surgery develop fewer complications with equally good oncological outcomes. It also showed that there is no difference between long-course and short-course radiotherapy other than that the former considerably lengthens the time for treatment. “The results of the study will give rise to improved therapeutic strategies, fewer complications with a sustained low incidence of local recurrence, and better survival rates for rectal cancer patients,” says Professor Martling. “The results can now be immediately put to clinical use to the considerable benefit of the patients.” This was a close call. The news release refers to harms/adverse effects from radiotherapy at least four times but does not name even one potential harm, so we’re rating it unsatisfactory for the omission. According to the study, the most common postoperative complication was infection, which occurred in 18 percent of patients. The study also mentions bowel obstruction and pelvic abscesses. About 7 percent of patients whose surgery was delayed were hospitalized for radiation toxicity. The news release (and the abstract of the journal article) avoid a thornier question. Could delaying surgery after radiation treatment of rectal cancer increase the chance that rectal cancer will come back? The study found rectal cancer recurred in 2.8% of patients an average of 19 months after delayed surgery and in 2.2% of patients an average 33 months after surgery at the usual time. The small difference seems to favor the usual timing of surgery. The authors take a scientifically valid position that if the difference in rate between options could have happened up to 5 percent of the time by random chance, then the new option is “noninferior” to the standard treatment, as is the case here. It is quite possible that cancer outcomes are slightly worse for the new timing of treatments, but justified by a much bigger improvement in complication rate. The absolute difference in local cancer recurrence is only 0.6% (with a large margin of possible error) whereas surgical complications were reduced by an absolute 12% (41 vs. 53%). The study notes that one potential drawback of delaying surgery is that it delays the start of chemotherapy in regimens that include chemotherapy after a tumor has been removed. But it says chemotherapy could be more effective if administered before surgery, so a delay would present an opportunity to administer chemo. Whether that would help patients would need to be determined by another research study. The news release does not give basic information to help readers grasp the significance of the study, such as the fact that it included 840 patients recruited over a span of more than 14 years. Because the study was adjusted to the changing treatment protocols over the course of the long study, the results are not as clean as the news release makes them seem. Changing protocols affected the study’s design and the representation of various treatment groups. Also, the study does not include long-term quality of life data, which it says will be published separately. The news release does not engage in disease mongering. It says rectal cancer affects 2,000 men and women in Sweden per year. The news release states that the study was financed by the Swedish Research Council and the Cancer Society in Stockholm, and through the regional ALF agreement between Stockholm County Council and Karolinska Institutet. According to the study, there are no conflicts of interest. The purpose of this study was to compare the timing of existing standard treatment modalities. Complementary and alternative treatments are beyond the scope of the news release. Since these are existing treatments have already been in common use for many decades, availability is not an issue. The news release states that the trial tested the hypotheses that “the adverse effects of rectal cancer treatment can be reduced by administering more but lower doses of radiation for a longer time, or by increasing the interval between radiotherapy and surgery.” Other trials such as this one have studied the timing of surgery for rectal cancer, but we couldn’t find any that examined the same variables as this study. That’s enough to earn a satisfactory rating for novelty. The release doesn’t rely on sensational language to describe the study results. The headline calling this a “new therapy” might strike some readers as slightly misleading. However, the release explains that the researchers launched a 14-year study of the three protocols in the late 1990s, a few years after preoperative radiotherapy was first introduced for rectal cancer — partly owing to foundational research by the Swedish institute. Since the Karolinska Institutet has been a world leader in rectal cancer research and treatment, its horn-tooting statement — “Thanks to our results, radiotherapy is recommended to many rectal cancer patients.” — appears justified.
9656	A Paralysed Man Can Play “Guitar Hero” Using A Computer That Reads His Thoughts	This is a story about a case study involving one man with a specific type of partial paralysis, who regained some motion via an experimental device implanted in his brain and connected to a device worn on his arm. The case study is undoubtedly newsworthy, but BuzzFeed’s coverage was unbalanced. It starts off with a “be amazed” tone, skipping over important nuances about the technology and the man’s limited skills. For example, the headline blares that a mind-reading computer allows the man to play “Guitar Hero.” Only much later in the story do we get important details and caveats, ending on a “be disappointed” tone. As well, the story should have told readers that the lead researchers have an interest in patents associated with the hardware and software they are developing. Be amazed. Be disappointed. That’s the cycle that stories like this put us through. The achievement presented by these researchers is remarkable; they demonstrated that this line of work may someday produce something of benefit to some people with certain types of paralysis. But overselling the achievement as a mind-reading computer that gave a paralyzed man the ability to play “Guitar Hero” (a challenge for many able-bodied readers) gives us a false high and sets us up for a crash. It undermines the credibility of science and medical reports.	true	device,neurology,paralysis,spinal cord injuries	It is too early in the development of this experimental technology to begin talking about what the price of such a system might be. But readers would have gotten a clearer idea of the preliminary state of this work if the story had noted that the brain mapping, device implantation, sophisticated equipment and hundreds of hours of training probably cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. This article included important caveats about the limited actions that the patient was able to perform, and made it clear that this device was highly experimental. But most of these details are mentioned only near the end of the story. We might have given the story a Satisfactory rating if the headline and opening paragraphs had matched the tone of these later sections. However, the overly broad claims at the top of the story overwhelm the cautionary details. Also, the story should have more clearly pointed out that (as a Nature news article specifically noted) this approach may not work for people who, unlike this patient, don’t still have at least some ability to move their shoulders and elbows. As a result, the story implies that this experiment is relevant to a far broader group of people than the researchers claim. Even if the technology is experimental and only tested on one patient, the story should have included some discussion of risks of the implantation surgery and the implant itself. We will give the story a Satisfactory rating here because it’s made clear that this is a study of one person. Readers who pay attention all the way to the end are indeed warned about how far this line of work is from producing a useful option for real-world use. However, the story would have been better if–instead of boasting that the patient can play “Guitar Hero”–the headline and opening paragraphs had been clearer that he could produce a limited range of finger and hand motions in painstakingly prepared laboratory conditions that, rather than revealing a useful device, demonstrate that the goal of a useful device is probably not impossible someday. Paralysis from spinal cord injuries is a devastating condition, so the story is not overstating the situation facing patients. The story includes strong context and cautionary statements from two independent sources. However, we cannot give it a Satisfactory rating because it doesn’t tell readers that the researchers have an interest in patents for the hardware and software they are developing. These financial interests were clearly noted in the Nature journal article and should have been included in the story. This experimental device does appear to allow this patient to do things that no other treatment can. However, the main achievement is a proof of concept. Unfortunately, the story makes the difference between his baseline function and his movements in the laboratory appear bigger than it is. The story is clear that this device is in laboratory testing. The comments from independent sources at the very end of the story help describe the long and uncertain road ahead for researchers. The story describes the specific new achievement of this experimental device: sensing electrical patterns in the brain and then translating them to electrical stimuli that trigger appropriate muscle movements. The story includes comments from independent sources and does not rely solely on a news release.
29315	In June 2017, the FDA announced it would be banning the use of triclosan in various products, including Colgate Total.	What's true: In September 2016, the FDA ruled that a host of products could no longer be sold due to their containing triclosan, an antimicrobial agent. What's false: Despite containing triclosan, the toothpaste was conspicuously not included in the list of banned products, and continues to be approved by the FDA; the agency made no announcement regarding triclosan or Colgate Total in June 2017.	false	Medical, colgate, food and drug administration, toothpaste	On 26 June 2017, Woman Daily Tips published an article appearing to report that the Food and Drug Administration had just announced it would be banning the antimicrobial agent triclosan, which is commonly found in soaps and toothpaste: The FDA has just issued a warning this week noting that they will be putting a ban on triclosan — a common antibacterial agent used in soaps, detergents, toys, cosmetics, and toothpaste. Apparently, the chemical poses a high-degree of health risks and side effects. Colgate Total is just one of many products that list triclosan as an active ingredient. In reality, Colgate Total is one of very few products containing triclosan that the FDA has not banned. In September 2016, the agency ruled that a host of antiseptic and antibacterial wash products could no longer be sold in the United States, due to the presence of certain ingredients — including triclosan: The agency issued a proposed rule in 2013 after some data suggested that long-term exposure to certain active ingredients used in antibacterial products — for example, triclosan (liquid soaps) and triclocarban (bar soaps) — could pose health risks, such as bacterial resistance or hormonal effects. However, this ruling did not include Colgate Total because the manufacturers — Colgate-Palmolive — were able to demonstrate that the health benefits of the product (it is effective at reducing plaque and gingivitis) outweighed any potential for harm. At the time, FDA spokesperson Andrea Fischer told the New York Times: Based on scientific evidence, the balance of benefit and risk is favorable for these products. The FDA’s official stance on Colgate Total has not changed since September 2016, and the product was included in the June 2017 approved drug product list. The American Dental Association also lists Colgate Total as an “accepted product“. The irony of the Woman Daily Tips article is that it singles out a specific brand of toothpaste as being the subject of an imminent ban due to its containing triclosan, when in fact Colgate Total is conspicuous as a product that was not banned in a September 2016 ruling on triclosan. Contrary to the article’s claim, the FDA did not make an announcement during the week of 26 June 2017 that a ban on Colgate Total, or an additional ban on triclosan, was imminent; nor did the agency make such an announcement at any time during the first half of 2017.
41711	Men in Teesside have the same life expectancy as those in Ethiopia.	Men in one very deprived ward of Stockton have the same life expectancy as men in Ethiopia, according to figures from the World Bank in 2017. This isn’t the case for Teesside as a whole.	mixture	health	Men in Teesside have the same life expectancy as those in Ethiopia. Men in one very deprived ward of Stockton have the same life expectancy as men in Ethiopia, according to figures from the World Bank in 2017. This isn’t the case for Teesside as a whole. The gap in UK life expectancies is falling. Not true. The life expectancy gap between rich and poor, and between the northeast and London, is rising. Claim 1 of 3
23244	"Rand Paul ""wants us to pay $2,000 just to get Medicare."	Jack Conway says Rand Paul backs a $2,000 deductible for Medicare	true	National, Health Care, Medicare, Message Machine 2010, Jack Conway,	"During this election season, Republicans have been hammering Democrats over cuts they say were made to Medicare as part of the health care bill. Now, in a television ad in the Kentucky Senate race, Democrat Jack Conway is turning the tables, attacking Republican Rand Paul over Medicare deductibles. Here's the transcript of the ad, released Sept. 28, 2010: Narrator: ""More from Rand Paul."" Footage of Rand Paul: ""The real answer to Medicare would be a $2,000 deductible."" Man: ""A $2,000 deductible?"" Man: ""Rand Paul wants us to pay $2,000 just to get Medicare?"" Woman: ""That's crazy."" Woman: ""I can't afford that."" Footage of Rand Paul: ""The real answer to Medicare would be a $2,000 deductible."" Man: ""I don't know what planet he's from."" Woman: ""Rand Paul is off the wall with the $2,000 deductible."" Man: ""He knows we can't afford that."" Woman: ""The more we hear about Rand Paul, the worse it gets."" Conway: ""I'm Jack Conway, and I approved this message."" The grainy footage of Paul is real. It comes from a talk that Paul, an ophthalmologist and longtime libertarian, gave to the Center-Right Coalition, a conservative group, in Lexington, Ky., on June 19, 2009. A longer excerpt from Paul's talk has been posted on YouTube. To see whether Conway's ad takes Paul's remarks out of context, we transcribed the portion of his speech in which he talks about Medicare. ""What's the problem in medicine?"" Paul began. ""No price fluctuation. If you're over 65 and go to a doctor in this country, you pay the exact same price with every doctor in the whole country. So when they want to blame ... that on capitalism, we have to be smart enough and say, 'We don't have capitalism. We already have socialism.'"" He continued, ""Medicare is socialized medicine. People are afraid of that because, 'Oh, you'll say you're against Medicare.' No, I say we have to do something different. We can't just eliminate Medicare. But we have to figure out how to get more to a market-based system. It's counter-intuitive to a lot of people, but you have to pay for things if you want prices to come down. So you really need higher deductibles. And the real answer to Medicare would be a $2,000 deductible, but try selling that one in an election. But that's the real answer is, you have to pay for things. And when you do, but you also get rid of price controls. So you raise the deductible, you get rid of price controls, and you allow more competition. And you may have to allow more competition from other parties. Nurse practitioners, we already have some. Pharmacists. There have to be ways to allow medicine to come down."" His comment was no one-time slip of the tongue. The Conway campaign released another ad with footage of at least five other occasions in which Paul spoke publicly about his preference for high deductibles for Medicare, sometimes even invoking the same $2,000 figure. Indeed, Paul has been caught on camera being open about the political hazards of making such a proposal. In the Lexington talk featured in the first ad, Paul immediately followed his mention of the $2,000 figure with the addendum, ""but try selling that one in an election."" And in the follow-up ad, a clip shows him acknowledging the political risk with striking frankness. ""The hard part,"" he said, ""is how do you present this on national TV? I mean, what's going to happen to me in a statewide race if I tell people I think the Medicare deductible is going to be higher? Am I going to be booted out of the room? I don't know. I'm willing to take a risk because I think it's the right thing to do, and because the other answer is to become just like Canada."" We did not receive a response from the Paul campaign for this article, but the campaign has responded through TV ads. On Oct. 7, the liberal website Talking Points Memo published a side-by-side comparison of the Paul campaign's two response ads and found subtle but noteworthy differences. In the first, the Paul campaign says that Paul ""never supported higher Medicare deductibles."" In the second, the ad was changed to say that Paul ""doesn't support higher Medicare deductibles."" Had they stuck with the first ad, it would have been undermined by a half-dozen film clips. Paul refined his policy toward Medicare during an appearance on Fox News on Oct. 6. Paul said that he did not want to impose deductibles on current Medicare beneficiaries but rather on future beneficiaries, possibly starting with those who are currently 55 or younger. So even Paul now acknowledges that he thinks Medicare deductibles are worth considering. But does Conway's ad fairly portray the views Paul had espoused at the time? They come close, but we do offer one caveat. We think that the general impression Conway's ad gives -- and in particular the line where the man says, ""Rand Paul wants us to pay $2,000 just to get Medicare?"" -- is that what Paul wants to do is slap seniors with a $2,000 deductible, even though his plan is much more comprehensive. Paul's ideas for Medicare may be good or bad, but the ad is somewhat misleading when it reduces them to a simple $2,000 deductible. That said, we see it as a relatively minor exaggeration. Paul has advocated for a $2,000 deductible in multiple settings."
5739	Health panel: Millions of US kids should get hepatitis shot.	A scientific panel is recommending that more than 2 million U.S. kids get vaccinated against hepatitis A.	true	Health, General News, Immunizations, Hepatitis	Thirteen years ago, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended hepatitis A shots for all U.S. children at age 1. On Thursday, the panel said the shots should be given to older children who weren’t vaccinated earlier, including 14- to 18-year-olds who turned 1 before the recommendation was made. The panel also recommended the shots for every person with HIV. About 1.1 million Americans are estimated to have HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. People with HIV tend to develop more severe hepatitis A illnesses. U.S. hepatitis A infections and deaths have risen in the last two years, spurred by outbreaks among the homeless and drug users.
7241	Whitmer: Care for injured drivers will ‘still be there’.	Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Tuesday defended a pending overhaul of Michigan’s auto insurance law, saying treatment for injured drivers will “still be there” if they forego what has been a one-of-its-kind, mandatory unlimited personal injury protection benefit.	true	Auto insurance, Health, Michigan, Legislation, Gretchen Whitmer	The Democrat, who will sign the legislation as soon as this week, told The Associated Press she fought to ensure that all motorists buying car insurance have coverage — whether it is through their auto insurer or a private- or government-provided plan. Asked about criticism that severely injured people will no longer have gold-plated treatment because their regular health insurance will impose caps on rehabilitation visits and other services, Whitmer said medical providers may have to deliver care “in different mechanisms but it will still be there, and I think that’s a good thing.” She said the Republican-backed bills as initially proposed and a ballot initiative threatened by Detroit businessman Dan Gilbert “would have been devastating. This is a result where we can shore up the safety net.” Michigan — home to the country’s highest car premiums — is the only state to require unlimited personal injury protection, or PIP, benefits, which on average make up half of auto premiums. They cover medical treatment, rehabilitation expenses, lost wages for three years and up to $20 daily for assistance with things like cooking, cleaning and other services people can no longer carry out due to their injuries. Under the measure, starting in mid-2020 people will be able to forego PIP entirely if they have health insurance such as an employer plan or Medicare. Other options will include sticking with unlimited coverage or choosing either $250,000 or $500,000 worth. Those on Medicaid will have to carry at least $50,000 in PIP. The measure won overwhelmingly bipartisan support from the Republican-led Legislature on Friday. Speaking by phone from the Detroit Regional Chamber’s Mackinac Policy Conference, Whitmer said the legislation originally would have been “devastating” to hospitals with trauma centers. It would have cut reimbursements to workers’ compensation levels, while the bill heading to her desk would require that providers be paid at roughly 200 percent of the Medicare fee schedule. “It’s not just emergency rooms for people with auto injuries,” she said. “It’s losing access for any parent who’s got an asthmatic child who has gone to the ER because their child is having a hard time breathing or had a contusion. It would have been a lack of care for people that have a heart attack. When these trauma centers are at risk like this, every single one of us loses that access.” Unlike several other no-fault states, hospitals, doctors and rehab facilities treating crash victims have effectively been able to charge auto insurers far more than they do for patients covered by private or government health plans. Whitmer added that PIP rates will be cut for eight years under the pending law, calling it “real relief for consumers.” She said the new law will require “quite a bit” of public education, because “it’s a very complicated system that we are trying to address in a very thoughtful way.” The landmark deal left Whitmer optimistic about the potential for confronting other major issues such as deteriorating roads, which she has proposed fixing with a 45-cents-a-gallon fuel tax increase. She said she and the four legislative leaders — two Republicans and two Democrats — “got more done in the first five months of this year than has been done on this issue in the last five years.” The Michigan Chamber of Commerce, municipalities and the state’s leading road-construction industry group on Tuesday urged lawmakers to make infrastructure a priority. Whitmer said she will put “110%” emphasis on roads this week at the business conference on Mackinac Island. Asked if she secured commitments from GOP legislative leaders for a long-term road-funding plan as part of the car insurance negotiations, Whitmer said: “I’ll tell you this: The way that we worked together on this first issue is something that every one of us is eager to continue as we pivot into roads and getting the budget done.” ___ Follow David Eggert on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidEggert00
9125	Radiosurgery reduces depression and improves quality of life for patients with facial pain	In this release from medical journal publisher Elsevier, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic recommend using sterotactic radiosurgery as a first-line treatment for trigeminal neuralgia (TN), a very painful nerve disorder of the face. The study involved 50 people and used patient submitted questionnaires to evaluate the success of the treatment. The release doesn’t offer any numbers to put the effectiveness in context; we’re only told that volunteers “reported an improved quality of life and lower rates of depression after radiosurgery.” The release also omits costs and harms and is unclear about the availability of the surgery. While the intervention is said to be effective, more details are needed before readers accept the news release’s claim that “Doctors should consider radiosurgery for patients with trigeminal neuralgia.” Trigeminal neuralgia is a nerve pain syndrome with an unknown cause. It’s symptoms can vary from mildly intense to quite severe pain. For some, symptoms resolve on their own over time and for others, symptoms can persist. There are a number of medications that are used for treating trigeminal neuralgia. These medicines can help but may have side effects. The treatment described in this piece, radiosurgery, involves radiation treatment and may be considered a second-line treatment after medicines have failed to help or have caused intolerable side effects. Though the study does not compare radiosurgery to alternative treatments, outcomes show that symptoms decrease after treatment. Since the study did not compare stereotactic radiation with other types of treatment, it is hard to say that this study supports a role for using this treatment earlier in the course of a patient’s symptoms.	false	Elsevier,facial pain,Radiosurgery	We know surgery has many costs involved but none of them are discussed in this news release. The release mentions performing a “cost-based analysis” at the end but this is insufficient to give credit here. There are no numbers to back up the claims in the release. The release does not share information about the actual scores from patients in this study. In addition to providing data on the EuroQOL 5-Dimension questionairre scores before and after treatment, the release should have also provided information about what constitutes a meaningful change in the EQ-5D score. It would be most useful to know why radiosurgery is typically a “second line treatment to be used following the medication” and so one wonders if this is due to the harms involved with this type of surgery which can include fatigue, skin problems, and difficulty swallowing, none of which are mentioned in the news release. At a minimum, if there weren’t any side effects among the patient volunteers, the release could have stated that there weren’t any. Additionally, since the treatment involves radiation and radiation can promote cancer, the study should have mentioned this and why or why not it is an issue with this specific treatment. The two questionnaires, the EuroQOL 5-Dimension and Patient Health Questionnaire 9 were administered before and after the radiosurgery. Before and after comparisons of self-reported outcomes are among the lower forms of evidence. Limitations of this type of evidence should have been noted. Many patients could have been improved by factors not directly related to the surgery and we won’t know this without a control or comparison group. Though the piece does describe the study and what it measured (quality of life and depression), it doesn’t explicitly state that these findings aren’t compared to other treatments. Moreover, it isn’t clear what treatments patients in this study had previously or were currently taking at the time of the radiation treatment. For example, had they tried an anti-seizure medicine that is commonly used for trigeminal neuralgia and were they still taking it? One could then have asked if taking it at baseline, were they able to stop it? So while the information provided is helpful, other key pieces of data are left out and their absence makes it hard for the reader to put these results into context. There is no obvious disease mongering here.The statement that the pain is a 15 on a 0-10 scale borders comes close. The release provides helpful context on what trigeminal neuralgia is and the problems with some current treatments. The release doesn’t name the funder of the study. There’s also no mention of potential conflicts of interest, other than that Dr. Chao does the procedure. Although the release comments on medicines used for treating trigeminal neuralgia, their mention focuses on very severe side effects. However, no information is provided about the use of these medicines in the patients participating in this study. Only by directly comparing different forms of treatment can one determine their relative benefits. It is also worth mentioning that some patients will have spontaneous improvement, so it isn’t clear if it was the radiation treatment, or just the passage of time that helped. The authors suggest in the release that the radiation treatments should be used more, which implies it is not in wide use: “it [radiosurgery] is often overlooked or delayed as a treatment because there is a lack of capability and experience with the method.” This statement highlights that this may actually not be possible due to lack of trained clinicians. The news release directly addresses the novelty of the procedure in these statements: According to the new study, radiosurgery, which is normally a second line treatment to be used following the medication, helps improve quality of life and reduce depression in patients with TN. By considering it earlier as a treatment option, doctors could help improve the lives of patients with TN more quickly. “We knew radiosurgery results in pain relief, but we didn’t know if the patients actually felt better,” said Dr. Samuel Chao, corresponding author of the study. There were no major infractions in terms of unjustifiable language, yet unjustifiable conclusions based on the type and size of the study being presented here.
7733	Polar vortex freezes U.S. Midwest with snow, dangerously cold air.	A blast of Arctic air from the polar vortex brought dangerous, bone-chilling cold to a wide swath of the United States on Tuesday, stretching from the Dakotas through Maine, with snow expected as far south as Alabama and Georgia.	true	Environment	The Midwest was the hardest-hit region, as temperatures plunged below zero Fahrenheit (minus 18 degrees Celsius). By nightfall the mercury was hovering at 0F in Chicago, 7F (minus 14C) in Detroit and minus 21f (minus 29C) in Minneapolis. Local television pictures showed the Chicago River and Lake Michigan filled with chunks of ice. The brutal blast known as the polar vortex is a stream of cold air that spins around the stratosphere over the North Pole, but whose current has been disrupted and is now pushing south into the United States. Officials warned Chicago residents, accustomed to chilling winters, to expect an unusually deep and dangerous freeze. Even the city’s supply of its signature deep-dish pizza was affected: The Lou Malnati’s chain announced it would stop taking delivery orders at 8 p.m. on Tuesday. “This could possibly be history-making,” said Ricky Castro, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Romeoville, Illinois. As much as two feet (60 cm) of snow was forecast in Wisconsin, and six inches (15 cm) in Illinois. Snow was expected through Wednesday from the Great Lakes region into New England. Some Chicago residents found warmth inside the Harold Washington Library Center, which planned to stay open on Wednesday. Gilbert Rothschild, 79, walked through a corridor wearing three sweaters and an undershirt underneath his parka. “The more layers, the more you’re insulated,” he said. Rothschild, the president of a liquor retailer, said he planned on keeping his stores open on Wednesday, figuring customers who were not working might want to pick up something to keep them feeling warm at home. Many Midwest cities opened warming shelters. Regional governments closed hundreds of schools and airlines canceled more than 2,000 flights, according to the Flightaware flight tracking website. Many had been destined for Atlanta, where the National Football League’s Super Bowl will take place on Sunday. Amy Patterson, a vice president at the Atlanta Super Bowl Host Committee, said there would still be time for fans to fly to Atlanta for the game, with the National Weather Service forecasting a high of a balmy 58F (14C) on Sunday. A low of minus 10F (minus 23C) was forecast in Chicago and elsewhere in northern Illinois on Wednesday. But with the wind chill factored in, temperatures will feel as low as minus 50F (minus 46C) through Thursday, the National Weather Service reported. Temperatures could reach lows of minus 30F to minus 40F (minus 34C to minus 40C) in parts of the Northern Plains and Great Lakes on Wednesday, the NWS said. The freezing weather may have killed a man in Rochester, Minnesota, who was found dead outside his home on Sunday, according to a report by WCCO, a local CBS affiliate. Rochester police officials did not respond to a request for comment. Jim Hayes, a National Weather Service meteorologist, warned that frostbite was possible within 10 minutes in the intense cold. For many across the region, life ground to a halt. In Chicago, home to the nation’s third-largest school system, officials plan to cancel classes for all 360,000 students on Wednesday due to the weather. Detroit also said all public schools would close, and Michigan State University said it would suspend classes, only the seventh time it has done so because of weather since 1855. The Chicago Zoological Society said it would shut Brookfield Zoo for only the fourth time in its 85-year history on Tuesday and Wednesday. According to the National Weather Service, the coldest recorded temperature in Chicago was minus 27 degrees (minus 33C) on Jan. 20, 1985. Officials in Des Moines, Iowa, opened warming shelters, but also suggested residents could stay warm inside shopping malls. In Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp shut government offices in 35 counties on Tuesday, and schools across parts of the state were also closed. In Fargo, North Dakota, where the temperature dropped to minus 24F (minus 31C), Dan Hallock, an advertising executive, marveled that people were still working outside as he bought coffee. “The garbage men of Fargo have my utmost respect,” he said.
15412	Florida has reduced its carbon emissions by 20 percent since 2005.	"Bilirakis said, ""Florida has reduced its carbon emissions by 20 percent since 2005."" It may not be immediately clear from Bilirakis’ speech, but he’s only talking about carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that would be affected by the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. Those are the guidelines that would be put on hold by the bill passed by the House. EPA data show those Florida electricity generators have cut carbon dioxide emissions by 21.8 percent between 2005 and 2012. Overall carbon dioxide emissions from all sources didn’t decrease quite as much, dropping anywhere from 13.4 to 15.7 percent. Environmental groups also warned that the current reductions aren’t guaranteed. The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information."	true	Environment, Energy, Florida, Gus Bilirakis,	"Editor’s note: While researching this fact check, Rep. Bilirakis’ office on July 2, 2015, provided us with its research methodology using data through the Environmental Protection Agency’s Air Markets Program Data. Using this database, Bilirakis’ aides showed a 21.82 percent change in carbon dioxide tonnage emitted from Florida power plants between 2005 and 2012. PolitiFact was able to reproduce these results on July 2 when we followed their methodology, obtaining the same database numbers directly from the EPA website. We shared results with numerous sources who agreed the methodology was sound and the results illustrated Bilirakis’ point. We published the check with a . Later that day, an EPA contact informed us the 2012 figure used in Bilirakis’ calculation was incorrect. The agency calculated percent change between 2005 and 2012 was 13.87 percent, not 21.82 percent. When we queried the database again, the figure we received was the number the EPA cited. Neither Bilirakis’ aides nor the EPA could explain the discrepancy. An environmental scientist with the EPA said there had not been a revision of the figures since 2013. The 20 percent figure has been used by Bilirakis and other members of the Florida Republican caucus since at least November 2014, although this is the first time PolitiFact has checked it. We are seeking an explanation for this discrepancy and will post findings when we have them. Republicans in Congress recently voted for legislation that would prevent the federal government from implementing new emissions regulations on power plants -- in part, some argue, because utilities are already cutting carbon levels on their own. U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis, R-Palm Harbor, said that HR 2042, known as the Ratepayer Protection Act, would protect states from costly rules that aren’t necessary. The bill would delay the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce nationwide carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by 30 percent by 2030. The legislation also would allow states to opt out of the reduced emissions requirement. ""The EPA’s proposal on this rule has drawn widespread concern,"" Bilirakis said in a speech on June 24, 2015, before the GOP-majority House passed the legislation along party lines. ""It placed a heavier burden on Florida than other states, despite the fact that Florida has reduced its carbon emissions by 20 percent since 2005."" Congressional fights over regulations are not new, but we did a double take when Bilirakis said carbon emissions were down 20 percent over the last decade. (A reader sent us his comment and asked us to check it.) We decided to check whether the data fuels his claim. Carbon dating the claim We need to make sure one point is clear: Bilirakis was talking specifically about electricity generating power plants here. That’s important to understand, because the context wasn’t immediately clear to us -- or to some of our sources. The EPA’s new emission goals, which won’t be finalized until August, target power plants for that 30 percent reduction, starting at 2005 levels. The guidelines are part of President Barack Obama’s larger Climate Action Plan to enforce lower levels of air and water pollution. Some states and electricity providers have sued the EPA, saying the new rules are unnecessary and expensive for utilities, and therefore consumers. Enter the House’s Ratepayer Protection Act, which would keep the 30 percent reduction guidelines from going into effect for power plants until the justice system rules whether the EPA plan is legal. Obama has vowed to veto the Ratepayer Protection Act if it passes. A Bilirakis spokesman backed up the 20 percent figure by looking at EPA carbon dioxide emissions data for power plants generating more than 25 megawatts of electricity, which are covered by the EPA threshold for the guidelines. That data showed that between 2005 and 2012, the latest year with complete figures, Florida had reduced its power plant carbon dioxide emissions by 21.8 percent. That seems like a small slice of data, but even experts who were for the stronger emissions regulations told us it’s a valid use of the numbers to back up Bilirakis’ point. Power plants in Florida affected by the Clean Power Plan really have cut carbon dioxide by that much, according to the EPA. Of course, our first reaction to this claim was that all sources of carbon dioxide emissions had receded, which also turns out to be the case, although not at as high a rate. Accounting for cars, commercial and residential use, and a whole range of petroleum products, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says Florida’s overall emissions total have dropped about 15.7 percent in the same time span. The agency told us it’s not hard to imagine the number continuing to drop in subsequent years, but the data doesn’t show a 20 percent decrease. A look at the overall data from the EPA, which is recorded and calculated a little differently, puts the decrease from all sources at about 13.4 percent. What’s driving the downward trend for power plants? Environmental groups point out that there are several causes. Part of the change is because of utilities switching from coal to cleaner-burning natural gas (usage is up 67.6 percent between 2005 and 2012 in Florida) as natural gas prices have fallen. Credit also can go to increased efficiency in everything from air conditioners to washing machines to refrigerators. Some of the new product efficiencies are the result of other regulations, like the federal push to switch to compact fluorescent light bulbs. And while Florida was the second-highest electricity producing state in the country behind Texas in 2014, it still imports power to meet demand. That means if a power plant in another state burns fuel to generate electricity to sell to Florida, those carbon dioxide emissions don’t go against Florida’s total. That may be skewing the use-to-emissions ratio a bit. Finally, critics of the House legislation point out there’s one more caveat to the data Bilirakis cited: There’s no guarantee the state will maintain that drop in carbon dioxide from power plants. ""There is nothing to keep these emissions down to their current levels,"" said Susan Glickman, Florida director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, which opposes the Ratepayer Protection Act. ""If natural gas prices went back up, folks would start running coal plants more and emissions would increase -- absent any CO2 emission regulations."" Our ruling Bilirakis said, ""Florida has reduced its carbon emissions by 20 percent since 2005."" It may not be immediately clear from Bilirakis’ speech, but he’s only talking about carbon dioxide emissions from power plants that would be affected by the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. Those are the guidelines that would be put on hold by the bill passed by the House. EPA data show those Florida electricity generators have cut carbon dioxide emissions by 21.8 percent between 2005 and 2012. Overall carbon dioxide emissions from all sources didn’t decrease quite as much, dropping anywhere from 13.4 to 15.7 percent. Environmental groups also warned that the current reductions aren’t guaranteed. The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information."
10207	CDC To Doctors: Anti-HIV Pill No Magic Bullet Against Virus	Clear, succinct, and important reporting that tones down some of the celebratory tone that greeted a drug’s “landmark study” from a few months ago. The story notes that there was a lot of celebrating when news came out in November that taking a pill can reduce the risk of getting HIV. But the story delivered a clear dose of evidence and caution – important journalism.	true	NPR	Strong point. The story said, “There’s one other thing, the CDC says. Make sure patients understand that warding off HIV isn’t cheap. Each pill currently costs around $36, which adds up to more than $13,000 a year. Some insurers might pay, but some might balk” The story stated the benefits clearly – albeit only in relative risk reduction terms. We would have preferred absolute numbers. But it did such a good job in telling the updated story about proper use of the drug in question that we give it a satisfactory score. Several clear points were made about harms: The story did a great job of communicating the read-between-the-lines reality of the evidence for the use of this drug. NO disease-mongering here. The story is based on the CDC’s evaluation and warnings about proper use of the drug. We would have liked to have seen a clinician-researcher’s perspective – someone not affiliated with the CDC analysis. Not applicable. Because of the nature of this drug, no comparison is really necessary. As the story stated, “It’s the first time anybody’s shown that taking a pill can prevent HIV – and it was the first new weapon against HIV unveiled in many years.” The story is clear that Truvada is already on the market. The story stated, “It’s the first time anybody’s shown that taking a pill can prevent HIV – and it was the first new weapon against HIV unveiled in many years.” We have no evidence that the story relied on a news release.
33118	Syrian refugees are bringing a communicable flesh-eating disease into the United States.	In short, leishmaniasis infections in Syria increased due to a breakdown in the country’s infrastructure during a larger, ongoing conflict. However, Syrian refugees are not known vectors of the illness. While human-to-human transmission is possible in rare circumstances, the disease’s vector is the sandfly. Leishmaniasis has occurred in the United States, but again, it is rare due to the U.S.’s climate and its generally low-risk population.	false	Politics Immigration	On 20 December 2015, the web site Breitbart published an article titled “EXCLUSIVE – Syrian Refugees Bringing Flesh-Eating Disease into U.S.?”, which held: There is a risk that Middle Eastern refugees entering the U.S. could be infected with a flesh-eating disease that is sweeping across Syria. Health agencies confirmed that Syrian refugees have transported leishmaniasis to Lebanon and Turkey, where it has been difficult to manage and treat. Refugees who enter the U.S. must undergo medical screening according to protocols established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC. Each refugee must submit to a physical examination, including a skin test and possibly a chest x-ray to check for tuberculosis,as well as a blood test for syphilis. The blood tests do not currently look for leishmaniasis. Clearly, an attending doctor could easily spot a patient with obvious skin ulcers. However, leishmaniasis cannot be detected upon physical examination if the patient is asymptomatic, as can be the case for years. On 21 December 2015, the web site Patriot Crier built upon the claim with an article titled “BREAKING: TERRIFYING NEW DISEASE ROCKS THE NATION as Syrian ‘REFUGEES’ ENTER AMERICA …” It began: We’ve all been concerned that Syrian refugees were going to bring extremist beliefs and ideologies into the United States. But what about about leishmaniasis? You may have a puzzled look on your face right now…Don’t worry…you’re about to learn what that is. Although that article didn’t feature an image, it populated the above-reproduced photograph when the link was shared on Facebook. The appended image was unrelated; it appeared to depict a different infection known as amebiasis. The articles referenced leishmaniasis, which according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), has occurred in the United States, although rarely. A CDC FAQ addressed whether leishmaniasis is found in the United States, and explained: Not usually. Almost all of the cases of leishmaniasis diagnosed in the United States are in people who became infected while traveling or living in other countries. Occasional cases of cutaneous leishmaniasis have been acquired in Texas and Oklahoma. No cases of visceral leishmaniasis are known to have been acquired in the United States. The CDC said that the disease is generally spread by a certain type of insect: The main way is through the bite of infected female phlebotomine sand flies. Sand flies become infected by sucking blood from an infected animal or person. Some types (species) of Leishmania parasites also may be spread via contaminated needles (needle sharing) or blood transfusions. Congenital transmission (spread from a pregnant woman to her baby) has been reported. On a separate page (subtitled “Epidemiology & Risk Factors”), the CDC added: Leishmaniasis is found in people in focal areas of more than 90 countries in the tropics, subtropics, and southern Europe. The ecologic settings range from rain forests to deserts. Leishmaniasis usually is more common in rural than in urban areas, but it is found in the outskirts of some cities. Climate and other environmental changes have the potential to expand the geographic range of the sand fly vectors and the areas in the world where leishmaniasis is found. Leishmaniasis is found on every continent except Australia and Antarctica. A fact sheet from the World Health Organization (WHO) further emphasized that the manner of transmission is overwhelmingly insect-to-human: Leishmaniasis is caused by a protozoa parasite from over 20 Leishmania species and is transmitted to humans by the bite of infected female phlebotomine sandflies. Over 90 sandfly species are known to transmit Leishmania parasites. There are 3 main forms of the disease[.] In an 18 December 2015 ScienceAlert article, University of Glasgow Professor of Biochemical Parasitology Michael Barrett described the concerns as a manifestation of epidemiologic xenophobia: It is sandflies, not people, that transmit the disease and though they are found throughout the tropics and subtropics, they can’t survive in colder climates. The visceral form of leishmaniasis is already endemic in parts of southern Europe including Spain, Italy and the south of France, but the disease tends to only manifest itself in people with weak immune systems such as those infected with HIV. This highlights the fact that people in prosperous regions where nutrition and general health are good are at limited risk … Although Turkey might be at risk of increased incidence of the cutaneous disease due to the flow of refugees from Syria, again it is worth highlighting that people with access to good nutrition and in generally good health are less vulnerable. Concerns about imported germs, of course, are nothing new. Just last year, European airports were decorated with posters warning of Ebola, and those coming from West Africa were subjected to mandatory tests for signs of fever. But we should be careful of warnings of diseases spreading to developed countries, where healthcare systems and levels of public health are much more capable of preventing and treating infectious condition, even in instances where those diseases could spread. Plus the wider availability of treatments in Europe creates an opportunity to provide healthcare to incoming sick refugees. Barrett was correct in his statement that opposition to immigration and asylum couched in terms disease is “nothing new.” For example, in mid-2014, unaccompanied minor immigrants from Central and South America were widely and baselessly blamed for an outbreak of Enterovirus D68. As the linked snopes.com page from 2014 noted, such claims were nearly identical in tenor and shape: Media figures such as Schlafly and Pat Robertson have speculated that the EV-D68 outbreak started with immigrant children, with Robertson blaming minor migrants who have carried “with them viruses that we were not familiar with in the United States and haven’t built up immunity to.” Given that the particular strain of the virus now affecting Americans was recorded in the U.S. as far back as 1987, the claim that the current outbreak of Enterovirus D68 is due solely or primarily to that strain’s being carried to the U.S. by immigrant children is a problematic one. The “foreigners carrying disease” trope has, in fact, been present in American discourse for more than a century, and seems to reappear every time an immigrant or refugee population shows up in the United States.
6719	Paper: Old turf fields raise environmental, health concerns.	The hulking wall of rubber was first discovered by a borough maintenance crew.	true	Environment, Health, General News, Financial markets, Pennsylvania, York	About 6,000 rolled pieces were neatly stacked about 10 feet high, covering more than an acre of private land, according to the mayor of Cleona, Pennsylvania. The green blades of artificial grass peeking through the coiled logs offered the first clue. “This is what it looks like when someone gets rid of a dozen turf fields and there’s nowhere to send them,” said Mayor Larry Minnich. A York Daily Record/York Sunday News investigation has found an unregulated industry that is growing exponentially and dumping several hundred old athletic fields across the U.S. every year. Artificial turf and the projected mountains of waste Used artificial turf is expected to produce 1 million to 4 million tons of waste in the next 10 years, and it has nowhere to go, according to solid waste industry analysts. Minnich, the Cleona mayor, soon learned that the problem in his borough of about 2,100 people was similar to what communities were grappling with across the country — tons of worn-out, artificial school fields that municipal dumps won’t accept and a growing, unregulated, cottage industry of vacant land owners taking the waste. Turf fields installed in waves a decade ago are reaching the end of their lifespan and need to be replaced, according to an industry trade association. Despite being touted as a completely recyclable alternative to grass, there are no companies in the U.S. that can completely recycle them, according to a trade association president. The fields frequently end up in empty lots, backyards, in public spaces and on private land. Sometimes, they are given permission to be there. In some cases, they have been dumped illegally by contractors paid to remove them. An inside look at the turf war Artificial turf fields are largely made of scrap tires and synthetic fibers and are designed to look like natural grass. They’ve been revamped from the AstroTurf in the 1960s, which was largely made of fibers and sand, into the synthetic turf today that’s made of recycled rubber, fibers and sand. There are about 12,000 to 15,000 turf fields in the United States, according to the Synthetic Turf Council. Most of those fields carry an eight-year warranty, which is standard across the industry. But the turf council’s top lobbyist says they can last 10 to 12 years. When those fields reach the end of their lifespan, that waste has to go somewhere. But sending turf to a landfill is not cost effective or an industry best practice. Turf is already piling up on the sides of roads and being stored on private properties because there’s only one recycling facility in the world that can fully separate the parts for reuse, and that facility is in Denmark. Some property owners are getting creative in how they reuse it, but disposed turf is outpacing demand. For now, some of these stacks are eyesores along highways that can last for decades. Turf disposal is not regulated in Pennsylvania. These large piles of waste fall through bureaucratic cracks, leading to unchecked dumping. Though all waste in Pennsylvania requires a permit before being dumped, there are no specific rules on the books for turf. Those storing turf in Pennsylvania aren’t obtaining permits. They are cutting deals with landowners to store their waste, creating makeshift garbage dumps. Without any rules or oversight, disposed turf becomes the burden and responsibility of anyone who lives around it. Obstacles reusing and disposing of turf Recently in Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., turf fields have tested positive for lead and toxins that are known to cause cancer, low birth weight in babies and other diseases, according to reports in the Boston Globe and Washington Post. Industry-funded studies found no increased risk of disease to anyone of any age who uses turf fields. There’s been no independent, definitive study on the safety of turf. The Obama Administration started to examine the issue in his second term. The Trump Administration has studied it for three years and on July 25 released the first part of its findings. Some materials used to make turf fields, such as industrial silica sand, can’t be incinerated. Sometimes, college and professional fields can be donated to other facilities, but youth fields are too worn to be donated to another facility. Because stagnant water can pool inside them and attract rodents and mosquitoes, used tires can’t be taken to landfills. But turf, despite being largely made from old tires, can be taken to landfills. However, that’s an expensive option. Pennsylvania law also cites that tires shouldn’t be disposed of in landfills because they take up too much room. It’s $60 to $70 a ton to dispose of turf in a landfill. Each roll of turf is about 2,000 to 3,000 pounds. A ton is 2,000 pounds. For the 6,000 rolls of turf in Cleona, the landfill option would cost about $400,000. But none of those rolls are headed to a dump. They’re headed to Denmark. Slowly. ‘We’re running out of room’ The rolls have been sitting in Cleona for two years, and a few months ago, Minnich decided that was long enough. He was getting complaints from people in town, and there were safety concerns about the pile’s flammability and proximity to a fueling station. Property owner Kevin Fox, who operates a transportation business, said he never had any safety concerns, especially because the rolls were stored inside a fenced-in lot. Fox has been storing the turf for an undisclosed property rental fee since a former business associate told him more than a year ago that a turf recycler overseas needed a place to store dismantled fields. But Fox also reached a point where he agreed with the mayor that the turf couldn’t stay on his property. “We were running out of room,” Fox said. Challenges after inheriting abandoned turf At another site, weeds push through rolls of turf that are scattered on a hillside at the intersection of Matthew Bupp’s property at Loucks Mill Road and Route 30 in York, Pennsylvania. People frequently drive by and ask a version of: “What is that?” Bupp knows the feeling. He wondered the same thing when he inherited the problem a couple of years ago. Somebody who leased the land to store the turf defaulted on the rent. He’s not sure of the contractor, but he knows the disposed field was trucked in from Harrisburg or Mechanicsburg, 40 miles away. “It feels like this old football field has been here forever,” he said. “Promising rent and then abandoning the material is a perfect way of making sure you have no disposal costs and then making disposal someone else’s problem.” ___ Matthew Bupp It feels like this old football field has been here forever. ___ Bupp said there were so many subcontractors involved that he couldn’t successfully figure out the right person to hold accountable. The turf is not easy to get rid of. In addition to the high costs involved, it’s physically daunting. Each roll, depending on the size, typically weighs between 900 and 3,000 pounds. “This isn’t something you can put on the back of a pickup truck. You need tractor-trailers and machinery to lift it,” Bupp said. ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure’ He decided to get creative. He advertised through Craigslist and word of mouth, transferring the turf roll by roll to new homes and businesses. “Some has been given away; some has been sold. But I didn’t plan on or want to go into the turf business,” said Bupp, a property developer. The divvied up turf is now at a community garden in York City, indoor Xtreme Archery in Springettsbury Township, local soccer organizations, a Maryland lacrosse team, batting cages and private lawns for weddings. He’s also sent some of the rubber to a private home to be placed under a water slide. “I’m trying to make the old adage true that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure,” Bupp said. “I’m finding waste and putting it to reuse.” He’s an environmentalist at heart. When he bought the property five years ago, he said, he cleaned up 256 tires and two abandoned cars that were dumped and deserted on the bank of the nearby Codorus Creek. “I’ve always said real men recycle, but now I’d say real people recycle,” Bupp said. “I’m not sure how much longer it will take to get rid of it all, but I know it can be recycled and repurposed.” Unregulated, untraced Too often, old turf fields are not recycled and repurposed, according to Kyla Bennett, science and policy director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. She is also the director of the New England office for the watchdog organization, which helps government whistleblowers expose environmental wrongdoing. Bennett said state and federal clients have reported that most turf fields typically go to landfills or are dumped illegally. “They usually show up near wetlands or streams,” she said. That’s a concern because turf fields are largely made of crumb rubber, which is scrap tires. Scrap tires shouldn’t be dumped near or in waterways because they pose two health threats: a safe haven for pests and fire risk, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. “Prone to heat retention, tires in stockpiles also can ignite, creating tire fires that are difficult to extinguish and can burn for months, generating unhealthy smoke and toxic oils,” according to the EPA. Dan Bond, president of the Synthetic Turf Council, a Fairfax, Virginia-based trade group, said disposal of turf in waterways was a bad practice of the industry’s past. “It used to happen in the ’80s and ’90s before recycling. Yes, that did happen, but our trade group is emphatic about best practices today, and our manufacturers and recyclers adhere to it,” Bond said. But it’s not the manufacturers or recyclers he lobbies for who are removing the fields when they need to be replaced every eight to 10 years. It’s usually a subcontractor who shows up to remove a field and dispose it. Sometimes, two different businesses are hired to remove a field and get rid of it. There’s no chain of custody. There are no regulations at state and federal levels on turf disposal. For example, in Pennsylvania: “There are no waste regulations specific to turf, but the used turf would be considered waste, and should be managed as such. All waste disposal activities in Pennsylvania require a permit,” said Elizabeth Rementer, press secretary for the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. A chain of custody can be difficult to follow because old turf can find multiple new uses, and industry lobbyists discourage regulations, Bond said. “If you put out regulations on what to do at the end of a field’s life, that doesn’t help because there are so many applications. You can use different parts of the field for different applications. There’s not one best way to do this,” he said. The industry can regulate itself by setting guidelines and best practices, Bond said. His trade group recommends giving municipalities and school districts tax breaks for finding beneficial reuses for turf. That’s not good enough for Bennett, who said it’s a scheme that “kicks the can down the road and distributes the problem to someone else.” Concerns about chemicals found in artificial turf Bennett said the best solution is to use natural grass. Turf fields are a creative way for the tire industry to get rid of their waste, she said. The tires are shredded and put into fields, and eight to 10 years later, “a municipality then has to figure out what to do with it,” Bennett said. Even worse, she said, the “consumer and end user have no idea what’s in it.” ___ It’s a problem for everybody. Kyla Bennett, science and policy director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility ___ Whistleblowers who work with PEER have raised concerns about the toxicity of the disposed fields that frequently get dumped on land near community water supplies, she said. “It’s a problem for everybody,” Bennett said. Bond said 110 industry studies found no increased risk of disease to anyone of any age who uses turf fields. He points to the studies on the trade association website. In its first report about crumb-rubber synthetic fields, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry said research was “inconclusive” on the safety of crumb-rubber fields. They found a range of metals and chemicals in turf fields. “While chemicals are present as expected in the (tire) crumb rubber, human exposure appears to be limited based on what is released into air or simulated biological fluids,” the report says. The 800-page report looked at what chemicals are present in the fields, but it didn’t study whether those chemicals are safe for the people using them. It is unclear when the second part of the federal study will be released. A study by the Washington State Department of Health in 2017 found no evidence that crumb rubber in turf fields contained enough cancer-causing chemicals to put players at risk. California is conducting its own study on turf fields, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission is studying children’s exposure to chemicals on rubber tire surfaces at playgrounds. ___ Used artificial turf is expected to produce 1 million to 4 million tons of waste in the next 10 years. Solid waste industry analysts ___ Growing cycle of installing, removing of turf fields In the meantime, the number of new turf fields being installed and old ones being removed is growing every year in the multi-billion industry. There are between 12,000 and 15,000 turf fields in the U.S., Bond said, and another 1,200 and 1,500 are opening each year. Meanwhile, the number of disposed fields has grown from 365 in 2013 to 750 in 2018. The number of disposed turf fields is expected to grow by hundreds this year and in the upcoming year, according to the trade association. And something that both the industry and environmentalists agree on is that they need somewhere to put them. An apparent solution, hampered by a lack of oversight The solution to the old turf problem might be found in the pipeline from Cleona to Denmark. Fox, the property owner with thousands of rolls of turf on his property, is shipping dozens of loads at a time to Re-Match, a Scandanavian company that the industry and environmentalists agree is the only true recycling facility in the world. But founder Dennis Anderson said his company is a solution few U.S. companies are using, mainly because there are no regulations that require fields to be recycled. It costs about $20,000 to ship one field overseas and be recycled at Re-Match he said. That’s cheaper than a landfill. But if a contractor can pay a landowner a little bit of money to store turf, they will probably choose that option over shipping to Denmark, Anderson said. Anderson’s company is paying Fox an undisclosed amount to keep the fields on his property until it can open two U.S. recycling facilities in Pennsylvania and California in 2020. He did not disclose specific locations, but he said his company is in position to open the facilities late next year. It would take each recycling facility nine months to become operational. His recycling method is patented in 56 countries and is the only one that completely separates the grass part of the turf from the crumb rubber part, he said. Re-Match is the only company that has the technology to recycle an old turf field into a new one, Anderson said. Anderson has been storing 10 to 15 fields in Cleona while he works on opening a new facility in the Netherlands to serve the growing European market, where there are 4,100 new turf fields per year. The European market also outpaces the U.S. market on regulations and has stricter requirements on recycling. ‘Make it all go away’ Cleona didn’t have any regulations on the books, either, but the mayor pressured Re-Match to remove the turf from the borough. Anderson flew to Pennsylvania to meet with him. “I told them to take it away. Make it all go away,” Minnich said in the summer. “They did a little bit, but not to the level I was happy about. We’re hoping to get all of it out before winter sets in. That’s the plan as of today.” Fox said he’s already shipped 25 loads to Denmark. He’s also shipped two or three loads to Playing Surface Solutions in Meadville, Pennsylvania, where the turf installer can partially recycle some of the materials and repurpose them as putting greens. He was expecting to have more turf hauled away from his property in late November. “To the average person, this is garbage. But for a company that knows how to do it, there’s hundreds of thousands in profit to separate and clean it and resell it. You have to have the right equipment to do it though,” Fox said. Anderson has that equipment at Re-Match, but he doesn’t have enough U.S. business. Bond said: “I think you’ll see more companies like Re-Match coming into the marketplace, and they are needed.” While there are opportunities to recycle turf in creative ways, such as what Bupp is doing in York, the market is saturated with more old turf than there is demand for new putting greens or other alternative uses. And, for now, industry leaders and environmentalists agree the best solution to getting rid of all the turf piling up is still an ocean away. ___ Online: https://bit.ly/34jRhi3 ___ Information from: York Daily Record, http://www.ydr.com
4888	Planned Parenthood picks Chinese-born doctor as new leader.	A Chinese immigrant who fled her native country when she was 8 was named Wednesday as Planned Parenthood’s new president, the first doctor to hold the post in five decades.	true	Planned Parenthood, Health, Kavanaugh nomination, Abortion, Immigration, North America, International News, Asia Pacific, Sex education, Education	Dr. Leana Wen will assume the role Nov. 12, six days after midterm elections in which Planned Parenthood’s political wing plans to spend $20 million on behalf of candidates who support abortion rights. Wen, who has been Baltimore’s health commissioner for since 2015, will be Planned Parenthood’s sixth president over a century of work providing millions of Americans with birth control, sex education and medical screenings. The organization also is the largest provider of abortions in the U.S., making it a perennial target for anti-abortion activists. In recent years, its foes have been striving — thus far unsuccessfully — to halt the flow of federal funds that help Planned Parenthood provide some of its non-abortion services. Wen succeeds Cecile Richards, who had been president since 2006 before resigning earlier this year. Under Richards’ leadership, Planned Parenthood has been at odds with congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump on numerous fronts, most recently joining the intense opposition to Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. Abortion-rights advocates fear that Kavanaugh will tilt the high court to the right, possibly opening the way for rulings that would reverse or weaken the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that established a nationwide right for women to have abortions. Wen and her family fled from China just before her 8th birthday, were granted political asylum in the U.S. and became U.S. citizens in 2003. Wen graduated summa cum laude from California State University, Los Angeles and earned her medical degree from Washington University School of Medicine before becoming a Rhodes Scholar. Early in her tenure as Baltimore’s health commissioner, she provided strong leadership as the city was wracked by violent protests related to disputed police actions. She expanded trauma and mental health services, and secured funding for a program designed to treat gun violence as a contagious disease. Wen said she was proud of her accomplishments in Baltimore — including reducing infant mortality to record lows and providing eyeglasses for all children who needed them. But she said she could not resist the new job offer. “For more than 100 years, no organization has done more for women’s health than Planned Parenthood,” Wen said. “As a doctor, I will ensure we continue to provide high-quality health care, including the full range of reproductive care and will fight with everything I have to protect the access of millions of patients who rely on Planned Parenthood.” Rep. Elijah Cummings, a Democratic congressman from Baltimore, praised the appointment, saying of Wen, “When it comes to protecting her patients, she doesn’t back down from a fight.” With Wen’s encouragement, Baltimore sued the Trump administration for cutting funds for teen pregnancy prevention. A federal judge subsequently ordered the restoration of $5 million in grant funding to two Baltimore-based prevention programs. ___ This story has been corrected to show Wen began as Baltimore’s health commissioner in 2015, not 2014.
12256	In order to sell insurance in Florida there are over 40 separate individual conditions that must be covered. ... far beyond the essential health benefits included in Obamacare.	"Rubio said, ""In order to sell insurance in Florida there are over 40 separate individual conditions that must be covered. ... far beyond the essential health benefits included in Obamacare."" Rubio’s spokesman pointed to a list of about 50 state mandates, about half of which pertained to health conditions. But many of the state mandates only apply if an insurer chooses to cover a condition. The federal protections are more sweeping and put more requirements on insurers to cover a broad range of services. Rubio’s comparison omits that state laws alone would leave Floridians on the individual market without certain types of coverage that are mandated by the federal law. He also ignores that state categories are defined more narrowly."	false	Health Care, States, Florida, Marco Rubio,	"Republicans attempting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, have been met with concerns about whether health insurance will still offer comprehensive coverage under new rules. But U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio says Florida law mandates that insurers cover more essential health benefits than the federal law. ""In Florida, essential health benefits aren't just what the federal government requires, it is what state law requires,"" Rubio said on Facebook Live July 20. Then he continued ""under state law, in order to sell insurance in Florida, there are over 40 separate individual conditions that must be covered. In essence, you cannot sell a health care plan in Florida if you don't cover these things -- far beyond the essential health benefits included in Obamacare. Irrespective of what we do in federal law, we still have to follow the state law, and these plans will still have to go through the state. My point is much of what health insurance in Florida will look like will be determined by the state Legislature. That’s the way it should be."" In Florida, are insurers required to cover more conditions than under President Barack Obama’s signature legislation? A reader emailed the Truth-O-Meter and asked us to check it out, so we did. Rubio has a point -- Florida did have a long list of health care mandates before the federal law passed in 2010. But multiple experts told us that comparing the number of state mandates to the number of essential health benefits in the federal law is not an apples-to-apples comparison. In some ways, the federal protections are more sweeping. Understanding what the laws say about coverage requires reading the fine print. Prior to the Affordable Care Act, every state had its own mandates. Some states had a longer list of mandates than others -- Florida’s list of mandates was long, said Timothy Jost, emeritus professor at the Washington and Lee University School of Law and a supporter of the federal law. The Affordable Care Act took a different approach: It set 10 coverage ""essential health benefit"" categories for plans sold on the individual and small group markets nationwide. The categories were: Ambulatory patient services; Emergency services; Hospitalization; Maternity and newborn care; Mental health and substance use disorder services, including behavioral health treatment; Prescription drugs; Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices; Laboratory services; Preventive and wellness services and chronic disease management; and, Pediatric services, including oral and vision care. The federal law is a minimum standard -- states are allowed to provide greater benefits. For example, Florida law requires coverage of adult student dependents until age 30, with some caveats, while the federal law only requires such coverage until age 26. The 10 categories were intentionally broad so states could have flexibility to apply them. As part of the federal law, each state sets a benchmark plan which defines the essential health benefits. While the federal law sets 10 broad categories, Florida lists specific benefits. The Florida Office of Insurance Regulation directed PolitiFact to the benchmark plan, a Blue Cross Blue Shield plan which shows about 34 covered benefits. The first thing we noticed is that the list of benefits has some overlap, so it doesn’t mean that the 34 benefits are three times more than the broader 10 required categories in the federal law. For example, in the federal law, mental health and substance use is one category, but in the Florida benchmark plan, that’s broken down into four benefits for inpatient and outpatient mental health and substance abuse. A spokesman for Rubio sent us a chart showing about 50 mandates and their accompanying state statutes. About half of the statutes related to health conditions or procedures such as newborn hearing screening, emergency room services and a mastectomy. The remainder were related to covering services by certain health providers, such as acupuncturists, or types of people covered such as dependent adult children. In the laws Rubio cited about providers, many don’t actually require that insurers cover certain services. For example, a statute Rubio cited about massage therapists states that if a policy covers massage, it must cover the services of a person licensed to practice massage if it has been prescribed by a physician. But the numbers alone don’t tell us much about the actual coverage patients receive -- we have to read the fine print to see who would get certain types of coverage under Florida’s laws, said Justin Giovannelli, an expert at Georgetown University’s Health Policy Institute. For example, Rubio’s list references laws on substance abuse and mental health treatment, but state laws don’t require coverage for those services for the individual market. However, since the federal law supersedes state law, the Obamacare plans must cover those services. Rubio also cited a Florida law about maternity care. That statute isn’t a blanket requirement that insurers cover maternity care. Instead, it contains a few provisions that explain if a policy provides maternity care, here are the particular requirements -- for example, it must cover post-delivery services. Once the federal law defined maternity care as an essential health benefit, then all individual plans had to include coverage for that benefit -- regardless of existing state laws. (Before the law, some consumers purchased riders.) ""So whereas the ACA requires an insurer in the individual market in Florida to offer coverage that includes these benefits, if the ACA went away, an insurer would not be obligated by federal or state law to provide coverage of these benefits,"" Giovannelli said. Joe Antos, a health expert at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, says it’s not surprising that Florida law lists more than 10 benefits. ""The tradition among insurance commissioners in most states is to be more precise about what has to be covered,"" he said. But comparing the number of state benefits with the ACA’s required essential health benefits isn’t the point, he said. ""The number really doesn’t matter. What matters is, what is the economic impact on the premiums?"" he said. ""When most people talk about this, they seem to think there are huge savings from cutting out things like maternity coverage and mental health. The reality is maternity coverage is very small percentage of the total for a comprehensive plan. Mental health would be expensive, but Medicaid picks up vast majority of mental health expenses."" Rubio has a point about the state legislatures having the power to set health care laws -- something it had before the ACA and will continue to have. Richard Cauchi, a health insurance expert at the National Conference of State Legislatures, said that nearly half of Florida’s health care related laws were enacted before 1989 and only six in the last 10 years. The federal health care law has had a role in expanding the types of conditions covered in Florida. As a result of the Affordable Care Act, Florida Blue added pediatric services for dental, vision and habilitative services, said Doug Bartel, Florida Blue spokesman. Rubio said, ""In order to sell insurance in Florida there are over 40 separate individual conditions that must be covered. ... far beyond the essential health benefits included in Obamacare."" Rubio’s spokesman pointed to a list of about 50 state mandates, about half of which pertained to health conditions. But many of the state mandates only apply if an insurer chooses to cover a condition. The federal protections are more sweeping and put more requirements on insurers to cover a broad range of services. Rubio’s comparison omits that state laws alone would leave Floridians on the individual market without certain types of coverage that are mandated by the federal law. He also ignores that state categories are defined more narrowly."
20650	"Newt Gingrich Says a federal judge in San Antonio ""issued a ruling that … not only could the students not pray at their graduation, if they used the word ‘benediction,’ the word ‘invocation,’ the word ‘God,’ asked the audience to stand or asked for a moment of silence, he would put the superintendent in jail."	"To recap, Gingrich’s claim is that Biery ""issued a ruling that … not only could the students not pray at their graduation, if they used the word ‘benediction,’ the word ‘invocation,’ the word ‘God,’ asked the audience to stand or asked for a moment of silence, he would put the superintendent in jail."" The judge’s ruling did not broadly say students could not pray. However, his order prohibited students speaking at the graduation from leading the audience in prayer or delivering ""a message that would commonly be understood to be a prayer."" Gingrich is close on this part. Also, the judge told the district to banish ""benediction"" and ""invocation"" from the event. The rest of Gingrich’s claim, including its crescendo reference to putting the superintendent in jail, has weaknesses. The order did not bar ""God"" from any mention during the ceremony, only ruling out the phrase ""in God’s name we pray."" The judge’s order barred students from asking the audience to stand, presumably in preparation for organized prayer, but it did not forbid a moment of silence. The punch line of Gingrich’s primary-night claim — that the Texas order said the superintendent would be jailed if his ruling was violated — overstates things. The order lists incarceration or ""other sanctions"" as possible penalties, though nothing as a certainty, and doesn’t specify the superintendent as potential inmate. Also, the punishment language appears to have been standard."	mixture	Legal Issues, Religion, Texas, Newt Gingrich,	"Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich has his eye on a U.S. district judge in San Antonio. Gingrich has mentioned Fred Biery on the stump when arguing that the legislative and executive branches of government should remove judges perceived as abusing their power and acting out of sync with the nation’s culture. On Jan. 21, 2012, after winning the South Carolina Republican presidential primary, Gingrich again referenced Biery, urging voters to check out a position paper on his campaign website about ""the balance of power, putting the judiciary back in its proper role and eliminating dictatorial religious bigots such as Judge Biery in San Antonio, who issued a ruling that … not only could the students not pray at their graduation, if they used the word ‘benediction,’ the word ‘invocation,’ the word ‘God,’ asked the audience to stand or asked for a moment of silence, he would put the superintendent in jail."" A reader alerted us to Gingrich’s talk of Biery after the candidate mentioned the judge during a Dec. 18, 2011, appearance on the CBS News show Face the Nation. For this article, we’re checking the accuracy of the candidate’s description of Biery’s order during his South Carolina speech. We’re not going to delve into whether Biery is a ""dictatorial religious bigot"" — that’s Gingrich’s opinion — or whether his decision on prayer at graduation is an example of the judiciary overstepping its role. The case Taking Gingrich’s suggestion in his victory speech, we checked out the 54-page paper on his website, ""Bringing the Courts Back Under the Constitution."" Its Appendix B is devoted to Biery, chief judge of the federal Western District of Texas, and is headlined: ""Federal district court judge orders the censoring of high school graduation speech."" At issue: A June 1, 2011, order from Biery granting an agnostic family’s request for a temporary order prohibiting the 3,000-student Medina Valley school district, west of San Antonio, from including a prayer in its high school’s then-pending graduation ceremony. Gingrich spokesman Joe DeSantis pointed out the order when we asked for the backup for Gingrich’s victory-speech statement. In a May 26, 2011, lawsuit, the family challenged Medina Valley High School’s tradition of having students deliver an invocation and benediction as part of the graduation, a practice that the family said amounted to unconstitutional school-sponsored prayer. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of the family by the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said Christa and Danny Schultz were exposed to the ""unwelcome prayers"" at the high school’s 2009 ceremony, when their oldest child graduated. The couple’s younger son was in the 2011 graduating class. The lawsuit said: ""If the Schultzes were to attend the graduation of their son, they would once again be exposed to the school district’s longstanding practice of presenting prayers as part of graduation ceremonies"" unless the court stopped it. The lawsuit alleged that the graduation prayers violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment — ""Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion"" — and included a request that the judge issue an emergency order prohibiting the district ""from including any prayer … whether denominated an ‘invocation,’ ‘benediction,’ or otherwise"" at the graduation on June 4, 2011. During a May 31, 2011, hearing on the request, Craig Wood, a lawyer representing the school district, argued that with respect to the graduation speeches, the district was adhering to a 2007 state law that Wood said was enacted ""to honor the fact that students do sometimes wish to express religious viewpoints and ought not be penalized for doing so."" Wood was referring to the Texas Religious Viewpoints Anti-discrimination Act, which requires each school district to adopt a policy enabling student speakers at school events, including graduation ceremonies, to voluntarily express a religious viewpoint. At graduations, the law says, districts must ""state, in writing, orally, or both, that the student's speech does not reflect the endorsement, sponsorship, position, or expression of the district."" ""We're attempting to balance those First Amendment interests of all parties involved,"" Wood told Biery. ""And I will acknowledge, your honor, in a community like Medina Valley, it is not unusual for there to be a student selected (to speak at graduation) who would, in fact, make some sort of reference to some sort of religious deity. I will also tell you that in the last couple of years that the closing remarks made by the student had no religious connotation whatsoever."" By the end of the hearing, Biery had made it clear that he planned to grant the Schultzes’ request, articulating in court essentially what appeared the following day in his injunction. Ayesha Khan, legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who represented the family at the hearing, requested that Biery’s order specify that the students’ remarks could not include a prayer. ""Well, I will put that in there: It’s not to be a prayer,"" Biery said. ""On the other hand, if these young ladies get up and say the same thing without invoking a deity, or they make a personal statement: I believe, myself, in a higher being, like I think Mr. Wood used that phrase. And they can make a personal statement of their own belief. I think that's certainly acceptable."" The order Biery’s order, dated June 1, says the district and ""its officials, agents, servants, and employees, as well as all persons acting in concert with them, are prohibited from allowing a prayer (as defined in paragraph (b) below) to be included"" in the ceremony. Paragraph b mandates that: the district instruct the students chosen to deliver the ""invocation"" and ""benediction"" to change their remarks to be ""statements of their own beliefs as opposed to leading the audience in prayer."" everyone scheduled to speak at the graduation be instructed not to present a prayer, ""to wit, they shall be instructed that they may not ask audience members to ‘stand,’ ‘join in prayer,’ or ‘bow their heads,’ they may not end their remarks with ‘amen’ or ‘in [a deity’s name] we pray,’ and they shall not otherwise deliver a message that would commonly be understood to be a prayer, nor use the word ‘prayer’ unless it is used in the student’s expression of the student’s personal belief, as opposed to encouraging others who may not believe in the concept of prayer to join in and believe the same concept."" At the end of paragraph B, Biery says that ""in stating their own personal beliefs,"" students may ""speak through conduct such as kneeling to face Mecca, the wearing of a yarmulke or hijab or making the sign of the cross."" Also in the order, Biery says that the district must remove the terms ""invocation"" and ""benediction"" from the ""program of ceremonies for the graduation exercises"" and that they are to be replaced with ""opening remarks"" and ""closing remarks."" Finally, the order says the injunction goes into effect immediately and ""shall be enforced by incarceration or other sanctions for contempt of court if not obeyed by district official(s) and their agents."" The fact-check So how does Gingrich’s statement describing Biery’s order stand up? Let’s break it down: Gingrich’s first claim — that the judge’s order said students could not pray at their graduation — has a basis. The order prohibits student speakers from leading the audience in prayer or delivering ""a message that would commonly be understood to be a prayer."" Then again, Biery’s order allows the students to talk about their personal beliefs and use the word ""prayer"" in that context. Next, Gingrich says Biery banned the words ""benediction"" and ""invocation"" from being spoken. That’s pretty close. Although the order did not specifically prohibit students from uttering ""benediction"" and ""invocation,"" the district was told to banish the terms from the paper program. And Biery said at the pivotal hearing that ""there will be no words ‘invocation,’ ‘benediction’ in the ceremony."" Gingrich says ""God"" was also not to be mentioned during graduation speeches. That seems like a reach since Biery’s order has only one curb on mentions of God; it bars speakers from using the phrase ""in God’s name we pray."" Also prohibited, according to Gingrich: asking the audience to stand or asking for a moment of silence. In fact, the order says speakers cannot ask the audience to "" ‘stand,’ ‘join in prayer’ or ‘bow their heads’ "" — actions that often precede organized prayer. The order does not mention moments of silence. ** Finally, Gingrich says that Biery’s order says the district’s superintendent would go to jail if the boundaries set by the injunction were crossed. That appears to be an overstatement in that the order says it ""shall be enforced by incarceration or other sanctions."" That is, punishments short of going to jail were possible. In a July 3, 2011, news article about the case, the San Antonio Express-News reported that Biery’s order said ""school administrators could be jailed if they didn’t comply."" We consulted two legal experts about the wording of that section of Biery’s order. Charles Silver, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law, told us: ""It’s possible for someone who has violated a court order to be put in jail, but it would be unusual for that to happen. It would be much more likely for the punishment to involve a fine."" Mechele Dickerson, a UT law professor who teaches civil procedure, agreed that the most likely punishment for a violation of Biery’s order would have been a fine for the district. Also, she said, had the judge wanted to jail someone, the order’s language doesn’t necessitate that the person be the superintendent — unlike what Gingrich said. The punished person could be another ""agent"" of the district — the high school’s principal, for example — Dickerson said. Silver and Dickerson each said the punishment section of the order was fairly common. Silver said: ""It’s pretty much boilerplate language. The function is really to put people on notice: ‘Hey, the court means this.’ "" Each professor also noted that if the order was violated in some way, procedural steps would have to take place before anyone was punished. First, the plaintiffs in the case — the Schultz family — would have to file a motion with the court; and then a hearing would be held so that the judge could decide whether someone — possibly the superintendent — was in contempt. If so, the judge would then decide on punishment. Biery declined our request for an interview. In a telephone interview, Wood, the district’s lawyer, generally supported the views of Silver and Dickerson and said he thought Gingrich’s statement about Biery’s order wasn’t quite right. He agreed that the order’s language about the possible sanctions was standard and was informing the district that ""a violation was enforceable vis a vis the regular methods."" The sanctions imposed by the judge would most likely have depended upon the circumstances of the violation, Wood said, such as who had done it and ""the degree to which they thumbed their nose at the order."" The rest of the story Biery’s order survived for two days. On June 2, 2011, the district asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to dissolve Biery’s order barring the students from praying at the graduation, arguing that the court had abused its discretion, that the district had not violated the Establishment Clause and that the injunction had violated the graduation speakers’ ""free speech and free exercise of religion rights as well as state law."" The Texas attorney general’s office announced that it had filed a brief with the appeals court supporting the district’s appeal. On June 3, a three-judge panel of the appeals court vacated the injunction, saying that they were ""not persuaded that plaintiffs have shown that they are substantially likely to prevail on the merits, particularly on the issue that the individual prayers or other remarks to be given by students at graduation are, in fact, school-sponsored."" The judges also said the Schultzes’ request for an injunction ""may be rooted at least in part in circumstances that no longer exist,"" pointing to the statement in the district’s appeal that it had agreed not to include the words ""invocation"" and ""benediction"" in the graduation program distributed at the event. The panel sent the case — which included more than simply the injunction request — back to the district court, and on Feb. 9, 2012, it was settled. On the issue of speeches at graduation, the settlement says the district will not include a prayer as part of the official program or invite nonstudent speakers that it ""has reason to believe will proselytize, promote religion, or disparage the religious beliefs (or lack thereof) of students or members of the community during their remarks."" Student speakers will, however, be allowed to pray or ask the audience to join them in prayer. For its part, Wood said, the district agreed to honor ""the students’ right to free expression whether it be religious or otherwise, taking careful steps to clarify that it’s not the district’s speech or sponsorship."" For example, if a student leads a prayer at the ceremony, district officials must remain seated. Our ruling To recap, Gingrich’s claim is that Biery ""issued a ruling that … not only could the students not pray at their graduation, if they used the word ‘benediction,’ the word ‘invocation,’ the word ‘God,’ asked the audience to stand or asked for a moment of silence, he would put the superintendent in jail."" The judge’s ruling did not broadly say students could not pray. However, his order prohibited students speaking at the graduation from leading the audience in prayer or delivering ""a message that would commonly be understood to be a prayer."" Gingrich is close on this part. Also, the judge told the district to banish ""benediction"" and ""invocation"" from the event. The rest of Gingrich’s claim, including its crescendo reference to putting the superintendent in jail, has weaknesses. The order did not bar ""God"" from any mention during the ceremony, only ruling out the phrase ""in God’s name we pray."" The judge’s order barred students from asking the audience to stand, presumably in preparation for organized prayer, but it did not forbid a moment of silence. The punch line of Gingrich’s primary-night claim — that the Texas order said the superintendent would be jailed if his ruling was violated — overstates things. The order lists incarceration or ""other sanctions"" as possible penalties, though nothing as a certainty, and doesn’t specify the superintendent as potential inmate. Also, the punishment language appears to have been standard.
17816	No doctors who went to an American medical school will be accepting Obamacare.	"Coulter said that ""no doctors who went to an American medical school will be accepting Obamacare."" Nothing in the law bars American-trained physicians from treating newly insured people under Obamacare. It’s a ridiculous claim -- one with a whiff of xenophobia."	false	National, Health Care, Pundits, Ann Coulter,	"Conservative commentator Ann Coulter is not known for mincing words, but a recent column prompted many PolitiFact readers to contact us, seeking a fact-check. In the Oct. 9, 2013, column -- titled, ""Democrats to America: We Own the Government!"" -- Coulter pummels Democrats over provisions of President Barack Obama’s health care law. We were most intrigued by one claim, since we hadn’t heard it before -- that ""no doctors who went to an American medical school will be accepting Obamacare."" Really? We tried to ask Coulter through her speaker’s bureau if she could provide any evidence for this, but we did not receive a reply. We are sure the claim wasn't intended as a joke, because it's included in a bullet-point list of straightforward criticisms of the law. So let’s start by looking at the claim literally. Is there any provision of the Affordable Care Act that would prevent U.S.-trained doctors from accepting ""Obamacare"" patients -- that is, patients who secure insurance through the marketplaces that are a centerpiece of the law? We feel comfortable, both from talking to experts and from our years of reporting on the law, that there is no such provision. If there were, it would probably be ripe for challenge on constitutional grounds. In fact, when we asked experts for their reaction to this claim, their responses included words such as ""outrageous,"" ""ridiculous"" and ""ludicrous."" ""Of course there's nothing in the law that would bar any doctor from seeing any patient,"" said Katherine Baicker, a health economist at the Harvard School of Public Health. So, no dice on the literal reading of her claim. Still, we wondered whether there was some other tiny, buried grain of truth in what Coulter claimed. Is the idea that American-trained doctors will be pickier about accepting insurance? There is some evidence that medical practices are wary about taking patients from plans sold on the marketplace. In September, the Medical Group Management Association -- a trade group for medical-practice executives -- surveyed 1,000 physician groups that collectively employ 47,500 doctors. The survey asked, among other things, ""Does your practice plan to participate with any new health insurance products sold on an ACA exchange?"" Only 29 percent of respondents gave a definitive ""yes."" That rate is twice as high as the share that that said ""no"" (14 percent) but less than those that were still weighing their options (40 percent). The top reasons? A fear of bureaucratic regulations, low reimbursement rates and the need to collect payment from patients with higher deductibles. However, it’s important to remember that this study is not evidence that can be used to support Coulter’s specific claim, because it says nothing about foreign-trained doctors. In fact, the closer you look at the issue of foreign-trained doctors, the less plausible Coulter’s claim becomes. According to a 2010 study by the American Medical Association, about 26 percent of physicians in the United States were trained in other countries. This number includes both foreign-born doctors who trained overseas and Americans who received their medical education in other countries. But tough licensing requirements for foreign-trained doctors -- requirements that won’t be changed by Obama’s law -- are keeping the number of foreign-trained physicians low. A key barrier is the need to obtain a residency in the United States, even if an applicant had practiced or had a residency overseas. According to the New York Times, just 42 percent of foreign-trained immigrant physicians who applied for residencies through the leading matching service succeeded, compared to 94 percent of those who had trained in the United States. With such high barriers to entry, it’s not credible that a flood of foreign-trained doctors will suddenly swoop in and, without the help of a single American-trained doctor, serve each one of the newly insured patients who bought policies on the new marketplaces. ""I haven't seen any study that would suggest that American-trained doctors would be disproportionately less likely to see the newly insured,"" Baicker said. And even if there were such evidence, ""disproportionate is a far cry from ‘none,’ "" said Gail Wilensky, the former head of Medicare and Medicaid under President George H.W. Bush. ""There is no limit to the nonsense that some are saying. This borders on the absurd."" Our ruling Coulter said that ""no doctors who went to an American medical school will be accepting Obamacare."" Nothing in the law bars American-trained physicians from treating newly insured people under Obamacare. It’s a ridiculous claim -- one with a whiff of xenophobia -- that merits a ."
6179	‘No human is limited’: Kipchoge runs sub-2 hour marathon.	Roger Bannister, 1954. Eliud Kipchoge, 2019?	true	AP Top News, Roger Bannister, Health, Eliud Kipchoge, General News, Entertainment, Sports - Europe, Oddities, Lifestyle, Sports, Kenya, Olympic Games, Sports - Africa, Vienna	Like the sub-four minute mile, running a marathon in less than two hours had seemed impossible — until Saturday. But this time there’s an asterisk: Olympic champion Kipchoge performed his feat under conditions so tightly controlled to maximize his success that it won’t appear in the record books. The 34-year-old Kenyan completed the 42.195 kilometers (26.2 miles) in 1 hour, 59 minutes, 40.2 seconds at the INEOS 1:59 Challenge, an event set up for the attempt. Ahead of the event, Kipchoge even compared the feat to being “like the first man on the moon.” Afterward, he drew comparisons to Bannister, the late Briton who 65 years ago became the first athlete to run a mile in under four minutes. “It is a great feeling to make history in sport after Sir Roger Bannister,” Kipchoge said. “I am the happiest man in the world to be the first human to run under two hours and I can tell people that no human is limited. I expect more people all over the world to run under two hours after today.” HE. HAS. DONE. IT. @EliudKipchoge is the first human to run a marathon in less than two hours! His official time of 1:59:40 is now immortal.#INEOS159 #NoHumanIsLimited pic.twitter.com/wD6clIzHM0 With all variables tailored to his advantage, it was still the full marathon distance but it was no regular marathon race, which means his jaw-dropping finishing time will not be ratified by IAAF. Different to an ordinary race, event organizers had set a nine-day window to be flexible and stage the run in the best possible weather conditions. Also, Kipchoge was supported throughout his run by 36 pacemakers who accompanied him in alternating groups, with five athletes running ahead of him in a V-shape and two others closely following. Unlike a normal race, a timing car just in front of the pack also helped keep the scheduled pace, and was equipped with a laser beam, projecting the ideal position on the road, parts of which also had painted stripes to indicate the optimum running line. Furthermore, Kipchoge received drinks handed over by a cyclist to prevent him from having to slow down. Even though his attempt was never meant to set an official world record, Kipchoge was understandably delighted and twice punched his chest in celebration while smiling when he finished. “That was the best moment of my life,” he said, before adding that he trained 4 ½ months for his extraordinary race against the clock. “The pressure was very big on my shoulders. I got a phone call from the president of Kenya.” In a statement, President Uhuru Kenyatta said: “Hearty congratulations, Eliud Kipchoge. You’ve done it, you’ve made history and made Kenya proud. Your win today will inspire future generations to dream big and aspire to greatness.” Kipchoge said his mission went beyond athletics. “We can make this world a beautiful world and a peaceful world,” he said. “The positivity of sport. I want to make it a clean sport and an interesting sport.” Kipchoge was cheered by thousands along the course in Prater Park and there were celebrations in his home country before he had even finished. Hundreds of joyous Kenyans brought traffic to a standstill in the middle of the capital, Nairobi, as they gathered to watch the end of the run on a large screen. People pumped their fists, clapped and fell to their knees as Kipchoge cruised to the finish line. Situation on the ground in Eldoret Uasin Gishu county as @EliudKipchoge approached the finish line🎉🎉💪💪 #Eliud159 #NoHumanIsLimited @MichKatami @iaaforg @INEOS159 @humphkj pic.twitter.com/ac2NbCACzy In Kenya’s running mecca of Eldoret, called the home of champions, hundreds of people burst on to the streets in celebration. “We should line up the entire road from the airport to Nairobi. Receive him like the hero he is,” prominent activist Boniface Mwangi said on Twitter. Running at an average pace of 2 minutes, 50 seconds per kilometer (around 4:33 per mile), Kipchoge was 11 seconds ahead of schedule halfway through his run. He then maintained his tempo until the pacemakers left him for the final 500 meters, where he sped up. “I was really calm, I was just trying to maintain the pace,” said Kipchoge, adding he was never in doubt about breaking the barrier. “For me it was not 50-50, it was 90%.” Jim Ratcliffe, founder of the chemicals company backing the attempt, exchanged high-fives with Kipchoge after the finish. “He even accelerated in the final kilometer, he is a superhuman,” Ratcliffe said. “I can’t believe he’s done it. He did the first half in less than an hour and then he’s just done that again.” Organizers said normal anti-doping regulations were in place and that Kipchoge and all the pacemakers were being tested in and out of competition by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU). The team behind the event “has ensured all athletes involved in the project are undergoing extensive intelligence-led testing that has been pioneered by the partnership between Abbott World Marathon Majors and the AIU,” they said in a statement to The Associated Press. The Prater Park in the Austrian capital offered long straights, protected from the wind by high trees, for most of the 9.6-kilometer course, which Kipchoge completed more than 4 times. It was his second attempt at breaking the two-hour barrier, after missing out by 26 seconds at a similar event on the Formula One track in Monza, Italy, in May 2017. Kipchoge, who took Olympic gold in Rio de Janeiro in 2016 and has won 10 of his 11 marathons, holds the official world record of 2:01:39 since shattering the previous best mark by 78 seconds in Berlin last year. In the near-perfect circumstances at the meticulously planned attempt, Kipchoge shaved almost two minutes off that time. Long-time coach and mentor, Patrick Sang, a former Olympic and world steeplechase silver medalist, said it was “really exciting.” “I am happy for him and what he has achieved. He has inspired all of us that we can stretch our limits and that we can do more than we think we can do,” Sang added. Under Sang’s guidance, Kipchoge won gold in the 5,000 meters at the world championship in 2003, the start of a distinguished track career which includes Olympic bronze and silver medals from 2004 and 2008. After missing out on qualification for the 2012 London Olympics on the track, Kipchoge switched to the marathon and has since been pushing the boundaries of the discipline. But he still faces one big challenge — to run under two hours in a regular marathon race. ___ Associated Press writer Tom Odula in Nairobi, Kenya contributed. ___ More AP sports: https://apnews.com/apf-sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
30596	The accused school shooter in Florida is a Dreamer, a DACA recipient, or undocumented.	In the immediate aftermath of a mass shooting on Valentine's Day, social media users began speculating the suspect was undocumented.	false	Horrors, daca, florida, mass shooting	On 14 February 2018, 17 people were killed in a mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, an affluent community north of Miami. Authorities named Nikolas Cruz — a 19-year-old former student of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — as the suspect in custody for the crime. Almost immediately after his name was made public, social media users, apparently inspired by nothing more than a Spanish-sounding surname, began spreading an unfounded claim that he is an undocumented DACA recipient. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program gives people who were brought into the United States as young children temporary authorization to remain legally and DACA recipients are often referred to as Dreamers after proposed legislation. However Cruz was adopted as a small child, along with his younger brother, by a couple with that surname and is not undocumented. Here are examples of such unverified claims that spread on social media in the hours after the tragedy: Source: Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter, now in police custody after Parkland, Florida shooting, who has been identified as 19-year-old Nicolas Cruz – is a “Dreamer”. — Craig R. Brittain for US Senate (R-AZ 2018) 🆒 (@SenatorBrittain) February 14, 2018 Calling it right now, #stonemanshooting suspect is a #DACA recipient as well as a person prohibited from possessing a weapon. Police radio reported his name as Nicholas Cruz. — The Color Of Crime (@Color_Of_Crime) February 14, 2018 Was Florida Parkland shooter, Nicolas Cruz, another #DREAMER?pic.twitter.com/0JMk2bGfpG — Boston🇺🇸Bobblehead (@DBloom451) February 14, 2018 Of course no post-tragedy conspiracy theory would be complete without a healthy dose of xenophobia and paranoia: Shooter confirmed for half Mexican half Muslim and devoutly pro-Bernie, pro socialism, pro antifa and anti Trump #StonemanShooting #nicholascruz — the wolf (@IdentityWolf) February 14, 2018 As has become the morbid pattern after mass shootings in the United States, people looked for clues that the shooter was motivated by an ideology counter to their own or expedient to their own political agendas. At the time of the shooting, lawmakers had been debating about immigration as a whole and the DACA program in particular, going so far as to shut down the government over the issue. Cruz’s immigration status, of course, is a distraction that has no relation to the tragedy. In the 24-hour period since the shooting, potentially pertinent details of his life began surfacing including disturbing social media posts showing him posing with weapons and depicting acts of animal cruelty. He had been expelled from Douglas High School the preceding year for disciplinary issues. Douglas High students said they had believed, due to his troubling behavior, that if anyone was going to open fire at the school it would be Cruz. He had legally purchased an AR-15 firearm about a year ago. The unfounded claim that Cruz is a DACA recipient was hardly the only piece of false information circulating on social media in the immediate aftermath of the incident. A now-restricted Twitter account falsely purporting to belong to former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly spread a false image of a person who is not the suspect (the image’s presence on message boards like 4chan predates the shooting):
1741	In modernizing India, suicide is on the rise among young.	Pinki Chauhan, a straight-A physics and maths student, arrived at her university campus in India shortly after breakfast, poured petrol over her wispy frame and lit a match.The 19-year-old ran screaming across the college grounds in Gurgaon, near the capital New Delhi, before falling to her knees in flames outside the principal’s office. She died a few days later.	true	Health News	Her brother, Arun, said the incident a couple of months ago came after Pinki had been upset after receiving zero marks in an exam, and had been arguing with teachers for her paper to be re-marked. But Pinki’s problems ran much deeper. Highly ambitious, she was anxious she wouldn’t fulfill her dreams. At the same time she’d been under pressure from some family members to follow a more traditional route - to marry and settle down. “She didn’t know what else to do,” Arun said. “She put a lot of pressure on herself.” Pinki’s story is emblematic of problems confronting India’s young, in a society impatient for progress and yet underprepared for the challenges that inevitably accompany modernity. Cultural issues, discrimination, parental pressure and competition for highly paid jobs are combining to create a suicide epidemic among young Indians. Compounding the problem is a system that barely recognizes mental health issues. India has the world’s highest suicide rate among 15 to 29 year olds, ahead of next-placed North Korea, according to a September report by the World Health Organization. For the first time, suicide is the leading cause of death among young Indian women, overtaking deaths during childbirth, the WHO says.In most parts of the world suicides tend to occur among the most disadvantaged groups, but in India they are happening among better educated young adults living in the most prosperous regions. In south India, where literacy rates and incomes are highest in the country, suicide rates are 10 times higher than in northern states, according to a study published in The Lancet medical journal in 2012. “Aspirations are at a much higher level and society around them is not always keeping pace, so the disappointment is much greater,” said Vikram Patel, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who carried out the research. MENTAL HEALTH NEGLECT As India’s policymakers strive to put the country on a path to modernity, something akin to China’s transformation of the past two decades, the young are feeling the pressure. In particular, young females. Unlike the rest of the world where younger men are more likely to take their lives than women, in India the opposite is the case. Experts put this down to women’s low status in society. Compounding the issue, little help is at hand for those suffering from mental illness. In India, the condition often goes undiagnozed or untreated, and until a couple of months ago the country did not have national mental health policy. Spending on mental health accounts for 0.06 percent of the government’s health budget, the lowest level in the world after Zimbabwe. For most Indians with mental illnesses “there is literally no care available”, Harsh Vardan, then-health minister, said in October announcing plans to build more mental hospitals and train more psychiatrists.In January, the health ministry launched a nationwide program to provide community support for adolescents suffering from mental illness. TRAPPEDIn the run-up to Chauhan’s suicide, conflict had been building on different fronts. Exam pressure weighed heavily on her mind. There were disputes with her parents. She felt trapped between the competing ideals of old India and new.She lived in a village on the edge of Gurgaon where the timeless India of wheat fields and cattle-drawn carts abuts the frantically rising apartment towers of the budding middle class. Chauhan didn’t want to get married as a teenager, the path for most women in her village. In many families, once a woman gets married there is little chance for education and her primary job is to serve her husband’s family. “She had been arguing with her parents, who wanted her to get married, but she was ambitious, she wanted to prove herself and achieve her dreams,” said her brother, Arun. When she scored zero on a physics paper she was crushed, fearing it would blemish her job chances. Chauhan along with other students pleaded with their teachers for the papers to be reassessed. Her university, Government Girls College, declined comment when contacted by Reuters, saying the case was under police investigation. A teacher at the college, who asked not to be identified, said there was a mismatch between student’s expectations and what they were capable of. “We find many students get a shock when they come here because they have been doing well in school and then they don’t get good marks (here).” Another teacher said that while the college provided counseling to students, the high student-to-teacher ratio meant some people missed the safety net. Pinki appeared to fall into that category. Tragically, the college later said that what had pushed her to fatally strike a match was the result of an error. Pinki had in fact passed the exam, and was one of the best students performing in her class.
3584	Petition seeks medical marijuana for ailing household pets.	New Mexico will consider whether to extend its medical cannabis program to help dogs with epilepsy and people with attention deficit disorder.	true	Medical marijuana, General News, Marijuana, Veterinary medicine, Pets, New Mexico	Five new petitions submitted to the Medical Cannabis Advisory Board seek new qualifying medical conditions for patients in the state’s medical marijuana program. The board meets in December. The Department of Health withheld the names of petition sponsors on Wednesday in response to a request for public records. One petition cites recent studies in veterinary medicine to recommend the authorization of cannabis for animals coping with seizures. The petition uses a YouTube video of an epileptic dog named Tecumseh to illustrate the suffering associated with the condition. Cannabidiol derived from hemp or marijuana already is widely marketed for pets. New York and California have recently considered allowing veterinarians to recommend medical cannabis for pets, said Carly Wolf, a policy coordinator with the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. No state appears to explicitly allow that yet. The petitioner in New Mexico says that authorizing cannabis for animals would minimize the danger of animal abuse by regulating the use of medical marijuana with pets and provide new treatment tools to veterinarians. Another petition would allow marijuana for attention deficit hyperactivity syndrome, anxiety disorder and Tourette’s syndrome. New Mexico’s medical cannabis program, initiated in 2007, has served nearly 80,000 patients who cope with conditions from cancer to HIV. A large majority are diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder or severe chronic pain. A coalition of state legislators is developing a proposal to legalize recreational marijuana after a bill this year stalled in the state Senate. A working group appointed by the governor is seeking to ensure affordable access to medical marijuana if recreational marijuana is approved. That could mean tax-free medical cannabis in the future and possibly subsidized sales for impoverished patients. Several states have seen an exodus of patients from medical marijuana programs and issues of affordability with the authorization of recreational marijuana.
34501	Despite a decision that halted construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), Energy Transfer Partners continued to build it and accept a $50,000 daily fine.	The earliest versions of the rumor that DAPL construction would continue unabated despite the Army Corps of Engineers’ decision referenced the statement from ETP. Although the company said it is “fully committed to ensuring that this vital project is brought to completion” and that it expects to complete construction of the pipeline “without any additional rerouting in and around Lake Oahe,” it did not indicate any plans were in place to move ahead in violation of the referenced “policy decision.” The statement also did not indicate that the company intended to incur a $50,000 daily fine and continue DAPL construction without the easement. That aspect of the claim mirrored age-old urban legends involving a wealthy entity opting to pay fines to the detriment of public health, a rumor that dates back to at least 2005 and (falsely) attributes similar behavior to Coca-Cola.	unproven	Politics Legal, army corps of engineers, dakota access pipeline, dapl	On 4 December 2016, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied an easement necessary for Energy Transfer Partners to complete the Dakota Access pipeline, seemingly bringing an end to months of protests over the project. By the next day, widespread rumors asserted that the decision was not as final as it seemed. In the above-reproduced examples from e-mail and social media, claims have appeared that DAPL was “still under active construction,” and that Energy Transfer Partner had opted to incur a $50,000 daily fine for continuing construction on the pipeline. No specifics accompanied the rumor, such as how the fine might be incurred, or what would happen if DAPL were constructed without the approval to do so. One version of the rumor referenced a statement purportedly issued by ETP on the ACOE’s DAPL decision of 4 December 2016: Just spoke to Matt who is standing at the front line right now. Easement was denied, however DAPL released a statement saying that they will continue drilling and just pay the $50,000 a day fine. We are not free of this black snake yet, relatives. Late on 4 December 2016, ETP did release a statement on the ACOE’s denial of the necessary easement: Energy Transfer Partners, L.P. (NYSE: ETP) and Sunoco Logistics Partners L.P. (NYSE: SXL) announced that the Administration’s statement today that it would not at this time issue an “easement” to Dakota Access Pipeline is a purely political action – which the Administration concedes when it states it has made a “policy decision” – Washington code for a political decision. This is nothing new from this Administration, since over the last four months the Administration has demonstrated by its action and inaction that it intended to delay a decision in this matter until President Obama is out of office. For more than three years now, Dakota Access Pipeline has done nothing but play by the rules. The Army Corps of Engineers agrees, and has said so publicly and in federal court filings. The Corps’ review process and its decisions have been ratified by two federal courts. The Army Corps confirmed this again today when it stated its “policy decision” does “not alter the Army’s position that the Corps’ prior reviews and actions have comported with legal requirements.” In spite of consistently stating at every turn that the permit for the crossing of the Missouri River at Lake Oahe granted in July 2016, comported with all legal requirements, including the use of an environmental assessment, rather than an environmental impact statement, the Army Corps now seeks to engage in additional review and analysis of alternative locations for the pipeline. The White House’s directive today to the Corps for further delay is just the latest in a series of overt and transparent political actions by an administration which has abandoned the rule of law in favor of currying favor with a narrow and extreme political constituency. The statement’s final paragraph indicated that ETP was not giving up on DAPL, but in no part of that statement did they say that the company would continue to drill. However, it did say that they plan to finish construction of the pipeline as planned, without providing details: As stated all along, ETP and SXL are fully committed to ensuring that this vital project is brought to completion and fully expect to complete construction of the pipeline without any additional rerouting in and around Lake Oahe. Nothing this Administration has done today changes that in any way. It is possible that the company’s statement alongside a clearly speculative response shared (but not written) by prominent protester Dallas Goldtooth prompted the rumor: WILL THIS ACTUALLY STOP CONSTRUCTION? Debatable. It would be illegal for Energy Transfer Partners to drill under the Missouri, but that’s not to say they won’t do it and opt to pay whatever legal penalties they incur. That would be a fairly shocking move on their part but they’ve hinted they may be open to doing it. It’s easy to imagine that an incoming Trump administration would do their best to make the penalties as minimal as possible.
4097	Infant death related to whooping cough in Minnesota.	Minnesota health officials say the death of an infant has been linked to whooping cough.	true	Health, General News, Infectious diseases, Whooping cough, Minnesota	The baby died in November after being hospitalized for three months, the Department of Health said Wednesday. The last pediatric death related to pertussis, or whooping cough, was in 2013. The department’s preliminary data shows that in 2019 there were 25 cases of pertussis in babies less than 6 months. Of those, eight were hospitalized, and two of the hospitalized cases were severe. Anyone can get pertussis, but it is most severe in infants, according to health officials. They are emphasizing the importance of vaccination, especially during pregnancy, to help prevent pertussis. Kristen Ehresmann, the department’s director of infectious disease, said the tetanus, diphtheria and acellular pertussis, or Tdap, vaccine is recommended during the third trimester of each pregnancy. When the Tdap vaccine is given during pregnancy, the mother’s body creates antibodies to fight off the pertussis bacteria, Ehresmann said. Some of those antibodies are passed to the baby before birth and offer short-term protection until the baby can be vaccinated.

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