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2121
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WHO to tackle alcohol misuse, binge drinking.
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Health ministers agreed on Thursday to try to curb binge drinking and other growing forms of excessive alcohol use through higher taxes on alcoholic drinks and tighter marketing regulations.
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true
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Health News
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A waiter carries beer mugs on the opening day of Schweizerhaus beer garden in Vienna March 15, 2010. REUTERS/Heinz-Peter Bader The global strategy to reduce the harmful use of alcohol was adopted by consensus at the annual assembly of the World Health Organization (WHO). Its 10 main policy recommendations, drawn up after two years of negotiation, are not binding but serve as guidance to WHO’s 193 member states. “Alcohol contributes to accidents, mental health problems, social problems and harms third parties,” said Bernt Bull, a senior advisor in Norway’s health ministry. Nordic countries, many of which already have tight restrictions on alcohol sales, spearheaded the initiative at the United Nations agency. A relatively high excise tax on alcoholic beverages and regulations limiting their availability was helping to reduce alcohol-related diseases in Norway, he said. The WHO estimates that risks linked to alcohol cause 2.5 million deaths a year from heart and liver disease, road accidents, suicides and various cancers — 3.8 percent of all deaths. It is the third leading risk factor for premature deaths and disabilities worldwide. “Alcohol is usually not perceived as a killer, though it is,” Shekhar Saxena, director of WHO’s department of mental health and substance abuse, told a news briefing. Despite growing abuse and youth drinking at an earlier age in many countries, half of WHO members do not have a national alcohol policy, according to WHO expert Vladimir Poznyak. “The biggest changes might happen in those countries which have no alcohol control institutions or regulatory framework for alcohol consumption,” he told reporters. SELF-REGULATION The Global Alcohol Producers Group noted the strategy recognized the importance of self-regulation by industry in helping to address alcohol abuse. Its members recognized “the harmful effects of irresponsible drinking patterns” and would continue efforts to promote self-regulation of advertising as well as curbs on drink driving and illegal underage and excessive drinking, a statement said. Britain’s Diageo, the world’s largest alcoholic drinks group, and Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewer and maker of Budweiser, are among its members. In a separate statement, brewing giant SABMiller gave a cautious welcome to the plan, but warned: “SABMiller is unconvinced there is sufficient evidence to support policy options such as minimum pricing and high excise taxes that may result in unintended, negative public health consequences which stem from the growth of the illicit alcohol market.” The WTO strategy document says the harmful use of alcohol has a serious effect on public health and is one of the main risk factors for poor health globally. There is strong evidence that a low limit for blood alcohol concentration (0.02 to 0.05 percent) is effective in reducing drink-driving casualties, it says. It underlined the importance of a legal framework for restricting the sale and serving of alcohol, a minimum age for buying drinks and “mandated health warnings” on alcohol labels. Setting a minimum price per unit gram of alcohol has been shown to reduce consumption and alcohol-related harm, it said. But overly tight restrictions on alcohol availability may promote the development of a parallel illicit market, it warned. The Global Alcohol Policy Alliance — a coalition of medical professionals, researchers and non-governmental organizations — welcomed the WHO decision as historic and “long overdue.” “The strategy highlights the effectiveness of focusing on policies regarding pricing, availability and marketing of alcohol,” it said in statement.
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3567
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Nutrition Hub starts a nutrition bar craze in Memphis area.
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Salted Caramel, Reese’s, Blueberry Muffin, Cinnamon Toast and Strawberry Cheesecake. The menu at the new Nutrition smoothie bars reads like an ice cream shop or bakery, not a health food shop.
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true
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Health, Nutrition, Memphis
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While the flavors may be sinful, the shakes are not. Each protein shake has just 200 calories and only 11 to 15 grams of carbs. As an added bonus, each shake offers 24 grams of protein and 21 vitamins and minerals. “It’s everything you need in a healthy meal,” said Seth McMurry, Nutrition Hub and Nutrition Bar co-owner. This new smoothie bar concept that is spreading across the Memphis area started as a family affair. Seth McMurry and his wife, Cymber, along with Seth’s brother Nathan McMurry and his wife, Katelyn, opened The Nutrition Hub in Germantown in April. It was the first of these smoothie bar and meal replacement shops to open in the area. In September, the couples opened Nutrition Bar in Laurelwood in East Memphis. The names of the two businesses are slightly different, but each offers a similar menu. The focus is on shakes, teas and aloe shots. The shakes are creamy, filling and surprisingly tasty. They taste like a sinful milkshake, not a healthy meal replacement. “Protein shakes have been a big part of our life since we are athletes,” Katelyn said. “These are healthy, not chalky and taste like a dessert.” The protein shakes are made with water and ice as the base. Using water instead of milk helps keep the calories down. Each shake is made with protein powder and Healthy Meal meal-replacement shake mixes from Herbalife Nutrition. “We currently have three different protein powders and 11 healthy meal flavors,” Seth said of how they can make so many shake flavors. The current menu boasts about 40 flavors, and Seth is working on adding approximately 20 more flavors. “These shakes give you everything you need in a full meal without the calories,” Seth said. “Our shakes are a way to get a lot of protein in one meal with low calories,” Katelyn added. “When exercising, you need protein to build your muscles back up.” So what to order? Start with some of the owners’ favorites. Katelyn’s favorite flavors are the Blueberry Muffin and Cinnamon Toast. Nathan goes for the Elvis, a chocolate, peanut butter and banana concoction, or Salted Caramel. At $8 per shake, it’s a quick and affordable fast food. The tea at the Nutrition Bar and Hub is not your traditional Earl Grey or chamomile tea. Instead it’s a fruity-flavored energy tea that can be ordered cold or hot. “It gives you extra energy like a double espresso. But unlike espresso, it is a clean, natural energy, so you will have no jitters,” Seth said of the stevia-based teas that have only 15 calories and no added sugar. Each tea is made from a combination of a tea and an energy supplement. Seth recommends Pomegranate + Pomegranate, Chai + Orange, and Pomegranate + Orange. You can also add a “booster” to your tea. They offer seven different boosters that range from a collagen “Beauty Booster” to an “Immune Booster” with vitamin C and zinc. Teas are $4, with an extra charge for the boosters. When you visit the Nutrition Bar or Hub, Seth recommends you start with an aloe shot. Made from aloe vera, this shot is for gut health. Benefits include soothing the stomach, relieving indigestion and supporting nutrient absorption. The shots come in mango, mandarin and cranberry and are just $1. Unlike aloe water, which can contain jelly-like pieces of aloe plants, these shots are smooth and go down easily. “I have had customers tell me they been able to stop taking acid reflux medication after taking aloe shots daily,” Seth said. Customers can also purchase products to make their own shakes, teas and even aloe shots at home. As part of Herbalife Nutrition’s sales program, business owners like the McMurrys can receive a percentage of sales from other businesses that use their account to get up and running. “As they are more successful, we are more successful,” Katelyn said of this win-win to help others open a similar concept. “Plus, the percentage comes from Herbalife, not directly from their business.” In addition to the health aspect, Seth said a big reason the family started the business was to build community. “Each location has a big bar so folks can sit and talk with each other and us,” he said. “I know most of my customers here in Germantown by name.” Each location has comfortable seating, both at the bar as well as throughout the store. The atmosphere encourages guests to hang out for a bit, as they sip their shake. “All of us are athletes and we have been drinking protein shakes for years,” Seth said. “We have friends in Little Rock who have a similar business, and we wanted to create the same thing here in Memphis.” Katelyn said they also saw a big need in Memphis. “We are trying to make a difference by offering a healthy and fast alternative.” The McMurrys are growing their business by helping others open similar concepts. Last year, the McMurrys partnered with another family to open a third location on Main Street. Downtown Nutrition is co-owned by couple Preston and Jackie Butts and Anthony Hollins, Jackie’s brother. The menu and feel of the new location, which opened in early December, reminds you of the other two locations. Jackie described the business relationship with the McMurrys as “each is independently owned but we all work together.” “I liked the community aspect of the business, the health awareness piece and the impact it can have on a community,” Preston said. “Plus, we live Downtown, and we wanted to give a great product to the underserved health and fitness community in Downtown Memphis.” “We are opening a second location for us in Oxford, Mississippi, within the month,” Preston said. The new location will be much larger than the Downtown location, at more than 2,000 square feet, and is located at 1101 Merchants Drive, across the street from the Dick’s Sporting Goods. Ole Miss students will be happy to know that the shakes will be on the university’s meal plan. ___ Information from: The Commercial Appeal, http://www.commercialappeal.com
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25997
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Viral image Says Anthony Fauci “is married to Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister.”
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Anthony Fauci isn’t married to Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister; he’s married to Christine Grady.
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false
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Crime, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Viral image,
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"Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has become a favorite target of social media misinformation. With the recent arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell, who was charged in connection with the sexual abuse case against the late, disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, we find another unsubstantiated attack against Fauci. ""Fauci is married to Ghislaine Maxwell’s sister,"" reads the description of a photo of Fauci and his wife, Christine Grady, that is being shared on Facebook. The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The photo is from 2016, when Fauci and Grady attended a state dinner at the White House. But while Maxwell is a British socialite who was born in France, Grady is a New Jersey native. Grady’s father, the former mayor of Livingston, N.J., was John H. Grady. His wife of 63 years at the time of his death in 2013 was Barbara, a former assistant dean at Seton Hall Law School. Maxwell’s parents were Robert Maxwell, a British publishing giant, and Elisabeth Maxwell, who was born in France and established a scholarly journal called Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Elisabeth Maxwell was born Elisabeth Jenny Jeanne Meynard. Robert Maxwell changed his name multiple times during his life, but he never went by the name John H. Grady.ost ."
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21755
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State agencies have not identified one single instance where groundwater has been damaged due to hydraulic fracking.
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State Sen. Kris Jordan says 'fracking' hasn't contaminated Ohio groundwater
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true
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Environment, Ohio, Energy, Kris Jordan,
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"As public debate across the country has bubbled up in recent months over environmental concerns related to hydraulic fracturing — or fracking as it’s becoming widely known — proponents of oil and gas drilling have come rushing to its defense. The process involves pumping millions of gallons chemical-laced water and sand deep underground into horizontal wells under high pressure to crack open shale, enabling natural gas extraction. On June 15, 2011, state Sen. Kris Jordan, a Delaware Republican, defended the process in a floor speech on behalf of legislation that would throw open state parkland to oil and gas drilling. During his speech, Jordan portrayed the growing concerns of the public — which have been fanned by ""Gasland,"" a controversial documentary on the environmental issues related to the fracking process — as overblown as he pointed to a long track record of safe fracking in Ohio. ""State agencies have not identified one single instance where groundwater has been damaged due to hydraulic fracking,"" Jordan said. With drilling likely coming soon to Eastern Ohio where the Utica and Marcellus shale formations await possible exploration, PolitiFact Ohio decided to check out Jordan’s claim. We started with Jordan, who stood by his statement. ""From what I understand, none of the cases has come from fracking itself being involved in contaminating any water,"" said Jordan. ""Any problems that have happened have been well construction issues."" Jordan said he consulted with several people in Ohio’s oil and gas industry including Tom Stewart, a top official with the Ohio Oil and Gas Association for his information. Stewart and other oil and gas supporters directed us to several recent statements from state and federal EPA officials such as one made recently by Lisa Jackson, President Barack Obama’s top federal Environmental Protection Agency administrator. During a House committee hearing, Jackson said evidence was limited on whether hydraulic fracturing can affect water tables and aquifers. ""There is evidence it can certainly affect them. I am not aware of any proven case where the fracking process itself impacted water although there are investigations ongoing,"" she told lawmakers. The U.S. EPA began a study in January 2011 of possible environmental problems caused by fracking. The first findings from that study aren’t expected until late 2012. ODNR officials also said they haven’t seen water contamination from fracking in Ohio. ""ODNR’s Oil and Gas Program has not identified any instances of groundwater contamination related to hydraulic fracturing since the technology was first used here in the early 1950s,"" ODNR spokeswoman Heidi Hetzel-Evans said in an email. When considering these statements, however, it’s important to understand exactly what they are saying—and also what they are not saying. What they are saying is that there are no documented cases of groundwater contamination directly from the process of pumping the chemical-laced water and sand into the ground to break the rock apart. They are not talking about the actual drilling of the hole that is fracked or the construction of the drilling well that is used for the fracking process. ""There is definitely a lot of misinformation out there,"" said Hetzel-Evans. ""I don’t think the general public understands that the drilling process isn’t fracking."" And while there aren’t any groundwater problems due directly to fracking in Ohio, the drilling of wells to prepare for the fracking process has lead to water contamination in at least one case in Ohio. Meanwhile, the first study of its kind in the country is turning up similar evidence. In December 2007, a home exploded in a residential neighborhood in Bainbridge Township in Geauga County, Ohio. A panel assembled by ODNR ultimately found that a poorly-constructed well casing — think of it as a cement seal around the drill hole -- allowed gas to migrate upwards along the edge of the casing and up the pipe. Ultimately, this gas seeped into the home in Bainbridge and caused the explosion. Meanwhile, there is new evidence outside of Ohio that poorly constructed drilling wells used for fracking are leading to problems with groundwater. Duke University researchers found that methane levels were 17 times higher in water wells within one kilometer of hydraulic fracking sites in New York and Pennsylvania than in water wells farther away. The methane levels in those wells showed the same characteristics as methane produced from fracking, as opposed to naturally-occurring methane. Robert Jackson, the professor of environmental sciences who headed up the research, said that the ""methane migration"" was likely caused by problems with the casing around the drill hole rather than from the methane migrating thousands of feet through the rock from the fracking zone. But he wonders whether the new high-pressure water treatment used in fracking could be the cause. ""What I haven’t seen anyone address is whether hydraulic fracturing makes it more likely to cause well casings to leak,"" he said. ""It may be the high pressure involved in fracking makes leaks more common and bigger."" Meanwhile, the gas exploration boom in Pennsylvania has begun turning up evidence that the shale gas exploration involving the fracking process could be contaminating groundwater supplies with methane. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection ordered Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. to provide and maintain potable water and gas mitigation for residents in Dimock, Pa., who sued over wells polluted in 2009 with methane gas and other contaminants. Another group, from Lenox Township, Pa., sued Houston-driller Southwestern Energy Co. in 2010 claiming their wells were contaminated with fracking fluids. Both suits are tied up in court. So where does that leave Jordan’s claim that ""state agencies have not identified one single instance where groundwater has been damaged due to hydraulic fracking."" That statement squares with ODNR’s records. But regulators in Ohio have linked water contamination problems in at least one incident to other aspects of drilling such as the construction of the drilling wells. That’s additional information that provides clarification. On the Truth-O-Meter, Jordan’s statement grades out at ."
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393
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Sanofi and Regeneron cut list price of cholesterol drug by 60 percent.
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Sanofi SA and Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc said on Monday that they will slash the U.S. list price of their potent but expensive cholesterol fighter Praluent by 60 percent, as the drugmakers follow a similar move by rival Amgen Inc in hopes of increasing use of the drug.
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true
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Health News
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The new list price for Praluent will be $5,850 a year, matching the price Amgen set when it lowered the list of its competing drug, Repatha, in October. Sanofi and Regeneron said they expect the lower-priced Praluent to be available for pharmacies to order in early March. They said the new price should improve patient access and result in lower out-of-pocket costs for U.S. consumers. Praluent and Repatha belong a class of injectable biotech drugs called PCSK9 inhibitors that dramatically lower bad LDL cholesterol and reduce the risk of heart attacks and death. Sales of both have been severely constrained by onerous roadblocks to patient access put up by insurers looking to limit spending on the expensive drugs. They were approved in 2015 with initial list prices of more than $14,000 a year. In March of last year, Regeneron and Sanofi said that they would be willing to charge less for their drug if insurers agreed to reduce barriers for high-risk heart patients. A few months later they struck a deal with Express Scripts, now part of Cigna Corp, to make the drug available to that company’s customers at a price in the range of $4,500 to $6,600 a year. The United States, which leaves drug pricing to market competition, has higher prices than in other developed countries, where governments directly or indirectly control costs. That makes it by far the world’s most lucrative market for manufacturers. Congress has been targeting the pharmaceutical industry over the rising cost of prescription drugs for U.S. consumers, particularly since Democrats took over the House of Representatives in January. Executives from at least six drugmakers plan to testify at a Senate hearing on rising prescription drug prices later this month. Drug pricing is also a top priority of the administration of President Donald Trump, who had made it a central issue of the 2016 presidential campaign.
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31395
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DNC staffer Seth Rich sent 'thousands of leaked e-mails' to WikiLeaks before he was murdered.
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NBC News identified the “third party” who hired Wheeler to investigate Rich’s murder as Ed Butowsky, a Dallas-based financial adviser, who is also a Fox News contributor.
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false
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Politics Conspiracy Theories, DNC, fox news, murder
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On 16 May 2017, Fox News published an explosive report linking the death of murdered Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich to tens of thousands of e-mails allegedly found on his laptop computer. Fox reported that the e-mails were internal Democratic National Committee messages Rich transferred to Gavin McFayden, a now-deceased investigative journalist, who then sent them to the document-dumping web site WikiLeaks. The Fox report claimed that there was a conspiracy between the local police department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the D.C. mayor’s office to cover up the investigation: An FBI forensic report of Rich’s computer — generated within 96 hours after Rich’s murder — showed he made contact with WikiLeaks through Gavin MacFadyen, a now-deceased American investigative reporter, documentary filmmaker, and director of WikiLeaks who was living in London at the time, the federal source told Fox News. “I have seen and read the emails between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks,” the federal investigator told Fox News, confirming the MacFadyen connection. He said the emails are in possession of the FBI, while the stalled case is in the hands of the Washington Police Department. The revelation is consistent with the findings of Wheeler, whose private investigation firm was hired by a third party on behalf of Rich’s family to probe the case. “My investigation up to this point shows there was some degree of email exchange between Seth Rich and WikiLeaks,” Wheeler said. “I do believe that the answers to who murdered Seth Rich sits on his computer on a shelf at the DC police or FBI headquarters.” The federal investigator, who requested anonymity, said 44,053 emails and 17,761 attachments between Democratic National Committee leaders, spanning from January 2015 through late May 2016, were transferred from Rich to MacFadyen before May 21. Rich, a 27-year-old DNC staffer, was shot twice in the back at 4:20 in the morning on 10 July 2016 amid the run-up to the presidential election. Although none of his possessions were taken from him, Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police consider it a botched robbery attempt, because there had been a spate of muggings in Rich’s Bloomingdale neighborhood at the time. Almost two weeks later, on 22 July 2016, WikiLeaks dumped a load of hacked e-mails that would embarrass the DNC and create a media frenzy in the months before the election. The timing of the incidents, as well as Rich’s employment at the DNC, led to conspiracy theories tying his death to the leak. Adding to the confusion, WikiLeaks offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of Rich’s killer. Since his death, Rich’s family has consistently denied rumors linking him to WikiLeaks. The Fox News story about Rich came one day after a report by the Washington Post accused President Donald Trump of spilling classified information to Russian envoys during their visit to the Oval Office on 10 May 2017. Brad Bauman, a spokesperson for Rich’s family, told us he believed the Fox story was motivated by a desire to deflect attention away from the Post report: I think there’s a very special place in hell for people that would use the memory of a murder victim in order to pursue a political agenda. The Fox story uses two sources: Rod Wheeler, a Fox News contributor characterized as a private investigator in the article, and an unnamed “federal investigator.” On 15 May 2017, Wheeler speculated to local news outlet Fox5 that there was critical information on a computer that belonged to him, which was either in the possession of the FBI or MPD: The police department nor the FBI have been forthcoming. They haven’t been cooperating at all. I believe that the answer to solving his death lies on that computer which I believe is either at the police department or at the FBI. I’ve been told both. Wheeler claimed to have a source at the FBI that “confirmed” Rich was linked to WikiLeaks, and a source inside the police department who told him MPD was told to “stand down” from the investigation. In a follow-up interview on Fox News, Wheeler implied that a conspiracy reaching to the highest levels of the city’s government was at work: I want to find out who caused that man’s death so we can put them behind bars. But if there’s somebody in politics, if there’s somebody in government, whether it’s the mayor’s office or anywhere else in this city that’s involved, you better believe they’re going to be dragged in and questioned. We were able to confirm the FBI is not investigating Rich’s murder — it is an MPD investigation. We reached out to Wheeler by e-mail and have yet to receive a response, but since the Fox story was published, he has been quoted in several news articles recanting his original story. He told BuzzFeed News the following day, “That story on Fox 5 last night was inaccurate. I don’t even know where the computers are.” On 19 May 2017, the Rich family attorney sent Wheeler a cease and desist letter saying he had violated a contract forbidding him to publicly disclose information about the case and threatening to sue if he continues to do so. We contacted the office of Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser to ask if there was a lurid connection between the mayor, the DNC, and Rich’s death, and got a flat denial from spokesman Kevin Harris: All claims made by Mr. Wheeler are false and take fake news to a whole new level. The family deserves better and everyday MPD continues to work diligently to solve this case. We also asked the police department about Wheeler’s claims that the department was stepping back from the investigation. A spokesperson for the department denied it and said that the investigation remains active: The assertions put forward by Mr. Wheeler are unfounded. The Metropolitan Police Department’s (MPD) Homicide Branch is actively investigating Mr. Rich’s murder and we continue to work with the family to bring closure to this case as we do with all homicide investigations. If there are any individuals who feel they have information, we urge them to call us at 202-727-9099 or text us at 50411. The department is offering a reward of up to $25,000 for information on this case that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible. Bauman said in a statement that Wheeler was not authorized to speak on behalf of the family, and added the family only learned of the new round of accusations through news reports: Even if tomorrow, an e-mail was found, it is not a high enough bar of evidence to prove any interactions, as e-mails can be altered and we’ve seen that those interested in pushing conspiracies will stop at nothing to do so. We are a family who is committed to facts, not fake evidence that surfaces every few months to fill the void and distract law enforcement and the general public from finding Seth’s murderers. The services of the private investigator who spoke to press was offered to the Rich family and paid for by a third party, and contractually was barred from speaking to press or anyone outside of law enforcement or the family, unless explicitly authorized by the family. McFayden, an investigative journalist who was an early defender of WikiLeaks, died in October 2016 after a battle with lung cancer. Although the Fox report claims Wheeler is a private investigator, a search for Wheeler’s name on the public lookup tool for licenses in Washington D.C. yields no results. We also checked for a license under his name in Maryland, where his firm Capitol Investigations is based. This search also yielded no results. When we asked MPD whether he was indeed a homicide detective with the department, they only confirmed he once worked there starting in 1990. He was dismissed by the department in 1995, but a spokesman did not explain why. We sent an e-mail to Wheeler through his firm and have not yet received a response.
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25681
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“... in 2013 Obama determined Social Security would not send checks through the USPS, because it was not secure”
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A law shifted Social Security benefits and statements to primarily paperless, electronic delivery by March 2013, but some recipients can choose mailed checks. The shift to a paperless system was promoted as cost-saving and eco-friendly. Hundreds of thousands of Americans still receive their Social Security checks by mail.
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false
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Social Security, Facebook Fact-checks, Facebook posts,
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"President Donald Trump has made a target of the U.S. Postal Service by raising spurious concerns about the security of mail-in ballots. And now misinformation targeting the Postal Service is gaining traction on social media. One Facebook post claims that there were concerns about the security of U.S. mail service when President Barack Obama was in office. ""Did you know in 2013 obama determined Social Security would not send checks through the USPS, because it was not secure!?"" the post reads. 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.) During the Obama administration, Social Security payments did largely shift to electronic delivery. But the post errs in saying the shift was due to concerns about the security of the Postal Service. Each month, the U.S. Treasury sends payments for Social Security and Supplemental Security Income benefits to 69 million recipients around the country. Until 2010, about 16% were done by mailed checks and 84% were done electronically through direct deposit or through debit cards that could be automatically replenished. In April 2010 — just a few days before Earth Day — the Treasury Department announced a rule that would increase the number of electronic Social Security transactions and decrease the number of mailed checks by 2013. The change was expected to save ""more than $400 million and 12 million pounds of paper in the first five years alone,"" according to the Treasury Department press release. ""By moving to all-electronic payments, Treasury will save hundreds of millions of dollars and substantially reduce our environmental impact, making this a win-win for all Americans,"" then-Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said in a statement. News coverage of the new rule focused on the fact that electronic deposits would save taxpayer money, reduce the Social Security Administration’s environmental impact and provide increased security for the payments. In a 2011 Social Security Administration press release, Michael Astrue, commissioner of Social Security, said getting benefit payments by direct deposit or on a debit card was safe and reliable. ""You don't have to worry about your check being lost or stolen, and your money is available immediately on your payment date,"" Astrue said. ""There is no need to wait for the mail to arrive."" Testifying before a Senate committee in 2013, Theresa Gruber, assistant deputy commissioner for operations at the Social Security Administration, pointed out that electronic Social Security payments do not face the same disruption that mailed checks face from natural disasters such as hurricanes. She also said paper checks are more likely to be lost or stolen than electronic deposits. A spokesperson for the Social Security Administration told PolitiFact that the push to switch to primarily direct deposit was not at all related to concerns about the security of mailing checks via the Postal Service. ""Direct deposit is a secure and convenient method for people to receive their benefits,"" the spokesperson said. ""Their money is immediately available in their account at their financial institution, making a separate trip to their bank with a paper check unnecessary — especially important for people with transportation or mobility issues, in bad weather, or when natural disasters strike."" He added that the 2013 shift was part of a government-wide initiative led by the Treasury to move to electronic benefit delivery. The plan was to ""phase out"" paper checks by March 1, 2013. But in some circumstances, people could apply for waivers that would allow them to continue receiving paper checks. By 2014, 98.6% of Social Security payments were made via direct deposit. Today, 99.1% of Social Security payments are made by direct deposit, leaving about 550,000 payments to be made via mailed checks each month, according to Social Security Administration data. Although officials referenced ""lost"" and ""stolen"" checks as a potential benefit of the switch to direct deposit payments, PolitiFact found no evidence the Obama administration enacted the rule because of concerns with the security of the Postal Service, as the post claims. A Facebook post said, ""in 2013 Obama determined Social Security would not send checks through the USPS, because it was not secure."" The claim is misleading. Officials said the switch to direct deposit Social Security payments was environmentally prudent and would save millions of taxpayer dollars. Officials also said direct deposit payments would prevent checks from being lost or stolen, but we found no evidence anyone argued the Postal Service was not a secure way to deliver checks. More than half a million people still receive Social Security checks by mail today."
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8252
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Johnson tells UK: Stay apart or face tougher coronavirus measures.
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Britain may need to impose curfews and travel restrictions to halt the spread of the coronavirus if people do not heed the government’s advice on social distancing, Prime Minister Boris Johnson warned on Sunday.
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true
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Health News
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Pubs, clubs and gyms have already closed, but social media on Sunday was awash with pictures of people congregating in parks and food markets, apparently ignoring advice to stay two metres apart. Parks in London are already closing down as authorities struggle to slow the advance of coronavirus through the population, the biggest public health crisis since the influenza pandemic of 1918. So far 281 Britons have died from coronavirus. The spiralling number of infections means Johnson is in a race against time to prevent a repeat of the tragedy in other countries, including Italy where the death toll reached 5,476 on Sunday. Johnson was blunt as he delivered his message to the public. “Stay two metres apart. It’s not such a difficult thing. Do it,” he said. “Otherwise.... there is going to be no doubt that we will have to bring forward further measures and we are certainly keeping that under constant review.” Johnson said tougher measures such as curfews needed to be timed right for maximum impact. “After all, when the epidemic is hardly spreading at all that’s not the moment to impose curfews and prohibitions on movement and so on and so forth,” he said. “You’ve got to wait until, alas, it’s the right moment to do it and that’s always been how we’ve been guided.” In another sign of the times, McDonald’s Corp (MCD.N) announced on Sunday it will temporary shut all of its more than 1,300 restaurants in Britain and Ireland by Monday evening. “This is not a decision we are taking lightly, but one made with the well-being and safety of our employees in mind as well as the best interests of our customers,” the company said in a statement on Twitter titled “See you soon.” The latest official statistics show the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Britain rose to 5,683 on Sunday, up from 5,018 on Saturday. Speaking alongside Johnson, communities minister Robert Jenrick said the government will write to 1.5 million of its most vulnerable citizens to demand they stay at home for the next 12 weeks to shield themselves from the virus. Senior doctors in Britain are already thinking about how they may need to ration critical care beds and ventilators if resources fall short. Johnson, who has asked British manufacturers to produce ventilators for coronavirus sufferers at short notice, said “far, far more” would be needed. Britain said on Friday that engineering companies had come up with an emergency ventilator prototype to treat coronavirus patients that could be approved next week, though one industry source told Reuters full production was several weeks away. Around 12% of adult critical care beds in hospitals in England are occupied by patients with COVID-19, England’s deputy chief medical officer, Jenny Harries, said while speaking alongside Johnson. “That will change drastically as we go through the epidemic,” she added.
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8918
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The shadow of SARS: China learned the hard way how to handle an epidemic.
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The emergence of a new virus in central China has brought back painful memories of another virulent respiratory disease that wreaked worldwide havoc and left the country’s health authorities struggling to rebuild public trust.
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true
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Health News
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But global health experts said China has come a long way since 2003, when it was accused of trying to cover up a major outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), a previously unknown virus believed to have emerged from the wet markets of Guangdong province before spreading into major cities. As many as 774 people died in an epidemic that reached nearly 30 countries. Now, nearly 17 years later, government officials insist they have learned from past mistakes as they try to contain the latest deadly viral pneumonia strain, which has infected 440 people, mostly in Wuhan city, and killed nine since it was first identified at the end of last month. Liu Heng, an adviser to China’s cabinet said it took the country about four or five months to announce the SARS outbreak to the public, and this time it had taken less than a month. “We are doing much better now... We are paying greater attention to preventing the epidemic,” he told reporters. Li Bin, vice minister at the National Health Commission, told reporters on Wednesday that since 2003, China had established comprehensive new procedures to handle major health threats. “With relatively complete prevention and control systems for sudden and infectious diseases in place since SARS ... and with the support of the broad masses of the public, we are confident of victory,” he said. A key factor watched by experts both at home and overseas has been the rapid disclosure of information about the genetic structure of the virus and the way it has spread through the population. Li said Beijing had learned from its experiences with SARS and was now sharing all relevant data with international stakeholders, including the World Health Organization (WHO). “The speed with which this virus has been identified is testament to changes in public health in China since SARS and strong global coordination through the WHO,” said Jeremy Farrar, a British infectious diseases specialist who also worked on combating SARS. Experts say the failures of SARS were caused by an under-resourced and overcentralised health system with little experience of infectious diseases and no information disclosure mechanisms. Local governments were also reluctant to take responsibility for the rapid spread of infections. Beijing has since established the China Information System for Disease Control and Prevention that hooks up hospitals and clinics nationwide and reports outbreaks in real time. It has also set up specific mechanisms for new pneumonia strains. “China... has developed excellent disease surveillance systems since SARS, including real-time emergency department surveillance for severe acute respiratory infections, so this will help with rapid identification of new cases,” said Raina MacIntyre, head of the biosecurity research programme at the Kirby Institute in Sydney. Vice-minister Li said China’s health infrastructure was also now better able to cope, with the country ready to deploy several “back-up” hospitals that could be put into action should the number of infected people spike further. The silence on the part of authorities during the early stages of SARS helped create a rumor mill that sparked panic in several major cities and brought the economy to a standstill. One estimate suggested China’s economy slowed by around 1-2 percentage points in 2003 as a result of SARS. This time, officials have been warned they face public ignominy if they cover up any infections, and the message throughout state media has been about the need for greater transparency. Communist Party-backed tabloid Global Times said on Wednesday that “concealment would be a serious blow to the government’s credibility and might trigger greater social panic”. President Xi Jinping has vowed to curb the spread of the virus, which has erupted just before the nation begins its biggest holiday this week, the Lunar New Year, when hundreds of millions people travel. Nevertheless, some people said Chinese officials are cracking down on those who spread news about the disease online. Social media is still awash with cover-up claims, and some doubts are still being expressed about the accuracy and timeliness of China’s data. “We can only judge the information we are being provided and have no way to determine if any information is not being disclosed,” said MacIntyre. And the big test of lessons learned could be still to come, when new year travel could create countless new vectors for the potential transmission of the virus. Adam Kamradt-Scott, an infectious diseases expert at the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney, said China has “come a long way” since the outbreak of SARS. “I’m not sure that we could expect more of them at this stage in the outbreak, particularly when they are understandably focused on responding to the outbreak and trying to contain it ahead of the Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations,” he said.
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22242
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The costs of cancer and all affiliated issues are over $20 billion a year to this state.
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Texas Rep. Jim Keffer says costs of cancer and related issues are over $20 billion a year in Texas
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true
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Health Care, Texas, Jim Keffer,
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"Opposing a proposal to reduce the amount of money that the state puts toward cancer research, Republican state Rep. Jim Keffer of Eastland focused on the financial impact the disease has on Texans. Addressing the measure’s author, GOP Rep. Rob Orr of Burleson, Keffer said in House debate April 3: ""Do you know … that the costs of cancer and all affiliated issues are over $20 billion a year to this state? So that is the reason that this is such a great program. We are having successes, and, really, to tamper with or harm it now … it’d be detrimental."" We wondered whether Keffer was right about cancer costs to Texas. First, some background: In 2007, with the backing of Gov. Rick Perry and bicycling superstar and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong, the Legislature voted to ask Texans to approve the sale of $3 billion in bonds over 10 years to finance cancer research grants. Voters gave the OK that fall, and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas was created to dole out the money. Orr’s 2011 measure, which the House rejected, would have reduced the annual sale of the cancer bonds by one-third over the next biennium. In response to our inquiry, Keffer’s chief of staff, Ky Ash, told us that the $20 billion cost statistic was a reference to May 2007 testimony by consultant and lobbyist Billy Hamilton, a former deputy state comptroller, before the Senate Health and Human Services Committee. During that hearing, which we reviewed online, Hamilton said he was not speaking for any group or agency in addressing ""the financial aspects"" of cancer in Texas. He pointed to a 2001 study commissioned by the Texas Comprehensive Cancer Control Coalition, a public-private group that is now known as the Cancer Alliance of Texas, and conducted by a research team led by David Warner, a professor of health and social policy at the University of Texas’ LBJ School of Public Affairs. The study estimated the total economic impact of cancer on Texas in 1998 as about $14 billion. According to the study, about $5 billion of the total represented ""direct costs,"" including hospitalization and other treatments, cancer screenings and medications, plus spending on research and other cancer-related programs by state agencies, nonprofit groups and private foundations. The remaining $9 billion reflected ""indirect costs"" — in this case, the value of the economic activity lost because someone was sick with or died from cancer. For example, the researchers estimated how much income and other economic benefits people who died of cancer in 1998 would have produced had they lived to their age group’s average life expectancy. So, Hamilton testified, the $14 billion total included numerous costs — including to the government, to families, in lost wages and in insurance — ""rolled together."" He then told the senators that he had drawn on the study to make a conservative estimate for the cost of cancer in Texas in 2008: ""just under $30 billion."" Noted: That’s quite a bit greater than Keffer’s aired figure. In an e-mail, Hamilton told us that he no longer has the original information that supported his analysis, but he said he reached his estimate by updating the 2001 figure using newer data on cancer incidence in Texas, plus demographic and economic figures and information on cancer costs. Hamilton said he believed his estimate was conservative because his price assumptions were closer to the general inflation rate than the increase in the costs of medical care, which is greater. Next, we looked for other research on the costs of cancer in Texas. Christine Mann, an assistant press officer at the Texas Department of State Health Services, pointed us to an analysis conducted by researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. It put the 2007 cost number at about $22 billion: $10 billion in direct costs and $12 billion in indirect costs. The March 2009 report, commissioned by the Texas Cancer Registry, says the researchers’ methodology combined an adaptation of a recently published National Cancer Institute approach with methods used by the LBJ School’s Warner in 2001. From 1998 to 2007, the more recent report says, the cost of cancer in Texas increased for several reasons, including an increase in the number of older Texans, rising health care costs and more expensive treatments. For information about cancer trends in Texas, we turned to the Texas Cancer Registry, a collaboration between the Texas Department of State Health Services, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas. A February 2010 report says that although cancer rates (the number of new cases per 100,000 people) have been declining in recent years, the number of new cancer cases has been rising because of ""the increasing size and aging of the Texas population."" According to the Cancer Registry, there were 95,607 new cancer cases in Texas in 2007, the most recent data available. That’s an increase of 3.6 percent from the year before. Finally, we found an analysis of the 2010 costs of cancer in the state. Done by the Perryman Group, a Waco-based economic analysis firm, the report updates the direct and indirect cost estimate to about $25.3 billion. However, the report, conducted for the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas, says Perryman ""developed a more comprehensive measure of the cost of cancer in terms of Texas business activity,"" including both losses stemming from treatment, illness and death — as the earlier studies measured — and ""spillover effects,"" which it considers ""further reductions in business activity."" Those additional reductions push estimated Texas economic losses to more than $150 billion and nearly 700,000 jobs, the Perryman report says. Finally, we looked for national expertise on the costs of cancer at the state level, finding none. Summing up: Keffer claimed that cancer and its related issues cost Texas upwards of $20 billion a year. Most of that figure is pegged to indirect costs. That said, the most recent research we found consistently pegged the total annual cost at considerably more than $20 billion."
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9422
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Gene therapy for rare retinal disorder to cost $425,000 per eye
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Getty Images This CNN story covers the FDA’s third-ever approval of a gene-editing treatment — Luxturna, which treats a rare eye condition that can lead to blindness — from the angle of its exorbitant cost. Treatment costs aren’t covered as often as they should be in the popular press, even though they can drive insurance premium hikes, high deductibles, and other healthcare costs, so this story is a refreshing outlier. However, the article inadequately explains how the treatment is done, how well it works, and for how long — all crucial information when deciding whether an effectively $850,000 procedure is worth it. (Note: Many stories, including CNN’s, used “$425,000 per eye”–but treatment appears to be recommended for both eyes.) This story matters for two reasons: 1) the extreme price tag of the therapy, and 2) the novelty of the treatment, being only the third gene-editing technology ever approved by the FDA for use in humans. The cost especially makes it important for news stories to explore how effective the therapy is, and the unknowns–such as the long-term performance. This story provided lots of important details, but not quite enough to help a person answer: Is it worth nearly a million dollars?
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mixture
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gene therapy
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The price tag of this new treatment is the focus of this article. The story also discusses the models of treatment proposed by the manufacturer. Well done. Two things, though: It wasn’t clear from the story if the patients in the trial had both eyes treated, which would make the more accurate price tag $850,000 vs the talking point of “$425,000 per eye.” And does this cost include everything–surgical care costs (operating room, anesthesia, etc), physician payments, and lab costs? The story stated that 27 of 29 phase 3 clinical trial patients experienced “a gain in functional vision as assessed by a mobility test performed in a maze.” That’s not enough to give readers a sense of scope of the benefits. How did that compare to the control group? And what was everyone’s vision like before? Given the extreme cost of the therapy, it would be useful to provide plenty of details to explain if the cost is worth the results. For example, it would have been helpful to point out that the way the researchers measured success–completing a maze–is not the gold standard for measuring vision improvement. Instead, measuring visual acuity, such as the ability to read different-sized letters, is more common. Why was it different for this study? The story mentioned potential harms of the therapy. We do think the story should have mentioned that we don’t know much about the long-term effects and safety of using this technology, however. The story didn’t provide sufficient discussion of the evidence–what are the limitations to the evidence conducted so far? The story made it clear that this is a very rare genetic disease that leads to blindness. The story squeaked by on this criterion, because it quoted a news release by the Patients for Affordable Drugs group that provides important counterbalance to the drug company’s claims. The story would have been stronger if it had contained more input from an independent medical expert who could comment on the veracity of the evidence itself. [Editor’s note: This criterion was updated on 1/11/18 to reflect the correct rating. It was previously rated “Not Satisfactory.” This change does not affect the overall rating.] Effective alternative treatments for RPE65 don’t exist yet, and — while this may seem obvious to savvy readers who understand gene-editing technologies — the story should have clearly stated this for the vast majority of people who aren’t familiar with the basics. The story didn’t discuss where one can have access to this treatment. It likely will be very limited. And will it be available to anyone with this condition, or will some people be ruled out? The story noted how Luxturna is only the third gene-editing treatment ever approved by the FDA. It also gave readers important context by briefly noting and comparing the new drug to another gene-editing treatment and its cost and payment methods, i.e. Kymriah for leukemia cancer. Good job. This story contained information not available in the Spark Therapeutics news release.
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13990
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For the amount of money Hillary Clinton would like to spend on refugees, we could rebuild every inner city in America.
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"Trump said that Clinton wants to spend hundreds of billions on refugees and for that money, ""we could rebuild every inner city in America."" Trump’s campaign provided no supporting numbers. Clinton has not said how much she would spend on refugees, but the Obama administration request for FY 2017 is about $2.2 billion. That figure could increase for Clinton, as she has said she wants to take in more Syrian refugees. If it doubles or even triples, it is nowhere near ""hundreds of billions."" It is also a scant fraction of the price tag to rebuild America’s inner cities. There is no comprehensive tally of what it would take to deal with substandard housing and infrastructure, but we quickly found a backlog of about $225 billion in projects. Trump’s numbers are off by a huge margin."
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false
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Immigration, National, Urban, Donald Trump,
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"A day after Hillary Clinton gave her list of Donald Trump’s many flaws on the economy, Trump returned the favor. In a speech from New York, he called her a ""world-class liar"" who has ""spent her entire life making money for special interests."" Trump delivered a broadside on Clinton’s immigration policies — to him, they represent ""mass amnesty"" and ""open borders"" — and blended those faults with her plans for refugees. ""Hillary also wants to spend hundreds of billions to resettle Middle Eastern refugees in the United States, on top of the current record level of immigration,"" Trump said. ""For the amount of money Hillary Clinton would like to spend on refugees, we could rebuild every inner city in America."" We asked the Trump campaign where he got those spending numbers and did not hear back. But as you’ll see, whatever number Clinton could conceivably spend resettling refugees come nowhere near what it would cost to rebuild America’s urban centers. The cost of refugees The only numbers we could find for Clinton’s budget plans were $15 million for immigrant integration services (from her campaign website), and $582 million to resettle 70,000 refugees. The second figure comes from an analysis of federal refugee spending by the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures. We used that as one starting point. President Barack Obama seeks to increase the number of refugees accepted from around the world to 100,000. That includes 10,000 Syrian refugees. Clinton has said she wants to take in 65,000 Syrians. If we add her higher number to Obama’s, and we assume she wouldn’t trim his plan, we can estimate a total number of refugees of 155,000. Scaling up the dollar amounts, we can roughly estimate a total cost for her plan of about $1.3 billion. That is about half a percent of the ""hundreds of billions"" that Trump claimed. We also looked at the Obama administration’s FY 2017 budget request for refugee and entrant assistance. That is a bit under $2.2 billion for 100,000 refugees. When you add in the additional costs for more resettled Syrian refugees, you might get a budget in the neighborhood of $3 billion to $4 billion. The cost of rebuilding inner cities Trump used a term that generally refers to low-income urban neighborhoods. What he meant by rebuilding them is unclear. It could include rebuilding substandard housing, fixing aging water systems, investing in schools and job training, creating an enticing business environment, or any number of aspects of life where low-income communities are lacking. Solomon Greene, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, an academic center in Washington, told us he knows of no comprehensive study that added up the rehabilitation needs of every American city. He did, however, note that alone there is a $26 billion backlog to repair the nation’s public housing. ""It’s a very conservative estimate,"" Greene said. ""It only includes public housing, and that’s a small share of the low-income housing stock."" Not all public housing is in urban centers, but Greene, a housing specialist, told us that the great majority of it is. New York City alone could use billions of dollars in improvements. The Center for an Urban Future, a research and policy group supported by funders ranging from MetLife to the Child Welfare Fund, estimated that fixing the Big Apple’s aging infrastructure would cost about $47 billion over five years. Researchers at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, an urban planning research center in Cambridge, Mass., found a number of estimates for different urban needs. The Federal Transit Administration estimated in 2013 that it will cost $85.9 billion to bring the nation’s transit systems to a state of good repair. The Council on Great City Schools said facility needs for schools in the 50 largest cities will cost $85 billion. The institute’s director George McCarthy estimated that it would cost $975 million just to demolish abandoned structures in Detroit. We could go further, but the numbers are clear. Barely scratching the surface of the needs of America’s cities, we find a price tag of over $225 billion. Even if Clinton doubled the Obama administration’s funding for refugees, the money would barely make a dent. Our ruling Trump said that Clinton wants to spend hundreds of billions on refugees and for that money, ""we could rebuild every inner city in America."" Trump’s campaign provided no supporting numbers. Clinton has not said how much she would spend on refugees, but the Obama administration request for FY 2017 is about $2.2 billion. That figure could increase for Clinton, as she has said she wants to take in more Syrian refugees. If it doubles or even triples, it is nowhere near ""hundreds of billions."" It is also a scant fraction of the price tag to rebuild America’s inner cities. There is no comprehensive tally of what it would take to deal with substandard housing and infrastructure, but we quickly found a backlog of about $225 billion in projects. Trump’s numbers are off by a huge margin.
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21861
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"The WIC program ""is an incredibly cost effective program, serving nearly 10 million Americans each year and costing less than $100 per person. In my district, more than 18 percent of residents suffer from food insecurity and depend on WIC to make ends meet."
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Rep. Cicilline says WIC costs $100 per person and 18 percent of people in his district depend on it
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false
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Rhode Island, Children, Federal Budget, Health Care, Poverty, Women, Taxes, David Cicilline,
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"Democratic U.S. Rep. David Cicilline has been arguing against cutbacks in social programs proposed by the Republican majority, a campaign he has highlighted in a YouTube video posted on June 15 and available on his website. It shows him speaking on the floor of the House a day earlier opposing a reduction in funds for the WIC program, which stands for Women, Infants and Children. WIC provides nutritious food to low-income women who are pregnant or have recently delivered a baby, and children under age 5 who might not be getting nutritious meals. ""If the majority [Republican] party has their way and denies necessary funding to a critical safety net for some of our nation's most vulnerable citizens, nearly 1,000 women, infants and children in Rhode Island's First District will be denied the assistance they need to survive,"" said Cicilline. ""WIC represents the most basic obligation we have to our fellow citizens most in need -- food and nutrition. On top of that, it's an incredibly cost effective program, serving nearly 10 million Americans each year and costing less than $100 per person. In my district, more than 18 percent of residents suffer from food insecurity and depend on WIC to make ends meet."" We wondered whether 18 percent of the residents in the 1st Congressional District were actually on the WIC program, a number that seemed high. It seemed even higher when we considered Cicilline's statement that 10 million Americans are covered by the WIC program -- about 3 percent of the U.S. population. That would mean the people in his district are six times more likely to have WIC coverage than the rest of the country. We were also surprised that the program might be so inexpensive. You can't buy a lot of groceries for $100 a year. So we asked Cicilline's office for the congressman's sources. It didn't take long to discover that the $100 figure was wrong. His staff sent us to the Congressional Progressive Caucus, where staffer Minh Ta said Cicilline had relied on a dollar amount that the caucus had miscalculated. Because the program cost $6.4 billion last year and covered 9.2 million people, the actual amount was nearly $700 per year per person. ""Honest mistakes are made,"" said Ta. Then there's the number of people covered by the program. Rounded properly, the number should be 9 million, not nearly 10 million as Cicilline asserted on the House floor. And what about the statement that ""more than 18 percent of residents [in the 1st Congressional District] suffer from food insecurity and depend on WIC to make ends meet""? Last March, the Food Research Action Center (FRAC) in Washington, D.C., analyzed data from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a 2010 survey in which more than 352,000 people -- including 1,396 in Cicilline's district -- were asked: ""Have there been times in the past 12 months where you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?"" According to FRAC, 18.0 percent of the people in the United States and 18.4 percent in Cicilline's district responded ""yes,"" an indication that they suffered from ""food hardship."" That matches Cicilline’s ""food insecurity"" number. But is it really true, as Cicilline asserted, that these people depend on WIC to make ends meet? FRAC said it didn't know how many in the food hardship group were on WIC. So we turned to the Rhode Island Department of Health, which administers the program locally. Spokesman Annemarie Beardsworth said the department didn't have a breakdown of WIC recipients by congressional district because it lists its data by community and Providence is divided between two congressional districts. A total of 9,858 Providence residents receive WIC, some in Cicilline’s district, some in U.S. Rep. James Langevin’s district. Outside of Providence, 10,665 people are covered by WIC in the communities Cicilline represents. Even if we assumed that every WIC recipient in Providence lives in the 1st District, that would total 20,523 people, or 3.9 percent of the 524,000 residents in the 1st District, a far cry from the 18.4 percent cited by Cicilline. If Providence's WIC recipients were evenly divided between Cicilline’s and Langevin's districts, the percentage drops to 3.0 percent. So the percentage cited by Cicilline's was at least four and a half times too high. Katie Vinopal, a policy analyst for FRAC, explained why the number of people with ""food hardship"" is larger than the number of WIC recipients. The food hardship questions ""can be capturing elderly people,"" she said. ""We can be capturing people who can't get on the WIC program [because they're adult males, children over age 4 and women who are not pregnant or new mothers]. We're also capturing people who are income ineligible."" For someone to say that people suffering from food insecurity depend on WIC to make ends meet ""is not right,"" said Vinopal. While we were at it, we looked at Cicilline's assertion that the proposed GOP cuts would remove a critical safety net for ""nearly 1,000 women, infants and children in Rhode Island's First District."" To back that up, the congressman's office sent us a June 8, 2011, news release from the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It warned that 200,000 to 350,000 women and young children could lose their WIC benefits next year. In Rhode Island, it said, the estimate ranged from 600 to 1,000. But because the 1st District covers about half the state's residents, the numbers Cicilline quoted for his district should have been closer to 300 to 500. Not only that, the page of the news release that Cicilline's office didn't send us -- we found the original online -- makes it clear that the threat to WIC beneficiaries isn't just from the proposed Republican cuts. It's also from rising food costs. The low national estimate of 200,000 presumes a 2-percent rise in prices; the high estimate of 350,000 assumes a 5-percent increase. We asked Zoe Neuberger, coauthor of the center’s study, whether budget cuts or projected food price increases played the biggest role. She said that, based on the information at the time Cicilline made his comment, if the Republican cuts were approved and food prices did not increase, 150,000 low-income women and children will lose their food assistance. So the direct effect of the proposed Republican cuts in Cicilline's district extrapolated to about 225 women and children, not 1,000. Food price increases would account for another 75 to 275 cases. The day after we heard from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Cicilline spokewoman Jessica Kershaw wrote us to report that the congressman had misspoke when he said 1,000 would be affected. ""He meant to say that those 1,000 Rhode Islanders could be from across the state -- not just his district,"" she wrote. ""What’s most important -- and what the Congressman sought to stress in his remarks -- is that there are too many people who are going hungry and cannot afford enough food for their household and he strongly opposes cuts to programs that benefit the people who need those programs the most,"" Kershaw said. That's the message behind Cicilline’s statement. We certainly understand that people going hungry because they can’t afford food is a serious problem. But the bottom line is that Cicilline, in making an impassioned argument for a program meant to address the issue got most of the checkable facts in the statement wrong. Eighteen percent of the people in his district do not depend on WIC to make ends meet -- it's no higher than 3.9 percent. The cost of the WIC program is not $100 per recipient per year -- it's closer to $700. The number of Americans covered by the program isn't nearly 10 million -- it's closer to 9 million -- a relatively small error, but wrong, nonetheless. And if the GOP cuts were to take effect, the number of people affected in his district wouldn't be close to 1,000 -- it would be more like 225. They say that two wrongs don't make a right. We say that this many Falses in 46 seconds warrants a (Get updates from PolitiFactRI on Twitter. To comment or offer your ruling, visit us on our PolitiFact Rhode Island Facebook page.)"
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14527
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"There have been multiple media reports about (Donald Trump's) business dealings with the mob, with the mafia."
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"Cruz said, ""There have been multiple media reports about Donald's business dealings with the mob, with the mafia."" While it’s important to note that these connections were not atypical in the real estate and casino businesses in the 1980s, Cruz’s statement is accurate. Media reports have linked Trump to mafia bosses and mob-connected business associates for decades."
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true
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National, Candidate Biography, Crime, Ted Cruz,
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"Donald Trump ""seems terrified to release his taxes"" because they may reveal his net worth, his donations to liberal causes, or something even seedier, Sen. Ted Cruz suggested on Meet the Press. ""There have been multiple media reports about Donald's business dealings with the mob, with the mafia,"" Cruz said Feb. 28. ""Maybe his taxes show those business dealings are a lot more extensive than has been reported."" Pressed by host Chuck Todd to back up his claim, Cruz cited reports by ABC and CNN. A Cruz spokesman forwarded us several other media reports detailing the real estate developer’s alleged ties to organized crime. The Trump campaign did not get back to us. Is Cruz right that the Donald has worked with a few Dons in his career? HELP US RAISE $15,000 TO HIRE AN EXTRA FACT-CHECKER It’s important to note that Trump hasn’t been charged with any illegal activity, and it’s reasonable to argue that he was unaware or even a victim in some cases. But Cruz has a point that the mogul has been linked to the mob for decades. Mob control a ‘fact of life’ Before we detail Trump’s alleged ties, none of this proves that Trump was happy doing business with the mafia or even in cahoots with them at all. La Cosa Nostra had a virtual monopoly on concrete in New York at the time Trump was adding his name to its skyline in the 1980s. And the mafia’s control over building supplies and labor unions meant that the crime families had a hand in most construction projects in Manhattan. Trump and other major developers ""had to adapt to that situation"" or build elsewhere, said James B. Jacobs, a mafia expert who was part of a state task force on organized crime. ""That was the fact of life, that was the way it was,"" he told PolitiFact. ""The contractors and developers weren’t pure victims. You could bribe the mob-controlled union leaders and get relief from the more arduous conflicts. But we had no information that Trump was any different."" That being said, Trump’s business dealings with the mob or mob-related characters are widely documented. Let’s run through them. Mafia concrete for Trump Plaza Trump was first tied to the mafia in the 1980s, when a $7.8 million subcontract for Trump Plaza was awarded to S&A Concrete, according to Fortune. The company, as Cruz correctly says, was partially owned by Anthony ""Fat Tony"" Salerno, the boss of the Genovese crime family. Trump himself acknowledged as much in a December 2015 interview with the Wall Street Journal, admitting that S&A Concrete was ""supposedly associated with the mob."" ""Virtually every building that was built was built with these companies,"" he said, adding, ""These guys were excellent contractors. They were phenomenal. They could do three floors a week in concrete. Nobody else in the world could do three floors a week. I mean they were unbelievable. Trump Tower, other buildings."" When Salerno was indicted in 1986, the charges specifically mentioned Trump Plaza. Salerno’s 1992 obituary ends with a nod to the luxury highrise and 15 other Manhattan buildings. Trump World Tower, supported by the Quadrozzi Concrete Company, is also tangentially related to La Cosa Nostra. The head of the company, John Quadrozzi Sr., was tied to the Lucchese crime family and indicted for making illegal payoffs to the mob in 1992. TIME and Daily Beast have speculated that Trump Tower was also built with mafia influence, though the evidence is less concrete. Atlantic City partnerships Trump’s alleged mob dealings were not confined to New York. According to reports from the Huffington Post and Philadelphia Inquirer, Trump made a deal in Atlantic City with Kenneth Shapiro, an associate of mob boss Nicky Scarfo, and mob-connected labor boss Daniel Sullivan. Trump seemed aware of this, calling Shapiro ""a third-rate, local real estate mafia"" and Sullivan ""the guy who killed Jimmy Hoffa."" Nonetheless, in 1981, Trump leased a portion of the land for Trump Plaza and Casino from a company the two men controlled, according a report by New Jersey gaming regulators. The company refused to cooperate with the authorities, and Trump eventually ended the partnership and bought out their shares. Later Trump brought on Sullivan as a labor negotiator at the Grand Hyatt Hotel and introduced the man to his own banker, according to the Los Angeles Times. Through intermediaries Trump bought the property for the casino from the ""crown prince"" of the Philadelphia mob, Salvatore Testa, for $1.1 million in 1982. Multiple media reports and an unauthorized biography about Trump allege this was more than twice its market value. (Testa purchased the property in 1977 for $195,000.) According to The Federalist, two construction companies controlled by Nicky Scarfo ended up building Trump Plaza and Casino. ""You had contractors that were supposedly mob-oriented all over Atlantic City,"" Trump said when the Wall Street Journal asked him about it, adding that ""every single casino company used the same companies, just I hope you will say that."" A few years later, Trump’s organized crime connections extended overseas. In 1992, a Senate subcommittee named Danny Leung, who was then the vice president for foreign marketing at Trump Taj Mahal, as an associate of the Hong Kong-based organized crime group 14K Triad. ""Leung has also given complimentary tickets for hotel rooms and Asian shows to numerous members and associates of Asian organized crime,"" reads the report, which also identified three other triad-connected business associates or former employees of Trump’s gambling empire. According to gaming regulators, Leung ""flew in 16 Italian organized crime figures from Canada who stole more than $1 million from the casino in a credit scam,"" reported the New York Daily News in 1995. ""The incident was never reported because Trump never filed charges."" Leung, who had a separate contract to bring gamblers from Toronto to the casino, denied the affiliation to organized crime, and his casino and junket licenses were renewed. (The Trump Taj Mahal declared bankruptcy in 1991, and his other Atlantic City properties folded a decade later.) Mob-linked business adviser And there’s Felix Sater, ""a twice-convicted Russian émigré who served prison time and had documented mafia connections"" and the subject of the ABC story Cruz referenced. Sater pleaded guilty to a charge of money laundering in 1998 and was indicted again in 2000 for taking part in a $40 million stock scheme involving four Mafia families, according to the New York Times report. From 2003 to 2007, Sater traveled the country promoting projects for Trump, and his company was a partner in the Trump SoHo hotel. Trump told the Times he ""never knew that."" Three years later, Sater returned to the Trump Organization and had business cards that described him as Trump’s ""senior advisor,"" the AP reported. Trump told the AP that he’s ""not familiar"" with Sater. Our ruling Cruz said, ""There have been multiple media reports about Donald's business dealings with the mob, with the mafia."" While it’s important to note that these connections were not atypical in the real estate and casino businesses in the 1980s, Cruz’s statement is accurate. Media reports have linked Trump to mafia bosses and mob-connected business associates for decades."
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31701
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'Family Matters' star Reginald VelJohnson died of a heart attack in February 2017.
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Headlinen News is a satire site. We use real people to make real funny stories. Chill folks, its all for fun.
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false
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Uncategorized, bowling green massacre, celebrity death hoaxes, headline news network
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On 13 February 2017, the web site HeadlinenNews.com reported that Reginald VelJohnson (best known for his role as Carl Winslow on “Family Matters”) had died of a heart attack: Reginald Vel Johnson, the actor best known as Family Matters‘ Carl Winslow, has died after suffering a heart attack. He was 64. He was loved by the world and he will be missed profoundly,” says Jenkins, 24. “Our entire family thanks you for your thoughts and prayers.” Rumors claim that Vel Johnson was flying from London to Los Angeles on Sunday, Feb. 12, when he went into cardiac arrest. According to the story, paramedics removed him from the flight and rushed him to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for a heart attack. The rumor was given traction by VelJohnson’s appearance in a meme mocking the non-existent “Bowling Green Massacre“: VelJohnson personally debunked the claims on Twitter: Twitter literally trying to kill me! ??? https://t.co/OdRTRJVi7f — Reginald VelJohnson (@rveljohnson) February 15, 2017 Even when I finally pass you can still contact me thru this clock. Photo credit: some weirdo lol pic.twitter.com/ktLhkH83VF — Reginald VelJohnson (@rveljohnson) February 15, 2017 Although VelJohnson’s Twitter account is not verified, it was registered in 2009 and was not likely to be operating as a separate hoax. Even if it were a hoax Twitter account, however, the difficult-to-find “About” page on HeadlinenNews.com has the following disclaimer:
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2886
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Merck's anti-blood clot drug should be approved: FDA review.
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Merck & Co Inc’s experimental blood clot-preventing drug vorapaxar should be approved, based on “robustly positive” clinical trial results, according to a preliminary review of the data by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
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true
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Health News
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The review, posted on the FDA’s website on Monday, comes two days ahead of a meeting of outside medical experts who are expected to recommend whether it should be approved. The FDA usually follows the advice of its advisory panels. The drug, which would be sold under the brand name Zontivity, is designed to prevent heart-related deaths, cardiac arrests and strokes in patients who have had a recent heart attack. It would not be recommended for patients who have previously had a stroke because of an increased risk of bleeding in the brain. Results from a trial known as TRA 2P “are sufficient to establish the effectiveness of vorapaxar for its proposed indication,” the review found. The main safety concern with the drug is bleeding, the review found, though it noted that the rate of fatal bleeding was low in the population for whom the drug is proposed. The FDA did not recommend that the company establish a risk management program, nor did it recommend that the company conduct additional trials following approval. Vorapaxar works by preventing blood cells, known as platelets, from clumping together and forming clots in the arteries, which can lead to heart attacks. Other anti-platelets include aspirin and Plavix, which is made by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. Merck’s drug works in a different way, by inhibiting a receptor known as PAR-1. Each year about 525,000 Americans have heart attacks and about 190,000 have a second heart-related event, according to Merck. Standard therapy to prevent a second episode often includes treatment with aspirin and Plavix. Voraxapar would be given in addition to standard treatment. During clinical trials, safety monitors found that patients who had previously had a stroke were at higher risk of bleeding in the brain and were instructed to stop taking the drug. Merck then focused its analysis on patients who had had a heart attack but no stroke. Merck’s shares rose 2.7 percent to $51.21 in early trading, helped also by news it had initiated its application to market a drug for patients with advanced melanoma. The company also said it is pursuing strategic options for its animal health and consumer businesses and expects to complete any action this year.
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11195
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Hormone therapy may damage hearing
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For the millions of women who take hormone replacement therapy to treat menopausal symptoms, the news that the therapy may damage their hearing may be alarming. Other women who take birth control pills that contain progestin may also be wondering if they are also putting themselves at risk. However, by no means is this recent finding conclusive and this story does little to clear up the confusion. By focusing on “hearing damage” without describing the degree of loss or explaining whether the amount of loss is clinically significant or not, the story crosses the line into disease mongering. The story does not quantify the harms of HRT in terms of hearing loss so the reader cannot know whether the amount of loss is significant to the individual. Furthermore, the story does not adequately describe the nature of the clinical evidence. The story does not explicitly state important details about the design of the recent study. For example, was it prospective or retrospective? The story leaves it up to the reader to infer this detail from a quote from an expert. The story should have been more clear. In addition, the story does not mention the other harms of HRT such as heart attack, stroke or blood clot. However, the story does a good job of quoting multiple, independent sources who provide some much needed perspective.
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mixture
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This criterion is not applicable in this story. The story does not quantify the harms of HRT in terms of hearing loss. Furthermore, the story does not explain whether the amount of loss is significant to the individual. The story does not mention the other harms of HRT such as heart attack, stroke or blood clot. The story does not adequately describe the nature of the clinical evidence. The story does not explicitly state important details about the design of the recent study. For example, was it prospective or retrospective? The story leaves it up to the reader to infer this detail from a quote from an expert. The story should have been more clear on the study design. By focusing on “hearing damage” without describing the degree of loss or explaining whether the amount of loss is clinically significant or not, the story crosses the line into disease mongering. The story does a good job of quoting multiple, independent sources. The story stated: “A study of 124 postmenopausal women found that those taking hormone replacement therapy that included progestin had poorer speech understanding than women who were not taking hormones or who were using estrogen only.” So it at least nodded in the direction of other options, although not in any depth. Nonethless, we’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt on this criterion. Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is clearly available. HRT is clearly an existing therapy. Because the story quoted several independent sources, it appears that the story did not rely solely or largely on a news release.
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1094
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Trump says he is holding big Pharma accountable in opioid fight.
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U.S. President Donald Trump touted progress in the fight against opioid abuse on Wednesday and promised to hold drugmakers accountable for their part in the crisis, a day after his administration brought its first related criminal charges against a major drug distributor and company executives.
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true
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Health News
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America’s opioid epidemic, especially damaging in rural areas where Trump is popular, has been a focus for the Republican president. On Tuesday, the government charged drug distributor Rochester Drug Co-operative Inc and company executives for their role in fueling the epidemic. The company agreed to pay $20 million and enter a deferred prosecution agreement to resolve charges it turned a blind eye to thousands of suspicious orders for opioid pain killers. “We are holding big Pharma accountable,” Trump said at the Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit in Atlanta. Deaths from opioid overdose in the United States jumped 17 percent in 2017 from a year earlier to more than 49,000 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Deaths from potent synthetic opioids like fentanyl surged 45 percent in that time, according to the CDC. Hundreds of lawsuits by state and local governments accuse drugmakers such as Purdue Pharma of deceptively marketing opioids, and distributors such as AmerisourceBergen Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and McKesson Corp of ignoring that they were being diverted for improper uses. Trump said he convinced Chinese President Xi Jinping in a December meeting in Argentina to designate fentanyl as a controlled substance. China last month listed all fentanyl-related substances as controlled narcotics after criticism from Trump, though its government blamed U.S. culture for abuse of the drug and said the amount of fentanyl going from China into the United States was “extremely limited.” “Almost all fentanyl comes from China,” Trump said on Wednesday. “They are going to make it a major crime.” Little has come of Trump’s earlier calls for executing drug dealers. But the administration has taken some action to address the crisis on other fronts. Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency in October 2017. Last week, U.S. health officials said they will spend $350 million in four states to study ways to best deal with the opioid crisis on the local level, with a goal of reducing opioid-related overdose deaths by 40 percent over three years in selected communities in those states. The Democratic National Committee said in a statement before Trump’s remarks that his proposed Medicaid cuts and efforts to overturn the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, could make the opioid problem worse. Trump has used the crisis to support his call for building a wall on the border with Mexico, saying it would help keep out heroin and other illegal drugs and curb the crisis.
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15315
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The law says ... when a police officer stops you, do whatever he says and then deal with it later.
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"Houck claimed that ""the law says … that when a police officer stops you, do whatever he says"" during a stop. Reasonable suspicion justifies an officer’s increased authority during a stop or an arrest, though the definition of ""reasonable"" is often unclear. Applied generally, however, the claim is incorrect. Even though it might be advisable to defer to law enforcement in many cases, the Constitution protects one’s right to remain silent and to not consent to a search. Without suspicion that the subject is armed or has committed a crime, an officer must respect these rights. That's what the law says."
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false
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Corrections and Updates, Crime, PunditFact, Harry Houck,
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"Dashboard camera footage of the traffic stop of Sandra Bland spurred contentious, if not always accurate, cable news debate about a person’s rights when dealing with law enforcement. Bland, a 28-year-old woman from Chicago, was found dead in her jail cell three days after Texas state trooper Brian Encinia stopped her for failing to signal when changing lanes (she was ultimately charged with resisting arrest). Questions still surround her death, which officials called a suicide. But the video gives Americans a clearer look at the explosive start of the arrest that put her behind bars to begin with. The director of the Texas Department of Public Safety criticized Encinia’s actions, saying that the trooper violated arrest procedure. But some people are also questioning Bland’s behavior, including her refusal to put out her cigarette at Encinia’s request. Don Lemon led a CNN Tonight panel on July 21 about the ordeal with legal analyst Sunny Hostin, liberal pundit Marc Lamont Hill and retired New York Police Department detective Harry Houck. Most of the panel agreed with Hostin’s advice for dealing with law enforcement: Essentially, make the encounter as short as possible by obeying orders and dealing with legal issues or mistreatment later. Lemon then asked Houck to clarify the legal rights that people actually have during a police stop — and that’s where the discussion got murky. Lemon asked if all the attention on this encounter and others around the country ""is giving people a sense of rights that they have, that they really don’t have?"" Yes, Houck responded. ""People actually think, that I've talked to, saying that, no, if a police officer stopped me for something, I don't think he's stopping me for a right reason, but I don't have to cooperate with the officer. But that is wrong,"" he said. Houck continued: ""The law says, just like you said, Don, that when a police officer stops you, do whatever he says and then deal with it later."" Read literally, Houck’s statement seems to give law enforcement a lot of leeway during stops. Are civilians really required to obey their each and every order? The video Before we dive into the legal issues underlying Bland’s arrest, let’s review what the video shows. Encinia pulls Bland over for a failure to signal as she changed lanes. Encinia retrieves Bland’s driver’s license and insurance and heads back to his car. After four and a half minutes, Encinia returns to issue a ticket to Bland. At the window, he asks her if she’s okay. ""I’m waiting on you, this is your job,"" she says. ""You seem very irritated,"" he tells her. ""I really am,"" Bland replies, explaining why she’s unhappy that she was pulled over. Encinia asks if she’s done speaking, then asks her to put out her cigarette. Bland refuses, saying that she’s free to smoke a cigarette in her own car. Encinia then directs her out of the car, calling it a ""lawful order."" When she doesn’t move, he opens the door and forcibly removes her, pointing a Taser in her direction and threatening to ""light her up."" After Bland exits the car, Encinia issues a number of orders, including for her to put her phone down, to ""come over here,"" to ""stand right here,"" and to ""turn around."" The confrontation becomes physical shortly afterwards, before Encinia puts Bland in the back of his squad car. The panelists were divided on the issue of whether Bland escalated the situation by claiming rights she did not have when she refused Encinia’s order to put out her cigarette. Experts we consulted said Bland had the right to act the way she did, but Encinia may have, too. Here’s why. Pleading the Fifth (and the Fourth) Does the law really say you have to do whatever a police officer says during a traffic stop? Literally, no. The Constitution affords a few fundamental rights to everyone stopped or arrested by law enforcement in the United States. The right to refuse a search of one’s person, car or home is guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment, and the right to remain silent is protected by the Fifth. No matter how much information Encinia wanted to get out of Bland, she was not legally obliged to provide it. ""You definitely don’t have to answer questions,"" said Robert Weisberg, a Stanford University law professor who specializes in criminal justice and procedure. So Houck’s statement doesn’t hold up under constitutional scrutiny. When reached for comment, Houck said his comments were being taken too literally, adding he only meant that civilians were obligated to comply with orders ""within reason."" ""Anybody with common sense knows what I said,"" he said. Houck told PunditFact that he had been focusing primarily on the legality of Encinia’s order for Bland to exit her car, a point he brings up early on in the panel discussion but doesn’t stress throughout. In the interview, he brought up Pennsylvania vs. Mimms, a Supreme Court case from 1977 in which two implicated law enforcement officers were found not to have violated the Fourth Amendment when directing a man to exit his car upon stopping him for a traffic violation. He argued that the precedent established in Mimms applies to Bland’s arrest as well. Reasonable suspicion Houck does have a point that officers have a considerable amount of authority over a person during a traffic stop. In Mimms, after directing a man out of his car, officers noticed a bulge under the man’s jacket. The bulge turned out to be a loaded gun, and the man was then arrested. The court ruled that exiting one’s car for the duration of a stop did not violate a person's Fourth Amendment rights. So Encinia, using Mimms as jurisprudence, had the right to direct Bland out of her car, even if he had no reason to suspect that she was armed or dangerous. Some have argued, however, that because the ""legal stop"" was finished by the time Encinia directed Bland out the car, he did not have the right to continue the interaction. But the broader point that Houck misses in his explanation is that much of an officer’s authority to search or use force or a person is permissible only if they have reason to suspect that the person is armed or dangerous, or has committed a crime. What exactly constitutes ""reasonable suspicion"" is still up for for debate. Weisberg emphasized how gray this area of law still is. A non-answer, for example, can often be interpreted by law enforcement as ""furtive behavior,"" thus authorizing many options an officer might not have otherwise had, including searching, moving, or using force on a subject, Weisberg said. Making these judgment calls is where officers have the most leeway, said Jason Williamson, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who recently wrote a Bland-inspired article for Time entitled ""What to Do if You Get Pulled Over by a Cop."" ""It’s certainly true that cops are given discretion and the benefit of the doubt,"" Williamson said. In order for Encinia to argue that he was suspicious of Bland, he would have to point to her refusal to put out her cigarette as an indication of violent intentions, said Jody David Armour, a University of Southern California law professor. ""That is a judgment of intent,"" he said, ""and a judgment of character."" Our ruling Houck claimed that ""the law says … that when a police officer stops you, do whatever he says"" during a stop. Reasonable suspicion justifies an officer’s increased authority during a stop or an arrest, though the definition of ""reasonable"" is often unclear. Applied generally, however, the claim is incorrect. Even though it might be advisable to defer to law enforcement in many cases, the Constitution protects one’s right to remain silent and to not consent to a search. Without suspicion that the subject is armed or has committed a crime, an officer must respect these rights. That's what the law says. Correction: This item was updated on July 31 to correct the sequence of events in describing Pennsylvania vs. Mimms. In that case, the Supreme Court found that the act of ordering a person out of a car for the duration of a stop, even in the absence of reasonable suspicion, is constitutional."
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5449
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Missouri bill would bar discrimination for not vaccinating.
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A panel of Missouri lawmakers on Monday considered enacting a ban on discrimination against unvaccinated children, an effort that comes as other states look to increase immunization amid disease outbreaks.
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true
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Immunizations, Health, Discrimination, Missouri, Jefferson City, Disease outbreaks
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Parents testified to lawmakers that their unimmunized children were turned away from daycares and doctors. Republican Rep. Lynn Morris, a pharmacist from southwest Missouri, said parents are being pressured to vaccinate their children. “Parents are getting bullied,” Morris said. “They’re getting bullied by county health departments. They’re getting bullied by schools. They’re getting bullied by their doctors. They’re being intimidated, and I just don’t think that’s right.” The Republican’s bill would ban discrimination against unimmunized children in doctors’ offices, daycares, public schools and colleges if families have legal exemptions. Missouri grants exemptions for religious and medical reasons. The hearing came just days after a judge temporarily blocked a suburban New York county’s emergency order banning children from public places unless they’ve been vaccinated against measles. Lawmakers from other states also are looking to ramp up vaccinations in response to outbreaks of diseases such as measles and whooping cough . Washington lawmakers in March passed a measure to strip exemptions for measles vaccinations after an outbreak sickened dozens. There’s a push to end non-medical exemptions for vaccines in Maine, where there were 95 cases of whooping cough through February. While overall vaccination rates remain high in the U.S. according to the Centers for Disease Control, the number of kids under two who haven’t received any vaccines is growing. The CDC attributes much of this to lack of health insurance — uninsured kids are much more likely to be unvaccinated than children who have health insurance. Janessa Baake, from the city of Peculiar in southwestern Missouri, cited concern over potential medical risks and told lawmakers Monday that her 3-year-old daughter is unvaccinated. She said after being denied by a Missouri doctor, she now takes her daughter to a Kansas pediatrician. Another man said his two children developed autism after being vaccinated as toddlers. “All of the stories and the anecdotes that we heard are very important, but I don’t think that they can be used to refute science,” Ferguson Democrat Rep. Cora Faith Walker said during a break in the hearing. Multiple studies have debunked claims that measles, mumps and rubella vaccinations increase the risk for autism, and the National Institutes of Health says reports of serious reactions are rare: about one every 100,000 vaccinations. In the U.S., more than 90 percent of the population nationally is properly vaccinated. “What we know and what we have in study after study of scientific fact is that vaccines are safe, and they’re effective,” said Jefferson City pediatrician Katie Blount, a member of the Missouri chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Ultimately what it boils down to is it’s one of the best ways that I know how to take care of a kiddo.” A similar bill didn’t make it to the floor last year. The House Health and Mental Health Policy Committee also is considering legislation to require physicians to provide information on the benefits and risks of vaccines, information from CDC and other information before giving vaccines.
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10357
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Bone drug staves off breast cancer
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Though tamoxifen and raloxifene were found to have similar efficacy in terms of reducing the incidence of invasive breast cancer in postmenopausal women at increased risk of breast cancer, the article failed to distinguish between differences in side effects that were and were not statistically significant (i.e. that there were 36% fewer uterine cancers and 29% fewer blood clots among women who took raloxifene were not statistically significant while the 21% fewer cataracts were statistically significant). The supposed benefit of raloxifene over tamoxifen is about the prevalence of side effects and so this distinction is important. This is issue is then compounded by the quote from the surgical oncologist “Obviously, if a woman says she’s had a deep vein thrombosis before, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the other” because it is clear that this is not an evidenced-based statement. It’s fine to include that comment, but important to put it in context of the evidence. In addition, the two drugs were reported by the NCI as producing the same level of impact on quality of life, so the distinction between these two drugs is even less clear.Though this article portrayed raloxifene as the option with enhanced benefit, the results of the study were much less clear cut.
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mixture
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Cost of raloxifene as well as tamoxifen were provided. This article portrayed raloxifene as being as effective as tamoxifen in reducing the incidence of invasive breast cancer in postmenopausal women and as having decreased risk of uterine cancer and blood clots. The results of the study found that the difference in these side effects was not statistically significant. This article failed to accurately convey these results. The increased incidence of other, less-invasive forms of breast cancer (ductal carcinoma in situ and lobular carcinoma in situ) for women taking raloxifene as compared to those taking tamoxifen was not mentioned. While mentioning that uterine cancer is a known risk of tamoxifen, and that women taking raloxifene developed 36% fewer uterine cancers (which calculates out to a difference of 3 cases per thousand), the story failed to mention that this difference was not stastically significant. The article presented good information about the nature of the clinical trial. Though the study found that the reduction in invasive breast cancer was the same for the two drugs, the article failed to distinguish between differences in side effects that were and were not statistically significant (i.e. that there were 36% fewer uterine cancers and 29% fewer blood clots among women who took raloxifene were not statistically significant while the 21% fewer cataracts were statistically significant). The supposed benefit of raloxifene over tamoxifen is about the prevalence of side effects and so this distinction is important. This is issue is then compounded by the quote from the surgical oncologist “Obviously, if a woman says she’s had a deep vein thrombosis before, I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend the other” because it is clear that this is not an evidenced-based statement. It’s fine to include that comment, but important to put it in context of the evidence. In addition, the two drugs were reported by the NCI as producing the same level of impact on quality of life, so the distinction between these two drugs is even less clear. While making the claim that breast cancer was a disease that ‘claims 40,000 lives a year’, there was no mention that the results of the study provide no evidence that raloxifene had any impact on death from breast cancer, only that it reduced the chance it would develop in women at increased risk. Many of the ‘40,000 lives’ lost to breast cancer each year would not be candidates for this treatment as they would not have been perceived as being at increased risk prior to diagnosis. In addition, the two drugs were reported by the NCI as producing the same level of impact on quality of life. The sources of information for this article consisted of clinicians involved in the trial and several oncologists who did not appear to have direct connection with the study. The article mentioned tamoxifen, the only medication to date that has been approved by the FDA for reducing breast cancer risk in healthy women. Although the article mentions that doctors could prescribe raloxifene for the purpose of reducing breast cancer risk, it is not yet approved by the FDA for this purpose and would therefore represent an off-label use of this medication. It’s clear from the story that the use of raloxifene as a medication to reduce breast cancer risk is new. There is no evidence that the story relied solely or largely on a news release.
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37663
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"The World Health Organization advised social media users against ""unprotected sex"" with farm animals in response to a coronavirus outbreak that appears to have originated in China."
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No, You’re Not Being Told to Avoid ‘Unprotected Sex with Farm Animals’ Over the Coronavirus
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false
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Disinformation, Fact Checks
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As the World Health Organization (WHO) tried to disseminate health advisories amid a growing coronavirus outbreak, at least one “jokey” graphic blunting that message was spotted online in January 2020.The WHO’s original graphic, posted on January 27, 2020, recommended that social media users “avoid unprotected contact with live, wild or farm animals”:In outbreaks of other #coronaviruses (MERS & SARS), person-to-person transmission occurred through droplets, contact and fomites, suggesting that the transmission mode of the 2019-nCoV can be similarWHO Situation Report 27 January 2020 https://t.co/l1vODXEyD3 pic.twitter.com/vuNl64gZnm— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 27, 2020Perhaps predictably given the intended audience, the hoax graphic twists that line into “avoid unprotected sex with live, wild or farm animals”:While social media users were going for the easy laugh, the virus has reportedly killed more than 100 people in China, where the outbreak is believed to have started. On January 28 2020, the country’s National Health Commission said that it had confirmed 4,515 cases — up from 2,835 the day before. Another five cases of the virus have reported in the United States, none of them fatal; infections also have been so far confirmed in Cambodia, Canada, France, Japan, Nepal, Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam.However, the WHO also had a reassuring notice for social media users who own pets.“At present, there is no evidence that companion animals/pets such as dogs, cats can be infected with the virus,” the group said. “However, it is always a good idea to wash your hands with soap and water after contact with pets.”
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9657
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Using Vegetable Oils to Lower Cholesterol May Not Improve Longevity
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This story is about new evidence that may diminish the importance of limiting animal fats in people’s diets to reduce risk of deaths from heart disease. A new group of researchers re-examined a 45-year-old randomized controlled study of 9,000 people who were put in two groups: one group replaced animal fats with corn oil in their diet, the other ate animal fats. The risk of death from heart attack was higher in the vegetable-oil group, even though certain markers of cholesterol in their blood did become lower. The story does a good job of explaining the study’s design, and some of the complex issues surrounding dietary habits and heart disease. But this story falls short by not quantifying study elements: no numbers for cholesterol level changes, no numbers for changes in risk. Diet appears to play a role in dozens of chronic diseases, including heart disease. Research that helps tease out which fats are truly better for people helps us further understand the issue, though it is complex and evolving. News coverage should not only be accurate, it should help readers understand how the latest study fits into the greater body of scientific knowledge.
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true
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British Medical Journal,heart attacks,prevention,saturated fats
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Since this is about affordable and widely available cooking oils, this is N/A. The story does not quantify. We are told the 45-year-old data showed a “lowering” of cholesterol for study participants who swapped animal fats for vegetable fats. But we aren’t given any numbers for by how much or even by what percentage. In a similar shortcoming, one of the most counter-intuitive findings was dismissed. “In fact, the study found that the lower the cholesterol, the greater the risk of death. But that’s a misleading association because a variety of illnesses can also cause drop in cholesterol, which is unrelated to diet.” The story should have given us some numbers for that “greater risk.” Even if it is misleading, we are entitled to know the size of the risk found in the study. The intervention in the study (eating more unsaturated fat) is unlikely to cause adverse side effects, risks, or complications, so we’re rating this N/A. The story did point out the surprising association between lower cholesterol levels and increased risk of death, though that could have been explained more clearly. The story gives us information about both the old Minnesota study and the new British Medical Journal publication. We know the old study was randomized and included 9,000 people. At the end of the story, we also learn the study has “many” limitations and some of these are mentioned. Ideally, the story would have specifically pointed out that the study population included only residents of nursing homes and mental health hospitals, which may affect generalization. Also, given that this is decades-old data, we’re wondering how researchers took that into account, and how it might have impacted the quality of evidence. There was no disease mongering. There don’t appear to be any conflicts of interest, and the story includes an independent source. The story does a good job of talking about the complicated recommendations regarding diet, as well as medications, specifically statins. The different oils are widely available; this is N/A. The story explains that the novelty is not with any treatment or discovery but rather a novel statistical examination of old data. The story does not appear to rely solely on a news release.
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1795
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Big pharmacies knock on door of oil-rich North Dakota.
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North Dakota’s oil boom has fueled a construction bonanza for new supermarkets, restaurants and clothing stores. But try finding a Rite Aid, Walgreens or other national pharmacy chain in the state, the fastest-growing economy in the nation, and you’ll be largely out of luck.
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true
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Health News
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That could all change with a controversial Nov. 4 ballot initiative in which voters will get to decide for the first time whether to abolish a 1963 state law designed to protect small businesses. The law requires North Dakota pharmacies to be owned by local pharmacists or run by hospitals with a local pharmacist on staff. Supporters of the initiative argue it will remove an embarrassing anachronism, give consumers more choice and lower prescription drug costs. Opponents say that allowing national chains would destroy North Dakota’s tradition of personalized pharmacy care and be yet another example of how the state’s neighborly way of life is changing too fast. Canada, Germany, France and many other countries, they also note, have similar laws requiring local pharmacy ownership. “Independent pharmacies are more apt to focus on customer service,” said Gabe Gretz, who bought Service Drug Pharmacy in Williston last year with his father. “This is our bread and butter. It’s not just a hobby for us.” “North Dakota Nice” is a truism here, not an irony, and most retail stores are still prohibited from opening before noon on Sunday - a throwback to laws designed to encourage family time. Yet since the oil boom began around 2010, drawing thousands of new residents to jobs where roughnecks can earn more than $100,000 a year, drug use, assault and other violent crimes have jumped. Recent sex-trafficking charges brought against an oil field worker in Williston, a once quiet town that is now the epicenter of the boom, marked the first charges of that type ever filed in the area and has escalated tension between new and old residents. Many newly arrived oil workers, and even some locals, say they hope the ballot measure passes so that they can use the same chains they’ve grown accustomed to elsewhere. Rite Aid Corp has no outpost in the state, North Dakota’s Walmarts have no in-store pharmacies and the state’s lone Walgreens, on the Minnesota border, is prohibited from selling prescription drugs. CVS is able to operate only a handful of pharmacies in North Dakota thanks to a 2006 buyout of several Osco Drug stores that operated before the 1963 law. “Honestly, it’s not convenient getting my prescriptions here,” said Jan Anseth, a resident of Williston who spends winters in Arizona where she gets her medications from a national chain. In North Dakota, Anseth says, she runs into problems transferring prescriptions and getting anything more than a 30-day supply. The ballot’s primary sponsor, North Dakotans For Lower Pharmacy Prices, was funded with $168,000 in contributions from Walmart, Walgreens, Kmart and others. In campaign materials, the group cites data the Kaiser Family Foundation compiled in 2009 showing North Dakota has one of the highest per capita costs for prescription drug and medical devices in the country. Walmart says North Dakotans are missing out on its popular $4 prescription program, which makes many generic drugs available at the sharply discounted price. Crying foul, the state’s independent pharmacists say they’re able to often meet or beat prices from national chains, most of whom lose money on pharmacy sales as a way to get customers in the door. A random survey by Reuters of North Dakota’s independent pharmacies showed that a 30-day supply of the generic blood thinning drug clopidogrel ranged in price between $10 and $59.95. A CVS in Bismarck, the state capital, quoted a price of $149.95 for the same dosage. “I get to set the prices here at my pharmacy,” said Jenna Wahlstrom, a pharmacist at Larsen Service Drug, which her grandfather founded in Watford City in 1952. “It’s not a corporate decision.” Like the big chains, Wahlstrom offers her customers a smartphone app and online refill ordering. Her pharmacy has transferred hundreds of prescriptions from retail chains for workers who have moved to the state, she said. Ahead of the vote, the state’s top politicians are declining to take sides. Governor Jack Dalrymple, a Republican who took office in 2010, says he shops at locally owned Aerohead Plaza Drug while in Bismarck and believes it has been able to compete effectively with the nearby CVS. Yet in the 1990s, as a state legislator, Dalrymple voted to keep the pharmacy law intact. “I don’t know,” he now says, “if that was the right vote.”
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30293
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"Mark Twain said, ""Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your HONOR."
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There are some excellent virtues in newspapers, some powers that wield vast influences for good; and I could have told all about these things, and glorified them exhaustively — but that would have left you gentlemen nothing to say.
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false
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Questionable Quotes, Journalism, journalists, mark twain
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The reputation of the fourth estate has waxed and waned over the course of American’s history, sometimes thanks to the criticisms of public figures — including members of the press itself — complaining of its shortcomings and, according to them, undue influence on the electorate. Novelist, humorist, and sometime newspaperman Mark Twain is an example of a journalist who displayed sharply mixed feelings about the profession. On the one hand, he was of the firm opinion that the press — particularly the rambunctious, freewheeling American press of the late nineteenth century — was essential to the defense of a free society. “The devil’s aversion to holy water is a light matter compared with a despot’s dread of a newspaper that laughs,” Twain wrote in his 1888 essay, “The American Press.” At the same time, he warned of the excesses of the press and their deleterious effect on ordinary people. “There are laws to protect the freedom of the press’s speech, but none that are worth anything to protect the people from the press,” he said in an 1873 speech. In an even stronger statement that has been making the Internet rounds since the early 2000s, Twain allegedly urges readers to “fear the media”: “Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. Fear the media, for they will take your HONOR…” — Mark Twain — Henry_in_Texas (@henry_in_poc) May 19, 2018 In a longer version of the quote, Twain supposedly goes on to deride journalists as “ignorant, self-complacent simpletons”: Do not fear the enemy, for your enemy can only take your life. It is far better that you fear the media, for they will steal your honor. That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse. What we found when we attempted to source the quote, however, is that there is no public record of Mark Twain ever writing or uttering the words “fear the media.” In fact, there is no evidence that he ever used the phrase “the media” in the sense we’re familiar with today (i.e., denoting means of mass communication) — which would have been an anachronism, in any case. When Twain was writing and speaking (in the late nineteenth and very early twentieth centuries), there was only one form of mass communication — the printed word, in the form of books, pamphlets, magazines, and newspapers — and that’s how he referred to them. Twain died in 1910. No one would speak of “the media,” as we now understand the term, until the 1920s, at the earliest. Media historian John Nerone (author of The Media and Public Life: A History, published in 2015) writes: Mass penetration of media had been achieved in the most advanced countries by the 1920s. Accompanying this fact was a new language of talking about the media, including the use of the word “media,” then its variant “mass media” or “media of mass communication.” Although some believe that the term “media was coined by Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s, it actually has a much older history. John Peters notes that in the nineteenth century it was used to refer to agents of communication with the spirit world. It was also used to refer to the biological media used to culture germs and to the physical media through which light passed. Architects and artists began to use the word to refer to the materials they used to make things. Then, around the beginning of the 1920s, the word began to be used by advertising agencies to refer to the things that carried ads. “Media” replaced “space” as a term of art in advertising because agencies began to place ads on radio programs as well as in newspapers and magazines. From there, the term came to be used by social scientists in the 1930s. Around the same time, the terms “mass media” and “mass communication” became used to refer collectively to newspapers, magazines, radio, and motion pictures. We therefore cannot credit Mark Twain with the exhortation, “Fear the media, for they will take your honor.” Who did say it? We don’t know. The earliest instances of the quote we’ve found go back to 2003, when it first turned up on the Internet, sometimes attributed to Mark Twain, sometimes to “Unknown.” We suspect it was fabricated. The longer version of the quote does contain sentences uttered by Twain during a speech entitled “License of the Press,” delivered in Hartford, Connecticut in March 1873. It was the same speech in which he bemoaned the fact that there are laws protecting freedom of the press, but none protecting people from the press. His criticism of the journalistic profession (of which he himself was a member) was unsparing: That awful power, the public opinion of a nation, is created in America by a horde of ignorant, self-complacent simpletons who failed at ditching and shoemaking and fetched up in journalism on their way to the poorhouse. I am personally acquainted with hundreds of journalists, and the opinion of the majority of them would not be worth tuppence in private, but when they speak in print it is the newspaper that is talking (the pygmy scribe is not visible) and then their utterances shake the community like the thunders of prophecy. Yet he delivered this condemnation with a wink and a nod. As we noted above, Twain had mixed feelings about journalism. amply expressed in his closing statement: But I will not continue these remarks. I have a sort of vague general idea that there is too much liberty of the press in this country, and that through the absence of all wholesome restraint the newspaper has become in a large degree a national curse, and will probably damn the Republic yet.
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33655
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The gold ball atop a military flagpole contains a razor, a match, and a bullet.
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Rob Dalessandro, of the U.S. Army Center for Military History at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C., says noncommissioned officers take this legend so seriously that at promotion boards, soldiers are asked how far the pistol is buried from the flagpole: “In some they’re pretty specific: It’s six paces, the pistol from the flagpole and some of them even mention a cardinal direction.” Dalessandro, however, says no Army document formalizes this ritual.
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false
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Uncategorized, american flag, ASP Article, flag customs
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The importance of the flag in military culture would be difficult to overstate. Its importance extends far beyond its function as a symbolic representation of the land, people, and principles for which one fights — the flag is a marker of territory, a symbol of resistance, and a proclamation of victory, and its capture, lowering, or absence is an indicator of defeat. The continued presence of the American flag over Fort McHenry the morning after a British attack on Baltimore’s harbor in 1814 inspired Francis Scott Key to pen the words to what is now the USA’s national anthem, and the picture of U.S. Marines planting an American flag atop Mt. Suribachi during the battle for the ferociously-defended island of Iwo Jima in 1945 is perhaps the world’s most famous military photograph. We’re not surprised, then, to find the flag as the subject of legend which brings together patriotism, horror, and whimsy in a curious belief that celebrates the bravery of American soldiers while reminding all that the duty expected of these warriors is limitless. An oddly persistent bit of military lore asserts a small cache of items deemed necessary for protecting the flag during a last stand at an overrun military facility is secreted in the gold ball atop the flag pole or buried near the pole’s base. The golden balls that top flagpoles are properly (and obscurely) styled “finials” but have also come to be known on military bases as “trucks.” Their purpose is to ornament solid flagpoles and keep water out of hollow ones, and they can also serve to hold the pulleys through which rope halyards are run to raise and lower the flags. A number of military flagpoles were at one time topped with gold-colored eagles, but these proved impractical because flags would become hopelessly entangled on them during high winds; the switch to spheres eliminated this problem. Flag-defense items are not secreted in the finial or buried at the foot of the pole. Although the flag has great symbolic importance, defending the bases over which it flies from attacking forces has far more direct and practical importance, and it’s hard to imagine any right-minded soldier’s taking time away from his duty of repelling invaders to engage in ritualistic flag destruction. Nor is it very plausible that a soldier, amidst a force of enemy troops overrunning his base, would have the time to scale a flagpole (or chop it down, or knock it over, or dig up its base) to retrieve hidden items, much less time to put them all to use. Although this is a charmingly romantic bit of lore, it’s also a wildly impractical one. “Flag-defending supplies” lore seems to dictate that three items be hidden in or near the flagpole, but what those three items are varies from one presentation of the rumor to the next. Generally, one item is provided to destroy or mutilate the flag (a match or a razor); the second item serves to arm the defender, either for the purpose of battling onrushers or assisting him in ending his own life (a bullet or a revolver), and the third item is purely symbolic (a penny to represent America’s wealth, or a grain of rice to indicate that American soldiers are so tough they can survive on almost nothing). However, all manner of combinations are posited in different versions of the legend, including two-item offerings. The strongest theme running throughout such beliefs is the idea that the enemy must at all costs be prevented from taking possession of a base’s flag. Though no one would want to see his country’s flag fall into enemy hands (such an eventuality is, after all, symbolic of the base’s having been thoroughly overrun), the invaders’ capturing a flag is not the catastrophe lore would portray it, certainly not when compared to the loss of the base itself or the deaths of those stationed there. Prized symbol or not, it is not the flag itself that is important but its presence overhead — as long as it flutters above, it proclaims America’s ownership of that particular piece of territory. Its coming down during battle indicates ownership has changed hands, either through force (the attackers have successfully overrun the facility) or capitulation (the defenders have surrendered). Therefore, a besieged soldier who lowers his country’s flag, even for the noble purpose of destroying it, is signaling his base’s surrender. What would happen to the flag itself afterwards would be almost beside the point, because the banner’s value lay not in its worth as a scrap of cloth but as a symbol of military occupation. We view flags with special reverence because they have historically served as symbols of the collective identity of those who fight under them, symbols proudly carried into battle at the forefront of attacking forces and waved to rally troops in disarray or retreat. The colors of a Civil War regiment embodied its honor, and the men chosen to bear them made up an elite. The post of flagbearer was deemed an appointment of great honor, and those who trooped regimental and national flags into battle were especially brave, for colors “drew lead like a magnet.” A fallen bearer’s banner would quickly be taken up by a fellow soldier, and many men willingly exposed themselves to enemy fire (often at the cost of their lives) rather than allow their regiments to suffer the dishonor of allowing their flags to touch the ground. Yet it was not the flag itself that was important so much as what it symbolized: that so long as the banner waved, at least one man from that regiment lived on, and thus the regiment itself continued to exist. Two secondary themes are also often present in the “flag-defending supplies” rumor: the notion that the flag must be destroyed by one of its defenders, and the romantic image that the last man left standing must commit suicide rather than be taken alive. If keeping the flag out of enemy hands is the priority, there are other choices besides destroying it: the flag could be entrusted to someone charged with carrying it to safety, or it could be hidden in a place where the intruders wouldn’t find it. (If these notions sound implausible, picture the improbability of a hurried soldier’s successfully setting a flag on fire with just one match, especially a match that has been exposed to varying weather conditions for months or years.) As for the last defender’s killing himself, American military tradition does not encompass the concept (exemplified by the Japanese bushido warrior code) that capture by the enemy is shameful, and a soldier is honor-bound to die fighting or commit suicide rather than allow himself to be taken prisoner. As long as an American soldier has fought bravely (and there is little or nothing to be gained through his holding out at the cost of his life), his surrender or capture is considered neither shameful nor dishonorable. Hence, the flagpole legend’s mandate that the “last man” take his own life is not a realistic reflection of military duty and serves only the typical storytelling requirements of symmetry and closure: if the flag must be destroyed to prevent it from falling into enemy hands, so must the man who carried out this highly symbolic task. Perhaps the flagpole legend was not intended to be taken literally and was merely created as a prankish bit of misinformation used in the initiation of new recruits (much in the vein of the “snipe hunt,” a ritual in which newcomers to a group are sent in quest of ridiculous, non-existent objects, their naivety in undertaking such tasks providing a source of great glee to the all-knowing veteran members). If so, that the legend is now widely-believed (or at least taken seriously enough to be questioned) might demonstrate that the legend has since taken on the secondary, unintended effect of reinforcing the symbolic importance of both the flag and a soldier’s devotion to duty.
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10564
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Medimetriks announces the results of a successful Phase 2 trial of MM36 in Atopic Dermatitis; Study results and design published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology (JAAD)
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This news release describes the results of a somewhat small (121 patients) phase 2 safety and efficacy trial of a topical non-steroidal treatment for mild-to-moderate symptoms of eczema (atopic dermatitis). The release is based on a study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, and offers substantial detail about the company (Medimetriks) which owns the U.S. rights to the experimental treatment, dubbed MM36. The MM36 compound is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory ointment believed to stop itching and redness by blocking chemicals released by an enzyme known as PDE4 subtype B and active in causing inflammation. The release describes the percentage of improvement in symptoms over a period of eight weeks, but doesn’t describe or quantify what improvement means. And it highlights several alternative treatments, but offers no data on how MM36 compares with these existing therapies. Readers will learn little to nothing about the makeup of the test group, side effects, or costs. A WSJ story on this eczema study, which was also reviewed by HealthNewsReview.org, shared an excessive optimism with respect to approval and availability of this treatment still in development. As the release notes with admirable detail, atopic dermatitis — and the “red, swollen and cracked skin” that accompanies the “intense” itching associated with it — is estimated to strike 18 million people in the U.S. alone. Moreover, current therapies, such as corticosteroids, cause unwanted side effects when used over long periods of time, and some burning and stinging. Most people who have experienced eczema would agree that while not life-threatening, the symptoms are sometimes disfiguring and can be extremely unpleasant. A treatment that targets a particular enzymatic pathway without the potential downsides of current therapies would thus be welcome. And because these conditions are often chronic, the markets for such products can be highly profitable.
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mixture
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industry/commercial news releases
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The release discloses the total 2015 sales of Otsuka, the drug maker, but offers not a penny’s worth of information about the costs of current therapies or whether the new product would be more or less expensive. Although there is no pricing for an investigational new drug still in clinical trials and not yet FDA-approved for sale, it would be helpful to consumers to know if part of the novelty of the product will be its availability and cost. Although the release does give the mean percentage improvement scores compared to baseline measures and patient-reported outcomes (39% improvement for those volunteers assigned the MM36 compound compared to 3% on the placebo at week 2 and throughout the remainder of the 8-week study), it could have been greatly improved by saying specifically how many of the 121 experienced what percentage of improvement. There also is no information on what it actually means to say a condition has improved from “moderate” to “mild,” especially given that the treatment is being tested only for those with “moderate to mild” eczema. According to the published study, the number needed to treat (NNT, or the number of patients that need to be treated for one to benefit compared with a control in a clinical trial) was about 6 for an improvement of at least 2 levels on a 0 – 5 scoring system. According to that measure, the difference in improvement between the high dose cream and the placebo was about 18%. The published research report clearly reports that some subjects experienced a worsening of symptoms, or no real change, but the release fails to mention any data on side effects. According to the study, the harms were about the same in the high dose group and the placebo, but were greater in the low dose group (and that difference was statistically significant). The release doesn’t give the study methods in strong detail, but it does describe it as a double blind, randomized clinical and placebo control trial, which suggests a high level of evidence. The published study appears to show a low risk of bias. The study also showed there was a dose response between the high, low and control doses for the primary outcome event (degree of improvement) and except for some discrepancies in the adverse events rates (higher in the low dose group than in the high dose or placebo groups) there was fairly good precision and the NNT of 6 is not unreasonable. It would have been beneficial to readers if the release had included some information about the age, gender and race of those being treated, as well as more details about the patient-reported improvements. The release doesn’t engage in disease-mongering. The release mentions a possible link to skin or blood cancer with the use of topical steroids which are in wide use today, but then notes that the studies suggesting the link have not proven the case. The release doesn’t include any information about how the study was funded. The study itself discloses that several authors are paid consultants for the companies making the drug. The release does give ample information about alternative treatments, including the standard treatments. We’d still like to know how the drug under development would be an improvement over alternative treatments, including some of the over-the-counter treatments available for patients with mild eczema. How much better would the new treatment be in terms of symptomatic relief? Also, there is no mention of the fact that there are other PDE4 inhibitors already under development and on the market for other inflammatory conditions. Although industry-sponsored releases must avoid “forward looking” predictions about future drug approval, the release would have added useful information if it had noted whether this phase 2 trial would be followed by phase 3 trials. As it stands there is no way to gauge if or when this product will be available. It seems overly optimistic to make this statement based on a phase 2 study: “MM36 is expected to be the 2nd topical PDE4 inhibitor available in the US and may offer unique benefits for patients suffering from AD.” The release notes in two places that MM36 would be the second topical PDE4 inhibitor after a competing product (cisaborole, manufactured by Anacor Phamaceuticals). Cisaborole is further along in the approval-seeking process than MM36. The news release does not employ unjustifiable language.
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21680
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Active duty males in the military are twice as likely to develop prostate cancer than their civilian counterparts.
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Cliff Stearns, in pushing for research funding, says military men twice as likely to get prostate cancer
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true
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Health Care, Military, Florida, Cliff Stearns,
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"War, needless to say, is fraught with danger — bullets flying, bombs exploding. But one Florida congressman recently targeted a silent killer that attacks soldiers from within. Rep. Cliff Stearns recently sought — and received — House approval to shift $16 million in Pentagon funding to beef up research for prostate cancer for military members. The Ocala Republican pointed out in a press release that prostate cancer was the second-leading cause of cancer-related death among American men. No argument there. After all, according to the American Cancer Society, only skin cancer is more common than prostate cancer among American men. And only lung cancer kills more of those sufferers. What caught our attention, though, was Stearns’ follow-up assertion: ""In addition,"" he said, ""active duty males in the military are twice as likely to develop prostate cancer than their civilian counterparts."" Twice as likely? Really? We asked Stearns’ office about the congressman’s sources, and spokesman Paul Flusche provided a trio of publications. One looked at how Agent Orange might have caused a spike in prostate cancer rates among Vietnam War vets. Another focused on prostate cancer rates strictly among Air Force personnel. The third, which Flusche labeled as the ""most important"" in supporting Stearns’ claim, was conducted by a team of scientists who compared the rates at which a variety of cancers, including prostate cancer, strike soldiers relative to civilians. That study, conducted by the U.S. Military Cancer Institute, or USMCI, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, was led by Dr. Kangmin Zhu. Zhu’s team actually reviewed six types of cancer — breast, lung, prostate, colorectal, testicular and cervical — for soldiers ages 20 to 59. The data they studied covered from 1990 to 2004. For prostate cancer, the study population included 910 soldiers and 42,751 civilians. In some instances, such as with testicular cancer, there were no differences in the rate of occurrence between the military and civilian populations, the report said. But Zhu and his colleagues, based on their analysis of the numbers, concluded: ""Prostate cancer rates in the military were twice those in the general population."" So Stearns is citing a verifiable statistic contained in a reputable story. The natural question, of course, is why would military members be more prone to prostate cancer? The Zhu study could only speculate. For instance, researchers found discrepancies between military and civilian healthcare providers in how cancer incidents are reported, which could explain at least part of the difference. Zhu also hypothesized that better and more frequent health screening for soldiers might explain why prostate cancer is more prevalent among U.S. troops. Exposure to depleted uranium also might account for the results. But Zhu ultimately said that he could not determine a reason and suggested further study. We ran the findings by Dr. Jonathan Simons, president and CEO of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, a Santa Monica, Calif.-based philanthropic organization that has raised roughly $450 million and helped fund 1,500 researchers at 200 institutions in 12 countries. (The foundation was not connected to Zhu’s work.) Simons observed that Zhu’s mission was not to find why military members seemed more likely to get prostate cancer, but to simply crunch the numbers. In that context, Simons said Stearns was ""absolutely correct"" and justified in stating that military personnel were twice as likely as civilian men to contract prostate cancer. For one thing, Simons noted, ""This is not the junior varsity that did the work. These are really top people."" Still, Simons cautioned that the potential for drawing a ""false correlation"" existed -- namely that military members are more likely to get prostate cancer than non-military members. If military service meant a greater risk of developing cancer, then one would expect soldiers to exhibit higher rates of the disease across the board, Simons said. That was not the case here. Yet he reiterated that much more research into prostate cancer occurrences among soldiers was necessary to determine whether the findings were a ""fluke"" or if there was a definite connection — and if so, what might cause it. And that, Simons observed, was Stearns’ goal in pushing for more funding. ""I actually compliment Representative Stearns for elevating it,"" Simons said. ""Congressman Stearns did a really important bit of public health policy here."" Back to Stearns’ comment. In pushing for $16 million in Pentagon funding to beef up research for prostate cancer for military members, he said that ""active duty males in the military are twice as likely to develop prostate cancer than their civilian counterparts."" Stearns is correct that research shows that military members are diagnosed with prostate cancer at twice the rate as non-military members. However, that same research doesn’t conclude that military members are twice as likely to ""develop"" prostate cancer as Stearns said. The study hypothesizes that one reason for the different diagnosis rate may be because military members are subject to more frequent health screenings. Getting to the bottom of the discrepancy is actually why Stearns requested the money. That’s a needed clarification when considering Stearns’ comment."
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17753
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Texas Governor Rick Perry’s voter ID law is a blatant effort to defeat Wendy Davis by disenfranchising tens of thousands of women voters.
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"The Democratic governors group said the voter ID measure signed into law by Perry is a ""blatant effort to defeat Wendy Davis by disenfranchising tens of thousands of women voters."" In addition to its timeline gulf--the ID proposal passed into law two years before Davis emerged as a serious gubernatorial prospect--this claim suffers from an absence of proof that the Texas law was intended to disenfranchise tens of thousands of women or has had such an immediate effect. Significantly, we are not judging here whether the ID hurdle is affecting voter participation. The law is lately being enforced for the first time. Only after the 2013 elections is there likely to be data on its effect on voters--of all kinds. This pre-election claim, weakened by chronological illogic and an overall absence of evidence, shakes out as both incorrect and ridiculous."
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false
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Elections, Women, Texas, Democratic Governors Association,
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"An Oct. 24, 2013, email blast from the Democratic Governors Association opened: ""BREAKING: Texas Governor Rick Perry’s voter ID law is a blatant effort to defeat Wendy Davis by disenfranchising tens of thousands of women voters."" The email, urging donations to Davis’ gubernatorial campaign, went on to say that Perry and ""his handpicked successor, Greg Abbott,"" the Republican Texas attorney general running for governor, ""are trying to undo the voting rights women fought for – a century ago! It’s downright anti-democratic."" Dramatic--and is this so? From the top, there’s a sizable timeline hiccup in the idea that the Texas voter ID law, approved by the Republican-led Legislature and signed into law by Perry in 2011, came to be in order to disenfranchise women potentially voting for Davis for governor in 2014. Davis, a Fort Worth state senator, announced her gubernatorial candidacy on Oct. 3, 2013 and wasn’t even reported to be considering a statewide bid until after her June 25, 2013 filibuster slowing GOP-led passage of a measure stepping up abortion restrictions. To our request for backup information, an association spokesman, Danny Kanner, emailed us links to a news article and commentary, both published in October 2013, and to a 2006 report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. The articles touched on the possibility that photo IDs presented by women at the polls might not have the same names on them as voter records. None reached conclusions about a link between the 2011 law and Davis garnering votes for governor in 2014. Under the Texas law, which had its implementation delayed to the November 2013 elections by legal challenges, voters going to the polls are expected to present a photo ID issued by the Texas Department of Public Safety (a driver's license, personal ID card, concealed handgun license or election identification certificate) or by the federal government (a passport, military ID or a citizenship or naturalization certificate). One voter's experience As noted by Kanner, on Oct. 22, 2013, KIII-TV, Channel 3 in Corpus Christi, reported that the law may cause delays at polling places when a voter’s name on their offered ID doesn’t match their name on the voter roll. The story quoted a state district judge, Sandra Watts, as saying that when she went to vote the day before, what ""I have used for voter registration and for identification for the last 52 years was not sufficient."" Watts was required to sign an affidavit affirming her identity, the story said, when a poll official noticed that she had one name shown as her middle name on her driver’s license and a different middle name on her voter registration card. One of the middle names was her maiden name. The story further noted that the alternative to signing a voter affidavit would be to vote a provisional ballot. A provisional ballot isn’t counted until seven to 10 days after an election and then only after a voter proves their eligibility. Commentator's speculation On Oct. 24, 2013, Slate legal columnist Dahlia Lithwick wrote a commentary, also noted by Kanner, about the effect of voter ID laws on turnout. She concluded there is insufficient data to reach sweeping conclusions about the effects of voter ID laws on disenfranchising women. Lithwick noted first that some see an effort to deter females aligned with Democratic candidates from casting ballots. To the contrary, Lithwick wrote, some election law experts told her such laws might deter more conservative women who might be more likely to have different names on their voter registrations and photo IDs. Brennan Center survey Kanner also pointed out a 2006 survey conducted by the Brennan Center indicating that only 48 percent of voting-age women with ready access to their birth certificates had a certificate with their current legal name. ""Many of those who possess ready documentation of their citizenship do not have documentation that reflects their current name. For example, survey results show that only 48% of voting-age women with ready access to their U.S. birth certificates have a birth certificate with current legal name – and only 66% of voting-age women with ready access to any proof of citizenship have a document with current legal name. Using 2000 census citizen voting-age population data, this means that as many as 32 million voting-age women may have available only proof of citizenship documents that do not reflect their current name."" Concern about women being blocked from voting is one thing. We looked for signs the law was written to do so, coming up empty. A press release and a news blog post On the Nexis database, we searched for news articles on the 2011 Texas law and the disenfranchisement of women. Many stories touched on Democratic charges that ID demands at the polls would deter Latino and black voters. Very little turned up focusing on the effects of the mandate on women. On March 24, 2011, blogger Charles Kuffner of Houston quoted a press release issued by Houston state Rep. Jessica Farrar, a Democrat who opposed the proposal. Issued after the House advanced the ID measure, Farrar’s release said: ""The list of citizens who could be denied the right to vote because of the new requirement is quite lengthy, and includes: the elderly, women who are recently married or divorced, college students, the poor, those who live in rural areas, Hispanics and African Americans."" Earlier, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported on Davis questioning the Senate’s version of the ID measure by recalling her younger years while stressing the possible effect of the law on low-income Texans. ""Long before she was a Harvard-educated attorney and a member of the state Senate, Wendy Davis was a divorced single mom who was holding down two jobs and raising a young daughter while attending Tarrant County Community College,"" the newspaper’s Dave Montgomery said in a Jan. 25, 2011, PoliTex blog post. ""Davis recalled those experiences Tuesday as the Republican-controlled state Senate debated a controversial voter ID bill. Like other Democrats, she contended that (Senate Bill) 14 threatens to disenfranchise the indigent, minorities and elderly by requiring voters to show a photo identification in order to vote,"" the post went. The blog post continued: ""‘There was a time when I was indigent,’ the Fort Worth lawmaker told Sen. Troy Fraser, R-Horseshoe Bay, as they debated the merits of the legislation. Had the law been in effect during her earlier days, Davis told Fraser, she ‘would have been quite challenged’ in acquiring the documentation needed to exercise her right to vote."" Davis cited her own experiences when was holding down two jobs and said that many low-income Texans do not have the time to leave work and stand in long lines, nor do they have the money to purchase the required ID documents, Montgomery wrote. ""For people who have to take off at work it can be a very real problem,"" Davis said as she stood beside a chart illustrating the cost of supporting documents, the blog post said. ""I'm afraid we're going to wind up disenfranchising legal citizens...who are going to be denied the right to vote."" More women might lack required ID to vote Separately, we asked activists and attorneys who have questioned the law about evidence bearing on the association’s claim. Wendy Weiser, who directs a Brennan Center project focused on voting rights and who also has been involved in litigation against the law, said by telephone that she is not aware of studies specific to the ID mandate’s effect on women alone, though she said that due to marriages and divorces, women generally change their names more often than men. Weiser suggested we consider research by Matt Barreto, a University of Washington political scientist who has conducted voter surveys to gauge how many have the IDs required to vote in states with such mandates. By email, Barreto told us that a 2009 survey of Texas registered voters indicates that at that time, 89.5 percent of male registered voters had a valid photo ID compared with 84.2 percent of women. The difference, Barreto said, was statistically significant and an indication that about 900,000 registered female voters lacked the ID likely required to vote compared with about 520,000 men. Arianna Campos, a Farrar aide, suggested we contact Sondra Haltom, president of Empower the Vote Texas, a nonprofit group that describes itself as advocating changes that encourage voter participation and opposing restrictions of voter rights. By telephone, Haltom said that by her analysis, a match of state voter rolls with driver license data, as of August 2013, nearly 610,000 registered voters had no sign of a driver’s license or state ID on their voter registration records--with 84 percent of them being women and/or minorities and/or young people. Haltom emailed us a spreadsheet indicating that by her calculation, about 402,000 of the nearly 610,000 voters, 60 percent, were women. But the state of Texas and federal judges have objected to reaching conclusions about how many people carry appropriate IDs based on such absences of matching information, a spokesman for Abbott’s state office, Jerry Strickland, pointed out by email. In August 2012, a judicial panel for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia issued a ruling striking down the Texas ID law, though that ruling was overtaken on June 25, 2013 when the Supreme Court held that Texas and other jurisdictions no longer had to win federal preclearance of changes in voting laws before carrying them out. Regardless, the 2012 ruling said the state had failed to prove the ID law would not lead to retrogression in voting among racial minorities. That ruling also challenged the methodology behind tabulating those registration records lacking driver license numbers. The judges noted, first, that Texans seeking to register to vote are given the option of recording the last four digits of a Social Security number or their eight-digit driver’s license number, meaning ""even voters who possess a driver’s license may opt to provide a Social Security number. After all, four digits are easier to write than eight. Furthermore, many voters likely memorize their Social Security number but not their driver’s license number,"" the judges wrote. ""Thus, what voters write on their registration form is barely probative of whether they actually possess a state-issued ID card—much less whether they possess any"" of the types of photo IDs permitted under the law. State: No voters turned away to date Finally, a spokeswoman for the Texas Secretary of State’s office, Alicia Pierce, telephoned us after learning of this fact check from the attorney general’s office. Pierce stressed that the Texas law does not require anyone’s name on a valid ID to perfectly match their name on their voter registration. She said, too, that voters whose names are ""substantially"" similar had cast ballots in the 2013 ""early voting"" period by swearing that they are who they say they are. Men and women were affected to limited degrees, she said. She said she was not aware of anyone with a substantially similar name on their ID and voter registration being prevented from voting. Our ruling The Democratic governors group said the voter ID measure signed into law by Perry is a ""blatant effort to defeat Wendy Davis by disenfranchising tens of thousands of women voters."" In addition to its timeline gulf--the ID proposal passed into law two years before Davis emerged as a serious gubernatorial prospect--this claim suffers from an absence of proof that the Texas law was intended to disenfranchise tens of thousands of women or has had such an immediate effect. Significantly, we are not judging here whether the ID hurdle is affecting voter participation. The law is lately being enforced for the first time. Only after the 2013 elections is there likely to be data on its effect on voters--of all kinds. This pre-election claim, weakened by chronological illogic and an overall absence of evidence, shakes out as both incorrect and ridiculous. !"
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31570
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The creator of Breaking Bad announced the series will return for a sixth season.
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Reports that the creator of 'Breaking Bad' has announced the series will return for a sixth season are fake news.
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false
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Media Matters, better call saul, breaking bad, Not Necessarily The News
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On 25 August 2014, the National Report published an article positing that the creator of the popular AMC TV drama Breaking Bad had announced the series would be returning for a sixth season of new episodes: Breaking Bad fans around the world are celebrating the stunning, glorious and amazing news announced today: Walter White is not dead, and there will indeed be a sixth season of the wildly-popular, award-winning AMC drama. This shocking and exciting news comes not from an internet message board or the rumor mill but from series creator Vince Gilligan. In an exclusive CNN interview late Sunday evening, Gilligan dropped the bombshell. “Walter White is not dead, and neither is Breaking Bad,” said the 47-year-old writer, director, and executive producer of the groundbreaking show. By the following day links and excerpts referencing this article were being circulated via social media, with many of those who encountered the item mistaking it for a genuine news article. However, the article was just another bit of fake news from the National Report that was republished on other sites as well. All of these sources are fake news sites who publish outrageous fictional stories with clickbait headlines such as “IRS Plans to Target Leprechauns Next,” “Boy Scouts Announce Boobs Merit Badge,” and “New CDC Study Indicates Pets of Gay Couples Worse at Sports, Better at Fashion Than Pets of Straight Couples.” The National Report‘s disclaimer page notes that all of the site’s articles are fiction: National Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news. Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental. On 14 October 2014 another fake news site, Empire News, published an article with the very same premise: If you were are fan of the hit AMC TV show Breaking Bad, then I hope you’re sitting down for this news. Vince Gilligan, the creator of the much-loved series, has announced that on top of working on creating spin-off series Better Call Saul, he and his writers have begun working on a sixth season for Breaking Bad. “It’s true, we did decide to come back for another round with Walt,” said series creator Gilligan. “Better Call Saul is going to be able to stand on its own, but there is more to Walt’s story. He hasn’t died just yet.” The item was just as much as a bit of fiction as the previous one. Empire News is another one of the many fake news sites that publishes sensationalized made-up stories such as “Body Found Under Motel Bed,” “George W. Bush Arrested for Cocaine Possession,” and Congress Approves Bill That Will Offer Free Automobiles to Welfare Recipients.” Their disclaimer page notes that Empire News “is a satirical and entertainment website.” Season two of Better Call Saul, the follow-on prequel series about Breaking Bad‘s conniving “criminal lawyer” character Saul Goodman, has featured appearances from several Breaking Bad characters such as the Cousins and Hector Salamanca. Some sharp-eyed fans of the latter show noticed that first letter of each of the episode titles in Better Call Saul’s second season are an anagram for the phrase “FRING’S BACK,” heralding the potential reappearance of Breaking Bad drug lord Gus Fring: @BetterTalkSaul on vacation this week, and have nothing but time lol pic.twitter.com/KvHF8WY4JV — Shaquita (@sirena6783) March 28, 2016 As Variety noted of the tease: The second season finale appeared to tease something that fans of “Breaking Bad” have been anticipating ever since the prequel series was announced: the reintroduction of Emmy-nominated favorite Giancarlo Esposito as drug lord Gus Fring. Of course, we didn’t actually see Esposito or Fring in the episode. There is simply an ominous note left for Mike (Jonathan Banks) warning him off of taking any extreme measures against Hector Salamanca (Mark Margolis) — who was also a crucial character on “Breaking Bad.” Theories that the note was written by Fring, or at the very least one of his associates, were exacerbated by the discovery that the first letter of each of the ten-episode titles in “Saul’s” second season are an anagram for “FRING’S BACK.” That’s no coincidence. Variety spoke with showrunners Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan about why they chose to tease Fring in this fashion. Peter Gould: “If we knew for sure one way or the other I’d be more comfortable saying that we want them to marinate in that. I have to say, we did not think the clues in the titles would be decoded as quickly as they were. We’re still mulling over season three. Now that the cat is out of the bag, we’re certainly thinking Gus Fring had a hand in what happened with Mike at the end of season two. Having said that, Gus Fring works in mysterious ways, he casts a long shadow, he works indirectly.”
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3766
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Vaping illness death count surpasses 50 in US.
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The death toll in the vaping illness outbreak has topped 50, U.S. health officials said Thursday.
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true
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U.S. News, Health, General News, Marijuana, Vaping
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The 52 deaths in 26 states are among the 2,409 hospitalized cases that have been reported across the nation this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Hospitalized cases have been most common in the Midwest, with some of the highest rates in Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin. The median age of the people who died is 52, but most people who suffered lung damage have been much younger, with half in their teens or early 20s. The outbreak appears to have started in March. The bulk of the cases occurred in August and September, but new cases are still being reported, including 118 in the past week, the CDC said. Some of the newly reported illnesses happened more than a month ago but were only recently reported. However, 43 percent of the latest batch of cases were people hospitalized since Nov. 17, the agency said. Most patients have said they vaped products containing THC, the ingredient that produces a high in marijuana. CDC officials have gradually come to focus their investigation on black-market THC cartridges. Last month, CDC officials said they had narrowed in on a culprit — a chemical compound called vitamin E acetate that has been commonly found in the lungs of sick patients and in the products they vaped. It’s a thickening agent that’s been added to illicit THC vaping liquids. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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41642
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When the UK leaves the EU we won’t be sending vast amounts of money to the EU every year.
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Our net contribution to the EU budget is typically £9-10 billion a year. We will no longer contribute to it from 2021 onwards, but other costs and economic effects associated with leaving are expected to more than offset that saving.
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false
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health
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No longer sending money to the EU means we will have money to spend on priorities like the NHS. There is no guaranteed extra money to pay for increased NHS funding from stopping our payments to the EU budget. Other costs associated with Brexit are expected to outweigh the savings. When the UK leaves the EU we won’t be sending vast amounts of money to the EU every year. Our net contribution to the EU budget is typically £9-10 billion a year. We will no longer contribute to it from 2021 onwards, but other costs and economic effects associated with leaving are expected to more than offset that saving. Claim 1 of 3
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15079
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"Iran’s ""regime is responsible for more than 1,000 American casualties during the Iraq war"" and ""has plotted a terrorist attack here in our nation's capital."
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Cash-strapped WeWork, the office-sharing company that is trying to negotiate a financial lifeline, has a new problem that may prove costly. It has closed about 2,300 phone booths at some of its 223 sites in the United States and Canada after it says it discovered elevated levels of formaldehyde.
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true
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Iraq, Foreign Policy, Terrorism, Texas, Michael McCaul,
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The company, which abandoned plans for an initial public offering last month after investors questioned its mounting losses and the way it was being run, said in an email to its tenants on Monday that the chemical could pose a cancer-risk if there is long-term exposure. After a tenant complained of odor and eye irritation, WeWork began testing and based on the results took 1,600 phone booths out of service, the company said in the email to tenants, which it calls members. An additional 700 booths are closed while more testing is conducted, it said. All the phone booths closed were installed over the past several months, WeWork said. “The safety and well-being of our members is our top priority and we are working to remedy this situation as quickly as possible,” WeWork said in a statement. More costs are the last thing needed at the company, which some analysts say is fast running out of cash. WeWork declined to comment on the cost of testing and replacing the booths. It is currently in talks for a multi-billion dollar rescue deal that could lead to its largest shareholder, Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp (9984.T), taking control, two people familiar with the matter said. WeWork is also talking to JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N) over a possible debt package, they said. WeWork declined to identify the manufacturer of the phone booths. “Long-term exposure to formaldehyde, such as that experienced by workers in jobs who experience high concentrations over many years, has been associated with certain types of cancers,” WeWork told tenants in the email. In 1987, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classified formaldehyde as a probable human carcinogen under conditions of unusually high or prolonged exposure. Some studies since then suggested that formaldehyde exposure is associated with certain types of cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute. A tenant, who did not wish to be identified, said she was worried about the risk of cancer as she had spent hundreds of hours inside phone booths at a San Francisco WeWork that has the problem. Phone booths are popular in WeWork’s open-plan offices as they provide privacy and noise reduction, the tenant said.
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2733
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As quality control violations rise, FDA chief heads to India.
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The commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Margaret Hamburg, plans to visit India for the first time in an official capacity next week as the agency works to keep sub-standard food and drugs from entering the United States.
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true
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Health News
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The FDA’s Wednesday announcement of the visit, planned for February 10-18, comes less than two weeks after the FDA banned products from a fourth facility owned by Indian drugmaker Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd due to manufacturing violations, effectively shutting the company out of the U.S. market for the foreseeable future. India is the second-largest exporter of drugs to the United States after Canada and the eighth-largest food exporter. Indian companies supply 40 percent of all drugs consumed in the United States, yet quality control problems have been rampant. Hamburg said the purpose of her visit is to “connect with my counterparts in the regulatory agencies as well as have a chance to talk with industry leaders who are important stakeholders in terms of our activities.” She plans to visit Delhi, Mumbai and Cochin, where she will attend the World Spice Congress which runs from February 16-19. She will also visit a seafood processing facility and a spices facility. India accounted for 16 percent of U.S. spice imports by value in 2010 according to a recent FDA report, more than any other country. However, spice imports have been a source of food contamination. In October the FDA released figures showing that nearly 7 percent of all spice imports examined between 2007 and 2009 were contaminated with salmonella, while 12 percent of imported spices were contaminated with insects, hair and other filth. Mexico and India accounted for the highest percentage of contaminated shipments. Hamburg said she wants to build both professional relationships with her counterparts “and build the personal bonds as well.” “We plan to sign a fairly broad memorandum of understanding to strengthen the ongoing working relationship,” she said. “It will be a fairly broad umbrella framework but will be important both practically and symbolically.” She said she will not be visiting individual drug companies, but will have a round-table discussion with drug company chief executives. Part of the discussion will focus on quality control. “We have made it very clear that we have a set of quality standards that we will adhere to,” Hamburg said, adding that the message will be reiterated. “It needs to be a very clear message, but it is a message they will not be surprised by.” In December Jubilant Life Sciences Ltd received a warning letter from the FDA over manufacturing practices at one of its U.S. facilities. In November the FDA effectively banned products from a second plant operated by Wockhardt Ltd. “We have a responsibility to ensure quality, whether of drugs manufactured in this country or outside our borders,” Hamburg said.
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9036
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Medical cannabis significantly safer for elderly with chronic pain than Opioids
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The study summarized in this release relied on questionnaires about pain and quality of life in 901 people over age 65 who have used medical marijuana for 6 months for a variety of conditions (about two-thirds for either nonspecific or cancer-related pain). The news release uses unjustified language and relative numbers to suggest the study shows that medical marijuana is “safe and efficacious” for a variety of conditions which afflict the elderly. But it doesn’t point out major limitations and significant conflicts of interest to the reader. Furthermore, the misleading headline implies that marijuana is safer and more effective than opioids (even though this was not part of the study). Finally, the last paragraph provocatively hints that marijuana might help reduce opioid dependence. This is purely speculative. The treatment of chronic pain has been in the news a lot because of concerns about the inappropriate use of opioid medications that have led to dependence, abuse and overdoses. Side effects of opioids and most medicines are greater in older patients, so safer therapies would be welcome. Medical marijuana is one option that has gained increasing attention as jurisdictions in the US and elsewhere permit its use with a prescription from an authorized clinician. However, there is very limited evidence that medical marijuana is either safe or effective for most indications that it is currently being used for. Most evidence focuses on patients with cancer and chemotherapy related side effects, but even here the evidence is inconclusive in that there are few head-to-head comparisons between medical marijuana and other active therapies. As pointed out in the study: “the number of people aged 60 and over is expected to double by 2025 worldwide, and by 2050 in the United States.” When you couple that statistic with the challenge of managing pain in the elderly then you can see how finding new approaches to pain is not just a pressing medical concern, but also a potentially lucrative business opportunity. Most studies looking at the safety and efficacy of medical marijuana are — like this one — observational in nature. Therefore, they can only make statements regarding association and not causality. Another challenge to be aware of when reading about these studies is that of dosing. Because of the wide range of marijuana strains, and the variety of delivery options used, it’s very hard to accurately determine dosing.
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false
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Ben-Gurion University of the Negev,chronic pain,medical cannabis
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Cost is not mentioned in this news release. The study involves several different methods of taking cannabis (smoking, infused oils, vaporization) which all involve a wide range of pricing. Moreover, it isn’t clear whether insurance pays for this or whether it represents out-of-pocket payments by patients. The study abstract provides numerical data: “After six months of treatment, 93.7% of the respondents reported improvement in their condition and the reported pain level was reduced from a median of 8 on a scale of 0–10 to a median of 4.” However, the release got it wrong, saying that, “more than 93 percent of 901 respondents reported their pain dropped from a median of eight to four on a 10-point scale.” That isn’t the case. The release mixed it up. In addition, the news release provides positive outcomes in pain control and quality of life using relative percentages, not absolute numbers. Further, the results are based on self-reporting in questionnaires, which are highly subjective and notoriously unreliable. Only about 900 (33%) of the original 2,736 subjects actually completed the study, and their follow-up was quite short at six months. The news release mentions the “most commonly reported side effects were dizziness (9.7%) and dry mouth (7.1%).” It would have been useful to include this information from the study: Among the roughly 900 subjects who took the follow-up questionnaire at six months, almost one-third “reported at least one adverse event.” For about 10 percent of these subjects, they reported this adverse event as a 7 out of 10 on the severity scale. Quality of life was measured by a questionnaire that gave subjects 5 options (very good, good, neutral, bad, very bad). Pain intensity was measured by the classic 11-point scale (0=no pain; 10= worst pain imaginable) Perception of the general effects of cannabis was measure along 7 choices ranging from significant improvement all the way down to significant deterioration. But the reproducibility of the findings from the questionnaires is very limited by small sample size (n= 901), the highly subjective nature of self-reporting, and the inability of the researchers to calculate dosing of the active substance (in this case, the THC in marijuana). The study did not compare cannabis treatment to other therapies. Thus, the reported outcomes are not really comparative. Second, the study population had to be on cannabis for at least 6 months. But we don’t know about the effect in the majority of patients who took it for shorter periods. In effect, the release reports on pre-selected patients who are likely to have done well on the treatment. None of these limitations were mentioned in the news release. To its credit, the release does note at the end that the study should be followed up and “more evidence-based data from this special, aging population is imperative.” No disease mongering in this news release. Although the news release mentions that the subjects surveyed “received medical cannabis through ‘Tikun Olam,’ the largest Israeli medical cannabis supplier,” it does not point out the following: This is definitely something readers should know in a news release that implies efficacy in treating nearly a dozen different conditions in the first two paragraphs. It’s quite clear that people over 65 represent a growing target market for medical cannabis. There are a large number of treatment options for patients with pain due to various conditions but none are mentioned here except for the misleading assertion in the headline that cannabis was compared with opioids. As mentioned earlier, the release doesn’t acknowledge that there was no comparison to other therapies in this observational study. Rather, the release tends to dismiss them in terms of side effects using opioids as an example. There are other medicinal and non-medicinal therapies that could be used. The news release does not address which countries (other than Israel) or US states have legalized medical marijuana. Availability depends very much on where the patient lives. There have been several other studies looking at the safety and efficacy of using medical cannabis in the elderly. A 2014 review of them concluded: “Adequately powered trials are needed to assess the efficacy and safety of cannabinoids in older subjects, as the potential symptomatic benefit is especially attractive in this age group.” These other studies are not mentioned in the news release. The title of the release, “Medical cannabis significantly safer for elderly with chronic pain than opioids,” goes far beyond what the study found. It implies this was a comparative study. It’s overreaching to imply that cannabis is “safe and efficacious” in treating nearly a dozen conditions based solely on the self-reporting of a small number of subjects, and in an observational study that can not establish cause and effect.
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10161
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Fecal transplant effective against immunotherapy-induced colitis
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“It’s safe, quick, and the effect is durable – from one treatment.” We challenge the news release’s ability to make this claim after a look at just two patients. While immunotherapy has taken the cancer treatment world by storm, the use of “immune checkpoint inhibitors” can produce debilitating side effects. In about 40% of patients, one of those side effects is severe inflammation of the colon, a problem that brings treatment to a halt until the colon clears up. In this preliminary, “proof-of-concept” study, a team of MD Anderson Cancer Center researchers found that fecal transplants returned the colons of two afflicted cancer patients to a healthy state. While such results suggest that clinical trials will be a welcome next step, they don’t give oncologists or public information officers carte blanche to tout the effectiveness of the strategy. Nature Medicine thought the small study deserved a spot in its “Brief Communication” section, but communication professionals at the cancer center should have taken a pass on this one and waited until more robust evidence becomes available. If this intervention ends up being fully evaluated and proven successful, treating colitis related complications could possibly be done without using corticosteroid therapy (which has its own complications at high doses and over long periods of time. But until then, keep in mind that the sometimes severe side effects of immunotherapy have patients casting about on the internet for solutions. You can learn how to perform your own DIY fecal transplant thanks to YouTube—minus the careful screening procedures, of course—so recommending a procedure such as this must be the result of careful clinical exploration.
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false
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Academic medical center news release
|
Although the use of fecal transplants to soothe severe colitis in cancer patients (caused, in this case, by immunotherapy) has yet to be tested clinically, the treatment itself is increasingly popular for other gastrointestinal issues and typically costs in the $1000 to $2000 range. Alas, we learn nothing about that cost in this release. The release clearly states the outcomes of fecal transplants in the two patients that constitute the study. Risks of these transplants are not mentioned. Fecal material produced without careful screening could introduce microbes, including those linked to MS and Parkinson’s. Formally evaluating this intervention is important and making claims of “safety” and “durability” is not technically accurate for a proof-of-concept study. Larger phase I trials are needed to evaluate safety. To its credit, the news release notes that “the very small cohort” limits the quality of the evidence. But on the other hand, a study involving just two patients raises the question of why anyone would publicize this study via a news release in the first place. The release doesn’t disease-monger. Inflammation of the colon is the second most common side effect of employing immune checkpoint inhibitors, according to the release. That makes finding a way to minimize this side effect important. The release does identify funding sources, but it does not illuminate possible conflicts of interest. Admittedly, this would be hard to do given the large number of coauthors. But a section on “competing interests” in the Nature Medicine article that jump-started this release does indicate that some of the coauthors have a commercial interest in the success of microbiome treatment applications. The text explains that traditional treatment of severe gastrointestinal symptoms involves steroids and drugs that may suppress the efficacy of immunotherapy and suppress an individual’s immune system, while generating their own unpleasant side effects. Determining this will be confusing to someone reading this release. Fecal transplant procedures are in use to treat a variety of gastrointestinal issues, so this would suggest that the procedure is available. But its employment to subdue inflammation caused by immunotherapy treatment is just being explored and has not even been subjected to clinical testing yet. So whether the procedure would be available to cancer patients receiving immunotherapy is an open question. The text maintains that this study represents “the first time” that fecal transplants have been used to treat individuals with immunotherapy-induced colitis. Although the text identifies the sample of only two patients as a design limitation, the first author of the study projects confidence that the procedure is “safe, quick, and the effect is durable” and recommends that others consider the procedure “as a first-line therapy for ICI-associated colitis.” Without appropriate clinical trials on a larger population, such confidence may not be warranted.
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35863
|
A seller submitted a photo of a tea kettle with a revealing reflection to an online auction site.
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This is an actual photo that was put in the classified ads for someone selling a dining room set. There’s a pretty strong clue in here suggesting that it was taken by a man.
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true
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Fauxtography, Risqué Business
|
One of the many trends spawned by the internet is a phenomenon known as Reflectoporn — the deliberate posting of photographs of items with reflective surfaces to online auction sites, with those pictures “accidentally” capturing reflected images of the sellers/photographs in various states of undress. The photograph that is generally credited with kicking off the Reflectoporn trend is an image of a tea kettle, which was posted to sold.com.au, an Australian on-line auction site, in August 2001 and thereafter widely mocked: PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT This is a quick note to all would-be auctioneers: Folks, if you’re going to be selling something that people are going to be drinking fluids out of, please take some extra time to either put on some clothes before taking a picture, or concentrate on selling the non-reflective items in your kitchen. Thank you. That the posting of the revealing image was unlikely to have been accidental was confirmed by a trace of the seller’s user ID, which showed him to be one of a group of people who were planting similar pictures on various web sites. Other examples of Reflectoporn appeared in an auction for a television on the UK version of eBay in December 2002: And in an eBay auction for a guitar in April 2003: We started seeing the following picture of a dining room set in February 2005, although we don’t know if it actually was, as claimed, used in on-line auction posting or other type advertisement:
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9899
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Roche Drug Shrinks Tumors in Study
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This story presents the early findings of a new drug shown to reduce tumor size in two rare cancers: advanced basel cell carcinoma and medulloblastoma. While the drug showed good response rates, the story reminds the reader that this is a new drug in the early stages of testing and its true efficacy is currently unknown. More information regarding what “response” really meant in this case, and more about the potential harms would have strengthened the piece.
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true
|
"The drug has only been tested in a phase I trial and a discussion of cost is not applicable at this time. The story indicates that 55% of patients (or 18 out of 33) with advanced basel cell carcinoma responded to the treatment. Only one person with medulloblastoma was enrolled in the study and the story adequately describes this case. One point we wish the story had addressed: what is meant by ""response?"" Typically it’s a standard percentage shrinkage on an imaging study. What did it really mean in this case? The story states that the drug is associated with “few significant side effects,” however, the specifics of these side effects are not provided. Six patients in the advanced basel cell carcinoma study experienced 8 grade 3 adverse events, including fatigue, hyponatremia, muscle spasms, and atrial fibrillation. One patient withdrew from the study citing adverse effects. The writer makes it clear that this is a small, experimental study that enrolled only 33 patients with advanced basel cell carcinoma and 1 patient with medullablastoma. This story does not engage in disease-mongering. It clearly states that medullablastoma and advanced basel cell carcinoma are rare forms of cancer, a percentage of which involve the pathway targeted by the new drug. This story provided comments from co-authors of the two studies, as well as the author of the accompanying editorial. This story briefly mentions chemotherapy, surgery and radiation as treatment options for cancer. The story makes it clear that this drug is still in the experimental phase and the FDA has not yet approved it. This is story makes it clear this is a novel drug in the early phase of testing. There does not appear to be a press release associated with this story."
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3532
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MD lawmakers, officials, union meet on staffing shortages.
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State union employees told lawmakers Tuesday they are concerned that staff shortages — of about 2,600, according to a 2018 study — are causing safety issues, including some injuries, for employees at certain agencies.
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true
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Appropriations, Health, Annapolis, General News, Maryland, Injuries
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Maryland lawmakers, state officials and union members gathered in Annapolis to address the shortage during a joint hearing before the Senate Budget and Taxation Committee and the House Appropriations Committee. Hogan Administration officials said during the hearing that they are aware of the safety concerns and are working to address them, along with the shortage. Jason Kramer, policy analyst with Legislative Services, said during the hearing that the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services alone had a need for more than 1,000 employees, while agencies like the Department of Juvenile Services and Department of Health were short more than 200 positions each, according to the study. Delegate Marc Korman, D-Montgomery, noted during the hearing that recent safety incidents “triggered” the meeting Tuesday morning, which also included testimony from members of Maryland’s American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — a public employee trade union. The members, donning green union shirts, filled the seats in the hearing room. In a news conference held shortly before the hearing, Patrick Moran — the president of the union — spoke of what he described as “systematic underfunding and delays” in filling vacancies. He said the union is demanding “immediate action,” but also noted that the members present in Annapolis had “no confidence” in Gov. Larry Hogan as an employer. Mike Ricci, a spokesman for Hogan, said in a written statement that once the union, “agrees to the ground rules that require them to bargain in good faith — rules that other unions have agreed to year after year — our administration is ready and willing to move forward with negotiations.” Delegate Shelly Hettleman, D-Baltimore County, attended the news conference and said that state employees are “underpaid and overworked,” and the staffing shortages are “putting people in danger.” Jeremy Jeffers, a resident adviser with the Department of Juvenile Services, testified during the hearing and said he has personally dealt with the “dangers” of understaffing, noting that he has been assaulted “multiple times,” suffered six concussions and even lost part of his finger during an incident. “I would challenge anyone to come and spend a shift,” Jeffers said. Ikeia Cornish, a direct care assistant at Eastern Shore Hospital Center, also testified and said one of her coworkers was “blindsided” and beaten by one of the patients. She referred to staffing shortages as a “crisis,” which leads to “more staff and patient injuries” and an “unsecure environment” Representatives from the Hogan Administration also testified during the hearing and addressed what is being done to alleviate the staffing problem. David Brinkley, secretary of the Department of Budget and Management, said the administration takes the staffing shortage issue “very seriously” and is focused on “hard-to-fill” positions like correctional officers. Nick Pepersack, Brinkley’s deputy chief of staff, later confirmed to Capital News Service that those employees received a nearly 10% salary increase between January and July of this year. Total salary enhancements in the last and current fiscal years, Pepersack said, amounted to approximately $467 million for employees statewide. Robert Neall, secretary of the Department of Health, said there is now an “increase in emphasis” on reporting all incidents at state hospitals and he looks “forward to reporting more progress” in January. Delegate Kirill Reznik, D-Montgomery, addressed Neall during the hearing and said while he has “no doubt” that the secretary is trying, “we have been here before.” “Ever year we hear, ‘these are all the things we are doing’ . and every year, we come back here,” Reznik said. Pressed by Reznik on where the department will be in terms of vacancies next year, Neall repeated that he expects “significant” progress, but could not answer the question “with specificity.” Sen. Andrew Serafini, R-Washington, told Capital News Service after the hearing that with regard to the safety incidents, “we have a more violent community in general.” “It’s not that we don’t care” about state employees, Serafini said, adding that the characterization to the contrary is “problematic.” ___ This story was produced by the University of Maryland’s Capital News Service.
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3082
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Budget deal advances VA private care program backed by Trump.
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President Donald Trump’s expansion of a program aimed at steering more veterans to private health care is getting an $8.9 billion boost as part of the massive government spending bill approved by the House, setting up a potential battle over the direction of the Veterans Affairs Department.
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true
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Government spending, Health care reform, General News, Politics, Health, Business, Bills, Veterans, Veterans affairs, Donald Trump
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The deal provides $81 billion for VA medical care to treat 9.3 million veterans, including the $8.9 billion for private care under a law passed last year expanding the Veterans Choice program. Another $11.3 billion is on tap for private care in 2021. Major veterans groups have cautioned against “cannibalizing” VA programs to pay for Choice, which they worry could lead to privatization of VA. The program gives veterans wider access to private care when they have endured lengthy wait times or the treatment was not what they had expected. The price tag could soar as the expanded program takes hold, putting the VA at risk of future budget shortfalls. Democratic presidential contenders including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren have urged reinvestment in the VA over expanded private care options. Former Vice President Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, a mayor of South Bend, Indiana, have said they will roll back or change some of the Trump administration’s rules on Choice. “As the increasing need for medical care by wounded, ill and injured veterans and their family caregivers is being forced to fit under tight budget caps, we are concerned necessary resources could be shifted away from the VA healthcare system, which independent research has shown provides higher quality care than the private sector,” said Joy Ilem, national legislative director for Disabled American Veterans. “While community care programs are vital to fill and supplement VA in many locations, we believe the value to veterans and the taxpayer of every dollar spent in the VA health care system is greater than if it were spent in the community,” she said. House Democrats had pushed for Choice money to be exempt from budget caps, to avoid the risk of cuts to core VA programs as costs grow in the coming years. Ultimately, however, the money was kept under budget caps after the White House resisted. The added money for Choice is part of a 6% increase to the total VA budget for the fiscal year ending next September. It also includes $9.4 billion for mental health care. About 20 veterans die by suicide each day, a rate unchanged during the Trump administration. The spending bill, which still needs Senate approval, also requires the VA to report to Congress within 30 days the reasons for a two-year delay in announcing whether it plans to provide health care coverage for additional Vietnam War veterans exposed to Agent Orange. Former VA secretary David Shulkin in 2017 tried to get additional diseases such as Parkinson’s on a VA list of conditions that are tied to Agent Orange, but the White House opposed that recommendation. A National Academies report in 2016 said there was suggestive evidence to link some of the diseases to herbicide exposure. “The VA and the Office of Management and Budget now have 30 days to deliver a plan detailing how they’ll get veterans suffering from Agent Orange exposure the coverage they need,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., who pushed the provision.
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1826
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If your friends feel like family, there's a good reason for it.
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The truism that friends are the family you choose may be more accurate than you might suppose.
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true
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Science News
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A study published on Monday found that people are apt to pick friends who are genetically similar to themselves - so much so that friends tend to be as alike at the genetic level as a person’s fourth cousin. The findings were based on an examination of about 1.5 million markers of genetic variations in a group of nearly 2,000 people who had taken part in a long-running health study based in Massachusetts. The researchers compared people identified as friends to those who were not. The study showed people were most similar to their friends in olfactory genes, which involve the sense of smell, and were least similar in relation to immune system genes. “Olfactory genes have a straightforward explanation: People who like the same smells tend to be drawn to similar environments, where they meet others with the same tendencies,” said one of the researchers, James Fowler, a professor of medical genetics and political science at the University of California, San Diego. The study, published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, follows research released in May that found that people tended to choose spouses who have similar DNA. Fowler said the new findings made it clear that people have more DNA in common with those who are selected as friends than with strangers in the same population. Fourth cousins are people who have great-great-great grandparents in common. Because the study population was largely homogeneous, mostly whites of European background, the findings “are less likely to be driven by the simple explanation that people of similar ancestry befriend one another,” Fowler said. Fellow researcher Nicholas Christakis, a Yale University professor of sociology, evolutionary biology and medicine, said the mechanism used by people to choose friends with similar genetics remained a mystery. “It could involve the workings of a postulated ‘kin detection system’ in humans,” Christakis said. “Our fates depend not only on our own genes, but also on the genes of others around us, and in particular our friends.” Christakis said he was interested in finding out why people have friends in the first place. “The making of friends is exceedingly rare in the animal kingdom,” Christakis added. “Certain other primates, elephants and whales are the only other mammals who do this, and this alone aroused our curiosity.”
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5759
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Medical marijuana user, 78, evicted from subsidized housing.
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A 78-year-old man who relies on medical marijuana for back pain finds himself homeless after being evicted from federally subsidized housing in a case complicated by conflicting state and federal marijuana rules.
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true
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Medical marijuana, Health, Marijuana, North America, Niagara Falls
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John Flickner was staying at a Niagara Falls shelter Thursday, after an hourslong eviction ordeal Tuesday that ended with him steering his electric wheelchair in freezing temperatures to a center about a half mile away. “Cold, wet, windy,” Flickner recalled of the trip, which was photographed by The Buffalo News . “All I wanted to do was get out of the wind,” Flickner told The Associated Press on Thursday inside Community Missions, the facility he transferred to the next day. Niagara Towers, where Flickner lived for two years, is subsidized by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development. Although New York state has legalized medical marijuana, HUD says it gives landlords discretion on whether to evict residents for using it. Marijuana use remains illegal under federal law. Flickner’s problems with his landlord started in June, when inspectors found marijuana in his apartment and called police. Responding officers declined to charge Flickner — who said he got the marijuana from a doctor in Canada — but advised him that he needed a prescription to possess it. Flickner said he had no trouble quickly getting a doctor’s prescription and had it long before this week’s eviction. “I didn’t know about getting the card. I just knew it was legal,” he said. “I wasn’t hiding anything.” Still, the Tennessee company that owns the complex, LHP Capital, moved forward with ending his lease. “The basis of the eviction was they have a zero-tolerance (policy) and he had marijuana in his apartment and at that time he did not have medical marijuana,” said Niagara Falls attorney Jason Cafarella, who represented LHP at a November hearing in Niagara Falls City Court. “It was a lease violation and the tenant had known what the rules of the property were, had known the rules of the lease and violated those rules.” A judge issued a Nov. 29 eviction order. “What really swayed the judge, the be-all, end-all factor, was a regulation which basically gives management the ability to impose this zero-tolerance rule regardless of medical marijuana or otherwise,” said attorney Kevin Quinn of the Center for Elder Law and Justice, who represented Flickner. “If it’s being used, they have that ability to terminate a lease.” It’s not unusual for people to be evicted from federally subsidized housing for medical marijuana use, though few are as old as Flickner, said David Mangone of Americans for Safe Access, a medical marijuana advocacy group. “It’s really a clear evidence of discrimination, and medical marijuana should be treated like any other medication when it comes to living in subsidized housing,” said Mangone, the Washington-based group’s director of government affairs. HUD responded to a request for comment by forwarding the agency’s 2014 guidance giving landlords discretion on whether to evict current residents for the use medical marijuana. The memo said landlords are supposed to deny new applicants for subsidized housing if they use medical marijuana. There was no immediate comment from HUD specifically on Flickner’s eviction. LHP did not respond to two telephone messages seeking comment. The company has 55 properties in eight states, according to its website. Flickner on Thursday was waiting for a friend to help him make arrangements for a new place to live. In the meantime, Community Missions spokesman Christian Hoffman said the facility wouldn’t stop him from using the odorless, pen-like vaporizer that delivers his medicine. Flickner, a former tool-and-dye worker, said he injured his back in a skydiving mishap 50 years ago. Medical marijuana relaxes his muscles better and more safely, he said, than addictive opioids. “We’re going along with state guidelines,” Hoffman said. Although Flickner is the first client to arrive at the shelter under these circumstances, Hoffman said he wouldn’t be surprised if others followed. “Hopefully, everyone is able to get on the same page, whatever that looks like,” he said. “But until then, places like ours are going to be picking up some of the pieces.” ___ Associated Press writer Michael Hill contributed from Albany.
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33
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Shipping industry sails into unknown with new pollution rules.
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Faced with imminent new global marine pollution rules, shipping companies and insurers are puzzling over the risks.
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true
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Environment
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To reduce emissions of toxic sulphur that cause premature deaths, shipowners who have long relied on the dirtiest residues of oil extraction will have to either switch to low-sulphur fuel or install exhaust gas cleaning systems from Jan. 1. Neither option has been fully tested for long, and some problems have already been reported, both with the more expensive new fuels and with devices known as scrubbers which extract the sulphur on board. Interviews with key players in the industry show varying levels of alarm at potential risks, which they say range from unexpected fires or collisions due to engine failure to liability for inadvertently flouting the rules. The container shipping industry alone is having to invest $10 billion to adhere to the new rules, analysts say, and is concerned about extra costs were things to go wrong. If different types of the new, cleaner fuel are mixed, for example, they may produce a residue which could eventually clog up an engine and, in a worst-case scenario, damage or break it. Several large ship owners said handling the new fuels correctly and making sure the scrubbers were properly deployed would minimize danger, but that if care was not taken, problems could arise. “The big guys are going to be serviced by the right people … there is bigger risk for the smaller ships,” Hugo De Stoop, chief executive of leading Belgian tanker operator Euronav (EUAV.BR), told Reuters. Euronav has bought the equivalent of almost six months’ supply of compliant fuel and is storing it in a megatanker off Malaysia. If a ship is too far away and has to buy fuel, it will try to buy a single type, or, if only a blend is available, ask to see the seller’s lab tests. “We don’t always believe that people have done the test, been diligent about it,” he said. Graphic: Global shipping density (here) Khalid Hashim, managing director of one of Thailand’s largest dry cargo ship owners, Precious Shipping (PSL.BK), said it had not allowed co-mingling of marine fuel, also known as bunker fuel, for over five years and required all of it to be sample tested. “Of course this costs us annually around $100,000, but we prefer that cost than to use untested bunker oil based solely on the Bunker Delivery Receipt and find that we have a massive problem on our ship,” he said. The company had taken measures to reduce its ships’ fuel consumption to offset some of the extra costs and had installed extra compartments for the tanks on board to avoid mixing, he said. “That way we would have future-proofed our ships for the IMO 2020 regime,” Hashim said, referring the U.N. International Maritime Organization’s rules, agreed by more than 90 countries in hopes of saving more than half a million lives by 2025 alone. Around 172 ships have avoided the problem because they are powered by sulphur-free liquefied natural gas (LNG), data from Norwegian risk management and certification company DNV GL showed, but this in an expensive option. Some ship owners have balked at paying for the new 0.5% sulphur fuel, which is quoted at more than twice the price of the 3.5% high-sulphur grade in northern Europe at the moment. <0#HFOFARAA:> <0#LFO05FARA:> More than 3,000 ships - around 5% of the global fleet - will have scrubbers fitted by 2020 so they can clean the exhaust gas and so continue using existing fuel, the DNV GL data showed. Some ports have banned one type of scrubber, the open-loop version which empties washwater residues into the sea, and insurers have reported cases of fires or corrosion with the devices. Norwegian ship insurer Gard cited a few cases where sparks from welding or cutting fell into a scrubber through uncovered openings: in one case it spread to the engine room through glass reinforced epoxy piping. If corrosion was legally deemed to be inevitable, underwriters might try to deny related claims, said Stephen Harris, senior vice president with insurance broker Marsh. “Whether underwriters adopt this line or not could depend on how frequent and how big the problem becomes next year.” Roger Strevens, VP of global sustainability with Norwegian shipping company Wallenius Wilhelmsen (WALWIL.OL), said its experience with scrubbers had shown risks could be minimized if done properly. “If you buy cheap, you’ll pay twice,” he said. Nautilus International, a union which represents over 20,000 workers in shipping, said the use of new fuel types would place extra strain on crews, who have reported incidents including power loss when changing fuels, filter problems and leaks. “These are complex requirements,” Nautilus professional and technical officer David Appleton said, calling for comprehensive training and protection in cases of inadvertent infringements. An underlying problem is that oil refineries are not obliged to produce tailor-made shipping fuel, said Neil Roberts, head of marine underwriting at Lloyd’s Market Association, which represents the interests of all underwriting businesses in London’s Lloyd’s insurance market. “The ship’s crew has to test it and filter it,” he said. The IMO said it does not have a remit to regulate the fuel industry but that international standards for the new fuel and information about compatibility between types had been issued as part of comprehensive preparations. “IMO is ready, and we are confident IMO member states and the shipping sector are ready for January 1,” an IMO spokesperson said. Protection and Indemnity (P&I) clubs, through which groups of shipping companies cover injury and pollution claims, are in wait-and-see mode. Alvin Forster, deputy director with North P&I club, cited possible engine failure in busy shipping lanes, while Precious Shipping’s Hashim said members investing in expensive low-sulphur fuel should not have to share the loss on any scrubber claims. Harris from Marsh, a broker active in marine insurance including hull and machinery, said assessing cover was still guesswork: for instance, who should pay a fine for a ship using high-sulphur fuel because no alternative was available? “Is it non-compliance?” he said. “The question marks are bigger than the answers.”
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26306
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“It’s not that there’s a virus shield between Canada (4,500 deaths) and the U.S. (80,000 deaths). What exists is a difference in leadership.”
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The U.S. has nearly twice as many confirmed COVID-19 deaths per capita as Canada. Leadership is one explanation for the gap. But there are others, including differences in the two nations’ health care systems and New York City being hit hard early in the outbreak.
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mixture
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Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"A Facebook post claimed that a difference in leadership explains why the United States has so many more COVID-19 deaths than Canada. ""It’s not that there’s a virus shield between Canada (4,500 deaths) and the U.S. (80,000 deaths),"" the post said. ""What exists is a difference in leadership."" The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The United States has experienced more confirmed COVID-19 deaths than Canada. But when taking into account the larger population of the U.S., the gap is not nearly as large as the post claims. While experts say leadership is one factor affecting coronavirus mortality, other factors are in play as well. The raw numbers come from Our World in Data. That research organization is funded by philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates and is led by Max Roser, director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Global Development at the University of Oxford. As of May 9, the date of the post, the confirmed COVID-19 death toll was 4,569 for Canada and 77,180 for the U.S., or nearly 17 times as many. But the United States has a much larger population. To account for that, Our World in Data also reports the number of COVID-19 deaths per million people as of May 9: 121.06 for Canada and 233.17 for the United States. So adjusted for population, the U.S. death toll is not quite double Canada’s. The U.S. leads the world in overall COVID-19 deaths. On a per-capita basis, it fares better than some countries, but worse than others. The U.S. is showing a lower number of deaths per capita than countries such as Spain and Italy. But despite claims by President Donald Trump, it has far more than Germany and many other countries, including Canada, South Korea, Iran, Russia, Poland and Switzerland. But comparing numbers at a particular point in time ""can be very misleading in terms of conclusions — because trajectories over time and the levels at different points in time are very different,"" said health economist Peter Berman, director of the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia and adjunct professor in global health at Harvard University. ""Canada and the U.S. are not too far apart today, but the U.S. was way higher than Canada some weeks ago,"" he said. The post does not define what it means by ""leadership,"" but there are differences in the ways the two countries’ governments responded to the outbreak. At the federal level, Canada supported widespread testing early and the U.S. did not, said Joshua Michaud, associate director of global health policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation. ""That has been one of the big weaknesses of the U.S. response. It took us a very long time to scale up testing in the United States. ""Provinces in Canada have generally coordinated well with the federal government on how to respond to the outbreak, whereas U.S. states have often taken their own paths and sometimes clashed with the federal government,"" said Michaud, a former infectious-disease epidemiologist. ""That has not helped the response in the United States, if you have that sort of tension."" Berman said public-health officers in Canada are much more empowered legally, and medical care is largely under the same government authority as public health, so it is much easier to direct and coordinate a response. Canada’s politicians, he said, ""tended to cede the podium to the public-health scientists more and didn’t undermine or question them, especially in public. In the U.S., political leaders disagreed with scientists often and publicly. With the U.S. in an election cycle, Berman added, ""political opposition is looking for things to criticize, as is a politically polarized media. Also, the U.S. seems to me to be a more polarized society politically. All of this has different results in terms of coherence and coordination of policy response."" News reports have also looked at differences in leadership. An analysis by the CBC, the Canadian broadcast network, said Trump gave mixed messages about social distancing, and one American study found that people in counties that voted predominantly for Trump in 2016 were less likely to perceive risk associated with coronavirus, seek information or practice physical distancing, the analysis noted. In contrast, according to the analysis, Canadian politicians were more consistent in their messaging, and tracking data collected by Google from smartphones suggested that Canadians practiced more physical distancing than Americans and began doing it earlier. In addition to citing Trump’s mixed messaging, the CBC analysis said the U.S. death rate is higher because its largest city, New York, was struck early in the pandemic; and because a lack of health insurance is a problem in the U.S., especially among Americans more vulnerable to COVID-19, such as African Americans. ""Canada has universal health care, whereas many people in the United States do not have health insurance or easy access to care, Michaud said. And, he said, the U.S. has a ""fractured"" health care system, with government providers, health insurance companies and private practitioners ""competing for scarce resources."" A Facebook post claimed: ""It’s not that there’s a virus shield between Canada (4,500 deaths) and the U.S. (80,000 deaths). What exists, is a difference in leadership."" These numbers aren’t directly comparable because the U.S. has a far larger population, so the post exaggerates the difference. But on a per-capita basis, the United States still has nearly twice as many COVID-19 deaths as Canada does. Experts said differences in how political leadership responded to the disease are one factor in the disparity. But there are others, such as the virus’ heavy impact on New York City; poor access to health insurance and health care among people more vulnerable to the coronavirus; and people’s different responses to guidelines aimed at containing the virus. The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details."
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3568
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Less beef, more beans. Experts say world needs a new diet.
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A hamburger a week, but no more — that’s about as much red meat people should eat to do what’s best for their health and the planet, according to a report seeking to overhaul the world’s diet.
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true
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Health, Nutrition, AP Top News, Agriculture, Environment
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Eggs should be limited to fewer than about four a week, the report says. Dairy foods should be about a serving a day, or less. The report from a panel of nutrition, agriculture and environmental experts recommends a plant-based diet, based on previously published studies that have linked red meat to increased risk of health problems. It also comes amid recent studies of how eating habits affect the environment. Producing red meat takes up land and feed to raise cattle, which also emit the greenhouse gas methane. John Ioannidis, chair of disease prevention at Stanford University, said he welcomed the growing attention to how diets affect the environment, but that the report’s recommendations do not reflect the level of scientific uncertainties around nutrition and health. “The evidence is not as strong as it seems to be,” Ioannidis said. The report was organized by EAT, a Stockholm-based nonprofit seeking to improve the food system, and published Wednesday by the medical journal Lancet. The panel of experts who wrote it says a “Great Food Transformation” is urgently needed by 2050, and that the optimal diet they outline is flexible enough to accommodate food cultures around the world. Overall, the diet encourages whole grains, beans, fruits and most vegetables, and says to limit added sugars, refined grains such as white rice and starches like potatoes and cassava. It says red meat consumption on average needs to be slashed by half globally, though the necessary changes vary by region and reductions would need to be more dramatic in richer countries like the United States. Convincing people to limit meat, cheese and eggs won’t be easy, however, particularly in places where those foods are a notable part of culture. In Sao Paulo, Brazil, systems analyst Cleberson Bernardes said as he was leaving a barbecue restaurant that limiting himself to just one serving of red meat a week would be “ridiculous.” In Berlin, Germany, craftsman Erik Langguth said there are better ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and dismissed the suggestion that the world needs to cut back on meat. “If it hasn’t got meat, it’s not a proper meal,” said Langguth, who is from a region known for its bratwurst sausages. Before even factoring in the environmental implications, the report sought to sketch out what the healthiest diet for people would look like, said Walter Willett, one of its authors and a nutrition researcher at Harvard University. While eggs are no longer thought to increase risk of heart disease, Willett said the report recommends limiting them because studies indicate a breakfast of whole grains, nuts and fruit would be healthier. He said everybody doesn’t need to become a vegan, and that many are already limiting how much meat they eat. “Think of it like lobster — something that I really like, but have a few times a year,” Willett said. Advice to limit red meat is not new, and is tied to its saturated fat content, which is also found in cheese, milk, nuts and packaged foods with coconut and palm kernel oils. The report notes most evidence on diet and health is from Europe and the United States. In Asian countries, a large analysis found eating poultry and red meat (mostly pork) was associated with improved lifespans. That might be in part because people might eat smaller amounts of meat in those countries, the report says. Ioannidis of Stanford noted nutrition research is often based on observational links between diet and health, and that some past associations have not been validated. Dietary cholesterol, for example, is no longer believed to be strongly linked to blood cholesterol. The meat and dairy industries also dispute the report’s recommendations, saying their products deliver important nutrients and can be part of healthy diets. Andrew Mente, a nutrition epidemiology researcher at McMaster University, urged caution before making widespread dietary recommendations, which he said could have unintended consequences. Still, the EAT-Lancet report’s authors say the overall body of evidence strongly supports reducing red meat for optimal health and shifting toward plant-based diets. They note the recommendations are compatible with the U.S. dietary guidelines, which say to limit saturated fat to 10 percent of calories. While people in some poorer counties may benefit from getting more of the nutrients in meat and dairy products, the report says they shouldn’t follow the path of richer countries in how much of those foods they eat in coming years. Though estimates vary, a report by the United Nations said livestock is responsible for about 15 percent of the world’s gas emissions that warm the climate. Robbie Andrew, a senior researcher at CICERO Center for International Climate Research in Norway, said farming practices that make animals grow faster and bigger may help limit emissions. But he said cows and other ruminant animals nevertheless produce a lot of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. “It’s very difficult to get down these natural emissions that are part of their biology,” Andrew said. The environmental benefits of giving up red meat depend on what people eat in its place. Chicken and pork produce far fewer emissions than beef, Andrew said, adding that plants in general have among the smallest carbon footprints. Brent Loken, an author of the EAT-Lancet report, said the report lays out the parameters of an optimal diet, but acknowledged the challenge in figuring out how to work with policy makers, food companies and others in tailoring and implementing it in different regions. ____ AP reporters Frank Jordans in Berlin and Stan Lehman in Sao Paulo, Brazil, contributed to this article. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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14706
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In reality, gas produced by fracking is worse for the climate than coal.
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"The Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island asserts: ""...in reality gas produced by fracking is worse for the climate than coal."" The chairman of the University of Rhode Island’s geosciences department, David Fast-Ovsky, agrees with Pierrehumbert and shares many of Howarth’s concerns, too. But without appropriate historical context, he says he isn’t ready to say that fracked gas is worse for the climate than coal. That is a very aggressive statement to make, he says. The Justice League did not qualify its claim with a nod to the transient nature of methane emissions. The league mentioned a concern about the potential for ""runaway climate change,"" but did not give the historical context behind Howarth’s assertion that a failure to control methane emissions in the short-term, within the next 20 years, makes fracked gas more damaging to climate. This is complicated stuff and the League oversimplified. ""The statement is not false and it’s not exactly true because it’s not well-constrained,"" says Fast-Ovsky. We agree with Fast-Ovsky."
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mixture
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Rhode Island, Climate Change, Public Health, Environmental Justice League of R.I,
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"The Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island asserts that a new liquefied natural gas facility at Fields Point would accelerate climate change. The league’s position paper, posted at RIFuture.org, predicts that the storage facility proposed by National Grid would increase emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. ""While the oil and gas industry and their supporters like to present ‘natural gas’ as a ‘cleaner’ alternative or a ‘bridge fuel’ towards a renewable future, in reality, gas produced by fracking is worse for the climate than coal,"" the paper says. So coal is cleaner than natural gas? The primary source for this material is Cornell University’s Robert W. Howarth, who has researched the climate-warming effects of methane that escapes into the atmosphere during the lifespan of fracked gas — from drilling to combustion. In fracking, water is pumped underground at high pressure to fracture shale to free up gas or oil. Methane is released in the process. The impact of gases — methane from coal-burning plants and carbon dioxide from automobiles — depends on how potent they are and how long they remain in the atmosphere. Methane is 100 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas during the 10 years following its emission, according to Howarth. But methane stays in the atmosphere for a little more than a decade, while carbon dioxide, some say, hangs around for 1,000 years. The point, Howarth says, is that global warming has moved into a critical period. It’s urgent, he says, to stave off what he calls ""runaway global warming"" — a scenario he believes is possible during the next 20 years. In the short-term, fracked gas is worse for the climate than coal-burning. Reducing methane emissions, he wrote to us in an email, is the only way to keep atmospheric temperatures below the 2 degrees Celsius mark set during last month’s accord at the Paris climate conference. ""Methane emissions from fracked shale gas are horrendously high; so yes, it’s unequivocally worse for the climate than is coal,"" Howarth says. Other scientists disagree. In 2014, Raymond Pierrehumbert, a geoscientist at the University of Chicago, presented research that shows carbon dioxide ""is in a class by itself"" among greenhouse pollutants. The lifetime of carbon dioxide, says the paper, can’t even be characterized, and the gas’s significant greenhouse effects ""persist for millennia."" Pierrehumbert likens the greenhouse effects of carbon dioxide to irreversible lead poisoning and the effects of methane gas to a hangover. ""The important thing to note,"" Pierrehumbert was quoted as saying in an online post for The New York Times, ""is that essentially all of the climate effects of methane emissions disappear within 20 years of cessation of emissions. In this sense, the climate harm caused by methane leakage is reversible. In contrast, CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, ratcheting up the temperature irreversibly, at least out to several millennia."" In a different online Times post, Louis A. Derry, a Cornell colleague of Howarth’s, and an associate professor in earth and academic sciences, was quoted as saying that between 2007 and 2011, the climate impact from increased carbon dioxide was 13 times greater than that of methane. ""For me, the picture is pretty clear,"" he wrote, ""Displacing coal emissions with gas emissions is beneficial from a climate standpoint."" Another prominent climate expert, James Hansen of Columbia University, recently acknowledged that gas can serve as a temporary alternative to burning coal. Does this mean natural gas, including fracked gas, is better for climate than coal-burning? Hansen said that he would need to know more about methane emissions. ""I'm not sure anybody has it nailed down,"" said Hansen, the former NASA climatologist whose testimony before Congress in 1988 helped spread awareness of global warming. If he had to guess, Hansen said, the negative side effects of producing natural gas are small compared to those of burning coal, ""or they could be made small."" Pierrehumbert, Howarth, Hansen agree on one thing: the safest path is to develop more renewable energy such as wind and solar. Our ruling The Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island asserts: ""...in reality gas produced by fracking is worse for the climate than coal."" The chairman of the University of Rhode Island’s geosciences department, David Fast-Ovsky, agrees with Pierrehumbert and shares many of Howarth’s concerns, too. But without appropriate historical context, he says he isn’t ready to say that fracked gas is worse for the climate than coal. That is a very aggressive statement to make, he says. The Justice League did not qualify its claim with a nod to the transient nature of methane emissions. The league mentioned a concern about the potential for ""runaway climate change,"" but did not give the historical context behind Howarth’s assertion that a failure to control methane emissions in the short-term, within the next 20 years, makes fracked gas more damaging to climate. This is complicated stuff and the League oversimplified. ""The statement is not false and it’s not exactly true because it’s not well-constrained,"" says Fast-Ovsky. We agree with Fast-Ovsky.alf-True."
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9572
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The water workout trend health experts are gushing over
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This story offers a general overview of the potential benefits of running or walking underwater, either using a specially-designed underwater treadmill or in a pool. The story notes that this reduces stress on a patient’s joints, and refers to a relatively recent study showing possible cardiovascular benefits for stroke patients. The story highlights several reasons why water-based therapy may be appealing (leading to “health experts gushing” over it), but provides no evidence to show that people get better using this therapy, or that it works better than standard physical therapy. And that’s important to discuss, considering the presumed higher price tag and lack of availability compared to standard PT–though the story doesn’t discuss these points, either. For people recovering from an injury or illness requiring physical therapy, water-based therapy may be an appealing alternative. But does it work? Or is it an expensive gimmick? This story doesn’t provide the details needed for readers to get a sense of how effective it is.
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false
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exercise
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Cost is not discussed, which is a significant oversight. At least some idea of what the out-of-pocket costs are for this kind of therapy is important. While we wouldn’t expect the story to necessarily address all the following issues, these are the kinds of questions people have when considering what kind of therapy to receive. First, the treadmill systems: It is difficult for consumers to find a cost for underwater treadmills, as most of the companies that sell them tell potential customers to contact the company for a quote. However, the treadmill company mentioned by name in the article quotes $65,000 in the example on how its leasing program works. And a 2013 story in USA Today says that underwater treadmill systems range in price from $33,000 to $270,000. A 2014 story in Runner’s World says that insurance may cover the use of such a treadmill system at a physical therapist’s office, if the system is being used for injury recovery. The CBS story doesn’t even give us that much information. Second, this story also mentions pools that have a “water flow system you can work against.” Again, it’s not clear what the costs of such a system would be, but one such company notes that its least expensive therapy pool options start at $7,400 (yet, the same company notes that its standard system “starts at $22,900”). Third, the story also refers to simply exercising in a pool with a foam vest or foam handbells. This is, of course, far more affordable for most people. But it’s not clear, at all, how comparable the benefits of this sort of activity are to the use of the high-end systems discussed in the rest of the article. Lastly, for a story like this, it would be great to know how water-based physical therapy compares in cost to standard PT. It may not be covered by a patient’s insurance and result in higher out of pocket costs, for example. The story focuses on multiple benefits, none of which are quantified. For example, the story discusses the ways in which being underwater can reduce joint pain during exercise. How much does it reduce pain? What are the benefits in terms of health outcomes? Unclear. There also was no attempt to quantify speed of recovery and final recovery state compared to other treatments such as standard physical therapy. It also cites a study showing cardiovascular benefits for stroke patients, but it doesn’t even appear that this study directly compared outcomes of water-based PT vs. standard PT in patients following a stroke. Rather, it sounds like the study compared physiologic measures in stroke patients comparing two forms of exercise testing, which isn’t proof that one method resulted in better recovery outcomes for patients. The story doesn’t discuss harms. There don’t appear to be any particular health risks associated with the use of underwater treadmills that wouldn’t apply to beginning any exercise or rehabilitation regime — but that’s actually a point worth making. However, exercising in a pool poses risks of its own — particularly for patients who may be recovering from surgery or stroke. As a result, it would be wise to explain that these patients (or any patient who is not confident in the water) should have supervision. And, this therapy may induce anxiety among people who can’t swim or are anxious around water. The story refers only to a single study, and doesn’t give readers much information on how to find the study it does refer to. It does tell readers where the study was published (though not when), that the study compared on-land treadmill use and underwater treadmill use among stroke survivors, and that the study involved 21 patients. (If you’re curious, we found the relevant study. It’s here.) There was no evidence provided to support the claims of any benefits other than cardiovascular benefits for stroke survivors. No disease mongering here. Though, the story implies that this form of therapy can be used for just about any condition where treadmill or bike treatment is indicated. So not disease mongering, but possibly treatment mongering. The story quotes four experts, making this a strong point. It would have been helpful for one of these experts to point out that there is very little evidence supporting water-based PT compared to standard PT. The alternative to using a treadmill underwater would be to engage in cardiovascular exercise on dry land. The story addresses this, noting both the treadmill comparison study (mentioned above) and the fact that exercising in water reduces stress on joints. So, we’ll give it a Satisfactory rating. However, the story intimates that exercising in a pool and exercising on an underwater treadmill are comparable. It’s not clear that this is the case, and the 2014 story from Runner’s World indicates that they are actually quite different. What’s more, there is no discussion of another form of aquatic exercise: swimming. Is swimming a viable option for cardiovascular recovery? It’s not clear from the story how widely available underwater treadmills are for the general public. Underwater treadmills are not particularly new (the research literature on them goes back to at least 1989). Frankly, it’s not clear why this story was written now, or what is novel about underwater treadmill exercise (given how the story indicates that it is comparable to walking in a pool with a foam vest). The story does not appear to be based on a news release.
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"Jimmy Coyne's grandson"" was assaulted for refusing to take part in March 2018 walkouts to protest lawmaker inaction over school shootings."
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A third report confirmed that an altercation occurred, but did not discuss the claims. Although the fight does not appear to be in dispute, the only information reported about the basis of the claim appears to contradict the rumor. According to a local news source, the young man injured in the dispute supported the school walkout. That same report said the older student arrested in connection with the assault disagreed.
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unproven
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Inboxer Rebellion, #notonemore, gun control, national school walkout
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On 18 March 2018, Facebook page “Newly Press” shared a text-based image with the claim that the grandson of a man named Jimmy Coyne was assaulted for refusing to participate in walkouts against school shootings: Please keep Jimmy Coyne and his family in your prayers. His grandson was beat at school yesterday for NOT participating in a school walkout for violence in schools. His collar bone was broke in 5 pieces with severe facial injuries. He under went surgery last night. Let this sink in…protesters against school violence beat this kid because he didn’t want to join the protest!!! This happened in Oklahoma yesterday. Missing from The Newly Press meme: A date, names of those involved, the name of the school at which the purported beating took place, and links to information supporting the claims made. Earlier on 18 March 2018, a Facebook user named Jimmy Coyne shared a status update stating that his grandson had been hospitalized after an altercation at his high school. In the comments, Coyne said the incident occurred at Glenpool High School in Glenpool, Oklahoma: In his initial post, Coyne did not mention a school walkout or state that Chandler had been attacked for his refusal to participate in one. A different post shared by someone else claims that the boy was attacked for that reason: Several news outlets carried reports about the altercation, but did not name the students. KOTV shared a statement from Glenpool schools confirming the incident occurred, but declined to provide details: Glenpool Public Schools is aware of a student fight which occurred on campus after the lunch period as students were transitioning back to class. The fight occurred at 11:25 approximately one and a half hour after a student led campus walk-out protesting school violence. Law enforcement and authorities have been made aware of the incident and are investigating. The District is unable to offer any additional detail as the fight involved two district students whose information is subject to protection under both state and federal law. Glenpool Public Schools will fully investigate the incident and take any necessary action allowed under its policies. On 14 March 2018, KTUL reported that footage of the altercation appeared on YouTube but was later deleted. Although the item didn’t describe the video, further details were provided. According to that account based on police in Glenpool, the badly injured student “was in support of the walkout”: According to the Glenpool Police Department, a 17-year-old high school student was arrested and another badly injured after a fight about the student walkout escalated Wednesday morning at Glenpool High School. Police say the incident started when the older student allegedly took to Snapchat Tuesday night to voice his disagreement about the walkout. On Wednesday, the older student and a 16-year-old, who was in support of the walkout, got into a fight. The 16-year-old victim was badly beaten, police say, and is recovering in the hospital.
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4285
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US doctor who survived Ebola honored for service in Liberia.
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Almost five years have passed since he nearly died of Ebola in Liberia, but Richard Sacra has never wavered from his commitment to the struggling West African nation.
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true
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Liberia, Epidemics, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Africa, Monrovia, West Africa, U.S. News, Health, Massachusetts
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The 56-year-old family doctor from Massachusetts was among a handful of Americans treated and cured of Ebola during West Africa’s deadly epidemic in 2014, which was the worst ever outbreak of the virus, claiming more than 11,000 lives over two years, primarily in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Sacra contracted the virus while delivering babies at ELWA, a missionary hospital in the Liberian capital of Monrovia where he’s worked for more than two decades. He was evacuated and treated in Omaha, Nebraska, but within months, Sacra was back at ELWA — which stands for “Eternal Love Winning Africa” — treating patients. The devout Christian, who says he dreamed of becoming a missionary since he was a child, hasn’t stopped going back since. “It’s our adopted home,” Sacra said Wednesday as he and his wife Debbie took a rare break at their home outside Worcester, Massachusetts, where he’s on the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. “My wife and I have been going to Liberia since 1987. Our kids grew up there. So the idea of not going would be harder for me than the idea of going back.” Sacra was honored Thursday by the African Mission Healthcare Foundation for his work in Liberia, a nation founded as a colony of freed African American slaves in the 19th century. The organization awarded him the L’Chaim Prize for Outstanding Christian Medical Missionary Service at a ceremony in New York City. The annual prize comes with a $500,000 gift. Sacra said the money will be used at ELWA to build an intensive care unit, install solar panels and build out a training program for family physicians that he founded in 2017. The 107-bed hospital was founded in 1965 and is run by SIM, an evangelical Christian organization based in North Carolina. Increasing the ranks of family doctors is a small but critical piece in rebuilding the nation, which had never fully recovered from more than a decade of civil war before Ebola struck, Sacra said. “One of the things the Ebola crisis really highlighted was how weak the health system in Liberia was. The whole system just collapsed because there were too few trained doctors and nurses,” he said. “So one of our goals as a mission is to strengthen that health system. To not just bring over doctors, but to train local physicians and build up their capacity so that something like this won’t happen again.” Ebola has continued to flare up in other parts of Africa, particularly the Congo, where more than 300 have died since last summer. But Sacra believes Liberia is better prepared than it was five years ago. More doctors are graduating from local medical programs, the national government has established a public health monitoring and education system, and an experimental Ebola vaccine is being tested. “Building a health system from scratch is not something you can do in a year or two,” Sacra said. “It’s a generation long project.” With their three sons now in their 20s and beginning their own careers, Sacra says he and his wife are committed to being a part of those efforts for the foreseeable future. “We’re just grateful God gave us a second chance to continue to make an impact,” he said. ___ This story has been corrected to show that Sierra Leone, not Ghana, was among the primary countries affected by the 2014 Ebola epidemic.
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2104
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Experts demand European action on plastics chemical.
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Scientists and international health organizations from around the world called on Europe’s food safety watchdog on Wednesday to regulate against exposure to a potentially harmful chemical found in plastic containers.
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true
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Environment
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In an open letter to the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), a group of 60 scientists and health campaigners from 15 countries said they feared exposure to the chemical Bisphenol-A (BPA) could damage health, particularly among vulnerable groups such as babies and pregnant women. BPA is a mass produced chemical used in the manufacture of polycarbonate plastics. It is found in plastic food and drink packaging, such as baby bottles and sports bottles, and as an epoxy resin in canned food and drinks and storage containers. Some recent scientific studies have linked BPA exposure to higher risks of health problems such heart disease, breast cancer and diabetes. The EFSA is expected to publish a new “scientific opinion” on the safety of Bisphenol A in food packaging next month, after it was asked by the European Commission to re-assess the risks. “Over the last decade and a half, a substantive body amounting to several hundred peer reviewed scientific papers, have been published that have highlighted potential adverse health effects associated with BPA exposures,” the letter said. “It is our opinion that any objective and comprehensive review of the scientific literature will lead to the conclusion that action is necessary to reduce the levels of BPA exposure, particularly in groups at highest risk, namely young infants and pregnant mothers.” Regulators in Canada and the United States are already beginning to take action on BPA exposure, with Canada planning to ban its use in baby bottles, but as yet there has been no similar action at a European Union level. “It is high time that EFSA caught up to the overwhelming science showing genuine reasons for concern about our daily exposure to BPA,” said Lisette van Vliet, an adviser on toxics policy at the Brussels-based Health and Environment Alliance. Some European countries, notably Sweden, Germany, France and Denmark, have made unilateral moves ahead of the EFSA review. Sweden’s environment minister said last month that if the EU would not ban BPA in baby bottles, Stockholm would go ahead with a national prohibition. And Germany’s environment agency issued new guidance this month calling on manufacturers and importers of BPA to use “alternative substances that pose less risk to human health and the environment in all areas of use that significantly contribute to exposure.” Experts estimate that BPA is detectable in the bodies of more than 90 percent of the U.S. and European population. It is one of the world’s most widely manufactured chemicals, with more than 2.2 million tonnes produced each year. Andrew Watterson of Britain’s Stirling University, one of the signatories to the letter, said hundreds of academic studies had shown the potential risks of BPA and “this should dictate a strong precautionary policy response from European regulators. “If this is not forthcoming, the UK government must intervene as other European countries are already doing so,” he said in a statement.
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18356
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Rick Perry Says Sam Houston opposed slavery and as governor said Texas should not leave the union over slavery.
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"Perry said his long-ago predecessor ""was against slavery, and he stood up and very passionately said, you know, ‘Texas does not need to leave the Union over this issue of slavery.’ "" Houston’s personal views are unclear; politically, he took actions that were viewed as anti-slavery as well as actions that were pro-slavery. But he did exhort Southerners and his fellow Texans not to secede over slavery -- an unpopular stance he stuck to in hopes of preserving the Union he revered."
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mixture
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Gays and Lesbians, History, Texas, Rick Perry,
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"As the Texas-headquartered Boy Scouts of America moved closer to a vote on allowing openly gay members, Texas Gov. Rick Perry revisited his opposition to such a change, while calling for leadership that hews to principles even when they are unpopular. Speaking May 6, 2013, via video as part of the national, conservative Family Research Council’s ""Stand With Scouts Sunday"" webcast, Perry cited the example of Sam Houston, Texas’ first president and seventh governor, whose portrait hung behind Perry on a wall in the Governor’s Mansion. ""From this library that I speak, he made a powerful decision that cost him his governorship,"" Perry said. ""He was against slavery, and he stood up and very passionately said, you know, ‘Texas does not need to leave the Union over this issue of slavery. We need to stay. We’ve only been’ -- he thought, a terrible decision. He was right. But it cost him his governorship."" That’s ""the kind of principled leadership"" we need today, said Perry, a former Eagle Scout who wrote a 2008 book defending the organization’s ""American values"" and saying it was the object of an anti-religious ""cultural war"" being waged to force the inclusion of gays, agnostics and atheists. His comments touched off an Internet flurry of debate over whether opposing slavery could or should be equated with opposing gay admission, but we wondered about the underlying facts. Did Sam Houston, the leader of Texas’ military insurrection against Mexico, oppose slavery and say Texas shouldn’t split from the United States over it? Houston did lose his job as governor over secession, ending a career of representing Texans in elected office almost continuously from the Texas Revolution to the start of the Civil War. The military hero of San Jacinto became the first president of the Republic of Texas in 1836; then a representative in the Republic’s legislature; president a second time; U.S. senator when Texas became a state in 1845; and, finally, governor starting in 1859. But Texas’ secession convention removed Houston as governor March 18, 1861, after he refused to sign an oath of loyalty to the Confederate States of America. Historians have written that Houston’s views on secession had earlier cost him his seat in the U.S. Senate. As a senator, according to the Texas State Historical Association’s Handbook of Texas, Houston angered pro-slavery factions by voting in 1848 to prohibit slavery in Oregon; supporting the delicately balanced slavery/anti-slavery decisions in the Compromise of 1850; and opposing, in 1854, the Kansas-Nebraska Act that let territories decide their own slavery status, repealing previous law that banned slavery north of latitude 36°30'. What guided Houston’s thinking in these disputes was his belief in the ""glorious Union"" he had worked hard to get Texas into. The Handbook says, ""As senator, Houston emerged as an ardent Unionist ... a stand that made him an increasingly controversial figure. He stridently opposed the rising sectionalism of the antebellum period and delivered eloquent speeches on the issue."" Perry spokesman Josh Havens referred us to the 2004 biography ""Sam Houston,"" in which author James Haley described Houston the politician as treading a fine line on slavery for decades: ""He disliked it,"" Haley wrote, but ""recognized it as a fact of life to be dealt with."" Via email, Haley told us, ""Gov. Perry is right that Houston was against slavery, but as a Southern senator he was chained to it and could not openly oppose it."" Haley pointed us to a key speech by Houston on slavery, delivered Feb. 22, 1855, in Boston, in which the senator said the Union should not be sundered for ""political opinions,"" that slavery was natural to the Southern economy and that the North would still have slaves if it were profitable there. Emancipation, Houston said, would cast the freed man into jobless destitution: ""You might call him free, but he would be an object of want and wretchedness."" Haley wrote, ""To Sam Houston, what was paramount at that time, and in that place, and during that crisis was keeping the Union together."" Houston’s personal views on slavery are unclear. He was a slaveowner; according to his biography online at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, an inventory of his property upon his death in 1863 listed ""12 slaves valued at $10,530.20."" Yet ""almost all acts other than his ownership of slaves support the idea that he disagreed with slavery as an institution,"" the university biography said. Among examples given: ""While in office as president of the Republic of Texas and later as governor, he refused to permit payments to bounty hunters of escaped slaves. He also prohibited slave ships from trafficking in Texas."" One of Houston’s slaves recalled hearing him speak against the institution on the day Abraham Lincoln was elected president. In the 1940 memoir ""My Master,"" Jeff Hamilton said, ""I heard the General say that slavery was a damnable thing at best, and that he didn’t believe in human slavery nor in secession or disunion either. He said he hoped God might in some way perform a miracle as of old and save the country from destruction."" After Houston had helped shepherd Texas into the United States, he spoke publicly and often against ripping the Union apart over slavery. His pro-Union views and Senate votes made him anathema in Southern politics. His Senate career, the Handbook of Texas says, ""was effectively ended when, in 1855, the Texas Legislature officially condemned his position on the Kansas-Nebraska Act,"" which Houston opposed ""because it allowed the status of slavery to be determined by popular sovereignty, a concept he saw as potentially destabilizing to the nation."" Somewhat of a lame-duck senator, Houston returned to Texas and ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1857. Opponent Hardin Runnels advocated reopening the slave trade with Africa, which Houston had called an ""unholy and cruel traffic"" as Texas’ president. Houston was portrayed as a traitor to the South; the press accused him of ""voting against all bills in the interest of slavery,"" according to a July 1914 analysis in the Southwestern Historical Quarterly that summed up his defeat: ""The people had not yet forgiven Houston for his support of the Kansas-Nebraska bill."" Before leaving Washington for good, Houston defended his Kansas-Nebraska vote in March 19, 1858, remarks to the Senate: ""I was not the enemy of slavery, nor was I its propagandist, nor will I ever be."" Houston ran for governor again as a pro-slavery candidate, according to T.R. Fehrenbach’s 2000 ""Lone Star: A History Of Texas And The Texans"": In 1859, Houston, now past his sixty-fifth year, determined to appeal to the people once again. His platform was clear: he supported slavery, he supported the Constitution, but he pledged allegiance to the Union, come what may. It was not a popular platform, but Houston could not believe that the Texans were prepared to forsake the greater nation he had done so much to build. From the gubernatorial pulpit, Houston kept arguing against secession on practical grounds. In a Sept. 22, 1860, speech in Austin, Houston said slavery was not threatened if Southern states stayed in the Union: ""We still have the institution of slavery. All the legislation on the subject for the past twenty years has been to secure it to us, so long as we may want it."" Civil war would destroy the Southern states, he said, and there was no need for secession: ""Are our rights invaded and no government ready to protect them? No! Are our institutions wrested from us and others foreign to our taste forced upon us? No! … if the battle is to be fought for the Constitution, let us fight it in the Union and for the sake of the Union."" The institution of slavery ""is our own,"" Houston said, ""and the North has nothing to do with it. The North does not want it, and we have nothing to do with that. … We have the right to abolish slavery -- they have the right to establish it. It is in our interest to have it. Climate, soil, association -- all make the institution peculiarly suited to us. If it were to their interest, the people of the North would have it."" In a Nov. 14, 1860, open letter to residents of Huntsville who wrote to seek his advice on secession, Houston said a revolution should not be launched without ""some more weighty reason for overthrowing the Government, than rash enthusiasts have yet given."" As Texas moved toward secession, Houston told the Legislature in a Jan. 21, 1861, message that the slave states should be able to keep their rights, but ""hasty"" action could be disastrous for cash-strapped Texas. ""The millions now spent by the United States, the support of our postal service, the defense of our commerce, must all come from the pockets of our people."" Houston’s appeals failed, but Lincoln was impressed by his courage and according to the Texas State Library’s web site ""made secret contact with him through intermediaries, offering the old general command of 50,000 troops and the rank of major general if he would lead a force to restore federal control of Texas."" Houston turned down the offer in a March 29, 1861, letter; some accounts say he sat up late into the night discussing the question with friends in the mansion’s library and then dropped Lincoln’s offer into the fire. We asked Havens for reaction to our findings, and asked whether the Lincoln offer or another event was the ""powerful decision"" Perry had referred to. Haley’s book mentions a ""family tradition"" that says Houston paced the mansion’s floors all night before refusing to sign the Confederate oath. Havens said, ""Gov. Perry was referencing Gov. Houston’s strength of character, standing up for what he believed was right in the face of public opposition. There were a collection of events that occurred over that period of time, including burning Lincoln’s letter in the mansion library, when Houston was pondering an issue that would not only shape the fate of our state, but also his personal future."" Houston did not live to see the war’s end; he left Austin to return to Huntsville, where he died of pneumonia on July 26, 1863, at age 70. Our ruling Perry said his long-ago predecessor ""was against slavery, and he stood up and very passionately said, you know, ‘Texas does not need to leave the Union over this issue of slavery.’ "" Houston’s personal views are unclear; politically, he took actions that were viewed as anti-slavery as well as actions that were pro-slavery. But he did exhort Southerners and his fellow Texans not to secede over slavery -- an unpopular stance he stuck to in hopes of preserving the Union he revered."
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16345
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"Jeanne Shaheen Says Scott Brown ""co-sponsored legislation to let employers deny women coverage for birth control."
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"Shaheen said Brown ""co-sponsored legislation to let employers deny women coverage for birth control."" The amendment, which Brown supported, was written loosely enough to allow a religious-conscience opt-out for birth control -- an issue about which there has been a longstanding policy debate on religious and moral grounds."
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true
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New Hampshire, Health Care, Legal Issues, Women, Jeanne Shaheen,
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"The U.S. Senate race in New Hampshire has been awash in claims about abortion and women’s health issues in recent days. One claim by incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeanne Shaheen caught our eye. Shaheen is facing a challenge from former Republican Sen. Scott Brown. In a news release from her campaign, Shaheen said: ""I have always supported a woman’s right to choose because I know women should be making health care decisions in consultation with their doctors and their families, not their employer. Scott Brown’s record is clear: When it counts, he doesn’t stand up for women’s reproductive rights and economic security. He co-sponsored legislation to let employers deny women coverage for birth control or even mammograms. New Hampshire women can’t trust Scott Brown, and his record is move evidence that he is wrong for New Hampshire."" We noticed two claims that are related, but distinct enough to analyze separately. First, would the legislation in question have allowed employers deny women coverage for birth control? And would it have allowed employers to deny coverage for mammograms? We’ll look at the birth control claim here, and mammograms in a separate fact-check. It turns out the two issues differ a good bit. In a different Shaheen campaign news release, the campaign explained its sourcing by writing, ""FACT: Scott Brown both co-sponsored and voted for the Blunt Amendment that would let employers deny women access to a range of healthcare services, including contraception and coverage for mammograms."" The amendment in question was proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. It was tabled -- that is, dispensed with -- by a 51-48 vote in which a simple majority was required. Among those who voted ""nay"" -- that is, those who wanted to keep it under consideration -- was Brown, then representing Massachusetts in the Senate. He also co-sponsored a predecessor measure, S.1467, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act of 2011. So Shaheen’s camp is correct that Brown acted in support of this measure. But what did the amendment say? It acted to widen the scope of acceptable actions for opting out of provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on religious or moral grounds. It focuses on mandates within the law for preventive services, called the ""essential health benefits package."" Specifically, the amendment said employers cannot be required to cover ""specific items or services"" that are ""contrary to the religious beliefs or moral convictions of the sponsor, issuer, or other entity offering the plan."" We agree with the Shaheen campaign that the provision is drawn broadly. While it’s not targeted at abortion or birth control per se, it is so expansively written that there’s little doubt it could be invoked on behalf of those who oppose abortion and certain types of birth control. As we explained in our other fact check, we find no evidence that anyone has expressed a religious or moral objection to mammograms. But the case that the Blunt Amendment would have affected access to birth control is stronger. Some opponents of abortion have supported opt-out rights for employers who oppose certain types of birth control that they say work like abortifacients. In fact, this was the issue at the heart of the closely watched 2014 Supreme Court decision in Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby. In that case, a 5-4 majority ruled that a closely held, private corporation, such as the craft retailer Hobby Lobby, could decline on religious grounds to pay for certain kinds of contraceptives otherwise mandated in employee health coverage by the Affordable Care Act. The only quibble we have with the phrasing of Shaheen’s claim is that the Blunt Amendment didn’t single out birth control, which is the impression one could easily get from her statement. But since the amendment was written so broadly -- and since birth control has long been at issue for religious or moral reasons -- we don’t see this as a significant problem. Our ruling Shaheen said Brown ""co-sponsored legislation to let employers deny women coverage for birth control."" The amendment, which Brown supported, was written loosely enough to allow a religious-conscience opt-out for birth control -- an issue about which there has been a longstanding policy debate on religious and moral grounds."
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26280
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Facebook post Says Gov. Tony Evers “is proposing a new plan, a 150 day shutdown of the state (5 MONTHS!) followed by a 120 day extension.”
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A Facebook post shared by the Republican Party of Kenosha County and other conservative groups claimed Gov. Tony Evers wanted to shut down the state for 150 days, plus a 120-day extension. Put simply, this is incorrect. Evers’ administration never suggested such a plan.
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false
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Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Wisconsin, Facebook posts,
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"Wisconsin’s coronavirus response has been in a state of flux since the state Supreme Court threw out Gov. Tony Evers’ safer-at-home order on May 13, 2020. Absent statewide rules, counties implemented a patchwork of policies, some of which were quickly dropped. Other local orders remain, but expire on different dates. Evers’ administration proposed new rules, only to withdraw them after Republican blowback. In the middle of this uncertainty, a Facebook post claiming to detail Evers’ plan spread among conservatives and ended up on the Republican Party of Kenosha County’s page. ""HEADS UP WISCONSIN!! This is no joke!,"" the post reads. ""Evers is proposing a new plan, a 150 day shutdown of the state (5 MONTHS!) followed by a 120 day extension."" It goes on to ask readers to call 10 members of a key legislative committee to voice their outrage, suggesting the Evers order included forced masks, forced testing, forced quarantines and even forced vaccinations. (Never mind that no vaccination currently exists.) But that is not at all what the administration proposed. Let’s take a look. When asked for evidence to back up the Facebook post, the Republican Party of Kenosha County said it reposted the message from someone else and pointed PolitiFact Wisconsin to the Evers administration’s proposed rules. The message, which urges people to copy and paste it to share, has been shared more than 600 times based on the Kenosha County GOP post alone. It was also posted to the Recall Tony Evers Facebook group and shared by the La Crosse Tea Party. It’s unclear where the post originated. On May 14, 2020, Evers approved what’s called a statement of scope put together by the state Department of Health Services. The document is the first step in the rulemaking process that Evers’ administration must operate under after the Supreme Court ruling. A Republican-led committee could veto the proposed rules, which Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, asked Evers to withdraw saying it could not win support. On May 18, 2020, the governor said the proposal would be his last attempt at a statewide rule to contain the virus. DHS’ statement of scope said the agency would implement temporary measures to limit gatherings, enforce social distancing and ensure businesses protect employees and customers from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. The proposal also promised to establish a phased approach to reopening the state’s economy. All in all, DHS’ statement of scope largely replicated the plan -- which Evers had dubbed the ""Badger Bounce Back"" -- that was struck down by the state Supreme Court. DHS officials admitted as much, writing that ""the proposed emergency rule may re-articulate some or all the parameters specified in Badger Bounce Back."" ""The proposed rule will implement measures to reduce and slow the rate of infection of COVID-19, to reduce strain on the health care system, to mitigate economic hardship, and to save lives,"" the document states. Nothing in the statement of scope suggests state officials planned to shut down the state for 150 more days, plus an extension. Nor did the previous order that it’s based on. (And remember, the Evers order challenged by the GOP was 13 days away from expiring when the Supreme Court ruled.) The Evers administration’s Badger Bounce Back plan provided for a phased reopening of the economy as the state achieved certain public health criteria. Among them: Increased testing and contact tracing, a downward trajectory of positive tests as a percentage for 14 days and a decline in influenza-like illnesses. The state had met five of six benchmarks on May 12, a day before the court’s ruling came down. Wisconsin state statutes do specify that emergency rules can only remain in effect for 150 days, unless extended by no more than 120 days. But that should not be confused with DHS’ statement of scope, which was done under the emergency rules framework but did not establish a set time for reopening. Moreover, a phased reopening based on public health is hardly a complete shutdown as the Facebook post implies. When asked about the post during a May 18, 2020 media call, the governor’s response was brief. ""That’d be a lie,"" Evers said. A Facebook post shared by conservative groups in Wisconsin said Evers was proposing a five-month shutdown of the state, plus a 120-day extension. At no time did the Evers administration suggest this. The Supreme Court ruling meant Evers had to turn to the emergency rulemaking process through the Legislature. That process includes limits and timetables for any such rule. The Facebook post wrongly conflates that timetable with the governor’s plan to reopen the state. As such, it is entirely incorrect. What’s more, the post encourages people to spread misinformation."
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17836
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"Rick North Says Oregonians for Food and Shelter ""proudly features board members from Monsanto and Syngenta and the (Oregon) Farm Bureau also receives funding from biotech companies."
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Do two state agriculture groups have ties to biotech firms?
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true
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Environment, Agriculture, Oregon, Rick North,
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"During the Oregon Legislature’s most recent special session, one bill stuck out as an oddity. Four of the five bills dealt solidly with fiscal policy -- taxes and the Public Employees Retirement System. The fifth, though, addressed whether local governments could regulate genetically modified crops. The bill was thrown in as something of a bargaining chip. Gov. John Kitzhaber needed Republican support for his other four endeavors, and the GMO bill was one way to reach a compromise. This deal, however, rubbed environmentalists the wrong way. They began calling the bill the ""Oregon Monsanto Protection Act."" One of the bill’s critics was Rick North, the former project director of the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility's Campaign For Safe Food. In a piece he wrote for BlueOregon, a liberal political blog, he called out two of the local -- and wholesome sounding -- groups that were big advocates of the legislation. ""Oregonians for Food and Shelter and the Oregon Farm Bureau, biotech puppets who have most state Republican legislators in their back pocket, jumped into action,"" he wrote. ""OFS proudly features board members from Monsanto and Syngenta and the Farm Bureau also receives funding from biotech companies."" We were curious about the board member and funding claims, so we decided to take a look. The first bit, that Oregonians for Food and Shelter has board members from those two leading biotech firms was easy to check. We simply went to the group’s website and found, listed along with 34 other voting members, these two names: Michael Diamond, the director of government affairs for Monsanto, and Danelle Farmer, who was most recently listed as a senior state government relations manager at Syngenta. The names aren’t difficult to find -- and they’re listed along with their corporate affiliations. Naturally, we reached out to Oregonians for Food and Shelter to see if they had extra information we might consider. Scott Dahlman, the executive director, said it is unabashedly the group’s position to defend ""the right to responsibly use pesticides and biotechnology."" Next we checked out the Oregon Farm Bureau funding statement. We started by speaking with the bureau’s spokeswoman, Anne Marie Moss. She said it was probably because the group has a political action committee that accepts donations from any and all groups. Moss stressed, however, that the Farm Bureau is a largely grassroots organization that takes positions based on what county members -- all of whom are required to be involved in agriculture or ranching -- vote to take up on the state level. ""We have members on both sides of that issue as well, but it's like a democracy,"" Moss said. ""Majority rules."" Generally, she said, the group tries to support all sorts of agriculture, whether organic or genetically modified, but often members come down on the side of fewer restrictions. ""We believe in the whole big tent of agriculture, all types are welcome,"" she said. There is already ""a lot of regulation so, as a whole, we try to push back. We don't want our members regulated out of business."" We took a look at the campaign finance records for ourselves and found that both Monsanto and Syngenta had contributed a significant sum to the group. Since 2006, the Oregon Farm Bureau has reported receiving about $440,000 in cash contributions. Of that, Monsanto has contributed $103,500 and Syngenta has given more than $19,000. That means those two companies represent a combined 28 percent of the total reported cash contributions. This year, Monsanto donated $10,500 -- $4,500 in mid-September. During our conversation, Moss noted that while the money is appreciated, ""Monsanto couldn't come in and give us a command directive."" Indeed, we found donations from other sources, including individual farms and nurseries. For our final stab at due diligence, we called North to let him know we’d looked into his claims. We asked him why he thought this information was important given that both groups consider themselves to be grassroots. ""I don't know that it's anything more complicated than ‘Follow the money,’"" he said. In an opinion piece for BlueOregon, North said Oregonians for Food and Shelter ""proudly features board members from Monsanto and Syngenta and the (Oregon) Farm Bureau also receives funding from biotech."" We’ve checked out both claims and found them to be accurate. Tell us what you think, by heading over to Oregonlive and leaving us a comment."
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10746
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Train The Brain: Using Neurofeedback To Treat ADHD
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The story did accurately portray the overall state of the evidence on neurofeedback for ADHD and emphasized the lack of well controlled studies supporting its effectiveness. It also provided useful information about how to avoid untrained therapists, and was generally good in its approach to the other criteria that we look at. In the final analysis, the story applied the healthy skepticism which is a hallmark of good journalism to this topic. But a significant flaw at its core makes this story less useful than it could have been and makes us wonder why it was considered newsworthy, since there is apparently no compelling recent research to discuss. It might have been better to wait for the results of the first placebo-controlled study of neurofeedback for children with ADHD (which the story says will be out in just a few weeks) to be published. For many parents, medication is not an appealing option for treating a child’s ADHD symptoms. The availability of better non-pharmacologic alternatives would therefore be an important and welcome development. Journalists have to be careful about how they characterize the research supporting uNPRoven approaches such as neurofeedback, however. If there’s evidence that a treatment is effective, we should expect to hear descriptions of the relevant studies and estimates of how big the benefits are for which specific outcomes.
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true
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NPR
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The story sidebar estimates that a full course of treatment can cost $3000 or more. It could have added that this treatment is unlikely to be covered by many insurance companies. This was the biggest hole in an otherwise reasonably solid story. The article claims that there is “growing evidence” that neurofeedback can help treat people with ADHD. However, the story never describes any of the results of this purported increase in research that supposedly documents these benefits. The closest we come is the description of a study which hasn’t even been published yet. The story also suggests that neurofeedback’s benefits might last longer than those of medication. Again, however, we are never given any sound basis to believe that neurofeedback works at all — let alone better than other treatments. At the same time, the story leans heavily on testimony from a journalist who has written a book about ADHD and claims neurofeedback worked for her and her son. We are told that the primary improvement she saw with her son was that he was “easier to live with.” Although this kind of anecdotal report can be useful to add context to scientific findings, it is certainly no substitute for reporting on the actual clinical outcomes of research. The story failed to discuss any potential harms of neurofeedback treatment. The most prominent of these is that patients could forego other treatment approaches that have better supporting evidence and are more likely to reduce symptoms. There is also some evidence that neurofeedback can cause seizures or make symptoms worse in some individuals with psychological disorders. In addition, the need for frequent treatments may necessitate taking a child out of school. Readers should come away from this story with a generally accurate feel for where the research on this treatment stands. The story told readers early on that neurofeedback is “scientifically uNPRoved” for the treatment of ADHD. It backs up this contention later in this story by noting that almost all research on this treatment hasn’t involved a placebo control group. And the only study to include such a group apparently hasn’t released its results yet and seems to have involved a very small number of patients. In addition, the story quotes an expert who emphasizes that other forms of treatment (e.g. medication and behavior therapy) have better evidence to support their effectiveness for ADHD. We did think the story focused a bit too much on a single patient anecdote (a deficiency discussed later under the “Benefits” criterion) — an emphasis which makes the treatment sound very promising with little justification. The story could have struck a better balance by toning this section down a bit. No disease-mongering in this story. In addition to extensive comments from the journalist book author who discusses her experience with neurofeedback, the story quotes a Duke University researcher who is an expert on ADHD and offers some counterbalancing perspective. The story quotes a researcher who says that two other approaches — medication and behavior therapy — have a more extensive research base supporting their use for ADHD compared with neurofeedback. It’s clear from the story that this type of treatment is available to the general public. We like that the story cautioned readers to look out for unqualified therapists and gave tips for finding reputable clinicians. The story could have been more specific about how many trained professionals there are and how easy it is to find them outside of large population centers. The story does not oversell the novelty of neurofeedback for the treatment of ADHD. This story does not appear to be based on a news release.
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11716
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The Legionella bacteria is in most water systems in Illinois.
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"Rauner says news reports about his administration’s response to recurring incidents of Legionnaires’ disease at the Illinois Veterans’ Home in Quincy leave out a key part of the story: ""The Legionella bacteria is in most water systems in Illinois."" The governor’s statement glosses over the reality that any such contamination is likely present at low and non-threatening levels. The use of the word ""most"" is also questionable since there’s no real quantifiable evidence. The CDC avoids quantifying the presence of the bacteria, which thrives on slime in poorly maintained internal water systems. The governor has a point that the bacteria lurks in a number of water systems. But his statement makes an unprovable claim about the extent of the contamination. The governor’s claim is overbroad and lacking in context."
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mixture
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Environment, Public Health, Illinois, Bruce Rauner,
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"In 2015, during Bruce Rauner’s first year as governor, a virulent outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease at the state-run Illinois Veterans’ Home in downstate Quincy killed 12 residents and sickened dozens of others. Since then, according to recent news reports, the facility has been plagued by more illness and deaths from Legionnaires’, which experts say is usually linked to the inhaling of a bacteria that thrives in poorly maintained water systems. It was also reported by WBEZ that Rauner administration officials delayed public disclosure of the 2015 outbreak for nearly a week after discovering it. Critics claim the governor’s failure to act quickly to safeguard the water at Quincy after the initial incident displayed an indifference to the fate of the elderly military veterans who live there. Family members of victims have filed suit against the state over their deaths. Meanwhile, one potential Democratic challenger to Rauner’s re-election, J.B. Pritzker, began running TV spots attacking the Republican incumbent’s handling of the Quincy situation. Rauner insists his administration did not drop the ball, and recently spent seven days living at the home to make a public show that it was safe. He also took aim at the media for casting blame his way without telling the whole story. In an interview with the editorial board of the Joliet Herald-News, Rauner said news reports failed to explain that the source of the disease is basically everywhere. ""The reality is, and this is what’s not getting into the reports, the Legionella bacteria is in most water systems in Illinois,"" Rauner told the paper. ""There were just two infections of Legionnaires at Northwestern Hospital, which is not even an old facility and I think is regarded as a really well-run facility. These things happen."" We wondered if the governor is right. Are bacteria that can cause Legionnaires’ disease lurking in most building water systems? And, if so, what public health danger does that pose? Legionnaires’ disease is a severe and sometimes deadly form of pneumonia that derives its name from its first recognized outbreak in 1976 at an American Legion convention in Philadelphia. Most at risk are the elderly and those with compromised immune systems, cited by state officials as one reason why the outbreaks at the Quincy facility proved so serious. Legionnaires is spread through aerosolized water drops inhaled into the lungs, with showers, faucets, hot tubs and mist from large building air-conditioning units serving as common sources for spreading the infection. The disease is unlikely to be spread from drinking contaminated water. Rachel Bold, a spokeswoman for Rauner, cited explanations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization and the scientific journal PLOS One to reinforce his claim that bacteria that can cause the disease are widespread. However, none of those sources contained information confirming that a majority of Illinois building water systems contained the bacteria, known as Legionella. Erik Olson, health program director at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Legionella likely can be found in many water systems. Even so, Olson said it was ""misleading"" for Rauner to attempt to frame the danger so broadly. Trace amounts of the bacteria don’t pose a threat unless allowed to grow due to poor building maintenance, Olson explained. He likened the phenomenon to that of coliform bacteria, which are also widespread in the environment. Many forms of coliform bacteria are harmless, he said, while some can lead to potentially deadly E. coli in food if proper sanitation procedures are not followed. The CDC also stresses that poor building maintenance — rather than the widespread presence of low-level bacteria — is the main culprit in Legionnaires’ outbreaks. Legionella is naturally occurring and is present at low levels in water sources such as lakes and rivers. Therefore, it’s assumed by government officials that the bacteria makes its way into building systems. However, there’s no quantifiable data. ""We don’t actually have an exact number or even proportion,"" CDC spokeswoman Kristen Nordlund said in an interview. State health departments report annual incidents of Legionnaires’ cases to the CDC. There were 6,000 cases reported nationwide in 2015. An estimated 9 to 10 percent of all cases result in death, Nordlund said, though the agency doesn’t ask states to report numbers of deaths from the disease. In 2015, the city of Chicago advised building owners to check and clean water supply systems to guard against the spread of Legionnaires. ""Legionella bacteria are present at low levels in many water systems,"" the city letter stated. ""Background levels of Legionella are not known to be a significant risk when associated with proper water quality management of water systems."" Northwestern Memorial Hospital spokesman Christopher King confirmed Rauner’s claim that two patients treated at the hospital within the past six months tested positive for Legionella. The hospital is working with state health officials and conducting its own review ""to determine if these two cases are related,"" he said, declining to comment further. Rauner says news reports about his administration’s response to recurring incidents of Legionnaires’ disease at the Illinois Veterans’ Home in Quincy leave out a key part of the story: ""The Legionella bacteria is in most water systems in Illinois."" The governor’s statement glosses over the reality that any such contamination is likely present at low and non-threatening levels. The use of the word ""most"" is also questionable since there’s no real quantifiable evidence. The CDC avoids quantifying the presence of the bacteria, which thrives on slime in poorly maintained internal water systems. The governor has a point that the bacteria lurks in a number of water systems. But his statement makes an unprovable claim about the extent of the contamination. The governor’s claim is overbroad and lacking in context."
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1903
|
Vow of chastity and the pill may keep nuns healthy.
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Nuns should be offered the contraceptive pill, on health grounds, since it would cut their risk of getting cancer, two Australian doctors said on Thursday.
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true
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Health News
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A nun attends a mass led by Pope Benedict XVI at the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem May 12, 2009, where it is believed Jesus had his final prayer before he was betrayed and arrested. REUTERS/Baz Ratner The vow of chastity taken by the world’s 95,000 Catholic nuns carries with it an increased risk of breast, ovarian and uterine cancers — all of which are more common in women who do not have children. It is a problem that has been recognized for hundreds of years. In 1713, Italian physician Bernadino Ramazzini reported nuns had extremely high rates of the “accursed pest,” breast cancer. Kara Britt of Monash University and Roger Short of the University of Melbourne, writing in The Lancet medical journal, argued that taking modern contraceptive pills could be one answer. Lack of pregnancy and lactation means childless women have more menstrual cycles, which increases cancer risk, while those who have children further decrease their risk if they have first babies while young, have several children and breastfeed. Overall mortality in women using the contraceptive pill is around 12 percent lower than in those who have never used it and the risk of developing ovarian and endometrial cancers falls by 50 to 60 percent, the authors said. “If the Catholic Church could make the oral contraceptive pill freely available to all its nuns, it would reduce the risk of those accursed pests, cancer of the ovary and uterus, and give nuns’ plight the recognition it deserves,” the doctors said. Although the Catholic Church condemns all forms of contraception, barring abstinence, the doctors argued that using the pill might still be possible under regulations on birth control set out by Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae in 1968. This document stated that “the Church in no way regards as unlawful therapeutic means considered necessary to cure organic diseases, even though they also have a contraceptive effect.” Of course, the pill can also carry its own dangers, such as the risk of blood clots with the combined oestrogen-progestogen version, so the suitability of nuns would have to be assessed according to their individual medical histories, the doctors added.
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7252
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Judge: Carnival must fix ocean pollution issues faster.
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A federal judge pushed top Carnival Corp. executives on Wednesday to work faster to fix ocean pollution problems caused by the world’s largest cruise line.
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true
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Miami, Oceans, Micky Arison, Business, Science, Courts, U.S. News, Pollution
|
At a hearing in Miami federal court, U.S. District Judge Patricia Seitz said she expects more concrete action and fewer promises from Carnival. “We’re not there. And we should be,” Seitz said. The cruise company is about halfway through a five-year probation sentence for a 2016 criminal pollution conviction. Chairman Micky Arison, who also owns the Miami Heat, and CEO Arnold Donald both insisted the company is doing a lot, but that it takes time to implement real changes at a company with 120,000 employees, more than 100 cruise ships and nine different brands. “We strive to be perfect,” Arison told the judge. “We won’t ever be perfect, but we are going to work toward that.” Earlier this year, Carnival admitted violating probation from the 2016 criminal case as its ships continued to cause environmental harm around the world since then. It was hit with a $20 million penalty, on top of a $40 million fine imposed in the original case. The environmental problems included allowing plastic to be discharged along with food into water; dumping “gray water” in prohibited places such as Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park; and permitting a corporate culture to persist that does not value compliance with environmental laws. Richard Udell, a Justice Department lawyer specializing in environmental enforcement, cited the recent inability of Carnival to detail what happens to the estimated 50 million plastic bottles used on its ships each year. Carnival, he said, simply told the government they don’t keep track of that because they are all supposedly recycled at some of its 700 destinations. Prosecutors want to know if that is really the case, or if often the bottles simply get dumped in the ocean or in landfills by other entities where Carnival ships dock. “If we don’t look, we won’t know, and if we don’t know, we don’t care,” Udell said. “We hope that we can get past this.” Carnival outlined many steps it is taking to phase out use of plastics on its ships, including the bottles, and that it would look deeper into the recycling issue. And Donald, the CEO, said the company’s leadership is making every effort to value environmental compliance just as much as ship safety and guest hospitality. “Compliance, environmental protection, safety _ it’s the first thing,” Donald said. “Without it, we don’t have a business.” Another status hearing is set for December. _____ Follow Curt Anderson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/Miamicurt
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19819
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"Multnomah County Says ""Your kid just ate 16 packs of sugar."
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Did your kid just drink 16 packs of sugar?
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true
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Oregon, County Government, Public Health, Multnomah County,
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"In recent days we’ve heard a revival of an age-old question that highlights our nation’s shared love of sugar yet calls out our regional differences: Is it pop or is it soda? Or maybe it’s just Coke? While in bubbly debate over what to call soft drinks -- your PolitiFact Oregon staff does not agree on this -- a colleague of ours suggested a potential fact check that anyone might find intriguing, no matter what they call their carbonated beverage of choice. You’ve probably seen the ""Sugar Packs"" ads around Multnomah County, put there by the Health Department as part of a healthy living and anti-obesity campaign that started in 2010. It’s the one with a pile of packets of white sugar draining into a 20-ounce bottle of generic cola. ""Your kid just ate 16 packs of sugar,"" the ad states. ""All those extra calories can bring on obesity, diabetes and heart disease."" Sixteen packets? Our collective stomachs cramped. Our teeth ached. We swallowed our distaste and started checking. Soda-sleuthing turned out to be quite easy, namely because there’s a lot of pop in a newsroom. In fact, we found more than a dozen empties within spitting distance. A 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola regular, we learned, contains 39 grams of sugar, usually from high-fructose corn syrup in the United States. A 20-ounce bottle would then contain 65 grams of sugar. Corn syrup is not the same as white table sugar, but the county is talking equivalents. A packet of table sugar as shown in the ad is equal to about a teaspoon, or about 4 grams of sugar. So, indeed, there are at least 16 packs of sugar in every 20-ounce bottle of regular cola. There’s no arguing that that’s a large chunk of sweet. The American Heart Association recommends no more than nine teaspoons -- nine packets -- of added sugar a day for adult men. For women, it’s six. But just for the fun of it -- no, we’re not on a sugar high -- we wanted to know what else could contain the equivalent of 16 packets of granulated white. And bingo: A 16-ounce Jamba Juice Banana Berry contains 60 grams of sugar. A 12-ounce Chocolate McCafe shake from McDonald’s has 76 grams. A Starbucks Grande non-fat, no-whip Caramel Frappucino Blended Beverage contains 59 grams of sugar, although to be fair, the drink also includes 4 grams of nutritious protein. The iced lemon pound cake contains 46 grams of sugar -- but then, all you adults knew that -- and PolitiFact Oregon has fallen into tangential research. Back to the point. We figure children don’t usually indulge in diet sodas, which are made with artificial sweeteners like aspartame, and not with corn syrup or sugar. We’re told by a beverage trade publication that 12-ounce cans are the top sellers -- but a 20-ounce bottle doesn’t seem out of line in this age of super-sized drinks and Double Big Gulps. ""It’s what’s available in our environment,"" said Sonia Manhas, who manages the program for the county. After all, McDonald’s markets a 16-ounce soda as a small-sized soft drink and a 12-ounce drink as child-sized. We figure parents are smart enough to figure out the sugar-gram-to-cola-ounce ratio themselves. The smaller the drink, the fewer the sugar packets. All this really means is that we find the county’s statement accurate. And that’s the unsugar-coated truth."
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12356
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Actually, on some procedures, you're more likely to die if you're on Medicaid than if you're uninsured.
|
"Needham said, ""Actually, on some procedures, you're more likely to die if you're on Medicaid than if you're uninsured."" Needham points to a 2011 op-ed that cited studies about the outcomes of patients on Medicaid for certain types of procedures. We were able to reach the authors of three of those studies who disputed Gottlieb’s conclusions."
|
false
|
Health Care, Medicaid, Florida, Michael Needham,
|
"In his defense of the Republican Senate health care proposal, Heritage Action for America CEO Michael Needham argued that some patients on Medicaid are more likely to die than those without insurance. Needham, who heads up the conservative organization, questioned the effectiveness of Medicaid in an interview on Fox News Sunday June 25. ""If the Democratic Party wants to become the party of Medicaid, I don't think it's going to have a lot of success in the 21st century. Medicaid was a program designed in the middle of the last century where health outcomes between people on Medicaid and the completely uninsured are exactly the same. Actually, on some procedures, you're more likely to die if you're on Medicaid than if you're uninsured,"" Needham said. Legislation in both the House and Senate would slow the rate of Medicaid spending and result in enrollment declines, according to the Congressional Budget Office. A spokesman for Needham said his statement about deaths for those on Medicaid compared with the uninsured came from a 2011 Wall Street Journal op-ed by Scott Gottlieb, who was recently confirmed as FDA commissioner. Gottlieb was also a clinical assistant professor at the New York University School of Medicine and a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Gottlieb wrote that for Medicaid patients, ""in some cases, they’d do just as well without health insurance."" He cited four studies about the outcomes of patients on Medicaid for certain types of procedures. We were able to reach the authors of three of those studies, and they disputed Gottlieb’s conclusions. University of Virginia study was only about people who underwent surgery The largest study, done by the University of Virginia and published in 2010, followed the patient outcomes of almost 900,000 major surgeries across the country. The study kept track of whether those patients had private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid or no insurance at all. The results showed Medicaid patients were more likely to die following a procedure than the uninsured, but the deaths result from the fact that Medicaid patients tend to begin treatment in poorer health. That's a critical distinction, said one of the key researchers for the study, Dr. Irving Kron, a University of Virginia School of Medicine professor and cardiovascular surgeon. Kron told PolitiFact that Needham’s conclusion is incorrect. Kron has said that his study doesn’t mean Medicaid is to blame for higher odds of patient deaths. While the study adjusts for socioeconomic factors, it notes that if you’re on Medicaid, you’re probably suffering from a long list of risk factors other patients don’t have. Medicaid recipients are the poorest, least educated and sickest of all patients. Those patients have the highest incidence of AIDS, depression, liver disease, neurologic disorders, psychoses and metastatic cancer, according to the study. ""The reality is it’s apples and oranges,"" Kron previously told PolitiFact. ""The problem with Medicaid is there’s more emergencies, because they’re sicker than most people. … They wait for care and unfortunately, emergent patients don’t do as well as elective patients."" Some other studies were narrow in scope Gottlieb’s op-ed also cited studies examining outcomes for Medicaid patients who had cancer of the throat, coronary angioplasty or lung transplants. We tracked down authors of two of the studies; they rejected Gottlieb’s conclusions. Gottlieb cited a 2010 study of 1,231 patients with cancer of the throat, published in the medical journal Cancer. The study found that Medicaid patients and people lacking any health insurance were both 50 percent more likely to die when compared with privately insured patients—even after adjusting for factors that influence cancer outcomes, Gottlieb wrote. However, the authors of that report told PolitiFact that Gottlieb’s conclusion was wrong. One of the caveats of the insurance records used for this study was that no distinction was made between patients who were covered by Medicaid at the time of diagnosis and those who were uninsured at diagnosis but were then enrolled in Medicaid, said Scott M. Langevin, an assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Since researchers were unable to consider the Medicaid and uninsured groups separately, it’s an ""errant interpretation"" to conclude that health outcomes for people on Medicaid and those completely uninsured are exactly the same, Langevin said. Gottlieb also cited a study about outcomes for patients who underwent coronary angioplasty (a procedure to open clogged heart arteries). Dr. Michael Gaglia, associate professor of medicine at the University of New Mexico and an author of the 2011 study in the American Journal of Cardiology, said that Gottlieb ignores the full findings of his study and the broader picture about Medicaid. For those younger than 65, the Medicaid patients fared a little better than those who were uninsured, he said. He said that such arguments that having Medicaid is worse than not having insurance is ""absurd."" ""This implication that somehow you get worse care with an insurance plan -- Medicaid -- than you would by not having an insurance plan at all -- no coverage, just going to the ER for emergencies -- for most reasonable people that doesn’t make any sense,"" he said. PolitiFact has previously found at least seven academic papers that detected a link between securing health insurance and a decline in mortality. In general, these papers present a stronger consensus that having insurance saves lives. Harvard researchers recently wrote a piece summarizing the evidence on the effect of Medicaid or other insurance on mortality. Their review of the evidence concludes that insurance like Medicaid significantly reduces mortality relative to being uninsured, said Katherine Baicker, one of the authors. The researchers found that ""coverage expansions significantly increase patients’ access to care and use of preventive care, primary care, chronic illness treatment, medications, and surgery. These increases appear to produce significant, multifaceted, and nuanced benefits to health."" Our ruling Needham said, ""Actually, on some procedures, you're more likely to die if you're on Medicaid than if you're uninsured."" Needham points to a 2011 op-ed that cited studies about the outcomes of patients on Medicaid for certain types of procedures. We were able to reach the authors of three of those studies who disputed Gottlieb’s conclusions."
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5351
|
Nonprofit has given $25M to Wyoming health care.
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The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust has given more than $25 million for mammogram machines and other medical equipment to Wyoming hospitals and clinics since 2010.
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true
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Health, Wyoming, Medical equipment, Casper, Mammography
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The organization is a national nonprofit that works to improve rural health care. Program director Shelley Stingley tells the Casper Star-Tribune (http://bit.ly/2veibqx ) that more than $10 million of its contributions in Wyoming has gone to better care in cancer treatment centers. That includes putting eight new digital mammography machines in towns like Torrington and Wheatland. Some of the machines were new equipment to a facility, while others replaced a hospital’s aging machine. Additionally, Stingley says the program sought to provide cancer patients with better radiation treatment. New machines were purchased in Cody, Sheridan and Rock Springs. ___ Information from: Casper (Wyo.) Star-Tribune, http://www.trib.com
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8923
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Data suggests virus infections under-reported, exaggerating fatality rate.
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Fatalities from the coronavirus epidemic are overwhelmingly concentrated in central China’s Wuhan city, which accounts for over 73% of deaths despite having only one-third the number of confirmed infections.
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true
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Science News
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In Wuhan, the epicenter of the disease, one person has died for every 23 infections reported. That number drops to one on 50 nationally, and outside mainland China, one death has been recorded per 114 confirmed cases. Get our full coverage on the coronavirus: here Experts say the discrepancy is mainly due to under-reporting of milder virus cases in Wuhan and other parts of Hubei province that are grappling with shortages in testing equipment and beds. “In an outbreak your really have to interpret fatality rates with a very skeptical eye, because often it’s only the very severe cases that are coming to people’s attention,” said Amesh Adalja, an expert in pandemic preparedness at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Baltimore. “It’s very hard to say those numbers represent anything like the true burden of infection” said Adalja, who estimates current fatality rates are likely below 1%. As of Tuesday, 24,551 cases have been confirmed globally. A 1% fatality rate would put total cases at over 49,000, based on the current death toll of 492. Gauden Galea, the World Health Organisation (WHO) representative for China, told Reuters on Sunday that a “crude calculation” done by dividing total cases by deaths put the rate at 2% and said the rate was generally falling. “Trying to really demystify those fatality numbers by including mildly symptomatic cases will help people to better understand the risk,” said Adalja. In Wuhan, some patients with milder symptoms have been turned away from hospitals in recent weeks because of the strain on resources, several people in the city told Reuters. Others have opted to self-isolate. Wuhan resident Meiping Wang said she and her sister both believe they have mild cases of the virus after their mother tested positive, but have not been tested. “There is no use going to the hospital because there is no treatment,” Wang, 31, said in a telephone interview. Under-reporting mild cases - which increases fatality rates - could have a negative social and economic impact as global health authorities race to contain the disease. “It’s good to remember that when H1N1 influenza came out in 2009, estimates of case fatality were 10 percent,” said David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, who was working in public health at the time. “That turned out to be incredibly wrong.” “As the denominator is growing in terms of case numbers, and case fatality goes down and down... you start to realize it’s everywhere,” he said. The global response to the coronavirus epidemic has been swift and fierce. Several countries have implemented partial or full travel bans on Chinese travelers. “There are many actions going on all over the world that really are premised on the idea that this is a very severe illness,” said Johns Hopkins’ Adalja. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday that the bans were an unnecessary interruption to travel and trade.
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26421
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"The Gates Foundation ""tested a polio vax in India between 2000 & 2017 and paralysed 496,000 children."
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The Gates Foundation has long supported polio vaccination efforts in India. There is no evidence that 496,000 children were paralyzed due to a polio vaccine. Numbers from the WHO show that there have been 17 cases of vaccine-derived polio in India since 2000.
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false
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Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"A popular conspiracy theory on Facebook digs into Bill Gates’ past to try to discredit his current efforts to speed up the development of a coronavirus vaccine. An April 13 post claims the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation ""tested a polio vax in India between 2000 & 2017 and paralysed 496,000 chlidren."" ""Fact!"" the post reads. But it’s not. The post, which has been shared more than 16,000 times, was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) (Screenshot from Facebook) PolitiFact reached out to the original poster, but we haven’t heard back. The Gates Foundation told us in an email that the post is . Still, we wanted to take a closer look. The source of the claim appears to be an April 7 Instagram post from Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and one of the biggest sources of anti-vaccine advertisements on Facebook. The post was subsequently covered by the BL, a pro-Trump website that has been known to publish misinformation. We found no credible news reports about 496,000 paralyzed children in India due to a polio vaccine. The Gates Foundation has long funded groups in India and elsewhere that seek to expand access to polio immunization. In March 2014, the World Health Organization declared that its Southeast Asia region was polio-free, in part because of the kinds of mass vaccination campaigns supported by the Gates Foundation. However, the virus remains a threat in South Asian countries like Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to the WHO, it is possible to contract polio from vaccines — but it’s extremely rare. The agency estimates that 1 in 2.7 million oral doses results in vaccine-associated paralytic polio. Since the eradication of polio in India, there have been some scares of tainted vaccines. But data from the WHO show that, between 2000 and 2017, there were 17 cases of vaccine-derived poliovirus. The Facebook post comes amid a rash of other conspiracy theories about Gates and his connection to the coronavirus pandemic. We’ve fact-checked several or misleading claims about the billionaire philanthropist, spanning from his purported financial interest in a COVID-19 vaccine to a bogus conspiracy about tracking Americans in lockdown. Like many of those claims, this Facebook post is inaccurate."
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Don Pridemore Says Gov. Tony Evers “has never had a real job.”
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GOP candidate for Wisconsin Senate Don Pridemore says Democratic Gov. Tony Evers ‘never had a real job’ The governor’s earliest jobs include scraping mold off of cheese at a factory in his hometown of Plymouth and working as a caregiver in a nursing home. Evers’ professional resume includes stints as a teacher, principal, district superintendent and State of Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction.
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false
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Jobs, States, Wisconsin, Don Pridemore,
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"The pushback against Gov. Tony Evers’ safer-at-home order aimed at slowing the spread of the coronavirus has included a lawsuit filed by Republican leaders and rallies at the Capitol. One such gathering, an Open Wisconsin rally on April 24, 2020, attracted about 1,500 people according to Capitol police. Among them: former state Rep. Don Pridemore, R-Hartford. Pridemore told Shawn Johnson, State Capitol Bureau chief for Wisconsin Public Radio, that he is aiming to launch a recall effort against Evers and Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. On his Twitter account, Johnson quoted Pridemore saying he was at the rally to ""wake Tony Evers up. Tony Evers has been in an ivory tower all his life. He's never had a real job."" In a recording of the interview shared with PolitiFact Wisconsin, Pridemore can be heard expanding on the ""never had a real job"" comment by saying that ""without that experience, (Evers) doesn’t know how the people are suffering with this stay-at-home business."" There is some bluster and hyperbole here, of course. But what about Pridemore’s starkest claim? Is it true Evers has ""never had a real job""? Attempts to reach Pridemore via telephone and email to request back up for his claim were unsuccessful. In the past, Pridemore has refused to speak with journalists from certain media outlets, including the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Pridemore has said he will run to replace state Sen. Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau. Fitzgerald is running to replace U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., who is retiring at the end of his term. It is also worth noting that Pridemore ran for the position of Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction in April 2013 and was defeated by Evers, who held the post at the time. Evers’ spokeswoman Melissa Baldauff chided Pridemore for not being more familiar with the governor’s background ""considering he lost an election for state superintendent by more than 20 points to then-Supt. Evers back in 2013."" Evers had been in that post since July 2009. It’s fair to say this position is probably what Pridemore was referring to as being in an ""ivory tower."" And, while elected officials work, it’s fair to say most people don’t think of elected positions as everyday, run-of-the-mill jobs. So, what else has Evers done? Baldauff said Evers’ first job was ""as a kid, scraping mold off of cheese in his hometown of Plymouth, Wisconsin."" In a Nov. 6, 2018 campaign podcast interview with The Capital Times featuring Republican Gov. Scott Walker and challenger Evers, Evers said: ""I worked in three separate cheese factories in Plymouth, and my high-level job was scraping mold off of cheese."" (For those now raising their eyebrows: scraping mold from cheese was indeed a job decades ago.) John Umhoefer, executive director of the Wisconsin Cheese Makers Association, said the governor is describing a job he had about 50 years ago, and yes, it is quite reasonable to state that people were employed in that era to trim cheese blocks and wheels prior to further processing. ""The cheese industry is quite different than it was around 1970, including major improvements in packaging systems, packaging films, natural mold inhibitors, and temperature and humidity-controlled storage facilities,"" Umhoefer said in an email to PolitiFact Wisconsin. ""The Governor has described working in facilities that the dairy industry would call converters or processors,"" Umhoefer continued. ""These facilities hold and process cheese that was made elsewhere. Often the cheese is cut into chunks, slices, cubes or shreds at a converting company. In 1970, it is believable that cheese blocks and wheels were trimmed (scraped, to use his word) to remove harmless surface molds prior to being cut for consumer use."" Umhoefer pointed out that ""mold is much less of an issue today with the packaging and storage improvements."" In addition, Baldauff said, the young adult Evers ""worked as a caregiver in a nursing home."" Most of the governor’s career, Baldauff said, has been in public education, serving as an educator and administrator in school districts around the state (including Tomah, Oakfield, Baraboo, Oshkosh, and Verona). Evers’ biography, according to the Just Facts/Vote Smart website includes these jobs: Former Teacher, Baraboo School District Former Superintendent, Oakfield School District Former Principal, Tomah School District Former Superintendent, Verona School District Deputy State Superintendent, State of Wisconsin, 2001-2009 Chief Administrator, Cooperative Educational Service Agency 6, 1992-2000 Superintendent of Public Instruction, State of Wisconsin, 2009-2019 Governor, State of Wisconsin, 2019-present ""If working to support our dairy industry, caring for our neighbors in long-term care facilities, and educating our kids don’t constitute ‘real jobs’ to Mr. Pridemore, I can’t imagine what does,"" Baldauff said. Pridemore said Evers has ""never had a real job."" It’s probably news to dairy workers that scraping mold from cheese was not considered a real job. Ditto for nursing home caregivers, school teachers and principals. (Elected officials would probably disagree as well)."
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Malaysia turns to coronavirus antibody tests to supplement laboratory checks.
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Malaysian authorities have begun using COVID-19 antibody rapid tests kits to supplement laboratory tests as the number of cases in the country grows, a senior health official said on Tuesday.
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true
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Health News
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Officials in Malaysia, as elsewhere, had initially rejected the use of the serology test kits, which can show the presence of antibodies in people who have been infected. Like other countries, it instead chose polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, laboratory tests, which detect the presence of the novel coronavirus itself and are seen as more reliable. But as the number of suspected cases needing testing has risen, the turnaround time for laboratory test results had increased from around 6 hours to as many as two days or more, the director-general of health Noor Hisham Abdullah told reporters. Malaysia reported 170 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday, taking the total to nearly 5,000 infections, the second-highest in Southeast Asia, with 82 deaths. It had done nearly 82,000 PCR tests as of Monday and reported over 8,000 pending lab results earlier this month, before it stopped publishing backlog data. To reduce the testing backlog, the close contacts of people infected will now receive the antibody tests at the end of their 14-day mandatory quarantine period. “On the 13th day, we will use the antibody or serology tests... and if it comes back positive, then we will carry out the PCR test again,” Noor Hisham said. “But if the antibody test comes back negative, then you’re in the clear. This is how we are trying to reduce the number of PCR lab tests.” A person who tested negative can then be discharged from quarantine, freeing up state resources used to monitor them, but they would still be required to self-isolate under movement curbs imposed by the government until April 28 to limit the virus’ spread. Countries hope antibody tests may one day help them to ease movement curbs by identifying people who may have acquired immunity, but it is not yet clear if that is possible. Some doctors had been calling for Malaysia to use new rapid test kits - both antibody and antigen - to widen testing and reduce the backlog of cases, but like other countries, it has been awaiting trial results. A shortage of laboratory testing supplies and difficulty in procuring them have made it hard to ramp up capacity. Malaysia last week warned of a shortage of reagents, a chemical used in diagnostic tests to detect the presence of the coronavirus. Noor Hisham on Tuesday also warned that the country was running low on personal protective equipment (PPEs) for health workers, with supplies of some items expected to last just another 19 days.
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'Like a zombie apocalypse': Residents on edge as coronavirus cases surge in South Korea.
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Residents of a South Korean city at the centre of a new coronavirus outbreak described empty streets, deserted shops, and a climate of fear as a surge in confirmed cases linked to a church raised the prospect of wider transmission.
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true
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Health News
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Malls, restaurants and streets in Daegu, the country’s fourth largest city with a population of 2.5 million, were largely empty in scenes that residents and social media users likened to a disaster movie. “It’s like someone dropped a bomb in the middle of the city. It looks like a zombie apocalypse,” Kim Geun-woo, a 28-year-old resident told Reuters by telephone. “Even Dongseong-ro Street – the most crowded centre of the city – is empty,” he said, adding that he had tried to buy surgical masks but shops were sold out. Korea’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) reported 53 new cases of the virus on Thursday, following 20 a day earlier, taking the total across the country to 104. Of that national tally, 70 patients are from Daegu or nearby and the majority have been traced to an infected 61-year-old woman known as “Patient 31” who attended a church, a scenario that KCDC described as a “super-spreading event”. South Korea also reported the first death of a coronavirus patient, though the man’s exact cause of death was being investigated. The man was among 13 people at a hospital near Daegu who tested positive for the virus. Health officials said they were investigating whether there were links between the outbreak at the church and the hospital. The hospital would be temporarily shut down and about 600 staff and patients would be tested for the virus, Yonhap news agency reported, citing officials. Several major department stores, including at least one in Seoul, were closed after reports that Patient 31 had visited in recent weeks, Yonhap reported. Daegu Mayor Kwon Young-jin told residents to stay indoors as he warned of likely further cases. “We are in an unprecedented crisis,” he said at a briefing in the city, about 240 km (150 miles) southwest of the capital Seoul. Kwon cautioned that at least 90 more of the about 1,000 other people who attended services at the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony were also showing symptoms. “We plan to test all believers of that church and have asked them to stay at home isolated from their families,” Kwon said. South Korea’s vice health minister Kim Kang-lip said at a separate briefing in the administrative city of Sejong that the situation was “very grave”. The cases previously reported in South Korea had mostly involved people who had travelled individually to China or come into contact with somebody who had, but it is unclear how Patient 31 contracted the virus. Daegu authorities ordered the shutdown of all kindergartens, while all schools will postpone the beginning of the spring semester scheduled for early March by one week in an unprecedented move, Yonhap said. The Defence Ministry banned troops stationed in Daegu from leaving their barracks and receiving guests, while a soldier who had recently visited his home in Daegu tested positive for the virus. The U.S. military imposed similar restrictions on its army base in the city, which houses thousands of troops, family members and civilian employees, curbing travel and closing schools and child-care centres. Media footage showed the few people on Daegu’s usually bustling downtown streets wore face masks and kept far apart. Topics such as “Daegu lockdown” and “Daegu church” were among the top searches on major South Korean portal Naver as debate heated up online about whether the city should be sealed off from the rest of the country. A KCDC official told Reuters the government was not considering that measure. The church at the centre of the outbreak is a branch of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, a religious movement founded in 1984 by South Korean Lee Man-hee who has about 500,000 followers. Some commentators on social media blamed the custom of churchgoers sitting on the floor close to each other during services as increasing the risk of spreading the virus. Shincheonji said on Wednesday it had closed its Daegu church and instructed that services elsewhere be held online or individually at home.
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Medical breakthrough? New procedure fights tumors
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"This story reports on the presentation of two abstracts at this week’s Society of Interventional Radiology meeting on cryoablation for kidney cancer. Cryoablation is a minimally-invasive procedure that uses flash freezing to destroy the tumor. This short story presents little in the way of useful information to the consumer. It does not adequately describe the availability of the treatment, the strength of the available evidence to support its use, or any harms of the procedure. The story does not quantify the benefits of the treatment nor does it adquately describe the advantages and disadvantages of the alternatives. Furthermore, by using such terms as ""breakthrough"", ""great success"" and ""promising"", the story exaggerates what is and isn’t known about the procedure and glosses over the fact that the studies have yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal."
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false
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"The story does not mention the cost of the procedure. The story says the proceudre works ""95 percent of the time"" but does not explain what this means. Nor does it compare the effectiveness of the procedure compared to surgery. The story does not mention any harms of the procedure. The story does not adequately describe the strength of the available evidence. The story does not describe the current study or other studies like it. Nor does the story mention that the results were presented at a conference and have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal. We have a primer on the pitfalls of reporting on conference papers. The story does not engage in disease mongering. The story only quotes one expert, the lead author of the current study. The story should have quoted multiple experts who could provide valuable perspective on the importance of these new results. The story mentions surgery but does not mention other procedures, such as radiofrequency ablation. Nor does the story discuss the advantages and disadvantages of these alternatives. The story does not comment about whether the procedure is widely avaiable or not. This is a concern given its novelty; access to the procedure is likely to be limited. Clearly the procedure is new. There is no way to know if the story relies on a press release as the sole source of information."
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Samuel L. Jackson was an unknown actor and heroin addict before a catalyst role in the 1990s saved him from addiction.
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Was Samuel L. Jackson an ‘Unknown Heroin Addict’ Before ‘Pulp Fiction’?
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mixture
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Entertainment, Fact Checks
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In February 2019, a Facebook page shared the following biographical meme about Samuel L. Jackson, detailing a purported drug addiction that defined his life before he got clean, which was around the time he appeared in Pulp Fiction.Alongside the meme, the page wrote: “Because he did not allow his situation to become his coffin.” The appended image featured a photograph of a laughing Jackson, stating:Incase you think you’re too old or it’s too lateAt 43, he was an unknown actor with a heroin addiction.His 8-year old daughter found him unconscious on the floor, so he entered rehab.After his release, Spike Lee hired him to play a crack addict in Jungle Fever.The role was so cathartic it became his catalyst for staying clean + led him to the role in Pulp Fiction that made him a star — finally — at age 46.The meme told a very specific story of redemption about Jackson, a successful American actor who regularly has appeared in films for decades. According to its text, Jackson’s small part in Jungle Fever was a surprising “catalyst,” saving him from a life of heroin addiction and leading to his breakthrough role in Pulp Fiction. The meme said Jackson’s daughter Zoe was eight when she purportedly found him during an overdose. Jackson does have a daughter named Zoe, who was born in 1982, placing her at that age in approximately 1990.Many readers found the claims believable, as many people who quite young or not yet born when Pulp Fiction was released in 1994 have no memory of Jackson before that film. So our first stop was Jackson’s IMDb page, to see if he leapt on to the Hollywood scene in the 1990s.Jungle Fever was released in 1991, three years prior to Pulp Fiction‘s runaway success. It was somewhat accurate to say Jackson’s career picked up after Pulp Fiction became a 1990s blockbuster, but it seemed misleading to describe his 1991 role in Jungle Fever as a “catalyst” for his acting success overall.Jackson, who was born in December 1948, is first credited on IMDb in 1973 — 21 years prior to the release of Pulp Fiction, and when Jackson was roughly 25. The actor amassed four credits between 1973 and 1978, and another 12 in the 1980s. Several of the parts did appear to be small (“Taxi Dispatcher,” “Hold-Up Man,” and simply “Black Guy”), not involving a named character.However, before Jungle Fever, Jackson also appeared in high-profile films and television shows. Among them were Spenser: For Hire in 1986-87, Coming to America in 1988, Do the Right Thing in 1989, and Mo’ Betta Blues in 1990. Several of those parts involved named roles. Moreover, Jackson appeared in the highly-acclaimed 1990 movie Goodfellas as “Stacks Edwards,” one of the first characters of many to meet a grisly fate after the doomed Lufthansa heist went awry:Eight years later, during the Lufthansa heist, [Thomas] DeSimone acted as one of the key gunmen who collected the money. Then, following the robbery, he also carried out the killing of Parnell “Stacks” Edwards, a criminal associate that the thieves had hired to dispose of the truck used in the heist, but who had failed to do so.In between Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction, Jackson went on to star in the interim films Patriot Games in 1992, Amos & Andrew in 1993, True Romance in 1993, and Jurassic Park in 1993. Arguably, Pulp Fiction catapulted Jackson to a new level of fame in 1994, but it also appeared that his star was simply already rising following his appearance in Goodfellas.A June 1991 New York Times profile on Jackson’s then-newfound level of fame made no mention of a heroin-related epiphany, mentioning Zoe (who was nine at the time) and reporting accolades achieved by Jackson after his breakthrough performance in Jungle Fever:But his anonymity is quickly coming to an end. Last month, Mr. Jackson received a special jury prize for best supporting actor at the Cannes International Film Festival for his performance in “Jungle Fever.” Critics are calling his emphatic portrayal of Gator, the crack addict with the emotional maturity of a 16-year-old, a breakthrough that could do for Mr. Jackson what Mr. Lee’s “Mo’ Better Blues” did for Wesley Snipes, who stars in “Jungle Fever” as Mr. Jackson’s younger brother.Having spent the last 19 years playing cameo roles in nearly a dozen movies from “Ragtime” to “Goodfellas,” in addition to television, commercials and everything from street theater to repertory theater to developmental theater, Mr. Jackson is taking the attention and praise with a healthy grain of humor.“I was talking to someone who had a film project, and he said he was considering me for the project but guessed I was out of that range now,” Mr. Jackson said, “and I said, ‘Whoa!’ Let’s not get crazy here. Sam is not out of anybody’s range yet.”[…]Mr. Jackson once harbored ambitions of becoming an architect, before stumbling into acting while attending college. He is married to LaTanya Richardson, an actress, has a 9-year-old daughter, Zoe, and lives, yes, in a Harlem brownstone. His silver and horn-rimmed glasses add a professorial touch to his lanky 6-foot-3-inch frame.This summer, he will begin filming an NBC special, “Night Man,” in which his wife co-stars. Recalling his performance in “Jungle Fever,” Mr. Jackson said it was the first time he had ever seen his work and said to himself: “I don’t want to go back and fix it.”The 1991 piece captured his initial discomfort with his show business ascendancy, as he recalled the novel sensation of being considered too overqualified for roles. That article’s title was “UP AND COMING; Samuel L. Jackson: Out of Lee’s ‘Jungle,’ Into the Limelight.”A compelling aspect of Jackson’s life not mentioned by the meme was his involvement with the civil rights movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Jackson was in his late teens and early twenties:After the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Jackson attended the funeral in Atlanta as one of the ushers. Jackson then flew to Memphis to join an equal rights protest march. In a Parade interview Jackson revealed: “I was angry about the assassination, but I wasn’t shocked by it. I knew that change was going to take something different — not sit-ins, not peaceful coexistence.”In 1969, Jackson and several other students held members of the Morehouse College board of trustees (including a nearby Martin Luther King, Sr.) hostage on the campus, demanding reform in the school’s curriculum and governance. The college eventually agreed to change its policy, but Jackson was charged with and eventually convicted of unlawful confinement, a second-degree felony. Jackson was then suspended for two years for his criminal record and his actions. He would later return to the college to earn his Bachelor of Arts in Drama in 1972 … However, before Jackson could become involved with any significant armed confrontation, his mother sent him to Los Angeles after the FBI told her that he would die within a year if he remained with the Black Power movement.As for the meme’s specific claims about Jackson’s drug use, a June 2016 Guardian item may have been the source for its claims. However, in that interview, Jackson described a busy career prior to a 1991 effort to stop using drugs in 1991 after his daughter came across him “zonked out” in the kitchen:We often forget that before exploding into the public consciousness in 1994, aged 45, as Pulp Fiction’s fire-and-brimstone-spewing hitman Jules, that Jackson was a well-regarded New York stage actor. Well-regarded, that is, except for his demons and appetites. He played important roles in the first runs of a couple of August Wilson plays, but was always replaced before they moved to Broadway. He had started boozing, smoking weed and doing LSD at college in the late 60s, and has said that until he got clean in 1991 – after a crack-induced meltdown that involved his eight-year-old daughter finding him zonked out in the kitchen among his dimebags and paraphernalia – he had never set foot on stage without some kind of substance in his body.“‘Made it’ is all relative,” he says of his supposedly late start in the movies. “I had a very good theatre reputation. Granted, I was a fucking drug addict and I was out of my mind a lot of the time, but I had a good reputation. Showed up on time, knew my lines, hit my marks. I just wasn’t making a lot of money, but I was very satisfied artistically. I was doing Pulitzer prize-winning plays. I was working with people who made me better, who challenged me. So I was doing things the right way, it was just that one thing that was in the way – my addiction. And once that was out of the way, it was – boom! The door blew wide open.”An extensive 2019 Hollywood Reporter profile also delved into Jackson’s previous use of drugs (including LSD and heroin), and his wife’s insistence he enter rehab in 1991. Notably, the piece described Jackson as a “function[ing]” user of substances, and hardly an “unknown actor”:It was also during the 1960s that Jackson began experimenting with drugs, a habit that clung to him for years and nearly destroyed his life. It started when a Merry Prankster-esque professor turned him on to LSD, but Jackson quickly branched out into heroin, cocaine and, by the 1980s, crack. That last one stuck, and for 15 years he maintained a mostly functional addiction, smoking crack the way some people drink Starbucks lattes. […]For Jackson, rock bottom arrived when his wife and daughter discovered him lying face-down and unconscious on the kitchen floor, surrounded by drug paraphernalia. [Wife LaTanya] Richardson — who refers to this period as her “villa in hell” — insisted Jackson go to rehab, which he did. He was ready. “I’d been getting high since, shit, 15, 16 years old, and I was tired as fuck,” he says. While detoxing, he was sent a script by Spike Lee, for whom he had already done a string of smaller roles in films like Do the Right Thing and Mo’ Better Blues. Lee wanted him to play Gator, the crackhead brother of Wesley Snipes’ character in the interracial romance Jungle Fever. Ironically, the first role Jackson would take as a sober actor would require him to play a crack addict. “All the people in rehab were trying to talk me out of it,” he recalls. ” ‘You’re going to be messing around with crack pipes. All your triggers will be there. Blah, blah, blah.’ I was like, ‘You know what? If for no other reason than I never want to see you motherfuckers again, I will never pick up another drug.’ ‘Cause I hated their asses.”Jackson recalled that background for his work in Pulp Fiction, noting that producer Quentin Tarantino conceived the role of Jules Winnfield specifically for him after they first met in 1991:Jackson did not get the part [in Reservoir Dogs of Holdaway, the cop who teaches Tim Roth’s undercover Mr. Orange the “commode story.” But he was in the Sundance audience when the film premiered the following year. “I was thinking, ‘Well, good movie.’ Then I realized that dude who I read with was the director! So I go over to him and tell him how much I liked the movie but how it would’ve been a better movie with me in it. So he said, ‘Well, I’m writing something right now for you.’ I was like, ‘Really? You remember me that well?’ And then about two weeks later, Pulp Fiction came.”Jackson read the script twice. “I vividly remember getting to the end of it and being like, ‘Wow. Get the fuck outta here. Is this shit that good or am I just thinking, because he wrote it for me, I think it’s that good?’ So boom, I flipped it over and read it through again.” It was that good.Another interesting bit of trivia provided by Jackson involved his discussions with co-star Bruce Willis. The actors starred in both Pulp Fiction and Die Hard With A Vengeance together in 1994-1995:In May 1994, the pair took a break from filming Vengeance to fly to Cannes for the world premiere of Pulp Fiction. Willis wasn’t convinced there would be an audience for it. At one point in the screening, he whispered into Jackson’s ear: “This movie’s OK, but Die Hard‘s going to change your life. This movie’s not going to change your life … Willis was half right: Vengeance made Jackson an international star, but the art house crossover Pulp Fiction was heralded as an instant classic. Says Jackson, “It’s the kind of movie that every year, I gain 3, 4 million new fans because kids get old enough to see it for the first time. They think it’s the coolest thing they’ve ever fuckin’ seen in their lives.”The meme cobbled together a few biographical aspects of Jackson’s life and career to form a half-baked (and ultimately misleading) conclusion. It was true that Jackson struggled with substance abuse up until 1991 (not 1990), a turning point which involved being found passed out by his wife and daughter. It incorrectly states Jackson was offered the role upon leaving rehab, when he in fact discussed his commitment with fellow patients who urged him to drop out of Jungle Fever.Jackson was hardly an “unknown actor” at the time, nor was he a “heroin addict.” In the 1980s through 1991, Jackson occasionally used crack cocaine — but he also won roles in massive films through the 1980s and into the 1990s. Jackson stopped using cocaine in 1991, right before he was set to appear in Jungle Fever. And his appearance in the high-profile Goodfellas occurred before he entered the program.Further, Jackson’s performance in that Spike Lee film (again, a role he appeared to receive based on his performances while still using drugs) was cited as his breakthrough in a 1991 New York Times piece. At around the same time, Jackson met Tarantino, who created the “Jules” role specifically for him. As noted by Bruce Willis, Jackson was already acting in high-budget blockbusters like the Die Hard sequel when Pulp Fiction cemented his A-list status. Jackson himself observed that while his stint in rehab coincided with his larger level of fame, he was a well-regarded actor prior to that point.
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26704
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"If the coronavirus gets in your mouth, ""drinking water or other liquids will WASH them down through your esophagus and into the stomach. Once there in tummy ... your stomach ACID will kill all the virus."
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There is no evidence that drinking water helps to prevent coronavirus infection. Health officials and media outlets have debunked the claim. To prevent infection, wash your hands with soap and water, cover your coughs and sneezes with a tissue and regular sanitize the surfaces in your home.
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false
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Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"Drinking water is one of the primary ways to treat viral infections. But could it also prevent infections from the 2019 coronavirus? Health experts say no. One popular Facebook post prescribes ""a few sips of water every 15 minutes"" for people who want to avoid the coronavirus, officially known as COVID-19. The post includes a diagram of a lung and a long paragraph of medical advice attributed to ""Japanese doctors treating COVID-19 cases."" ""Even if the virus gets into your mouth … drinking water or other liquids will WASH them down through your esophagus and into the stomach,"" the photo reads. ""Once there in tummy … your stomach ACID will kill all the virus. If you don’t drink enough water more regularly … the virus can enter your windpipes and into the LUNGS."" 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.) It has been shared hundreds of times. (Screenshot from Facebook) A good rule of thumb is that if an online medical cure sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Such is the case with this Facebook post, which has been debunked by several other media outlets. While health experts recommend drinking water regularly to stay healthy, there is no evidence that sipping some every 15 minutes can help prevent coronavirus infection. The primary way the virus spreads is through close contact with infected people and respiratory droplets, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. When someone with the coronavirus coughs or sneezes, their germs land on surfaces around them. The virus then infects people who touch those surfaces and then their eyes, nose and mouth. So to prevent contracting the coronavirus, the CDC advises people to avoid touching their face as much as possible. Other ways to prevent infection include washing your hands with soap and water, covering your coughs and sneezes with a tissue and regularly sanitizing the surfaces in your home or at your workstation. As of now, there is no specific treatment for the virus. In a tweet published Feb. 7, the World Health Organization in the Philippines said it does not advise people to drink water as a way to avoid coronavirus infection. Q: If drinking water alleviates a sore throat, does this also protect against #2019nCoV infection?A: While staying hydrated by drinking water is important for overall health, it does not prevent coronavirus infection. pic.twitter.com/AWb1wK89Wj As of March 11, the 2019 coronavirus had infected more than 118,000 people in 113 countries. In the United States, there have been 938 confirmed cases and 31 deaths. The Facebook post is inaccurate."
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22354
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We don't need a separate (prescription drug) database ... Pharmacies already have a database in place.
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Freshman House member says pill mill database isn't needed because one already exists
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false
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Drugs, Health Care, Public Health, Florida, Larry Ahern,
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"Republicans in Tallahassee are split on whether to implement a new database that would track the sale of some prescription drugs in order to better identify and prevent doctor shopping and prescription drug abuse. The statewide drug-monitoring database would allow pharmacists and physicians to track the sale of prescription drugs and pain medication in order to prevent patients from going doctor to doctor to acquire prescriptions. Law enforcement officials could use the database to spot doctors who were over-prescribing drugs or people who are trying to abuse the system. More than 30 other states already have some type of database. Florida approved its version in 2009, but the database has been stalled over a contract dispute over what private vendor would manage the system. That has given some Republicans a chance to second-guess the program. A bill moving through the House at the behest of Speaker Dean Cannon (HB 7095) would eliminate the database. Rep. Robert Schenck, chairman of the committee that sponsored the bill, argues that the database merely tracks the problem and doesn't stop it. The House bill would instead require tracking drug wholesalers to identify unusually large distributions of narcotics. It also prohibits doctors from dispensing those medications, leaving that to pharmacists. Gov. Rick Scott, meanwhile, has said he worries the database could be an invasion of privacy, and that he doesn't want Florida taxpayers to end up on the hook for a program that was established with the promise that it would never be supported by state money. Federal grants and private fundraising efforts have generated enough money to run the database for about two years. And Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, has offered to pay $1 million to help fund the program. Scott also announced March 28 a statewide law enforcement response to try to halt criminal distribution and abuse of drugs in Florida. A freshman legislator from Pinellas County, Rep. Larry Ahern, wrote a letter to the editor of the St. Petersburg Times with another reason to oppose the database: Florida already has one. Ahern, who runs a swimming pool remodeling business, was responding to an editorial from the Times urging Republicans to move forward with the database. ""The Florida House has it right, and the Times gets it wrong,"" he wrote in a letter published March 25, 2011. ""Pharmacies already have a database in place, and the transaction is recorded on the spot. They will question the person trying to fill another prescription so quickly, and not fill it or call the doctor. ""We don't need a separate database with one already in place. The House bill will close pill mills without hurting legitimate doctors' ability to help their patients."" Is the database that's caused such a fight in the Legislature overkill? Lori Weems, a lobbyist for the Florida Pharmacy Association, suggested we call a pharmacist to find out. Ron Haines, a licensed pharmacist since 1961 who works at an independent pharmacy in Tarpon Springs, told us there is no database like the one Ahern is suggesting. ""I can't call the pharmacy across the street to ask if they filled a prescription for Mike Smith. They can't tell me."" Records are kept by pharmacies, of course, but those records aren't shared, Haines said. Every pharmacy keeps a record of what they prescribe to patients, Haines said, and pharmacy chains like Walgreens, CVS and Publix link into company databases. So a Publix pharmacist might know how many times a customer has been to a Publix pharmacy, and for what. But the Walgreens database doesn't sync into the CVS database, or vice versa. Insurance companies also keep databases on their patients to track what insurance companies are being ask to help pay for. But none of those databases were created with the idea of trying to find people -- doctors or patients -- who are abusing the system, Haines said. ""The databases we use store prescription records in the pharmacy. That's as far as it goes,"" he said. ""There is nothing aimed at targeting bad doctors and doctor shopping. That's what we're after."" Michael Jackson, CEO of the Florida Pharmacy Association, told us the same thing. ""It is true that many of the major chain pharmacies have prescription databases that are shared under their corporate umbrella pharmacies however they are not interconnected with other pharmacies,"" Jackson said. ""For example I may be a pharmacist working at chain ""A"" and a patient brings in their prescription to me. I cannot determine if that patient had a prescription filled at my competitor chain ""B"" located across the street that same day. In many cases I may ask the patient to provide me with their medication history and who has been their pharmacy providers but they may either not remember or for some reason elect to withhold that information from me."" Ahern, in an interview, more or less conceded the point. He said what he was trying to suggest is that the state should explore ways to have the big pharmacies connect the already in-place databases together in a way that would allow law enforcement and pharmacists to look for trouble spots. He said using infrastructure already in place is better than creating a new system from scratch. ""That would, in essence, solve much of the problems,"" he said. Ahern also pointed out flaws in the statewide monitoring program -- namely that health care practitioners would not be required to access the database before prescribing anyone medicine. And that pharmacists have 15 days to enter drug purchases into the system. ""Where does that solve the problem?"" Ahern asked. Ahern, for the record, is worried about privacy concerns in the database, and says he supports efforts to quell doctor-shopping. But he just doesn't think the statewide database is an effective tool in that fight. He also claimed in his letter to the editor that a database already is in place. There are many private-sector databases that collect information on prescription drug purchases, but those databases are not interconnected and were not created with the idea of reducing prescription drug abuse statewide. These individual store or company databases don't address the problem."
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4141
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Environmental groups sue steel mill over lake chemical spill.
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Two environmental groups are suing a steelmaker for allegedly violating the Clean Water Act at its northwestern Indiana facility more than 100 times in the past five years, including an August spill that killed more than 3,000 fish.
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true
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Lake Michigan, Fish, Lakes, Environment, Chemical spills, Indiana, Laws, Lawsuits, Pollution
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The Environmental Law and Policy Center and Hoosier Environmental Council filed the lawsuit Wednesday in federal court after previously alerting ArcelorMittal of their plans to sue, The (Northwest Indiana) Times reported. ArcelorMittal’s facility in Burns Harbor discharges pollution into the East Arm of the Little Calumet River, which flows directly into Lake Michigan. The groups allege that the company breached its Clean Water Act permit after releasing impermissible levels of cyanide and ammonia in August. The chemical spill killed fish, forced nearby beaches to shutter and kept visitors away from the newly designated Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. ArcelorMittal’s toxic spill and permit infractions harm the environment, kill fish and endanger safe drinking water, said Howard Learner, executive director of the Environmental Law and Policy center. The suit “calls for fines and penalties sufficiently large to change ArcelorMittal’s environmental practices and modernize the company’s equipment and operations to better reduce pollution damages going forward,” Lerner said. “ArcelorMittal should be held fully accountable for its pollution that harms local communities, the Lake Michigan shoreline and nearby waters, and the aquatic life and ecosystem of Northwest Indiana,” he said. A spokesman for ArcelorMittal said the company had not yet been served with the lawsuit. Indra Frank, environmental health and water policy director for the Hoosier Environmental Council, said the community cannot continue waiting for the state and federal governments to act in the face of “repeated, illegal damage to Lake Michigan.” “The damage has to stop for the sake of everyone who gets their drinking water from the lake; everyone who swims, fishes, or boats in the Lake; and the wildlife that make their home in the Lake,” Frank said. The groups said ArcelorMittal did not disclose the spill until after the public began discovering thousands of dead fish. ArcelorMittal, one of Porter County’s largest employers, has nearly 3,400 workers on a nearly 2,000-acre (809-hectare) swath along Lake Michigan, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) southeast of Chicago.
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1551
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Paralyzed monkeys walk again with wireless 'brain-spine interface'.
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Swiss scientists have helped monkeys with spinal cord injuries regain control of non-functioning limbs in research which might one day lead to paralyzed people being able to walk again.
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true
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Health News
|
The scientists, who treated the monkeys with a neuroprosthetic interface that acted as a wireless bridge between the brain and spine, say they have started small feasibility studies in humans to trial some components. “The link between the decoding of the brain and the stimulation of the spinal cord – to make this communication exist – is completely new,” said Jocelyne Bloch, a neurosurgeon at the Lausanne University Hospital who surgically placed the brain and spinal cord implants in the monkey experiments. “For the first time, I can imagine a completely paralyzed patient able to move their legs through this brain-spine interface.” Gregoire Courtine, a neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) which led the work, cautioned that there are major challenges ahead and “it may take several years before this intervention can become a therapy for humans.” Publishing their results in the journal Nature on Wednesday, the team said the interface works by decoding brain activity linked to walking movements and relaying that to the spinal cord – below the injury – through electrodes that stimulate neural pathways and activate leg muscles. In bypassing the injury and restoring communication between the brain and the relevant part of the spinal cord, the scientists successful treated two rhesus monkeys each with one leg paralyzed by a partial spinal cord lesion. One of the monkeys regained some use of its paralyzed leg within the first week after injury, without training, both on a treadmill and on the ground, while the other took around two weeks to recover to the same point. “We developed an implantable, wireless system that operates in real-time and enabled a primate to behave freely, without the constraint of tethered electronics,” said Courtine. “We understood how to extract brain signals that encode flexion and extension movements of the leg with a mathematical algorithm. We then linked the decoded signals to the stimulation of specific hotspots in the spinal cord that induced the walking movement.” The brain and spinal cord can adapt and recover from small injuries, but until now that ability has been far too limited to overcome severe damage. Other attempts to repair spinal cords have focused on stem cell therapy and on combinations of electrical and chemical stimulation of the cord. Independent experts not directly involved in this work said it was an important step towards a potential future where paralyzed people may be able to walk again. Simone Di Giovanni, a specialist in restorative neuroscience at Imperial College London, said EPFL’s results were “solid, very promising and exciting” but would need to be tested further in more animals and in larger numbers. “In principle this is reproducible in human patients,” he said. “The issue will be how much this approach will contribute to functional recovery that impacts on the quality of life. This is still very uncertain.”
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12729
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There's no demonstrable evidence they (after-school programs that feed kids) are helping kids do better at school.
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Mulvaney said that there is no evidence that federally funded afterschool programs that feed students help kids do better in school. Two studies from two of the largest states, California and Texas, found modest but positive impacts on test scores. They also found other gains, such as better attendance at school and better odds of moving up to the next grade. Mulvaney made a strong assertion that there is no evidence of gains. There is, even if test scores only rise a little bit.
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false
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National, Education, Federal Budget, Food, Mick Mulvaney,
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"White House budget chief Mick Mulvaney triggered a storm of complaints when he defended elimination of a large federal after-school program. When asked in a press conference about the impact on students in Pennsylvania, Mulvaney couched his answer as pertaining to ""after-school programs generally."" ""They're supposed to be educational programs, right,"" he said March 16. ""That's what they're supposed to do, they're supposed to help kids who can't -- who don't get fed at home, get fed so that they do better at school. Guess what? There's no demonstrable evidence they're actually doing that. There's no demonstrable evidence they're actually helping results, helping kids do better at school."" President Donald Trump’s budget zeros out the $1.2 billion for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers program that helps fund after-school and summer programs in disadvantaged communities around the country. We wondered what the research shows. Is there evidence programs like this help academically? The answer is a qualified yes. Improvements in test scores can be modest, and results vary from place to place. Also, as you might expect, the kids who actually come every day do better than those who don’t. California commissioned the UCLA Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing to do a detailed analysis of that state’s program. The center’s 2012 report found that among high school students ""participation had a slightly positive but minor effect on English language arts and math California Standards Test scores."" How minor? Students who took advantage of the afterschool program on average had scores a few points higher than a control group (matched according to a number of characteristics). Researchers called the results statistically significant but ""substantively weak."" For younger children, from kindergarten through eighth grade, the center’s research found the program boosted test scores only for the students who came regularly. For those who rarely showed up, there was no benefit. Deborah La Torre, a research associate at the UCLA center, told us food is an incidental part of these programs, and she called Mulvaney’s description ""muddled."" In California, the kids must get a ""healthy snack."" ""None of the programs just provide food,"" La Torre said. ""That’s not what they are about. They are mandated to provide specific academic programs in math and English, to help with homework and offer other programs such as art or physical fitness."" The Texas Education Agency also brought in an outside group to assess its federally funded afterschool program. Similarly to the California study, researchers found ""program participation was associated with higher Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills scores in reading/English language arts and mathematics."" But the benefits in Texas also mirrored California in that they were ""primarily in the small to moderate range."" Mulvaney’s focus on food puzzled other experts in this field, including Ken Springer at Southern Methodist University’s School of Education. ""Mr. Mulvaney's phrase ‘doing better in school’ leads somewhat narrowly to the question of whether better nutrition fosters better grades and test scores,"" Springer told us. ""It does, but when we focus specifically on better nutrition provided by afterschool programs, there's evidence that these programs can have other benefits, such as positively impacting students' knowledge about nutrition as well as their eating habits."" Springer said, and we confirmed, that there are many studies that affirm the educational benefits of feeding children from low-income families breakfast and lunch. Education researchers also emphasize that test scores alone are not the only measure of impact. Reduced absenteeism and better odds of moving up to the next grade are also linked to afterschool programs. We made several requests for information from the White House and the Office of Management and Budget. We did not hear back. Our ruling Mulvaney said that there is no evidence that federally funded afterschool programs that feed students help kids do better in school. Two studies from two of the largest states, California and Texas, found modest but positive impacts on test scores. They also found other gains, such as better attendance at school and better odds of moving up to the next grade. Mulvaney made a strong assertion that there is no evidence of gains. There is, even if test scores only rise a little bit."
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2890
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Brain training helped older adults stay sharp for years: study.
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A brief course of brain exercises helped older adults hold on to improvements in reasoning skills and processing speed for 10 years after the course ended, according to results from the largest study ever done on cognitive training.
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true
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Health News
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Older adults who underwent a brief course of brain exercises saw improvements in reasoning skills and processing speed that could be detected as long as 10 years after the course ended, according to results from the largest study ever on cognitive training. The findings, published on Monday in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society, offer welcome news in the search for ways to keep the mind sharp as 76 million baby boomers in the United States advance into old age. The federally sponsored trial of almost 3,000 older adults, called the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly study, or ACTIVE, looked at how three brain training programs - focusing on processing speed, memory and reasoning ability - affected cognitively normal adults as they aged. People in the study had an average age of 74 when they started the training, which involved 10 to 12 sessions lasting 60 to 75 minutes each. After five years, researchers found, those with the training performed better than their untrained counterparts in all three measures. Although gains in memory seen at the study’s five-year mark appeared to drop off over the next five years, gains in reasoning ability and processing speed persisted 10 years after the training. “What we found was pretty astounding. Ten years after the training, there was evidence the effects were durable for the reasoning and the speed training,” said George Rebok, an expert on aging and a professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who led the study. Participants in all three training groups also reported that they had an easier time with daily activities such as managing their medications, cooking meals or handling their finances than did participants who did not get the training. But standard tests of these activities showed no differences between the groups. “The speed-of-processing results are very encouraging,” said study co-author Jonathan King, program director for cognitive aging in the Division of Behavioral and Social Research at the National Institute on Aging (NIA), part of the National Institutes of Health, which helped fund the research. King said the self-reported improvements in daily function were interesting, but added, “We do not yet know whether they would truly allow older people to live independently longer.” However, researchers said even a small gain would be likely to ease the burden on caregivers and healthcare providers. “If we delay the onset of difficulties in daily activities even by a small amount, that can have major public health implications in terms of helping to curb healthcare costs, delaying entry into institutions and hospitals,” Rebok said. The training course was designed to bolster specific cognitive abilities that begin to slip as people age. It does not aim to prevent dementia caused by underlying disease such as Alzheimer’s. At the start of the study, all 2,832 participants were cognitively normal. The study included four groups: three training groups plus a control group of volunteers who came in for regular testing to see how they were faring with age. People were trained in small groups over a period of several weeks and then were tested immediately after the training and again one, two, three, five and 10 years later. About 60 percent of the volunteers who underwent training also got booster training sessions, which enhanced the initial benefits. At the end of the trial, all groups showed declines compared with their initial baseline tests in memory, reasoning and processing speed, but those who got training in reasoning and processing speed experienced less decline. Among those given training in reasoning strategies, 73.6 percent were still performing above their pre-trial baseline level, compared with 61.7 percent of those who received no training and were only benefiting from practice on the test. The effect was even greater in processing speed. Among the training group, 70.7 percent of participants were performing at or above their baseline level, compared with 48.8 percent of those in the control group. There was no difference in memory performance between the memory group and the control group after 10 years. Two of the three training programs - the memory and the reasoning strategies - were done with paper and pencil, while the processing speed training was done on a computer. The programs, developed by the researchers, were focused largely on teaching strategies to improve cognitive performance. For example, the memory training taught people how to remember word lists, sequences and main ideas, while the reasoning training focused on things like recognizing number patterns. In the processing speed training, people were asked to focus on the main object in a computer screen while also trying to quickly recognize and identify objects on the periphery of the screen. Such training can help older drivers with things like recognizing road signs while driving. A version of the speed training program developed for this trial is now commercially available through the brain fitness company Posit Science, but the researchers are working on making other types of training available as well. Rebok’s team just got a grant from the National Institute on Aging to make a computerized version of the memory test, with the hope that repeated training can improve the results. The study was not designed to explain why cognitive training can have such a lasting effect. Rebok said it may be that people take the strategies they learn and practice them over time. As they age, trained individuals can rely on these strategies to compensate for their declines. Whether this training actually strengthened the brain in the way that exercising builds muscle is not clear, but the government intends to study this, too. Last week, NIA put out a request for proposals that would study whether cognitive training causes physical changes in the brain.
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35129
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Youngsters deliberately coughing on produce in grocery stores during the COVID-19 pandemic is a nationwide trend in the U.S.
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Deputy Chief Dave Dailey [said] the group was seen taking videos by another patron but had not yet been able to locate the video in question on social media.
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false
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Viral Phenomena
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Amidst the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic in March 2020, the Purcellville, Virginia, police department announced via Facebook that it was investigating an incident “at a local grocery store involving juveniles reportedly coughing on produce, while filming themselves and posting it on social media.” Although news reports stated that the store “removed the tainted items and has reportedly taken appropriate health safety measures to protect the public,” the Purcellville Police Department’s post prompted wider concern because it declared that the “coughing on produce” incident “appears to be a disturbing trend on social media across the country”: However, we haven’t yet turned up any reports (verified or otherwise) of youngsters deliberately coughing on foodstuffs in stores (or other similar activities), other than this single suspected occurrence in Virginia. Moreover, news reports about the purported incident indicated that police had not actually turned up video of this particular alleged occurrence, either taken by the suspected perpetrators themselves or captured on store security cameras: Juveniles in Loudoun County reportedly filmed themselves coughing on grocery store produce and then posted the videos to social media, police say.
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26139
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“Since the week ending March 14, Wisconsin actually saw a drop in tourism spending compared to last year of $1.7 billion.”
|
Decrease in tourism dollars became apparent the week of March 14, with a year-over-year drop of $17 million. Year-over-year decreases continued to mount, with drops of about $200 million per week statewide. A study commissioned by the U.S. Travel Association found year-over-year decreases totaled $1.775 billion from March 14 to May 16.
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true
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Economy, Tourism, Wisconsin, Sara Meaney,
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"Major industries in Wisconsin have sustained significant economic losses during the coronavirus pandemic, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the tourism sector. Wisconsin plays host to about 112 million tourists in a year, according to the WorldAtlas website, and 2019 was ""a record setting year, and the largest year for Wisconsin in at least a decade"" said Wisconsin Secretary of Tourism-designee Sara Meaney. However, the loss of revenue in 2020 is massive, she said. In a May 24, 2020, appearance on the WISN-TV (Channel 12) show ""UpFront,"" she said, ""Unemployment in our state in general is at about a quarter of our population. It’s actually over 50% of travel and tourism-related jobs that are now facing unemployment."" Meaney went on to say that just in the weeks since the pandemic hit, the state has lost more than a billion dollars in tourism dollars. ""Since the week ending March 14, Wisconsin actually saw a drop in tourism spending compared to last year of $1.7 billion,"" she said. Wisconsin’s tourism industry should come back a bit this summer. Some northern resorts have opened and state campgrounds reopened June 10, according to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. But that tourism recovery could be an uphill climb if Meaney is correct that year-over-year weekly travel spending in the state has dropped $1.7 billion since March. Let’s take a look. Craig Trost, Wisconsin Department of Tourism communications director, pointed PolitiFact Wisconsin to the U.S. Travel Association, which commissioned a study by Tourism Economics, the firm the department uses for its economic impact data. The U.S. Travel Association is a national, non-profit organization representing the travel industry, with various sectors — including transportation, lodging, retail, recreation, leisure and entertainment and food service, meetings and trade shows. Adam Sacks, president of Tourism Economics, in an email to PolitiFact Wisconsin, explained that the analysis is based on a combination of factors: daily hotel data (nights and revenue) from STR, a research company that tracks the hospitality industry; flight data (seats and passengers) from Airline Data Inc. and the Transportation Security Administration; and drive travel data (outside 50 mile radius) from Arrivalist based on mobile device data. Trost said the week ending March 14 was significant because that is when COVID-19 began significantly impacting tourism spending. ""Since the beginning of March, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in over $176 billion in losses for the U.S. travel economy,"" the report states. According to the report, Wisconsin’s year-over-year net change in weekly travel spending from the week ending March 28 to the week ending May 16 was down about $200 million each week. When going back earlier in March, the report notes losses for the week ending March 14 at $17 million and the week ending March 21 of $50 million. That brings the total to $1.775 billion. Romy Snyder, CEO/President of the Wisconsin Dells Visitor and Convention Bureau, said it will take time to correctly analyze and know the financial impact of COVID-19 on Wisconsin Dells. ""We do know the loss of visitors has been detrimental to the local tourism economy,"" Snyder said in an email. ""According to 2019 numbers, the spring and summer seasons account for 66% of direct visitor spending in Wisconsin Dells."" Snyder said area businesses are ready to welcome visitors. ""Wisconsin Dells’ businesses are working to accommodate current visitors to the area in a safe manner by increasing sanitation procedures and limiting capacities and hours of operation,"" Snyder said. ""We know Wisconsin Dells has strong brand awareness in the Midwest, which will help our area when people are ready to travel and are looking for an accessible vacation destination with a diversity of activities."" Jon Jarosh of Destination Door County said area businesses have been getting ready and opening up. ""Everybody has a little different protocol in terms of what they’re going to allow at their particular business,"" Jarosh said on the same ""UpFront"" program where Meaney appeared via remote. ""We’re asking our visitors and residents that are out and about to just respect the individual businesses and what they are asking for. But by and large most businesses are going to be asking that their customers do wear a face covering of some sort and also just practice social distancing guidelines."" A major Dells attraction, Noah’s Ark water park, set its opening date for June 20, the first day of summer. The water park plans a number of precautions in line with recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those precautions include social distancing and limiting capacity not only in the park itself but also on specific attractions and in buildings. The park is requiring guests to RSVP for the day they want to visit, and visitors must buy tickets in advance online. Walk-up tickets will not be sold. Meaney said the state’s tourism losses have topped $1.7 billion since March. Data from weekly studies commissioned by the U.S. Travel Association, an organization with over 1,100 members nationwide, found that beginning the week ending March 14, when the COVID-19 crisis first began to significantly impact tourism spending, Wisconsin was down $17 million compared to a year earlier. The drop in year-over-year travel spending in the state mounted weekly, with the latest available report reporting a drop of $214 million for the week ending May 16. That brings the state tourism sector drop to $1.775 billion since the week ending March 14.
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2567
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Americans living longer, with unhealthy lifestyles: report.
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Americans have longer, but not necessarily healthier, lives due to high rates of preventable chronic disease, according to an annual report on the nation’s health released on Tuesday.
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true
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Health News
|
Gains in life expectancy contrast with Americans’ unhealthy behaviors, which have led to a 28 percent adult obesity rate, a diabetes rate of nearly 10 percent and a high blood pressure rate of more than 30 percent, according to United Health Foundation’s 2012 America’s Health Rankings. All three conditions are considered risk factors for cardiovascular disease. Since 1990, premature deaths have declined by 18 percent, cardiovascular deaths have fallen 35 percent, and cancer deaths have slipped by 8 percent, the report said. Americans’ life expectancy was 78.5 years in 2009, 1.7 years above the level in 2000, the report said. “As a nation, we’ve made extraordinary gains in longevity over the past decades, but as individuals we are regressing in our health,” said Dr. Reed Tuckson, a medical adviser at the United Health Foundation and chief of medical affairs at the UnitedHealth Group. Among the 24 different metrics involved in calculating the nation’s health are a variety of factors such as smoking, violent crime and a lack of health insurance. The report, now in its 23rd year, incorporates data from the Centers for Disease Control and the U.S. Census Bureau as well as the FBI, among other sources. Vermont was found to be the healthiest U.S. state thanks in part to a low incidence of infectious diseases, a low violent crime rate and a high rate of health insurance among its residents. Mississippi and Louisiana were found to be the unhealthiest states because of a high prevalence of obesity, diabetes and a low birth weight among infants, among other factors.
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4186
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Expect another huge blob of algae on Lake Erie this summer.
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Heavy rains that inundated the Great Lakes region this spring will fuel another massive algae bloom across parts of western Lake Erie later this summer, researchers said Thursday.
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true
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Lakes, Environment, Lake Erie, Toledo, General News, Ohio, Algae
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Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration expect this year’s bloom to rank among the top five since it began measuring their severity in 2002, according to their annual algae forecast for the lake. What’s not known is how toxic it might be or whether it will pose a threat for cities in Ohio and Michigan that draw their drinking water from the lake. Algae blooms that produce toxins and can sicken swimmers and harm fish are becoming an increasing concern nationwide, causing water warnings this year from Vermont to the Gulf Coast. Environmental officials in New Jersey have been telling people to stay out of the state’s largest lake since late June and beaches in Mississippi have been closed in recent weeks by a bloom fueled by polluted Midwest floodwaters pouring from the Mississippi River. Lake Erie, the shallowest and warmest of the Great Lakes, has been hit particularly hard over the past decade. It was five years ago when a toxic bloom caused a two-day shutdown of drinking water in Toledo. Researchers, using a scale for rating the severity of the bloom, expect it to be a 7.5 this year — short of the most severe outbreaks this past decade but still a significant one. Studies have shown that much of the phosphorus that fuels the algae comes from fertilizer runoff from farm fields along with sewage treatment plants and other sources. Unusually heavy rains this spring washed large amounts of nutrients into the lake, but the rain also prevented many farmers from planting corn and applying phosphorus-rich fertilizers on their fields. That may be why the amount of phosphorus found in the lake’s largest tributary, the Maumee River, was much lower than what would be expected, said Laura Johnson, director of the National Center for Water Quality Research at Heidelberg University. The forecasters say one thing they’re unsure about is how the record-setting water levels on the lake this year will impact the algae. “Each bloom is different in how they behave,” said Rick Stumpf, of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Where the bloom will go on the lake’s western end along Ohio and Michigan will vary based on wind direction, but researchers point out that most of the lake will be fine for boaters and swimmers. Other factors that will determine the size and location of this year’s bloom in the coming weeks include rain amounts and the lake’s water temperature. Although some areas along the Ohio shoreline already have algae starting to form and drift into the lake, researchers don’t expect to see a large outbreak until the end of July.
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26655
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"Kelly Alexander Says ""most"" NC legislators are in the ""high risk age group"" for coronavirus"
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"A Democratic North Carolina House member tweeted that ""most"" legislators are in the high risk age group for coronavirus. The high risk age group includes people 60 and older. More than half of NC legislators are in that age group."
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true
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North Carolina, Coronavirus, Kelly Alexander,
|
"To prevent the spread of coronavirus, one state lawmaker wants to take the ""assembly"" out of the North Carolina General Assembly. North Carolina state Rep. Kelly Alexander, a Democrat from Mecklenburg County, suggested on Twitter that legislators should consider video conferencing. The start of the legislature’s session is scheduled for April 28. Alexander posted his tweet on March 11. That same day the World Health Organization labeled the spread of the novel coronavirus as a ""pandemic,"" prompting a wave of event cancellations and changes across the globe. ""With a vaccine a year in the future the General Assembly should use more teleconferences and fewer in person meetings to cut down on potential exposure...after all most of the GA’s members are in the high risk age group,"" Alexander tweeted, adding: ""besides we need to modernize...just saying."" Is it that ""most"" of North Carolina’s legislators are in the ""high risk age group?"" Alexander never responded to an email from PolitiFact, so we don’t know how he came to his conclusion. Regardless, his tweet is on-point. First, let’s first look at what health experts say about the novel coronavirus (also known as COVID-19) and who’s most at-risk. The virus causes a fever, cough and shortness of breath in people anywhere from two to 14 days after exposure, according to the the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC says people with chronic medical conditions such as heart disease, diabetes or lung disease are most at-risk. As for age, there’s no specific birth date at which people become more vulnerable. Generally speaking: the older you are, the more likely you are to have complications from the novel coronavirus. That said, top health organizations have defined ""older adults"" as people who are at least 60 years old. The CDC has previously, in a document unrelated to the coronavirus, defined older adults as those over 60. The World Health Organization specifically mentioned people over 60 in its recent report on the coronavirus outbreak in China. Health experts recently told CNN that the term ""older"" typically refers to anyone over 60. And US Surgeon General Jerome Adams said 60 is the ""average age of people who need medical attention."" It also appears that people older than 60 are more susceptible to complications from the virus. Scientific American reported that patients in China were more at-risk of death if they developed acute respiratory distress syndrome, known as ARDS, after contracting coronavirus. The average age of those who contracted the syndrome was 61. So we know that people who are 60-years-old or older are likely to be more at-risk than other age groups. With this in mind, let’s look at the age of North Carolina’s legislators. The legislature includes 170 members: 120 in the House and 50 in the Senate. In the Senate, 28 members are 60-years-old or older. In the House, 63 members are older than 60. That means 91 members are aged 60 or older -- which is 53% of the General Assembly. Those numbers come from James White, the House principal clerk, and Sarah Holland, the Senate’s principal clerk. So it’s that a majority of legislators are 60 or older. How does that compare to Congress? In the U.S. House, 197 of its 435 members are 60 or older. In the U.S. Senate, 66 of its 100 members are 60 or older. That means about 49% of Congress is at least 60 years-old. Those numbers come from a report by the Congressional Research Service and Jennifer Manning, the service’s senior research librarian. Rep. Alexander said ""most"" North Carolina legislators are in the ""highest risk age group"" for coronavirus. The highest risk age group is generally people who are aged 60 and older. Alexander’s claim is on-point: more than half of legislators are older than that."
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16206
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Over 214,000 doctors opt out of Obamacare exchanges.
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"A chain email claimed that more than 214,000 American doctors are ""opting-out of Obamacare exchange plans."" That is based on a survey of a select group of doctors and even the makers of the survey said it can’t be extrapolated for the entire country. Further, of the doctors responding to the survey, 42 percent said they weren’t participating in marketplace plans because they were never asked to, not because they were ""opting out."" The estimate is the result of a flawed methodology and a misreading of survey data."
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false
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National, Health Care, Chain email,
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"Are doctors en masse refusing patients who gained health care coverage due to the Affordable Care Act? That’s the claim in a chain email a reader asked us to check. ""More, truly scary Obamacare news,"" said the email, sent just before Halloween. The accompanying story was from CNSnews.com, a site operated by the conservative Media Research Center. ""Over 214,000 Doctors Opt Out of Obamacare Exchanges,"" read a headline on CNSnews.com. We found the source of the claim. It was coming from American Action Forum, a self-described ""center-right policy institute."" The organization put out an analysis on Oct. 27 titled: ""Health Care Providers are Opting-Out of Obamacare Exchange Plans."" How many? According to the post, ""as many as 214,524 American physicians will not be participating in any (Affordable Care Act) exchange products."" It went on to list some reasons ""doctors are opting out of the exchange plans."" That’s a lot of doctors. Have that many decided to turn away patients with insurance purchased on the marketplaces? Let’s take a look. Can doctors opt out of Obamacare exchanges? The Affordable Care Act requires essentially everyone to have insurance. To make it easier for people to buy insurance, the government created federal and state insurance marketplaces, sometimes called exchanges. The biggest one is HealthCare.gov, but some states elected to operate their own as well. These marketplace policies are private plans sold by insurance companies. In some states, just one or two companies are providing plans; in others, it’s many. Consumers typically have dozens of choices ranging from bronze policies, which pay 60 percent of health costs on average, to platinum, which pay 90 percent of costs. (For comparison, a typical employer-based plan covers about 80 percent of costs.) Can doctors choose not to participate in the networks of policies purchased on exchanges? Sure. While some states require doctors to accept any plan for an insurance provider they do business with, in most cases insurance companies are constantly negotiating with physicians and hospitals to determine which policy networks they will participate in, experts and industry officials told us. Some doctors might decide they don’t want to be in the network of plans purchased on federal or state marketplaces. In other instances, insurance providers might choose not to include certain doctors or health groups in policies they created for the marketplaces. It’s a two-way street, and marketplace policies are just the latest twist to a contracting process that has always existed between doctors and insurance companies. 200,000 doctors? We asked American Action Forum to explain their analysis to us. The organization based its findings on an April survey from the Medical Group Management Association, a trade organization for physician groups. ""The survey found that 23.5 percent of doctors said they would not participate in (Affordable Care Act) exchange plans,"" said Marisol Garibay, spokeswoman for American Action Forum. That percentage was multiplied by the total number of professional active physicians, which Kaiser Family Foundation estimates is 893,851. That equals 210,054 doctors, close to the American Action Forum number. Garibay called it an ""upper bound"" estimate. But when we looked at the survey ourselves, we found this to be a pretty dubious figure. Here’s the rub, from the research: ""The survey includes responses from more than 700 medical groups in which more than 40,000 physicians practice nationwide."" While there’s a lot of interesting information gleaned from this survey, the results cannot be extrapolated to represent all the doctors in the country. Why not? Because the Medical Group Management Association only represents doctors who are part of medical groups. This does not include physicians who run independent practices, for example, and there’s no reason that a poll of 700 medical groups is representative of all 900,000 physicians in the country. ""That’s a significant difference,"" said Anders Gilberg, a senior vice president of government affairs for Medical Group Management Association. ""I wouldn’t generally suggest using it as a proxy for all physicians."" Let’s put that aside for a second and dig further. The survey found that as of April, 76.5 percent of respondents were accepting health insurance sold on a state or federal marketplace. Of those not participating in marketplace policies, 42 percent said it was because insurance companies in their area didn’t ask them to participate in the networks of plans sold on marketplaces. Meaning, even if this limited survey could be extrapolated to represent all doctors, not all of them are ""opting out"" of Obamacare. Many — almost half — weren’t asked to participate in ACA marketplace policies. Why weren’t they asked? One reason is that the insurance companies want to limit which doctors will serve their customers by creating narrow networks. Narrow networks are a way for insurance providers to keep costs lower for insurers. How? If you create a narrow network, it guarantees a doctor will get a bigger share of your patients, and a doctor would be willing to accept lower reimbursement rates in exchange for more business. Narrow networks are also more common on the exchanges because consumers can pick the plan with the doctors that fit their needs, said Paul Ginsburg, a professor of the practice of health policy and management at University of Southern California. ""Employer plans tend to have a broad network because they’re trying to satisfy everyone (at the company),"" Ginsburg said. ""On an exchange, you don’t have to satisfy everyone with one policy, you can offer many, so you can have narrower plans."" There are plenty of broad plans on the exchanges, they just tend to be more expensive. According to a May survey of individuals likely to use the marketplace, 54 percent said they would accept more limited networks to get a cheaper sticker price. As it is, 85 percent of plans bought on federal and state marketplaces were the less expensive bronze or silver plans, according to the Department of Health and Human Services. To be sure, it appears some doctors want nothing to do with these cheaper marketplace plans or the customers who buy them. Among other things, doctors worry that many of the plans on the marketplace, particularly bronze and silver plans, have high deductibles. Some patients won’t be able to meet their obligations for cost-sharing, potentially forcing physicians to eat those costs or shake down customers. These are legitimate concerns, and there is reason to believe that some doctors are choosing not to contract with marketplace insurance plans. But there is no evidence to suggest the number is anywhere near 214,000. Our ruling A chain email claimed that more than 214,000 American doctors are ""opting-out of Obamacare exchange plans."" That is based on a survey of a select group of doctors and even the makers of the survey said it can’t be extrapolated for the entire country. Further, of the doctors responding to the survey, 42 percent said they weren’t participating in marketplace plans because they were never asked to, not because they were ""opting out."" The estimate is the result of a flawed methodology and a misreading of survey data."
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15070
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100 percent of the crime is committed, in estimate, by about 15 percent of the population.
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"Patrick said: ""100 percent of the crime is committed, in estimate, by about 15 percent of the population."" Sure, not all of us commit crimes, a point that’s patently obvious. When it comes to the specifics of this ""15 percent"" declaration, however, we found nothing to back it up — including the statistics offered by Patrick’s office. Invented stats meet our definition of a ridiculous claim. The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim. CORRECTION, 5:30 p.m., Oct. 13, 2015: This story has been amended to correct an incorrect figure. A reader helped us realize the second study of Philadelphia juveniles involved more than 28,000 youngsters, not 2,000, as we initially wrote. This change did not affect our rating of the claim."
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false
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Corrections and Updates, Criminal Justice, Crime, Population, Texas, Dan Patrick,
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"Urging a positive view of law officers ""that you and your family depend on every day,"" Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick went on to say the vast majority of citizens are law-abiding. He put precise numbers on that. ""You know,"" Patrick said during a Sept. 2, 2015, interview with David Brown of the Texas Standard, a statewide news affairs program based at KUT, the NPR affiliate in Austin, ""100 percent of the crime is committed, in estimate, by about 15 percent of the population."" (We have regularly talked about our fact checks on the program.) A curious listener emailed us. Could Patrick's 100/15 statement be so? Patrick’s backup Asked how Patrick reached his figures, his spokesman, Alejandro Garcia, said by email that Patrick ""uses 15% as the number of citizens that commit 100% of crime as an indicator of the number of criminals in the total population to make the point that most citizens are law-abiding. That is higher than statistics would indicate,"" Garcia said, writing that according to law enforcement data, ""we have approximately 2.2 million people in jail in America and another 5 million on probation and parole. That is roughly 2.5% of the total population that has been convicted of a crime including non-violent drug offenses."" Garcia declined to elaborate on how that 2.5 percent justified Patrick’s 15 percent figure. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, part of the Justice Department, said in a December 2014 report that in 2013, 2.2 million people were incarcerated and more than 4.7 million people were under community supervision (on probation or parole). The report further says those counts (which roll in some people not convicted of crimes) equate to 2,830 people per 100,000 U.S. adults, meaning 2.8 percent of U.S. adults were under correctional supervision. That ratio was the lowest since at least 2005, when there were 3,160 people per 100,000 U.S. adults in the ""correctional population,"" the report said. A pair of criminologists told us the numbers offered by Patrick didn’t make a case for the unfamiliar 100/15 formulation. ""Gibberish,"" Candace McCoy, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, commented by email, elaborating that the attempt to account for U.S. residents behind bars doesn’t necessarily support what Patrick declared on the air. ""I don't know how the two statistics supposedly relate to each other, if at all,"" McCoy said. Robert Brame, a University of South Carolina professor who has led research into young Americans arrested for non-traffic offenses, said by phone he didn’t see how the backup offered by Patrick ""addresses the fraction of the population that’s responsible for the crime problem in the United States.That’s not clear to me."" Broadly, Brame and other criminologists we reached said they weren’t aware of a factual way to get to an accurate statement that ‘x’ percent of the population commits all the crime. But there have been studies suggesting a subset of residents commit about half of crimes. Alex Piquero, a criminologist at the University of Texas at Dallas, said by email: ""A routine finding in the criminological literature is that about half of the crime is committed by a very small fraction of the population, around 5-8 percent depending on the sample and methodology used. This finding has been replicated in many different studies around the world. The bottom line is that a small fraction of the offending population is responsible for a great majority of crime."" Piquero said most of the studies tracked residents only into late adolescence or early adulthood. The Philadelphia studies and others Since the 1960s, researchers have probed how often youths come into police contact, consistently finding that a subset of people account for around half of the crimes reported to police. In the seminal ""Crime in a Birth Cohort"" and a followup study, a team led by University of Pennsylvania criminologist Marvin Wolfgang tracked nearly 10,000 boys born in 1945 and living in Philadelphia from age 10 through 17; they ultimately gauged how often each boy came in contact with police for an offense. One upshot: 627 boys, 6 percent of the group, each accounted for five or more offenses, according to police reports. Those boys, Wolfgang wrote, were collectively identified as responsible for 52 percent of all the offenses recorded in the study and, he said, about two-thirds of all violent crimes believed to have been committed by the juveniles. In Patrick-speak, Wolfgang found that 6 percent of juvenile boys accounted for about half of alleged juvenile crimes. The follow-up study, presented in progress in 1982, tracked more than 28,000 boys and girls born in 1958 who lived in Philadelphia from age 10 through 17. Among males, the study found, 61 percent of reported offenses were committed by 1,030 ""chronic recidivists,"" comprising 7 percent of males in the study. That is, 7 percent of the boys accounted for 61 percent of the juvenile offenses. David Farrington, a University of Cambridge professor of psychological criminology reported in 2006 on criminal offenses by 411 South London boys occasionally interviewed by the team starting when the subjects were 8 years old in 1961. The researchers, who also checked criminal records, found that a ""small proportion of the study males (7%) were defined as ‘chronic offenders’ because they accounted for about half of all officially recorded offenses"" in the study. The most common offenses, they wrote, included thefts, burglaries and car thefts followed by violence, vandalism, fraud and drug abuse. In 2014, Swedish researchers drawing on records accounting for the experiences of 2.5 million people born in that country from 1958 to 1980 reported that from 1973 to 2004, some 1 percent of the population accounted for 63 percent of all violent crime convictions. Researcher Örjan Falk added: ""Psychotic disorders are twice as common among repeat offenders as in the general population, but despite this fact they constitute a very small proportion of the repeat offenders."" In the United States, Brame in 2011 reported that based on interviews of a representative sample of residents aged 12 to 16 at the end of 1996, some 25 percent to 41 percent of participants had been arrested by the time they turned 23. Brame told us a widely quoted takeaway from the study was that by age 23, around 1 in 3 of people in that age group would have been arrested for a non-traffic offense at least once. Then again, it’s not a good idea, Brame told us, to assume the same figure would apply to young residents nowadays because teen crime and arrest rates were higher in the mid-1990s. Brame said another vital consideration in mulling how much of the population is responsible for all crime is that many crimes go unreported to police. In 2014, according to the 2014 National Crime Victimization Survey, only 37 percent of U.S. property victimizations and only 46 percent of violent victimizations were reported to police. To our inquiry, William Kelly, director of the University of Texas Center for Criminology and Criminal Justice Research, noted that according to the U.S. Sentencing Project, as many as 100 million U.S. residents, which in 2014 would have been equal to 41 percent of the adult population, had a criminal conviction. Our ruling Patrick said: ""100 percent of the crime is committed, in estimate, by about 15 percent of the population."" Sure, not all of us commit crimes, a point that’s patently obvious. When it comes to the specifics of this ""15 percent"" declaration, however, we found nothing to back it up — including the statistics offered by Patrick’s office. Invented stats meet our definition of a ridiculous claim. ! PANTS ON FIRE – The statement is not accurate and makes a ridiculous claim. CORRECTION, 5:30 p.m., Oct. 13, 2015: This story has been amended to correct an incorrect figure. A reader helped us realize the second study of Philadelphia juveniles involved more than 28,000 youngsters, not 2,000, as we initially wrote. This change did not affect our rating of the claim."
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3016
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Maine swim coach on pool deck despite medical setbacks.
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A college swimming coach has endured a quadruple bypass after a heart attack, removal of cancerous tumors from his colon and wrists, and the amputation of part of his leg.
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true
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Health, Waterville, Coaching, Sports, U.S. News, Sports - General, Maine, Bangor, Swimming
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But Husson University’s Butch Babin is still on the pool deck. Babin, 57, returned to coaching at the Maine college part time in October and then resumed full-time coaching after Thanksgiving, the Bangor Daily News reported. Using a wheelchair while his leg heals doesn’t affect his coaching, he said. “I need to be here for the kids and myself,” Babin said. “It’s very important to let the kids know I wasn’t going to let this beat me.” Swimmers are inspired by his dedication and spirit. Sophomore Kayla Redman, of Waterville, called him “amazing” and “awesome.” Senior Kelsey Poland, of Levant, called him an “inspiration.” “He’s dedicated. To be here means a lot to us,” said sophomore Erin Aucoin, of Brewer. Babin acknowledged that there have been times when he was discouraged by the challenges during several nightmarish years of health problems, which were capped by arterial stents last spring to improve blood flow to his heart and flesh-eating bacteria that led to the amputation last fall. “But here I am, thanks to the good people around me and my positive attitude. All the support has helped me stay positive,” Babin said. Assistant coach Robby MacDonald said Babin is invested in the success of the team and the development of the team members. “Unquestionably, coach Babin has displayed great courage and great resiliency,” MacDonald said. “He has been very inspirational. He always comes in with a healthy, positive frame of mind.”
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31676
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A study performed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory found that millimeter wave body scanners commonly used by airport security can alter your DNA.
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The authors of the study themselves refute the claims made by the “Collective Evolution” post and the study itself is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant to the technology utilized by airport scanners.
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false
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Science, body scanners, dna, TSA
|
On 19 February 2017, conspiracy and metaphysics web site “Collective Evolution” published an article (titled “Los Alamos Study Finds Airport Scanners Can Rip Apart & Alter DNA”) that was written by Kathy J. Froti, a clinical psychologist with no professional background in biology or physics who claims to have been taught “how key mathematical information affects the consciousness of the cells” from “multi-dimensional beings of light whose goal is to bring healing to our world” after a near-death experience. In that post, she reviews a litany of complaints about the older backscatter x-ray scanners once employed by the Transportation Security Administration before diving into perceived health risks of the newer, millimeter wave technology: Now they also want us to believe that the replacement technology, millimeter wave “digital strip search” scanners, are also “perfectly safe”. Don’t believe it for a second. […] These millimeter wave technologies are designed to bombard innocent travelers with high frequency energy particles known as terahertz photons. A study conducted by Boian S. Alexandrov et.al. at the Center for Nonlinear Studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, revealed that these terahertz waves could “…unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication.” The new technology Froti describes, referred to by the TSA as “millimeter wave Advanced Imaging Technology”, has been in common use at American airports since 2012. It works by bouncing electromagnetic waves of a specific frequency range called terahertz radiation, which is described in a 2007 report on its potential for security applications: Terahertz (THz) waves, or submillimeter/far-infrared waves, refer to electromagnetic radiation in the frequency interval from 0.1 to 10 THz. They occupy a large portion of the electromagnetic spectrum between the mid-infrared and microwave bands. To support her argument that these devices are dangerous, she links to a 2009 MIT Technology Review article discussing a study (the “Los Alamos study”) that sought to address interactions between the natural frequencies present in the hydrogen bonds of DNA and a THz field: At first glance, it’s easy to dismiss any notion that they can be damaging. Terahertz photons are not energetic enough to break chemical bonds or ionise atoms or molecules, the chief reasons why higher energy photons such as x-rays and UV rays are so bad for us. But could there be another mechanism at work? […] [Lead author of the study Boian] Alexandrov and co have created a model to investigate how THz fields interact with double-stranded DNA and what they’ve found is remarkable. They say that although the forces generated are tiny, resonant effects allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, creating bubbles in the double strand that could significantly interfere with processes such as gene expression and DNA replication. Because (and despite Froti’s claim of “high energy”) these electric fields are not strong enough to actually cleave chemical bonds, they reasoned that another mechanism must be present if terahertz fields are to impart any biologic effect. In their study, Alexandrov and colleagues wanted to investigate the possibility that terahertz radiation, because it is similar in frequencies of energy holding hydrogen bonds together, could possibly interact in a way so as to amplify each other’s signals to the point where it could break chemical bonds: The energy of [terahertz] radiation is too low to directly disrupt any chemical bonds or cause electronic transitions. Only a resonance-type interaction might lead to an appreciable, biological effect. In biomolecules such interactions are possible through the ubiquitous hydrogen bonds that have energies in the THz range. Ultimately, the authors found that while unlikely, it is possible that, under a set of remarkably specific conditions, such a phenomenon is possible: We have found that a THz field may cause dynamical separations of the DNA double strand. In the presence of weak perturbations e.g. thermal fluctuations, small amplitude response occurs (at half the driving frequency) either in a spatially uniform manner or, at higher frequencies, in an unusual spatially dimerized form. In the latter case, neighboring base pairs oscillate in an out-of-phase fashion. However, large localized openings (bubbles) in the DNA double strand can only occur via a nonlinear mechanism requiring a spatial perturbation above a certain amplitude threshold that is determined by the intensity and the frequency of the THz field. One reason Froti may have avoided the study itself is that it makes no mention of airport scanners, although the MIT Technology Review article did use them as a news hook for its story. According to the actual authors of the paper, however, their research holds no relevance to airport scanners. In an e-mail, Alexandrov (the lead author of the “Los Alamos” study), told us: Our project is still at the level of exploratory basic research, and we have drawn no connections to full-body scanners. Co-author Anny Usheva reiterated this point via email as well: We never investigated if THz cleaves DNA. It has never been investigated how scanners alter DNA and the biological THz effect in the time frames that are relevant to the scanning procedures. Indeed, she clarified that her research (on which she said they have made progress but are held up due to a lack of funding) aims to use THz radiation over much longer intervals of time to “reprogram” cells for regenerative medicine: The work is collaborative with my lab at Harvard Medical School/presently at Brown and Los Alamos. We do the laser/THz part at Los Alamos. As a corresponding author of these publications, I am confident to say that there is a biological effect after 8 hours of continuous broad band (0.1-10 THz) exposure. Our goal at the moment is to achieve massive and fast reprogramming of cells (outside of the body) for the needs of the regenerative medicine. Needless to say, an airport scanner does not expose travellers to eight hours of continuous radiation. The federally funded research and development center Pacific Northwest Laboratories highlights the actual time frame on a page describing the development of the TSA’s scanners: Scans [are] completed in 1-2 seconds using a two-array system to keep people moving through security check points quickly. That same website, conveniently, lists all of the patents associated with the TSA’s millimeter wave technology. While there are several frequency ranges associated with the methodologies patented to analyze millimeter data, the three patents that describe the actual device employed by TSA makes it clear that only a small fraction of the terahertz range is utilized, as described in the most recent patent filing: A holographic apparatus for near real-time imaging of a target, said apparatus utilizing millimeter wave radiation having a plurality of frequencies from about 1 to about 110 GHz. Expressed in GHz, the broadband exposure (i.e. multiple wavelengths at the same time) Usheva investigated was 100 to 10,000 GHz, a range that barely overlaps with with the TSA’s stated range of 1 to 110 GHz, and a far cry from “broad band” terahertz radiation.
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9820
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Nicotine Gum and Skin Patch Face New Doubt
|
We applaud the writer for being the only one of the three to find comments from researchers not connected to the makers of nicotine products. But we wish that the independent commentary had been used to better effect to actually help readers understand the strength of the evidence. This story was the only one to note that the clinical trials that are mentioned in all three stories have been the basis for federal guidelines that recommend the use of nicotine replacement products as aids for quitting smoking. One of the surest ways to reduce premature death in the US and around the world would be to effectively encourage people to reduce smoking, and federal guidelines do make a difference in the paths that individual physicians choose for their patients and in the programs that are funded. If evidence is starting to build that nicotine products are less effective than previously thought, these guidelines and the resulting funding strategies may need to be reexamined.
|
true
|
New York Times,Smoking
|
All three stories at least mentioned the total amount of money being spent on nicotine replacement products or the growth in that spending. None of the stories actually explained how much these products cost or compared them to the costs of cigarettes. The cost of an 8-week regimen of nicotine patches is $160-200. The story was less successful than the other two in quantifying the benefits. It did not put any hard numbers to the findings, saying instead, “At each stage, about one-third of the people trying to quit had relapsed, the study found. The use of replacement products made no difference, whether they were taken for the recommended two-month period (they usually were not), or with the guidance of a cessation counselor. One subgroup, heavy smokers (defined as those who had their first cigarette within a half-hour of waking up) who used replacement products without counseling, was twice as likely to relapse as heavy smokers who did not use them.” While using vague terms like “twice as likely” may make the story a little less daunting for some readers, we think that a story on a scientific study, especially a study as controversial as this one, should provide the actual numbers from the study as much as possible. Also, all three stories failed to make it clear whether the same 30% or so of people continued to relapse throughout the study or whether a total of two-thirds of the participants fell back to smoking. None of the stories mentioned the potential harms from taking nicotine, as opposed to quitting cold turkey. Nor did they mention the additional risks associated with continuing to smoke instead of making use of a more successful smoking cessation program that would actually help a smoker quit. As the leading risk factor for early death, smoking should be stopped as quickly and effectively as possible. As with the other two stories, this one provided the basic outlines of the study protocol, but, unlike the other two, it did not provide more than make a vague mention of a potential flaw in the study’s design. None of the stories, either, made any attempt to discuss whether the previous evidence in favor of nicotine products could have been unduly influenced by the makers of the products. We did appreciate, though, that this story noted that earlier studies had shown “the products have proved effective, making it easier for people to quit, at least in the short term.” This places the current study into perspective since it looked at long term outcomes at 5 years. We could go either way with this score, but we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. No disease mongering. This is the only one of the three stories we reviewed that did not quote someone directly connected to GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of some of the best selling tobacco replacement products. Several independent sources were quoted. The story lists a range of alternative factors for successful smoking cessation at the end of the piece: “Motivation matters a lot; so does a person’s social environment, the amount of support from friends and family, and the rules enforced at the workplace. Media campaigns, increased tobacco taxes and tightening of smoking laws have all had an effect as well.” This isn’t quite a comparison with nicotine products, but we give the story credit for covering some of this territory. This story talks about the sales figures for nicotine products as one indication of widespread availability and use. The story does a great job pointing out how this study fits into the recent history of similar research into the topic. The story did not rely on any press release.
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26515
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“While all COVID-19 news has been going on, the U.S. Government has been sneakily trying to remove end-to-end encryption” which means “the government will be able to see all of your messages and listen to all of your calls.”
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A bill currently being considered by Congress, called the EARN IT Act, would make it easier for law enforcement to demand information from technology companies about certain users of their services. The bill wouldn’t grant unlimited access. Any request would have to be premised on a link to suspected child exploitation. Whether the government would try to push past those boundaries in practice is hotly debated between civil libertarians and law enforcement.
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false
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Legal Issues, Technology, Privacy Issues, Coronavirus, Instagram posts,
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"A post now circulating on Instagram warns that pending legislation moving through Congress could allow the government to view anyone’s text messages and listen to phone conversations. The March 17 post, which received at least 5,000 likes, said, ""While all COVID-19 news has been going on, the U.S. Government has been sneakily trying to remove end-to-end encryption, and it’s been working its way through Congress. If this passes, the government will be able to see all of your messages and listen to all of your calls, essentially removing all privacy from your conversations."" The caption of the post refers to the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (EARN IT) Act of 2020. The post says: ""EARN IT Act threatens end-to-end encryption. ""While we’re all distracted by stockpiling latex gloves and toilet paper, there’s a bill tiptoeing through the US Congress that could inflict the backdoor virus that law enforcement agencies have been trying to inflict on encryption for years. ""At least, that’s the interpretation of digital rights advocates who say that the proposed EARN IT Act could harm free speech and data security."" The bill in question was introduced in March 2020 and given a hearing by the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 11. Here are some key elements of the bill, according to sponsors and media reports: The bill amends section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which generally protects tech companies by saying they are not responsible for what users of their products upload. It establishes a national commission to develop best practices to identify and report child exploitation. This commission would consist of the heads of the Justice and Homeland Security departments and the Federal Trade Commission, plus 16 other members appointed by Congress, and the guidelines would be subject to further approvals If child predators are caught on their systems, tech companies can either comply with these practices or abide by their own practices, as long as they’re approved by the commission. The bill allows victims the chance to sue tech companies that don’t comply with practices approved by the commission. The impetus for the bill is data showing the volume of child sexual abuse files. Reporting from the New York Times and research collected from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children CyberTipline show that in 2019, there were 16.9 million reports of problematic material, covering 69.1 million photos, videos and files of child sexual abuse, according to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Encryption is the process of encoding or scrambling a form of communication, such as an email or a text message, so that a key is needed in order to unscramble it, said Hannah Quay-de la Vallee, a senior technologist with the Center for Democracy and Technology, a group that supports civil liberties on the internet. This key — think of it as an extra-long password — is used to protect the data that is stored in a particular message. In encrypted systems that are not ""end to end,"" the tech platform that carries the message holds the keys to encode and decode the message. When two users message each other, Vallee said, ""the first user sends the message to a platform — that is one encrypted stream — and the platform re-encrypts it, sends it to the second user, the receiver of the message, and that’s a separate encryption stream."" But an ""end to end"" encryption system means that the two users exchanging the message have their own keys. End-to-end systems are more secure because only the two people communicating have keys, not the third-party tech platform over which their messages travel. But that set-up limits a tech platform’s ability to monitor messages for evidence of abuse or exploitation. The EARN IT Act’s primary sponsor, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., argues that the bill won’t stop end-to-end encryption. In a press release, he called encryption ""a serious issue in the enforcement of child sexual-abuse material laws."" In Graham’s view, passage of the bill means that tech companies will be forced to address child exploitation occurring on their networks. He argues that this is a narrow intervention and dismisses assertions that it is a slippery slope to wider government access to private data. ""Our goal is bring these companies to the table and give them a choice: Prevent the exploitation of children online and stop the proliferation of child sexual abuse material, or face the same liability as every other industry in America,"" Graham said in the release. The post is partially accurate in spotlighting the tech industry’s concerns surrounding the EARN IT Act. The bill would require tech companies to provide the government access to certain information falling under the law, specifically that related to child exploitation. Whether to give the government so-called backdoor access to customer messages and uploads is a long-running debate, going back to at least the 1990s. Historically, it has pitted law enforcement against technology companies and advocates for civil liberties. Groups representing the tech sector have generally expressed concern about how much power the government should have to access user data in the name of pursuing lawbreakers. Dean Garfield, CEO of the Information Technology Industry Council, released a statement in 2015 responding to the government's attempts to circumvent encryption technology. ""We deeply appreciate law enforcement's and the national security community’s work to protect us,"" he said, ""but weakening encryption or creating backdoors to encrypted devices and data for use by the good guys would actually create vulnerabilities to be exploited by the bad guys,"" such as hackers. The post leaves out important context about the status and scope of the bill. For starters, there is no evidence that Congress is ""sneakily"" advancing it during the coronavirus crisis, when lawmakers are expected to be away from the Capitol for safety reasons, except to pass urgent coronavirus legislation. Neither a committee nor the full Senate has voted on the bill yet, and the Senate will not meet again until at least April 20. The portion of the post that says ""the government will be able to see all of your messages and listen to all of your calls"" — is also an exaggeration. The bill in its current form is aimed at preventing the online sexual exploitation of children. It is not a green light for the government to spy on Americans willy nilly. While critics of the bill see it as a slippery slope — and there may be legitimate concern that the law could be abused — the post doesn’t mention any of the limits on the government’s powers. Charlie Mitchell, editor of Inside Cybersecurity and the author of ""Hacked: The Inside Story of America's Struggle to Secure Cyberspace,"" said the government has for years made its case for securing access to encrypted communications using the most dire scenario — putting a stop to child predators. The tech sector tends to argue that once a backdoor is created, it could be exploited for other purposes. Quay-de la Vallee acknowledged that there is nothing in the EARN IT Act that explicitly limits end-to-end encryption. But it may have that practical effect, she said, since the bill would establish guidelines that require companies to scan communications for illegal materials. ""If companies would have to do this scanning, in order to get this legal protection, then seemingly they’re doing this on behalf of the U.S. government, and that makes them agents of the government. This means that anything they found is now subject to Fourth Amendment unreasonable-search concerns,"" she said. The post said, ""While all COVID-19 news has been going on, the U.S. Government has been sneakily trying to remove end-to-end encryption"" which means ""the government will be able to see all of your messages and listen to all of your calls."" If the EARN IT Act passed — which is not imminent — it would make it easier for law enforcement to demand information from technology companies about certain users of their services. But the bill is receiving public scrutiny and proceeding through Congress in a typical way, so it’s not accurate to describe it as sneaky. The post is also misleading about the official scope of the act. Far from green-lighting government intrusion into ""all"" messages and calls, any such requests would have to be premised on a link to suspected child exploitation. Whether that limitation would hold in practice is hotly debated between civil libertarians and law enforcement. The post contains an element of truth, but leaves out important context that would give a different impression."
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23676
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Education Week rates Ohio schools in the top five in the nation.
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U.S. furniture company RC Willey Home Furnishings is so concerned that new global clean air rules will cause transport disruption that it brought forward the shipment of arm chairs and sofas from China by two months.
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true
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Ohio, Education, Yvette McGee Brown,
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The tougher regulations, set by the United Nations shipping agency, the International Maritime Organization (IMO), come into force on Jan 1. Costs will rise for ships towards the end of this year and there will be a knock on effect for trucks and other transporters that move goods around the world. For shipping companies it is the biggest shakeup in decades and adds to the pressures of an economic slowdown and the threat of an escalating trade war between the United States and China. While consumers are not expected to pay more for goods, higher transport bills and disruption to company deliveries could further dent economic growth. Ship owners must cut sulphur emissions to 0.5% from 3.5%. They can do this by using low-sulphur fuel, installing exhaust gas cleaning systems or opting for other, more expensive, clean fuels such as liquefied natural gas or traveling more slowly. Jeff Child, president of Berkshire Hathaway’s RC Willey Home Furnishings, moved the delivery of about 450 containers from September and October to July and August. He wants to avoid any disruption in the peak fourth quarter as ships prepare for the changes, including refitting equipment. “We just don’t want to get caught in a situation where it affects our inventory,” he told Reuters. Analysts say the container industry, which transports consumer goods such as sofas, designer clothes and bananas, will be one of the worst hit with extra costs of about $10 billion. The world’s two biggest container shipping lines - Denmark’s Maersk and Swiss headquartered MSC - say they face annual extra costs of over $2 billion each. Twenty-five logistics company executives told Reuters they would pass along any IMO-related costs, such as ship upgrades or more expensive fuel, to customers. “The sulphur cap will further put pressure on ocean freight rates and we... will have to pass those costs on to remain competitive,” Peder Winther, global head of ocean freight with Swiss transportation company Panalpina Group said. Economists say manufacturers are expected to absorb their part of the cost and are unlikely to raise the price of consumer goods, but the hit to companies could be a drag on the world economy. A Nestle S.A. spokesperson said the food group was talking to transport companies about “fuel adjustment methodology” to reflect the impact of the new rules. “Higher fuel prices would result in higher transport costs,” said Peter Nagle, an economist with the World Bank’s Development Prospects Group. “This would have the potential to lead to slower economic growth and trade.” Trucking companies will also suffer. The IMO rules do not apply to them but they will face new competition from ships for lower sulfur fuel. This is expected to push up the price of diesel fuel for trucks by as much as 100 percent. Small to mid-sized truckers may find it tough as they lack the clout to negotiate fuel deals or to recoup the costs. “I’m at the whim of the market. All I can do is let the customers know what’s going on,” said Mike Baicher, president and chief executive of New Jersey based West End Express, which runs 90 trucks in New York, New Jersey and along the East Coast. “There is only so much that the trucking company can absorb.” In a letter sent to top U.S. government officials including National Security Advisor John Bolton, transport associations including trucking groups said there was consensus that U.S. transport industries would be “negatively affected by IMO 2020 pricing pressure”. It said there could be market disruptions. “There’s a storm approaching but we don’t know how bad the storm is going to be,” said Glen Kedzie, energy and environmental counsel for the American Trucking Associations. Shipping and freight forwarding companies, who offer a service overseeing the delivery of goods from beginning to end, expect to feel more cost pressure. Bart de Vries, chief operating officer for air & sea with U.S. headquartered Hellmann Worldwide Logistics, expects to pay more for services as shipping companies pass along the costs. Some companies may overhaul their business plans. “It will undoubtedly force many exporters and importers to review their sourcing strategies and vendors,” said Cas Pouderoyen, senior vice president of ocean freight with global logistics company Agility Richard Fattal, co-founder of digital freight forwarder and logistics provider Zencargo, said there could be as much as a 10 to 20% rise in overall operating costs next year. Allen Clifford, a U.S.-based executive vice president with MSC, said at a recent forum in California that his company was facing huge expenses. “Who’s going to pay for it? You’re going to pay for it. Because I’m tired of paying for it,” he told industry executives, and port and customs officials.
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22355
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As a prosecutor, Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser did not investigate or file charges in a case involving 30-year pedophile priest, then participated in cover-up.
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Greater Wisconsin Committee says Supreme Court Justice David Prosser mishandled allegation of sex abuse by priest
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false
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Legal Issues, Wisconsin, Greater Wisconsin Committee,
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"A new TV ad claims that in 1978, when Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice David Prosser was a district attorney, he didn’t ask police to investigate an abuse case involving a longtime pedophile priest, then refused to file charges and participated in a cover-up. The claims are made by the liberal Greater Wisconsin Committee, which frequently runs TV ads critical of Republicans. The group is also running an anti-Prosser ad linking the 13-year justice to Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Both ads were released less than two weeks before Prosser faces challenger assistant state attorney general JoAnne Kloppenburg in the April 5, 2011, election. The priest ad quickly sparked controversy partly because two brothers who were the victims in 1978 case repudiated it. Here’s what the narrator says in the ad, which began airing March 24, 2011: ""A priest sexually abuses children for 30 years across Wisconsin. A mother tells DA David Prosser her two young sons were sexually assaulted. What does Prosser do? Prosser refuses to prosecute; doesn’t even ask the police to investigate. Instead, Prosser meets with the bishop. To avoid scandal, they send the priest to another community and the assaults continue. Tell David Prosser: Judges should protect our children, not sex offenders."" A picture of Prosser is shown throughout the ad. A picture of the priest is shown briefly, along with two newspaper headlines revealing that Prosser had declined to file charges and was questioned about the decision. The priest, the mother and her two sons are not identified by name. But there is no dispute that the ad refers to a May 1978 incident that Sharon Merryfield reported to Prosser, who was the Outagamie County district attorney at the time. Merryfield told Prosser -- who said he attended middle and high school with her -- that Catholic priest John Patrick Feeney improperly touched her sons Todd, then 14, and Troy, then 12, at the family’s home. A court summary in a later matter says Feeney, who worked at a church in Freedom, touched the boys in the chest area and moved his hand downward toward their penises but did not touch them there. Feeney also pinched one of the boys on the buttocks. The incident -- as a result of a later investigation, in 2002 -- helped put Feeney behind bars. Let’s see whether information in the ad backs up the Greater Wisconsin Committee’s central claims -- that Prosser didn’t ask police to investigate the two boys’ accusations against a longtime pedophile priest; that Prosser didn’t file criminal charges; and that he participated in a cover-up of the priest’s actions. We’ll draw from evidence cited by the Greater Wisconsin Committee, news reports, court records and comments Prosser made during a 20-minute discussion of the case with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board on March 24, 2011. The ad essentially makes three sets of claims. We’ll address them one at a time. The incident involved a priest who had abused children for 30 years The ad suggests that when the matter came to Prosser, he was aware Feeney had a long history of molesting boys. But evidence that Feeney molested boys over some 30 years emerged 24 years later, in the 2002 investigation, which was conducted by the Outagamie County Sheriff’s Department. That investigation found Feeney had molested boys dating back to 1969, although no charges were filed in the older incidents because the statute of limitations had expired. So, while the priest may have had an extensive history of sexual abuse, the ad takes it out of context to suggest this was known by Prosser in 1978. Prosser didn’t ask police to investigate and refused to prosecute. Prosser said in the editorial board interview that he interviewed both boys and found another Feeney victim, but that victim refused to testify. He did not ask a police agency -- in this case, the Sheriff’s Department -- to investigate, so the ad is correct on that claim. It is an open question whether the Sheriff’s Department would have investigated the Merryfield boys incident and related cases more vigorously than Prosser did. The ad is also correct that Prosser decided not to file charges against Feeney. But it provides no context as to why they were not pursued. In his comments to the Journal Sentinel, Prosser cited several reasons. Prosser said the case would have been difficult to prove at the time because Feeney had not indecently touched the boys, and because it would pit the credibility of two boys against the credibility of a priest. He also said the case would be hard on the family because it would become sensationalized, given that Feeney’s brother, Joe Feeney, was a regular performer on the Lawrence Welk network television show. And he said his office lacked experienced prosecutors. So, this statement also leaves out key information. Indeed, records show more details came out during the future investigations, which made the case against Feeney stronger. By that point, other victims had emerged. Prosser and a bishop, ""to avoid scandal,"" sent the priest to another community and the assaults continued. Prosser said that as part of his investigation, he told Green Bay Bishop Aloysius Wycislo that Feeney needed to be removed from the Freedom parish and that the bishop replied by saying, ""I will take care of it."" Prosser said he related that information to the Merryfield family when he told them he had decided not to file charges. ""The family didn’t seem to be that upset at the time,"" told the editorial board. Wycislo wrote a letter in 1978 saying Prosser had come to him ""to prevent unnecessary scandal."" He also wrote: ""I had to agree with the district attorney that the church would prefer to keep this out of court and out of the public eye and I was able to tell (Feeney) of our decision last week, with which he agreed."" So, the ""avoiding scandal"" characterization is attributable to the bishop. Prosser says choosing not to prosecute had nothing to do with avoiding scandal. What’s more, Prosser would not have had any official role in moving Feeney, although it appears he and the bishop agreed that should be done. Prosser said that, to his surprise, Feeney was not moved until more than six months later. By that time, Prosser had won election to the state Assembly and left his district attorney post. He had been campaigning for the job when Sharon Merryfield first came to him. Prosser also noted that in January 1979, Sharon Merryfield filed a report with the Sheriff’s Department about the incident in her home, and that that report also did not result in criminal charges. In 2002, the Sheriff’s Department opened another investigation after another Feeney victim was discovered. News reports said Feeney worked in 18 parishes over 30 years in the Green Bay diocese before he left Wisconsin in 1983. The reports cited church documents in saying that Feeney left amid numerous allegations of sexual misconduct with altar boys. Authorities were able to charge Feeney in the 2002 investigation because he had left Wisconsin, which meant the statute of limitations had not expired. That supports the point in the ad that says abuse continued. That’s where the ad ends. But let’s finish the story about how Feeney ended up behind bars. As the case summary shows, Troy Merryfield stated in the 2002 sheriff’s investigation that Feeney had grabbed his penis during a face-to-face confession one or two months before the May 1978 incident in the Merryfield home. Prosser said Troy Merryfield never told him about the earlier incident; and the appeals court noted that the earlier incident was not mentioned in the January 1979 sheriff’s report that had been filed by Sharon Merryfield. So, Prosser did not have that allegation to consider when he decided not to file charges against Feeney. The 2002 sheriff’s investigation produced five felony charges against Feeney for the two incidents involving the Merryfield brothers. The charges included attempting to touch the boy’s penises during the incident in their home. Feeney was convicted of four of the charges and was sentenced in 2004 to 15 years in prison. Now 84, he could be released from prison in November 2011 on extended supervision, according to the state Department of Corrections. Troy Merryfield issued a statement the day after the Greater Wisconsin Committee’s ad was released, calling the ad ""offensive, inaccurate and out of context."" The statement said the sheriff’s 2002 investigation resulted in charges because he and his brother were able to provide more detailed information about Feeney’s actions than they did when Prosser handled the case in 1978, and that, as adults, they were more comfortable about testifying. In 2008, Troy Merryfield had been critical of Prosser, saying he should step aside when cases involving priest sexual misconduct come before the Supreme Court. ""He knows damn well what happened and what was said,"" Merryfield said about his own case in 2008. ""He dropped the ball, and he should recuse himself."" Todd Merryfield told PolitiFact Wisconsin he stands by his brother’s statement condemning the ad and agreed it should no longer be aired. So, where does all of this leave us? The Greater Wisconsin Committee claims David Prosser didn’t ask police to investigate a mother’s report that a 30-year pedophile priest had indecently touched her two sons, then refused to file charges him and participated in a cover-up of the priest’s acts. The committee’s TV ad uses generally factual statements to make its case, but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. By using information that only became known later, it suggests more information was available to Prosser at the time than really was. For instance, Prosser didn’t know that the priest had a long history of molestation -- that came out 24 years later. And it wasn’t until 24 years later that one of the brothers made the most serious allegation against the priest. Finally, the two brothers have condemned the ad as ""offensive, inaccurate and out of context."""
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7736
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Ebola spreads to high-risk area of Congo: WHO.
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Democratic Republic of Congo’s Ebola outbreak has spread southwards into an area with high security risks, the World Health Organization said.
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true
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Health News
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The outbreak, the country’s worst, has killed 439 of the 713 people believed to have caught the disease. The fight against Ebola depends on tracing people who may have had contact with the disease and could fall ill and spread it further. But the outbreak in a region of Congo with frequent fighting makes it hard for health workers to move around and monitor potential sufferers and to spread messages about how to avoid becoming sick. Most of the cases since the start of the year have been in Katwa health zone, where the WHO said Ebola workers had faced “pockets of community mistrust” and most people falling ill were not on lists of people suspected of coming into contact with Ebola. “The outbreak has also extended southwards to Kayina health zone, a high security risk area,” the WHO said in its statement late on Thursday. There have been five cases in Kayina, which lies between the main outbreak zone and the major city of Goma, which is close to the Rwandan border. The WHO said that after running an Ebola simulation exercise in Rwanda, it was sending a team to beef up the country’s preparedness and to vaccinate health workers who would be first to come into contact with Ebola if it spread across the border. However, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said there had also been a decline in cases around the previous hotspot Beni. “It is very premature to shout victory, it’s true we had some success in Beni because all the steps we’ve taken have had an impact, but unfortunately we see cases turning up in other areas,” she said. “The country is not only facing Ebola but other health threats, just to name malaria, cholera, vaccine-derived polio, and also a very long humanitarian crisis and a lot of violence in several regions.” More than 60,000 people have been vaccinated in Congo, as well as 2,500 in Uganda, one of the countries at “very high” risk from the disease. Chaib said there were 4,000 people with potential Ebola contact under surveillance and 156 patients in hospital.
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11260
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New breast cancer drug may be effective against other types of cancer
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This detailed news release from the University of Pennsylvania describes results of a literature review of small clinical trials that suggest far broader treatment possibilities for a type of cell-cycle or checkpoint inhibitor drug already approved by the FDA for its effectiveness against a form of hormone-dependent breast cancer. The drug, palbociclib, interferes with the hallmark rapid division of cancer cells by inhibiting two so-called cyclin-dependent kinases (or CDKs), the enzymes CDK4 and CDK6, which ramp up cell proliferation and are widely present in a variety of malignant tumors. These cell cycle saboteurs are the hot new focus of individualized cancer treatments because of their relatively non-toxic side effects and — alone and in combination with other drugs — their ability to extend progression-free survival. The release does a good job of noting the rapid emergence and track record of palbociclib, which is taken usually once a day by mouth, and its potential use in lymphoma, other forms of breast cancer, sarcomas and teratomas. The release would have been made stronger if it had included more information about the type of breast cancer palbociclib was approved for by the FDA (hormone receptor positive tumors), and about costs, along with more data about prevalence of the cancers it already treats and may have the potential to treat. We also think the release gets ahead of itself when talking in unqualified terms about the drug’s “potentially broad applicability” and “real promise for addressing a variety of cancers.” Those applications may pan out and then again they may not; the release only seems to consider the first possibility. To say that CDK and other checkpoint inhibitors are exciting oncologists and their patients alike is an understatement. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is fast-tracking new ones and existing ones for additional uses, and drug makers already are pouring extraordinary resources into marketing them. To be sure, these drugs — as the Penn release points out — are not cure-alls, do carry side effects, and still seem in many cases to work best only when combined with radiation and other drug therapies. And — as the release fails to point out — they are mega-expensive. Cancer patients and their families are right to be hopeful about the value of palbociclib and other cell cycle therapies. But the hope is that news releases and news stories will also underscore the clinical limitations and accessibility issues that accompany these new treatments.
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false
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Academic medical center news release,Breast cancer,Cancer
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The release goes to some lengths in describing the quantitative and qualitative benefits of pairing palbociclib with other anti-cancer drugs, but offers not a word about costs. In this case, costs are significant. Pfizer has pegged palbociclib at $9,850 per month. Carrying an informal calculation forward puts the cost of the drug at about $40,000 per prolongation of survival for four months. The consequences of such pricing remain unclear owing to subsidies and discounts. But for many patients the costs are not covered by insurance and drugs may not be accessible to all who need them. They also put a major strain on the entire health care system. The release claims that the drug offers lower toxicity than other drugs, ease of use, and effectiveness as either an add-on or stand alone treatment but with very little data backing up the claims. The release summarizes the outcomes of two small trials using palbociclib in somewhat muddy terms. In one involving 17 previously treated mantel-cell lymphoma patients, the drug is attributed to one “complete” response and “two partial responses.” Another trial with 29 sarcoma patients treated with palbociclib showed “progression-free survival of 66 percent at 12 weeks.” The release might have added more specifics about the impact and meaning of “complete” and “partial” responses as well as extended “progression-free survival” with hard data that would help readers compare such survival with and without the use of the drug. The release notes the drug’s side effects, including the most common one which renders patients more susceptible to infections. However, it needs to be pointed out that the studies involved very small numbers of patients and the emergence of more serious side effects may not be seen until the drug is observed in a larger population. The studies highlighted were Phase 2 trials without controls or any information about the adequacy of blinding in observers of the outcomes. When “progression-free” outcomes are used, there is a certain amount of subjectivity that is part of the measurement, which could make the results invalid. By focusing mostly on the molecular biology the news release obscures the quality and results of any clinical studies that have been done. The release describes the unpublished, short-term results of two small clinical trials, but omits specific information about the investigators’ other ongoing trials, and gives no information about the protocol used to select the 130 “relevant” articles in the published literature, or how, exactly, those data added evidence for broader use of the drug beyond breast cancer. There seem to be some patients who get more benefit than others suggesting that there may be individual cellular markers that may predict response. No disease mongering here. In fact, we wish the release had given some attention to the prevalence of the specific tumors studied as well as the types of tumors the drug is intended to target. The release notes that Pfizer and the National Institutes of Health funded the review. Since there is no comparison to standard therapy it’s hard for the reader to come away knowing what the pros and cons are for the drug and how advantageous a tumor cell inhibitor might be to a patient’s specific cancer. There’s no mention of whether this drug is currently approved or how widely this drug is used. The drug is the first of a new class of drugs and that’s noted in the release. While the language used is professional in tone it includes some overly optimistic statements such as “potentially broad applicability” and “real promise for addressing a variety of cancers” which suggests the drug sponsors are angling for future applications beyond those that have been studied. It is too early in the process of studying the drug to be so optimistic about treatment success — at least not without providing some tempering language to balance expectations.
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9700
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Got Night Milk? A Possible Treatment for Anxiety, Insomnia
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Starting with the headline of the article, so-called “night milk” (cow’s milk collected at night) is touted as a possible treatment for anxiety and insomnia. This is certainly the type of headline that grabs one’s attention. The claim is difficult to support, however, due to the inherent limitations of the underlying study. The article’s main shortcoming is that it mischaracterizes the quality of evidence presented by the study. Our concern is that the story misreports the comparisons that were made in the study. Contrary to what the article reports, night milk is never directly compared against day milk in the study. Nor is it ever directly compared against diapezam. To its credit, the article does a very good job in correctly recognizing that the underlying study only concerns animals and thus cannot be generalized to humans without further research. The CDC states that, “getting sufficient sleep is not a luxury – it is a necessity – and should be thought of as a ‘vital sign’ of good health.” Further, more than one quarter of Americans claim to not get enough sleep and around 10% suffer from chronic insomnia. The sleep-promoting and anxiety-reducing effects of night milk are worth studying because the findings may suggest its potential as a natural aid for sleep and anxiety related disturbances.
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mixture
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melatonin,mice studies,night milk
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Although the cost of night milk is not discussed directly, the reader is given a hyperlink to the company website of Milchkristalle GmbH, a producer of night milk, where the price of night milk may be found. (Though we find it strange that a hyperlink of night milk should direct the reader to a specific company selling a night milk product.) The reader is left to ponder statements such as “mice that got night milk were significantly less active…” But how much less active? The story does make a good faith effort to report some number-based outcomes from the study. It says, for example, “Balance and coordination were measured by the number of falls from a rotating bar during a 20-minute period: Mice fed night milk on average fell four to five times, about twice as often as mice given day milk. Diazepam-treated controls fell about nine times, while the water-fed controls fell twice.” But then again, it’s not exactly made clear how this result relates to the outcomes that readers are interested in such as sleep or anxiety. We’ll reluctantly rate this Not Satisfactory. Drinking milk is common enough that it hardly warrants an explanation of the associated harms. The story earns points for declaring up front that the study was conducted in animals and including a caveat at the end that the study can’t be generalized to humans. This is an excellent practice that helps counterbalance some significant concerns we had with other aspects of the piece. Specifically, the statements … the study found that milk collected at night, or night milk, had enhanced sedative effects in mice compared with milk produced during the day. and Night milk significantly decreased the rodents’ physical activity, balance and coordination and increased sleep time compared with day milk, the research showed. are misguided. The underlying study never directly compares night milk to day milk. Rather, the treatment arms of 1) day milk at three doses, 2) night milk at three doses, and 3) diazepem are each compared to the treatment arm corresponding to the control group, which consists of mice who only received distilled water. We think the confusion may stem from the fact that the study also reports one-way ANOVA results. (Just fancy statistics jargon for comparing treatment effects between multiple groups.) A significant ANOVA result allows one to conclude that not all of the treatment arms are the same, i.e. there exists at least a pair of comparisons amongst the treatment arms that are significantly different from each other. ANOVA used in this way simply tests an omnibus hypothesis that is not very interesting in its own right, in that it is not a procedure that identifies which two experimental arms are different. We acknowledge that the study itself is not clear on this point, making it difficult for journalists to analyze the results. Inclusion of an independent source might have helped with the evaluation. No disease-mongering going on here. No independent sources are solicited. The only link included to an outside “source” is to the company that sells night milk. The article states Mice fed night milk were more inclined to explore open spaces, an indication of reduced anxiety that was comparable to the effects from consuming diazepam… The design of the study, however, does not support this claim because a direct comparison is never made between night milk and diazepam. Since we’ve already addressed this issue above, however, we’ll give the story credit here. The article makes an effort to establish the availability of night milk by providing a hyperlink to a company that sells night milk. But the website obviously caters to German customers and seems like it could be a headache for US consumers to navigate. And we couldn’t find any other online sources of night milk besides this company that would be more accessible. The article does not establish the context of the study adequately, making it hard to judge the novelty of using night milk to treat anxiety and insomnia. Is this the first such study to be conducted? This is where an independent expert could’ve helped out. We couldn’t find a news release to compare with the story. But since no independent sources are quoted, we can’t be sure the story didn’t rely on a news release. We’ll rate this Not Applicable.
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3750
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Lawsuit filed over treatment of inmates with mental illness.
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Civil liberties advocates are suing the Rhode Island prisons department over its treatment of inmates with mental illness.
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true
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Rhode Island, Mental health, Prisons, Health, General News, Lawsuits, Class action lawsuits
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The American Civil Liberties Union’s Rhode Island chapter announced Friday it filed a federal class action lawsuit with Disability Rights Rhode Island and the ACLU’s National Prison Project, alleging constitutional violations of the rights of prisoners with serious mental illness. The suit was filed on behalf of inmates. Corrections Department spokesman J.R. Ventura says they’ve trained staff on best practices and partnered across state agencies to guarantee high-quality mental health care. He says they “strongly dispute” the ACLU’s claims. The suit accuses the department of subjecting people with serious and persistent mental illness to prolonged solitary confinement, despite knowing the serious risk of harm these conditions pose. It seeks changes to how inmates are housed.
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8691
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Prince William opens new UK emergency COVID-19 hospital.
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Prince William, the grandson of Queen Elizabeth, has opened an emergency COVID-19 hospital built in just eight days in the exhibition centre of Britain’s second city, Birmingham.
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true
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Health News
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William, the Duke of Cambridge, opened the new NHS Nightingale Hospital at the National Exhibition Centre (NEC) via video link. The hospital is the second of seven being constructed around England in response to the novel coronavirus outbreak which has killed nearly 13,000 people in Britain so far. It has a 500-bed capacity, which can be increased to 1,500. Over 400 civilian contractors, along with military personnel and about 500 clinical staff, were involved in its building.
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9584
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Period Pain Drug Can Cure Alzheimer’s Disease, New Study Suggests
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This is a story about a potential new treatment for Alzheimer’s disease–although the story sensationalizes mouse research to a degree we don’t see often at HealthNewsReview.org. These errors seem to stem from an over-reliance on a news release and a lack of critical thinking about the qualify of the evidence from a University of Manchester study. The story could lead readers to think that a cure for Alzheimer’s is imminent, saying in the first sentence, “Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, can be fully cured with an anti-inflammatory drug commonly used for period pain.” The facts show that the truth is far from what is described. The research was highly experimental, only a proof-of concept, and performed on a tiny number of genetically altered mice. Alzheimer’s disease is the most common form of memory loss and dementia in the U.S., affecting millions of people. It is a disease many fear, and it appears to be getting worse at a rate that is faster than can be merely explained away by the aging of the population. News stories that promise way more than the research actually delivers is not only disappointing to readers, it erodes trust.
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false
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alzheimer's disease,mice studies
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Costs don’t rate a mention in the story. The drug in question requires a prescription in the United States and is expensive, ranging between $111 and $400 for a 30-day course of treatment. Given the over-the-top headline and first sentence, we would have expected to see at least a little in the way of quantification of the benefits in mice. The story provides no numbers, though. The story says, “Researchers observed that memory loss was fully reversed to the levels seen in mice without Alzheimer’s.” But even if the story had provided specific study findings on benefits, this was a mouse study–known as a pre-clinical trial. Any benefits measured in mice is far too premature to make any extrapolative statements to people. While the story does allude to harms, there are two problems. First, we are troubled that the explanation was actually taken directly from the news release about the study. Second, we feel that it was too vague and not explored in any meaningful way. The story says only, “they also warned that these ‘drugs are not without side effects and should not be taken for Alzheimer’s disease at this stage–studies in people are needed first. '” What are the side effects? We’re not told. This is perhaps the biggest failing of the piece. The article makes no mention of multiple areas that should give readers pause: The study, which is available for free online, is complex and would be hard even for other researchers to understand. There is no disease mongering in the story. There are no independent sources in the story. The story mentions, near the top, “no drug medications can successfully treat chronic neurodegenerative disease, but certain medicines can help alleviate symptoms or slow down the progression.” This barest of nods toward alternatives earns it a just-passing Satisfactory rating. It says that the drug being studied is “a common Non-Steroidal Anti Inflammatory Drug (NSAID).” This is true for readers in the UK (where the study originates), so we’ll rate this Satisfactory. However, for readers in the U.S. (Medical Daily is an American-owned news site), this is not the case, and it would have been helpful to explain the drug is available by prescription in the U.S., though it is not commonly used. There is a discussion about how this class of drugs may be developed as “a class of existing drugs that are likely to treat Alzheimer’s.” “Likely” is probably a stretch here, but certainly there seems to be an effort underway to investigate the use of known drugs and “re-purpose” them. So there is some discussion of novelty here. The story has no independent sources, and uses language from the news release nearly verbatim in multiple places. For example: News release: Memory loss was completely reversed back to the levels seen in mice without the disease. Story: Researchers observed that memory loss was fully reversed to the levels seen in mice without Alzheimer’s.
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11501
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Experimental Drug May Help Treat Psoriasis
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This story permitted self-interested parties to gush their enthusiasm with quotes such as: “This is unheard of” “With this drug, the word ‘remission’ is on the table.” “We had amazing responses.” “Many of us were disappointed it was withdrawn.” A more balanced approach would be to seek independent perspectives about the cancers and cardiac events seen (the latter being the reason the drug company withdrew its application for approval earlier this year). Journalists should stick to the facts, seek independent perspectives to help evaluate the evidence, and leave the sensational quotes for the drug advertising.
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mixture
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WebMD
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At this stage of development, the cost of briakinumab is impossible to determine. However if the costs will be anything like other biologics such as Stelara – which the story mentioned – then the cost could be as much as $1,500 to 2,000/month. So some attempt could have been made to address the important cost issue in this field of drug development. Adequate explanation of the potential benefits seen in the study. Weaker than the competing HealthDay story on this point. This story only reported “patients taking briakinumab had more serious infections and more cancers than those taking methotrexate.” Then, in the second last sentence of the story, it added that serious adverse events occured in 9/1% of briakinumab group and 6.1% of methotrexate group. But HealthDay actually quantified what they were – the number of serious infections and the number of cancers. It’s inadequate for WebMD to throw in a line “more cancers” while failing to provide any numbers or details. Adequate explanation of the evidence. However, We were troubled by the inclusion of information from the study about the decline in effectiveness of methotrexate but not a word about the similar drop seen with briakinumab. No disease-mongering of psoriasis here. The story included a second source, but he can’t be viewed as an independent source since he, too, has been involved in research of the drug and has been a paid consultant and investigator for Abbott. The story also did not disclose what is clearly disclosed in the journal article – that the principal investigator: It also didn’t disclose what the journal article disclosed, that Abbott personnel helped write the manuscript and helped with the statistical analyses. The Statement of Principles of the Association of Health Care Journalists includes these clauses: While mentioning the similar drug Stelara, the story didn’t wrap the new research into the context of other approaches to psoriasis – including some non-drug therapies. It would take only another sentence to give some broader context about other therapeutic approaches. The experimental nature of briakinumab was made clear in the story. The story at least explained that “a similar drug, Stelara, was approved by the FDA in 2009.” It’s clear that the story did not rely solely on a news release.
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1570
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Lack of exercise costs world $67.5 billion and 5 million lives a year.
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A study of one million people has found that physical inactivity costs the global economy $67.5 billion a year in healthcare and productivity losses, but an hour a day of exercise could eliminate most of that.
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true
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Health News
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Sedentary lifestyles are linked to increased risks of heart disease, diabetes and cancer, researchers found, but activity - such as brisk walking - could counter the higher likelihood of early death linked with sitting for eight or more hours a day. Such inactivity is estimated to cause more than 5 million deaths a year - almost as many as smoking, which the World Health Organization (WHO) says kills 6 million a year. Giving details of their findings at a briefing in London, the international team of researchers warned there has been too little progress in tackling a “pandemic of physical inactivity”. Ulf Ekelund, a professor at the Norwegian School of Sports Sciences and Cambridge University, said that WHO recommendations for at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise a week was probably not enough. A quarter of adults worldwide do not meet even the WHO’s recommendations. “You don’t need to do sport or go to the gym ... but you do need to do at least one hour a day,” he said, giving walking at 5.6 km an hour (km/h) or cycling at 16 km/h as examples of what was needed. People who sat for eight hours a day but were otherwise active had a lower risk of premature death than people who spent fewer hours sitting but were also less active, suggesting that exercise is particularly important, no matter how many hours a day are spent sitting. The greatest risk of premature death was for people who sat for long periods of time and did not exercise, according to the findings, published in The Lancet on Wednesday. In another of the series of four studies, researchers estimated healthcare costs and productivity losses for five major diseases linked to lack of exercise - heart disease, stroke, diabetes, breast cancer and colon cancer - cost $67.5 billion globally in 2013. Melody Ding of the University of Sydney, who led this part of the research, said the costs occur largely in wealthier countries, but as poorer countries develop, so too will the economic burden of chronic diseases linked to inactivity.
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5773
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Vatican defends membership for theologian over abortion flap.
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The head of the Vatican’s bioethics panel is defending the decision to name as a member an Anglican moral theologian who has said that abortion could be condoned up until the 18th week of gestation.
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true
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Health, Europe, Religion, Vatican City, Bioethics
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Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia spoke out Saturday after conservative commentators criticized the inclusion of Oxford University professor Nigel Biggar as a member of the Pontifical Academy for Life. Biggar, a noted Christian ethicist, was quoted as saying in 2011 that he would draw the line for abortion at 18 weeks, since that is “roughly about the earliest time when there is some evidence of brain activity, and therefore of consciousness.” Catholic Church teaching holds that life begins at conception and must be defended until natural death. In an interview with Italy’s La Stampa, Paglia reaffirmed the Vatican’s unwavering opposition to abortion. He said Biggar had been personally recommended by the archbishop of Canterbury, had never written about the issue and wouldn’t engage in abortion debates as a member. Biggar, for his part, confirmed in an email to The Associated Press that Paglia’s office had asked him to clarify his position after the ruckus broke out. He said he had provided the Vatican with copies of the few and incidental remarks he had made about abortion over the past 30 years. “Abortion is a very important and, I think, difficult moral issue. But, although I have provisional views about it, it is not one that I have published anything substantial on,” he said in the email. “I have on the other hand written a lot about voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide, spoken about it in the UK, Ireland, France, and Canada, and consistently opposed their legalization. On those two issues, my conclusions align with those of the Roman Catholic Church.” The Pontifical Academy for Life is the Vatican’s bioethics advisory board, founded in 1994 by St. John Paul II to promote Catholic teaching on the defense of life. Under John Paul and Pope Benedict XVI, the academy took a very conservative line on issues surrounding sexual morals, and some of its more hard-line members occasionally made headlines for calling out perceived lapses in upholding church teaching. Francis announced the academy’s new members this past week, leaving off some of its more outspoken members.
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16530
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Over 73% of all donations raised (from the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge) are going to fundraising, overhead, executive salaries, and external donations.
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"The blog post said that ""over 73 percent of all donations raised (from the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge) are going to fundraising, overhead, executive salaries, and external donations."" Whether purposely or by incompetence, the anonymous blogger misreported the ALS Association’s figures. In reality, nearly 79 percent of the ALS Association’s expenditures were for purposes that advance its stated mission. Fundraising, overhead and executive salaries account for no more than 21 percent."
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false
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National, Disability, Health Care, Bloggers,
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"By now, there are very few Americans who haven’t heard of the ""ALS Ice Bucket Challenge"" -- the social media-driven campaign during the summer of 2014 to dump ice water on your head as a way of raising awareness of the neuromuscular disease ALS and promoting donations to the ALS Association, which funds medical research and support programs for those who have the disease. The effort has led to at least $94 million in donations to the ALS Association -- a jolt of extra funding for a group that last year spent a comparatively modest $26 million. But not everyone is happy about this development. A blog called politicalears.com posted an article stating that the Ice Bucket Challenge was a ""fraud"" because most of the money was being spent on administration and overhead. The unsigned post was picked up widely on social media feeds; that’s where PolitiFact readers noticed it. Several of them asked us to check it out, so we did. (The website has no contact information, so we were unable to reach the person who wrote the post.) Here are key excerpts from the Aug. 28 blog post, headlined, ""Ice bucket fraud: ALS Foundation admits that 73% of donations are not used for ALS research."" ""We've been duped. America is filled with fun-loving and caring people. The viral ice bucket challenge has combined both our sense of responsibility to our fellow human with fun. And it has been fun! Who didn't love seeing Sarah Palin doused? ""But wait? Ice Bucket Challenge donations are nearing $100 MILLION. Where is that money going? According to the ALS Foundation, not towards ALS. ""Over 73% of all donations raised are going to fundraising, overhead, executive salaries, and external donations. Less than 27% is actually used for the purpose we donated for. ""According to the ECFA, a charitable watchdog, 27% of donations actually making it to the cause they are donated to is unacceptable. In fact, the ECFA won't deem a non-profit as a reliable charity unless at least 80% of donations make it to their intended projects. ... ""The ALS Foundation is a terrible organization to send your money. If you decide to take the Ice Bucket Challenge, may I humbly suggest that you select a well-researched charity (on your own, no endorsements here) and send it to them."" The post reprints a pie chart taken directly from the ALS Association’s website, showing the following breakdown of expenses: Research: $7.2 million (27 percent) Patient and community services: $5.1 million (19 percent) Public and professional education: $8.5 million (32 percent) Fundraising: $3.6 million (14 percent) Administration: $1.9 million (7 percent) Let’s start by noting some comparatively minor problems. First, the group in question is the ALS Association, not the ""ALS Foundation,"" as the blog post calls it. Second, the ALS Association hasn’t said anything to ""admit"" the claims asserted in the blog post, as the post’s headline says. In fact, they’ve posted a response to it here. Now for the blog post’s biggest mistakes: • ""Over 73% of all donations raised are going to fundraising, overhead, executive salaries, and external donations."" Not true. The 73 percent figure appears to come from subtracting everything except for the 27 percent that falls under ""research."" The charitable way (no pun intended) of viewing the post’s error is that it misread the category headings. If the post had simply said ""research accounts for only 27 percent of the ALS Association’s budget,"" that would be technically correct though still misleading, since the group’s mission statement includes several goals beyond directly sponsoring research. They include raising awareness, serving as a trusted source of information, providing patients with access to support services and advocating for increased funding for research. Once you include ""patient and community services"" and ""public and professional education"" as legitimate spending to advance the group’s stated mission, the percentage spent on items supporting those goals rises to nearly 79 percent. But the blog post actually exacerbated its error by specifically labeling 73 percent of the group’s spending as ""fundraising, overhead, executive salaries and external donations."" That’s flat wrong. We’ll add that if anyone wants to donate money to the association for research only, they can do that. ""If a donor would like 100% of their donation to go to research, he/she can simply check a box on our online donation form here,"" the association’s website says. ""If a donor already donated and would like to redirect their donation, please email us at [email protected]."" • The role of ECFA. The post cites standards by ECFA, the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, a group founded in 1979 that ""enhances trust in Christ-centered churches and ministries by establishing and applying Seven Standards of Responsible Stewardship to accredited organizations."" However, when we contacted ECFA, Dan Busby, the group’s president, told PolitiFact that his group does not advance the argument made in the post. ""We were very surprised to see the ALS-related report which attributes certain statements to ECFA,"" Dan Busby, the group’s president, told PolitiFact. ""We did not provide any information for the story."" Busby added that, contrary to what the blog post said, his group doesn’t have a ""bright line"" test for a charity’s appropriate spending percentage. ""The data of applicants and members which reflect high overhead expenses are carefully analyzed for propriety,"" he said. ""In addition to considering the financial picture of a potential donee charity, we believe donors should also look at other attributes, including the charity's commitment to effective board governance, financial integrity, and appropriate accountability."" Other groups that analyze charities have given the ALS Association high scores. Charity Navigator, for instance, gave the ALS Association a score of four stars out of four for financial standards and transparency and accountability. The association is ""Top Rated"" by Charity Watch, is accredited by the Better Business Bureau and is a Guidestar Exchange gold participant. Our ruling The blog post said that ""over 73 percent of all donations raised (from the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge) are going to fundraising, overhead, executive salaries, and external donations."" Whether purposely or by incompetence, the anonymous blogger misreported the ALS Association’s figures. In reality, nearly 79 percent of the ALS Association’s expenditures were for purposes that advance its stated mission. Fundraising, overhead and executive salaries account for no more than 21 percent."
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13558
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"Young women, ""account for a shocking 74% of all new HIV infections among adolescents in Africa."
|
"Trudeau claimed that young women ""account for a shocking 74 percent of all new HIV infections among adolescents in Africa."" The data from UNAIDS and UNICEF closely matches his numbers, though Trudeau would have been more precise if he said sub-Saharan Africa. Evidence there shows that young girls between the ages of 10 and 19 are significantly more vulnerable to HIV infection than their male peers due to a wide variety of economic and gender-related issues. Trudeau’s claim is accurate with the small caveat about his use of Africa and not sub-Saharan Africa."
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true
|
Global News Service, Public Health, Justin Trudeau,
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"International leaders continue to try and shine a light on the AIDS epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa. But do they get their facts right? Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently penned a letter decrying the impact of poverty and disease on young girls in Africa, a group he says make up a disproportionate amount of new HIV infections among young people. Trudeau wrote the letter in response to the One Campaign, which sent out an appeal to global leaders asking them to help combat gender inequality. The One Campaign is a worldwide advocacy program that works to raise awareness about poverty and preventable disease. Included in Trudeau’s message was a claim that young women ""account for a shocking 74 percent of all new HIV infections among adolescents in Africa."" We’ve seen this statistic floating around before. Our partners at Africa Check investigated a nearly identical claim featured in an online article published in April. They concluded that the source of the data was ambiguous, but their independent calculations mostly fell in line with the overall message of the claim. PolitiFact decided to dig into Trudeau’s claim in more detail. Running the numbers Trudeau’s office informed us that the source of his claim is a 2015 reference report authored by UNAIDS and the African Union. The report, titled ""Empower young women and adolescent girls,"" contains a figure claiming that in 2013, 74 percent of new HIV infections among people between ages 15 and 24 in Africa occurred in adolescent girls. But the report’s footnotes section only lists ""2013 UNAIDS data"" as its source. Where did this data come from, and is it still accurate today? First, it’s important to note that although Trudeau named the entire continent of Africa in his claim, the majority of AIDS estimates in Africa specifically examine sub-Saharan Africa. Alasdair Reid, deputy director of communications and global advocacy at UNAIDS said that discussion of AIDS in the continent usually focuses on sub-Saharan Africa and treats North Africa as a separate region or as part of the Middle East. Katie Smith, communications associate at the Kaiser Family Foundation, referred us to the 2016 Prevention Gap Report, a collection of HIV data and analysis of infection trends from 146 countries. The press release for the report states, ""In eastern and southern Africa three-quarters of all new HIV infections among adolescents aged 10–19 years are among adolescent girls."" The report made no reference to data analyzing sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. We reached out to UNAIDS to obtain the most recent data for the entire region. The agency pointed us to the 2016 Prevention Gap Report as well, but also gave us up-to-date figures taken from aidsinfoonline.org, a database of AIDS-related statistics. According to a spreadsheet provided by UNAIDS, in 2015, 76 percent of all new HIV infections among adolescents aged 10-19 in sub-Saharan Africa were among adolescent girls. The age range used in the sheet is lower than the 15-24 group used by Trudeau’s source. The officials we spoke to told us that Trudeau’s claim was basically correct, and was actually slightly lower than more recent numbers because it was based on data from 2013. Why girls are so vulnerable to HIV Trudeau’s sobering statistic made us wonder why African girls are so disproportionately affected by a virus that can infect any human being. The experts we talked to stressed that a wide variety of factors ranging from economic circumstances to societal gender norms were responsible for the gap. Anurita Baines, the HIV/AIDS regional advisor at UNICEF’s Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office, stressed that the obstacles most girls in poverty face even when healthy make avoiding HIV infection more difficult. ""The primary reasons that girls are more vulnerable have to do with gender inequality, including lack of access to education,"" she said. ""These issues prevent women and girls from negotiating for condoms and safe sex practices."" One particular problem is the phenomenon of intergenerational sex, where poor young girls have sex with men who are often at least a decade older. Reid told us that these ""blessers"" shower poor girls with gifts and money, who then become dependent on the men to stay in school. The result is often unprotected exposure to an HIV-positive partner. However, in recent years an array of initiatives has been developed and implemented to specifically protect young women from HIV infection. Baines highlighted UNICEF’s social protection programs in countries such as Kenya and Malawi that give small cash grants for households with school-age girls. The purpose of the grants is to keep girls in school longer, which delays their sexual debut and reduces their risk of contracting HIV. Ultimately, Baines is hopeful that increased international attention could further advance efforts to fight the disease. ""To have someone at a high political level make a statement like that is very encouraging,"" she said of Trudeau’s claim. ""What has to come next is the funding and the support for programs that actually reach these girls and help them."" Our ruling Trudeau claimed that young women ""account for a shocking 74 percent of all new HIV infections among adolescents in Africa."" The data from UNAIDS and UNICEF closely matches his numbers, though Trudeau would have been more precise if he said sub-Saharan Africa. Evidence there shows that young girls between the ages of 10 and 19 are significantly more vulnerable to HIV infection than their male peers due to a wide variety of economic and gender-related issues. Trudeau’s claim is accurate with the small caveat about his use of Africa and not sub-Saharan Africa.
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4669
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Minnesota OKs medical cannabis for chronic pain, eye disease.
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Minnesota is expanding the state’s medical marijuana program to include chronic pain and age-related macular degeneration as conditions that can qualify for treatment, state health officials said Monday.
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true
|
Chronic pain, Medical marijuana, Health, General News, Macular degeneration, Marijuana, Minnesota
|
The state Department of Health also said it would allow more sites where patients can access medical cannabis. The changes take effect in August, Minnesota Public Radio News reported. Minnesota’s medical marijuana program began in 2014. Originally, only nine conditions were on the list, but now it covers such conditions as obstructive sleep apnea, post-traumatic stress disorder and cancer. Sensible Change Minnesota, a group trying to change marijuana policy in Minnesota, sought the addition of chronic pain. A doctor’s diagnosis of chronic pain will be required. It could be easier to certify than intractable pain, which was added to the program a few years ago. Minnesota Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm said the added conditions give more people more ways to deal with debilitating illness. “The bottom line is that people suffering from these serious conditions may be helped by participating in the program, and we felt it was important to give them the opportunity to seek that relief,” Malcolm said in a statement. Maren Schroeder, policy director for Sensible Change Minnesota, said doctors have been hesitant to certify intractable pain cases because that carries a specific legal definition by which pain cannot be removed but only managed and other options have failed to achieve results. “This will give doctors a little more comfort in getting their pain patients into this program as well as helping those patients qualify,” Schroeder said. Residents petitioned to include the new conditions this summer. Those requests were reviewed by a citizens panel and Health Department staff. Four conditions were rejected: anxiety, insomnia, psoriasis and traumatic brain injury. As of October, nearly 18,000 patients were certified for the state’s medical marijuana program. Minnesota’s program is considered relatively restrictive because patients are not allowed to get marijuana in leaf form or ingest it through smoking. Pills, vapors, topical ointments and liquid gels had been the only forms people could obtain through licensed manufacturers. Starting next summer, new delivery methods will include water-soluble cannabinoid, such as powders or sprinkles, and products such as lozenges, gums, mints and tablets. In addition, LeafLine Labs and Minnesota Medical Solutions — the two licensed manufacturers — will be allowed to open a combined eight more centers in Minnesota. The Health Department said the proposed centers are in Blaine, Burnsville, Duluth, Golden Valley, Mankato, Rogers, Willmar and Woodbury.
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29411
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If you use a real Christmas tree, you run the risk of bringing Lyme disease-transmitting ticks into your home.
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The bottom line is — at least from a Lyme disease perspective — Christmas is pretty much the safest time of the year to bring a tree into your house.
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false
|
Medical, christmas, christmas tree, lyme disease
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A meme posted in the Facebook group “Lyme Disease Posters” on 3 December 2016 (and its accompanying text) provides dire warnings about the risks posed by potentially tick-infested Christmas trees. While ticks, specifically the kind that can transmit Lyme disease, are indeed a serious medical concern and could conceivably be found on Christmas trees brought into your home, the information presented in this meme is generally misleading, scientifically inaccurate, or incomplete. More likely than not, a Christmas tree would not contain any Lyme disease-bearing ticks, and if it did the overwhelming likelihood is that the tick would not be in a position to transmit a disease during Christmas. Lyme disease is caused by the Borrelia genus of bacteria which is transferred from one animal (typically birds or small rodents), into the gut of a specific genus of tick called blacklegged ticks (genus Ixodes) in their larval stages, where it can then be transferred to a human through biting once that tick is in later stages of life. Per the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: The lifecycle of blacklegged ticks (Ixodes scapularis and Ixodes pacificus) generally lasts two years. During this time, they go through four life stages: egg, six-legged larva, eight-legged nymph, and adult. After the eggs hatch, the ticks must have a blood meal at every stage to survive. A blacklegged tick’s feeding times are seasonally determined, with little to no activity happening during the weeks leading up to Christmas, according to the Minnesota Department of Health (though the information is broadly applicable to all blacklegged ticks): In the spring and summer of year one, eggs hatch into larvae which feed once and molt into nymphs. Nymphs become dormant for the fall and winter. In year 2, nymphs feed from May through July. At this time, the nymph may transmit disease-causing organisms (such as the bacteria that cause Lyme disease) to humans or to wild or domestic mammals. In the fall, nymphs molt into adult male and female ticks. The females feed on deer and other large mammals, mate, lay eggs, and die. If females don’t feed in the fall, they try to find a large mammal host in the following spring. Male blacklegged ticks attach to a host to wait for females, but do not take a blood meal. This is the season-to-season life cycle of a blacklegged tick, according to the CDC, which shows the times of highest risk of transfer to humans is late spring into summer: The blacklegged tick’s ability to transmit the disease to a human is dominantly relegated to only one-and-a-half of its four life stages (the nymph stage and female adult stage). Both of these stages are generally dormant during Christmas, making most of the claims about the dangers of ticks and Lyme disease in Christmas trees fairly trivial. The actual human data provided by the CDC bore this out as well, clearly demonstrating that there are relatively few cases of Lyme disease during Christmas based on 10 years of monthly data: That being said, here’s some background on specific assertions made by the meme: If you bring a Christmas tree home to decorate it may be full of ticks of all ages and tick eggs. Ticks typically attach themselves to grass and smaller shrubs, not trees. Further, as mentioned above, the “all ages” shouldn’t really be frightening, as we are interested only in nymphs and female adults who have previously fed on another disease carrying bird or mammal. These critters are not typically interested in feeding during Christmas. One female tick can lay thousands of eggs. Fully engorged (that is to say, freshly fed) female deer ticks do indeed lay numerous eggs — up to 3000, in fact. There are three important things to note, though, when talking about tick eggs in Christmas trees. The first is that deer ticks lay eggs in May — a time that is demonstrably not Christmas. The second is that they lay their eggs in the ground (a place demonstrably not a Christmas tree). Third, larvae (in terms of transferring a disease to a humans) are all born pathogen-free. If the larvae for some reason were not born dormant (unlikely) and then used a human as a host (impossible), it would have no pathogen to transfer. All ticks can carry and transmit disease. Only blacklegged ticks are capable of transmitting Lyme disease, and within those species they are further limited to transmitting diseases to humans only in their nymph and female adult life stages. Larval blacklegged ticks and the eggs from which they come are scientifically incapable of transferring disease to humans. Other ticks do carry other diseases. For an overview of those risks and their location, the CDC has a convenient map of the six potentially infectious tick species in the United States. If you are concerned that you may have been bitten by a tick or have symptoms of Lyme disease, the CDC also has a helpful guide here.
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