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28041
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"Dozens of people on the set of the film ""Titanic"" were sickened after eating seafood chowder that had been spiked with the drug PCP on the final day of shooting."
|
"What's true: Dozens of people on the set of ""Titanic,"" including actor Bill Paxton and director James Cameron, were sickened after someone laced the seafood chowder with PCP. What's false: The movie's stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet, were not on set at the time, and the incident did not occur on the final day of shooting."
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true
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Entertainment, historical pictures
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On 30 April 2019, the Facebook page “Historical Pictures” renewed interest in an old news story involving the movie Titanic, seafood chowder, and the drug PCP (Phencyclidine, or angel dust): The Facebook page reads: “On the last night of filming Titanic, someone laced the cast and crew’s food with PCP. 80 cast and crew members, including James Cameron and Bill Paxton, started hallucinating and had to be hospitalized.” This Facebook post recounts a genuine news story from the set of Titanic. However, some of the details are misleading or inaccurate. For instance, this incident occurred during the final day of shooting at one specific location but not the final day overall for the film: The location was the Halifax area on the Akademik Msislav Keldysh research vessel that Cameron used to film the underwater sequences, a year earlier. Fifty crew members made the trip to Nova Scotia for what was supposed to be a pit stop to the main event. However, on 9 August 1996, three weeks into filming, all hell broke loose when several people fell violently ill after a dinner break. More importantly, the included image in this Facebook post is misleading, as neither of the movie’s stars, Leonardo DiCaprio or Kate Winslet, were on set at the time of the incident. On 26 August 1996, the Canadian press reported that nearly 80 people were taken to the hospital from the set of Titanic for what was initially thought to be food poisoning. However, the Halifax regional police investigated the incident and found that someone had laced the seafood chowder with PCP: Thu, Aug 29, 1996 – 30 · Star-Phoenix (Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada) · Newspapers.com Though the movie’s lead stars were not on set during this incident, other big names attached to the film, such as actor Bill Paxton and director James Cameron, were on set and did eat the PCP-laced chowder. Paxton was quoted by Entertainment Weekly in 1996 saying that he typically didn’t eat the catering on the set but on that night, for whatever reason, he decided to join Cameron for a bowl of the chowder: Exactly who spiked the chowder remains a mystery — and the source of an ongoing criminal investigation — but for actor Bill Paxton (Twister), who plays a modern-day treasure hunter, it was truly a night to remember. After planning to eat Italian food in his trailer, Paxton opted instead to join Cameron for a bowl of lobster chowder. Within 15 minutes after eating, he recalls, ”the crew was all milling about. Some people were laughing, some people were crying, some people were throwing up.” Assuming that bad shellfish had caused the problem, Paxton jumped in a van headed for Dartmouth General Hospital. ”One minute I felt okay,” he says, ”the next minute I felt so goddamn anxious I wanted to breathe in a paper bag. Cameron was feeling the same way.” Paxton also recounted the experience during an interview with Larry King: Several other people who were on set that day have given their own versions of this story. Marilyn McAvoy, who was a standby painter on the set, spoke with Vice in May 2017: Vice: Hey Marilyn, so tell me, what was that chowder like? Marilyn McAvoy: The chowder was unbelievable. People were going back for second bowls. I really thought about going back because it was so good. And I think that was part of the problem: People ate a lot more than usual because it was so delicious. What else do you remember about that night? There was no indication that there was anything strange happening … until the meal. By the time we got back from eating, after about 30 minutes, that’s when I started noticing something was wrong. Everyone seemed confused. Everyone was having trouble getting their work done. […] How did the rest of the crew react? While I was trying to figure out what was going on, everyone else seemed to be going outside. They were all gathering outside of the giant doors of the building we were working in. I also heard later on that as soon as James Cameron realized something had been put in the chowder, he ran up to his room and forced himself to throw up. This incident is also mentioned in a biography of DiCaprio. In it, actor Lewis Abernathy was quoted describing how Cameron allegedly looked after eating the drug-laced chowder: Actor Lewis Abernathy, who played a cynical sidekick to Bill Paxton’s relic hunter, recalled: “There were people just rolling around, completely out of it. Some of them said they were seeing streaks and psychedelics.” “I thought it was food poisoning,” he continued (luckily he had eaten in his hotel that night). “Really bad seafood can make you hallucinate and this caterer was big on clams. Jim was being loaded into the back of this van – I was just shocked at the way he looked. One eye was completely red, like the Terminator eye – a pupil, no iris, beet red. The other eye looked like he’d been sniffing glue since he was four.” Cameron confirmed that he had eaten the chowder but said that he avoided a trip to the hospital by forcing himself to throw up the contaminated food. While police confirmed that numerous people on the movie set were sickened after eating PCP-laced seafood chowder, investigators never found out who was responsible. Some suspected that the culprit was a disgruntled chef, while others believed that a crew member was attempting to get revenge on Cameron, who has a reputation for being a tyrannical director. As far as we can tell, the person who put drugs in the chowder was never identified and no charges were ever filed over the incident. In 1998, the Calgary Herald published an article entitled “Titanic Mystery: Who Spiked the Chowder?” In it, both Paxton and Cameron expressed their anger (as well as confusion) over the incident, saying that whoever laced the chowder put everyone on set, including elderly people and children, in danger: Thu, Jan 15, 1998 – 63 · Calgary Herald (Calgary, Alberta, Canada) · Newspapers.com Some disagreement exists over the exact number of people who were sickened or the type of chowder (lobster, clam, or seafood?) that was laced with PCP. However, it is undoubtedly true that dozens of people unknowingly took angel dust on the set of Titanic after an unidentified person spiked the food with it.
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7448
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Seattle sees 1st case of childhood disease tied to virus.
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Seattle has had its first confirmed case of a rare inflammatory disease in children closely tied to COVID-19.
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true
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Seattle, Health, General News, Virus Outbreak, Public health
|
The disease being called “pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome” was identified and treated at Seattle Children’s Hospital, KUOW reported. King County Public Health said the patient was a resident of Snohomish County and there have been no other confirmed cases in the area. It involves a “hyper response” of the child’s immune system to the virus, according to Dr. Michael Portman, who directs pediatric cardiovascular research at Children’s. It can lead to inflammation of the blood vessels, and affect the heart’s arteries, leading to coronary aneurysms. In similar diseases, that can lead to lifelong heart issues, Portman said. The syndrome is rare and most children infected with the virus develop only mild illness. The disease is being linked to COVID-19, Portman said, because almost all of the patients have had confirmed cases of the virus, positive antibody tests, or known exposure. Portman said it is very similar and at times appears almost identical to a disease called “Kawasaki disease,” which was identified in Japan in the 1960s. According to Portman, Kawasaki disease is fairly common at Seattle Children’s. Around 30% patients at Children’s with Kawasaki disease are of Asian descent, Portman said. But the disease “seems to affect Hispanic and black children more severely” due to a “more robust inflammatory response.” Most of the cases of the new syndrome have been in the New York area and a handful have been fatal. Portman’s advice to parents is “not to freak out,” but if a child has a persistent fever, which is a symptom, he recommends getting it checked.
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37321
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The rate of accidental deaths from physicians is much higher than the accidental death rates for gun owners, meaning that doctors are more dangerous than guns.
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Are Doctors More Dangerous Than Gun Owners?
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false
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Disinformation, Fact Checks, guns, Medical, Viral Content
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An email about gun deaths versus doctor-related deaths has been around in various forms since at least 2004. Minor details vary, but they all went something like this:Scary Doctor Facts This is really something to think about: A. The number of physicians in the US is 700,000 B. Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year is 120,000 C. Accidental deaths per physician is 0.171 (US Dept of Health & Human Services). Then think about this: A. The number of gun owners in the US is 80,000,000. B. The number of accidental gun deaths per year (all age groups) is 1,500. C. The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is .0000188. Statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners. FACT: NOT EVERYONE HAS A GUN, BUT ALMOST EVERYONE HAS AT LEAST ONE DOCTOR. Please alert your friends to this alarming threat. We must ban doctors before this gets out of hand. (As a public health measure I have withheld the statistics on lawyers for fear that the shock could cause people to seek medical attention. )This email and post was obviously originally the humorous creation of a gun enthusiast. We don’t know exactly when it was written, but not all of the statistics are accurate.As of 2016, the Federation of State Medical Boards found that there were 953,695 allopathic and osteopathic doctors in the United States — up 12 percent from 2010. A CNBC story from 2018 estimated the number of accidental medical deaths between 250,000 and a jaw-dropping 440,000. However, those numbers are wide-ranging and getting everybody to agree with statistics regarding deaths caused by doctors is a little more difficult. A breakdown of those numbers includes unnecessary surgeries, medication errors , miscommunications, infections in hospitals, and more.According to the National Rifle Association’s 2010 Fact Sheet, there were between 70 and 80 million gun owners tallied in the United States at that time. The NRA added that there are are close to 300 million privately owned firearms in the United States with hand guns counting for nearly 100 million, and that somewhere between 40 and 45 percent of American households have firearms. Also according to the National Rifle Association, there were 776 accidental deaths from firearms in 2000, a lower figure than in the email.The Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, created after Arizona lawmaker Gabrielle Giffords was shot and badly wounded in 2011 (six people were murdered and twelve others injured in the mass shooting rampage), estimates that more than a hundred Americans are killed by guns every day, but that number encompasses deliberate as well as accidental deaths.The premise of the email and post is weak and, as we said, mostly aimed toward humor. Comparing doctor deaths to accidental firearm deaths is meaningless, especially because doctors are dealing with people who are sick in the first place, some of whom are at high risk for death or have gone through high-risk medical procedures.Editor’s note, 9/18/2019: This story has been reformatted and rewritten since it was originally published. You can find the original version of the story here. –bb
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9148
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Study: New blood test is more accurate in predicting prostate cancer risk than PSA
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This Cleveland Clinic news release describes a “new” blood test called IsoPSA that is supposed to be more accurate than traditional prostate specific antigen (PSA) blood tests. Instead of determining PSA concentrations in the blood or other bodily fluids, IsoPSA recognizes the protein’s structural changes. Researchers believe this test could help distinguish prostate cancer from benign conditions and identify patients with high-grade disease. It’s not exactly clear what’s new here, however. These types of structurally-based PSA tests have been around since 2009. The news release does a decent job cautioning readers on overdiagnosis and overtreatment after positive PSA tests. It also discloses conflicts of interest, as the principal investigator is a co-founder and chief medical officer of Cleveland Diagnostics — the biotech company that funded this study. We wish we were given some numbers to put some of the claims into perspective. Benefit data were given in relative terms and described with vague, comparative wording. Also missing are discussions on the study design and limitations, as this study did not have a control group. PSA screening has been the subject of debate the past few years. In fact, many experts believe screenings may do more harm than good in the long run, especially since routine PSA screenings lead to over-diagnosis of harmless cancers. This then leads to treatments for prostate cancer, which come with higher risks for side effects. One European study showed an additional 48 men who were not at risk of dying from prostate cancer had to be treated to prevent one death from the disease. Another alternative to traditional PSA blood tests is certainly of public interest, especially if the test is comparable in cost while being more sensitive to aggressive prostate cancers.
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mixture
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Cleveland Clinic,IsoPSA blood test
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There is no discussion of costs in this news release — neither the cost of the test or the potential savings if it decreases false positive results which lead to further testing or treatment. A regular PSA test is typically covered by insurance, especially for men over the age of 50. According to Healthcare Bluebook, a PSA test should cost around $48 for patients without insurance, but prices may vary depending on location. This price also does not include the office visit. We feel the news release should give consumers a ballpark estimate of costs, even if it is a new test. Therefore, we give the news release a Not Satisfactory rating here. The news release uses vague, comparative language to describe the benefits of the new blood test, such as IsoPSA may “substantially reduce” the need for biopsy and IsoPSA proved “significantly superior” to PSA. Here, the word “significant” is ambiguous because it means “statistically significant,” instead of the colloquial meaning of the term. In addition, IsoPSA could “significantly reduce the rate of unnecessary biopsies by almost 50 percent.” Instead of relative terms, we prefer benefit data to be written in absolute reduction risk to provide a more accurate impression of how effective the new test really is. Even if the journal article reports its results relatively, we still expect the writer to follow up with the researchers and provide some quantitative data for readers. Basically, the study used the gold standard of the biopsy result to compare PSA (the current test) to IsoPSA (the new test). The study itself provides numbers for the sensitivity and specificity of these two tests to detect any cancer as well as to detect higher risk cancer. These numbers could have been provided and explained. Without any raw numbers, it’s hard for us to judge whether IsoPSA is indeed more accurate than PSA. We give the news release a Not Satisfactory rating here. There are no great harms associated with taking a blood test, but we do know there are harms associated with screening tests. They can lead to false positives, additional tests and over-treatment of low risk prostate (and other cancers) that might never have caused harm. Patients may also suffer psychological effects if they are confronted with false positive test results. The side effects of treatment for these tumors can be serious — impotence, incontinence and bowel dysfunction. Though one could argue this new test may decrease those harms, it is unproven at this point. The news release does a good job cautioning readers on PSA screenings, since PSA is “tissue-specific but not cancer-specific, leading to over-diagnosis and over-treatment of biologically insignificant cancers.” However, we aren’t given a lot of details on the study itself. All we know is that it was a multicenter prospective study with 261 men and that they were enrolled between August 2015 and December 2016 at five US centers. Participants were already scheduled for prostate biopsy. We don’t know how these men were selected and how old they were. Furthermore, the news release doesn’t point out any study limitations, such as the lack of a control group. The journal article mentions there was no standardized pathology review of the biopsies, as well as no distinction between primary and repeat biopsies. We would have liked more discussion on the study design and limitations, which is why we give the news release a Not Satisfactory rating here. There is no disease mongering in the news release. It provides some useful context on the pros and cons of PSA screening. The IsoPSA test was developed by Cleveland Diagnostics, which also funded, designed and conducted the study. The principal investigator is a co-founder and chief medical officer of Cleveland Diagnostics and has investment interest in the company. Since the news release disclosed these facts, we give it a Satisfactory rating here. The news release compares IsoPSA to the current PSA blood test. IsoPSA detects molecular changes in the protein, it states. According to the journal article, IsoPSA is a structure-based assay encompassing the entire spectrum of the protein’s structural changes. Conventional tests are based on PSA concentrations in the blood or other bodily fluids. Although the news release doesn’t go into much detail about current tests, we feel it does a good enough job for a Satisfactory rating here. However, it would have been good for the release to highlight that the current test is not uniformly recommended. No testing is a reasonable option according to the USPSTF’s draft screening recommendations. The news release makes it clear that IsoPSA is not available at your local doctor’s office, since this blood test needs to undergo further study and then be adopted clinically. It is clear that this release is about the search for a better test. It’s not exactly clear what’s new here, since having a structurally-based PSA test is not a novel idea. IsoPSA is also known as PSA/SIA (Solvent Interaction Analysis) — an assay that has been described in medical literature since at least 2009. In a Journal of Urology article, researchers used the same technique to differentiate structural PSA forms in urine. In the study, the PSA/SIA assay had been developed by AnalizaDx, Inc., a Cleveland-based biotech company. Interestingly, the first author of this article is Mark Stovsky, the principal investigator of the current European Association of Urology article. Since the news release doesn’t include this background information, we give it a Not Satisfactory rating. The news release does not include unjustifiable, sensational language.
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2905
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Bone marrow stem cells could defeat drug-resistant tuberculosis.
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Patients with potentially fatal “superbug” forms of tuberculosis (TB) could in future be treated using stem cells taken from their own bone marrow, according to the results of an early-stage trial of the technique.
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true
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Health News
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The finding, made by British and Swedish scientists, could pave the way for the development of a new treatment for the estimated 450,000 people worldwide who have multi drug-resistant (MDR) or extensively drug-resistant (XDR) TB. In a study in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine journal on Thursday, researchers said more than half of 30 drug-resistant TB patients treated with a transfusion of their own bone marrow stem cells were cured of the disease after six months. “The results ... show that the current challenges and difficulties of treating MDR-TB are not insurmountable, and they bring a unique opportunity with a fresh solution to treat hundreds of thousands of people who die unnecessarily,” said TB expert Alimuddin Zumla at University College London, who co-led the study. TB, which infects the lungs and can spread from one person to another through coughing and sneezing, is often falsely thought of as a disease of the past. In recent years, drug-resistant strains of the disease have spread around the world, batting off standard antibiotic drug treatments. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that in Eastern Europe, Asia and South Africa 450,000 people have MDR-TB, and around half of these will fail to respond to existing treatments. TB bacteria trigger an inflammatory response in immune cells and surrounding lung tissue that can cause immune dysfunction and tissue damage. Bone-marrow stem cells are known to migrate to areas of lung injury and inflammation and repair damaged tissue. Since they also modify the body’s immune response and could boost the clearance of TB bacteria, Zumla and his colleague, Markus Maeurer from Stockholm’s Karolinska University Hospital, wanted to test them in patients with the disease. In a phase 1 trial, 30 patients with either MDR or XDR TB aged between 21 and 65 who were receiving standard TB antibiotic treatment were also given an infusion of around 10 million of their own stem cells. The cells were obtained from the patient’s own bone marrow, then grown into large numbers in the laboratory before being re-transfused into the same patient, the researchers explained. During six months of follow-up, the researchers found that the infusion treatment was generally safe and well tolerated, with no serious side effects recorded. The most common non-serious side effects were high cholesterol levels, nausea, low white blood cell counts and diarrhea. Although a phase 1 trial is primarily designed only to test a treatment’s safety, the scientists said further analyses of the results showed that 16 patients treated with stem cells were deemed cured at 18 months compared with only five of 30 TB patients not treated with stem cells. Maeurer stressed that further trials with more patients and longer follow-up were needed to better establish how safe and effective the stem cell treatment was. But if future tests were successful, he said, it could become a viable extra new treatment for patients with MDR-TB who do not respond to conventional drug treatment or those with severe lung damage.
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10906
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Trial Shows Blockbuster Potential for Blood Clot Pill
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This is a story about a large clinical trial that found a new medication to be more effective though more expensive than the current medication used to reduce the chance of blood clot formation in individuals with atrial fibrillation. The story did a good job of detailing the study reported on as well as the financial ramifications for the drug maker. It remains to be seen whether the adherence seen in the trial will be as good in the real world. And Eliquis, the drug reported, still needs to undergo review by the FDA for safety and efficacy. But it appears that at least some clinicians and market analysts are enthused about the impact of this medication. A drawback of this story is that it fails to provide information about the absolute reduction in risks that may be possible with this medication. In the absence of this information, it is impossible to assess the true scope of how valuable a treatment this might be. The risk of hemorrhagic stroke is a concern to those who use warfarin as part of their treatment for atrial fibrillation. The availability of a medication that reduces that risk and is a more effective treatment for their condition will be of interest to those who can afford the added costs.
|
true
|
New York Times
|
The story mentioned that it was expected that the drug reported on would cost $8/day as compared with <$1/day for warfarin. One aspect of costs that were not considered in this story is the difference in monitoring, which would be less with patients using Eliquis. The competing HealthDay story did a better job on this latter point. The story provided only relative risk reduction figures – “prevented 21 percent more strokes…31 percent fewer incidents of major bleeding…reduced total deaths by 11 percent” – but neglected to present the absolute decrease in adverse events. 21% of what? 31% of what? 11% of what? The story mentioned some of the disadvantages associated with this use of the medication reported on. It did not specifically detail whether there were any harms associated with this medication or how well people in the study were able to stick with the dosing schedule. On this issue, this story was not as complete as its HealthDay competition, which reported: “The new trial comes on the heels of another study on apixaban that was stopped early due to safety concerns. In that trial, published in July in the New England Journal of Medicine, apixaban’s use was associated with raised odds for bleeding — without providing patients with any reduction in heart attack risk.However, “in that case, apixaban was given to patients with coronary artery disease who were also taking two other blood thinners,” Ansell noted. “The three of them together showed that the risk of bleeding was just too high and there was no real benefit in that population. But, that’s an entirely different problem, compared with atrial fibrillation,” he said.” The story included a lot of information about the study it reported on – where the results were presented and published, its design, the number of clinical sites, countries involved, the number of people studied and the length of time they were studied.. No overt disease mongering. The story mentioned that the study reported on had been funded by the drug maker. It included comments from a clinician who had no ties to the study reported on. The story compared the study drug with the long time treatment, warfarin, as well as mentioning a newly approved medication and another medication in the approval process. The story opened by indicating that Eliquis (apixabane) was experimental and closed by indicating the expectation of submission to the FDA for approval. The story was clear that this was a new medication, though there are two other medications (warfarin and Pradax) that are currently available. Did not appear to rely solely on a news release.
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10048
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Boston Scientific finds higher clot risk for drug-coated stents
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This article reported on unreviewed research results about an elevated risk of developing blood-clotting in patients with Taxus drug-eluting stents used in the treatment of coronary artery disease. While providing information about the impact of the study results on the company’s stock, the article was not as helpful as it might have been in helping patients understand the potential risks and benefits that may be derived from the use of drug-eluting stents, nor how the magnitude of the risks might compare with the various treatment options that exist.
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false
|
There was no information about the cost of either drug-eluting or bare-metal stents Describing the risk of blood clotting as ‘slightly higher’ is not helpful for the reader. It would be useful for readers to know what the risk of blood clotting is with and without the different types of stents and other treatments for coronary artery disease. It would also be helpful for readers to be able to compare the restenosis rates and timeframe for the two types of stents as well as for bypass surgery. The article should have included information from the same meeting which suggests that the use of drug eluting stents may increase the risk of cardiac events (including blood clots) and death (http://www.escardio.org/vpo/News/events/wcc_drugelutingstents_events.htm) One harm of treatment, I.e. blood clotting, was presented in this article without providing numbers that would allow the reader to see how often this occurred and how the rates of its occurrence differed in patients receiving bare-metal and drug-eluting stents. The article failed to explain that the FDA has previously issued two warnings about late stage blood clotting problems with drug eluting stents. This is useful for the reader to put the report from the latest study into perspective. Some of the information came from a company spokesman. Some came from the reporter citing another news source (the Wall Street Journal). Some may have come indirectly from a report at scientific meeting. The article failed to explain that such results have not been peer reviewed and that it is not certain that they will stand the test of time. (See “News from scientific meetings” in the “Things You Should Know About Research Stories” section on the right side of the home page.) The article provides no context and provides a confusing array of information. For example, the article indicates that the Taxus stent is one of two drug eluting stents available and then several paragraphs later mentions the Cypher stent without any description. The article also notes the “Journal” (meaning the Wall Street Journal) noted no problem with the Cypher stent while also noting that a company spokesman noted it to be a class problem with all drug eluting stents. There is no overt disease-mongering in the story, although the size of the risk increase is unstated giving the impression that the problem is more common than it really is. But we address this in the “Harms of Treatment” criterion. The article included a quote from a spokesperson from the company that produces the drug-eluting stent that was reported to increase risk of blood clotting. However, there did not appear to be any expert quoted to put the potential risks and benefits from this treatment in context. And for one news outlet to rely so strongly on what was reported by another news outlet is weak. The article only mentioned the two categories of stents that are currently used in the treatment of coronary artery disease (drug-eluting and bare metal stents). It did not mention bypass surgery or drug treatment as alternative options for coronary artery disease. It also did not mention that there is a limit to the number of drug eluting stents a person can get because of concerns over exposure to the material coating the stent. It’s clear from the story that the drug-coated stents discussed are readily available and commonly used. The use of drug-coated stents in the treatment of coronary artery disease is not novel and there have been previous suggestions that these stents may increase risk of blood clots. This article did not appear to be making any suggestion that what it was reporting on was novel. We can’t be sure if the story relied solely or largely on a news release, although it did seem to rely to a large extent on company spokesmen and news reported by another news outlet.
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33152
|
Jimmy Carter said that medical marijuana cured his cancer.
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Satirical news for satirical folk. Satira is Latin for Satire.
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false
|
Junk News, cancer, jimmy carter, marijuana
|
On 7 December 2015, the entertainment website Satira Tribune published an article claiming that former President Jimmy Carter said that medical marijuana had cured his cancer: While speaking to ABC News about the remission of his cancer, former President Jimmy Carter credited marijuana for killing of his cancer cells. The Nobel winner thanked his doctors and family for their support through his brain cancer ordeal. He also thanked Terrance ‘Scooby’ Williams of Dr. Green’s Greenery, a pot dispensary in Oakland, CA, for helping him find the right strain of cannabis. Carter told his medicinal regiment to Sawyer“I smoke two joints in the morning, I smoke two joints at night, I smoke two joint in the afternoon, and it makes me feel all right. “Edibles are also good when traveling when smoking is not permitted.” While Carter did announce in December 2015 that he was “cancer-free,” the former President did not credit medical marijuana. The Satira Tribune is a satirical publication that does not publish factual news stories. The website does not contain a readily available disclaimer, but its Facebook page clearly notes the satirical nature of its content:
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4150
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Warming hurting shellfish, aiding predators, ruining habitat.
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Valuable species of shellfish have become harder to find on the East Coast because of degraded habitat caused by a warming environment, according to a pair of scientists that sought to find out whether environmental factors or overfishing was the source of the decline.
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true
|
North America, Environment, AP Top News, Maine, Overfishing
|
The scientists reached the conclusion in studying the decline in the harvest of four commercially important species of shellfish in coastal areas from Maine to North Carolina — eastern oysters, northern quahogs, softshell clams and northern bay scallops. They reported that their findings came down squarely on the side of a warming ocean environment and a changing climate, and not excessive harvest by fishermen. One of the ways warming has negatively impacted shellfish is by making them more susceptible to predators, said the lead author of the study, Clyde MacKenzie, a shellfish researcher for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who is based in Sandy Hook, New Jersey. “Their predation rate is faster in the warmer waters. They begin to prey earlier, and they prey longer into the fall,” MacKenzie said. “These stocks have gone down.” MacKenzie’s findings, the product of a collaboration with Mitchell Tarnowski, a shellfish biologist with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources, appeared recently in the journal Marine Fisheries Review. The findings have implications for consumers of shellfish, because a declining domestic harvest means the prices of shellfish such as oysters and clams could rise, or the U.S. could become more dependent on foreign sources. The scientists observed that the harvest of eastern oysters from Connecticut to Virginia fell from around 600,000 bushels in 1960 to less than 100,000 in 2005. The harvest of the four species declined from 1980 to 2010 after enjoying years of stability from 1950 to 1980, they found. The scientists reported that a positive shift in the North Atlantic Oscillation led to the degradation of shellfish habitat. The oscillation is an irregular fluctuation of atmospheric pressure that impacts weather and climate, which in turn affects things like reproduction and food availability for shellfish. The study mirrors what Maine clam harvesters are seeing on the state’s tidal flats, said Chad Coffin, a clammer and the president of the Maine Clammers Association. Maine’s harvest of softshell clams — the clams used to make fried clams and clam chowder — dwindled to its lowest point since 1930 last year. It will take adopting new strategies, such as shellfish farming, for the fisheries to survive, Coffin said. “Clammers aren’t the reason there’s no clams,” he said. “We need to adapt, we need to focus our efforts on adapting to the environment we have.” Some near-shore shellfish harvests in the U.S. remain consistently productive, such as the Maine sea scallop fishery, which takes place in bays and coastal areas in the winter. The state’s scallop fishery bottomed out at about 33,000 pounds in 2005, but has climbed in recent years, and its 2017 total of almost 800,000 pounds was the most since 1997. Many in Maine attribute the health of the fishery to conservative management, said Alex Todd, a scallop fisherman who also works the waters off Massachusetts. “Up and down the coast, there have been good years recently compared to 10 or 15 years ago,” he said. But the scientists’ findings track with others who have studied the impact of warming waters on shellfish, such as Brian Beal, a professor of marine ecology at the University of Maine at Machias. Beal, who was not involved in the study, has said rising seawater temperature could spell “doom and gloom for the clamming industry and probably for other industries as well.” That’s especially true of valuable species that are important food items, like clams and mussels, he said. “None of this can be attributed to overfishing, a term that is used willy-nilly and applied erroneously to these declines in commercially important shellfish,” Beal said.
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23259
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Webster sponsored a bill to create a form of marriage that would trap women in abusive relationships.
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Alan Grayson tones down rhetoric, but not attacks in new ad targeting Dan Webster
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true
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Marriage, Message Machine 2010, Women, Florida, Alan Grayson,
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"U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson is continuing his pointed attacks against Republican opponent Daniel Webster, and Webster's stance on women's issues. Only this time, he's ditching the lines about religious fanaticism and the comparisons to the Taliban. Grayson, a Democrat from Orlando, caught flak for airing an ad that compared Webster's beliefs to those of the Taliban, and for distorting Webster's words in a speech Webster gave to a Christian group. Grayson played clips in a 30-second ad called ""Taliban Dan Webster"" that showed Webster saying wives should submit to their husbands. But an unedited clip of the speech showed that Webster was in fact telling husbands to love their wives. The distortion, which earned a False rating from PolitiFact Florida, gave Webster's campaign national attention (including tweets of support from Sarah Palin) and helped him raise more than $100,000 in 48 hours, his campaign said. In response, Grayson released a toned-down version of the ""Taliban Dan"" ad on Oct. 6, 2010, called ""The Facts."" Gone are the terrorists holding machine guns, the people burning American flags and the women wearing burqas. Also gone are references to religious fanaticism, Iran and the Bible. (Gone, too, we found, is the ""Taliban Dan Webster"" ad from Grayson's YouTube website. The video is now marked private.) Here's a transcript of the new ad: Daniel Webster's Washington backers are attacking Alan Grayson on women's issues. The facts on Webster's record: Fact: Webster sponsored a bill to create a form of marriage that would trap women in abusive relationships. Fact: Webster is an advocate for a group that teaches that mothers should not work outside the home. Fact: Webster would force victims of rape and incest to bear their attacker's child. Those are the facts. Don't let Daniel Webster make the laws we will have to live with. In another item, we're analyzing the claim that Webster is an advocate for a group that teaches that mothers should not work outside the home. In this fact check, we'll focus on the first ""Fact"" -- that Webster sponsored a bill to create a form of marriage that would trap women in abusive relationships. It's a slightly different take on a claim in the first ad when Grayson claimed that Webster ""wants to make divorce illegal,"" even for abused women. Both claims track back to a piece of legislation Webster introduced as a member of the state House in 1990. That year, Webster authored HB 1585, a bill that ""creates a form of marriage known as 'covenant marriage,' which may be dissolved only on grounds of adultery."" Florida law then and now allows married couples to divorce if a court finds that the marriage is ""irretrievably broken."" It's a common standard throughout the country, often called no-fault divorce. The term can be interpreted broadly and critics say the standard of proof makes divorce too easy. Webster's legislation sought to make getting a divorce more difficult, at least for couples that voluntarily entered the covenant marriage. Here's what he proposed. Men and women would have the option on their application for a marriage license to elect a covenant marriage. Under terms of the covenant marriage agreement, the husband- and wife-to-be would have to have their parents' permission and attend premarital counseling by a member of the clergy or a marriage counselor before proceeding. As part of their marriage license, the husband and wife would then have to sign notarized documents declaring: ""I, (insert name), do hereby declare my intent to enter in Covenant Marriage. I do so with the full understanding that a Covenant Marriage may not be dissolved except by reason of adultery. I have attended premarital counseling in good faith and understand my responsibilities to the marriage. I promise to seek counsel in times of trouble. I believe that I have chosen my life-mate wisely and have disclosed to him or her all facts that may adversely affect his or her decision to enter in this covenant with me."" Once a couple agreed to a covenant marriage, the only way they could get a divorce is for adultery. That means physical or sexual abuse was not grounds for a divorce. Webster's legislation went nowhere in Florida -- Democrats controlled the state House in 1990, and the bill never came up for a vote -- but it did help launch the movement for covenant marriage nationwide. Three states -- Louisiana, Arkansas and Arizona -- adopted a version of Webster's law, though the laws on the books in those states were all less restrictive than what Webster proposed in Florida, said Alan J. Hawkins, a professor of Family Life at Brigham Young University and an expert on covenant marriage. In his first ad, ""Taliban Dan Webster,"" Grayson said that Webster ""wants to make divorce illegal,"" even for abused women. But as our research proves, Webster's bill wouldn't make all divorce illegal. Rather it would make divorce more difficult, but not impossible, for couples who chose to form a covenant marriage. Even couples who chose Webster's form of covenant marriage had a small window out for adultery. It appears the Grayson campaign listened. In his new ad, ""The Facts,"" Grayson says ""Webster sponsored a bill to create a form of marriage that would trap women in abusive relationships."" In 1990, Webster sponsored HB 1585, which would create a new form of marriage called covenant marriage. If women agreed to form a covenant marriage, they would not be allowed to divorce because of physical or sexual abuse. The only out under Webster's legislation was adultery."
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19748
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"Chain email Says President Barack Obama ""doubled the national debt, which had taken more than two centuries to accumulate, in one year."
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Bayer AG has not offered to pay billions of dollars to settle claims in the United States related to the Roundup herbicide, mediator Ken Feinberg said, dismissing a report to that effect which drove its shares as much as 11% higher.
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false
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New Jersey, Debt, Chain email,
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“Bayer has not proposed paying $8 billion to settle all the U.S. Roundup cancer claims. Such a statement is pure fiction,” Feinberg said in an email on Friday. “Compensation has not even been discussed in the global mediation discussions.” Bayer shares, which had shed some of their gains before Feinberg’s statement, retreated further and closed up 1.7% at 64.63 euros. Bayer, which acquired Roundup and other glyphosate-based weedkillers as part of its $63 billion takeover of Monsanto last year, declined comment on the initial Bloomberg news report and on Feinberg’s response. Bayer Chief Executive Werner Baumann last week said the company would consider settling with U.S. plaintiffs only on reasonable terms, and if it “achieves finality of the overall litigation”. He added at the time the group was “constructively engaging” in a court-ordered process with mediator Feinberg on the cases heard in federal court. Most of the pending cases, however, have been filed with U.S. state courts. Feinberg added that any efforts by Bayer toward a comprehensive settlement were tied in with the mediation proceedings overseen by him. “These are all part of the same mediation process.” Bayer shares have lost more than a third of their value, or roughly 30 billion euros ($34 billion), since last August when a California jury in the first such lawsuit found Monsanto should have warned of the alleged cancer risks from Roundup. The German drugs and pesticides company has engaged in negotiations with plaintiffs’ lawyers, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. “The problem is, how do you get the plaintiffs to climb down from their very high expectations? None of the jury verdicts so far have been favorable for Bayer,” one of the sources said, adding that talks were focused on basic questions such as how to handle potential future claims. Bayer said on Friday that the next U.S. glyphosate lawsuit initially scheduled to be heard in St. Louis, Missouri, this month would be postponed to Jan. 27, 2020, and that a following St. Louis case slated for September had also been postponed. The German company may benefit from having cases heard in the city where Monsanto was headquartered and where Bayer manages its global seeds business. But Missouri is also known for juries that often hit companies with huge damages. Bloomberg said the delays had been pursued by Bayer to allow for undisturbed settlement talks. The initial unfavorable court rulings in the first three glyphosate cases, heard in California, have at times dragged Bayer’s market value below what it paid for Monsanto, although the shares are now trading above that level. The company, which says regulators and extensive research have found glyphosate to be safe, has previously said it was banking on U.S. appeals courts to reverse or tone down three initial court rulings that have so far awarded tens of millions of dollars to each plaintiff. Bloomberg cited three sources familiar with the discussions as saying Bayer’s lawyers were seeking an accord to resolve all current and future cases. Talks over cases that have yet to be filed were particularly tricky, the report added. While Bayer has indicated it could pay $6-$8 billion, plaintiffs’ lawyers want more than $10 billion to drop their claims, the report said. An estimate of a $20 billion hit from the litigation has previously been reflected in the share price, while a likely litigation settlement liability was in the mid single-digit billion dollar range, Bank of America analysts said in note. They kept a “neutral” rating on the stock, citing uncertainty over Bayer’s fortunes in the appeals process - with the first appeals verdict expected by the end of the year - and whether a settlement could be achieved before that. The number of U.S. plaintiffs blaming Roundup and other glyphosate-based weedkillers for cancer had continued to rise by 5,000 to 18,400, Bayer said last week.
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1275
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European nations weigh impact of Brexit on drug supplies.
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Germany’s drug safety regulator has concluded that Brexit will not put its patients at risk of losing access to essential drugs, while Ireland has drawn up a list of 24 medicines whose supply would be most vulnerable if Britain fails to conclude a divorce deal.
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true
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Health News
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Between 60 and 70 percent of the 4,000 medicines on the Irish market either come from or transit through the United Kingdom. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said a working group of health officials meeting weekly for the last two years had drawn up the watch list, but advised against stockpiling. “It is a really important message that I want to deliver to people in Ireland today, both to patients and pharmacists, that there is no need to stockpile medicines,” Health Minister Simon Harris said at a news conference, warning that such action could inadvertently disturb the supply chain. The country would have a supply of several weeks’ worth of most medicines if Britain crashed out on March 29 without a deal, he added. The medicines that may be vulnerable due to special storage and transportation needs, short shelf life or single supplier reliance included intravenous foods and some radiotherapy products. Officials are progressing contingency plans, including identifying appropriate alternatives. For its part, Germany’s Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) last year ordered the country’s main drug industry associations to gather information on the effect of a no-deal Brexit. “For BfArm, the analysis has led to the conclusion that no shortages of medicines that are deemed critical are to be expected,” the watchdog said on its website. More than 2,600 drugs have some stage of manufacture in Britain and 45 million patient packs are supplied from the UK to other European countries each month, while another 37 million flow in the opposite direction, industry figures show. The British government has asked UK drugmakers to build an additional six weeks’ worth of medicine stockpiles to prepare for any no-deal Brexit - a target the industry has said will be challenging. The EU’s drugs regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said last August that it and national regulators had set up a task force to minimize supply disruptions arising over the next two years, adding that Brexit would likely affect the availability of medicines in the EU. The Europe-wide drugs watchdog EMA is moving from London to Amsterdam, prompting many drugmakers to prepare duplicate product testing and licensing arrangements.
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2336
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Global life expectancy rises again, but new challenges loom.
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Average life expectancy has risen globally to 73 years for a girl born in 2012 and 68 for a boy following successes in fighting diseases and child mortality, the World Health Organization said on Thursday.
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true
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Health News
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Big advances in the battles against infectious diseases such as measles, malaria, tuberculosis and polio have continued to extend life expectancy although other factors, such as people’s lifestyles, are constraining longevity, the WHO said in its annual statistics report. The longest life expectancy at birth is for baby girls in Japan, at 87.0 years, and boys in Iceland, at 81.2 years. Japan, Switzerland, Singapore, Italy and Luxembourg rank in the top 10 for both sexes. “There are major gains in life expectancy in recent decades and they continue,” said Ties Boerma, chief of statistics and information systems at the WHO. The lowest life expectancy is in sub-Saharan Africa, where nine countries have expectancy of less than 55 for babies of both sexes. Lifestyle changes leading to heart problems and other diseases were curbing life expectancy in some cases. “We’re seeing a health transition from success in infectious diseases to more people dying, including at younger ages, from non-communicable diseases,” said Boerma. However, even in the rich countries where people live longest, there is no sign of life expectancy gains slowing down. “If human life expectancy was capped at population level at around 90 years of life we would expect to see a slowdown as we approach those limits. We’re not seeing that,” said Colin Mathers, coordinator of WHO’s statistics on mortality. For the first time the annual statistics report, the most comprehensive statistical overview of the world’s health, measured “years of life lost”, a number that takes account of the age when people die as well as the number of deaths, to put more focus on the things that kill more people at a younger age. Years of life lost to diarrhea and respiratory infections, the biggest causes of early deaths in 2000, had fallen by 40 percent and 30 percent respectively by 2012, when ischemic heart disease was the biggest factor in early deaths. Years of life lost to road injuries have also increased by 14 percent between 2000 and 2012 as more people driving in developing countries outweighed gains in road safety elsewhere. Life expectancy at birth has increased in almost every country since 1990, and in almost all cases it was higher in 2012 than in 2011, with Botswana, Cote d’Ivoire and Syria among the exceptions. Another was Pakistan, where life expectancy averaged 65 years in 2012, down from 67 years in last year’s report. Mathers said that reduction reflected improved data, which revealed child mortality was 30 percent higher than previously thought. The global average life expectancy for a 60-year-old has also increased, with hope of another 20 years in 2012 instead of 18 years in 1990. But not everywhere. In Russia and several other former Soviet states, life expectancy for a 60-year-old was lower in 2012 than in 1990. Mathers said death rates rose fast in the early 1990s, due to cardiovascular disease and injury, both influenced by high rates of binge drinking. Although the death rates have since improved, they have not yet dropped to pre-1990 levels. Russia’s experience surprised epidemiologists who had expected chronic diseases would take a long time to take root. Many countries, especially those recovering from conflict, have also shown that it is possible to make big gains fast. “We’ve seen in many countries a catch-up, really fast progress,” said Boerma. “Examples - Liberia, which has been our fastest catch-up country, but also Rwanda, Cambodia. So if they come out of a crisis with good leadership, there’s enormous progress in health.”
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38356
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Cooking with aluminum pots and pans or aluminum foil causes Alzheimer’s disease.
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Cooking with Aluminum Foil Causes Alzheimer's Disease.
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unproven
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Medical
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Theories that exposure to aluminum has been linked to Alzheimer’s disease have been circulating since the 1960s — but there’s never been any definitive proof that aluminum causes Alzheimer’s disease. And even if there was a clear link between aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease, not using aluminum pots and pans or aluminum foil would do little to reduce your overall aluminum intake (more on that later). These old rumors about aluminum and Alzheimer’s resurfaced in 2014 when the natural health website Mercola.com published a report under the headline, “First Case Study to Show Direct Link Between Alzheimer’s and Aluminum Toxicity,” that has been read more than a million times. The Mercola.com article links to a U.K. case study about a man who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease after being exposed to high levels of aluminum dust (pronounced aluminium in the U.K) on the job over an eight-year period. Shortly after beginning work, the man complained of headaches, tiredness and mouth ulcers. Later, he had memory loss issues. After his death, the family requested that his brain tissue samples be studied by researchers at Oxford University. High aluminum levels were found in the frontal lobe of his brain, and researchers ruled that it was “highly likely” that aluminum had contributed to the rare and aggressive form of Alzheimer’s: The clinical diagnosis of early onset sporadic Alzheimer’s disease showing features postmortem of advanced disease at age 66 is suggestive of aggressive disease aetiology and the probable involvement of aluminium in the onset and progression of the condition. High brain tissue aluminium was similarly implicated in a recent case of congophilic amyloid angiopathy where disease onset was again very early and disease pathology postmortem was highly advanced in an individual in their late 50s. While it is impossible to know if high levels of brain aluminium instigated disease in either of these cases it is highly likely, considering the known neurotoxicity of aluminium, that aluminium was a contributor to disease aetiology, perhaps resulting in an earlier onset and more rapid progression of a nascent condition. The case study has since been used to argue that cooking with aluminum foil causes Alzheimer’s, or that exposure to aluminum through pots and pans or other consumer products causes Alzheimer’s. Those claims are problematic because casual exposure to aluminum is not the same as breathing aluminum dust every day for eight years. Also, researchers didn’t definitively conclude that aluminum exposure was responsible for the man’s disease — but that it was “possible” and or “highly likely.” When specifically asked about the link between aluminum cookware and Alzheimer’s disease, Dr. Anil Nair, an assistant professor of neurology at Boston University Alzheimer’s Disease Center, said that it was a “very old theory.” Beside lack of a clear link between Alzheimer’s and aluminum, Dr. Nair noted that aluminum is found in deodorants, antacids, food additives, drinking water and many other products. Cutting out aluminum foil or aluminum pots and pans would do little to reduce your overall aluminum intake, he said. And although aluminum can cause neurotoxicity in large amounts (one gram of aluminum every day for many years), it’s “never really been soundly proven” to contribute directly to Alzheimer’s disease: The most common way to consume that much is through consuming aluminum hydroxide antacid. One tablet of aluminum hydroxide antacid contains somewhere between 1,000 milligrams (one gram) of aluminum and 1.5 grams of aluminum – a large dose. If you are cooking with aluminum pans, typically you don’t get much. You need a very highly acidic or a very highly basic solution – like Indian food – to actually leach out aluminum from cooking. In the 1970s, people thought that aluminum is a cause of Alzheimer’s disease. Some brain plaques have been found that contain that metal. One reason why the brain plaques may have that aluminum is that Abeta (amyloid beta protein) – the bad protein in Alzheimer’s disease – is a very highly chelating agent, and it tends to attract all kinds of heavy metals. (A chelating agent is an organic compound that is capable of bonding with metals such as aluminum.) A lot of epidemiological studies related to aluminum have been inconclusive and somewhat contradictory. Other epidemiological studies have measured how much aluminum is added to water to purify it to see if that had something to do with dementia. Many of these studies have been from Europe and showed some powerful evidence between aluminum in water and increased dementia. But when they tried to replicate those studies, they couldn’t find any cause. We don’t really know if the water for that particular area had more likelihood of having Alzheimer’s dementia. So it is at best unclear, but there is no real direct cause. Nair said he doesn’t tell his patients to cut back on aluminum intake because he doesn’t believe the hypothesis that aluminum causes Alzheimer’s because of “lack of evidence.” And the Alzheimer’s Association contends that “there is no convincing evidence that aluminum increases a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease,” but adding that, “some researchers are still examining whether some people are at risk because their bodies have difficulties in handling foods containing the metals copper, iron and aluminum.” The Alzheimer’s Association also noted that some studies show increased levels of aluminum in brains of people with Alzheimer’s, while others do not. And early studies focused on one animal that is susceptible to aluminum poising, leading to incorrect conclusions about the the general impact of aluminum on the body and brain. Specifically when it comes to cooking with aluminum pots and pans or aluminum foil, the Alzheimer’s Association agreed with Dr. Nair’s conclusion that even if aluminum was linked to Alzheimer’s, not cooking with aluminum would do little to cut down on your overall aluminum intake: It would be difficult to significantly reduce exposure to aluminum simply by avoiding the use of aluminum cookware, foil, beverage cans and other products. Even if aluminum were clearly implicated in the development of Alzheimer’s disease, these means of exposure contributes only a very small percentage of the average person’s intake of aluminum. In the end, it’s true that very high levels of aluminum can cause neurotoxicity. But aluminum has not bee definitively linked to Alzheimer’s disease, and specific claims that cooking with aluminum causes Alzheimer’s are unfounded. In reality, cutting out aluminum foil and aluminum pots and pans would do little to reduce your overall aluminum intake. Comments
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31769
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"Female lawmakers unveiled a bill prohibiting the disposal of ""unused semen."
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… all news articles contained within burrardstrettjournal.com are works of fiction and constitute fake news. Any truth or actual facts contained in said stories or posts are purely incidental or coincidental and not intended to be, or be construed as, facts.
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false
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Junk News, burrard street journal
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Against the backdrop of a 24 January 2017 House vote involving abortion, the satrical web site Burrard Street Journal reported that female legislators had “unveil[ed]” a bill pertaining to the proper disposal of “unused semen”: A group of leading female legislators have enacted a new bill that forbids American men from disposing of “unused” sperm, requiring them to bring any recreational semen to a nearby fertility clinic. According to noted alternative facts specialist, Stephanie Yorke, sperm is intended for “procreation only” and not to be “wasted” on pleasure … One 15 year old boy in Ohio, with severe pelvic and testicular congestion which if untreated could prove fatal, has begged doctors to allow him to ejaculate and dispose of his secretions without having to donate his sperm. His physician, Dr. Sheila Burton, has repeatedly explained to the boy that his unconceived child is more important than his own life, and he must either endure the pain or face giving away his unborn child. The mention of a purported “Level Playing Field” bill governing ejaculatory fluid and “alternative facts” were clearly a satirization of current legislation involving abortion. And indeed, the Burrard Street Journal’s “About” page identifies the nature of their content as such: The Burrard Street Journal is a sometimes funny Canadian satire, parody and comedy news website based in Vancouver, BC. All articles, videos and images are fictitious and occasionally intended to be humourous. For more information please see our disclaimer at the bottom of the page. The site’s disclaimer reiterates the nature of their “news”: All burrardstreetjournal.com, FM News or FM Football News articles are satirical and entirely fabricated. Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental, except for all references to sports personalities and/or celebrities, in which case they are based on real people, but still based almost entirely in fiction. Please feel free to copy and paste this disclaimer into you facebook comment to “prove this site’s bullshit”.
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10185
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Should you take Tylenol, Advil, or aspirin for pain? Here's what the evidence says.
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In this installment of “Dear Julia,” Vox health reporter Julia Belluz takes on a reader question about pain medications. The reader wants to know which over-the-counter (OTC) pain reliever is the best for treating pain – Tylenol, Advil or aspirin. The story presents evidence from high-quality studies and opinions from three pain experts. The story carefully explains that it’s not appropriate to state unequivocally that one beats the other because it’s not a one-size-fits all situation. In general, though, ibuprofen (name brand Advil) is more effective and safer than acetaminophen (Tylenol) and aspirin in beating minor pain. The “Dear Julia” column, which debuted earlier this month, promises to answer “everyday health questions on anything from the science of hangovers to the mysteries of back pain.” The column is off to an auspicious start, and we look forward to more of its practical, evidence-based responses. You can submit a question for the column here. Americans spent $4.4 billion on OTC analgesics in 2014, according to the Consumer Healthcare Products Association. Despite wide use and efforts by public health efforts to inform consumers about safety issues, there’s still a lot of confusion about which medication works best for different ailments. As the article points out, acetaminophen is the most popular selling OTC pain reliever but not always the most effective or safest.
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true
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Vox
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The story doesn’t mention costs but since these over-the-counter medications have been widely available for a long time it doesn’t seem like an important omission. Because aspirin has been available the longest and is manufactured by literally hundreds of companies, it is by far the cheaper of the three. The article takes a close look at the drawbacks and benefits of each drug. For example, while the experts said acetaminophen is less effective than ibuprofen in treating pain (and carries more risks than the others), it is beneficial in treating fever, especially in children age three and up. Ibuprofen is deemed less toxic for pain relief but it carries the risk of bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract and kidney damage. There’s also a reasonable amount of quantification provided by an expert source, Dr. Andrew Moore, who says: “If you’re talking about aspirin in doses of 500 to 1,000 mg or two tablets, 30 percent of people get relief from acute pain. For acetaminophen at doses of 500 to 1,000 mg, about 40 percent have a success. For ibuprofen, in its normal formulation at something around 400 mg or two tablets, about 50 percent have success.” The story would have been even stronger had it provided links or additional details regarding where this expert obtained his estimates. The story comprehensively describes the harms from each drug based on different uses and patient populations. We especially liked this quote: “Don’t believe that just because something is over-the-counter, it’s safe.” The story cites and links to reliable evidence sources, including a systematic review of randomized controlled trials on back pain published in the BMJ. There are no examples of disease mongering in the story. Sourcing is a very strong component of the article. The story quotes three pain experts from three different institutions as sources. No conflicts of interest were apparent. The main premise of the story was comparing which pain medication was the best for different types of pain. The comparisons are covered in depth with perspectives from three sources. It’s obvious from the story that all of the medications profiled have been widely available without a prescription for many decades. Aspirin, a modified version of salicyclic acid, was created by a Bayer chemist in 1897; acetaminophen followed in 1956; and ibuprofen in 1962. The story establishes that it’s responding to a reader question about three well-known and widely used medications. It also notes the gap between public perception about these drugs and what pain researchers think of them. Since this article was prompted by a reader question and includes comments from three expert sources, we are confident it isn’t based on a news release.
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41844
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Sen. Blumenthal “went around telling war stories” about Vietnam, talked of “people dying left and right, but my platoon marched forward.”
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Like a snowball rolling downhill, President Trump’s account of Sen. Blumenthal’s misstatements about his service record during the Vietnam War has grown more exaggerated over time.
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false
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military record, Vietnam,
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Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Marine Corps reservist during the Vietnam War, wrongly claimed years ago that he “served in Vietnam” and once spoke of the mistreatment of Vietnam veterans “when we returned.” Those misstatements are fair game for his political opponents to criticize.But President Donald Trump has stretched the facts about Blumenthal’s misstatements to absurd lengths.Most recently, amid Blumenthal’s criticism of Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the president falsely claimed Blumenthal “went around telling war stories,” claimed he “fought in Da Nang Province” and talked of “soldiers dying left and right as we battled up the hill.” Blumenthal never said any of those things.We generally let politicians fend for themselves when they are attacked for misstatements. When Trump tweeted in February 2017 that Blumenthal told a “major lie,” because he “never fought in Vietnam when he said for years he had,” we did not weigh in.But like a snowball rolling downhill, Trump’s account of Blumenthal’s misstatements has grown more exaggerated over time – particularly during Kavanaugh’s contentious confirmation hearings.So, here we will lay out the facts about Blumenthal’s time as a Marine reservist during – not in – the Vietnam War, and how those facts have been distorted.Blumenthal’s misleading statements about his military service during Vietnam first surfaced while he was running for the Senate in 2010 when the New York Times ran a story headlined “Richard Blumenthal’s Words on Vietnam Service Differ From History.”The story, which was published May 17, 2010, noted that during a rally in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 2003 in support of the military, Blumenthal talked about Vietnam War veterans and stated, “When we returned, we saw nothing like this. Let us do better by this generation of men and women.” And in 2008, the paper noted, Blumenthal told a group in Norwalk, “We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam.”But, as the newspaper documented, Blumenthal did not serve as a Marine in Vietnam. Blumenthal’s Selective Service record, published by the New York Times, showed that Blumenthal got at least five educational and occupational deferments from 1965 to 1970. He then enlisted in the Marine Reserve and served for six years stateside. The Marine Reserve was never deployed in Vietnam. (We should note that Trump also got five deferments, including a final one for bone spurs in his heels, during the Vietnam War. )The New York Times also found: “In at least eight newspaper articles published in Connecticut from 2003 to 2009, he is described as having served in Vietnam.” And yet, the paper wrote, “It does not appear that Mr. Blumenthal ever sought to correct those mistakes.”When the story came out, Blumenthal, then serving as Connecticut’s attorney general, told reporters, “On a few occasions I have misspoken about my service and I regret that, and I will take full responsibility. But I will not allow anyone to take a few misplaced words and impugn my record of service to this country.”Blumenthal added that any claims he made to have served in Vietnam were “absolutely unintentional — a few misplaced words.” He said that he usually tries to be more precise in saying that he served in the Marine Reserve “during” Vietnam rather than “in” Vietnam.Indeed, in the same 2008 speech in which he said he served “in Vietnam,” Blumenthal initially said he was “someone who served in the military during the Vietnam-era in the Marine Corps.” And during a debate in March 2010, the Times noted, Blumenthal responded to a question about Iran by saying, “Although I did not serve in Vietnam, I have seen firsthand the effects of military action, and no one wants it to be the first resort, nor do we want to mortgage the country’s future with a deficit that is ballooning out of control.”A week after publication of the Times story and his explanation that he had “misspoken,” Blumenthal offered a more full-throated apology, saying in a statement, “I have made mistakes and I am sorry. I truly regret offending anyone.” And he acknowledged, “At times when I have sought to honor veterans, I have not been as clear or precise as I should have been about my service in the Marine Corps Reserves.”As we said, Trump has on several occasions over the years ridiculed Blumenthal for his misstatements when talking about his service during Vietnam.The president ramped up those attacks after Blumenthal, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, questioned Kavanaugh’s credibility during the committee’s review of Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations that Kavanaugh sexually assault her in the summer of 1982.During a rally in Tennessee on Oct. 1, Trump unveiled a new nickname for Blumenthal, dubbing him “Da Nang Blumenthal.”Trump, Oct. 1: How about Blumenthal? Da Nang Blumenthal, we call him Da Nang Blumenthal. For 15 years, as the attorney general of Connecticut, he went around telling war stories. People dying left and right, but my platoon marched forward. He was never in Vietnam. It was a lie. And then he’s up there — then he’s up there saying, “We want the truth from Judge Kavanaugh.”The same day, during remarks on the new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, Trump continued the attack.Trump, Oct. 1: Look at some of these people asking the questions, OK. Look at Blumenthal, he lied about Vietnam. He didn’t just say, “Hey, I went to Vietnam.” No, no. For 15 years, he said he was a war hero. He fought in Da Nang Province. We call him “Da Nang Richard.” “Da Nang,” that’s his nickname, “Da Nang.” He never went to Vietnam. And he’s up there saying, “We need honesty, and we need integrity.” This guy lied when he was the attorney general of Connecticut. He lied. I don’t mean a little bit. And then when he got out — he actually dropped out the race and he won anyway, because Democrats always win in Connecticut. He won very close, probably the closest ever. … And when he got out and when he apologized, he was crying, the tears were all over the place, and now he acts like, “How dare you.”The following day, at a rally in Mississippi, Trump added a couple new wrinkles.Trump, Oct. 2: This guy lied about his service. He didn’t just say, “Gee, I was in the service.” No. He said, “I was in the Marines. Da Nang Province. Soldiers dying left and right as we battled up the hill.” This went on for 15 years when he was the attorney general of Connecticut. I thought he was a great war hero. And then it turned out he was never in Vietnam. He was in the Reserves. And I watched him two days ago. I watched him saying, “We need the truth. If we don’t have” — and here’s a guy who was saying people were dying all around him and he was never there. And then he cried. When they caught him, he cried like a baby. … And the reason he got elected is because in Connecticut it’s impossible for a Republican to get elected. And I did well there. But you can’t. He actually gave up the race. You’d thought he lost. You remember that? He, sort of, gave — he stopped campaigning. It was over. And then he won by three points.Again, Blumenthal in 2008 said, “We have learned something important since the days that I served in Vietnam.” And he said in 2003, “When we returned [from Vietnam], we saw nothing like this.” (Emphasis is ours. )But Blumenthal never said he fought in Da Nang Province. He never “went around telling war stories. ‘People dying left and right, but my platoon marched forward. '” He never talked about, “Soldiers dying left and right as we battled up the hill.”It’s also untrue that “when [Blumenthal] apologized, he was crying, the tears were all over the place,” or that, “When they caught him, he cried like a baby.”Here’s a video of Blumenthal’s initial response on May 18, 2010, to the New York Times story, in which he said, “I misspoke about my service.” No tears. And here’s a video of Blumenthal’s speech at the 2010 Connecticut State Democratic Convention on May 21, 2010. No crying. And here’s a video of Blumenthal talking to the media on May 24, 2010, after he released a statement apologizing for his “mistakes.” Again, no crying, no tears.Nor is it true that in 2010, Blumental “actually dropped out the race and he won anyway, because Democrats always win in Connecticut. He won very close, probably the closest ever.” Or, as Trump put it on Oct. 2, “He actually gave up the race. You’d thought he lost. You remember that? He, sort of, gave — he stopped campaigning. It was over. And then he won by three points.”Blumenthal never dropped out of the 2010 Senate race. And while a poll taken immediately after the Times story broke in 2010 showed that Blumenthal’s sizable lead had dwindled to just 3 percentage points, he actually won the general election by a dozen percentage points over his opponent, Republican Linda McMahon. That was by no means the “closest ever” Senate race in Connecticut history. As the Washington Post Fact Checker pointed out, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman won by a smaller margin in 1988 and 2006, as did Sen. Lowell Weicker in 1982.Blumental was reelected in 2016 by a nearly 29-point margin.In a tweet on Oct. 1, Blumenthal said Trump’s “ridiculous personal attacks are total nonsense — simply untrue.”A spokesman for Blumenthal also said there is a misperception that Blumenthal frequently mischaracterized his service record, though the New York Times article cited just one instance of Blumenthal saying he served “in Vietnam.” As we said, Blumenthal in the same speech more accurately stated he was “someone who served in the military during the Vietnam-era in the Marine Corps.”So to recap, based on what we know from the public record: Blumenthal did not say he was a “war hero.” He did not say he fought in Da Nang Province. He never bragged about battles. He never talked about “soldiers dying left and right as we battled up the hill.” He never said “people were dying all around him.” He never “went around telling war stories.” He apologized and said he “should have been more precise” in his language, but he didn’t “cry like a baby.” He never “dropped out of the race,” or “stopped campaigning.” He didn’t eke out a win “by three points”; he won by a dozen points. And that wasn’t nearly the “closest ever” Connecticut Senate race.Update, Oct. 10, 2018: Trump added even more preposterous exaggerations onto his claims about Blumenthal during a rally in Kansas on Oct. 6. In his latest remarks, Trump described Blumenthal as saying he tried twice to make heroic rescues as comrades were being shot all around him. Said Trump: “He talked about, when I was in Da Nang province in Vietnam and I was fighting up the hill and men are going left and right of me, they’re dying. They’re being struck by bullets, but I went back to their rescue. I went back and I got them, and then I made a second attempt, and bullets are going left and right and over my shoulders and they’re hitting my men.” Again, there is no public record of Blumenthal saying any of that.
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6803
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New Mexico seeks concussion safeguards for more youth sports.
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State health officials are seeking to shore up and standardize safeguards against brain injuries in youth sports beyond schools in non-scholastic athletic leagues and clubs.
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true
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Youth sports, Health, General News, Sports, New Mexico, Injuries
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Coaches and many youth athletes automatically would undergo training to detect signs of a concussion and understand the potential consequences of a brain injury under rules proposed by the New Mexico Department of Health. The agency has scheduled a public hearing later this month on the proposal requiring annual training about concussions not only of coaches but also parents and young athletes themselves — once they turn 11. Agency official were unavailable Friday for comment. Those children would sign a form each year that shows they completed brain-injury prevention training session linked to standards from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2010, New Mexico adopted far-reaching prevention and education measures to address concussions and potential brain injuries in school sports, and more recent legislation in 2017 extended training and education to student athletes. State Senator and high school teacher Bill Soules of Las Cruces said he sponsored the 2017 bill after conversations with students who felt left out of decisions about concussions in athletics. He said protocols for non-scholastic youth sports were not fully addressed at the time — and applauded the idea of expanding youth education. “The idea is that students have an awareness as to what the symptoms are of concussions because sometimes they don’t show up until one or two hours afterward, and the coach is long gone,” he said. The newly proposed brain injury rules echo many guidelines already in place at statewide youth sports organizations affiliated with national governing bodies, such as New Mexico Youth Soccer that oversees a long list of clubs and leagues across the state. Gloria Faber, executive director of New Mexico Youth Soccer, said the new state rules may be help independent youth sports groups keep up with evolving research on brain injuries and ensure that athletes take adequate time off after a concussion. She said standards for non-scholastic sports are especially important because many coaches are parent volunteers and competition begins at a young age. New Mexico’s proposed new rules include a standard sit-out period for symptoms of a concussion or brain injury — of at least 10 days. Players would return only with a written medical release. In 2015, a New Mexico judge overruled state concussion protocols to allow a high school football player in Rio Rancho to play in a title game after his parents challenged the school’s diagnosis.
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27775
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'Mob Wives' personality Big Ang died of cancer.
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Aside from the tweet, representatives for Raiola provided no further information about Big Ang’s condition, other than confirming she remained hospitalized in Manhattan and was “fighting.”
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true
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Entertainment, angela raiola, big ang, mob wives
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Update: Angela Raiola’s family has confirmed her death as of 3:01am on 18 February 2016: This is @vinniemedugno on behalf of the family of Angela Raiola, please see below: pic.twitter.com/wiuPApr9Lw — Angela Raiola (@biggangVH1) February 18, 2016 On 17 February 2016, multiple outlets reported that Mob Wives personality “Big Ang” (Angela Raiola) died of cancer at a Manhattan hospital: Big Ang, ‘Mob Wives’ reality star, has reportedly died at the age of 55: https://t.co/xF0UwhFoBX pic.twitter.com/fSx97jqRYy — Fuse TV (@fusetv) February 18, 2016 Initial reports, however, were conflicting (despite some big names in entertainment news having carried the story): Entertainment Tonight reporting Big Ang died, but my sources say she’s still alive. So gross to jump the gun for pvs pic.twitter.com/CfHjUnh8rF — Mark Graham (@unclegrambo) February 18, 2016 ETOnline originally reported: Angela Raiola, known as “Big Ang” on the TV show Mob Wives, died at age 55 in the hospital on Wednesday after a battle with stage 4 cancer, a family source confirmed to ET. In December, ET confirmed that Raiola’s throat cancer had returned. Several months earlier, in March, a lemon-size tumor was previously discovered and removed from her throat in March 2015. Later, in June, she underwent the same procedure for the right side of her throat as well. Later on 17 February 2016, that web site walked back the report, updating with the following statement: UPDATE: Though a source close to the family confirmed Angela Raiola’s death to ET on Wednesday night, Mob Wives creator and Raiola’s sister Jenn Graziano now says, “At this time that is a false rumor. I am here with the entire family and all her friends and they ask for your continued support and prayers. We will keep everyone updated.” A tweet published late on 17 February 2016 by the account @BigAngOfficial denied the claim: pic.twitter.com/L8CZyCWTdJ — Angela Raiola (@BigAngOfficial) February 18, 2016 The account also retweeted two tweets lambasting ET for their premature report: Let’s get cable to drop @etnow! TWEET #FIREET & #SUEET NOW! EVERY TWEET IS A PRAYER AND SUPPORT FOR BIG ANG! #FIREET #SUEET — Mob Wives (@MobWivesLS) February 18, 2016 CONFIRMED: @etnow is the source who spread the rumor about Big Ang! #SueET #FireET — Mob Wives (@MobWivesLS) February 18, 2016
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28124
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After shaving her legs, a woman developed a life-threatening skin infection that required the removal of massive amounts of skin and muscle tissue.
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What's true: A woman developed a life-threatening skin condition after she cut herself shaving. What's false: She did not get sick immediately, but several days later. The original story omitted the fact that the woman's immune system was already compromised.
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true
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Medical, daily mail, flesh eating bacteria, necrotizing fasciitis
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In April 2017, British tabloid the Daily Mail reported that a woman had developed a life-threatening skin infection after shaving in 2012: Dana Sedgewick, 44, from Sheffield, trimmed her pubic area with a brand new razor but ended up cutting a spot on her groin. Her body almost immediately went into shock, causing a red rash on her legs before they turned black from necrotising fasciitis — a flesh-eating infection. Rushed to intensive care, doctors operated to remove as much of the rotting skin as they could – but she developed sepsis during the procedure. She was placed in a coma as her family were told she had just a 30 percent chance of survival as her kidneys failed and her heart stopped four times. Necrotizing fasciitis is often referred to by the misnomer “flesh-eating bacteria.” It is often caused by common bacteria like Streptococcus, E. coli, and Staphylococcus — but rather than actually consuming flesh, they release a toxin that can destroy skin and other surrounding cells. Necrotizing fasciitis happens when those bacteria infect a layer of connective tissue underneath the skin called fascia. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes the condition this way: In cases of necrotizing fasciitis, bacteria spread quickly once they enter the body. They infect the fascia, connective tissue that surround muscles, nerves, fat, and blood vessels. The infection also damages the tissues next to the fascia. Sometimes toxins (poisons) made by these bacteria destroy the tissue they infect, causing it to die. When this happens, the infection is very serious and those infected can lose limbs or die. The infection can often begin with an extremely minor cut to the skin — something like a small cut during shaving would certainly count. A 2009 case report described one patient whose infection purportedly developed from the tiny prick of an acupuncture needle. Necrotizing fasciitis is uncommon. That same case report estimated that “most primary care physicians will be involved with managing at least one case during their time in practice, but [it is] infrequent enough for most to be unfamiliar with the disease.” The condition is less rare, however, in people with compromised immune systems, which make them unable to prevent bacteria from breaching into the fascia in the first place. We spoke to Sedgewick via Facebook. She told us that, while she has no personal recollection of the illness because she blacked out, the Daily Mail report appeared to mostly match what had been told to her by her nurses and doctors. However, she said, it also omitted key information. Most significantly, the numerous tabloid stories omitted the fact that her immune system was severely compromised when her infection began. The writer also took liberties with the timeline. While the story lead with the claim that she “almost immediately went into shock” after shaving, the reality is that she first felt ill two days later. Sedgewick, who still requires continued operations twenty-six surgeries later, told us that Daily Mail never interviewed her, but that their story was based on an account she told a UK press agency. She told us she had hoped to raise awareness about sepsis, a life-threatening complication of infections, but that the press agency’s process had led to the omission of information about her immune system and the sensationalization of some details.
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38486
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The United Nations has backed President Obama’s secret plan to nationalize local police departments.
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UN Backs Secret Obama Takeover of Police
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false
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Crime / Police, Obama
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The UN hasn’t backed Obama’s secret plan to takeover local police departments — and we couldn’t find evidence to prove that a “secret plan” like that exists. These rumors stem from a statement released by Maina Kiai, a human rights attorney from Kenya who was appointed by the UN Human Rights Commission to research and report on “the rights of freed of peaceful assembly and of association” in the United States in July 2016. One paragraph of Kiai’s lengthy statement drew speculation about the UN backing Obama’s police takeover: “The Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has provided oversight and recommendations for improvement of police services in a number of cities with consent decrees. This is one of the most effective ways to reduce discrimination in law enforcement and it needs to be beefed up and increased to cover as many of the 18,000-plus local law enforcement jurisdictions.” A website called Lifezette started rumors that Kiai’s statement meant the UN had backed a nationalized police force in the United States. In an article published August 4th under the headline, “UN Backs Secret Obama Takeover of Police,” the website reports: (That quote was from) United Nations Rapporteur Maina Kai on July 27, a representative of the U.N. Human Rights Council, who on the tail-end of touring the U.S., endorsed a little-known and yet highly controversial practice by the Justice Department to effect a federal takeover of local police and corrections departments. The story’s first mistake is that it mischaracterizes exactly what a “special rapporteur” is and falsely implied in the headline that Kiai’s statement amounted to a UN endorsement. In reality, a special rapporteur is an independent expert that the UN Human Rights Council has appointed to examine and report back on events unfolding in a country, or on a particular human rights theme. Then, the UN Human Rights Commission reviews and critiques that report and decides whether or not to act on it, according to special procedures of the Human Rights Council: The Commission on Human Rights exercises oversight over the work of the experts while keeping in mind that the experts are irremovable, independent and are immune from legal process. It examines their reports and passes resolutions either welcoming or criticizing the work of the expert, or simply takes note of their action …. Simply put, a special rapporteur does not speak for the UN; Kiai’s statement doesn’t amount to the UN “backing” anything. rapporteurLifezette explains Obama’s “secret plans” to take control of local police departments by issuing a flurry of the “consent decrees” (which Kiai endorsed in his statement): The consent decrees are already being implemented in Newark, New Jersey; Miami, Florida; Los Angeles, California; Ferguson, Missouri; Chicago, Illinois; and other municipalities… In short, the much-feared nationalization of local police departments is already being initiated by the Obama administration’s Justice Department. And somehow nobody noticed. But those claims about where consent decrees have been issued are misleading, and in some instances they’re false. The Los Angeles consent decree was issued under Bill Clinton in the 1990s — not Obama. The Miami consent decree was issued due to violations of the Clean Water Act — it had nothing do with police. Chicago, meanwhile, asked for a DOJ investigation of police tactics in December 2015, and the review is ongoing (no consent decree has been issued). The story did, however, correctly report the Ferguson and Newark consent decrees reached under Obama. But a Washington Post review of the number of DOJ investigations launched and the number of consent decrees reached over the last two decades don’t support the idea that Obama is secretly trying to use them to create a nationalized police force: In the past two decades, the Justice Department has launched 67 civil rights investigations of police departments. Nine remain unresolved. Of the completed investigations, 24 were closed without reform agreements, meaning investigators did not have sufficient evidence to prove civil rights abuses or the agencies informally resolved the problems, officials said. In eight investigations, Justice documented patterns of civil rights abuses and won promises from the departments to reform. Those cases were settled out of court with no independent or federal oversight. Twenty-six investigations — a little more than half of them since President Obama took office — have led to the most rigorous outcome: binding agreements tracked by monitors. More than half were consent decrees, meaning they were approved and managed in federal court. In the end, there doesn’t seem to be sufficient evidence to prove that Obama is using consent decrees to secretly takeover the country’s police forces. And the UN hasn’t endorsed that — even though a special rapporteur for the UN Human Rights Commission did. Comments
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11521
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UAB Optometrist Improves Treatment and Care for Patients with Dry Eye
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This is a lay-friendly news release touting the benefits of lifitegrast (marketed as Xiidra), a newly approved prescription drug for the treatment of dry eye. It would have been stronger with some quantified details on the benefits and a better description of the clinical trials the drug’s recent FDA approval is based on. Although this is not the only product available for treatment of dry eye, the news release does not say anything about the others while claiming that this is the first prescription drug for dry eye. And there was no mention of the cost of the product. As a result, a reader does not have enough information to formulate an informed opinion about the product. Though dry eye rarely results in permanent vision loss, it can lead to “pain, ulcers, or scars on the cornea, and some loss of vision,” according to the National Eye Institute. Dry eye can also make it difficult to use a computer or read. Thus, treatments can be key to improving quality of life. The drug’s approval is a significant boon for Shire, the manufacturer. Analysts predict it may become a blockbuster (meaning sales in excess of $1 billion) by 2022. With such a potentially wide customer base, claims about its benefits — particularly in relationship to other available over-the-counter and prescriptions treatment options — should be carefully scrutinized.
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false
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Academic medical center news release
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The news release does not mention cost. We were unable to find any cost information online after a brief Google search. The benefits were summarized this way: “In all four studies, eye dryness was significantly reduced, with two of the studies showing improvements at week two. Results from inferior corneal staining tests — used by physicians to detect abrasions on the cornea — showed improvement in three of the four studies.” How was eye dryness measured? How reduced was “significantly reduced?” How was “improvement” of abrasions measured? How improved was the improvement? The news release does not say. No mention is made of possible harms caused by the drug. But the package insert for the drug, also known as Xiidra, notes that they exist: “The most common side effects of Xiidra include eye irritation, discomfort, or blurred vision when the drops are applied to the eyes, and an unusual taste sensation (dysgeusia).” It appears that some of the side effects are the same as the symptoms that the drug is supposed to relieve. The news release describes the trials that the FDA looked at: “Nichols and a team of researchers studied 1,181 patients, of whom 1,067 received lifitegrast in four placebo-controlled 12-week trials. Signs and symptoms were assessed at baseline and at weeks two, six and 12.” The release would have been more helpful if it had noted whether the studies were blinded since this could be a significant factor in determining the outcome (redness), something that would be subjective and could be influenced by whether researchers knew who was getting the drug or placebo. An astute reader who followed up and looked up the studies (found at http://www.shiretrials.com/en/studies, choose “Dry Eye Syndrome” from the drop down menu) would find that in one of four trials the drug was no better than placebo in reducing corneal abrasions. In general, the descriptions of the trials were superficial with only the term “placebo” giving us any information about how they were set up. Since there are other remedies for dry eye available, why weren’t they — instead of placebo — studied against this new drug? Optometrist Kelly Nichols is quoted as saying, “There is hope for dry eye patients worldwide.” Given that dry eye is not fatal and rarely results in permanent vision loss, that statement might be considered hyperbolic. The news release also states, without attribution, that dry eye affects more than 16 million adults in the United States. A search of the National Eye Institute’s website finds no total figure for U.S. adults, but the figures it does offer raise questions about whether the 16 million figure is accurate: “Elderly people frequently experience dryness of the eyes, but dry eye can occur at any age. Nearly five million Americans 50 years of age and older are estimated to have dry eye. Of these, more than three million are women and more than one and a half million are men. Tens of millions more have less severe symptoms. Dry eye is more common after menopause. Women who experience menopause prematurely are more likely to have eye surface damage from dry eye.” There is a small risk that the release, when encouraging patients to visit the specific eye clinic at UAB, could lead to “indication creep” as more and more people with very mild symptoms go to that clinic for diagnosis and treatment. The news release acknowledges that the person quoted was doing work for Shire plc, the company that makes the product. The release was correct to include this funder as a potential conflict of interest. It would also have been good to note that study was conducted by by the UAB Center for Translational Research. The news release notes that researchers are working to find new treatments for dry eye, with more than 30 studies under way. But it makes no mention of the currently available treatments or how this product compares with them. Other available treatments including artificial tears; Restasis, a drop that that induces tear production; and there are many other eye drops on the market that treat some of the side effects of eye dryness. Though the news release does not say anything about availability, it does note that the FDA has approved the product. The drug was approved July 12, 2016. The news release claims that the product “is the only prescription eye drop indicated for the treatment of both signs and symptoms of dry eye, and it is the first new dry eye prescription drop approved in the last 13 years.” That’s partly true, as the fact-checking site PolitiFact might say. There are other prescription and over-the-counter eye drops available for treating the signs and symptoms of dry eye. Restasis, a drug that stimulates tear production, was approved in 2003, so the claim that Xiidra is the first prescription drug “approved in the last 13 years” for dry eye is true, to our knowledge. The news release body does not engage in unjustifiable language. However, the headline says that a “UAB Optometrist improves treatment and care for patients with dry eye.” Though that may well be true, the news release does not offer evidence to support that assertion.
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9500
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To Treat Depression, Try a Digital Therapist
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This story heralds the evolution of internet-based therapies for treating mild to moderate depression. It summarizes several recent studies, which find that a combination of interacting with both a “smart” internet app and human therapists competes well with more traditional, face-to-face strategies. The story hits a lot of the right notes, employing independent sources, making clear that efficacy studies are still relatively sparse, and giving readers access to actual study texts. Missing from the story is any mention of potential downsides of internet-based therapies, an omission that seems important given the traditional, highly interpersonal nature of cognitive behavioral therapy. Initial research suggests that internet-based approaches to therapy can work for individuals with minor or moderate mental health problems. If that good news continues to hold over the course of further studies, such a strategy would be a boon in areas of the world with few mental health resources.
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true
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depression
|
We’re rating this one a cautious “Satisfactory.” The story offers no information about the cost to a patient of a digital therapist, but it does reflect on the cost of creating and maintaining a similar app. This story does a good job of summarizing the benefits that accrued in the course of several studies. Risks are not broached here. This is an issue for a topic such as this, as one could imagine readers expressing concern about the efficacy of a non-human “therapist.” The story actually acknowledges that concern in its second paragraph (“It [the use of technology] might seem surprising, since therapy, more than many other kinds of medicine, is so focused on the relationship between patient and therapist.” But it never digs into the possible debits of wrestling with moderate depression online. We also think the story should have discussed the risk patients being victimized in an open source or relatively open chat room or other online group setting. One important element of psychiatry is privacy and patient confidentiality. Three studies are summarized in this text and, although those summaries are brief, the story allows readers to link to the texts themselves for more details. At least one of those studies, a meta-analysis, gathered the small number of experiments (13) that made explicit comparisons between internet-delivered and face-to-face cognitive behavior therapy. The text makes it clear that internet-based therapies may be more valuable for individuals with mild to moderate depression than for persons with severe depression, who would be more likely to seek face-to-face therapy regimens. But, in a word of caution, does that encourage people to overdiagnose themselves? That’s something to consider. Another cautious “Satisfactory.” One source is clearly identified as someone independent of one of the studies cited. Two others experts are not so identified but are not listed as coauthors on any of the studies. Funding for those studies is not mentioned. It’s worth noting here that two of the sources seem to be heads of institutes that are involved in the development of technological/Internet-based treatment approaches; both could benefit financially from being able to treat many more patients online. The piece discusses several interventions, and offers a graphic representation of recovery rates for individuals in Great Britain across five therapeutic modalities. But, there is no mention of psychiatric medications. Since those are frequently helpful in short-term situations and at least for moderate depression, they should have been included in the comparisons. The story identifies several therapeutic apps and, in a video, shows one individual using a “mobile therapy platform” to text and videochat with a therapist. Several comments in the story about the continuing evolution of these applications suggest that these strategies remain works in progress. A bit of historical information in the story makes it clear that online therapeutic agents have been around—in various stages of development—for more than a decade. This story integrates studies and sources, making reliance on news releases unlikely.
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16246
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Facebook post Says the 1956 Republican Party platform supported equal pay, the minimum wage, asylum for refugees, protections for unions and more.
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The meme says the 1956 Republican Party platform supported equal pay, the minimum wage, asylum for refugees, protections for unions and more. That’s generally correct. However, it’s worth noting that other elements of the 1956 platform were considered conservative for that era. Also, some of the issues have changed considerably between 1956 and 2012, such as the shift from focusing on post-war refugees to focusing on illegal immigration. The claim is accurate but needs clarification or additional information.
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true
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Immigration, National, Poverty, Social Security, Unions, Women, Workers, Facebook posts,
|
"Liberals are getting nostalgic about the 1950s Republican agenda -- at least judging by the social media meme several readers recently sent us. The meme, created by the group Occupy Democrats, summarized a few planks from the 1956 Republican Party platform, followed by the wistful comment, ""Share if you miss the good old days!"" Here are the seven planks listed in the meme, which to today’s ear sound more like Democratic talking points: 1. Provide federal assistance to low-income communities; 2. Protect Social Security; 3. Provide asylum for refugees; 4. Extend minimum wage; 5. Improve unemployment benefit system so it covers more people; 6. Strengthen labor laws so workers can more easily join a union; 7. Assure equal pay for equal work regardless of sex. We wondered whether the meme accurately describes these elements of the 1956 platform, and if so, whether the 1956 document contrasts sharply with the most recent party platform in 2012. So we took a closer look. What the 1956 platform said We located a copy of the official party platform from 1956, when Dwight D. Eisenhower was running (successfully, as it turned out) for his second term as president. All told, the meme is generally accurate in portraying these seven elements of the 1956 platform, with some caveats. On federal assistance to low-income communities, the 1956 platform said the party would ""promote fully the Republican-sponsored Rural Development Program to broaden the operation and increase the income of low income farm families and help tenant farmers."" On protecting Social Security, the platform touted the Eisenhower administration’s extension of Social Security to 10 million more workers and benefits hikes for 6.5 million Americans. On refugees, the platform spotlighted the administration’s work in sponsoring the Refugee Relief Act ""to provide asylum for thousands of refugees, expellees and displaced persons,"" promising its ""wholehearted support"" for additional efforts. M. Christine Anderson, a Xavier University historian, noted that many refugees were coming from communist countries in Eastern Europe, so this wasn't an especially controversial issue during the Cold War era. On the minimum wage, the platform notes that the Eisenhower administration raised the minimum wage for more than 2 million workers. It urged extending minimum-wage protections ""to as many more workers as is possible and practicable."" On improving the unemployment benefit system, the 1956 platform touted the administration’s actions to bring unemployment insurance to 4 million additional workers, and backed efforts to ""improve the effectiveness of the unemployment insurance system."" On strengthening unions, the platform says the ""protection of the right of workers to organize into unions and to bargain collectively is the firm and permanent policy of the Eisenhower Administration."" That’s full-throated rhetoric in support of unions -- but the policy reality is a bit more nuanced, said Jennifer Delton, a Skidmore College historian and author of Rethinking the 1950s. The platform did not support unions’ key agenda item that year -- a repeal of states’ ability to pass ""right to work"" laws that would ban compulsory union membership. On equal pay for equal work regardless of sex, the platform says the Eisenhower administration will ""continue to fight … (to) assure equal pay for equal work regardless of sex."" What the 2012 platform says The party’s 2012 platform is pretty different, both in tone and substance. On federal assistance to low-income communities, the 2012 platform takes a much more skeptical view. ""The federal government’s entire system of public assistance should be reformed to ensure that it promotes work,"" the 2012 platform says, arguing that the system has become overly bureaucratized and discourages work. The 2012 platform also takes a shot at federal low-income housing policy, saying the government ""has spent billions more on poorly designed and ineffective housing assistance programs."" On Social Security, the platform says current retirees or those approaching retirement should continue to receive Social Security as currently configured. However, it goes on to say that demographic and financial challenges mean that the program is ""long overdue for major change, not just another legislative stopgap that postpones a day of reckoning,"" including the possibility of ""personal investment accounts as supplements to the system."" The 2012 platform doesn’t address refugees specifically, but it does address immigration. It criticizes President Barack Obama for creating ""a backdoor amnesty program unrecognized in law (and) granting worker authorization to illegal aliens."" It also says that ""granting amnesty only rewards and encourages more law-breaking,"" and it promises to ""create humane procedures to encourage illegal aliens to return home voluntarily, while enforcing the law against those who overstay their visas."" The 2012 platform doesn’t mention the minimum wage specifically, but it does place an emphasis on free-market business practices rather than government regulation of labor markets, laying the blame for the nation’s weak economic recovery on ""unprecedented uncertainty in the American free enterprise system due to the overreaching policies of the current administration."" Even accounting for the nuances of the 1956 platform, the clearest contrast between the two platforms may be in their approach to labor unions. The 2012 platform offers no rhetorical niceties, accusing the Obama administration of ""clinging to antiquated notions of confrontation and concentrating power in the Washington offices of union elites"" and of turning the National Labor Relations Board into ""a partisan advocate for Big Labor, using threats and coercion outside the law to attack businesses."" The 2012 platform doesn’t mention two of the meme’s seven items from 1956 -- unemployment benefits and equal pay for women. The bottom line, then, is that on most of these issues, the GOP moved to the right between 1956 and 2012, though the degree of that shift has varied somewhat issue by issue. What historians say We asked scholars whether the contrast between the two platforms is noteworthy, and they generally agreed that it was. Delton noted that the Republican Party in the 1950s was divided between moderates (including Eisenhower) and conservatives. She said the moderates controlled the process of platform-writing in 1956, but they threw a few bones to conservatives in certain portions of the document. For instance, the platform said the government wouldn’t sign a treaty or enter into an international agreement in violation of individual rights -- an issue that continues to energize conservatives decades later -- and there’s a plank about a balanced budget, which was seen as a conservative position. The seven items listed in the meme were supported by moderates, Delton said. At the time, she said, ""conservatives would have focused, with horror, on the very items the meme highlights."" Eisenhower was facing a Democratic Congress in 1956 and didn’t want to try to reverse the New Deal, Anderson said. ""If the point is that Eisenhower was not as extreme as Republicans today, it is accurate."" Our ruling The meme says the 1956 Republican Party platform supported equal pay, the minimum wage, asylum for refugees, protections for unions and more. That’s generally correct. However, it’s worth noting that other elements of the 1956 platform were considered conservative for that era. Also, some of the issues have changed considerably between 1956 and 2012, such as the shift from focusing on post-war refugees to focusing on illegal immigration. The claim is accurate but needs clarification or additional information, so"
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6173
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Some China cities close poultry markets amid bird flu fears.
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Several Chinese cities have shut down their poultry markets in the wake of a bird flu outbreak that has killed at least two dozen people this year across China.
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true
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Health, Flu, Business, Bird flu, China, Asia Pacific
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Live poultry sales have now been suspended in Changsha, the capital of central China’s Hunan province, as well as markets across the eastern province of Zhejiang, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday, as authorities deal with dozens of new cases of H7N9 bird flu. Nearly 300 markets and slaughterhouses were shut down in the southwestern Chinese city of Suining, where authorities are also cracking down on unauthorized poultry businesses. Xinhua reported that 21 people in Jiangsu province died in January after contracting H7N9. Hunan authorities have reported at least five deaths this year, and an infant girl has died in southwestern Yunnan province. A major H7N9 bird flu outbreak in humans first struck China in March 2013, killing more than 40 people and devastating the poultry industry. H7N9 is considered less virulent than the H5N1 strain, blamed by the World Health Organization for hundreds of deaths worldwide over the last decade. Most people infected with H7N9 are believed to contract it by touching infected poultry or entering contaminated areas, according to a WHO alert published last month. Experts do not believe the virus can be spread widely between humans, the WHO said. In Guangzhou, China’s third-largest city, more than 30 percent of the live poultry markets were found to be contaminated with H7N9, state media reported Saturday. Authorities in Guangzhou have announced temporary three-day suspensions of the poultry trade to try to contain the virus.
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3998
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Virginia health officials warn of possible measles exposure.
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Virginia health officials are mounting an effort to identify people who may have recently been exposed to a person with measles.
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true
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Health, Measles, General News, Virginia, Richmond
|
The Virginia Department of Health said in a news release Saturday that the person visited the Richmond International Airport Tuesday night and a doctor’s office in suburban Richmond on Thursday afternoon. The department posted detailed instructions online about what to do if you were at either of the locations during certain time frames. The directions depend on whether or not you have been vaccinated against measles. Based on the date of exposure, the health department said people infected could develop symptoms as late as January 11, 2020. Measles is a highly contagious illness spread though coughing, sneezing and contact with droplets from the nose, mouth or throat of an infection person. Symptoms include a fever, runny nose, watery red eyes and a cough, followed by a rash that begins on the face and spreads all over the body.
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11136
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Is my chemo working? Scans may give faster answer
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"As the scores below indicate, this report on the use of PET scans to determine the effectiveness of cancer treatment oversells its promise, under-reports its limits and creates an emotional context that exaggerates both. This is not to suggest that this use of PET scans isn’t promising and worth a story. It is. But the story needs balance and context and a kind of basic ""reality check"" to help readers understand their value. This is especially important in any story involving the promise of any new cancer treatment, because the audience for these stories is understandably full of hope and fear. Following best practices in sourcing could have mitigated at least some of the story’s shortcomings. But there is a much more fundamental problem. The reporter fails to acknowledge that PET scans, like many forms of nuclear imaging, are currently the subject of fierce debate about their costs and benefits. The volume of this debate is increasing as the leaders of health care reform begin to look closely at the role of expensive new technologies in driving up healthcare costs. Advocates of these technologies–industry, hospitals, physician groups, patient groups–have strong motivation to get positive stories about their benefits into the national debate. It’s hard to imagine how a report on wider use of PET scans could be published in 2009 without acknowledging this context. Oddly, the best case would be that the reporter and editor were simply unaware of the backstory. Because if they understood it but decided not to mention it and produced a one-sided report nonetheless. . .well, one is reluctant to speculate further. This is a good example of a rising challenge–and opportunity–that health and medical reporters now face. With health care reform on the table, propagandists from all sides will be trying to use the media to publish stories favorable to their political or financial interests. The risk of reporters being used, which is always present, is greater than ever. Which is to say this is a moment when skilled, independent, savvy, knowledgeable health care and medical journalism could have significant impact on public health. It can provide guidance to decision makers they will not get from industry or other interest groups. Let’s hope the nation’s health and medical journalists can rise to the challenge. Sadly, the team that produced this story did not."
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false
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"The story does not mention costs of PET scans under the proposed use. In this case in particular–where the costs and benefits of PET scans are in hot dispute–this is inexplicable. Conventional PET scan cost is estimated at $3,000 to $5,000. The story makes brief references to two studies, one involving 28 people in Korea, the other 7 patients in the U.S. The reporter cites positive results of the studies, implying efficacy. But no caveats other than small study size are offered to provide a more balanced view. The report should have mentioned the radiation doses used in PET scans. While these are not large–about the amount of a typical X-ray–they are worth noting. PET scans are not indicated for women who are pregnant. If multiple PET scans were to become part of a treatment or diagnositic protocol the radiation dose could become significant. In addition, there is no mention of the possibility that a scan might erroneously identify a treatment as ineffective, causing an unwarranted and harmful change in the treatment approach. The story is based on extremely early clinical testing of the technique. Its safety and efficacy are uNPRoven. This should have been stated early, plainly and uncategorically. On a positive note, the story eventually does say the research is in early stages, with fewer than a dozen human studies into the most promising type of scan, all too small to be conclusive. The story makes brief references to two studies, one involving 28 people in Korea, the other 7 patients in the U.S. The positive aspects of the results are used to imply efficacy, but no caveats are offered. The story dramatizes one patient’s story in a way that overemphasizes the emotional impact not of treatment, but of having to wait for weeks or longer to learn whether a cancer treatment is working. It suggests the novel use of PET scans could ""shorten [the patient’s] stay in purgatory"" by providing an answer ""possibly within days."" The writer uses loaded language to describe the patient’s status, and at the end includes a vivid, dramatic quote in which the patient who did not have access to this PET scan technology compares his situation to ""having a rope tied around you and you’re leaning over a canyon at about a 45-degree angle, and you don’t know if someone is going to pull you back in. . . "" We have no idea whether the patient is receiving the experimental treatment. We learn later that he was diagnosed in 2005 and that with conventional treatments his cancer has remained stable. The overall effect is to magnifity the problem and overpromise a solution–a nearly ""perfect"" illustration of disease-mongering. Sources include: No independent sources are consulted to provide context or less enthusiastic viewpoints. The story did not report whether any of the sources has a financial conflict of interest. While the story demonstrates the shortcomings of current methods of determining cancer treatments effectiveness, it fails to say what those methods are. The treatment is experimental and not currently available. Yet it is not until late in the story that we learn the research is very preliminary. The caveats appear eventually but should have framed the story from the outset. The story allows advocates to offer unsupported speculation that the government may agree to pay for the procedure in ""two or three years"" and new PET technologies will transform cancer treatment within 10 years. The use of the anecdote in the lede implies availability. The report makes clear that PET scans are commonly used, but [with the exception of lymphoma] not to determine whether a cancer treatment is working. We can’t be sure if the story relied on a news release."
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36789
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A mall Santa Claus and his elves beat up a child molester after a little girl confided in him that all she wanted was for her stepfather to stop touching her at night.
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Did a Mall Santa and His Elves Beat Up an Accused Child Molester?
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false
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Crime / Police, Fact Checks, Viral Content
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A persistent and untrue story about a mall Santa Claus beating up a child molester after a little girl said “all she wanted was for her stepdad to stop touching her at night” appears every Christmas:Santa beats up a child molester while saying his famous catchphrases pic.twitter.com/mEUd1EfwYB— That Happened (@ThatDefHappened) November 3, 2017The story seems to have first appeared at ThugLifeVideos.com and has since been copied and pasted across the online world without its original disclaimer:As well as more serious content, we sometimes share the odd satire stories for your entertainment.This falls under “odd satire.” The story originally appeared under the headline, “Kid Tells Mall Santa a Secret; Seconds Later Him and His Elves Are Beating Up Child Molester,” and it has been shared hundreds of thousands of times on social media:66 year-old Nicholas Cooper was taken into custody for assaulting Kris Kane, 38, after an unnamed young girl confided in him. She said that she ‘wanted to tell Santa a secret’ and that ‘all she wanted was for her stepdad to stop touching her at night’.Kane was waiting by the side of the Southridge grottos for his stepdaughter to finish talking to Santa. And when he saw the fake bearded and red suited Cooper come towards him, he thought he was in for a chat about what gifts she wanted… But he couldn’t have been more wrong.“Santa didn’t say nothing. He just grabbed the back of the guy’s skull and headbutted him REAL hard,” an eyewitness said. “Then Kringle got on top of him and just started pummeling him. He was laughing and screaming ‘Ho! Ho! Ho! Motherf*cker!’ over and over again. It was damn surreal.”The witness goes on: “That ain’t even the damnedest thing, though. While Santa’s punching the cr*p out of this guy, three or four of his little elves ran over and started kicking him. I mean, they’ve only got little legs – but they were aiming for his head. He was NOT left feeling very festive after that!”ThugLifeVideos.com reported that the mall Santa beating took place at Southridge Mall in Greendale, Wisconsin, but we found no credible local reports about the incident. Also, no sexual assault criminal charges have been brought against anyone with the festive name “Kris Kane,” according to online court records.Given all that, we’re confidently calling this one “fiction.”
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17467
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Brian Kilmeade Says Colorado food stamp recipients can use ATMs to get cash to buy marijuana.
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Fox News’ Kilmeade said ATMs give food stamp recipients in Colorado a way to buy marijuana. The technology behind government electronic benefit cards blocks that. While the card could have cash value from another program such as TANF, no ATM would dispense cash based on a person’s food stamp allowance.
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false
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Drugs, Welfare, PunditFact, Marijuana, Brian Kilmeade,
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"We are a scant few weeks into the era of legal recreational pot in Colorado and so far, there are no reports of increased driving accidents or violence. But Fox News found a different point of concern. Brian Kilmeade, co-host of Fox and Friends, honed in on the connection between pot and food stamps, otherwise known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. ""Can people collecting food stamps in Colorado add marijuana to their shopping list?"" Kilmeade asked. ""Right now, the answer is yes. Because there’s nothing blocking using government benefit cards in pot shop ATMs."" In this fact-check, we are looking specifically at Kilmeade’s claim that people receiving food stamps in Colorado can use an ATM to get cash that they can use in turn to purchase marijuana. We reached out to Fox News and got no response. Federal and Colorado law says that food stamps must be used for food (hat tip here to Media Matters). The U.S. Department of Agriculture says ""SNAP benefits can never be withdrawn as cash."" So if SNAP benefits can’t be withdrawn as cash, how can people use them at Colorado pot shops? They can’t. Colorado gives SNAP recipients a Quest Card, which is basically a debit card. It’s a cover-all card used by people who sign up for SNAP, low-income energy assistance, welfare (Temporary Aid for Needy Families or TANF) or any other aid they might qualify for. People receiving benefits from those other programs can use their Quest Card at an ATM to get cash. But not SNAP, and the card knows the difference, officials with the Colorado Department of Human Services told us. ""The card is programmed to distinguish between a cash withdrawal for TANF, or any other cash benefit, and a food purchase with SNAP dollars,"" said Dan Drayer, the department’s communications director. ""There’s no way they can get SNAP benefits from a machine."" Kilmeade would have been more correct if he had focused on another federal benefit -- Temporary Assistance For Needy Families, or TANF. Nothing would prevent a person with a Quest Card with TANF money on it from using the card in any ATM to get cash, which they could then use to buy marijuana. Two final points. First, marijuana stores do have ATMs. ""Due to the lack of access to banking services for cannabis businesses, purchases generally must be done in cash,"" said Taylor West, deputy director of the National Cannabis Industry Association, a trade group. Second, a SNAP benefit card will only work with foods that are the approved by the USDA. A rumor that food stamps could be used to buy marijuana brownies falls flat because no food that can be eaten in the store, laced with pot or otherwise, would be on the government’s list. Our ruling Fox News’ Kilmeade said ATMs give food stamp recipients in Colorado a way to buy marijuana. The technology behind government electronic benefit cards blocks that. While the card could have cash value from another program such as TANF, no ATM would dispense cash based on a person’s food stamp allowance."
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33401
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New Year's is the day of the year on which the greatest number of people are killed in automobile accidents.
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It should be noted that although traffic-related deaths may increase around certain holidays, the number of fatalities across the entire 17-year period covered by the study still averaged 117 per day. As Allan Williams of the IIHS cautioned, “While more deaths do occur on some of the holidays, the toll of fatalities is relentless every day, all year long.”
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false
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Automobiles, new year's, new year's eve, Traffic Accidents
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Many a motorist who has set out to drive somewhere on New Year’s Day has departed to an emphatic chorus of “Be careful!” admonitions from relatives, friends, and acquaintances, the presumption being that New Year’s is a particularly dangerous day to be out on public roads. The combination of a holiday noted for alcoholic consumption among its revelers falling at a time of year when daylight hours are short and winter weather makes for less than ideal driving conditions is presumed to pose an especially high risk for motorists. But is New Year’s Day actually the most dangerous day for driving? While the general concept of “danger” is difficult to quantify, if we define it to mean “the day of the year that typically sees the greatest number of automobile accident-related deaths,” New Year’s Day is not the most dangerous day of the year. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) analyzed data from the federal Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) for the seventeen-year span from 1986 to 2002 and calculated the average number of people who died in automobile crashes for every date of the year. The results showed that in number of fatalities, January 1 ranked lower than the days immediately preceding the Christmas and Fourth of July holidays, and not significantly higher than several days in early to mid-August: When we ran the same stats ourselves for the year 2012, we found a similar pattern: The days with the highest numbers of traffic fatalities were primarily Saturdays that typically fell between the beginning and end of the summer driving season (mid-June to late August) and often coincided with mid-year holidays and celebrations (Cinco de Mayo, Memorial Day, 4th of July), but New Year’s Day itself ranked well down the list, tied with two other days (September 15 and October 20) for 18th place. The overwhelming preponderance of high-fatality traffic days on this list also fell on Sundays: We note for the sake of thoroughness that this chart is based on absolute figures, not relative ones. A significant factor behind why summer months correspond to higher numbers of traffic fatalities is because those are the months in which the total number of miles driven by motorists reaches its peak for the year (while January and February represent the opposite extreme), so the fatal accident rate (i.e., fatalities per mile driven) may be higher at other times of the year. Not surprisingly, as the IIHS observed, alcohol plays a large part in the reason why holidays such as New Year’s and the Fourth of July experience more automobile-related deaths: Forty-one percent of the deaths on the 4th [of July] and 51 percent on January 1 involved high blood alcohol concentrations. These proportions compare with 33 percent on December 25 and January 8 (days in close proximity that aren’t associated with New Year’s) and 31 percent on June 27 and July 11. The fatality numbers cited above include drivers, passengers, and pedestrians. If we exclude the occupants of vehicles and consider the statistics from a pedestrian standpoint alone, New Year’s Day is the most dangerous day of the year to be afoot on or around public roadways, followed closely by Halloween:
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5233
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White House launches website aimed at addiction treatment.
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The Trump administration has unveiled a website aimed at helping millions of Americans with substance abuse issues learn about and locate treatment options.
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true
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Opioids, Addiction treatment, Health, General News, Kellyanne Conway, Politics, Donald Trump
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FindTreatment.gov is the latest development in the administration’s effort to address the nation’s opioid crisis. The White House said it believes the site, which went up Wednesday, will enable the tens of millions of Americans with a variety of substance abuse and mental health issues to better access the care they need. Kellyanne Conway, the counselor to President Donald Trump who is leading the White House response to the drug crisis, said the site is designed to provide “connectivity” between treatment providers and those who need help. FindTreatment.gov modernizes an obscure directory of 13,000 licensed treatment providers maintained by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, adding user-friendly search criteria and tools. For instance, it will now allow users to search based on the type of treatment sought — such as inpatient, detox or telemedicine — by payment option and whether the treatment is medication-assisted. Users also will be able to select between options that focus on youth, veterans and LGBT Americans. The website also is meant to be an educational resource for those needing care and their loved ones with information on how to pay for treatment. “We know that the drug crisis is indiscriminate, so we want the response to be indiscriminate,” Conway said. The website was built in-house by government coders and is managed by the White House. The administration is calling FindTreatment.gov an example of “American-First design” that offers easy access to information without breaking the federal budget. “We designed it with human-centered principles in mind,” Conway said. “We used real words for real people.” The effort included employing a language expert for help with providing “destigmatizing” explanations for treatment options to make them more acceptable to those in need. The site’s design was informed by more than 300 user feedback responses and 60 detailed interviews with those who have sought treatment, their family members and providers, the White House said. The website builds on other efforts by the White House to address the drug crisis, including law enforcement efforts, securing billions of dollars from Congress for treatment and working with the private sector on promoting drug “take back” days. More than 70,000 Americans died in 2017 from drug overdoses, the bulk of them involving opioids. Future developments include plans to more closely integrate the site with the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide more targeted resources to the community of former service members.
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5815
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Sens. Markey, Warren press health officials on EEE research.
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U.S. Sens. Edward Markey and Elizabeth Warren are pressing federal health officials on research efforts to combat eastern equine encephalitis.
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true
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Health, General News, Elizabeth Warren, Massachusetts, Edward Markey
|
The two Massachusetts Democrats this week sent a letter to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases within the National Institutes of Health seeking the current state of federal research into EEE and whether research into other viruses could help lead to better treatment for the mosquito-borne infection. Two new human cases of EEE were confirmed in Massachusetts this week, bringing the total this season to seven. One of the previously announced cases was fatal. There are now 36 communities statewide at critical risk, 42 at high risk, and 115 at moderate risk. Massachusetts has seen a disproportionately high number of EEE cases since 2009, second only to Florida.
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3649
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French conservatives protest bill allowing IVF for lesbians.
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Several thousand conservative activists of all ages marched through Paris on Sunday to protest a French bill that would give lesbian couples and single women access to in vitro fertilization and related procedures.
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true
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Couples, Health, General News, France, Lifestyle, International News, Paris, Europe, In vitro fertilization
|
“Where is my dad?” read some signs as traditional Catholic groups, far-right activists and other marchers weaved from the Luxembourg Garden to the Montparnasse neighborhood, passing by the French Senate. Police guarded several Paris streets as the protest unfolded, notably to prevent tensions with LGBT activists holding a small counter-demonstration in support of the bill. Both were peaceful. The conservatives’ march was organized by the same groups that held mass demonstrations against France’s legalization of gay marriage in 2013, who are hoping their opposition to the IVF bill provides new fuel for their movement. Some shouting “Liberty, Equality, Paternity” — a play on the national French motto — marchers argued that the bill deprives children of the right to a father. The crowd included parents with children and older people. “I believe we are going too fast and we’re not thinking about the consequences of this law,” said demonstrator Monique Brassier of the eastern city of Nancy. “We are heading toward a commercialization of the human being, a commercialization of procreation, and that scares me.” Proponents say women should have the right to bear children regardless of their marital status or sexual orientation, and say the bill’s opponents are trying to preserve an outdated patriarchal system. President Emmanuel Macron’s government considers such procedures shouldn’t be restricted to infertile, married heterosexual couples as families and society evolve. Several other countries already offer assisted reproduction to lesbians and single women, and French women sometimes travel abroad for fertility procedures. The measure is part of a broader bioethics draft law under debate at the National Assembly, where Macron’s party has a majority. France’s health care system would cover the cost of the procedures for all women under 43. It also would allow children conceived with donated sperm to find out the donor’s identity upon demand when they reach age 18, a change from France’s current strict donor anonymity protections. The new bill doesn’t cover surrogate pregnancies, which are banned in France. “We cannot live without our parents. That’s the human condition,” said Olivier De La Chapelle from the northeastern city of Metz. “They are making legislation so that a person will not have a father anymore. That’s scandalous.” ___ Elaine Ganley contributed to this report.
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37926
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"Ben Shapiro tweeted that the ""endless parade of jokes"" about him and his wife didn't bother him, because they both know there are ""much more important things in a marriage than sexual satisfaction."
|
Ben Shapiro’s August 2020 critique of the song “WAP” led to widespread mocking on Twitter, and on August 21 2020, a tweet was attributed to Shapiro. In it, he purportedly said he and his wife “both know there are much more important things in a marriage than sexual satisfaction.” However, the first sharer of the screenshot circulating later commented that the tweet was satire — a claim supported by the lack of any indication Shapiro had tweeted and then deleted that particular comment.
|
false
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
|
"On August 21 2020, a tweet attributed to right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro appeared:The purported tweet, which spread in screenshot form, said:You know how much this endless parade of jokes about me and my wife bothers me? Not one bit. My wife and I both know there are much more important things in a marriage than sexual satisfaction.Earlier in August 2020, Shapiro inadvertently had become the punchline of innumerable Twitter jokes after he attempted to criticize Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion‘s song “WAP.” Shapiro first read the lyrics on his podcast in a monotone voice and inspired a remix (retweeted by Cardi B):😩😂😂😂 https://t.co/BoMFEkk0IG— iamcardib (@iamcardib) August 10, 2020That particular chain of events prompted Shapiro to defend his critique on Twitter, leading to intensified jokes about his apparent lack of sexual skills:As I also discussed on the show, my only real concern is that the women involved — who apparently require a ""bucket and a mop"" — get the medical care they require. My doctor wife's differential diagnosis: bacterial vaginosis, yeast infection, or trichomonis.— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 10, 2020Comments on the tweet piled on, or surmised that Shapiro’s wife was soothing his ego:Ben, Ben, Ben… I think your wife was trying to make you feel better about having never turned her on. Your wife is lying to you, Ben. Aroused women get wet. As pretty much every other woman on the planet who has ever been aroused will tell you.— MizLNìcTeàrlach (@MizLiot) August 14, 2020Based on Shapiro’s initial “doubling down” on what appeared to be minimal familiarity with female arousal, the tweet seemed plausible. However, we only located one screenshot of the tweet (above), and the text rendering seemed off. We were unable to locate any trace of it on Shapiro’s Twitter feed, nor did anyone manually retweet what likely would have been a viral tweet, had it come from Shapiro himself.A date-restricted reverse image search led to what appeared to be the first iteration of the tweet, purportedly published by Shapiro at 12:16 AM on August 21 2020. Roughly an hour later, the screenshot was shared to Reddit’s r/ToiletPaperUSA, a subreddit satirizing the conservative group Turning Point USA:Benjamin versus the haters from ToiletPaperUSAThat version was visually identical to the one spreading on Facebook, with the same rendering of text, same date and time stamp, and same number of likes and retweets. Actual deleted tweets often vary in screenshots, with many users capturing screenshots of the tweet at different moments and from different devices.In the comments of that post, submitter u/carrorphcarp responded to posters discussing Shapiro’s purported tweet, saying that “maybe, just maybe, he didn’t write this at all”:TL;DRBen Shapiro’s August 2020 critique of the song “WAP” led to widespread mocking on Twitter, and on August 21 2020, a tweet was attributed to Shapiro. In it, he purportedly said he and his wife “both know there are much more important things in a marriage than sexual satisfaction.” However, the first sharer of the screenshot circulating later commented that the tweet was satire — a claim supported by the lack of any indication Shapiro had tweeted and then deleted that particular comment.Comments"
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8527
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Could the new coronavirus weaken 'anti-vaxxers'?.
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An American mother-of-three is a long-time member of “anti-vaxxer” groups online: a small but vocal global community that believes vaccines are a dangerous con and refuse to immunize themselves or their children.
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true
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Health News
|
But COVID-19 is shaking her views. The woman who would identify herself only as Stephanie, citing a fear of reprisals from committed anti-vaxxers, says she is now 50:50 on taking a vaccine should one be discovered for the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus. “I’ve definitely thought about it,” she told Reuters by phone from the United States, also expressing frustration at what she considers the anti-vax community’s downplaying of the pandemic’s seriousness. “We’re all being affected by this virus, schools closing, young people in hospital, and they still say it’s a hoax.” As the world’s scientists and pharmaceutical companies seek a cure for the coronavirus, other anti-vaxxers are gearing up for a fight against any potential new vaccine. “Refuse, demonstrate,” said a Briton on Facebook in response to a post asking people how they would react if a vaccine was made mandatory. But some virologists say the quest for a vaccine is so widely supported that resistance will be eroded. The latest national surveys by pollster ORB International for the Vaccine Confidence Project (VCP), which monitors attitudes to immunisation, appear to support this idea. In France, where a 2018 poll showed one in three people did not view vaccines as safe, just 18% would refuse a coronavirus vaccine now, according to the VCP poll of around 1,000 people on March 18, a day after France locked down. In Australia, the VCP’s figure was also 7%, while Britain, where about 2,000 people were polled, and Austria registered 5% opposition in polls there a week later. “If a vaccine were made available tomorrow, everyone would jump to get it,” said Laurent-Henri Vignaud, who co-authored a history of France’s anti-vax movement. That view was challenged by Mary Holland, vice-chair of American non-profit group Children’s Health Defense, which is critical of vaccination in the United States. “I don’t think this virus fundamentally changes people’s deeply held concerns about vaccines,” she told Reuters. Although the term “anti-vax” is sometimes associated with conspiracy theories, many people are simply concerned about side-effects or industry ethics. Globally, one person in five does not view vaccines as safe or is unsure, according to a 2018 survey by the Wellcome Trust health fund. reut.rs/2JTb27q In China, where the COVID-19 disease caused by the novel coronavirus originated, surveys by VCP researchers show safety is an important cause of concern. Several scandals eroded trust, including in 2018 when a unit of China’s vaccine maker Changsheng Bio-technology Co Ltd was heavily fined for falsifying data for a rabies vaccine. The company said it was “deeply sorry” for the incident. Online discussions tracked by Reuters - including closed Facebook pages with more than 200,000 members, Twitter feeds such as the Children’s Health Defense and YouTube videos totalling over 700,000 views - showed considerable mistrust that a rushed vaccine would be improperly tested. VCP director Heidi Larson said that was also the main reason for concern around the vaccine against the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009. A quickly produced swine flu vaccine in 1976 led to about one in 100,000 people developing Guillain-Barre syndrome, a paralyzing immune-system disorder, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Some 115 coronavirus vaccine candidates are being developed by institutes and drugmakers, according to the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation, a global alliance financing and coordinating the development of vaccines. “I will not be injected with anything, especially a fast-tracked vaccine,” added American Vicki Barneck, 67, who believes a strong immune system is enough to combat the disease. Holland, of the Children’s Health Defense, said: “Some react fine to vaccines, others are paralysed or killed.” However, a 2015 paper by CDC epidemiologists said “multiple studies and scientific reviews have found no association between vaccination and deaths except in rare cases.” The VCP is running an 18-month study tracking conversation online about the coronavirus and conducting global polls to measure attitudes towards social distancing, isolation, hand-washing and anticipating a vaccine. From analysing more than 3 million posts a day between January and mid-March 2020, director Dr Heidi Larson said the vast majority were eager for a treatment, fast. “People are hungry for a vaccine,” she said. In Italy, which has been hit badly by COVID-19, the anti-vax movement has “virtually disappeared” in the discussion on the coronavirus, according to virologist Dr Roberto Burioni. For a coronavirus vaccine to be effective, wide uptake and annual vaccination is likely to be required, said George Kassianos, immunisation lead at the Royal College of General Practitioners in London. There is also the question of how to distribute fast enough to people lining up for the vaccine. “Essential workers will be the priority. Police officers, hospital workers, cleaners. Then at-risk groups,” said Douglas L. Hatch, a physician specialised in pandemic preparedness working on the COVID-19 response in San Francisco. “By the time you get to the anti-vaxxers, they’ll have trouble getting it even if they wanted to.” (Corrects French poll data in eighth paragraph)
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9421
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Bariatric Surgery Helps Teens With Severe Obesity Reduce Heart Disease Risk
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This story covers an observational study showing cardiovascular risk factors improved after three years for teens who underwent weight-loss surgery. The story does a good job describing the study, the potential harms of the intervention, and limitations to the findings. One area with room for improvement: it doesn’t mention how much these procedures cost or whether they are covered by insurance. Also, it’s always a good idea to point out when surrogate markers are being used as stand-ins for heart health. Lastly, some readers of the story might have found the photo stigmatizing–here’s our tips for communicating about obesity without promoting stigma. This isn’t the first research to suggest that bariatric surgery might help teens with severe obesity, who are at risk of developing health problems in their 30s and 40s. Yet one recent review asserted that while weight-loss surgeries are increasingly being offered to teens, there’s no data to show what impact these involved procedures will have in the long term. News coverage should remain cautious, stressing the risks and extreme lifestyle changes they entail and the fact that the jury is still out on their ultimate impact.
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true
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bariatric surgery,weight loss
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There’s no mention of the cost of these procedures or whether they are covered by insurance. The average cost of gastric bypass surgery is $23,000, the average cost of lap band is $14,500, and the average cost of sleeve gastrectomy surgery $14,900, according to the web site ObesityCoverage. The story states: “Before surgery, only 3 percent of the teens had no cardiac risk factors at all, but three years later, just over half of them (52 percent) had no risk factors. Just 5 percent had all four cardiac risk factors before their surgeries, but none had all of them three years later. In fact, the majority of the participants — 83 percent — had only one or no risk factors three years after their surgeries. The proportion of participants with two or three risk factors also dropped substantially.” This is a useful start, but the story needed to remind readers: Changes in risk factors predicated on lab values are surrogate markers, so they may not actually lead to improved “heart health” as the story states. The story states that the weight-reduction procedures “carry the same risks as any surgical procedure, such as infections, blood clots and bleeding” as well as nutritional and vitamin deficiencies. It also states that gastric banding “has low effectiveness and a risk of the band slipping down the stomach.” Note: The most risky complications (problems arising from general anesthesia) were not mentioned. The story describes how the study was conducted and provides important caveats, stating: “The study’s biggest limitation is its very selective population. Most of the participants were female, most were white, and most received the gastric bypass. Children of color have the greatest risk of obesity, heart disease and type 2 diabetes, but it’s not clear if they would see the same improvement with these procedures.” It also mentions that the study included “only teens with the greatest obesity who were also unsuccessful trying other weight loss methods. Further, it points out the need for longer-term data of 10 or 15 years. The story does not mention one inherent weakness of this study: The lack of a comparison group that did not receive surgery. [Editor’s note: We updated the final sentence in this criterion to strike the phrase “observational studies” and replace it with “this study.”] The story does not engage in disease-mongering. It states that an estimated 4 to 7 percent of teens have severe obesity. The story includes two sources who were not part of the study. The story does a good job here, quoting Geetha Raghuveer, a pediatric cardiologist at Children’s Mercy Kansas City in Missouri who, it reports, was not involved in the study. Raghuveer is quoted saying surgery “would be considered for the highly obese and those not responding to any behavioral modifications, physical activity or calorie restriction.” Further, the story says, Raghuveer endorses public health efforts that “aim for better obesity prevention, including parent education and interventions when children are toddlers and preschoolers.” “The big question is, how do we prevent obese kids from getting to this point where they would need an invasive surgical procedure?” Raghuveer says in the story. The story mentions that 1,600 teens undergo stomach reduction surgeries each year, which suggests that they are widely available. It also mentions the need to seek counseling and “detailed information from well-established bariatric surgery centers that are specifically dedicated to treating adolescents.” However, one big key to availability is insurance coverage–and this was not mentioned. The story mentions that this study includes more patients than some previous studies that looked at the impact of surgery on teens with severe obesity, and it quotes the study’s author saying it “serves to reinforce the benefits of bariatric surgery as a safe and effective treatment strategy that should be considered sooner rather than later.” Also, the the study of cardiac risk factors and how they are affected is novel, as well, and that’s clear in the story. The story does not appear to rely on a news release.
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8757
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Malaria campaigners hopeful on drugs pricing deal.
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Anti-malaria campaigners are confident that a deal can be reached with pharmaceuticals groups to cut the cost of new drugs needed to fight a disease estimated to kill more than 1 million people a year.
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true
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Health News
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Negotiations are being held with several big drugs makers as part of a wider drive to bring the cost of so-called artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) down to the level of the older, but now ineffective, chloroquinine treatments. “I am very hopeful that this first stage, the negotiations, will produce results,” Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria told reporters in Paris on Tuesday. The negotiations, part of a program called the Affordable Medicines Facility - Malaria (AMFm), aim to persuade drugs companies to cut the price of ACTs to all first-time buyers to $1, the price currently charged to public sector buyers. The AMFm would then subsidize wholesalers 95 percent of the cost, enabling them to sell the drugs at prices within reach of people in some of the world’s poorest countries who may be living on $1 or $2 a day. Malaria, a disease spread by mosquito-borne parasites, is contracted by up to 500 million people every year, of whom more than 1 million die, according to figures from the World Health Organization. Chloroquinine, one of the former standard treatments for the disease, has become ineffective in many countries as resistance levels have grown. But its low cost — around 20 cents a dose compared with $4-5 for ACTs — makes it far more affordable for people living in poor African, Asian or Latin American countries where the disease is most dangerous. Kazatchkine said the program would help drugs companies by increasing the size of the market for ACTs and make it easier to predict demand. “We are seeing the market a lot more clearly now,” he said. “Some firms were complaining that they had produced too much of these medicines. We’re hoping an agreement will enable us to regulate the flow better so that everyone benefits.” Swiss drugs maker Novartis and France’s Sanofi are among the Western companies that make the drug but the sector has been shaken by the arrival of Chinese and Indian companies like Cipla and IPCA Laboratories. “The more firms there are producing these medicines, the greater the level of competition will be and the more prices will fall,” Kazatchkine said. He said a sharp increase in malaria funding over recent years had improved prospects for controlling the disease but said an extra $1 billion a year was needed. “We have the means to control and combat malaria,” he said. “It would be incomprehensible, shocking now that we are so close to being able to reduce it really significantly if we didn’t.”
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4901
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California bows to beverage industry, blocks soda taxes.
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A new push by the beverage industry is slowing the expansion of soda taxes in California and elsewhere.
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true
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Legislature, Jerry Brown, Health, Sacramento, North America, California, Legislation, Local taxes, U.S. News, Obesity
|
California cities pioneered soda taxes as a way to combat obesity, diabetes and heart disease, but the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown on Thursday bowed to pressure from beverage companies and reluctantly banned local taxes on soda for the next 12 years. It follows similar bans recently passed in Arizona and Michigan. Voters in Oregon will decide on a statewide ban in November. The American Beverage Association, which represents Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and others, has backed the moves after several cities passed taxes on sugary drinks in recent years. California’s ban is part of a last-minute maneuver to block a beverage industry-backed ballot measure that would make it much harder for cities and counties to raise taxes of any kind. The ABA said in a statement the legislation is about keeping groceries, including drinks, affordable. Lawmakers approved the proposal despite deep reluctance. “This industry is aiming a nuclear weapon at government in California and saying, ‘If you don’t do what we want we are going to pull the trigger and you are not going to be able to fund basic government services,’” said Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, which has a soda tax. The Legislature’s action drew a strong rebuke from public health advocates who view soda taxes as a crucial front in their efforts to contain obesity and the health complications it causes. But local government officials, terrified by the prospect of having their hands tied on all future tax increases, reluctantly backed the legislation. “I’ve been in politics a long time, and sometimes you have to do what’s necessary to avoid catastrophe,” said Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg, who is pushing a local sales tax increase that would be at risk if the ballot measure passed. The governor said only a handful of communities are looking to tax soda, but the ballot measure would affect all 482 cities in California. “Mayors from countless cities have called to voice their alarm and to strongly support the compromise which this bill represents,” Brown wrote in a memo explaining his decision. The California measure bans any new taxes on groceries including beverages through 2030, but allows four cities in the San Francisco Bay Area to keep soda levies already on the books. The beverage industry has used aggressive campaigning to beat back soda taxes and other measures. But some soda tax efforts are now receiving better funding. Former New York City Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire who unsuccessfully tried to limit the size of sugary drinks sold in the city to 16 ounces, has funded some local efforts. Philadelphia, Seattle and Boulder, Colorado also have taxes on sugary drinks. After Brown signed the legislation, the California Business Roundtable withdrew a ballot measure that would have raised the threshold for any tax increases by local government. Nancy Brown, chief executive of the American Heart Association, asked for a meeting with Gov. Jerry Brown after The Sacramento Bee reported beverage industry lobbyists dined with Brown and his wife Anne Gust Brown at the governor’s mansion in Sacramento this month. A spokesman for Brown, Evan Westrup, said the governor did not negotiate the deal and the dinner was unrelated. Public health officials said taxes are the most effective tool they have to discourage people from drinking soda, sports drinks, sweetened coffee and tea, and other sugary beverages. Beverage companies spend billions promoting their products that public health professional can’t match, said Kristine Madsen, a physician and associate professor of public health at University of California, Berkeley. She led a study that found a 20 percent reduction in consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages in low-income neighborhoods in the year after the city’s tax took effect. Sales in grocery stores dropped 8 percent — a figure that was not fully offset by higher sales in neighboring towns. ___ The bill is AB1838 . ___ Associated Press food industry writer Candice Choi contributed.
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5574
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Groups ask UW-Madison to require meningitis B vaccine.
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Immunization groups and the mother of a student who died from bacterial meningitis are urging the University of Wisconsin-Madison to require the meningitis B vaccine.
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true
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Madison, Wisconsin, Meningitis, Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, University of Wisconsin, Immunizations
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A coalition sent letters this month to universities, asking campuses to join Indiana University and Purdue University in the vaccination requirement, The Wisconsin State Journal reported. The shots are typically covered by insurance and cost about $200. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that children age 11 or 12 should be vaccinated against the four common strains of meningococcal bacteria — A, C, W and Y — and get a booster shot at 16. People age 16 to 18 should consider getting the newer vaccine for strain B, the CDC said. UW-Madison won’t be requiring the shot until the CDC upgrades its guidelines, said Dr. William Kinsey, medical director. “We are not convinced that the benefit lasts long enough that we know it’s worth vaccinating everyone for it,” he said. “Each student should have a discussion about the risks and benefits of getting that vaccine with their primary care provider.” About 21,000 UW-Madison students, or 70 percent of undergraduates, received the first dose of meningitis B vaccine in 2016 after three students developed serious cases. At least 9,000 students decided to get the second dose, Kinsey said. College students are at an increased rise of acquiring bacterial meningitis because they tend to share food and drink, health officials said. Gail Bailey’s son, Eddy Bailey, was 20 when he died from the rare but potentially fatal disease in 2002 while he was a student at UW-Madison. Immunizations are worth it even if it saves just one life, she said. “If we can do something about it, why not do something about it?” she said. ___ Information from: Wisconsin State Journal, http://www.madison.com/wsj
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24787
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"On attacks by Republicans that various programs in the economic stimulus plan are not stimulative, ""If you add all that stuff up, it accounts for less than 1 percent of the overall package."
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Obama says Republicans are quibbling over less than 1 percent of the stimulus plan
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mixture
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National, Economy, Stimulus, Barack Obama,
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"In the battle for public opinion, Republican opponents of President Obama's economic stimulus plan have repeatedly scored points by ticking off various spending programs that seem hard to defend as economic stimulus. Hundreds of millions for contraceptives. Hundreds millions more for sexually transmitted disease prevention. Two hundred million to refurbish the National Mall, including new sod. Some Republican leaders warned the plan even cleverly funnels millions, maybe even billions, to the party's favorite villain, ACORN. In one of several interviews last week to promote the plan, Obama played defense, portraying those controversial projects as relatively small in the overall scope of a massive and urgently needed plan. ""People have plucked out this program or that program that doesn't look particularly stimulative, the contraceptives issue being a primary example,"" Obama said in an interview with the CBS Evening News on Feb. 3, 2009. ""If you add all that stuff up, it accounts for less than 1 percent of the overall package. Now, that doesn't mean that the package can't improve and that's what I said to the leadership last night, 'Let's improve it. Let's make this a package that is big enough for the moment.'"" Obama is right about some of the Republican sound bites that have drawn the most attention. A few examples: • ""How you can spend hundreds of millions of dollars on contraceptives — how does that stimulate the economy?"" — House Republican Leader John Boehner. • ""I mean, there's $300,000 for a sculpture garden in Miami. You know, there's $360 million for sexually transmitted disease education."" — Rep. Eric Cantor, the House Republican whip. • As much as ""$4.2 billion would be available to organizations like ACORN for so-called neighborhood revitalization. That's just political payoff."" — Louisiana Republican Sen. David Vitter. • ""I mean, there are so many different things that you can make fun of in this bill. Let me just mention one — millions of dollars to World War II Filipino veterans in the Philippines. ... It doesn't stimulate anything."" — Sen. Jon Kyl, the Republican Whip. • ""In legislation before the Senate this week, $20 million for the removal of small to medium-sized fish passage barriers or $25 million to rehabilitate off-roading trails for ATVs is not going to put this economy back on track."" — Republican Rep. Mike Pence. PolitiFact has looked at a number of the Republican claims and found that some are accurate (such as spending for STD prevention), some are misleading (such as the claims about money for ACORN), some are outright wrong (such as the claim about money for a sculpture garden in Miami) and some have since been cut (such as money for contraceptives). We find that Obama is right that these projects are tiny in the scheme of a plan costing upwards of $800 billion. In fact, all those items listed above would come, as Obama said, to less than 1 percent of the package. Democrat Charles E. Schumer, the senior senator from New York, picked up that line of defense in an interview on Feb. 9 on MSNBC’s Morning Joe when he said, ""Why quibble over $200 million?"" But that argument from Schumer and Obama ignores more wholesale Republican criticisms of spending in the plan. For example, Sen. Tom Coburn and his staff put together a widely circulated list of more than 30 items in the proposed stimulus plan that he considers wasteful. That list includes a ""$2 billion earmark to restart FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Deptartment of Energy defunded last year because the project was inefficient"" and ""$246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film"" (since removed). The majority of his list comes to about 2 percent of the overall package, but jumps significantly when he includes $87.7 billion that he calls a state Medicaid bailout, a project that Democrats contend would have a good stimulative effect. John Hart, a spokesman for Coburn, said those items hardly comprise a list of the entirety of Coburn's objections to the stimulus package. ""These are items that are particularly egregious,"" Hart said. ""But there are thousands of provisions in there. These are just a few that jump out at us as particularly wasteful, the ones that didn't pass the smell or laugh test."" In fact, in an opinion piece written by Coburn for the Wall Street Journal , Coburn laid out his case that the overwhelming majority of Obama's plan is not stimulative. ""Less than 10 percent of the bill could be considered true stimulus, if one assumes tax credits and infrastructure spending will jolt the economy,"" Coburn stated. ""The other 90 percent of the bill represents one of the most egregious acts of generational theft in our nation's history, with taxpayer money going to special-interest earmarks, an ill-conceived bailout to states, and permanent spending increases that expand government's reach in areas like health care and education."" Coburn is hardly alone among Republicans in believing that major portions of the Obama stimulus plan aren't stimulative. Said Republican Rep. Kenny Marchant of Texas: ""This bill, quite frankly, was an attempt to sneak hundreds of billions of dollars in pork into an 'emergency' bill under the guise of 'stimulus.'"" Sen. Charles Grassley and other Republicans say they have less problem with the proposed tax cuts and shovel-ready projects where the money can be spent in two years. Grassley suggests, ""Cut all the spending out, keep the stimulus, do almost as much stimulus as you want to do and can do in two years, and keep the tax provisions. And what that adds up to, it would add up to a lot less than $900 billion. But whatever it adds up to doesn't bother me as much as what's in the $900 billion bill that's going to obligate us for the next 50 years as opposed to the next two years."" We're not going to weigh in one way or the other about whether the Republicans or Democrats are right about whether spending in the plan is stimulative — only that many Republicans have claimed large portions of it are not. Obama's point is that some perspective is in order, that legislators are quibbling over a relatively small portion of the spending. And yes, if he's talking about some of the most publicized projects, he's right. But we think that it's misleading to dismiss all of the complaints as less than 1 percent. In fact, many Republicans have said large percentages of the stimulus plan would not stimulate the economy and would waste taxpayer money."
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40826
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The number of hospital beds for people with acute mental health conditions has fallen by 30%.
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These years aren’t comparable due to a change in collection method from 2010. Between 2010 and 2017 there was a 22% drop.
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unproven
|
mental-health
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The number of mental health nurses has fallen from 46,155 to 39,358 [since 2009]. This is the difference in the number of mental health and learning disabilities nurses between two different months which isn’t the best way to compare the figures. Comparing the figures in September 2009 and 2017 shows the drop has been larger. The number of doctors in specialist psychiatry training fell from 3,187 in 2009 to 2,588 in the first quarter of this year. This 20% drop was between September 2009 and March 2018, which isn’t a fair comparison. Comparing September 2009 and 2017 there was a 15% decrease. Claim 1 of 3
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29429
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Tequila fights viruses, aids weight loss, and is beneficial for people afflicted with gastrointestinal illness.
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All in all, the primary beneficial effect of tequila appears to be that some people enjoy drinking it.
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false
|
Medical, bad science, not actually a study, tequila
|
In late October 2016, a number of Facebook posts asserted that tequila, a strong liquor distilled from fermented mash of the agave plant, acts as a probiotic and confers myriad health benefits: Multiple claims were presented in the clip displayed above, the first of which was that doctors purportedly prescribed a “tequila drink” as a cold and flu remedy in the 1930s, adding that the agave soothes sore throats and maintains antibacterial qualities. The former statement didn’t constitute any sort of compelling evidence, as a number of medical treatments popular in the 1930s have since been abandoned as ineffective or impractical and replaced with superior alternatives. As for the latter claim, agave was found to perform no better than a placebo as a cough and cold treatment for children. A 2008 study of agave showed it to demonstrate limited antibacterial properties, but both colds and influenza are viral in nature and thus unaffected by antibacterials (although viral illnesses occasionally introduce a secondary bacterial infections). The video clip also claimed that the lime served alongside tequila is a good source of Vitamin C to combat colds, but Vitamin C need not be consumed with tequila (and vice-versa), and no conclusive evidence has ever shown that Vitamin C supplements effectively “fight colds.” In a later portion of the video agave was again lauded as a weight loss supplement (albeit mitigated by the consumption of tequila). The claim dates to a constellation of 2014 articles lauding tequila as a weight loss miracle, based in turn on research not of tequila, but of agave. That research was not conclusive and was conducted on mice (not humans): A sweetener created from the plant used to make tequila could lower blood glucose levels for the 26 million Americans and others worldwide who have type 2 diabetes and help them and the obese lose weight, researchers said … [t]he main reason it could be valuable, they explained, is that agavins, a natural form of sugar found in the agave plant, are non-digestible and can act as a dietary fiber, so they would not raise blood glucose. Their report was part of the 247th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society (ACS). “We have found that since agavins reduce glucose levels and increase GLP-1, they also increase the amount of insulin,” said Mercedes G. López, Ph.D. GLP-1 (glucagon-like peptide-1) is a hormone that slows the stomach from emptying, thereby stimulating production of insulin. She added, “Agavins are not expensive and they have no known side effects, except for those few people who cannot tolerate them.” In addition, agavins, like other fructans, which are made of the sugar fructose, are the best sugars to help support growth of healthful microbes in the mouth and intestines, she said. Moreover, a review of sweeteners published by the University of Washington Medical Center Diabetes Care Center in 2013 contradicted the claim that agave was an effective weight loss tool: Agave nectar is a highly processed type of sugar from the Agave tequiliana (tequila) plant. Agave nectar is about 1 1/2 times sweeter than regular sugar. It has about 60 calories per tablespoon, compared to 40 calories for the same amount of table sugar. Agave nectar is not healthier than honey, sugar, HFCS, or any other type of sweetener. The claim that agave has been shown to lower cholesterol came from the same study of mice presented in 2014, with no conclusive evidence demonstrating the efficacy of tequila for reducing cholesterol in humans. Concurrent research determined that no “statistically significant differences in total cholesterol or triglycerides were detected,” again in a mice-only trial. All mention of tequila’s stimulating the appetite leads back to the video itself or related content, and we could locate no research suggesting that claim is true. A 2010 study contradicted claims that any alcoholic beverage aids digestion, and separate studies demonstrated risks associated with regular consumption of alcohol by former sufferers of Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) as well as adverse effects [PDF] involving the entire gastrointestinal tract (including the colon).
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22382
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Not even expensive bottled water, like Perrier and Evian, are of good enough quality to pump out of mines in Southwest Virginia, according to the EPA regulation.
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Morgan Griffith says EPA standards are so strict that Perrier would not pass
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false
|
Environment, Virginia, Morgan Griffith,
|
"What do French bottled water and Appalachian streams have in common? More than you might think, according to Rep. H. Morgan Griffith, R-9th. A vocal opponent of the Environmental Protection Agency, the southwest Virginia legislator pledged in February to roll back regulations governing water from mountain-top mining areas. ""Not even expensive bottled water, like Perrier and Evian, are of good enough quality to pump out of mines in Southwest Virginia, according to the EPA regulation,"" Griffith wrote. Standards so strict that Perrier and Evian would fail? We couldn’t swallow that without checking. We had two questions: Would fancy bottled water really fail a conductivity test? And would that sort of test actually tell us anything about the safety of the bottled water? First, a word about EPA the standards and how mountain-top mining works. This form of mining relies on explosives to expose coal seams in far southwest Virginia and West Virginia. The controlled explosions generate huge piles of debris that often bury nearby valleys. In April 2010 the EPA said ""the resulting waste that then fills valleys and streams can significantly compromise water quality, often causing permanent damage to ecosystems and rendering streams unfit for swimming, fishing and drinking."" The agency established a new purity standard for streams near coal mining areas, saying it was updating provisions of the Clean Water Act to set new conductivity levels. Conductivity is a measurement of how well water transmits an electrical charge and gives a reading on the amount of dissolved solids in water. The EPA set a maximum conductivity of 500 microSiemens per centimeter, which the agency says is about five times higher than a normal level and should ""protect 95 percent of aquatic life in the coal regions."" Emily Bernhardt, an associate professor of biology at Duke University, studies water quality in coal-mining areas. She told us conductivity is a ""really inexpensive way to see if you have a lot of constituents in water."" In coal-mining regions, she said, conductivity is correlated with sulfate. Pyrite, a mineral made up of coal and sulphur ions, is found in coal seams and filters into water. She said if water near coal mines has high conductivity, it usually contains a lot of sulfates and metals. Streams in mining areas often show elevated sulfur levels, as well as higher levels of iron, selenium and manganese. But the test is designed solely for rural Appalachia, not for use across the country. In urban areas, for example, high conductivity may occur when road salt is washed into streams. So how do Perrier and Evian seep into this debate? Beth Breeding, Griffith’s press secretary, told us the congressman’s comments were based on the EPA’s conductivity guidance. But the EPA website makes no mention of Perrier or other bottled waters. Griffith’s claim appears to come from Alpha Natural Resources, the nation’s third-largest coal mining company. A PowerPoint slide circulated by the company says Evian, Perrier and San Pellegrino would all fail EPA conductivity tests. We asked Rick Nida, a spokesman for Alpha, whether his company thinks the EPA test is a fair way to evaluate the impact of mountain-top mining. ""We don’t think it’s a good standard to use,"" he said. ""The point is rules are so stringent that bottle water doesn’t pass. Richard Yost, a spokesman for the EPA, said the standards are designed to protect aquatic species in the water, not necessarily determine whether the water is safe to drink. ""The science demonstrates that stream life present in waters contaminated by mine waste is killed when salinity levels rise above levels that would not be toxic to humans who may drink such water,"" Yost said. ""Aquatic organisms and people respond to salinity in very different ways, so it is not technically valid to make direct comparisons between healthy levels of salinity in central Appalachian streams and acceptable levels of salinity in drinking water."" Rather than rely on Alpha’s conductivity data, we put these bottled waters to the test. Paul Bukaveckas, an associate professor of biology at Virginia Commonwealth University who studies river ecology, invited us to conduct the tests at his lab. Mac Lee, a laboratory specialist at VCU, used a sensor he and Bukaveckas employ on the James River. We tested the conductivity of distilled water, Evian, Perrier, Pellegrino and, last of all, a sample taken from the James River in downtown Richmond. Here were our test results: So the bottled water has a conductivity level higher than the EPA’s 500 microSiemens threshold. We asked Bernhardt and Bukaveckas if that is a relevant piece of information. Bukaveckas, the VCU biologist, said the argument reminds him of those raised 20 years ago by power companies disputing the impact -- or even existence -- of acid rain. ""They’d point to lakes and say, ‘These are naturally acidic.’ But if you did water tests, you’d find that undamaged lakes were acidic because of organic or naturally occurring acids,"" he said. The damaged lakes, in contrast, contained acids created by emissions from the smokestacks of power plants. Bernhardt, of Duke, said water is different in each environment, making a comparison between French springs and Appalachian streams pointless. ""The EPA’s data find that high conductivity is most closely correlated with the loss of species,"" Bernhardt said about Appalachian water. ""Salty water makes it harder for freshwater fish to live. So maybe it is bad for freshwater fish to be dumped in Pellegrino, but that’s not the right argument to have."" Let’s review our findings. After conducting an independent test, we agree with Griffith’s claim that Perrier, Evian and Pellegrino all have conductivity levels above the limits the EPA sets for streams in Appalachian coal areas. But the fact that a Pellegrino bath could kill Virginia’s fish population is irrelevant to these water standards. According to independent water experts, high conductivity in coal country strongly correlates with the loss of aquatic species. Griffith sought to confuse the issue with a non sequitur about bottled water. Saying Perrier is good for humans and therefore must be OK for fish seems to us like saying that because humans eat oranges, fish should too. The congressman has ignored critical facts to give his constituents a skewed impression of an EPA rule."
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10643
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Some transplant patients OK without years of drug treatment
|
"Acute rejection is a major concern in organ transplantation. Rejection is normally treated and prevented with immune supressing drugs, including steroids, to prevent the body from attacking the foreign organ. However these drugs are associated with significant side effects and harms, especially when taken for long periods of time. This story reports on an interesting new technique of transplantation that involves treating the organ with the donor’s own stem cells to protect the organ from a response by the recipient’s immune system. The story does a great job of describing the novelty and availability of the new technique. It quotes multiple sources, describes the alternatives and does not engage in disease mongering. The story adequately describes the strength of the available evidence by describing the studies as ""preliminary"" and bringing attention to the very small sample sizes. However, the story could have made less use of such terms as ""groundbreaking"" and ""breakthrough"" to describe the treatment in light of the preliminary nature of the findings. Furthermore, the story should have described the costs of the new technique and mentioned the potential harms."
|
true
|
"Although the story mentions the cost of immunosuppressant drugs, the story does not mention the cost of the new transplant technique. Given the preliminary nature of the findings, it is not yet possible to quantify the benefits of the new transplantation technique. The story does not mention any potential harms of the therapy. The story adequately describes the strength of the available evidence. The story describes the studies as ""preliminary"" and brings attention to the very small sample sizes. However, the story could have made less use of such terms as ""groundbreaking"" and ""breakthrough"" to describe the treatment in light of the preliminary nature of the findings. The story does not exaggerate the prevalence or seriousness of kidney disease. The story quotes multiple experts The story mentions immunosuppressants with traditional transplantation as the alternative to the new transplant technique. The story clearly states that the transplant technique is experimental and is only being performed in a handful of medical centers. The story clearly states that the treatment is a new approach. Because the story quotes multiple sources, the reader can assume that the story did not rely on a press release as the sole source of information."
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2163
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After damaging Reuters report, J&J doubles down on talc safety message.
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Johnson & Johnson Inc’s statement was unequivocal.
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true
|
Health News
|
"""The FDA has tested Johnson's talc since the '70s. Every single time it did not contain asbestos,"" the company said in a Dec. 19 tweet. It followed by several days the publication of a Reuters investigation (here) that found the healthcare conglomerate knew for decades that the carcinogen lurked in its Baby Powder and other cosmetic talc products. The tweet, posted under the handle @JNJNews, didn't mention that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found traces of asbestos in the company's Shower to Shower talc in 1973, as revealed in agency documents here reviewed by Reuters. And it is only one of dozens of tweets conveying a similar message about talc safety since the Reuters article appeared Dec. 14. The Reuters article prompted a stock selloff that erased about $40 billion from J&J’s market value in one day and created a public relations crisis as the blue-chip healthcare conglomerate faced widespread questions about the possible health effects of one of its most iconic products. To reassure investors and consumers, J&J has tweeted, posted on Facebook, run a series of full-page newspaper ads across the United States, published a lengthy rebuttal to the Reuters investigation on its website and announced a $5 billion stock buyback. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Alex Gorsky has appeared in a company video and on CNBC’s “Mad Money” to reinforce the company’s position. That position has been unwavering. J&J insists that its Baby Powder is safe and has been asbestos-free at least since regular testing began in the 1970s. The message doubles down on the stance the company has taken to defend against lawsuits in which about 11,700 plaintiffs allege that the J&J talc they used in past decades caused their cancer. The company is pursuing this strategy despite the evidence that talc in its raw and finished powders sometimes tested positive for the carcinogen from the 1970s into the early 2000s — test results that the company didn’t disclose to regulators or consumers. In response to a Reuters request for comment, the company said it is committed to defending the talc litigation, “and that same, long-term view is reflected in our ongoing communications that consistently point to the strong scientific evidence that our talc is and always has been safe.” As for the 1973 Shower to Shower test, J&J noted that the result didn’t “reflect FDA’s final determination about this sample” in a 1976 table summarizing the agency’s early 1970s cosmetic talc testing. However, in that 1976 table, which Reuters examined, the FDA did not indicate any result, positive or negative, for the type of asbestos found in the Shower to Shower sample in 1973. Given the mass of litigation it faces, J&J has little choice but to zealously dispute findings that its products sometimes contained traces of asbestos, said Eric Dezenhall, a crisis-management consultant in Washington, D.C. “If your position in court is that the claims being made are false…you can’t just shrug your shoulders,” he said. Soon after the Reuters article appeared, J&J executives consulted crisis-management experts, according to people familiar with the matter. Among the company’s reasons for deciding to maintain its stance on absolute talc purity, these people said, was a conviction that a company known for putting health and safety first had the facts on its side, a litigation track record that included victories and mistrials, and the expectation that adverse verdicts will be overturned on appeal. Many of J&J’s subsequent messages have mirrored the company’s written responses to questions and findings Reuters presented to the company during its investigation: They deny that the company kept information from regulators and point to the many studies finding that talc is safe and doesn’t cause cancer. Those earlier responses were composed by J&J’s outside litigators, led by Peter Bicks at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, and conveyed to Reuters by lawyers at a crisis-management firm co-founded by Lanny Davis, a lawyer who represented U.S. President Bill Clinton in the 1990s and Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former attorney who has pleaded guilty to multiple criminal charges. Gorsky, in his appearance on “Mad Money,” invoked J&J’s now legendary response to the Tylenol crisis as evidence that the company can be trusted to address any safety problems linked to its products. In 1982, J&J moved decisively to pull all Tylenol from store shelves after seven people died from taking cyanide-laced pills. “I can’t believe the company that took that dramatic of an action would allow a product that they felt in any way could be harmful to stay on the market,” Gorsky told “Mad Money” host Jim Cramer. “We unequivocally believe that our talc, our Baby Powder, does not contain asbestos.” Citing the Tylenol recall provides “some reputational buffer,” said Stephen A. Greyser, the Harvard Business School professor who wrote the first study of the company’s handling of that crisis. “But it is not a total protection” because it won’t shield the company from a loss of trust if consumers or investors conclude the company hasn’t been fully forthcoming in this case, he said. J&J needs to guard against “reputational contagion,” the risk that a loss of confidence in Baby Powder could bleed over into how consumers, shareholders and others view the company more broadly, Greyser added. The key difference between the two crises is that poisoned Tylenol presented a threat to consumers at the time, while the documented asbestos contamination of J&J talc that Reuters investigated spanned from 1971 to the early 2000s. J&J says that if it believed that Baby Powder today presented safety risks, it wouldn’t hesitate to remove it from store shelves, given that the product accounts for less than 0.5% of annual revenue. The company joined its talc supplier, Imerys Talc America, a unit of Paris-based Imerys SA, in requesting that a trial scheduled for January in St. Louis be delayed for, among other things, what they called “negative national and local news coverage” resulting from the Reuters investigation that would inevitably taint prospective jurors. The judge denied the motion. The same judge recently upheld a $4.69 billion jury award in a separate ovarian cancer case, which J&J says it expects to be overturned on appeal. The judge said J&J’s promotion of a product that the evidence showed was contaminated with a known carcinogen was “particularly reprehensible.” In an emailed statement, Imerys Talc America said it “is committed to the quality and safety of its products,” and that rigorous research “overwhelmingly confirms that talc is safe, and no agency has asserted that talc causes cancer.” Some of J&J’s messages in its recent campaign omit key details regarding findings on talc and, in certain instances, are undermined by other evidence, according to a Reuters review of the company’s statements. The Dec. 19 tweet claiming that the FDA’s own tests never found asbestos in J&J talc, for example, ignores an agency scientist’s 1973 finding that a Shower to Shower sample contained asbestos fibers, according to a copy of an FDA report titled “Asbestos and Other Contaminants in Talc” and a deposition of a former J&J head toxicologist. The FDA did not respond to questions for this article, citing a partial government shutdown. On CNBC, Gorsky said: “We also not only used the best testing methodologies that were available, but we continued to improve them through the years.” J&J’s testing methods do exceed the industry standard. But even so, as a geologist and frequent J&J expert witness acknowledged in court this year, only a tiny fraction of the company’s talc sold over the past 40 years has been tested using what is widely recognized as the best method to detect asbestos fibers, known as transmission electron microscopy. Plaintiffs’ lawyers are already homing in on inconsistencies between J&J’s statements and other evidence regarding its talc, and they are planning to depose Gorsky in coming weeks. “There is no flexibility in what they’re saying,” said Leigh O’Dell, one of the lead lawyers representing plaintiffs in thousands of lawsuits against J&J consolidated in a New Jersey federal court. “Taking these statements on behalf of the company and pointing out to juries and judges the misrepresentations contained in those statements — I think you’re going to see that in every case going forward, whether it’s an ovarian cancer case or a mesothelioma case.” One of J&J’s recent tweets criticized plaintiffs’ lawyers: “Far from a new theory or insight, plaintiffs’ lawyers have resurrected a disproven argument about asbestos in our talc that dates to the 1970s.” The Reuters investigation found that tests by J&J’s own contract labs and others periodically found small amounts of asbestos in talc from mines that supplied the mineral for Baby Powder as recently as the early 2000s. Some J&J tweets and newspaper ads have adopted a question-and-answer format. “What about the allegation you withheld safety information?” the company said in a full-page ad in USA Today the day after Christmas. “It is false,” the company said. “All safety concerns are taken seriously, and we share all relevant information with regulators.” Some Twitter users have responded to J&J’s tweets with praise and support. Others have referenced their relatives’ longtime use of J&J talc products and subsequent deaths from ovarian cancer. “We’re very sorry to hear this,” J&J responded to several Twitter users, expressing a desire to speak with them and offering a phone number to call. In response to another recent tweet in which J&J said its talc doesn’t contain asbestos, one Twitter user asked: “Did it USED to?” “No,” J&J responded. “For decades, J&J’s baby powder has repeatedly been tested for asbestos and found not to contain asbestos.”"
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41002
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China has closed down its last coronavirus hospital. Not enough new cases to support them.
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This is correct. The last hospitals closed at the start of March 2020.
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true
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online
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Doctors in India have been successful in treating coronavirus with a combination of drugs (Lopinavir, Retonovir, Oseltamivir along with Chlorphenamine) and are going to suggest the same medicine globally. India’s ministry of health has advised that the anti-HIV drugs, Lopinavir and Retonovir, are used in some groups of Covid-19 patients. But it is unclear how successful this treatment has been. The other two drugs from the claim are not mentioned in their guidance. Researchers at the Erasmus Medical Center claim to have found an antibody against coronavirus. Researchers in the Netherlands have released research, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, on an antibody against the new coronavirus. A 103 year-old Chinese grandmother has made a full recovery from Covid-19 after being treated for 6 days in Wuhan, China This has been widely reported in the media. Apple has reopened all 42 China stores. Correct. On 13 March 2020, Apple announced that it had reopened all 42 stores in mainland China after a closure of almost six weeks. Cleveland Clinic developed a Covid-19 test that gives results in hours, not days. The number of new cases in South Korea is declining. Italy is hit hard, experts say, only because they have the oldest population in Europe. Whilst it is true that an older population has contributed to a high number of deaths in Italy, it may not be the sole reason. Scientists in Israel are likely to announce the development of a coronavirus vaccine. Scientists in Israel and elsewhere are working on developing a vaccination to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus, but it won’t be ready for the public for over a year. Three Maryland coronavirus patients fully recovered and are able to return to everyday life. Correct. On 13 March 2020, Montgomery County, Maryland confirmed that three residents who previously had the virus no longer tested positive. A network of Canadian scientists are making excellent progress in Covid-19 research. At least one group of Canadian scientists has recently announced some progress in understanding Covid-19. A San Diego biotech company is developing a Covid-19 vaccine in collaboration with Duke University and National University of Singapore. Tulsa County's first positive Covid-19 case has recovered. This individual has had two negative tests, which is the indicator of recovery. Correct, this patient has recovered according to official Tulsa County sources. Two negative tests is one of three official indicators of recovery among people with Covid-19 (who showed symptoms). All seven patients who were getting treated for Covid-19 at Safdarjung hospital in New Delhi have recovered. There is a news story reporting that seven patients in this hospital in New Delhi had recovered. However, these were not the only Covid-19 patients in the city. Plasma from newly recovered patients from Covid -19 can treat others infected by Covid-19. This is being used as a treatment in some countries, but clinical trials have not yet proved that this is effective. Claim 1 of 15
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9241
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Toothpaste significantly reduces dental plaque and inflammation throughout the body
|
This news release about a small pilot study of a brand of toothpaste that displays plaque on teeth plays up potential, but unproven benefits, while ignoring serious weaknesses in the research. The release notes the study found people using Plaque HD toothpaste for a couple of months had less plaque and lower levels of a blood protein that is associated with a type of inflammation that may, in turn, be associated with heart disease risk in certain cases. But the release does not provide any hard numbers. It doesn’t mention that inflammation levels inexplicably rose in people using the placebo toothpaste, just one of many questions about the quality of the study and the meaning of its results. Indeed, the researchers excluded more than a third of the trial participants from the high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP) test analysis (hs-CRP is a measure of inflammation that is sometimes associated with cardiovascular disease risk), because their baseline results were already so low that they weren’t likely to see any further reduction. The release does not mention this important study design decision. The release does not tell readers that the study was paid for by the maker of the toothpaste brand. It does not mention other possible explanations for the results or the availability of other, much cheaper, products that also mark tooth plaque. This small, pilot study is already being used by the maker of Plaque HD to promote its high-priced toothpaste. The company, which funded the study, improperly proclaims on the product website that the study “suggests Plaque HD reduces the risks of cardiovascular disease.” And a company news release goes even further, claiming “Toothpaste May Save Your Life.” While the company language goes far beyond the wording of the release from Florida Atlantic University that we reviewed, the academic version dovetails nicely with the study funder’s marketing. Indeed, similarities between the two releases raise troubling questions about behind-the-scene coordination between the university and the company. We were dismayed that a major figure in epidemiology, Dr. Hennekens, would allow his name to be attached to this study or to the exaggerated claims made in the news releases and product website.
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false
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dental plaque,Florida Atlantic University,plaque displaying toothpaste
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Plaque HD toothpaste is very expensive: $16.95 plus $5.75 shipping for a single 4.1-ounce tube, according to the manufacturer’s website, compared to less than $5 for a similar amount of conventional toothpaste. Also, plaque disclosing tablets can be bought for about 10 to 25 cents each. These don’t have to be used every day, just on a periodic basis to determine effectiveness of brushing. Considering the big price difference, consumers would want to see strong evidence that this brand of toothpaste really provides health benefits over other toothpastes and other ways of showing plaque on teeth. The release fails to quantify the observed reductions in tooth plaque and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein. Although the body of the release notes that the researchers are planning a much larger trial in order to see whether this toothpaste can reduce the risk of heart attack and strokes, the sub-heading (“Findings support reductions in heart attacks and strokes”) overstates the study conclusions. Also, by not including the patients with low CRP levels, the results could be more impressive than if used in a larger population with patients who have elevated CRP and those who don’t. The release does not mention harms. While regular toothpastes come with a standard warning to keep away from young children and to avoid ingesting, we aren’t told if the disclosing agents used in Plaque HD’s “Targetol technology” pose any additional harms for people with sensitivity or mouth problems. It would be good to be told either way. The release does a poor job of describing the trial. The trial leaves many, many questions unanswered. The release fails to discuss them, except to note that a much bigger trial is in the works to test potential health benefits. For instance, neither the journal article nor the release describe the brushing technique instructions given to study participants. A description of the trial posted at ClinicalTrials.gov indicates that participants were told to brush once a day for one minute, which is less often and briefer than the twice-a-day for two minutes many dentists commonly recommend. Even the Plaque HD label recommends brushing at least twice a day. There is no indication that researchers tracked how often or how long participants actually brushed. Also, participants in this trial used manual toothbrushes, not electric ones, which in some studies seem to do a better job reducing plaque. These features of the trial are important and should have been discussed. What if the participants using Plaque HD brushed longer than those using the placebo paste, because they could see the stained plaque that was on their teeth? Could it be that brushing frequency and duration are important variables, as some studies of oral cleanliness have found? Is it possible that simply using a timer, so that the participants using the placebo toothpaste brushed just as long, might have minimized differences between the groups? There are some key statistics that are left unexplained in the journal article and not mentioned in the release. For instance, hs-CRP levels actually rose in the placebo group. Why? And if the levels had not changed, as would be expected, would that have wiped out the claimed advantage of Plaque HD? What’s more, the researchers excluded 23 of the 61 participants (38 percent) from the hs-CRP analysis because their baseline levels were already very low. The key study design decision is not mentioned in the release. These are all very important issues and can lead to a very biased conclusion in the study. This release illustrates a recurring problem with disease-oriented rather than patient-oriented evidence. The release ties dental plaque and hs-CRP test levels more tightly to heart attacks and strokes than is justified. It begins by stating, “For decades, research has suggested a link between oral health and inflammatory diseases affecting the entire body — in particular, heart attacks and strokes.” But it doesn’t explain how nuanced those links are. Indeed, the value of CRP testing is hotly debated. It is typically recommended only for people having a hard time deciding whether or not to begin statin drug treatment. The release strongly (and improperly) implies that everyone, regardless of their individual heart disease risk, would benefit from something that lowers hs-CRP levels. Indeed, almost 40 percent of the trial participants were dropped from the hs-CRP comparisons because their levels were already low. If researchers decided that more than a third of the trial participants were unlikely to see any meaningful reduction in their hs-CRP levels, the release should have noted that many people have no reason to think that this product could reduce their heart disease risk. The release fails to disclose that the trial was funded by TJA Health LLC, the maker of Plaque HD. (The journal article states that the company was not involved in the design, conduct or reporting of the trial.) And while the release devotes considerable attention to the prominent career of senior author, Charles Hennekens, MD, it does not point out that he holds patents related to CRP testing. The release does not mention the availability of inexpensive plaque-disclosing tablets. Consumers would want to know if such tablets might be an alternative to the very pricey Plaque HD toothpaste, an important point that the study did not explore. The release also does not discuss the potential effect of brushing frequency or duration. The release implies that Plaque HD toothpaste and testing for hs-CRP are both currently available. The release states that “the findings on decreasing inflammation are new and novel” and “Plaque HD® is the first toothpaste that reveals plaque so that it can be removed with directed brushing.” However, the study doesn’t present strong evidence for the first claim and in regard to the second, neither the release nor the journal article address whether plaque-identifying toothpaste is superior to plaque-disclosing tablets. As noted above, the sub-heading (“Findings support reductions in heart attacks and strokes”) overstates the conclusion of the small, pilot trial. And the release repeatedly states or implies that reducing levels of hs-CRP provides a health benefit, which is a matter of ongoing debate. There is also no support provided for the claim that Dr. Hennekens has “saved more than 1.1 million lives.” Where does this number come from? Whatever his contributions to medical science, it is hard to imagine that he personally can claim credit for saving more than 1 million individual lives.
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37490
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A viral Facebook post represents an open letter from a grocery store manager during the coronavirus pandemic, addressing common misconceptions by shoppers.
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Coronavirus ‘Memo from a Grocery Store Manager’
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unproven
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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An April 7 2020 Facebook post — purportedly a message from an overworked grocery store manager — racked up over half a million shares in just a few days.The post, accompanied by an image of (what looked to be pre-COVID-19 pandemic) supermarket shelves, was an apparent chain letter posted by user Roy Allen Stagg. It read:From a grocery store manager:I manage a grocery store.Here’s some things everyone should know:1. I don’t have toilet paper 2. I don’t have sanitizer 3. I run out of milk, eggs and meat daily 4. I promise if it’s out on the shelf … it’s not in a hidden corner of our back roomThose are the predictable ones, now for the real stuff5. I have been doing this for 25 years I did not forget how to order product 6. I did not cause the warehouse to be out of product 7. I schedule as much help as I have, including many TMs working TONS of overtime to help YOU 8. I am sorry there are lines at the check out lanesNow for the really important stuff9. My team puts themselves in harm’s way everyday so you can buy groceries 10. My team works tirelessly to get product on the floor for you to buy 11. My team is exhausted 12. My team is scared of getting sick 13. My team is human and do not possess an antivirus… they are in just as much danger as you are. (Arguably more) But they show up to work everyday just so you can buy groceries 14. My team is tired 15. My team is very under appreciated 16. My team is exposed to more people who are potentially infected in one hour than most of you will in a week (medical community excluded, thank you for all that you do!) 17. My team is abused all day by customers who have no idea how ignorant they are 18. My team disinfects every surface possible, everyday, just so you can come in grab a wipe from the dispenser, wipe the handle and throw the used wipe in the cart or on the ground and leave it there… so my team can throw it in the trash for you later 19. My team wonders if you wash your re-usable bags, that you force us to touch, that are clearly dirty and have more germs on them than our shopping carts do 20. My team more than earns their breaks, lunches and days off. And if that means you wait longer I am sorry.The last thing I will say is thisThe next time you are in a grocery store, please pause and think about what you are saying and how you are treating the people you encounter. They are the reason you are able to buy toilet paper, sanitizer, milk, eggs and meat.If the store you go to is out of an item.. maybe find the neighbor or friend that bought enough for a year … there are hundreds of them… and ask them to spare 1 or 2. They caused the problem to begin with…And lastly, please THANK the people who helped you. They don’t have to come to work!Stagg didn’t claim to have written the missive, and his Facebook profile listed an occupation other than supermarket employee. It was in fact quite clear that Stagg was not the original author, but he was credited as such regardless by the scraper site Love What Matters in an undated post.It was also shared to a regional subreddit on April 8 2020, later amended to say that the original poster was not the author:https://www.reddit.com/r/bayarea/comments/fxfsrf/from_a_grocery_store_manager_during_covid19/On April 6 2020, the same missive was shared by the site Crooks and Liars, titled “A Memo From A Grocery Store Manager.” Before transcribing a nearly identical post, the site indicated it originated with “a grocery store manager, [and it] is getting heavy shares on social media.” The earliest iteration we were able to track down was shared by user Tina Shannon on March 27 2020. It’s likely the coronavirus “memo from a grocery store manager” began circulating earlier, but not by much.On March 13 2020, WBUR reported the onset of “panic shopping” at supermarkets and grocery stores, speaking to a Massachusetts supermarket vice-president:“The situation is tough right now,” said Arthur Ackles, vice president of merchandising and buying at Roche Brothers. “Over the past seven or eight days [prior to March 13 2020], our customers have been coming into the stores at a pretty alarming rate.”Ackles said [the first] Thursday and Friday [in March 2020] saw a roughly 10% increase in foot traffic, while [March 12 and 13 2020,] the increase skyrocketed to between 200% and 300%.On March 15 2020, the Wall Street Journal reported nationwide shortages as the looming pandemic led American shoppers to “stock up” on staple items. That article shoppers were queued for blocks to enter grocery stores across the country, and that empty shelves were commonplace:U.S. grocers are adjusting their operations to try to keep up with customers who are emptying their shelves amid angst over the new coronavirus, even as their own employees face heightened risk of infection.It’s not clear who wrote the “letter from a grocery store manager” in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, but it first went viral on or around March 27 2020 — at which point it had already been copied. A variation shared by a separate Facebook user spread over half a million times, and was credited to him by the site Love What Matters. The circumstances described in the missive were clearly real, but the original author (and whether this was was written by an actual grocery store manager during the coronavirus pandemic) is Unknown.
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34728
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House Bill 896, considered by the Texas House of Representatives in 2019, would have the effect of making abortion punishable by death.
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There is momentum building for fetal-heartbeat bills in Republican-dominated state legislatures. Texas, Missouri, Tennessee and Florida are expected to approve similar measures this year. Ohio’s legislature approved one on Wednesday, and the governor is expected to sign it. States like Ohio and Tennessee are also considering so-called trigger laws, which would immediately ban abortions if Roe v. Wade were overturned.
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mixture
|
Politics
|
In April 2019, a legislative proposal in the state of Texas garnered nationwide attention, including in the form of a widely-shared meme posted by the “Other 98%” Facebook page, which proclaimed that “Texas is considering the death penalty for women who have an abortion. They are now so ‘Pro-Life’ they want to kill you”: It is true that in the first few months of 2019, members of the Texas House of Representatives considered and debated a bill which would have redefined a “living child” to include fertilized eggs, and had the effect of completely outlawing abortion by amending state law on assault and homicide. In Texas, it is punishable by death to murder a child aged under 10 years, and since the proposed legislation would have reconstituted abortion as the murder of a living child, it is therefore true to say Texas lawmakers did indeed debate and consider a bill which would have had the effect of making abortions punishable by death. However, the bill’s passage through the Texas legislature appeared to have come to an abrupt end on 10 April 2019, shortly after the “Other 98%” published the meme, when a Republican committee chairman announced he would not allow the bill to advance beyond the committee. Republican House Member Tony Tinderholt introduced House Bill 896 (H.B. 896) on 17 January, with his Republican House colleagues Mike Lang and Valoree Swanson joining as co-authors of the bill, on 26 February. On 25 February, the bill was referred to the House Committee on Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence. On 10 April, that committee’s Chairman, Republican House Member Jeff Leach, announced that H.B. 896 would not advance out of the committee, a move which effectively killed the bill: My statement on HB 896: #txlege pic.twitter.com/9SulSKql0u — Jeff Leach (@leachfortexas) April 10, 2019 The legislation proposed making several changes to existing Texas law, with the intention of redefining a “living child” to include a fertilized egg and completely outlawing abortion in the state of Texas. Criminal Homicide and Assault Chapter 19 of the Texas Penal Code sets out the state’s law on criminal homicide, defining and outlining the punishments for murder, manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, and so on. Sec. 19.06 of that code creates an exception for abortion, stating that the law on criminal homicide does not apply where the death of an unborn child is brought about by the child’s mother, or by a licensed physician as part of a medical procedure. However, H.B. 896 would have explicitly reversed this exception, asserting that the law on criminal homicide “applies to the death of an unborn child regardless of whether the conduct charged” was committed by a mother or took place as part of a medical procedure. Sec. 19.03 of the Penal Code states that where an attacker “murders an individual under 10 years of age,” that murder is a “capital felony,” punishable by execution. By removing the Sec. 19.06 exception for abortions, H.B. 896 would therefore have had the effect of designating abortion an act of criminal homicide against a child under 10 years of age, effectively introducing the death penalty as a punishment for abortion. In this respect, the “Other 98%” meme and related news reports were accurate. Chapter 22 of the Texas Penal Code sets out the state’s law on assault. Sec. 22.12 contains an abortion exception to the prohibition on assault which is almost identical to the one found in Sec. 19.06 of the chapter on criminal homicide. However, H.B. 896 also would have reversed that exception, stating that the ban on assault “applies to conduct charged as having been committed against an individual who is an unborn child, regardless of whether the conduct” was committed by the mother of the unborn child, or was part of a medical procedure. Notably, H.B. 896 appeared to invite a court challenge against it, stating explicitly that “Any federal law, executive order, or court decision that purports to supersede, stay, or overrule this Act is in violation of the Texas Constitution and the United States Constitution and is therefore void.” The bill also directed the state’s Attorney General to ensure the assault and criminal homicide prohibitions on abortion were being enforced by state agencies “regardless of any contrary federal law, executive order, or court decision.” The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade ruled that a woman’s right to access an abortion was protected under her constitutionally-enshrined right to privacy. That decision has been the basis for decades of abortion liberalization, but pro-life activists have long sought to force the nation’s highest court to revisit it. As the New York Times reported, H.B. 896’s attempted outright ban on abortion could be viewed as forming part of a wider pro-life strategy of implementing increasingly stringent abortion restrictions and prompting court challenges which could escalate to the level of a Supreme Court reversal of Roe v. Wade: In other states, some Republican representatives have not been shy about getting a law on the books that could prompt the Supreme Court to revisit Roe v. Wade. In Mississippi, the Republican governor signed a bill last month that largely bans abortions once doctors can detect a trace of a fetal heartbeat with an ultrasound, which can come as early as six weeks into pregnancy. When a similar bill was being considered in Kentucky, the Republican majority leader said he would be proud if it were challenged up to the Supreme Court.
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29120
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A 13-year-old boy in Thailand died from pumping air up his rectum to get high.
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"What's true: A Thai teenager died from a punctured intestine brought about by compressed air being forced into his rectum. What's false: The death was not part of a ""fad"" for getting high, but rather the result of a prank perpetrated upon the victim by others that went wrong."
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mixture
|
Horrors, freakish fatalities
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Originally making the cyberspace rounds in mid-1997, a fancifully-embellished cautionary tale has been enshrined as one of the Internet’s “Darwin Awards.” Though the story was often identified as an article from the 15 August 1993 Japan Times, we found no evidence that news outlet ever published it: “The government must crack down on this disgusting craze of Pumping”, a spokesman for the Nakhon Ratchasima hospital told reporters. “If this perversion catches on, it will destroy the cream of Thailand’s manhood.” He was speaking after the remains of 13-year-old Charnchai Puanmuangpak had been rushed into the hospital’s emergency room. “Most ‘Pumpers’ use a standard bicycle pump,” he explained, “inserting the nozzle far up their rectum, giving themselves a rush of air, creating a momentary high. This act is a sin against God.” Charnchai took it further still. He started using a two-cylinder foot pump, but even that wasn’t exciting enough for him, and he boasted to friends that he was going to try the compressed air hose at a nearby gasoline station. They dared him to do it so, under cover of darkness, he snuck in. Not realising how powerful the machine was, he inserted the tube deep into his rectum, and placed a coin in the slot. As a result, he died virtually instantly, but passers by are still in shock. One woman thought she was watching a twilight firework display, and started clapping. “We still haven’t located all of him,” say the police authorities. “When that quantity of air interacted with the gas in his system, he nearly exploded. It was like an atom bomb went off or something.” “Pumping is the devil’s pastime, and we must all say no to Satan,” Ratchasima concluded. “Inflate your tires by all means, but then hide your bicycle pump where it cannot tempt you.” As humorous as this bit of scarelore was, it fell down upon closer examination for multiple reasons: The tone of indignant moral outrage is common to such offerings; it works to highlight the humor of the situation as we find ourselves laughing even as the ubiquitous cartoonish “spokesman” heatedly expounds upon the latest threat to Society. We’re also captured by the obligatory mental picture of the lad’s inglorious yet pyrotechnic end. (“One woman thought she was watching a twilight firework display, and started clapping.”) As unbelievable as this story is, it appears to be a fanciful embellishment of the 1993 death of Charnchai Puanmuangpak of Thailand. Though the 13-year-old did die from a punctured intestine brought about by compressed air being forced into his rectum, he was killed by others; there was no element of a death brought about by self-gratification gone wrong. The real Charnchai Puanmuangpak died when two of his 15-year-old co-workers at the gas station carried a prank too far. These older lads were in the habit of turning the compressed air upon Charnchai when they found him napping. Finding him deeply asleep, this time they inserted the nozzle into his bum. The boy died before reaching the hospital, and the two lads who inserted the hose were charged with carelessness resulting in death. A similar act of battery carried out upon a 13-year-old boy in Dezhou city (Shandong province), China, on 30 June 2012 left the unfortunate teen barely clinging to life. Two of Du Chuanwang’s co-workers at the gas station where they all worked inserted the nozzle of an air pump hose into the youngster’s anus then blew air through it, in the process damaging Du’s liver, kidneys, and stomach and causing massive bleeding within the abdomen. Following a charity appeal, the boy was moved from a local hospital (Xiajin County People’s Hospital) to the far better equipped Bayi Children’s Hospital in Beijing.
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9087
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Comprehensive meta-analysis affirms cranberries' role in promoting a healthy urinary tract
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The release focuses on a recent journal article that reviews the available medical literature concerning the effects of cranberry consumption on preventing urinary tract infections (UTIs). The release tells readers that “healthcare professionals should be telling their patients to have cranberry products as a first step in reducing recurrent UTIs.” However, the release offers little substance to support the claim, and neglects to provide information on the extent of benefits or any information on the underlying studies that were reviewed. The assertion that cranberry products are “a first step” implies cranberries were systematically compared with other interventions for preventing recurrence, and that’s not the case here. UTIs are common, unpleasant for patients, and can lead to serious complications. The problem of antibiotic overuse for UTIs as well as other infections, and the resulting development of antibiotic resistance, is also a concern. For these reasons, patients who suffer from recurring UTIs may well want to try relatively inexpensive methods that hold promise for preventing infection. But it’s important for people to make informed decisions, and not to rely on broad, unsupported statements.
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mixture
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cranberries,Cranberry Institute,urinary tract infections
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The release notes that “cranberry products are low cost,” which is fair enough and is sufficient to earn this a satisfactory rating. The issue of cost is, however, complicated by the fact that the release offers no information on what sort of cranberry products a patient may use. Is one glass of cranberry juice per day sufficient? Does one need to consume the whole berries? Or should patients take over-the-counter cranberry-based supplements? Costs would vary depending on how one chooses to pursue the vague directions discussed in the release. Benefits are not quantified. According to the release, “Authors found a statistically significant risk reduction in repeat UTIs overall, but not significant for any particular subgroup.” But what does “statistically significant risk reduction” mean? Were patients 10 percent less likely to get a UTI? 0.1 percent? Those are both statistically significant, but there’s a world of difference. In fact, the published study reported that the risk of recurrent infection was reduced by approximately 33 percent. Including this quantitative information would greatly strengthen the release. The release says only that taking cranberries as a health supplement is “low risk.” And that’s true. But that doesn’t mean that it’s no risk. For example, the University of Maryland notes that one of the chemicals found in cranberries can increase the risk of kidney stones for some people — that’s valuable information for readers who have a history of kidney stones. Even if the harms are minimal, it is important to note that fact explicitly. The release notes that the journal article is a meta-analysis of 28 studies, which involved close to 5,000 patients. That’s good, but not quite good enough — a little more information was needed. For example, what sort of studies are we talking about? How many were randomized controlled trials (the gold standard) and how many were observational? The release doesn’t need to provide details on all 28 studies, but it should tell readers whether any of the studies used placebo, were double-blind, etc. No disease mongering here. The release refers to a UTI as a “potentially debilitating infection,” but given that UTIs can lead to kidney damage or sepsis, that’s not inaccurate. This is satisfactory, yet the release could have been more transparent about the organization that issued the release. The study itself was supported by a Portuguese university and a Portuguese bank, which is noted in the release. However, the release lists a PR firm as the contact but includes a quote from the director of the Cranberry Institute and a summary of the Institute as background, without ever mentioning the group’s relationship to the study. After looking at the Cranberry Institute’s website it’s clear that the trade group has worked with the PR firm previously on news releases. Why not explain the Cranberry Institute’s interest in the research? There are a number of lifestyle changes, in addition to modifying one’s cranberry consumption, that can reduce the risk of UTIs. For example, increasing one’s water intake or changing one’s form of birth control. In addition, there are medical interventions such as use of vaginal estrogen preparations (for post-menopausal women) and taking an antibiotic preventively after intercourse. The story doesn’t address this, but it can be assumed that most (if not all) readers will be familiar with the availability of products containing cranberries. Ergo, we’ll rate this as not applicable. It’s worth noting that the release gives readers little idea of what sort of cranberry products a patient could — or should — use to lower their risk of a UTI. This is not the first journal article to review the available research on whether cranberry consumption can help to prevent recurrent UTIs — only the most recent. See, for example, previous reviews from 2012 and 2007. The release does not refer to these previous reviews or make clear how this most recent review article advances our understanding of the subject. As with the conflict-of-interest section, this earns a satisfactory rating, but includes some odd language that is worth noting. First of all, there is no unjustifiable language in regard to the study itself — thus the satisfactory rating. However, the release also quotes the director of an industry-funded organization, who notes that this research “revitalizes the enthusiasm for cranberry products year-round.” The relevant paragraph comes as a distinct non sequitur and gives the release the tone of an advertisement, rather than an attempt to raise awareness of recent health research findings.
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6431
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Hospital says it will be diverting trauma patients elsewhere.
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A Philadelphia hospital that earlier announced plans to close this fall has given notice that it will immediately begin diverting trauma victims to other facilities despite a state warning against taking steps toward closure.
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true
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Health, General News, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Trauma
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Hahnemann University Hospital said Saturday that it notified the Pennsylvania Trauma Systems Foundation Friday night that it was “de-designating” as a Level 1 and 2 trauma facility, effective immediately. Hospital chief medical officer Dr. Alexander Trebelev cited “clinical and operational challenges” that prevented the hospital from serving trauma and serious heart attack patients. “After reviewing our plan of closure and in consultation with the Pennsylvania Department of Health, we felt this move is in the best interest of patient safety,” he said. Officials said the emergency department will remain open but won’t accept trauma patients. The 495-bed hospital announced Wednesday it would close in September due to unsustainable financial losses. Ron Dreskin, interim chief executive officer of hospital owner Philadelphia Academic Health System, said in Saturday’s announcement that officials realize the impact the move and the closure would have on the city and surrounding neighborhoods “and most importantly, our staff.” “We wish there could have been a more positive outcome for all,” he said. “In spite of our best efforts and meetings with numerous city, state, union, insurance carrier and university officials, a financial solution could not be achieved.” State health officials on Thursday warned the hospital’s owners against taking the first steps toward closing, saying they must first file a detailed plan that ensures the safety of people who depend on the institution for care. The cease-and-desist order cited special concerns about closure of any part of the facility before July 4 due to the annual holiday celebration, concert and fireworks on the parkway that draws tens of thousands of residents and tourists. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that city officials also cited the July 4 event in an emergency petition to join a suit by Drexel University College of Medicine, which has been affiliated with Hahnemann as a teaching hospital and sought a preliminary injunction to block the closure. “Hahnemann, which is located only six blocks from 21st and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, is by far the closest emergency care facility to the parkway event,” the petition said, citing risk to those attending should Hahnemann’s emergency care facilities not be available.
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32015
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Abortion rates drop during Democratic presidencies and rise during Republican administrations.
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Multiple factors influence the incidence of abortion including the availability of abortion providers; state regulations, such as mandatory waiting periods, parental involvement laws, and legal restrictions on abortion providers; increasing acceptance of nonmarital childbearing; shifts in the racial/ethnic composition of the U.S. population; and changes in the economy and the resulting impact on fertility preferences and access to health care services, including contraception.
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false
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Politics, abortion
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In 1969, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) began collecting nationwide data on the numbers of abortions, the abortion ratio (abortions versus live births), and the abortion rate (abortions versus the US population of women aged 15-44 years old). While these data are not perfect due to inconsistent (and sometimes non-existent) reporting from different states, they can be used to analyze relative changes in abortion rates during the presidencies of different presidential parties, as we will do here using numbers from the CDC’s annual abortion surveillance study. Red portions of the lines show the ratio and rates of abortions occurring under Republican administrations, and blue under Democratic administrations: Before delving into the specific relationship between abortions and the political party affiliation of the President, the complete data set should be analyzed as a whole to provide context. This is how the CDC describes the overall trend in their data: Following nationwide legalization of abortion in 1973, the total number, rate (number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15–44 years), and ratio (number of abortions per 1,000 live births) of reported abortions increased rapidly, reaching the highest levels in the 1980s before decreasing at a slow yet steady pace. However, the incidence of abortion has varied considerably across demographic subpopulations. Moreover, during 2006–2008, a break occurred in the previously sustained pattern of decrease, but in all subsequent years has been followed by even greater decreases. The large uptick in legal abortions though the ’70s is related to the the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that a woman’s right to an abortion is protected under the right to privacy of the Due Process Clause of the 14th amendment. It is plain to see that abortion rates have risen (prior to their peaking in the mid-1980s) and fallen under both Democratic and Republican administration, suggesting little to no correlation with whichever political party controls the White House. The overall trend since the 1980s has been a fairly consistent decline across through administrations of both parties. It would be easy to demonstrate that abortion rates have not risen under Democratic administrations in the last several decades, but it would be false to argue that declines in abortion rates are an exclusive feature of Democratic presidencies. The claim that abortion rates fall under Democrats, while true, ignores the fact that rates have also continued to decline through Republican administrations as well. The claim, then, that abortion rates (at least since their mid-1980s peak) have risen when Republicans have held the White House is therefore equally false. At most, one can argue that the rate of decline appeared to slow during the presidency of George W. Bush before increasing under President Barack Obama’s administration, but such an observation would be based on a comparison between only two administrations and would do nothing to demonstrate causation. In fact, causation between the presidency and abortion rates would be difficult to demonstrate in any case because it is hard to draw a straight line between federal government policy (let alone presidential policy) and abortion procurement. Nearly all challenges to open access to abortion have come at the state, and not the federal, level. According to a 2013 report by the pro-choice Guttmacher Institute: Twenty-two states enacted 70 abortion restrictions during 2013. This makes 2013 second only to 2011 in the number of new abortion restrictions enacted in a single year. To put recent trends in even sharper relief, 205 abortion restrictions were enacted over the past three years (2011–2013), but just 189 were enacted during the entire previous decade (2001–2010). At the federal level, legislators have had more trouble passing abortion restrictions into law, making it difficult to argue that any presidential policy, specifically, has had an effect on abortion rates. The only relevant federal legislation that has been signed into law are the 1976 Hyde Amendment, which prohibited federal money from funding (most) abortions, and the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which criminalized abortions in the second trimester of pregnancy and was upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court in 2007. What one can say, though, is that federal or myriad state-level regulations put in place do not appear to produce much of a change in abortion rates, according to a 2014 study by the Guttmacher Institute: Forty-four laws intended to restrict access to abortion were implemented in 18 states between 2008 and 2010; an additional 62 were implemented in 2011 in 21 states. Some of these laws, such as those that added information to existing counseling requirements, would not necessarily be expected to have a measurable impact. In turn, we found no indication that they affected state-specific trends in abortion incidence. […] Finally, a number of states that did not enact any new abortion restrictions and that are generally supportive of abortion rights—for example, by allowing state Medicaid funds to pay for abortions for eligible women—experienced declines in their abortion rates comparable to, and sometimes greater than, the national decline (e.g., California, New Jersey and New York). That these states also experienced a slight drop in the number of clinics offering abortion services may reflect a decline in demand as opposed to the imposition of legal barriers. According to the CDC, multiple factors can affect abortion rates, including those such as contraception and demographic changes that have an effect on the demand for (as opposed to availability of) abortions:
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10520
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Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs May Cut RA Risk
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Of the two stories we reviewed that reported the findings of a study showing an association between statin use and lower rates of rheumatoid arthritis, this one does the better job highlighting the preliminary nature of the research. Comments from a researcher about the need for further study before suggesting statins as a preventive measure to fight rheumatoid arthritis appear near the top of the story. The story also includes a comment from an independent source saying this type of study cannot tell us if there is a causal relationship. Like the other story we reviewed, this one fails to make any mention of side effects or any other downside to statin use. As with the other story reviewed, a significant shortcoming of this story was the failure to put the observed difference in rheumatoid arthritis rates into perspective. The story reports those who took statins faithfully for several years had a 40 percent lower rate of developing rheumatoid arthritis. But this was 40 percent lower than what? Neither story answers that question. The American College of Rheumatology estimates that rheumatoid arthritis affects between 2 and 10.7 people per 1,000. That means you would need to treat up to 998 people with statins to eliminate one case of RA. That statistic puts the finding in a different light and should have been included. A small reduction in a common risk can affect more people than a big reduction in an uncommon risk; that is why stories must include some information about the absolute rates, not merely relative reductions or increases. Without this background information it is impossible to know how important a reduction in the risk really is.
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mixture
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The story does not mention the costs of statin therapy, which include not only the drug itself but also ongoing testing and other monitoring. For some patients, statins are part of a lifelong treatment regimen. In those cases in particular, the costs can really add up. The story does not clearly explain what a 40 percent reduction in the risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis really means. How many fewer cases developed than were expected? The story doesn’t say. It reports that the researchers reviewed medical records of almost 2 million health plan members in Israel and that about 2,500 new cases of rheumatoid arthritis were diagnosed during the study period. But readers can’t tell from this information what the typical risk of rheumatoid arthritis might be, so they are left to ask: 40 percent of what? Even though the authors of the research study commented on the risks of statin use in order to place this potential additional use into context, this story failed to include any mention of the potential harms. Although the story headline and lead suggest the study evaluated whether statins could prevent rheumatoid arthritis, overall the story was clear that the study was observational and that all it can offer is an indication of an association between statin use and arthritis rates. Indeed, the story clearly pointed out that the results of this study merely suggest experimental trials and other research should evaluate the potential benefits of statin use in regard to rheumatoid arthritis. This is not the kind of evidence that can reveal whether statins were responsible for the lower risk seen among participants who took the drugs over an extended period. This story does not engage in disease-mongering. At the same time, it fails to mention the prevalence or seriousness of rheumatoid arthritis. The American College of Rheumatology estimates the prevalence of RA between 2 and 10.7 per 1000 adults. While relatively uncommon, RA can be a devastating chronic illness. It would have been helpful to provide some information on prevalence in the story. The story includes comments from an independent source. Although the story does not mention any potential conflicts of interest, none were disclosed by the study authors. The story does not mention any alternative approaches to reducing the risk of rheumatoid arthritis. There are a number of risks factors associated with the development of rheumatoid arthritis. Of the four, only smoking is modifiable. The others are female gender (women get RA about twice as often as men), family history and age (most people with RA develop it between 40 and 50 years of age). A complete story would have provided a bit more background for the reader. The story notes that statins are the most commonly prescribed class of drugs in the world, which is an even better description than the one used in the HealthDay story. The story says there have been other studies that have looked into whether statin use may have any effect on rheumatoid arthritis. The story does not appear to be based on a news release.
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1837
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Berkeley residents to vote on soda tax in November.
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A California college town known for its liberal activism will vote in November on whether to place a penny-per-ounce tax on sugary beverages, touching off the latest obesity-fighting campaign in the United States.
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true
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Health News
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Berkeley City Council voted unanimously to add the measure in the form of a referendum on the city’s ballot, drawing cheers of support from residents and health advocates, and vows to fight from the U.S. food and beverage industry. “When we pass this measure in November, Berkeley will be the first in the country where such a measure has been passed,” said Vicki Alexander, a co-chairwoman of a local campaign to put the measure on the ballot. “We are very excited to see that day happen.” Public health advocates across the country have clamored for ways to reduce consumption of sugary drinks and junk food, but lawmakers and voters have generally opposed enacting taxes or other regulations. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to limit the sale of large sugary drinks was rejected on June 26 by the state’s highest court. A California bill to require sugary soft drinks to carry labels warning of obesity, diabetes and tooth decay died in the California Legislature on June 17. Two California cities, Richmond and El Monte, failed two years ago in their attempts to become the first in the country to impose taxes of a penny per ounce on businesses that sell sugary drinks. Revenues from Berkeley’s tax, if it passes, would go toward the city’s general fund. “It’s disingenuous because there’s nothing in this measure that’s going to education. This goes right into the general account. It’s a money grab,” said Ted Mundorff, CEO of Landmark Theatres, which has movie theaters in Berkeley. A Berkeley vending machine executive said her company would be forced to pass the tax on to consumers in order to stay in business. A city survey of 500 likely voters showed majority support for the tax in April.
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9595
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Cutting Sugar Rapidly Improves Heart Health Markers
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Reducing sugar—but not calories—in the diets of a small group of children who have obesity led to substantial reductions in heart disease risk factors in only nine days, a new study shows. This brief New York Times Well blog post does a good job explaining these details, including the cautionary information that the study was small and of short duration. But the cost of brevity is that it fails to offer readers the kinds of methodological and explanatory details that would have helped them judge the relatively cursory nature of the research. Instead, it encourages readers to view the study as part of a growing body of research by referring them to a longer and more detailed 2015 post about a study conducted by some of the same scientists. Alas, a quick look at the methodological details suggests that both studies stem from the same group of child participants. It is not unusual for a single study to generate several research articles. But one could make the argument here that holding such small studies in abeyance and waiting for the bigger picture would serve readers better. Including commentary from an independent expert also would have strengthened the post. Although we Americans cling desperately to our sugary foods, learning that reducing sugar could markedly improve our health might encourage significant behavior change in this country. There is a growing–but certainly not conclusive–body of evidence that suggests there might be unique concerns with sugar beyond just its calories, such as being a possible contributor to heart disease.
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mixture
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childhood obesity
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The brief text reflects only on removing highly sugared foods in the diet of children. Replacement foods used in the study were commonly available at no obvious extra cost. This short narrative does an admirable job of getting specific about physiological changes that took place in these children over the course of nine days. However, the story should have established what this means in terms of an outcome that someone cares about. What would be the expected reduction in risk of heart attack or stroke? How big are the changes clinically, and how do they compare with other approaches? It’s probably hard to say since these are children, but then the story should acknowledge that. The study sought to hold number of calories constant in order to examine the impact of reduced sugar. While many health experts would point out that substituting pizza and bagels does not meet the criteria for an overall healthy diet, that was not a concern of this design. This was a modest study, with only 37 or 43 (the blog post indicates 37 while a UCSF news release indicates 43) child participants who were tracked over nine days. The reporter does label the effort “small and short-term.” Calls to reduce sugar in our diets have burgeoned in recent years, and data do seem to suggest that eating less sugar is beneficial. Just how beneficial is still a matter of study. There are no independent sources–the one person quoted is study coauthor, Dr. Robert Lustig, who has a potential conflict of interest. Lustig wrote a book that’s extremely critical of sugar, and has spoken of fructose as “poison.” The story makes no mention of other strategies typically employed to reduce markers of heart disease, including other types of dietary changes, exercise and drugs such as statins (which are typically reserved for adults). The UCSF news release did include this type of information. Bagels and pizza are ubiquitous. The extent to which the research is novel is left unexplored. The blog post does reference a 2015 post about a research report that, while examining different physiological end points, reaches similar conclusions about sugar as a bad actor. The UCSF news release provided a lot of information about this study, but the blog post sticks with a short summary of the findings. The one quote in the story appears to be original, and not taken from the news release.
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29722
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Debby Ryan had a heart attack after learning that her former co-star Cameron Boyce had passed away.
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We need to use what we have and make the world a better place for other people, other people, people who need us.
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false
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Junk News
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On July 6, 2019, fans of actor Cameron Boyce were shocked and saddened to learn that the 20-year-old Disney star had passed away after experiencing a seizure. As celebrities and fans mourned the loss of Boyce on social media, a rumor began to circulate that actress Debby Ryan had suffered a heart attack after hearing the news about her former co-star’s death: There was no truth to this unfounded rumor, which was widely disseminated by a viral video posted to YouTube by @Dancetayley and titled “Debby Ryan Rushed to Hospital After Finding Out About Cameron Boyce.” The video, which racked up nearly 2 million views within a day of its initial posting, included a number of screenshots of tweets from random people who claimed that Ryan had suffered a heart attack: None of those tweets originated with verified sources, however, and no credible news outlets reported that Ryan experienced a heart attack. This rumor likely stemmed from the fact that Ryan’s voice was absent from the conversation immediately following Boyce’s death. While many other co-stars and celebrity friends posted messages to social media mourning the loss of Boyce after the news of his death broke, Ryan’s social media accounts were largely silent. Fans began to wonder why she hadn’t commented yet, and some of them started to claim without evidence that she had suffered a heart attack. There were, of course, innumerable potential reasons why Ryan didn’t immediately post to social media that did not involve a heart attack. For example, she might simply have taken some time to process the news that her co-star had passed away. While Ryan didn’t immediately post to social media, she did like a tweet posted by actor Charles Esten, who co-starred with Ryan and Boyce on the show Jessie: Ryan, who turned off her Instagram comments following Boyce’s death (likely because a large number of fans were continuously reminding her that her friend had just died), also posted a video to her Instagram story of Boyce’s acceptance speech for the Pioneering Spirit award at the 2018 Thirst Gala. Here’s the full video of Boyce’s acceptance speech. The portion of his speech included in Ryan’s post is transcribed below: It’s crazy, we can tweet whenever we want and we can use social media and Instagram and make the world a better place, instead of a worse one, which so many people use it for…
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38707
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Author and filmmaker Bill Still has followed up on reports that a UPS cargo plane smuggled illegal immigrants into the country at an airport in Harrison, Pennsylvania.
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The World Health Organization and Congolese authorities are proposing changes to how some Ebola patients are cared for, new guidelines show, after a patient’s death challenged the accepted medical theory that survivors are immune to reinfection.
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false
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Immigration
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There are many unanswered questions surrounding the circumstances of the woman’s death in Democratic Republic of Congo, which has not previously been reported. But it has raised concerns because the woman, whose name has not been released for confidentiality reasons, was thought to have had immunity after surviving infection, but fell ill again with Ebola and died. “That was a big red flag event for all of us,” said Janet Diaz, who leads the World Health Organization’s clinical management team for the epidemic in Congo. Congo’s Ebola outbreak has infected over 3,000 people and killed more than 2,000 since August last year. It is the second-worst outbreak after one in West Africa between 2013 and 2016 that killed more than 11,000 people. The woman was working as a caregiver in the high-risk “red zone” of a treatment center in Beni, eastern Congo, according to health officials familiar with her case. She was one of dozens of people assigned to care for Ebola patients because it was assumed they would not get sick as Ebola survivors, although some researchers have considered reinfection to be at least a theoretical possibility. Their presumed immunity allowed for closer contact with sufferers, many of them children. Alima, the medical charity that co-ran the Beni center where she worked, said she tested positive for Ebola and died in July before she could be readmitted for treatment. But it is not yet known whether the woman received a false positive result the first time she was tested, experienced a relapse or was reinfected, health officials say. Medical experts say it could be years before Ebola survivors’ immunity is fully understood. Yet the recent case is sufficiently worrying for health authorities to rethink how care should be provided to Ebola patients across eastern Congo. The WHO and Congolese officials have drafted new guidelines, seen by Reuters, that warn that some Ebola survivors may have “incomplete immunity” and advise that additional measures should be taken to protect them from possible reinfection. The new protocols would set limits on which Ebola survivors can work in treatment centers and standardize precautions that must be taken. Survivors who had mild cases of Ebola and those who were found to have low viral loads - or lower levels of the virus circulating in their blood - while infected “need to be carefully assessed, as they may be at risk for having incomplete immunity after infection,” the draft says. Diaz said the protocols were still being discussed with health organizations and could change in the drafting process. Efforts to contain the Congo outbreak have been hampered by militia violence and public mistrust, but aided by medical advances including new vaccines and therapies. Ebola survivors, known as “les vainqueurs” – French for “the victorious” – have been at the forefront of treatment, offering vital care, especially to children. Their assumed immunity has meant they could spend extended time with patients and provide much-needed human contact. The protective gear they must wear is lighter and less restrictive than that worn by other health workers. But the draft protocols being discussed by health authorities would bar some survivors from working in the contaminated red zone. These include people whose immune systems may be weaker because they are pregnant or because they have other infections such as HIV or tuberculosis, and those who had low viral loads during their Ebola infection. The woman who died was pregnant at the time, which she had not disclosed to the treatment center, according to Nicolas Mouly, Alima’s emergencies coordinator. But it is not known if that played a role in her falling sick again. Mouly said Congo’s biomedical research institute was running tests to learn more about the case. Officials with Congo’s Ebola response and the institute did not respond to phone calls and text messages seeking comment. In response to the case, health authorities have reviewed the clinical histories of all Ebola survivors working with Ebola patients, the WHO’s Diaz said. They have also reminded treatment centers to ensure their employees are following biosafety rules. Much remains unknown about how immunity works in Ebola survivors, including how treatments might affect a patient’s susceptibility to reinfection. “I think that’s the big question: What is the true immunity of an Ebola patient who survived?” Diaz said. “Everyone’s working very hard right now to both care for patients and also move science along.” There have been several confirmed cases of relapse with Ebola, including a Scottish nurse here who was infected in Sierra Leone in 2014 and fell ill again 10 months after recovery. But the symptoms have tended to be localized in certain parts of the body and are not known to have been fatal, according to Raina MacIntyre, who heads the Biosecurity Program at the University of New South Wales’ Kirby Institute. No case of reinfection has been confirmed since the disease was discovered near the Ebola River in northern Congo in 1976. Short-term immunity has largely been treated as a given. And a study of 14 survivors of the first documented Ebola outbreak in 1976 found that all were able to develop an immune reaction to at least one of three Ebola virus proteins 40 years later. Alima’s Mouly said the creation of a standardized set of rules for survivors working in treatment centers was a positive step, but recommended further measures to ensure the physical and mental well-being of all survivors.
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9424
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Do you take calcium and vitamin D to protect your bones? A new study says it doesn't help
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Getty Images Reporting on a large review study, this Los Angeles Times article walks readers through the conflicting advice and evidence about calcium and vitamin D supplements. Both compounds play roles in bone health and the routinely accepted claim is that supplementation can help prevent bone breaks in older people. This new meta-analysis shows that claim is not supported by evidence: not for calcium pills, vitamin D pills, or the two in combination. The story is well-done on several points, particularly on explaining how this study worked and what it found. The story would have been stronger if it had included some commentary from experts in the field who were not associated with the study to help put this recent, apparently strong finding, into context for readers. More than two million so-called fragility fractures — breaks that wouldn’t happen in a younger person, often related to the bone loss of osteoporosis–occur every year in the US. Preventing fragility means attending to bone health, which currently centers around exercise and getting enough calcium and vitamin D. Supplementation is an easy way to make sure a person takes in enough of the mineral and the vitamin, and yet, it’s important to understand whether routine supplementation actually prevents bone breaks.
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true
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calcium,osteoporosis,Vitamin D
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Given that the premise of the story is explaining there is no benefit to taking these supplements, we’ll rate this N/A. That said, it would have been interesting to explore the cost-savings for people if they decide to stop buying calcium and vitamin D. The story does a good job of letting readers know that there was no statistically significant benefit to taking calcium and vitamin D, based on the researchers’ systematic review of the evidence. The story cited one instance of harms, saying: “… for people who started out with at least 20 nanograms of vitamin D per milliliter of blood, adding more vitamin D through supplements was associated with a greater risk of hip fractures.” We also wanted to see a mention of potential harms of calcium, such as kidney stones. Another common side effect is excess gas and one potential harm of high doses is cardiovascular complications such as heart attack. The story hits some key points including the number of studies reviewed, potential confounding factors accounted for, and details about selection criteria. For instance, women on hormone replacement therapy, for whom there’s evidence for the benefits of supplementation were excluded from the current analysis. That’s a key point for postmenopausal women reading the story. Also the story makes clear that this study examined older adults who live in their own homes and therefore does not apply to older adults who live in nursing homes or similar institutions. Well done. The story does not engage in disease-mongering. It correctly states the risk of broken bones in people over age 50 and the risk of death in older people who break a hip. This story will also help reduce over-treatment and over-medicating of older adults, which is common. The only source quoted for the article is the study itself. There are no quotes from independent expert sources. The story references getting calcium from one’s diet and getting vitamin D from sun exposure. We think it’s safe to presume that readers know that vitamin and mineral supplements are widely available. The story does a good job of making clear previous claims of benefit from calcium and vitamin D supplementation. This large meta-analysis will provide some clarity of the questions surrounding using these supplements for bone health. The story does not appear to rely on a news release.
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3807
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Pingree critical of Trump’s plan to lower drug prices.
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Democratic U.S. Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine is criticizing the Trump administration for abandoning pledges to let the federal government’s Medicare program negotiate lower drug prices and to allow drugs to be reimported from Canada.
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true
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Medication, Prescription drug costs, Medicare, Prescription drugs, Canada, Maine, Chellie Pingree, Donald Trump
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Pingree said she believes consumers will not see any relief from rising drug costs unless both of those steps are taken. President Donald Trump on Friday rolled out a blueprint for lowering prescription drug costs that includes a requirement that drugmakers disclose medication costs in television advertisements. Other proposals include speeding the process of switching prescription drugs to over-the-counter medicines. In the Maine Legislature, Pingree pioneered the Maine Rx program that let state to use its purchasing power to lower prescription prices. She’s also led seniors on trips to Canada to buy prescription drugs.
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10486
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Study: CT scans can reduce lung cancer deaths by 20%
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Just as we went to publish this review, we noticed that USA Today had published an updated version of the story one day after the original story was published. To be consistent with our reviews of the AP, New York Times and Reuters stories – all of whose first-day versions were reviewed, our comments pertain only to the original USA Today story. Later versions did fill some gaps: adding absolute risk reduction, adding cost information, and adding cautious perspectives from Dr. Otis Brawley. But we still haven’t seen as good an analysis as that done by Richard Knox of NPR – with his next day followups. Cancer screening is a complicated and — as other stories about this study noted — controversial topic. Of course we all want better ways to identify cancer early, but screenings can be more of a costly comfort than they are a clinically proven lifesaver. Stories like this need to take extra care to quantify both the benefits and harms of screening and to provide the data in both relative and absolute terms to help readers understand the strength of the evidence.
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mixture
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Cancer,Screening,USA Today
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The original USA Today story did not give the cost of such scans. It also didn’t project the potential cost of followup testing and treatment when false positives arise. It did note two important pieces of cost information: “Insurance companies don’t pay for lung screenings, according to the National Cancer Institute.” And, the “Medicare program plans to review the study results to decide whether to cover screenings for high-risk people, says Harold Varmus, National Cancer Institute director.” The study results suggest that about 300 people need to be screened to identify one person with early stage lung cancer. At $300 to $1,000 a scan, identifying who is best served by the screening and how often they should be screened is essential. The original version of the USA Today story only quantifies the benefits in relative terms, and here we really needed to see the absolute numbers (something added in a version one day later). We are told, for example, that the study covered 53,000 people and that deaths were reduced by 20 percent. At first blush, one might think this means that the study saved 10,600 people. That’s because we are never told how many people actually died during the study period. Nor are we told how many people died in each study cohort. The study itself does not spell out how many people were in each cohort, but we did some rough calculations based on the study design report. The report showed that the total number of participants enrolled was 53,456. Assuming that 50 percent were put in each group, that would mean each arm had 26,728 participants. Based on the reported death numbers, this would mean that 354 people died in the CT scan group, or 1.32% and 442 died in the X-ray group, or 1.65%. That’s an absolute difference of 0.33%, not quite as exciting as a 20% reduction in deaths. Also, the number of people needed to treat to save one life (or NNT) is 304. That may be a justifiable number for added investment in spiral CT scans, but it should be part of the discussion. The story does not quantify the potential harms, but it at least acknowledges them in several parts of the story, which is more than some of the other coverage did. “Patz says patients should think carefully before requesting a screening. While CT scans are painless, they expose patients to radiation that can potentially cause new cancers, Patz says. It’s possible that a person scanned frequently for lung cancer could develop breast cancer as a result.” The story also indicates that the screenings could lead to more potentially dangerous surgeries. “The screenings also don’t diagnose cancer, says Michael Unger, a professor at Philadelphia’s Fox Chase Cancer Center, who wasn’t involved in the study. While screenings can detect potential problems, doctors need to retrieve actual cells to confirm cancer.Making an incision through the ribs to perform a lung biopsy is a serious operation and poses significant risks of its own, Unger says. The story made a good attempt to evaluate the quality of the evidence and to present readers with reasons to be cautious. It says, for example, “But Patz notes that doctors and healthcare leaders will have to look at the results carefully before recommending mass screenings.” But the story also was hampered by a number of factors, the main one being that it does not break down for readers all of the data necessary to evaluate the strength of these study results. For example, it never says how many people died during the study period, even though it offers the important context that “Significantly, 75% of deaths in the study were from causes other than lung cancer.” Nonethless, we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt. The story avoids disease mongering and does a good job explaining how lung cancer fits into the universe of smoking-related deaths. It says, for example, “Nearly 160,000 Americans a year die from lung cancer, the leading cause of cancer deaths in the world, according to the American Cancer Society.” Later it says that “smoking-related illness, which kills more than 400,000 Americans a year, Johnson says.” And, the story added that “a screening may catch lung cancer early, but a patient could still die young from heart disease, emphysema, a stroke or other smoking-related condition.” The story did a great job bringing in independent voices, and, interestingly, some of the most cautious comments in the story come from Ned Patz, a professor of radiology at Duke University who helped design the study. The story did not adequately compare spiral CT scans with X-rays for many of the reasons cited above. By saying that “Any hospital can perform the scan,” the story overstates the case a bit. The study focused not on all computed axial tomography (CT) scans but on what is known as a spiral CT scan. These are not as widely available as other CT scans, and other stories put their availability at 60%. The story led with the fact that this was the first time a large study showed this kind of benefit from lung cancer CT scans. The story did not rely on a news release.
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9587
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New Asthma Treatment: Pill Makes Huge Difference In Patients With Severe Symptoms
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This story is one of two we’re reviewing that describes a clinical trial for fevipiprant, an asthma pill under development by Novartis Pharmaceuticals. The other review covers a story in Reuters. This story offers readers no information beyond the contents of a news release from the University of Leicester (England), where the trial was performed. It reports a researcher’s sensationalistic claim that the pill may be a “game changer” without comment from an independent source. (We also reviewed the news release.) While the Reuters story and its headline maintain a measured tone, this headline hyping a “new asthma pill” that makes a “huge difference” may leave the impression that the drug is close to being available when in fact it’s years from potential approval. In sum, asthma sufferers should not plan to chuck out their inhalers any time soon. The possibility of taking a pill instead of using an inhaler to control symptoms would surely be welcome news to millions of asthma patients. Stories like this will be widely read, which is why it’s so important that journalists go a step beyond the news release to provide important context and information that won’t be found in the publicity efforts. This story didn’t do that.
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false
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asthma
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The story does not address how much fevipiprant might cost or the cost of currently available treatments. The story explains that the study involved 61 participants, about half of whom were given fevipiprant and half were given a placebo. It accurately reports that over the course of 12 weeks, researchers found that those taking the drug saw a decrease in their level of sputum eosinophil, a marker of white blood cells associated with asthma symptoms, from an average of 5.4 percent to 1.1 percent, which is close to that of a person without symptoms. However, importantly, the news story stated that the drug “was shown to reduce asthma symptoms as well as inflammation.” But the researchers specifically stated that future studies would have to be done to see if the decline in eosinophil counts resulted in improved symptoms. Right now, no one knows if it will help symptoms. For this reason, we’re rating this Unsatisfactory. No serious adverse effects were reported in trial participants who took fevipiprant, a fact the story does not mention. The story also should have mentioned mentioned that it remains to be seen whether fevipiprant is safe over decades of continuous use, which is typical for as asthma drug, as well as for patients of various ages and health conditions. The story does not mention the need for longer-term trials to confirm fevipiprant’s safety and efficacy and to investigate its effect on patients with severe asthma. The story also should have made it clear that the study was looking at changes in lab markers, and not symptoms. The story does not appear to engage in disease-mongering. There’s no comment from an independent source, leaving unchallenged a researcher’s assertion that fevipiprant may be a “game changer for the future treatment of asthma.” The story could have let readers know that funding came from Novartis, as well as a European Union grant program, and the Leicester (U.K.) National Institute for Health Research Respiratory Biomedical Research unit. Several researchers involved in the trial reported receiving financial compensation from Novartis and other drug companies. Current treatment options for asthma aren’t mentioned. The headline makes it sound as if the pill is readily available, with no mention that further trials and approvals are necessary before the drug could be marketed. The story says this is the first asthma pill in 20 years–that’s not correct. In recent years, several new drugs known as leukotriene receptor antagonists have come on the market as tablets. (The 20-year statement appears to come from the news release, and a Reuters story had a similar error.) While the story uses original wording and cites a University of Leicester news release as the source of some of its information, it does not appear that the story offered anything beyond what is in the news release. (We also reviewed the news release.)
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5342
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Chicago-area medical equipment cleaning plant won’t reopen.
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Sterigenics, the medical supply sterilization company that has been battling lawsuits and claims of increased cancer rates from fumes, announced Monday it has decided against reopening its suburban Chicago plant.
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true
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Cancer, Chicago, Health, General News, Illinois, Medical equipment, U.S. News
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The company said it will close the plant in Willowbrook, blaming “inaccurate and unfounded claims regarding Sterigenics and the unstable legislative and regulatory landscape in Illinois.” In August, nearly three dozen people sued Sterigenics, claiming fumes from ethylene oxide, used to sterilize medical equipment at the Willowbrook facility, have adversely affected their health. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency closed the plant in February, finding that air sampling by town officials and the federal EPA consistently found high outdoor ambient levels of ethylene oxide. Federal regulators consider the gas a carcinogen. Sterigenics, in the past, has said ethylene oxide is the only process to sterilize medical instruments that is federally approved. “Sterigenics appreciates that the state of Illinois has clearly acknowledged the company’s consistent record of regulatory compliance as well as the safety of the new controls we agreed to implement, and we made every effort to reach a constructive resolution,” the company said in the statement announcing the plant’s closing, adding that Illinois’ political environment makes it unwise to operate the plant. Illinois House Republican leader, Rep. Jim Durkin, has been leading a fight against the company’s effort to continue operations outside Chicago. The Legislature is also considering measures that would phase out use of ethylene oxide except in less populated areas. “Sterigenics got the message that we were never going to let them reopen their doors and poison our communities again,” Durkin said in a statement. Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and local officials in July reached an agreement with Sterigenics that would have allowed the plant to reopen after additional emission capture and control equipment was installed. Sterigenics also agreed to fund $300,000 in community projects designed in coordination with the state to benefit the environment and the local community. When that agreement was announced, company President Philip Macnabb said resolution of the matter puts the company a step closer to resuming the work of sterilizing vital medical products and devices for patients in Illinois and beyond. Sterigenics is a division of Ohio-based Sotera Health LLC, which provides safety services to the medical device, pharmaceutical, tissue and food industries.
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10055
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Stomach Balloons Used to Fight Weight Gain
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This is a story about “A balloon inserted into (the) stomach in a procedure that lasts less than 20 minutes. European doctors hail the technique as a simple, less invasive way to fight obesity.” It’s another surgical intervention that may aid with weight loss. The potential harms, benefits and costs of the treatment are not adequately presented. The story did not provide the source of the clinical evidence for claims about maintaining weight loss with the balloon procedure.
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mixture
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No estimate of costs provided No real estimate of benefit given other than the results of a few cases. Harms of treatment only provided as an anecdote from one patient without estimates of prevelance. Weight re-gain is clearly mentioned. Source of the clinical evidence for the maintenance of weight loss with the balloon was not provided; it would appear to be derived from the doctors’ own patients, though the nature of their follow-up is not provided. Mention of 25% reduced life expectancy from obesity, without mention that this figure derives from those individuals with morbid obesity with co-morbidities such as diabetes, sleep apnea and coronary artery disease. Followed the Italian source’s interview with input from a U.S. surgeon who is interested and experienced in weight loss surgery. Brief mention is made of patient attempts to lose weight without success prior to use of the balloon. Only the briefest mention of other obesity surgical techniques. No mention made of weight loss medications. Mentions that gastric balloons have not been approved by the FDA. Mentions that gastric balloon is a relatively new approach to treating obesity; one surgeon in Italy interviewed has been using it for six years.
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8969
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Simple score to diagnose heart attacks is safer, faster than current methods
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Possible heart attack symptoms require a physician’s attention, but determining who is actually having a heart attack and who is not is challenging. A global research team combined three commonly used tests into a single laboratory score that appears to do a better job of differentiating between higher and lower heart attack risk than do other diagnostic efforts. The news release does a nice job of describing the validation study but could have offered more detail about the make-up of the scoring system and about possible conflicts of interest among the researchers. About one-in-four deaths in the United States each year stems from heart disease, so quickly diagnosing a heart attack is important. However, not all individuals who go to their doctors with what appear to be heart attack symptoms will experience a heart attack in the short term. Many people arrive in emergency rooms with chest pain. Being able to accurately and efficiently identify very low-risk patients is important because they can be spared additional testing and be can sent home sooner. Differentiating those at-risk individuals from others is critical, and this relatively simple diagnostic strategy may be another good addition to the physician’s toolkit.
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mixture
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Canadian Medical Association Journal,heart attack diagnosis
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Although the release characterizes the chemistry tests that make up the scoring system as “common,” it offers no information about the cost of each or the likely cost of aggregating them into the recommended scoring system. The text gets specific about more accurate predictions stemming from the scoring system. But other benefits are not well explained. For example, although the lead of the news release describes the proposed laboratory score as “safer,” it clarifies that statement in a rather murky way lower in the release by noting that the use of an existing diagnostic test, high-sensitivity cardiac troponin, has not been demonstrated to be safe. Why that is the case is never explained. Also, the study design was not reported in the release. In fact, the study was retrospective, so investigators don’t actually know whether outcomes were better among those who underwent the new test vs. the standard troponin. The text is specific about the number of heart attacks that would have been missed by the scoring system (1 out of 727) in this population of 4000+ patients who went to emergency rooms with possible symptoms. This indicates a high sensitivity, which is good because it means that the test is not missing people likely to have a heart attack or die within 30 days. However, the other potential harm from a diagnostic test is from false positive results — which could lead to unnecessary hospitalizations and treatments. This statistic is not addressed in the release, though it is presented in the study. The reader will encounter useful detail about the number of patients, the employment of data from patients whose heart attack outcomes were already determined, the global nature of the effort, and the relatively short-term nature of the design. It would have been useful, however, to have described the three tests that were combined to create the single predictive score. Also, the accuracy of the predictive score depends on which cutoff the investigators use (scores ranged from 0 to 5). Rather than reporting statistics such as sensitivity and specificity to compare tests, it would be preferable to report the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve — a tool researchers use to evaluate and compare the performance of diagnostic tests. However, this was not done in the study. They also calculated separate scores based on different high-sensitivity troponin assays. This was not addressed in the news release. No disease mongering here. When a person lands in the emergency room with apparent heart attack symptoms, physicians struggle to identify those who are truly having a heart attack. The release provides some context on the types of tests used to diagnose heart attacks, and where they are lacking. The funder—the Canadian Institutes for Health Research—is clearly identified. Conflicts of interest among the many coauthors, however, are not mentioned. The original research article offers a lengthy list of potential conflicts; for example, the two coauthors quoted in the news release have begun the process of patenting the laboratory scoring system discussed in the research. And the first author of the paper, one of those quoted, has received research funding and honoraria from a number of drug companies. The text mentions two alternatives: a single blood test, called a cardiac troponin test, and “multiple blood tests over several hours.” It makes the case that the proposed laboratory score is superior to both. The release omits discussion of other strategies such as electrocardiograms, exams and patient history typically used in acute treatment facilities. Stress tests are not as readily available. It does raise the question of the timing of the troponin test that was used to calculate the score — ideally, we’d like to know that results were quickly available if we’re seeing this as a way to shorten emergency room stays. The release notes that the score is based on commonly available tests. The novel element here is the strategy of combining three tests into a single scoring system. The news release makes that point clearly. The text and quotes seem appropriate to the research.
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23495
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(Jeff) Atwater's bank was so weak that just a few months ago it was shut down by the FDIC.
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The fate of thousands of lawsuits seeking to hold drugmakers responsible for fueling the U.S. opioid epidemic hinges in part on a thorny legal question: Can a company use a bankruptcy to stop lawsuits from cities and states?
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mixture
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Candidate Biography, Financial Regulation, Housing, Message Machine 2010, Florida, Loranne Ausley,
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U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross is expected in July to decide whether to halt more than 160 active lawsuits brought by state attorneys general, cities and counties against opioid manufacturer Insys Therapeutics Inc. When it filed for Chapter 11 protection in Delaware earlier this month, Insys requested the cases be paused. A bankruptcy filing would normally halt active litigation immediately, giving a company such as Insys time to reorganize and preserve money that would otherwise be spent fighting the cases. But a longstanding exception in U.S. bankruptcy law can keep the lawsuits alive if they are enforcing government officials’ “police or regulatory power.” The exception holds that government actions seeking to enforce laws related to matters such as public health and safety are not automatically stopped by a company’s bankruptcy filing as other lawsuits are. State and local officials are suing Insys and other drugmakers in an attempt to address harm from an opioid crisis that has killed nearly 400,000 people between 1999 and 2017. More than half these deaths resulted from prescription painkillers, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For a graphic, click tmsnrt.rs/2EgfT0n “Criminal enterprises … should not be permitted to shield themselves from the consequences of their misconduct by running to bankruptcy court and obtaining the equivalent of a stay that allows them to evade justice,” said Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh in a Tuesday legal filing opposing Insys’s request to halt lawsuits. The opioid crisis “is a national public health emergency,” they said in the filing, which other state attorneys general supported, including those in New York, New Jersey and Arizona. “The interests of the public therefore are served by allowing these police powers actions of the states to continue unfettered by the injunctions that Insys seeks.” A spokesman for Insys, which faces trials in Maryland and Minnesota beginning in August, declined to comment beyond the company’s court filings. Insys already had reached a $225 million settlement before filing for bankruptcy with the U.S. Justice Department, admitting to illegal conduct in resolving claims that it bribed doctors to write prescriptions, including medically unnecessary ones, for a fentanyl spray called Subsys designed to treat cancer pain. The Chandler, Arizona-based company still faces, overall, more than 1,000 lawsuits raising similar allegations of deception and fraud in marketing its opioids. The misconduct occurred under a prior management team that has since “entirely turned over” and Insys is now committed to lawful marketing practices, the company said in court papers. Insys contends in bankruptcy-court filings that Judge Gross should halt the lawsuits against it regardless of any exceptions, lest the company drain limited financial resources fighting cases on multiple fronts. Allowing the cases to continue would leave less money for creditors, including the very government officials seeking to hold it to account, Insys contends, adding that its request is not an attempt to escape liability. It had less than $40 million in the bank when filing for bankruptcy and predicts spending up to $9 million through December to continue fighting lawsuits, according to court papers. The judge’s ruling is expected to influence whether another opioid manufacturer facing 2,000 lawsuits - OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP - decides to file for bankruptcy protection, according to a person familiar with the matter and legal experts. A Purdue spokesman declined to comment. A ruling allowing the Insys litigation to proceed could discourage Purdue from seeking bankruptcy protection, while pausing the cases might signal that Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings are a viable way to halt lawsuits and take advantage of breathing room to reach a broader settlement with plaintiffs, according to the person familiar with the matter and several legal experts. Insys lawyers are attempting to persuade government officials to agree to voluntarily halt their cases, according to a bankruptcy-court filing. Insys is nearing a deal that would effectively halt some of those legal claims against the drugmaker that are consolidated in an Ohio federal court, said Paul Hanly, a lead lawyer for plaintiffs in the opioid litigation. An Insys spokesman declined to comment on the potential agreement. Insys has some legal precedent backing its approach. In 2017, a bankruptcy judge sided with Takata Corp when temporarily halting lawsuits brought by Hawaii, New Mexico and the U.S. Virgin Islands against the Japanese supplier of automobile airbags that exploded, finding that allowing the litigation to continue threatened the company’s reorganization. That would have harmed creditors, including those seeking to hold Takata accountable for widespread deaths and injuries, the judge ruled. The ruling allowed Takata to focus on completing a sale to a rival, creating a combined company called Joyson Safety Systems. A Joyson representative declined to comment. The Minnesota and Maryland attorneys general argued in their legal filing on Tuesday that Insys has not demonstrated the kind of exceptional circumstances present in the Takata case - an unprecedented automotive recall - that warranted halting government lawsuits. While the outcome in the Insys case is not critical for opioid manufacturers with stronger balance sheets that face lawsuits, such as Johnson & Johnson, it holds significance for the likes of OxyContin maker Purdue, according to several legal experts. In March, Reuters reported that Purdue was exploring filing for bankruptcy protection to address lawsuits alleging it pushed prescription painkillers while downplaying their abuse and overdose risks, according to people familiar with the matter. Purdue’s CEO later confirmed the company was considering a bankruptcy filing. The company has denied allegations it contributed to the opioid crisis, pointing to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approving labels on its drugs carrying warnings about risk and abuse associated with treating pain.
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29920
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Police are seeking the impeachment of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi for treason.
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We reached out to Marjorie Greene and Law Enforcement Today for comment, but neither responded to our requests.
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false
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Politics, nancy pelosi
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In late January 2019, amidst a continuing impasse between Democrats and Republicans over what steps should be taken to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, an editorial titled “Police Are Now Seeking the Removal of Nancy Pelosi” was published on the website Law Enforcement Today. As speaker of the House, Pelosi (D-California) is the leader of the Democrats’ opposition to President Donald Trump’s proposal to erect a border wall to stop illegal immigration into the U.S. from Mexico and Central America. Law Enforcement Today is a news and opinion website for and about law enforcement officers. Its editor is Jim McNeff, a former police lieutenant with the Fountain Valley Police Department in Orange County, California. The 26 January 2019 editorial, penned by Marjorie Greene (who regularly contributes articles to right-leaning partisan websites), argued that Pelosi is guilty of “treasonous behavior” for supporting “sanctuary cities” (metropolitan areas whose ordinances limit cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities). Greene expressed particular concern for the impact of Pelosi’s immigration policies on “LEOs” (law enforcement officers), whose lives she said are endangered by those policies. “Nancy Pelosi’s Sanctuary Policies that provide aid, comfort, and protection to illegal aliens make it extremely difficult for LEO’s to preform [sic] their jobs, which they took an oath and swore to uphold and enforce the laws of this land,” Greene wrote. “Nancy Pelosi clearly chooses illegals over ICE agents. Her support of sanctuary and protection for illegal criminals is truly unreal for an elected representative of the American people, and treasonous behavior puts ICE agents in danger and makes their ability to do their jobs extremely difficult.” Greene’s commentary focused on the case of Newman, California, police officer Cpl. Ronil Singh, who was murdered during a traffic stop on 26 December 2018. The man charged with the killing, Gustavo Perez Arriaga, has been identified as an undocumented immigrant. “Do you know what Nancy Pelosi’s response to the murder of Corporal Singh was?” Greene wrote. “Nothing. Not a peep. No response to the murder of a legal immigrant who was serving the people of California as a police officer. Zero.” Greene continued: “At this point, can we just say that Nancy Pelosi seems to care less about LEO’s lives? To her Blue Lives don’t matter. Only Illegal Lives do … or should we say illegal votes. I will go further. Nancy Pelosi needs to be arrested for treason!” For the record, Pelosi did offer a public response to Singh’s murder during a 10 January press conference, calling it “tragic,” though in doing so she placed it in the broader context of what she termed “the tragic situation at the border”: Q: Democrats are calling this a manufactured crisis as far as the border is concerned. SPEAKER PELOSI. Yes. Q: Would you say that this is a manufactured crisis … to Corporal Ronil Singh’s family, who has ended up losing him to an illegal immigrant who ended up shooting him over in your state? Would you say this to families who have lost relatives to heroin overdoses, because, obviously, the drug, 90 percent of the time, came from Mexico? What would you say to families like that? SPEAKER PELOSI. Well, what I would say to families like that is what I say to the President regularly: These are tragic situations. There’s a tragic situation at the border. Two little children died in the custody of the Border Patrol. But the plural of anecdote is not data. And as painful and horrible one death is, more than we should be able to bear, whether it’s the corporal or whether it’s the children. But the fact is, we have to have public policy that secures our border, and what the President is proposing will not eliminate those possibilities. We won’t dwell on Greene’s argument that Pelosi ought to be arrested and impeached for treason (which is defined in the Constitution as “levying war against [the United States], or in adhering to [its] enemies, giving them aid and comfort”) other than to observe that it’s based on dubious assertions such as the following: Nancy Pelosi is a criminal, guilty of treason by refusing to lead her political party to fund the wall and border security measures that would protect our national security. Nancy Pelosi is a criminal guilty of treason by being a key member of a tyrannical government that has enslaved the American people into $21 trillion dollars in debt, which China owns most of our debt. Nancy Pelosi is a traitor to the American people who pay her paycheck and expenses for her service, security, staff, and travel, while she takes our hard earned tax dollars to send billions of our hard earned tax dollars to foreign governments, yet refuses to fund our border wall of $5.7 billion for our national security. Particularly she wants to send $10 billion to Mexico this year, yet refuses to meet with our president for lunch to work out a deal for our safety and government budget. It is Greene’s right to state her opinions, and Law Enforcement Today’s right to publish them. It is also their right to launch a WhiteHouse.gov petition calling for Pelosi’s removal “for crimes of treason,” which has garnered more than 100,000 signatures. What our readers have called into question, however, is the validity of the headline of Greene’s editorial, which has been widely disseminated via social media. One reader wrote to ask: “I saw on a Facebook post [that] police are looking to impeach Nancy Pelosi. Is this true?” It should be noted that nowhere in the body of the article does the author cite any police organizations who have taken the position that Pelosi should be impeached. And while we can be reasonably sure that at least some law enforcement personnel agree with Greene’s argument and/or have signed the White House petition, we further note that neither Greene nor Law Enforcement Today can claim to speak for the nation’s police officers collectively. Some major law enforcement groups, including the National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO), have consistently lobbied against the sanctuary cities movement, but we weren’t able to find statements from any of those groups calling for Pelosi’s removal from office. NAPO didn’t respond to our request for comment in time for publication, but we did receive the following statement from Peace Officers Research Association of California (PORAC) President Brian Marvel: We are heartbroken over the loss of Corporal Singh – as we are with the other brave law enforcement officers here in California and across the nation who have lost their lives in line of duty. Attacks on the police and other first responders have gotten out of hand and need to be stopped. Removing Speaker Pelosi or any other Member of Congress is not the answer. Rather focusing their and other lawmakers’ attention on this crisis is.
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6534
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Scientists aim at joint injuries that can trigger arthritis.
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Arthritis isn’t always from the wear and tear of getting older — younger adults too often get it after suffering knee or ankle injuries. Now researchers are hunting a way to stave off the damage, by targeting the little energy factories that power cartilage cells.
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true
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Medication, University of Iowa, Health, Arthritis, North America, Injuries
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University of Iowa scientists used pigs to mimic the cascade of cartilage damage that can begin with a broken ankle. Wednesday’s study found using some old medications in a new way — rapidly injecting them into the animals’ joints — interrupted that cycle of cell dysfunction to protect against arthritis. The researchers are seeking funds for human studies, part of a growing effort to understand why an aggressive form of arthritis can develop after some common orthopedic injuries — a torn knee ligament, for example, or a broken bone in a joint — seem to have healed. “It’s very promising,” said regenerative medicine specialist Farshid Guilak of Washington University in St. Louis, who wasn’t involved in the new study. “There are no therapies right now, for any form of osteoarthritis, that have been shown to modify the disease.” Osteoarthritis, the most common kind, usually occurs when joint-cushioning cartilage gradually wears away over decades of use. But about 5.6 million people in the U.S. get a subtype that strikes faster — post-traumatic osteoarthritis that’s sparked by injuries to weight-bearing joints. People who’ve experienced knee injuries, for example, are three to six times more likely to develop arthritis in that joint, and to get it a decade or so earlier, than people who’ve never been injured, according to a report last year in the Journal of Athletic Training. And ankle fractures that crack into the cartilage can trigger post-traumatic osteoarthritis even faster, making it ideal to study in the joints of 200-pound pigs that react a lot like human ankles. With funding from the Defense Department and National Institutes of Health, the Iowa team took a closer look. Only some cartilage cells die immediately upon impact. But over the next 48 hours, additional ones die and others become increasingly dysfunctional. Inside cells are tiny power plants, often introduced in middle-school biology as “the mighty mitochondria.” Somehow, the joint injury triggered the mitochondria inside cartilage cells to become wildly overactive and generate substances called oxidants in a damaging cycle. “What’s compelling,” said University of Iowa lead researcher Mitchell Coleman, “is if you can interrupt that early process, whatever is going on with those mitochondria in the first day, you can have a significant benefit to the tissue itself.” That’s just what his team did, using two old drugs — the sedative amobarbital, known to inhibit cellular energy generation, and an antioxidant named N-acetylcysteine — to aim at different parts of that cycle. To act inside the joint without body-wide side effects, the researchers created, and patented, gel formulas of the drugs that are liquid while being injected but solidify at body temperature. They injected one or the other drug into the pigs’ joint fractures, following the injury and a week later. “It will sit there where you injected it,” Coleman explained. A typical liquid drug “will squish right back out.” Each drug separately helped preserve cartilage, the team reported Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine. A year later, the cartilage in the treated animals showed significantly less deterioration than pigs given sham treatment, and the treated animals displayed no signs of pain. It will take lots of additional research to tell if the approach works in people. For now, people who’ve had risky joint injuries should guard against further damage by getting proper treatment for the injury and keeping up appropriate exercise, said Dr. Lisa Cannada, a trauma specialist speaking for the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons. “Maintain strong muscles to minimize the wear and tear on your joints,” she advised.
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41313
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Formaldehyde is in vaccines and causes cancer in humans among other issues and is banned from vaccines in most European countries.
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It’s not banned in Europe. There are only trace amounts in certain vaccines and not enough to be carcinogenic.
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unproven
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online
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Beta-Propiolactone is in vaccines and is known to cause cancer, suspected gastrointestinal, liver, nerve and respiratory, skin and sense organ poison. It may be present in trace amounts of some vaccines. It is potentially carcinogenic, but only in much larger amounts than would be in a vaccine. The antibiotics gentamicin sulfate and polymyxin b are in vaccines and can cause allergic reactions ranging from mild to life-threatening. Traces of these antibiotics can end up in certain vaccines, but would only cause a reaction in someone severely allergic. Genetically modified yeast, animal, bacterial and viral DNA in vaccines can be incorporated into the recipient’s DNA causing unknown genetic mutations. Modified DNA can be used in the production of some vaccines, but is very unlikely to end up in the final product. Even if it did, there’s no evidence it can cause mutations. Glutaraldehyde is in vaccines and is poisonous if ingested and causes birth defects in animals. There are trace amounts in some vaccines from manufacturing, and not enough to cause harm. Formaldehyde is in vaccines and causes cancer in humans among other issues and is banned from vaccines in most European countries. It’s not banned in Europe. There are only trace amounts in certain vaccines and not enough to be carcinogenic. Latex rubber is in vaccines and causes life-threatening allergic reactions. Latex is used in the packaging of some vaccines, which could potentially cause harm if someone’s strongly allergic to it. Human and animal cells from sources like aborted foetuses are in vaccines and are linked to childhood leukaemia and diabetes. They may be used in certain vaccines’ production, but are unlikely to make it to the final product. Mercury (aka thimerosal or thiomersal) is in vaccines and can damage brain, gut, liver, bone marrow, nervous system and kidneys, is linked to autoimmune disorder, autism. Thiomersal isn’t in any UK vaccines any more. This is down to concern around a slightly different mercury-based chemical. MSG is in vaccines and is linked to birth defects, developmental delays, infertility and is banned in Europe. It’s not banned in Europe. It’s used in some vaccines to stabilise them. There’s no strong evidence it causes these problems in humans. Neomycin sulphate, an antibiotic, is in vaccines and can lead to epilepsy, brain damage and allergic reactions. Trace amounts of this antibiotic may end up in certain vaccines. If you are allergic to it could cause an allergic reaction. Phenol / phenoxyethanol is in vaccines and is used as antifreeze. It is toxic to all cells and can destroy the immune system. These chemicals have been used in vaccines as preservatives. They are not in antifreeze. Polysorbate 80 and 20 are in vaccines and cause cancer in animals and are linked to autoimmune issues and infertility. Tiny amounts of Polysorbate 80 is in a type of flu vaccine. There isn’t evidence ingesting it is linked to these issues in humans. Tri(n) butylphosphate is in vaccines and is potentially damaging to the kidneys and the nervous system. We can find no evidence of this being used in vaccines in the UK. Claim 1 of 14
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4120
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CDC: Unvaccinated Oregon boy almost dies of tetanus.
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An unvaccinated 6-year-old Oregon boy was hospitalized for two months for tetanus and almost died of the bacterial illness after getting a deep cut while playing on a farm, according to a case study published Friday by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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true
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AP Top News, Immunizations, Tetanus, Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Oregon, North America, Infectious diseases, Portland, U.S. News
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The 2017 case is the first case of pediatric tetanus in Oregon in more than 30 years and alarmed infectious disease experts who said tetanus is almost unheard of in the U.S. since widespread immunization began in the 1940s. The child received an emergency dose of the tetanus vaccine in the hospital, but his parents declined to give him a second dose — or any other childhood shots — after he recovered, the paper said. “When I read that, my jaw dropped. I could not believe it. That’s a tragedy and a misunderstanding, and I’m just flabbergasted,” said Dr. William Schaffner, an expert in infectious diseases and chair at the Department of Preventive Medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tennessee. “This is an awful disease, but ... we have had a mechanism to completely prevent it, and the reason that we have virtually no cases anymore in the United States is because we vaccinate, literally, everyone.” Doctors in Portland, Oregon, who treated the child declined to provide any further information about the family at a news conference Friday, citing medical privacy laws. It was the first time that Dr. Judith Guzman-Cottrill, the pediatric infectious disease expert who treated the child, had ever seen tetanus because of widespread vaccination against it in the U.S. When the boy arrived at the emergency department, his muscle spasms were so severe he could not talk, could not open his mouth and was struggling to breathe, she said. “We had a hard time taking care of this child — watching him suffer — and it is a preventable disease,” Guzman-Cottrill said. News about the tetanus case comes as lawmakers in Oregon and Washington are considering bills that would end non-medical exemptions for routine childhood vaccines as the Pacific Northwest weathers its third month of a measles outbreak. Seventy people in southwest Washington, most of them unvaccinated children, have been diagnosed with the highly contagious viral illness since Jan. 1, as well as a handful of people in Portland, Oregon. Unlike measles, which is a virus, someone who has survived a case of tetanus is not immune and can get the illness again if they remain unvaccinated. Tetanus also isn’t transmitted person-to-person by sneezing or coughing like the measles, but instead comes from bacterial spores that are found in the environment. Tetanus spores exist everywhere in the soil. When an unvaccinated person gets a deep, penetrating wound, those spores can invade the cut and begin producing the bacteria that causes the illness. The tetanus bacterium secretes a toxin that gets into the bloodstream and latches onto the nervous system. Anywhere from three to 21 days after infection, symptoms appear: muscle spasms, lockjaw, difficulty swallowing and breathing and seizures. The disease can cause death or severe disability in those who survive, Schaffner said. About 30 people contract tetanus each year nationwide, according to the CDC, and 16 people died of it between 2009 and 2015. It’s rare among children; those over 65 are the most vulnerable. In the case in Oregon, the boy cut himself on the forehead while playing, and his family stitched up the wound themselves. Six days later, he began clenching his jaw, arching his neck and back and had uncontrollable muscle spasms. When he began to have trouble breathing, his parents called paramedics and he was transported by air to Oregon Health & Science University’s Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland. When he arrived, he asked for water but could not open his mouth. The child was sedated, put on a ventilator and cared for in a darkened room while wearing ear plugs because any stimulation made his pain and muscle spasms worse. His fever spiked to almost 105 degrees (40.5 Celsius), and he developed high blood pressure and a racing heartbeat. Forty-four days after he was hospitalized, the boy was able to sip clear liquids. Six days later, he was able to walk a short distance with help. After another three weeks of inpatient rehabilitation and a month at home, he could ride a bike and run — a remarkable recovery, experts said. The child’s care — not including the air ambulance and inpatient rehabilitation — cost nearly $1 million, about 72 times the mean for a pediatric hospitalization in the U.S., the paper noted. “The way to treat tetanus is you have to outlast it. You have to support the patient because this poison links on chemically and then it has to be slowly metabolized,” Schaffner said. Cases of tetanus have dropped by 95 percent in the U.S. since widespread childhood vaccination and adult booster shots became routine nearly 80 years ago; deaths have dropped 99 percent. The CDC recommends a five-dose series of tetanus shots for children between the ages of 2 months and 6 years and a booster shot every 10 years for adults. ____ Follow Gillian Flaccus on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/gflaccus
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8791
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Viagra helps depressed women get satisfaction too.
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Viagra, a popular anti-impotence pill, may help some women on antidepressants have better sex, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
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true
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Science News
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Viagra pills are seen in a handout photo. REUTERS/PRNewsFoto They found women on antidepressants who took Viagra had fewer sexual side effects than those who took a placebo. Sexual dysfunction can prompt many people to stop taking drugs to treat depression. While other studies have hinted that Viagra might help these women, the latest research, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is one of the first scientifically rigorous studies to show this benefit. “By treating this bothersome treatment-associated adverse effect ... patients can remain antidepressant-adherent, reduce the current high rates of premature medication discontinuation, and improve depression disease management outcomes,” Dr. H. George Nurnberg of the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and colleagues wrote. The research was funded by Pfizer Inc, maker of Viagra, which is known generically as sildenafil. Nurnberg has been a paid consultant for the company. Sexual dysfunction is linked with most commonly used antidepressants, including selective and nonselective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. These drugs represent 90 percent of the 180 million antidepressant prescriptions filled in the United States each year, according to the researchers. The researchers studied 98 women with an average age of 37 who had symptoms of sexual dysfunction, including delay of orgasm or lack of arousal, and whose depression was in remission after treatment with antidepressants. Women took a dose of Viagra or the placebo one to two hours before anticipated sexual activity for eight weeks. While 73 percent of women taking the placebo reported no sexual improvement, only 28 percent of women taking sildenafil failed to benefit. Related drugs such as Eli Lilly and Co.’s Cialis, known generically as tadalafil, and Levitra or vardenafil, sold by GlaxoSmithKline, Bayer AG and Schering-Plough, work in a similar way to Viagra. “These findings are important not only because women experience major depressive disorder at nearly double the rate of men and because they experience greater resulting sexual dysfunction than men, but also because it establishes that (drugs such as sildenafil) are effective in both sexes for this purpose,” they wrote.
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28338
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"In 2014, Mexican authorities arrested and tortured a U.S. Marine for ""accidentally crossing the border,"" tying him to a bed for nine months in the process. "
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What's true: Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, was arrested in Tijuana after crossing the border into Mexico on 31 March 2014. He was imprisoned for seven months and claims to have been beaten and abused during his incarceration. What's false: Tahmooressi was arrested and charged with weapons-trafficking after being found in possession of three firearms and ammunition, and his claims of abuse and mistreatment have not so far been substantiated with concrete evidence.
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mixture
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Politics, mexico
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In the autumn of 2018, the journey of a “caravan” of thousands of migrants from Central America towards the United States’ southern border dominated news coverage and debate for weeks. On 25 November, hundreds of the migrants, most of them from Honduras, were met by U.S. federal agents at the border post of San Ysidro in California. When one breakaway group attempted to rush from Mexico to the U.S., Border Patrol agents deployed tear gas, prompting both criticism and support for their actions. Speaking to reporters, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Kevin McAleenan asserted that some of the migrants attempting to rush across the border had also thrown “rocks and other projectiles” at CBP agents. The debate over the tear gas incident often followed partisan lines, with conservative supporters of President Donald Trump mostly defending the choice made by CBP agents, while progressive opponents of the president generally criticized the agents’ actions, as well as the militarized response of the White House to the arrival of the migrants, some of whom were would-be asylum-seekers fleeing violence in Central America. Against that background, social media users shared a tweet which appeared to present liberal critics of the use of tear gas as naive or even hypocritical, in light of the alleged arrest and torture of a U.S. Marine who had accidentally crossed into Mexico in 2014. On 27 November, the right-wing Twitter account “Educating Liberals” posted a tweet that declared: In 2014, Mexico arrested one of our marines, tied him to a bed for 9 months, & then tortured him for accidentally crossing the border. Yet liberals think we are being “mean” when our border agents use tear gas to defend themselves from violent invaders throwing rocks. Get real. In 2014, Mexico arrested one of our marines, tied him to a bed for 9 months, & then tortured him for accidentally crossing the border. Yet liberals think we are being “mean” when our border agents use tear gas to defend themselves from violent invaders throwing rocks. Get real. — Educating Liberals (@Education4Libs) November 28, 2018 The tweet was further promulgated when a screenshot of it was posted on the Facebook page “Cloyd Rivers”, which features conservative memes and content as well as links to online clothing stores: In a 911 call on the night of his arrest, Tahmooressi told a U.S. dispatcher that he had taken a wrong turn and accidentally crossed the border before being stopped by Mexican authorities: In testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Foreign Affairs Committee, Jill Tahmooressi maintained that her son, who served in Afghanistan and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), told her he had attempted to kill himself because of his fear that “the guards and the inmates were going to rape, torture and execute me.” She also asserted that Sgt. Tahmooressi had told her he was chained to his infirmary cot for 25 days: One week later, Fox News broadcast a lengthy interview with Tahmooressi, in which he outlined the circumstances leading up to his arrest as well as his treatment in two Mexican prisons. Speaking to Greta Van Susteren, Tahmooressi said: “I was handcuffed to a bed, four-point restraint … for about a month.” When asked why this unusual action had purportedly been taken on him, Tahmooressi replied: Because I wasn’t behaving. I wasn’t a behaved prisoner. I was lashing out. Not lashing out like being disrespectful, I never wanted to come off as disrespectful, but I just couldn’t take it all … I believe they did it because they were afraid of me, afraid that I might do something again and really end up doing something like successfully killing myself or harming somebody, and that they would get in trouble for it by not being able to control the situation. Tahmooressi claimed that he had attempted to escape from prison but was recaptured by guards who allegedly beat him, stripped him naked, and tied him to a pole for eight or nine hours. Subsequent to that, Tahmooressi claimed, he was handcuffed to a bed for a further 12 hours. Two or three days later, the former Marine claimed, he attempted to kill himself because he feared being subjected to a brutal attack by other inmates and thought they would attempt to extract information from him about his loved ones. Tahmooressi described his own state of mind at that time as being one of paranoia, adding that “I had been watching a lot of conspiracy films, and it made me change the way I thought about things, and things that I believe.” On 29 May 2014, Tahmooressi signed an “affidavit of mistreatment,” formally notifying the U.S. State Department about his allegations of abuse while he was being held in prison in Mexico. A consular email later released under the Freedom of Information Act summarized his claims in the following way: In his Affidavit of Mistreatment dated May 29, Mr. Tahmooressi stated he attempted to escape from the La Mesa prison on April 6. Mr. Tahmooressi said that once he surrendered, guards hit him three times in the leg with batons and stomped on his bare feet with their boots. He stated that handcuffs were placed on his wrists so tightly that they broke his skin open and that he was dragged, and then forced on to his knees with his face pressed up against a steel door, which made it difficult for him to breath [sic.] Next, Mr. Tahmooressi claims he was punched in the jaw three times and forcefully slapped by the guards a total of about 40 times in the jaw, face and forehead. Mr. Tahmooressi stated he was also punched in the stomach five times and in the rib cage about three times. Mr. Tahmooressi claimed that he was next taken to a room where his clothes were stripped off and handcuffed to a bed and forced to stay overnight naked. Mr. Tahmooressi stated the following day he was moved to another cell where he was handcuffed to a bed with one leg attached to one wall and a hand cuffed to the opposite wall for approximately 24 hours. However, the memo also noted that consular staff had not seen or received any indication from Tahmooressi that he had suffered such mistreatment in the seven weeks between when the abuse allegedly took place and when he first reported the alleged abuse to consular staff: Consulate had no notice and no indications of abuse prior to the recent claim. Inquiries to Mr. Tahmooressi during visits prior to May 29 regarding his condition and welfare had not elicited any claims of mistreatment. In news reports at the time, Mexican officials denied all allegations that prison authorities had mistreated Tahmooressi. We asked Mexico’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs for a detailed response to those allegations as well as any evidence which might support their earlier denials but did not receive a response in time for publication. Jill Tahmooressi told us that she had visited her son in prison on three occasions, and that on one of those occasions she noticed “red rings around his wrist” which he attributed to handcuffs. She told us that apart from that incident, she did not have any concrete evidence to support her son’s claims of mistreatment. She did provide us the names of two individuals who had regularly visited him in prison during 2014: one a former U.S. State Department official and the other a Christian pastor who counselled Sgt. Tahmooressi during his incarceration. We did not receive a response from either of them in time for publication. Fernando Bénitez, the high-profile attorney who represented Tahmooressi in Mexico and helped secure the prosecutors’ decision to drop the charges against him, told us that he had never seen any evidence that his client had been beaten, restrained, or abused in prison. He corroborated Tahmooressi’s account of having self-harmed while in prison and of having made something resembling an escape attempt, but he firmly rejected Tahmooressi’s claims of mistreatment: I find those assertions hard to believe … I do not know for a fact, but had that happened, it would have been the only incident of its nature in the last 20-25 years to take place here in Tijuana. It would have been unheard of, especially against an American and an American service member … I find the [claims about] beatings and tortures very, very, very hard to believe. They would serve no purpose and would have placed those responsible in jail themselves. It should be noted that Bénitez also informed us that a dispute had taken place between himself and members of the Tahmooressi family regarding fees paid for his services in the Tahmooressi case. Conclusion The viral “Educating Liberals” tweet described the case of Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi in the following way: “In 2014, Mexico arrested one of our marines, tied him to a bed for 9 months, & then tortured him for accidentally crossing the border.” Only part of this is verifiably accurate. Tahmooressi was indeed arrested and imprisoned after crossing into Mexico in March 2014, something he claimed he did accidentally. However, he was not arrested merely for crossing the border (accidentally or otherwise) — he was arrested and charged with weapons trafficking after being found in possession of three firearms and ammunition. a crucial fact which the tweet failed to mention. Furthermore, not even Tahmooressi himself has ever claimed that he was tied to a bed for nine months. The full duration of his incarceration in Mexico was seven months, and Tahmooressi asserted that he spent around one month of that time chained to a bed in a Mexican prison and received beatings from prison guards. Mexican authorities have denied that any such abuse or mistreatment took place, Tahmooressi’s former lawyer expressed heavy skepticism about the veracity of those claims, and despite our efforts we were unable to obtain any concrete evidence to support Sgt. Tahmooressi’s allegations. This does not in itself mean they are not true, only that they are so far unsubstantiated.
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4249
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Debra Stephens elected as new chief justice of Supreme Court.
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Justice Debra Stephens has been elected by her fellow members of the Washington Supreme Court to be chief justice next year.
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true
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Cancer, Health, General News, Washington, Elections
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Stephens, 54, will replace current Chief Justice Mary Fairhurst, who announced last month she will retire from the high court in January to focus on her health as she fights a third bout of cancer. The chief justice presides over the court’s public hearings, serves as the administrative head of the state’s judicial branch, and is the court’s main spokesperson. Stephens will serve the final year of Fairhurst’s term as chief justice. The next full, four-year term election for chief justice will occur in November 2020. In an emailed statement, Stephens wrote that she was honored by the selection and wrote: “We will all miss Mary greatly.” “She has been an amazing and inspirational leader for so many years, and I hope to continue in her tradition,” Stephens wrote. Fairhurst, 62, was first elected to the court in 2002 and was elected chief justice by her colleagues in 2016. She was first diagnosed with colon cancer in late 2008, and it later spread to a lung. After a final treatment in 2011 and several years of no evidence of disease, Fairhurst said that the cancer returned late last year — appearing in her lungs, liver, thyroid and spleen. Fairhurst continued to work while undergoing chemotherapy. She said her decision to retire became clear after she asked her doctor for her life-expectancy prognosis and learned she had between nine months and two years. “I’m an overachiever, and I believe in miracles so I’m not accepting that as a death sentence. But I am accepting it as the universe telling me I need to focus on my health and spend time with my family and friends and let the good work we’ve been doing here on the court continue with those who have more energy than I have going forward,” she said in an interview last month. Stephens, who previously served as a judge for Division Three of the Court of Appeals, was first appointed to the state Supreme Court in January 2008. She was elected to a six-year term in November 2008, then re-elected in 2014. Early next month, Gov. Jay Inslee is expected to appoint a new justice to fulfill the remaining year of Fairhurst’s term, and the seat will be open for election in 2020. Both the new justice and Stephens as the new chief justice will be sworn in Jan. 6. The other members of the court are: Justices Barbara Madsen, Charles Johnson, Susan Owens, Steven Gonzalez, Sheryl Gordon McCloud, Charles Wiggins and Mary Yu.
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9538
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New statin guidelines: Everyone 40 and older should be considered for the drug therapy
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Despite an alarmist headline, this report of the USPSTF’s recommendations on statin therapy is relatively thorough, with some notable exceptions. The strength of the evidence underlying the recommendations is not discussed and the actual amount of potential benefit from statin therapy is not mentioned, nor is the potential for harm adequately elaborated upon. Perhaps what is most missing from this “just-the-facts ma’am” article on the USPSTF’s recommendations is the larger sense of context: major statin trials have all been funded by statin manufacturers where we know that adverse event information is incomplete and sometimes hidden, benefits are typically exaggerated as they are expressed in relative risk reductions, and that most people, physicians and patients included, will likely overestimate the benefit they might derive from statin therapy. Above all, the medicalizing of cholesterol levels in otherwise healthy people is considered by some to be among the biggest current scandals in medicine. Having said that, it was good to see this article tipping the hat toward those who have put forward very strong arguments against the measuring and altering of our blood cholesterols, mentioning the questionable chance of benefit and the many potential harms. It also was good to see that the article noted that there were at least two sides to this issue and that “Individual doctors are free to take the advice or leave it, and in recent months there has been a lot of debate about what the scientific evidence really shows regarding the therapy.” Because this recommendation affects millions of Americans, how well it is understood, especially around the potential magnitude of benefit and potential for harm from long-term statin treatment, has huge implications for the health of the population. This recommendation is a great invitation for health journalists, if they haven’t already done so, to dig deeper and to introduce themselves to the many controversies over statins.
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mixture
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statins
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Costs of the drugs are not included. Recently, total costs for statin therapy in the U.S. were estimated at approximately $17 billion. It would also be useful to know that there is a wide variety in prices over the many statins currently on the market. We don’t know to what extent people in this category of risk (more than 10% or more than 7.5%) would benefit from statins, which would seem an essential and basic element of the story. Any recommendation that has the potential to alter the drug-taking habits of a huge swath of the population must be explained in numerical terms and so this was an unfilled gap. It mentions “muscle pain and cataracts [and] an increased risk for diabetes in women.” This is sufficient, but the story would have been stronger if it had discussed frequency of these side effects, and mentioned the more serious (and thankfully more rare) risks of rhabdomyolysis and muscle breakdown. The quality of the evidence is not explained, even though typically the level of evidence behind a USPSTF review is high, and the USPSTF goes to the trouble of quantifying its evidence. (ie: grade A, B or C, etc). This is a tough call, but the most widely-read part of the story–the headline–does cross the line by suggesting everyone over 40 with some level of cardiovascular risk (which means MOST of us) should consider taking a statin. Some have written extensively of the problems of creating diseases out of risk factors, such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol or low bone density, and have fairly criticized the widespread dissemination of this type of population-wide, drug-industry funded disease mongering. The story includes independent sources and we didn’t see any apparent conflicts of interest. There are many alternatives (cholesterol-altering agents, lifestyle factors and so on) that were worthy of mention. It’s pretty clear and obvious that statins are available via a doctor’s prescription. The story establishes novelty of the task force report by explaining: The report greatly expands the universe of people who should be screened to see if they need the medication to everyone over age 40 regardless of whether they have a history of cardiovascular disease. The presence of outside critique of these recommendations suggest there was a low reliance on the news release.
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41043
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If the new coronavirus gets into your mouth, drinking water or other liquids will wash them down through the oesophagus. Once they’re in the stomach, the acid will kill the virus. If you don't drink enough water more regularly, the virus can enter your windpipes and into the lungs.
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This is incorrect. Drinking water does not prevent an infection.
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true
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online
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If the new coronavirus gets into your mouth, drinking water or other liquids will wash them down through the oesophagus. Once they’re in the stomach, the acid will kill the virus. If you don't drink enough water more regularly, the virus can enter your windpipes and into the lungs. If you have a runny nose and sputum, you have a common cold, not Covid-19. These are the symptoms for the common cold, but they don’t rule out Covid-19. Coronavirus pneumonia is a dry cough with no runny nose. Some Covid-19 patients do get pneumonia, and one of the symptoms is a dry cough. A runny nose doesn’t rule out Covid-19. This new virus is not heat-resistant and will be killed by a temperature of just 26/27 degrees. It hates the Sun. There’s no evidence for this. There’s evidence that similar viruses transmit less well in the heat, but many countries with reported Covid-19 cases are experiencing temperatures higher than this. If someone with the new coronavirus sneezes, it travels about 10 feet before it drops to the ground and is no longer airborne. How far the droplets spread from a sneeze depends on environmental factors, but it is likely to be several metres. If it drops on a metal surface it will live for at least 12 hours - so if you come into contact with any metal surface - wash your hands as soon as you can with a bacterial soap. We don’t know how long the virus survives on surfaces yet—it may be between hours and days. On fabric it can survive for 6-12 hours. normal laundry detergent will kill it. There’s no evidence yet that the virus can survive in clothing and be transmitted this way. Any soiled clothing should be thoroughly washed. Drinking warm water is effective for all viruses. Try not to drink liquids with ice. There’s no evidence that the temperature of liquids consumed can either protect you from or cure diseases caused by viruses. Wash your hands frequently as the virus can only live on your hands for 5-10 minutes. We don’t know how long the virus can last on the skin, especially not down to the minute. But you should regularly wash your hands. You should also gargle as a prevention. A simple solution of salt in warm water will suffice. There’s no evidence that this works as a preventative or a cure for the virus. The symptoms of Covid-19 are a sore throat lasting 3 or 4 days. The virus then blends into nasal fluid, enters the trachea and then the lungs causing pneumonia. With pneumonia comes high fever and difficulty breathing. The nasal congestion feels like you're drowning This is a roughly accurate description of the most common symptoms, although not everyone with Covid-19 gets pneumonia, and the symptoms may not come in this exact order or at these times. The NHS does not mention nasal congestion that ‘feels like drowning’ as a specific symptom for Covid-19. Claim 1 of 12
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10987
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Fish Oil May Fight Psychosis
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This news story reports on results from a recent randomized trial, which found that taking fish oil capsules reduces the risk of psychosis in high-risk teens. While the results of this study seem exciting, this story tempers this excitement by indicating that further research is needed, particularly to determine if the same results can be seen in older people or those who already have a pyschotic disorder. While this story addresses many of our criteria, it would have been beneficial for the readers to know more about the cost, formulation, and dosage of the fish oil supplement used in the trial. In addition, commentary from independent experts in the field would have strengthened the piece. The notion that people could potentially prevent a severely debilitating mental illness through what appears to be a safe, inexpensive and widely available dietary supplement is highly attractive. However, it would be helpful for the reader to know more about the specific supplement used in the trial, as dietary supplements not regulated by the FDA can vary widely.
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true
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There was no mention of the cost of dietary fish oil supplements. This story clearly tells us that after one year, 11 out of 40 people in the placebo group developed a psychotic disorder, compared to 2 of the 41 people in the fish oil group. Additionally, the writer also presents the data in terms of number needed to treat (NNT), which tells the reader that 4 people need to take fish oil supplements for 12 weeks in order for 1 person to benefit. More information on what defines psychosis would have been helpful. As the story indicates, fish oil supplements are not associated with serious side effects, unlike antipsychotic drugs that can lead to weight gain and sexual dysfunction. The story might have noted that some people taking fish oil supplements have reported mild gastrointestinal side effects (e.g. diarrhea). The story did a nice job describing the study methods, specifically pointing out that half the teens and young adults received a placebo pill and half received a fish oil pill. It also mentioned that the results of this small trial should be interpreted with caution and additional studies are needed to determine if the same results can be seen in people with established psychosis, as well as those who are older. The story does not appear to exaggerate the prevalence of psychotic disorders in teens and young adults. The story does not include commentary from any independent sources. Furthermore, the quote provided by the study authors was pulled directly from the discussion section of the article. The story briefly compares the efficacy of fish oil supplements to antipsychotic medications and “other interventions.” However, more specific information on this would have been useful. Additionally, it would have been helpful to know that participants in both groups received psychosocial and psychological interventions. Fish oil pills sold as dietary supplements are widely available; however, supplement formulations can vary widely and some may only be available with a prescription. More information on the specific formulation used in the study, as well as the dosage would have been useful. This story does a nice job of setting the stage by saying that patients with psychriatric disorders have been found to have low levels of omega 3; hence the need for trials to study fish oil pills in these patients. The story also points out that other studies have evaluated the effect of omega-3 fatty acids on depression and other psychiatric disorders; however, the results of these studies have been mixed. There does not appear to be a news release associated with this story.
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11222
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Medtronic’s Infuse a hit in growth of spine fusion
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"This story comes from the newspaper in the town where one of the product manufacturers is headquartered. Perhaps not surprisingly, it included more of the company’s perspectives than other stories we reviewed. Examples: The story’s headline in print read: “Medtronic’s Infuse a hit in growth of spine fusion."" You’d never know there were problems if you didn’t read further. The statement, “JAMA’s findings loom large for Medtronic…” doesn’t make it clear whether that was looming large in a good way for this so-called “blockbuster device” or whether it was looming large in a bad way because of the study that the New York Times covered with the headline, “Bone-Growth Proteins Show Risk in New Study.” The story let Medtronic criticize the new study, but didn’t interview the authors themselves to defend their analysis. Meantime, one noteworthy local angle was missed by the Minneapolis paper. The Wall Street Journal noted – but the Star Tribune didn’t – that: “…an article in 2002 by former Army surgeon David W. Polly Jr., now of the University of Minnesota, and colleagues said, ""Preliminary results suggest that from a payer perspective, the upfront price of bone morphogenetic protein is likely to be entirely offset by reductions in the use of other medical resources. That is, bone morphogenetic protein appears to be cost neutral."" Dr. Polly, who last year received substantial consulting and speaking fees from Medtronic, didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment."" The story failed to give the reader any information on what benefits – if any – have been shown with the use of the product. So it left readers empty on the question of why there’s been such a “meteoric rise” in the use of these products. The real story – which perhaps the Star Tribune will pursue as a followup – is that this is a costly procedure associated with more complications for which there isn’t much data supporting any additional benefit. Maybe health care reform can look to places like this to find out where to save costs to cover more Americans with health insurance."
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mixture
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"This story provides cost estimates for the product, as well as for spinal fusion surgery. Even though the study in JAMA compared hospital charges associated with BMP use in spinal surgery with non-BMP spinal surgeries, these figures were not provided in this news story. (The median hospital charges for spinal fusion procedures using the bone-growth proteins was $46,112, about 40 percent higher than the $31,179 median charge for procedures that did not include the proteins.) We think that was an important piece of information. This story mentions that BMP was associated with increased complication rates for cervical fusion, but not with thoracic or lumbar fusion; however, the story gave no data to show how big (or small) the product’s potential benefit may be. The study also found that the use of BMP is associated with additional cost, but the story does not address any benefits that may come with this higher pricetag. The average reader is left wondering why there is such ""meteoric rise"" in the use of these products. The story didn’t explain how big were the potential harms. According to the results of the study, the use of BMP in anterior cervical fusion is associated with a 51.4% higher complication rate compared to patients who did not receive BMP (7.09% vs. 4.68%, respectively). However, these data were not presented in the story. The story does an adequate job of describing the study that appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association. However, it commits a common error in journalism when it says, ""A prominent medical journal said…."" It also says, ""JAMA’s findings loom large for Medtronic…"" The semantics are important here. They’re not ""JAMA’s findings."" The prominent journal didn’t say anything. ""A study published in the journal…"" would have been accurate. Journals ""say"" something when their editors write an editorial or commentary, which is not the case here. This story fails to provide any information regarding the evidence or indications for spinal fusion surgery and BMP. Specifically it states, ""The popularity of spine fusion surgery comes as no surprise — back pain is a leading cause of disability…"" Well it does come as a surprise when you consider that there is remarkably little data that it helps patients. The story doesn’t provide any information to place this procedure in context. A reader may think this is the only treatment for back pain. In fact, it is only for certain types of back pain, and in its most common use, for chronic degenerative low back pain, it appears to be no better than intensive rehabilitation. The story never mentions its role for those with chronic pain. The story includes an interview with a Medtronic spokesperson, as well as a physician from the Center for Restorative Spine Surgery. The Medtronic spokesperson states that BMP use is associated with reduced complications and costs in the long-term; however, in the study the authors present the argument that delayed complications from BMP can occur in the outpatient setting and may lead to readmission. These contradicting views were not addressed in the story. The story briefly mentions autogenous bone grafting; however the focus is largely on the pain associated with harvesting the bone. Additionally, there is no mention of allograft bone grafting or non-surgical options. Given all of the problems with spinal fusion and with this product, we think the story could have at least nodded in the direction of nonsurgical alternatives – even in one line. This story clearly states that bone morphogenetic proteins (BMP) have been approved by the FDA. The story clearly cites usage data from the study and indicates that the FDA approved its use for lumbar spinal fusion in 2002. Information on the prevalence of off-label use of the product would have been useful. Because multiple sources were used, it doesn’t appear that the story relied on a news release."
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5660
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Ebola vaccine hampered by deep distrust in eastern Congo.
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Until his last breath, Salomon Nduhi Kambale insisted he had been poisoned by someone and that was the reason he was vomiting blood. The 30-year-old man wouldn’t give community health teams his phone number, and when they found it, he hung up on them.
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true
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AP Top News, International News, Ebola virus, Public health, Africa, Health, Science, General News
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Health workers were desperate to persuade him to get vaccinated for Ebola after a friend fell ill with the lethal and highly contagious disease. But within days, Nduhi was dead. His widow and their four young children were given his positive Ebola test result and a chilling warning from a team of health workers: “If you don’t accept vaccination, you can prepare to die.” Deep distrust — along with political instability and deadly violence — has severely undermined efforts by public health authorities in Congo to curb the outbreak by tracing and vaccinating those who may have come into contact with infected people. Health experts agree the experimental Ebola vaccine has saved multitudes in Congo. But after nearly a year and some 171,000 doses given, the epidemic shows few signs of waning. The virus has killed more than 1,700 people and has now arrived in the region’s largest city, Goma. The World Health Organization last week declared the outbreak a global health emergency. During the 2014-16 Ebola epidemic in West Africa, which left more than 11,300 people dead, health workers could only dream of a vaccine with a 97.5 percent effectiveness rate that could improve the odds of survival even in those already infected. “We have it now and it’s not the miracle we wanted it to be,” said Dr. Joanne Liu, president of Doctors Without Borders. “The fact that we’ve used so much vaccine, and the epidemic hasn’t stopped, that shows us that contact tracing is not great.” WHO says as many as 90 percent of those eligible for vaccination have accepted it, but that figure only includes those who gave contact tracers enough information to be included on a list. The success rate excludes those who distrusted health workers and fled, or those who couldn’t be found in the first place. Health workers have been using what is known as a ring vaccination strategy: The vaccine is first given to those who were in close contact with a sick person. Then a second so-called ring is created by giving the vaccine to those who were in contact with those people. Because of the difficulties in making that strategy work, some people didn’t get vaccinated until they had already been infected with the virus, and they developed Ebola anyway. That increased doubts about the vaccine in communities where the public health campaigns led by outsiders already were viewed with suspicion and hostility. “The rumors were if you got vaccinated you would die,” said Liboke Kakule Muhingi, a 43-year-old farmer in Mangina, where the epidemic began last August. His mother was among the first to die. Then, one by one, six of his sisters who had cared for their ailing mother were killed by Ebola. Kakule accepted the vaccine and made sure his wife and eight children got it, too. “If I hadn’t, we’d all be dead,” he said. In some cases, health teams have been unable to reach certain areas because of violence or rebel activity. Earlier this month, the head of the Congolese health ministry’s response efforts in Beni was at one point unable to return from a field visit while the military battled ADF rebels, who are linked to the Islamic State. More often, though, contact lists have fallen apart simply because people have deliberately evaded health workers or did not understand they shouldn’t travel after being exposed. A pastor who became the first confirmed case in Goma had apparently put down fake names at health checkpoints to avoid detection. He had been sickened in the town of Butembo and then took a bus while ill. WHO and the Congolese health ministry have now switched tactics and are offering the vaccine to anyone who wants it. With Ebola’s arrival in Goma, a city of more than 2 million people, some wonder whether there will be enough of the vaccine if the outbreak continues. The vaccine’s manufacturer, Merck, said it has 245,000 1-millileter doses on hand and that could rise to 900,000 over the next 18 months. The dose in Congo also has been reduced to 0.5 mL, effectively doubling the supply. “Whether or not the available doses are sufficient to fulfill the demands depends on the evolution of the outbreak, the access to the communities and the successful expansion of the production of additional doses by Merck in early 2020,” WHO said. There is a second experimental vaccine, produced by Johnson & Johnson, but health officials in Congo have said it will not be used because it needs further testing and would cause too much confusion. It requires two doses given one month apart. It’s unclear how long the Merck vaccine will protect people. Scientists know from early studies that it lasts for at least a year, but the epidemic is approaching that limit. The only study to report longer vaccine durability tracked only a small number of healthy volunteers in Geneva for two years. The new strategy of giving shots to anyone who wants them involves setting up “pop-up” sites in the neighborhoods most affected. Last week a vaccination team headed to the neighborhood in Beni where Nduhi’s wife had stayed after he died. Outside the mud-brick home where his children still lived, a pickup truck full of plastic tables and chairs pulled over. Soon a tent was set up, and vaccination teams donned eye protection and yellow surgical gowns. Neighborhood children climbed the trees to watch. Baraka Kathembo Makasi, a 22-year-old motorbike taxi driver, brought his wife and two children with him. “At first I refused,” he said, “but I started seeing people die and decided to go.” ___ Associated Press writers Al-Hadji Kudra Maliro in Beni, Congo; Lauran Neergaard in Washington; Maria Cheng in London; and Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report.
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5460
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Documents: Labor agency rebuked Illinois VA on Legionnaires.
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Illinois workplace safety officials reprimanded state veterans’ officials for how the agency told staffers about a deadly Legionnaires’ disease outbreak at a Quincy veterans’ home, according to documents.
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true
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Quincy, Chicago, Health, Workplace safety, Legionnaires disease, Illinois, Disease outbreaks, Veterans
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The Illinois Department of Labor reproach focused on emails that Illinois Veterans Home administrators sent to state workers, WBEZ Chicago reported Thursday. State labor officials said the Illinois Department of Veterans’ Affairs “failed to effectively notify all employees” about the outbreak. Labor officials also said the veterans’ agency didn’t instruct workers about “proper precautions to avoid or eliminate exposure in a timely manner.” The disease has caused the deaths of 13 residents since 2015 and made dozens more residents and staff members seriously ill. State labor officials became involved after two sickened staffers complained to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration. AFSCME, the public union representing some Quincy workers, argued the veterans’ home didn’t do enough to warn employees about the disease threat. Illinois Veterans’ Affairs Director Erica Jeffries, who resigns next week, said Quincy employees were kept informed about the outbreak through emails, meetings and informational material posted at nursing stations. “We communicated effectively to our staff and to our residents and certainly to the family members of each resident that was exhibiting signs and symptoms of pneumonia,” she said in a statement. Her spokesman, Dave MacDonna, said the veterans’ affairs department “has been transparent concerning its response to the outbreak in 2015 and has provided thousands of documents to both members of the media and the General Assembly.” State Department of Labor spokesman Ben Noble said former state Labor Director Hugo Chaviano approved issuing the written reprimand but said there was no citation because no workplace safety standards were violated. Noble said the department hasn’t received any follow-up complaints. Rauner’s administration last week recommended starting fresh at the western Illinois home with a state-of-the-art facility on the 130-year-old campus costing between $190 million and $230 million. ___ Information from: WBEZ-FM.
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24487
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Baseball and insurance are the only industries exempt from antitrust laws.
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Liberal group says health insurance, baseball are only industries exempt from antitrust laws
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false
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National, Baseball, Health Care, Americans United for Change,
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"Supporters of the Democratic health care plan have invoked baseball in their latest television ad that tries to demonize the health insurance industry. In the 30-second ad, the liberal group Americans United for Change asks, ""How are professional baseball and insurance companies alike? Baseball and insurance are the only industries exempt from antitrust laws. How are they different? Insurance industry executives are scared of competition. Baseball players aren't. When baseball players fix the games, they get in trouble. When health insurance executives fix the games, they get rich. Time for competition when it comes to health insurance. We need the choice of a public health insurance plan."" In this item, we'll focus on their opening claim, that ""baseball and insurance are the only industries exempt from antitrust laws."" Let's first explain what ""antitrust"" means. Antitrust laws protect against anticompetitive conduct by cartels and monopolies. Federal antitrust laws target price-fixing, predatory pricing and mergers that reduce competition. Courts have consistently ruled that the federal government has the authority to pass laws that police competition in ""interstate commerce"" — that is, business activity that crosses borders and ripples through the national economy. While federal antitrust laws do cover most industries, some are exempted, thanks either to the courts or Congress. The Americans United for Change ad cites what is probably the best-known exemption: baseball. Baseball's sweeping exemption stems from a 1922 U.S. Supreme Court decision. The justices, presented with an upstart league's lawsuit against the well-established National League, ruled that teams' travel across state lines was not ""essential"" to the business. As a result, the justices ruled, the federal government had no antitrust power over baseball, since games were essentially events held in one state. Most notably, the exemption allows Major League Baseball to prevent teams from moving without the league's consent. In more recent challenges, the high court declined to overturn baseball's exemption, saying it was up to Congress to rescind it. Despite numerous bills, lawmakers have so far declined to do so. So, the ad is correct that baseball has an antitrust exemption. Does insurance have one too? It does. Insurance — in fact, all kinds of insurance, not just health coverage — is exempt from federal antitrust laws, though these protections are more limited than they are for baseball teams. A 1945 law exempts from federal antitrust law the ""business of insurance"" as long as it is ""regulated by state law."" However, in some contexts — such as if the conduct involves an agreement to ""boycott, coerce or intimidate"" — federal antitrust law does apply. This is hardly an arcane issue. As Congress struggles with health care reform legislation, some lawmakers are seeking to lift health insurers' antitrust exemption. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has introduced the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act, which would, among other things, ""repeal the federal antitrust exemption for health insurance and medical malpractice insurance companies for flagrant antitrust violations, including price-fixing, bid rigging, and market allocations."" Reps. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., and John Conyers, D-Mich., have introduced an equivalent measure in the House. Both measures are pending. Even though baseball and insurance have somewhat different types of antitrust exemptions, we find they are similar enough to justify the ad's pairing of the two. But when the ad says that baseball and insurance are ""the only industries exempt from antitrust laws,"" it's wrong. For starters, three additional industries — agricultural cooperatives, fishing cooperatives and maritime shipping — have, like baseball and insurance, what the American Bar Association calls ""general"" antitrust exemptions. Each of these exemptions stem from a law passed by Congress. For example, they permit co-ops, from milk producers to cranberry growers, to jointly market their products, including setting prices and output. (Congress has also exempted labor unions from antitrust law, but unions aren't an ""industry,"" so we won't include them in our calculations.) Also, other industries benefit from more limited forms of antitrust exemptions, usually laws that protect specific practices rather than invoking a blanket exemption for business activity. Studies by the ABA and a federal commission counted almost two dozen such partial exemptions. These govern a wide range of activities, including the actions by broadcasters to curb violence in television shows, efforts by airlines to ease airport congestion, attempts by financially troubled newspapers to merge some functions with competitors, and activities by soft drink producers to draw up exclusive sales territories. The Americans United for Change ad is generally correct to equate the antitrust exemptions of baseball and health insurance, but the one for health insurance is more limited. And the ad is incorrect to say that these are the ""only industries exempt from antitrust laws."" Agricultural and fishing co-ops and maritime shippers have similar exemptions. And a host of other sectors, notably freight rail, have some pretty significant antitrust protections as well."
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124
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Teva's UK arm recalls some batches of Ranitidine: Medicines watchdog.
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Teva Pharmaceutical’s UK unit has recalled some batches of heartburn medicine Ranitidine, Britain’s medicines watchdog said on Thursday, making it the latest drugmaker to pull the product.
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true
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Health News
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Teva, the world's largest generic drugmaker, is recalling all unexpired stock of Ranitidine Effervescent Tablets in 150 micrograms and 300 micrograms dosages, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) said here Teva did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Rantidine, a copycat of GlaxoSmithKline’s Zantac, is being taken off the shelves after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found “unacceptable” levels of a probable cancer-causing impurity in the drug. GSK last week recalled Zantac in all markets. U.S. and European health regulators said last month they were reviewing the safety of Ranitidine, after online pharmacy Valisure warned of possible contamination with an impurity called NDMA, which has carcinogenic potential. Ranitidine is the latest drug in which cancer-causing impurities have been found. Regulators have been recalling some blood pressure and heart failure medicines since last year.
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15850
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The measles vaccine has killed 108 people in the last decade, while no one has died of measles.
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Anti-vax measles claim misinterprets data
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false
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Georgia, Health Care, Public Health, NaturalNews.com,
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"The current measles outbreak has prompted some scientific-sounding claims about the dangers of vaccines. PolitiFact Georgia already ruled an outlandish statement reviving the threat of ""mercury"" in childhood vaccines, particularly the MMR shot for measles, mumps and rubella. Some readers challenged that conclusion, citing the experts in our backyard, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The gist of the argument comes from a headline over a story from the same alternative-health site as our first claim, NaturalNews.com. ""Measles vaccines kill more people than measles, CDC data proves,"" the headline reads. The story gives precise numbers: The CDC, it says, has reported no deaths from the virus in a decade, while ""at least 108 deaths"" have been linked to measles vaccines according to the government’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. It would be front-page news – not to mention a flood of ""I told you so"" Facebook posts – if, in fact, children were more than 100 times more likely to die from measles vaccines than the disease itself. The reason it isn’t? No grand conspiracy. Just a misreading of data. First, let’s agree that the data should only include cases or deaths in the United States. After all, measles remains among the leading causes of death for young children worldwide, killing 145,700 in 2013, according to the World Health Organization. The fate of children and adults in the United States is much better. The CDC’s National Vital Statistics Report data show measles as the cause of death five times between 2004 and 2010, the last year information is available. That breaks down to two cases each in 2009 and 2010, and one in 2005. And, according to the data, only the 2005 death was that of a child. However, even that low number might be an overstatement. A spokesman for the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases said those tallies sometimes report underlying causes, which do not always represent deaths associated with acute measles infection. Officially, the CDC shows the last verifiable deaths in the U.S. from acute measles were in 2003, when a 13-year-old boy and a 75-year-old man died, according to spokesman Mike Sennett. So that puts the half of the claim in line with the CDC’s stance. The other half – about more than 100 deaths from the four different measles vaccines – is the problem. Those figures come from searches of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), an online database co-sponsored by the CDC, U.S. Food and Drug Administration and agencies of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Significantly, anyone can file a report with VAERS: doctors, patients, family members, friends, ""even if the reporter cannot be certain that the event was caused by the vaccine."" That is important to know when running a search of the VAERS database for the past decade. That data reveal 105 deaths following one of the four measles vaccines. From the most common MMR vaccine, the count is 96. But remember, the system is designed to capture as much information as possible. Tallying a death that happened after a measles vaccine is not the same as confirming that the shot was the cause. (When available, causes of death after the measles vaccines range from existing heart conditions to co-sleeping to drowning.) Researchers want that information to review and study for patterns, said Dr. Walter A. Orenstein, a pediatrician and associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center who spent 16 years as the head of the CDC’s national immunization program. Government researchers constantly examine every report, on an ongoing basis. They turn over anything suspicious to outside groups, such as the Institute of Medicine, for deeper analysis. ""There is a very comprehensive review to look at vaccine safety,"" Orenstein said. ""After all, we give our own children these vaccines."" The review on the measles vaccines is clear: There have been no deaths attributed to the shots. In fact, none of the measles vaccines have prompted concern. Others have, most notably a rotovirus vaccine that VAERS data suggested increased risk for bowel blockages. That vaccine was pulled from the market in 1999. It has since been replaced by two similar vaccines that more effectively keep children from being hospitalized with severe diarrhea – though the blockages called intussusception remain a slight risk. ""The policy comes in, as weighing the risks and benefits of a vaccine,"" said Dr. Frank DeStefano, the director of the Immunization Safety Office the CDC. That is to say, the research allows for informed decision making when recommending vaccines. For the MMR vaccine, and others, there are known complications. Most common, DeStefano said, is anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction that will affect one out of every 1 million to 2 million children. Those children are usually allergic to components of the vaccine, such as gelatin or egg proteins, not the viral antigen itself. The complications from measles, meanwhile, are far more common. According to the book ""Vaccines"" by Peter M. Strebel, pneumonia occurs in 1 to 6 percent of cases, ear infections occur 7 to 9 percent of the time and diarrhea occurs in about in about 8 percent of cases. Encephalitis, a potentially deadly brain swelling, occurs in 1 out of every 1,000 to 2,000 kids with the disease. An almost always lethal form of encephalitis occurs years after an infection in 1 to 3 kids for every 1,000 cases. To scientists, those complications make it clear that the vaccine's benefits far outweigh its risks, and certainly outweigh the risks of a highly contagious disease. The NaturalNews site claims that at least 108 children have died from the measles vaccine in the past decade, while none have died of the disease itself. That’s wildly inaccurate. There have been reports of death in children following the vaccine, but that does not equal deaths caused by the vaccine. There are no confirmed deaths caused by the measles vaccines. The more accurate comparison, DeStefano suggests, is that big fat zero versus the 300-400 children who died annually in the United States before the vaccine was available in the 1960s. We agree. The article misreads data, to suggest that the measles vaccine is a greater threat to children than the disease. Experts, and data, show that measles is far more dangerous than the vaccine, even if some kids do have a reaction to the shot."
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16550
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"Under a proposed medical marijuana amendment in Florida, ""you don't get refills -- you get it forever."
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"Miguel said when it comes to doctor’s recommendations for medical marijuana, ""You don't get refills, you get it forever."" He was referring to how a doctor’s ""recommendation"" for cannabis does not allow the same level of control as a medical prescription does. He said there was no written limitation on how much or for how long a patient could get marijuana in the amendment, a common criticism by opponents of the amendment. It’s possible that potential Florida regulations would not limit time on a registry or how long a doctor’s certification would last for a patient. But it would be premature, and speculative, to assume that there would be no way under the amendment to stop a recommendation from going on forever. Other states have created their own rules, limiting the quantity and frequency of the drug that patients can get. They also limit how long patients can be on a registry before requiring a doctor’s approval."
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false
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Florida Amendments, Health Care, Florida, Marijuana, Drug Free America,
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"Opponents have made many arguments against Florida’s proposed medical marijuana amendment, but here’s a new one: They say patients would be able to get an unlimited amount of pot should the measure pass. Dr. Rafael Miguel, director of the Sarasota Memorial Institute for Advanced Medicine's Pain Medicine Program, was one of three representatives for Drug Free America who visited the Tampa Bay Times editorial board on Aug. 20. He joined Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri and Tallahassee attorney Susan Kelsey to discuss why the Sunshine State should shy away from Amendment 2 in November. Miguel offered several reasons why the medical establishment did not like the constitutional amendment. He said there was an unreasonable focus on marijuana’s smokeable form in order to obtain psychoactive effects, and added that the process by which doctors help patients get cannabis flies in the face of the prescription model of doling out drugs. Miguel focused on how ""recommendations"" to use marijuana are not prescriptions, and that they don’t allow doctors to control the amount and dosage patients consume, or for how long they consume it. ""You don't get refills -- you get it forever,"" Miguel said. ""There's no regulation on consumption."" PolitiFact Florida has written about the amendment’s guidelines before, but we were curious in this case whether doctors who recommend medical marijuana to patients would indeed have no say in how much or for how long their patients could take it. Following guidelines Medical marijuana is legal in 23 states and the District of Columbia. (Colorado and Washington state have gone a step further by legalizing cannabis for recreational use, even though the cultivation, possession and use of the drug remains against federal law.) Doctors in states that allow medical marijuana don’t prescribe the drug -- that could potentially lead to federal sanctions, since the U.S. government classifies marijuana as a Schedule I drug. Inclusion on that list means, legally, that marijuana has no known medical benefits, even though that claim is much disputed. Instead, in states that allow medical marijuana, doctors recommend people who suffer from certain approved conditions -- typically diseases like cancer, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, or other conditions causing chronic pain. States make their own rules for supplying the drug that vary from state to state. Florida’s Amendment 2 says that, should the initiative pass, the state Department of Health would create guidelines for the manufacture, distribution and use of marijuana. That worries opponents like Drug Free America; they argue that the language is too broad to limit the scope of the drug’s impact on the state. Miguel didn’t immediately return PolitiFact Florida’s request for more specifics about what he meant. During his editorial board visit he made it clear he preferred the FDA-approved process of writing prescriptions with a specified dosage, duration, potency and number of refills, using clinically tested drugs. The amendment doesn’t give doctors any of that control, Miguel said, and it doesn’t define any limit. In general, the measure says the state Department of Health will create regulations. However, the initiative does lay out some of the process. It defines a written ""physician certification"" as a document that says the doctor feels the patient has a condition that may be aided by the use of cannabis and specifies ""for how long the physician recommends the medical use of marijuana for the patient."" There also is a section that requires the Florida Department of Health to create ""a regulation that defines the amount of marijuana that could reasonably be presumed to be an adequate supply for qualifying patients’ medical use, based on the best available evidence."" That limit on quantity could be waived, depending on the patient’s condition. The language prevents a strict interpretation of how involved a doctor would be, said attorney Kelsey, who has criticized the amendment for being so vague it would eventually be challenged in the state supreme court. ""As I read it, the doctor doesn’t say the amount at all,"" Kelsey said. ""He just gives the patient the certification and it says for how long, then the patient gets their ID card and takes that to the dispensary and that is the point at which the quantity is determined and handed out."" So how is the drug distributed in states that allow it? Every state has different regulations for the process, but a good benchmark for Florida may be Nevada, because it passed medical marijuana as a constitutional amendment instead of as legislation. Colorado adopted constitutional amendments in 2000 and 2014, but the second one legalized recreational use, which the Florida Amendment does not do. Passed by voters in 2000, the Nevada amendment language was even shorter and more vague than the Florida proposal. It required the state Legislature to provide for a registry and to create guidelines, a process delegated to the state Department of Health and Human Services in subsequent legislation. As of 2013, Nevada limited patients to 2.5 ounces of marijuana every 14 days. Patients must get an ID card through a registry, and must renew their membership on the registry with a doctor’s approval every year. Even in states that allow patients to grow their own marijuana plants, there are legal limits to how much they can cultivate. It’s a moot point in Florida, because the amendment doesn’t allow for personal cultivation. Many laws or regulations also say doctors can tell the state agency in charge if they think a patient would no longer benefit from medical marijuana, according to Karen O’Keefe, state policy director at the Marijuana Policy Project, which favors regulations like Amendment 2. ""In most cases, the laws also specify that the card becomes void if the patient ceases to have the qualifying condition,"" O’Keefe said. ""I see no reason why regulators couldn’t include similar provisions in Florida."" Our ruling Miguel said when it comes to doctor’s recommendations for medical marijuana, ""You don't get refills, you get it forever."" He was referring to how a doctor’s ""recommendation"" for cannabis does not allow the same level of control as a medical prescription does. He said there was no written limitation on how much or for how long a patient could get marijuana in the amendment, a common criticism by opponents of the amendment. It’s possible that potential Florida regulations would not limit time on a registry or how long a doctor’s certification would last for a patient. But it would be premature, and speculative, to assume that there would be no way under the amendment to stop a recommendation from going on forever. Other states have created their own rules, limiting the quantity and frequency of the drug that patients can get. They also limit how long patients can be on a registry before requiring a doctor’s approval. CORRECTION, AUG. 29, 2014: This version of the article has been updated to reflect that Colorado passed constitutional amendments in 2000 and 2012, the latter of which allows recreational use of marijuana."
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37267
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An eRumor warning that Senator Obama still smokes, has a medical history of both parents dying at an early age and Senator Biden has had two brain aneurysms. If they were to both die while in office the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, would take over as President.
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Obama & Biden Health Concerns? Truth! & Fiction!
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mixture
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Obama, Politics
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The Los Angeles Times reported on May 30, 2008 that the Democratic Campaign released a doctor’s letter that Barack Obama was in “in excellent health”. The letter, by his longtime physician, stated that although the Senator had not undergone a physical examination for sixteen months that he was physically able to serve as President of the United States. The report also mentioned that the presidential candidate was struggling to quit smoking tobacco. On August 25, 2008, Fox News reported that the chief of surgery at Mt. Sinai Hospital, Dr. Michael Marin, said that Senator Biden, despite his history of aneurysms, was healthy enough to serve as Vice President. In 1988 Biden had corrective surgery to repair two berry aneurysms, which get their name from the tiny blueberry type of bulge that they make on blood vessels. Regular checkups and CT scans are the prescribed treatment for early detection, according to the article, and as long as a patient gets an examination every one to two years he should have a normal life expectancy. USA TODAY reported on August. 30, 2008 that Senator Biden had two surgeries for brain aneurysms in 1988. The US Constitution has a provision in the event that if neither President or Vice President are able to serve that Congress provide a law to name who would be next in line. According to the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the Speaker of the House would be the next in line to replace the President. Nancy Pelosi is currently the Speaker of the House. CLICK HERE for a list of other related stories about Barack Obama updated 9/24/08
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22938
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We were one of the first states in the U.S. to build sewers, to bring the treatment plant on line.
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Rhode Island was one of first states to build sewers and treatment plants
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true
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Environment, Rhode Island, Jamie Samons,
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"In hindsight, World Toilet Day came not a moment too soon. With a sputtering economy and high unemployment, Rhode Island has had precious few bright spots to brag about in recent years. But on Nov. 19, the Narragansett Bay Commission, which operates two major sewage-treatment plants, celebrated World Toilet Day by pointing with pride to some of the most dark and foul parts of our state: the sewers. ""Think about it,"" Narragansett Bay Commission public affairs manager Jamie Samons said. ""We were one of the first states in the U.S. to build sewers, to bring the treatment plant on line, and now we’re tackling CSOs (combined sewer overflows). How lucky are we to know that we can flush reliably."" Truth be told, it’s been awhile since we’ve thought about that topic. But with World Toilet Day as our inspiration, we decided to give it some thought. So we set out to prove or disprove the claim that Rhode Island was ""one of the first states"" to build sewers and a sewage treatment plant. A 1990 Narragansett Bay Commission document, ""Reclaiming Our Resources: A History of The Providence Sewage Treatment System,"" sets the scene, taking us to the year 1854 when Providence, then the seventh largest U.S. city, faced its second cholera epidemic in five years. The city’s superintendent of health, Dr. Edwin Snow, describes the Moshassuck River as ""filthy as any common sewer,"" saying ""the stench arising from it at times pervades the whole neighborhood"" and ""at any time, dogs, cats and hogs may be seen in the water in every stage of decomposition."" But there’s good news: ""In the 1870s a sewer system was constructed which conveyed the city’s waste to be discharged through a series of 65 combined sewer overflows into the rivers and harbor,"" the document states. And in 1884, Providence sent City Engineer Samuel M. Gray to Europe to study the latest methods of treating household and industrial waste. He recommended a system to collect sewage at Field’s Point and treat it with a ""chemical precipitation method"" used in England. In 1901, the Providence Sewage Treatment system began operating, and the commission document says, ""The chemical precipitation plant, the third of its kind in the United States, was described as ‘The largest of its type ever built.’ "" So did that make us ""one of the first""? To begin with, America certainly wasn’t the first country to come up with this sewer idea. In the Mesopotamian empire (3500 to 2500 BC), some homes were connected to a stormwater drain system to carry away waste, and the Romans built the Cloaca Maxima (AKA the central sewer system) in about 800 BC, according to P.F. Cooper’s ""Historical Aspects of Wastewater Treatment."" Also, Rhode Island certainly wasn’t the first place in America with sewers. New York, Chicago and Boston battle it out over which had the first sewer system, says Jon Schladweiler, the Arizona Water Association historian who runs the sewerhistory.org website and a traveling exhibit on sewer history. But Providence wasn’t far behind the front runners, he says. Brooklyn began construction in 1857 of ""the first effective planned sewerage system in the country designed to remove sanitary wastes and stormwater,"" and Chicago began building ""the premiere sewer system of the time"" in 1859, according to Martin V. Melosi's ""The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present."" In ""The Impact of Sanitary Reform,"" Jon A. Peterson says New York built about 125 miles of sewer lines between 1849 and 1865, and Boston installed about 100 miles of sewer lines between 1849 and 1873. He also mentions sewer projects under way in the 1850s in Chicago and Jersey City, N.J. And he says, ""In New England, where urbanization had advanced furthest, engineers devised major systems for Providence in 1869."" Providence also gets some love in a footnote found in ""American Sewerage Practice,"" a seminal 1914 text by Leonard Metcalf and Harrison P. Eddy. ""The sewerage system of Providence was declared in 1881 by Rudolph Hering, after a personal investigation of such work in our cities and in Europe, to be equal to anything abroad and much better than the work elsewhere in this country. The system was designed in 1869 by J. Herbert Shedd, then chief engineer of the water works and later city engineer."" And ""Mr. Shedd’s report of 1874 on these sewerage works was long a famous engineering document,"" Metcalf and Eddy say. ""It is only right to point out that the Providence sewers formed for some years the model American system."" You hear that, Connecticut? ""Model American system."" After a shout-out from Metcalf and Eddy, it’s safe to say Rhode Island enjoyed sewer All-Star status. But did we also have one of the first sewage treatment plants? Metcalf and Eddy say, ""The first extensive treatment plant utilized chemical precipitation and was built in Worcester, Mass., in 1889-1890."" Sewerhistory.org mentions an East Orange, N.J., treatment plant built in 1888 or 1889. And in ""Municipal Wastewater Treatment,"" Andrew Stoddard says, ""In 1886, the first wastewater treatment plant was constructed to protect beaches at Coney Island."" But, hot dog, Providence wasn’t far behind with its treatment plant starting to hum in 1901. And by 1909, there were still only 19 cities with more than 30,000 people treating their sewage, Joel A. Tarr notes in ""Goodbye to the Flush Toilet."" So after reviewing the claim that Rhode Island was ""one of the first states"" with sewers and a sewage treatment plan -- a phrase that leaves plenty of wiggle room. We should mention that in later years Providence’s sewage treatment became a disgrace. By the 1970s, the deteriorating plant was spewing nearly 65 million gallons of untreated or partially treated sewage each day into Rhode Island’s waters. But in 1980, voters approved an $87.7-million bond issue for improvements, the Narragansett Bay Commission was formed, and by 1995 the Environmental Protection Agency was naming the treatment plant best of its size in the nation. So next time World Toilet Day comes around, don't just sit there. Stand up and cheer."
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10129
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Fighting genetic disease with help from HIV virus
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This is an originally reported, people-driven story about children with a rare and deadly genetic disease known as metachromatic leukodystrophy undergoing an experimental gene therapy as part of a clinical trial in Italy. The preliminary results of the trial are very intriguing, and the two siblings in the story are currently disease free. The focus on one family, however, uses a single experience to suggest that the experimental therapy is effective, when in fact the small trial has yet to be fully analyzed, published and peer reviewed. Readers are given very little information about the trial itself, the stage of the research, or the strength of the evidence. No independent experts are featured to put the preliminary results into a wider context, and no information is given about the potential costs of the treatment, which are likely to be enormous. Although individually rare, single gene disorders collectively take a heavy toll. The WHO estimates prevalence at birth to be 1/100. Any new method to develop treatments for single gene diseases could have a major impact, so gene therapies currently in trials are being watched closely. Nonetheless, novel treatments can take a long time to prove safe and effective, so readers should not have their expectations raised that “miracle” cures are just around the corner–when in reality there is still a long way to go before gene therapies make it into mainstream medicine. Unfortunately, this story puts too much emphasis on the promise of an experimental therapy without suggesting there may be pitfalls to it becoming available.
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false
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CBS News
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Gene therapies are astronomically expensive; Glybera, the only approved gene therapy in the world, costs around $1 million and has only been used once. Nowhere is the potential cost of the treatment mentioned by the reporter, despite interviewing a woman financially supporting families to get their children into the clinical trial. Although it is impossible to say how much the experimental treatment would cost if approved, the likelihood of an extremely high price tag should have been mentioned. The story does not clearly state the quantified benefits seen in the experimental trial, though it does make reference to the research. All we’re told is “At least 70-80% of them have an outstanding benefit coming from the treatment.” But, what does “outstanding” mean? And how many kids are we talking about? It sounds like possibly 24, but we’re not sure. And, what’s happening to the other third who aren’t seeing “outstanding” benefits? The reporter does say that “it will take years to know for sure” if the treatment works, but ends the story on the word “miracle” and leans heavily on the anecdotal experience of a single family, which diminishes the previous cautious statements. The mention of gene therapy’s difficult past, including deaths in clinical trials, is valuable context for the reader to understand the potential risks of experimental treatments, so we’re glad the story mentioned that. However, there should have been some discussion of the potential harms of this new treatment. (If there are none, which is unlikely, that is also important and valuable information to the reader.) At no stage does the story say that the results of the trial have not been fully published, despite strongly suggesting that the experimental gene therapy is effective. This is a major problem, particularly when combined with extensive anecdotal experience suggesting the therapy works. At the very least, the small size of the experiment and early stage of the research should have been given. Any reader would be at a loss to know where to look for further information, or to grasp how far along the researchers are toward demonstrating whether their therapy is truly effective. MLD is referred to as a “rare, nightmare disease.” We feel this is not disease mongering considering that MLD is currently untreatable and usually kills children before they reach five years old. There are no independent sources quoted. While the story is focused on individuals and families living with the disease, it would not have been difficult to include a single third-party voice. No doubt many other researchers are watching the clinical trial with interest, and they may have provided valuable context as well as an indication of the quality of the evidence. The trial is funded by GlaxoSmithKline who own the experimental therapy. Again, a quick mention would have been valuable. The story does not discuss if there are alternatives under development. It is made very clear that the treatment is not available in the U.S., and likely won’t be for some time. While this deserves a Satisfactory rating, there are two ways in which the reporter might have dealt with the availability issue differently. First, it might have been worth saying the treatment may never be available in the U.S., since the research is at too early a stage to guarantee success. Second, it would have been informative to find out from the drug company what they think will happen next. GlaxoSmithKline are reported to have said they will seek approval in 2017–is that based on this current study or are they planning to do more research? The story establishes that this experimental gene therapy is novel. The story does not appear to be based on any particular publication or event, so the reporting is original and does not rely on a news release.
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31943
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The United States military recruited Native Americans as scouts in the Vietnam War and — in the course of their training — the military discovered that long hair actually helps give people ‘almost supernatural’ tracking abilities.
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This fanciful tale relies on the unsourced and unverifiable claim from a website that frequently peddles highly shareable stories having little to no scientific legitimacy, and it appears that the tale of long-haired Native American scouts in Vietnam belongs to that genre. Not a single piece of historical evidence supports the claims of Native American scout recruitment by the U.S. military, and no scientific evidence that holds up to any level of scrutiny supports the idea of heightened intuition resulting from longer hair.
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false
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Science, native americans
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A popular story that has been in circulation online since at least 2010 is one that involves long-haired Native Americans serving as scouts in the Vietnam War. The earliest mention of the tale we found was an 8 December 2010 post from the self-described “Indiana Jones of the superfoods and longevity universe,” David ‘Avocado’ Wolfe. As the story goes, a woman married to a Veterans Affairs medical hospital psychologist caught wind (via her husband) of top secret information about how the military recruited scouts on Native American reservations for the Vietnam War. But once the scouts’ hair was cut to regulation military length, they lost their preternatural tracking skills. Later tests showed that long, flowing hair was an essential component of those skills: It seems that during the Vietnam War special forces in the war department had sent undercover experts to comb American Indian Reservations looking for talented scouts, for tough young men trained to move stealthily through rough terrain. They were especially looking for men with outstanding, almost supernatural, tracking abilities. Before being approached, these carefully selected men were extensively documented as experts in tracking and survival … Once enlisted, an amazing thing happened. Whatever talents and skills they had possessed on the reservation seemed to mysteriously disappear, as recruit after recruit failed to perform as expected in the field. Serious causalities and failures of performance led the government to contract expensive testing of these recruits, and this is what was found. When questioned about their failure to perform as expected, the older recruits replied consistently that when they received their required military haircuts, they could no longer ‘sense’ the enemy, they could no longer access a ‘sixth sense’, their ‘intuition’ no longer was reliable, they couldn’t ‘read’ subtle signs as well or access subtle extrasensory information. The author of the tale attempted to explain a possible scientific rationale for such an occurrence: Hair is an extension of the nervous system, it can be correctly seen as exteriorized nerves, a type of highly evolved ‘feelers’ or ‘antennae’ that transmit vast amounts of important information to the brain stem, the limbic system, and the neocortex. Not only does hair in people, including facial hair in men, provide an information highway reaching the brain, hair also emits energy, the electromagnetic energy emitted by the brain into the outer environment. This has been seen in Kirlian photography when a person is photographed with long hair and then rephotographed after the hair is cut. When hair is cut, receiving and sending transmissions to and from the environment are greatly hampered. This results in numbing-out. Cutting of hair is a contributing factor to unawareness of environmental distress in local ecosystems. This story presented two separate areas in need of fact-checking: the historical claim that the United States military recruited Native Americans as scouts during the Vietnam era and later commissioned a study to find out why they were not performing as expected, and the scientific claim that hair functioned as an aid in military scouting activities. The historical account given here is dubious at best, and the claim that it stemmed from a “secret” project challenges us to prove a negative. Logical fallacies notwithstanding, the confirmable facts are that numerous Native American soldiers served in Vietnam, a large majority of whom volunteered for their service before being drafted and were integrated into regular units, and no historical accounts exist of specialized scouting units composed of long-haired Native American soldiers. We reached out to the military regarding the possibility that such a program may have occurred, and F. Lee Reynolds with the United States Army Center of Military History provided us with the following statement: We reviewed your request to validate or not validate the story on Native American Scouts in Vietnam. We did not find any information (official or unofficial) here to acknowledge the information is correct so we reached out to our historians with Army Special Forces to see if there was a local program conducted by Special Forces. The response back was that the story is “pure mythology.” An actual United States military project to recruit scouts from a specific ethnic group did exist, but the targeted group was Viet Cong defectors recruited to serve as intelligence scouts. This setup makes a good deal more sense relative to the Native American claim, given the Viet Cong’s actual knowledge of the land and its inhabitants. The scientific claims are no less dubious. While it is borderline accurate to say that hair plays a role in the nervous system, that does not mean it serves as some sort of “antenna” into the ineffable aspects of our own consciousness. The reality is a bit less grandiose, according to the New England Journal of Medicine: The hair follicle acts as a sensory organ and immunologic sentinel for the skin. Hairs detect mechanical stimuli above the surface of the skin, and the slightest bend in a hair activates neuroreceptors in the follicle, relaying important sensory information to the nervous system. The Langerhans’ cells at the opening of the follicle detect surface pathogens and activate the immune system. In other words, the two primary functions hair has on a sensory level are to signal physical movement of the hair and to detect pathogens. In both cases, however, it is not the hair itself that is talking to the nervous or immune systems, but the cells of the follicle to which the hair is attached. It is unclear how the subtle movement of one’s hair or the ability to detect pathogens via the scalp would have any bearing on scouting in the Vietnam War. The original article on this subject went on to claim that hair both emits and receives electromagnetic signals to and from the brain: Not only does hair in people, including facial hair in men, provide an information highway reaching the brain, hair also emits energy, the electromagnetic energy emitted by the brain into the outer environment. This has been seen in Kirlian photography when a person is photographed with long hair and then rephotographed after the hair is cut. When hair is cut, receiving and sending transmissions to and from the environment are greatly hampered. This results in ‘numbing-out’. The notion that hair emits electromagnetic energy is demonstrably false. Hair is a terrible conductor of electricity and is actually comparable in electrical resistivity to rubber, which commonly used to protect against the flow of an electric current. Other less well-defined terms such “intuition” are harder to refute, but it should be noted that not a single version of this story provided any sort of mechanism outside of the implausible and vague notion of electromagnetic signals. Kirlian photography, the only piece of “evidence” provided for the nebulous claim of hair as an intuition antenna, is a common topic on new age, alternative health, and metaphysical websites. In broad terms, it is a collection of techniques used to photograph an electric field, which new age and alternative health practitioners sometimes describe as an “aura” that is medically or spiritually informative. Science finds no support for such a claim, however. Any differences in a before/after photographs of hair would almost certainly represent nothing more than the moisture content of the hair or lack thereof, as later studies into the topic revealed. As Native American writer and creator of the blog “Native Skeptic” Noah Nez wrote on a post for the Center for Inquiry, hair plays an important role in many tribes’ religious beliefs, but those views have often been co-opted by various New Age movements: Close investigation into various tribal beliefs might help explain the origin of this story. Though Native American legends and belief systems do incorporate terms for the supernatural, they do not use phrases found in New Age mysticism like “aura” or “sixth sense” … While there might be some variability in the details regarding the reasons for long hair from tribe to tribe, there is one major component that has remained consistent: long hair has never been about aesthetics but instead is a religious concern.
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10821
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Drug Reverses Diabetes-Related Vision Loss
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The key difference between this and the NYT story was that WebMD didn’t reflect on the question of why Genentech didn’t test its cheaper Avastin against the much more expensive Lucentis. The important issue of corporate sponsorship of a clinical trial was overlooked. You want to talk about comparative effectiveness research? This would have been a good place for it.
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true
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"The story covers cost in the very last two lines. Adequate quantification of benefits seen in the study. Story says ""few eye-related complications"" were reported in the Lucentis group, but didn’t say what few means or what they were. We don’t think that’s quite adequate. Adequate job explaining how the study was done and what it means. No disease mongering in the story. One quote from the head of the National Eye Institute. But he didn’t really evaluate evidence – only talked about hope. Meantime, no mention that Genentech funded the trial (a strength of the NYT story was its discussion of the ""pay for play"" aspect of the research) – and no mention that Dr. Bressler disclosed financial ties to Genentech. From the Times: Some doctors criticized the organizers of the trial for testing Lucentis rather than another Genentech drug, Avastin, which works in the same way as Lucentis. Although it is a cancer drug, Avastin is often used off-label for eye diseases because it is far cheaper than Lucentis, costing only $20 to $100 a dose, compared with $2,000 for Lucentis. Avastin is undercutting sales of Lucentis, which totaled $1.1 billion in the United States last year. Organizers of the trial conceded that a major reason Lucentis was chosen was that Genentech, which is now owned by Roche, agreed to provide the drug free of charge and to contribute $9 million in additional financing — but only if Lucentis were used. “Obviously you can’t underplay $9 million,” said Dr. Ferris of the eye institute, which is part of the part of the National Institutes of Health. But he said there were other factors as well, like a belief that Lucentis might have been the better drug. Dr. Philip J. Rosenfeld, a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Miami, said the decision was “clearly a case of pay to play” since Genentech’s money dictated the choice of drugs. At least the story mentioned the uncertainty about whether Lucentis is any better than the cheaper Avastin, and mentioned an upcoming trial comparing the two in age-related macular degeneration. The story explains that Lucentis was approved 4 years ago for another cause. Story explains the drug is already approved for another use, and it also – at the very end – mentions that an older and much cheaper drug is also effective. It’s clear the story did not rely on a news release."
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35671
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A video shows Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates briefing the CIA in 2005 about a mind-altering vaccine.
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A years-old hoax recirculated in 2020 — this time with Gates' name attached to it.
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false
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Science
|
In May 2020, a video (below) supposedly showing Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates briefing the CIA about a mind-altering vaccine was circulated on social media. But the presenter in this footage is not Gates. Furthermore, this is not a genuine presentation to the CIA in 2005. This is a hoax video that was likely created for an uncompleted film project from director Ryan Harper called “FunVax.” This video has been circulating since 2011 under the assumption that it showed an authentic CIA briefing. Since then, a number of outlets examined and debunked this claim. Metabunk, for instance, noted that the brain scans displayed around the 45-second mark of the video are presented as if they show a “religious brain” and a “non-religious brain” from “two different individuals.” These scans, however, were actually taken from a 2010 study about a 43-year-old woman with a history of methamphetamine abuse. The filmmaker simply took the original scan, added some red and yellow coloring, and then claimed it showed the brain scan of a religious person. Here’s the doctored brain scan as shown in the video (left), and the original scan taken from the 2010 study in the medical journal Neurology (right):
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10736
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International Study Finds Effective, Less Toxic Way to Treat Brain Tumors
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A comparison of radiation treatments for some patients with metastatic brain tumors produced useful evidence that adding whole brain radiation to radiation focused on just the tumors was associated with more cognitive declines and lower quality of life, without adding to survival. That’s a noteworthy finding, but the news release obscures the advance in clinical evidence behind a flurry of superlatives, while leaving out important context. One bright spot is that the release highlights the finding that the patients given both whole brain and focused radiation had cleaner brain scans, but then did not live any longer. That’s an important reminder that disease progression tests do not necessarily point to better outcomes. The study results, as the release notes, could help spare many patients from over-treatment. But rather than promising a “better quality of life,” the release would have done better to stick to a more sober portrayal, that the study supports recommendations updated in recent years against using whole brain radiation in these patients. When cancer that started in the lungs or other organs spreads to a patient’s brain, the outlook for a long survival dims. As the researchers quoted in the release note, for these patients the effects of treatments on the quality of life take center stage. It’s a positive sign that more cancer researchers are studying a treatment’s outcomes on quality of life in addition to measuring tumor response. But it is important to maintain a sober tone about the likely scenarios, and resist implying that making the “right” choice of treatment will produce a substantially better quality of life, when the realistic goal is minimizing the rate of decline.
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mixture
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Academic medical center news release,Cancer
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Since both the focused radiation and whole brain radiation are common treatments for brain tumors, an estimate of typical costs should have been included in the release. There is likely to be a range of costs because of issues with the specific tumor target. However, the release could have made note of that. The release is far more emphatic than the study. The release says focused radiation treatment alone proved to be “substantially less toxic” than a combination of focused and whole brain radiation treatment for these brain tumor patients. By contrast, the study referred to “less cognitive deterioration” and lower rates of decline in the quality of life. However, the lack of detail about benefits in the release is largely due to the lack of detail in the study itself, which reported only on a combined measure of cognitive function and did not spell out specific benefits. The same can be said of the discussion of survival rates, because the study itself said only that there was no significant difference between the treatment groups. The release should have included a vital point: that few patients in either group lived more than a few months. Indeed, 20 percent had died before the first evaluation just three months after treatment. On the other hand, the release does a great service by highlighting the finding that although patients who received whole brain radiation in addition to focused radiation had better brain scan results, they did not live any longer than those whole were given only focused radiation treatment. The finding is yet another example of the danger of putting too much stock in measures of disease progression or other tests that logically seem to be related to important health outcomes, but often fall short. The main point of the release, emphasized in several statements, is that whole brain radiation is more toxic to the brain than focused (or stereotactic radiation) without improving survival outcomes. So, while one might expect that the more targeted approach might cause harm by “missing” some of the cancer, the story does a good job of pointing out the LACK of additional harm by targeting the tumor rather than irradiating the entire brain. The release does not describe the trial, either the features that make it noteworthy or its limitations. This ruling is a close call. Although the claim in the release that the study results could apply to tens of thousands of patients with brain tumors may be a reasonable estimate, it fails to put that number in context. The study included only a select group of patients with three or fewer metastases in their brains. By failing to mention either that one out of five patients in the trial died before the first post-treatment evaluation or that many patients with brain tumors don’t match the description of those in the trial, readers are given an inflated sense of the relevance of these findings. The funding source is not identified in the release. The release also makes no mention of conflicts of interest, but the journal article disclosure section notes only that one of the authors (not mentioned in the release) receives some industry funding. The release is clear that the point of the study was a direct comparison of two commonly-used treatments. The release also points out that surgery is a treatment option for these patients. It is clear that the treatments are currently in general use. The release fails to tell readers that whole brain radiation for these patients is, as an accompanying editorial comment notes, “falling out of favor.” The editorial goes on to note that, “In 2014, the American Society of Radiation Oncology… indicated that WBRT [whole brain radiation treatment] should not routinely be added to SRS [stereotactic radiosurgery or focused radiation] for patients with a limited number of brain metastases.” So this research, informative to clinicians as it may be, is unlikely to change the underlying trend away from using whole brain radiation in the treatment of these patients. The release doesn’t go overboard with sensational language. But as mentioned above, phrases such as “substantially less toxic” and “better quality of life” without quantification, along with tangential promotion of related research by the institution’s researchers, tilt the release toward marketing.
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10334
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Scientists Puzzle Over Minor Success Of AIDS Vaccine
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While many other news organizations were calling a Thailand AIDS vaccine trial a breakthrough, this story provides caveats, some skepticism, loads of context, comparisons with other vaccines and historical perspective. You can read the criterion by criterion analysis below, but this is the way early announcements of experimental research results should be covered. Kudos to David Brown and to the Washington Post.
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true
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"At this early phase of research it’s understandable that cost wouldn’t be discussed. It provided the outcomes in absolute terms – which we appreciate: ""Of 8,197 people who got vaccine, 51 became infected in the three years after their shots. Of the 8,198 who got placebo injections, 74 became infected. While that difference — 23 infections out of more than 16,000 people studied — is significant, it could have occurred by chance."" Were any harms – besides the lack of protection in most trial participants – reported in the Thai trial? We don’t know from the story. This is the strength of the story – by itself and in comparison with many other stories by many other news organizations. Over and over and throughout the story, the evidence was questioned. Excerpts: Other researchers were less sanguine about the study but did not want to be quoted by name as being skeptical when only a few details of the results have been released. ""I just think it’s too early really,"" said one, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for that reason. ""It is in a kind of gray zone, and I think we should really get the data and look at it and see what it all means."" And there was more. You get the picture. No disease-mongering in this story. Interviews with Dr. Fauci of NIH, with one of the investigators, and with an unnamed skeptic. Good job comparing this vaccine approach with other vaccines. The experimental stage of the vaccine research is clear from the story, as when it states: The vaccine is not licensed or being produced in large amounts. It is unlikely — but not impossible — that any country would consider it effective enough to be used as a public health measure against HIV. The story gave lots of detail about the novelty of this approach, but questions: ""How a vaccine that induces both a weak antibody response and a poor cell-mediated one can protect some people from HIV infection is the big initial mystery of this study."" It is abundantly clear that this story did not rely on a news release, but, rather, was based on enterprise journalism with context and with a historical perspective."
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7660
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WHO says new China coronavirus could spread, warns hospitals worldwide.
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There may have been limited human-to-human transmission of a new coronavirus in China within families, and it is possible there could be a wider outbreak, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.
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true
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Health News
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Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that can cause infections ranging from the common cold to SARS. A Chinese woman has been quarantined in Thailand with a mystery strain of coronavirus, Thai authorities said on Monday, the first time the virus has been detected outside China. In all, 41 cases of pneumonia have been reported in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, which preliminary lab tests cited by state media showed could be from a new type of coronavirus, and one patient has died. There have since been no new cases or deaths, Wuhan health authorities said on Tuesday. “From the information that we have it is possible that there is limited human-to-human transmission, potentially among families, but it is very clear right now that we have no sustained human-to-human transmission,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, acting head of WHO’s emerging diseases unit. The WHO is however preparing for the possibility that there could be a wider outbreak, she told a Geneva news briefing. “It is still early days, we don’t have a clear clinical picture.” Some types of the virus cause less serious diseases, while others - like the one that causes MERS - are far more severe. The U.N. agency has given guidance to hospitals worldwide about infection prevention and control in case the new virus spreads. There is no specific treatment for the new virus, but anti-virals are being considered and could be “re-purposed”, Van Kerkhove said. With Chinese New Year approaching on Jan. 25, when many Chinese tourists visit Thailand, the WHO called on Thai authorities, the public and holidaymakers to be on alert. Richard Brow, the agency’s representative in Thailand, said anyone with a fever and cough who had spent time in Wuhan should get checked out by a health worker.
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10011
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Ultrasound With Elastography May Cut Down on Biopsies
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Recent debates on the value of mammography screening have highlighted its major downfall – the high chance of having false positive results, which lead to unnecessary biopsies. Ultrasonography after a suspicious finding on a mammogram can help further discriminate potentially benign from cancerous lesions, however these too are far from perfect. Thus, many biopsies are performed needlessly. This week news came out of the annual Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) meeting that, according to two small studies, a newer type of utlrasonography, elastography, could help better identify benign lesions from cancer. The incomplete results of these studies were presented at the meeting, but they have yet to be published. Readers of such stories should note the results with some caution: scientific presentations have not been subject to a rigorous peer-review process. Published articles undergo review by experts who can comment on the quality of the design, analysis and interpretation of the results. This story does little to expand upon the press releases provided on the RSNA website. (Available at: http://www.rsna.org/Media/rsna/RSNA09_newsrelease_target.cfm?id=441). It appears to lift content directly from the press release, both in the numbers provided, the text itself and the quotes from the story lead authors. The story gives no evidence that any independent reporting was done beyond lifting and slightly rewriting what is written in the press release. As such, the story adequately describes the design of the studies, the novelty of elastography and quantifies the benefits. However, it fails to discuss the availabililty of elastography, and does not describe the potential costs or harms of the test. The lack of independent expert perspectives in the story was a major shortcoming. Especially in this time frame when breast cancer has received so much confusing news coverage, it is imperative that a story do a complete job of explaining what these results mean to women who are considering mammography and who are concerned about the risk of having to undergo biopsies that are of no benefit. This story failed to deliver that information.
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false
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The story makes no mention of the cost of elastography. The use of a second additive technology will clearly add to the costs of diagnosis unless the sensitivity and specificity of the test is sufficiently high to reduce unnecessary biopsies. The potential cost implications of this added technology are not noted in the story. Although the true economic impact of the technology is not known at present, the potential cost implications of the method should have been noted. The story repeats the quantification of benefits as they are presented in the press release but these differ slightly from what is published in the abstracts. The story mentions that elastography correctly identified 98% of cancerous lesions and 82% of benign lesions, however the abstract states that elastography identified 76% of benign lesions. It isn’t clear where this discrepancy comes from and for that reason we must judge this unsatisfactory. The story states that these numbers are better than conventional utrasonography but provides no quantification for comparison. The story should have placed them both into context with other technologies including MRI, computer assisted detection and full field mammography as well as ultrasonography. The story mentioned no harms of elastography, which are similar to conventional ultrasonography. Excessive false positive results could lead to needless biopsies in the case of both skin and breast lesions. Alternatively, false negative results of the new test could lead to undiagnosed breast or skin cancer. The story focuses on the reduced likelihood of biopsy in both cases failing to comment on the potential downside. While a sophisticated reader may note that the results were to be presented at a meeting, have not been published or subjected to peer review and are preliminary (since the study is ongoing), the story fails the average reader. The story could have emphasized that the peer-review process often picks up problems in the design, conduct and analysis of the studies, whereas presentations at scientific meetings are not subject to such scrutiny. Results presented at meetings should come with this note of caution to readers. The comments of the lead author of the breast lesion study suggesting elastography can eliminate the need for biopsies seem premature at best based on the preliminary results of this small study. The results of the study to date are presented incompletely and do not allow the reader to determine the relative sensitivity and specificity of the elastography as compared to ultrasound. The story does not engage in disease mongering. It accurately states that most breast lesions are benign. The story quotes only experts who were involved in the study. Even worse, the two experts who are quoted are also quoted in the press release. The story should have also pointed out that the senior author is listed as an investigator for the company that produces the device used for the study. This is a major flaw of the story. Persepctives from independent sources could have tremendously improved the quality of the story. The story compares elastography to traditional ultrasonography and biopsy but fails to mention the availability of MRI, full field mammography, computer assisted ultrasound and other technologies available or under development. The story makes no mention of the availability of elastography. The test is still under evaluation and is not widely available outside of research settings. The story adequately describes the novelty of elastography. The story appears to lift content directly from the Radiology Society of North America’s press release, available at: http://www.rsna.org/Media/rsna/RSNA09_newsrelease_target.cfm?id=441. Not only are the same numbers used in the story as the press release, but the same quotes and very similar text are used in both. The story gives no evidence of any independent reporting other than reading the press release to generate the story.
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9738
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New Evidence Resveratrol May Slow Alzheimer’s
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Resveratrol is an antioxidant compound found in grapes and red wine. This story reports on a recent well done randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial that finds high doses of resveratrol can have an effect on the production of a biomarker associated with Alzheimer’s disease. The story also highlights some modest gains in patients’ ability to perform daily tasks. However, the story seems to reach farther than the evidence and could easily mislead readers who are looking for ways to fight the symptoms of Alzheimer’s — for themselves or loved ones. The headline, “New Evidence Resveratrol May Slow Alzheimer’s,” is particularly off base, as there’s no evidence presented in this study to indicate a slowing of Alzheimer’s progression. The story’s characterization of brain shrinkage in the resveratrol group as a “positive sign” is similarly problematic, as it’s far from clear that a shrinking brain is a good thing for anyone. An independent source would likely have helped this story provide a more thorough and accurate evaluation of the study and its implications. A competing CNN story did feature such a perspective and, perhaps as a result, was better. Alzheimer’s affects more than 5 million people in the United States, and that number is expected to double over the next 35 years. It is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States. And while the number of patients diagnosed is great, the number of people affected is even greater. It is difficult for loved ones to watch a friend or family member lose his or her sense of self, to say nothing of the financial and emotional burden that comes with increased responsibilities for taking care of Alzheimer’s patients as the condition advances. New tools and treatments that can slow the progress of Alzheimer’s are important and worth covering. But it is also important to present the limitations of new studies, so as to avoid giving a false impression of the findings to doctors, patients and their loved ones.
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false
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resveratrol
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The story does not mention cost at all. But in this case we’ll rule this Not Applicable since the story clearly indicates that the supplements studied are not on the market. The story has a fundamental flaw. The key finding of the study is that high doses of resveratrol can have an effect on the production of amyloid-beta40, a biomarker that declines as Alzheimer’s disease advances. Specifically, the study looked at 119 patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease. Patients who received the high doses of resveratrol did not see declines in the biomarker, whereas patients who received a placebo did see declines in amyloid-beta40. Couching that as “new evidence resveratrol may slow Alzheimer’s,” as we see in the headline, is misleading. More accurate is the line in the eighth paragraph: “How resveratrol may be affecting the Alzheimer’s disease process isn’t clear yet.” And it’s not until the last line of the story that readers find: “We need more studies to see if it really does have benefit and then it could be turned into more effective drugs that can better target Alzheimer’s.” That’s a qualifier that should have found placement much higher in the story. Another concern is the story’s reporting on brain volume decline in the resveratrol group, which it says is “a positive sign, as the disease can cause inflammation and swelling that can interfere with nerve connections.” Characterizing a shrinking brain as a “positive sign” seems problematic at best. The study itself says that the “The etiology and interpretation of brain volume loss observed here and in other studies are unclear.” And in the news release issued for the study, Dr. Turner acknowledges, “We’re not sure how to interpret this finding.” And finally, the story also points to “slight improvements” among patients receiving resveratrol — but doesn’t explain exactly what that means. More on this below in “Quality of Evidence.” The story doesn’t mention side effects, but the study itself reported that adverse effects included nausea, diarrhea, and weight loss. In addition, there are some concerns that resveratrol may affect blood clotting, which would be important information for patients taking blood thinners. It’s worth noting that this absence of potential harms in the story is particularly problematic, given that a key goal of the study was to determine whether high doses of resveratrol are safe. Moreover, weight loss is already a significant concern among Alzheimer’s patients, so anything that would exacerbate that is definitely worth paying attention to. The story does note the size of the study and the maximum dosage that patients received. However, the story doesn’t provide much in the way of critical evaluation of the results. For example, while the story says that “men who were treated [with resveratrol] showed slight improvements in their ability to maintain certain daily activities on their own, such as dressing and bathing themselves,” it doesn’t mention the fact that the study included five tests that measured patient’s mental processes — and found slight improvements in only one of them. There was no difference between the resveratrol group and the placebo group on the other four tests. Similarly, the study looked at many different measures in the spinal fluid and plasma, as well as many different brain volume measures. And when looking at so many different outcomes, the authors were bound to come out with one or two positive results by chance. So-called “correction for multiple comparisons” is designed to address this problem, but wasn’t performed in this study as far as we could see. Lastly, the point of a phase 2 study is to look at safety, not benefits, but the story never communicated this key limitation or explained the purpose of this type of study. As the paper itself notes: “This phase 2 study has limitations….The altered biomarker trajectories must be interpreted with caution. Although they suggest [central nervous system] effects, they do not indicate benefit. A larger study is required to determine whether resveratrol may be beneficial.” Inclusion of an independent perspective would likely have brought attention to many of these concerns. No disease mongering here. While several of the study authors have ties to the pharmaceutical industry, it’s not clear whether any of those companies are developing resveratrol-based drugs or supplements, and the study itself was funded by the NIH. Regardless, the story does lack input from any experts who weren’t involved in the study, which is necessary to meet our standard here. The story would have been much stronger if it had included outside experts who could have placed the work in context and helped readers understand how this work fits into the broader scheme of Alzheimer’s research and treatment. While there are a paucity of treatment options for Alzheimer’s, there are some pharmaceuticals on the market, such as cholinesterase inhibitors. The story doesn’t mention any of them, or explore how these may compare to, or be compatible with, the use of resveratrol. In addition, so many small clinical trials in Alzheimer’s have made headlines like this one, only to come up totally negative when studied in a properly powered trial. We wish the story had shown some awareness of that fact. The story does make clear that this study does not mean people should begin drinking red wine or taking resveratrol supplements to combat Alzheimer’s disease, and notes that more studies are needed to determine benefit or to create drugs for clinical use. This study is, as the story notes, “the largest and longest study of resveratrol in people with mild to moderate Alzheimer’s disease.” We’ll rate the story Satisfactory for that reason, but we wished for additional context. A quick internet search turned up dozens of other studies on resveratrol and Alzheimer’s — and a quick paragraph on what those other studies have told us would have been both interesting and useful. This story technically meets our standard here since it includes quotes from an interview with the lead author — quotes that weren’t included in a news release about the study and which indicate original reporting. But we’d note that the news release on this study is actually much more careful in its presentation of the results than this more sensational news story. The news release is more accurate in claiming, “Resveratrol impacts Alzheimer’s disease biomarker,” and says nothing about “slow[ing] Alzheimer’s.” The release also includes cautionary language sprinkled throughout the text, whereas the lone caveat in this story comes only at the very end.
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10255
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Study Finds Single, Escalated Dose of Brachytherapy Radiation May Be a Safe and Effective Treatment for Localized Prostate Cancer
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This news release from a professional society of radiation oncologists summarizes a trial in 58 men with Stage 1 localized prostate cancer that found using a single treatment of high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy (where radioactive implants are inserted directly into the tissue) may be an acceptable and safe alternative to typical longer, but lower doses of radiation. Recognizing that a higher dose, single radiation treatment could be more toxic to tissues surrounding the prostate, this trial set out to measure the effectiveness and safety of such treatment. While the research was non-randomized, its generally positive tone was balanced by emphasizing that there needs to be additional follow-up research to see how it compares with conventional approaches. After stating in the headline the treatment “may be safe and effective,” the release provides a fairly detailed description of harms. A concern with this study is that nearly all of the patient volunteers would have been candidates for active surveillance–meaning that they did not need an active treatment. With no caveat that expert guidelines recommend surveillance for low-risk Stage 1 prostate cancers, this release engages in disease-mongering. It is recognized that exposure to radioactive treatments can be harmful and so finding other ways to treat tumors in the prostate should be welcomed. If a treatment for localized prostate cancer which is administered in a single procedure, is equally effective and safe as conventional treatment, it is possible that patients may have fewer side effects and adverse events related to their prostate cancer treatment. This study provides some data on the safety and tolerability of the single dose of 19 Gy HDR brachytherapy compared to LDR brachytherapy, It is important to note that these patients were a very select sample of prostate cancer patients (low to intermediate risk) and so extrapolating those findings to other prostate cancer patients may not be appropriate.
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false
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Association/Society news release
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There was zero mention of cost, which is unfortunate because presumably a single treatment would entail fewer costs than one that involved multiple procedures. The main benefit focused on a vaguely described “biochemical progression,” which means that there was some evidence that prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels increased. PSA is a protein produced by both cancerous and noncancerous tissue in the prostate. Determining PSA progression is more complicated following radiation because it takes time for the PSA level to stabilize (unlike following surgery to remove the prostate) before you can determine whether the PSA is rising. Biochemical progression is also a surrogate measure and does not imply that the cancer is–or will–clinically progress. The researchers did acknowledge that the actual benefits are unknown, saying that “as the follow-up interval lengthens, 19 Gy dosing in a single fraction may or may not be sufficient to result in cure rates comparable to historical standards.” The release provided detailed information on harms: “Within the six months following HDR therapy, seven patients (12.1%) experienced grade 2 urinary side effects, most commonly frequency/urgency (6.9%). No patients experienced short-term grade 3+ urinary toxicity or grade 2+ gastrointestinal (GI) toxicity. Rates were similarly modest for long-term side effects. Six patients (10.3%) experienced chronic grade 2 urinary toxicity and one patient (1.7%) experienced grade 3 chronic GI toxicity that subsequently resolved. No patients experienced long-term grade 3+ urinary toxicity or grade 4 GI toxicity.” But given that many oncology experts would consider the treatment unnecessary, any level of toxicity could be considered unacceptable. The lay reader would have benefited from a description of what “grade 2 or grad 3+” levels of toxicity means. There were a few issues that could have been clarified: the fact that these men were quite low risk to start with, that five of the initial patients dropped out of the study (and we aren’t told why) and that this was a non-randomized, prospective clinical trial which is potentially subject to a series of biases. The key takeaway is that this evidence does not establish the superiority of this approach to any other radiotherapy, any active treatment, or active surveillance. The quote from a study author at the end of the release indicating that more research was required and this study was not definitive proof of the superiority of the 19 Gy fraction of HDR brachytherapy was a welcome caution, and somewhat at odds with the overall positive tone of the release. Promoting brachytherapy radiation for treatment of low-risk men is a form of disease-mongering, particularly since there is no mention of the surveillance option. The American Urological Association (AUA) and National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) guidelines recommend that men with low-risk cancers be offered active surveillance. The release doesn’t tell us who sponsored the study. The published report indicated there were no conflicts of interest. The release says the study compared safety and effectiveness of single high-dose-rate (HDR) brachytherapy to longer courses of HDR treatment and that this alternative “may or may not be sufficient to result in cure rates comparable to historical standards.” This sounds inconclusive. Just what are the “historical standards?” And why talk about “cure” rates? A recently published randomized trial (PROTECT, Hamdy et al. NEJM, September 2016) of active monitoring, radiotherapy, and surgery for men with localized cancer found a 99% prostate-cancer specific survival for all treatment arms through 10 years of follow up. Speaking of a “cure” rate for low-risk disease that does not need to be cured is very misleading. H. Gilbert Welch, MD, MPH. professor of medicine at the Dartmouth Institute, has described these low risk diseases as “pseudo disease.” The release doesn’t address availability but high dose brachytherapy has been available for years–and a Google search reveals many sites offering this treatment. The news release suggests that this is a new strategy based on new research but that doesn’t appear to be the case. According to UpToDate, an evidence-based list of practice recommendations published by Wolters Kluwer, use of single, high dose brachytherapy for prostate cancer is not novel: “The HDR brachytherapy dose is usually administered in one to four large dose fractions over a period of time, typically 24 to 40 hours. Patients receiving more than one fraction are usually admitted to the hospital (typically a 23 hour “outpatient stay”) for treatment when delivering multiple fractions and retain the perineal catheters in place for the entire period.” The release detracts from the actual study when it states that the research “illustrates that a potentially curative dose of radiation…” This seems unjustified in the context of the trial. Is one ever really ‘cured’ from prostate cancer? Giving caveats, yet dropping the line that “the single-treatment approach can eventually become a standard practice for prostate cancer treatment,” seems premature. Urologist Willet Whitmore, MD, a founder of the urology oncology sub-specialty, spoke about localized prostate cancer cures this way: “If treatment for cure is necessary, is it possible? If possible, is it necessary?”
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16127
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In 2012, 123 African-Americans were shot dead by police. ... Same year, 326 whites were killed by police.
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O’Reilly said, 123 African-Americans and 326 white people were shot dead by police in 2012. He referenced recent federal numbers but failed to mention their well-documented flaws. We have not found any experts who will vouch for numbers that purport to represent annual fatal shootings by police, as there are gaping holes within each dataset. Additionally, the number of white people fatally shot by police in 2012 is substantially off if you account for white Hispanics -- a group O’Reilly did not seem to have in mind during his rant about race relations between blacks and whites. O’Reilly’s statement contains an element of truth, but it’s not the full picture he makes it out to be.
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false
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Crime, Race and Ethnicity, Urban, PunditFact, Bill O'Reilly,
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"Bill O’Reilly made headlines this week by offering his take on a silent Ferguson protest by a few members of the NFL’s St. Louis Rams, saying the decision of the players ""connotes the fact that they believe, I guess, that white police officers shoot black youths all the time."" That’s out of bounds of a fact-check. But O’Reilly did present some statistics in the same argument that several readers asked us to examine. ""Let's take a good look at this plague of white cops acting violently against blacks, as (professor and liberal columnist Michael Eric) Dyson puts it,"" O’Reilly said on his Dec. 1, 2014, Fox News program. ""In the past 50 years, the rate of black Americans killed by police has dropped 70 percent. In 2012, 123 African-Americans were shot dead by police. There are currently more than 43 million blacks living in the U.S.A. Same year, 326 whites were killed by police bullets. Those are the latest stats available."" Later in the show, O’Reilly said of these numbers, ""That's not an epidemic. It's not crazy. It's not a hunting-down of black youth."" This is not the first time we have evaluated pundits’ half-truths comparing black and white deaths from police killings. Like the other cases, O’Reilly is citing available government statistics, but these numbers are shaky and don’t paint a complete picture. Lack of national data O’Reilly’s team used the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s fatal injury reports database. A search in the system for fatal ""legal interventions"" -- deaths caused in the course of law enforcement trying to make an arrest or quell a situation -- confirms, on the surface, the numbers O’Reilly mentioned for whites and African-Americans. How does the CDC get the number? Primarily from causes of death listed in death certificates from coroners, medical examiners and physicians and demographic information provided by funeral directors. Figures are further supplemented by a violent death reporting system that includes data from 17 states. (Legal interventions include state executions.) But experts told us the data is likely incomplete because coroners and physicians are under no obligation to detail police involvement in the deaths that they encounter. ""It is not known or certain that every death certificate indicates that the death was caused by law enforcement officer in every jurisdiction,"" said Samuel Walker, retired professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. Another database, this one maintained by the FBI, attempts to get at the same figure. But it’s no more solid. The FBI reports rely on self-reported data from a small chunk of the nation’s more than 17,000 law enforcement agencies. The lack of a national clearinghouse for fatal police killings ""is a national embarrassment,"" said Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminology professor who specializes in high-risk police activities. ""I’m sure one of (O’Reilly’s) researchers pulled a number from that database, but it’s just a convenient fact, as someone used to say,"" he said. More problems with O’Reilly’s numbers Beyond the lack of clear national data for these deaths, experts found more problems with O’Reilly’s citation of CDC numbers. O’Reilly’s reference of the number of whites killed in legal interventions does not strictly account for non-Hispanic whites. People who identify as Hispanic are also counted in the total of 326 deaths. Running the search again for whites but excluding Hispanics leaves 227 deaths from legal interventions -- substantially fewer deaths due to the absence of 97 white Hispanics previously in the mix (in the black category, two were identified as black Hispanic). ""So if you are interested in people of color, what they list in the white data is too high,"" Walker said of O’Reilly’s figures. Additionally, the per capita rate of black deaths per 100,000 residents is .28, which is twice as high as the rate for white deaths of .13, Walker points out. Our ruling O’Reilly said, 123 African-Americans and 326 white people were shot dead by police in 2012. He referenced recent federal numbers but failed to mention their well-documented flaws. We have not found any experts who will vouch for numbers that purport to represent annual fatal shootings by police, as there are gaping holes within each dataset. Additionally, the number of white people fatally shot by police in 2012 is substantially off if you account for white Hispanics -- a group O’Reilly did not seem to have in mind during his rant about race relations between blacks and whites. O’Reilly’s statement contains an element of truth, but it’s not the full picture he makes it out to be."
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2821
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FDA rejects wider use of Amag anemia drug; shares slide.
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Amag Pharmaceuticals Inc said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rejected its application for wider use of its iron deficiency drug due to safety concerns and asked for more trial data, sending its shares down as much as 15 percent.
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true
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Health News
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In a “complete response letter” to Amag, the FDA suggested that the company generate additional safety data for the wider patient population and evaluate the dosing or administration of the drug, Feraheme. “The FDA did propose that the company conduct additional trials,” Amag Chief Executive William Heiden told Reuters. “We do have existing safety data from our two large late-stage trials ... certainly we would look to that data to support the safety profile of Feraheme.” The FDA asked Amag to provide additional safety data related to serious hypersensitivity, cardiovascular events and deaths. Heiden said conducting a new study with safety as the main goal would be easier than conducting an efficacy study, adding that Amag could begin a trial this year, if it came to an agreement with the FDA. “The treatment period is fairly short and there’s a fairly short followup,” he said. “The size of the trial and enrolment would be the determining factor on how long the trial would run.” This is not the first time Amag has faced problems related to Feraheme, which is marketed as Rienso in Europe. Last May, one of Amag’s partners, Takeda Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, recalled a batch of Rienso because of a death and several cases of hypersensitivity. In one of the late-stage trials conducted for the drug’s wider approval, Amag reported three deaths, of which two were in the Feraheme-controlled group, but none related to the drug. The regulator said the company had not provided enough information for the FDA to label the drug as safe for use in patients with adult iron deficiency anemia (IDA) who have failed or cannot tolerate oral iron treatment. The drug, Feraheme, is already approved to treat iron deficiency anemia in adult chronic kidney disease patients. Amag’s shares were down about 8 percent at $20.14 in morning trading on the Nasdaq.
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34242
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A 9-year-old girl was paralyzed as a result of receiving a flu shot.
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Rare neurological disorders which have their onset at around the time a child is of the correct age to receive a vaccine are often asserted to be caused by those vaccines based on temporal proximity, despite a lack of conclusive evidence to draw a mechanistic link. The available evidence does not support a connection between ADEM and the flu vaccine, but the condition is so rare that insufficient data exists to robustly prove a lack of causation at this time. As such, claims that the 9-year-old girl in Tampa developed as a result of the flu shot is unproven.
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unproven
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Medical, anti-vaccine, flu shot, natural news
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One commonly repeated incident that propagates and recirculates on anti-vaccine websites is that of a nine-year-old Florida girl who developed an extremely rare neurological condition known as acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) five days following her immunization for the flu in November 2013. The incident itself, described in local news accounts, is real: On November 20, 2013, [the girl’s] parents took her to the doctor where she received her annual flu shot. She would spend the next five days playing with children in the neighborhood. She was on break from school for the Thanksgiving holiday. Her mother recalls putting her to bed on the night of November 25, 2013 … [She] walked into her daughter’s room to check on her. Her daughter was not responding to her calls to wake up, so [she] lightly nudged her. Still there was no response despite [the girl’s] eyes being open … An advanced life support ambulance would transport Marysue to St. Joseph’s Hospital. On the way, she suffered a seizure, according to her mother. Once at the hospital, [the girl] suffered another seizure [and] was now on life support and in the intensive care unit. The stricken girl was ultimately diagnosed with ADEM, and while most cases of ADEM resolve completely or carry only minor long-term consequences, this case left the patient in a wheelchair and has caused lasting neurological damage. While devastating, the event’s causal relationship to the flu shot is a much more complicated area of science, one that has been misrepresented repeatedly in the anti-vaccine posts that have used this family’s story to advance their fear-driven agenda. A representative example can be found on the conspiracy mill website known as “Natural News”: National Vaccine Injury Lawyer Leah Durant has reported that ADEM, although rare, can … be triggered by a flu shot. That’s what happened to … a vivacious, active nine year old from Tampa, Florida. On November 20, 2013, [this girl] had a seasonal flu shot. Within days, she became limp, then paralyzed and, as reported by Natural News, “nonverbal, confined to a wheelchair/hospital bed, [and] primarily eating via a g-tube …” According to Myelitis.org, ADEM is a rare auto-immune disease that occurs when the immune system “mistakenly attacks its own brain tissue,” when responding to a vaccination or infection. A 2016 review of ADEM in the journal Neurology described the disease as belonging to a group of poorly understood conditions known as “immune-mediated demyelinating CNS disorders.” A demyelinating process is one that damages or removes the protective covering surrounding the nerve fibers of the central nervous system, known as a myelin sheath. An immune-mediated demyelinating process is one caused by the body’s own immune system attacking these surfaces, leading to neurological damage: Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) is an immune-mediated demyelinating CNS disorder with predilection to early childhood … ADEM often occurs postinfectiously, although a causal relationship has never been established … Outcome of ADEM in pediatric patients is generally favorable, but cognitive deficits have been reported even in the absence of other neurologic sequelae … Nationwide surveys of ADEM in Germany, Canada, and Great Britain report incidences of 0.1–0.3 per 100,000 children per year … The median age at presentation of ADEM is 5–8 years, with male predominance. Because ADEM is an immune-mediated disease, vaccines have long been considered as a plausible trigger for the condition, which is most commonly thought to be caused by the body’s inflammatory response to various viral or bacterial infections. Evidence for a possible minor link to the MMR vaccine, mentioned above in the Natural News post, has been published, although those conclusions have been disputed, and no widespread epidemiological study has ever found clear evidence of a causal relationship between ADEM and the influenza vaccine, as alleged in the viral story. This is likely why Natural News and other similar outlets rely upon a vaccine injury lawyer, whose livelihood stems from fees garnered from bringing complaints to the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, to assert the connection. A 2015 review of the influenza vaccine’s overall safety concluded that evidence was insufficient to “establish a causal relationship between influenza vaccines and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis”: The available evidence does not establish a causal relationship between influenza vaccines and acute disseminated encephalomyelitis (ADEM) or transverse myelitis, but the available evidence cannot rule out the possibility of a small increased risk following influenza vaccines. If there is any risk following influenza vaccines, this risk is very low. In fact, the risk of developing ADEM directly following influenza inoculation may well be lower than the risk of developing ADEM without receiving the influenza vaccine. A 2014 paper that reviewed cases of central nervous system demyelination (like ADEM) following vaccinations of any kind concluded that “The risk of onset or relapse of CNS demyelination following infections against which the vaccines are aimed to protect is substantially higher, and the benefits of vaccinations surpass the potential risks of CNS inflammation.”
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4759
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Groups ‘skeptical’ of Savannah harbor oxygen injector test.
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Conservation groups “remain skeptical” that machines injecting oxygen into the Savannah harbor will offset threats to fish caused by deepening the busy shipping channel to the Port of Savannah, but they won’t return to court to fight the $973 million project, according to the environmental groups’ attorney.
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true
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Savannah, Fish, Environment, General News, Harbors, Laws
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The Southern Environmental Law Center submitted its response Friday to a two-month test run the Army Corps of Engineers conducted to show it could mechanically replace a small loss of dissolved oxygen in the stretch of the Savannah River being deepened to make room for larger cargo ships. “Overall, it appears that the Test Run report shows that the Oxygen Injection System is capable of delivering oxygen to the river,” law center attorney Chris DeScherer said in a letter to the Army Corps. “However, we remain skeptical that the System will effectively work in perpetuity to mitigate for the impacts of the project.” The Army Corps is spending $100 million to build a pair of stations on the river equipped with large machines that suck in water, swirl it with oxygen pulled from the air and inject the mixture back into the river. The agency plans to run the oxygen injectors indefinitely, roughly from June through September each year when summer heat can cause dissolved oxygen levels in the harbor to drop below minimum standards set by Georgia and South Carolina. The agency estimates it will cost $3 million per year to pump extra oxygen into the waterway shared by Georgia and South Carolina, which is home to endangered shortnose sturgeon as well as species including striped bass and blue crabs. A 2013 court settlement required a successful test before the agency can resume dredging of the 27-mile (43-kilometer) shipping channel that links the Savannah port to the Atlantic Ocean. The project has been on hold since reaching its halfway point in March 2018. The Corps declared last month that tests performed between March and May exceeded expectations. It reported the machines pumped roughly 13,300 pounds (6,070 kilograms) of oxygen into the river daily, beating its target of 12,000 pounds (5,443 kilograms). And it found that on average 95% of the extra oxygen stayed in the water instead of escaping into the air — compared to an 80% target. DeScherer noted the tests were performed during the spring, rather than in summer when dissolved oxygen in the river tends to be lower. And the stretch of river where the machines were tested has yet to be deepened. The legal settlement prohibited deepening that portion of the waterway until after the machines were tested. Conservation groups and South Carolina state agencies had sued the Army Corps in federal court, arguing the harbor expansion would cause irreversible environmental damage. A settlement reached in 2013 stated that the plaintiffs could terminate the deal if the Corps couldn’t prove the oxygen machines worked. DeScherer’s letter said the environmental groups that sued won’t scrap the settlement despite their doubts about the oxygen machines. The deal included other environmental concessions such as $15 million for wetlands protection and $3 million for monitoring endangered fish species in the river. It’s not clear what the South Carolina agencies that were part of the lawsuit will do. A spokesman for the state’s Department of Health and Environmental Control did not immediately return an email seeking comment Sunday.
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27392
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"California schoolteacher Gregory Salcido called members of the United States military ""the lowest of our low"" during a classroom discussion."
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Gregory Salcido, who is also a City Council member in Pico Rivera, was caught on video making a series of controversial remarks about the armed services.
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Politics
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On 26 January 2018, a Connecticut woman posted video to her Facebook page that was apparently video from a hidden camera showing California high school teacher Gregory Salcido talking pejoratively about the U.S. military: Salcido is both a long-time teacher at El Rancho High School and a city councilman in Pico Rivera, a working-class city of roughly 63,000 in southeast Los Angeles County. When we contacted him, he declined to comment. In the videos, which were secretly recorded by senior Victor Quinonez, Salcido’s comments were often met with students’ laughter. He criticizes military recruitment on the high school’s campus and derides the glorification of the military, saying statements made by United States President Donald Trump about the its greatness are overblown. In the quote that drew the most outrage, Salcido said: We got all our freaking night vision goggles, all that kind of stuff, and we can’t freaking control these dudes wearing freaking robes and chanclas. Because we got a bunch of dumb shits over there. Think about the people who you know who are over there, your freaking stupid Uncle Louie or whoever, they’re dumb shits. They’re not like high-level thinkers, they’re not academic people, they’re not intellectual people. They’re the freaking lowest of our low. Not morally. I’m not saying they make bad moral decisions. They’re not talented people. […] How come when you go to like the Rose Bowl, Rose Parade, Dodger opening day, why after the national anthem do we have a killing machine fly over the freaking stadium? You know the stealth bomber’s out there and everyone’s like, “Yeah that’s what we kill people with!” Like why would that be something we celebrate? I don’t get it. Anyway, you better not freaking go. The comments drew a rather intense round of what has become a familiar pattern of viral Internet outrage and backlash. In response to the controversy, Salcido has been officially admonished by the Pico Rivera City Council and stripped of his committee assignments. He has been placed on leave by the El Rancho Unified School District while the incident is under scrutiny. Even the United States Department of Defense has weighed in, calling Salcido’s comments “uninformed.” Salcido told the Los Angeles Times he was receiving “vulgar and violent threats” directed against himself and his family. Pico Rivera is a tight-knit, primarily Latino suburb that has a strong tradition of honoring veterans and a large military-serving community, with two Veterans of Foreign Wars posts and two American Legion auxiliaries, said Mayor Gustavo Camacho. Speaking by phone, Camacho told us: I respect the First Amendment and freedom of speech and Mr. Salcido is entitled to his freedom of speech. But I want to remind him that the reason he has that freedom is because of the men and women who lost their lives in order for us to have that freedom of speech. Many folks can listen to an audio and interpret it as they see fit. If you have an opinion about recruitment or a particular college recruiter, why don’t we tell our kids, “These are our options. I think this is a better option and let me help you get there,” rather than saying they’re dumb shits. I and my fellow council members strongly disagree with Mr. Salcido’s statements and viewpoints. Frankly we denounce those statements. But Trinity College sociology professor and U.S. Army veteran Johnny Eric Williams said although Salcido’s comments were delivered clumsily, the teacher shouldn’t be formally punished for making them, calling the response troubling and overblown. Williams himself was the subject of a separate Internet outrage storm in June 2017, when a post on his personal Facebook page intended to criticize structural racism and white supremacy went viral after right-wing web sites interpreted it as racist toward white people. Williams, who is African-American, received death threats and told us that he continues to get them to this day. He added: The classroom is your social space where people can say things they wouldn’t say normally out of the classroom setting so they can seriously interrogate it. It sounds like he was trying to provoke the kids to think about why a student would wear a Marines shirt without thinking about what the Marines do. Clearly it didn’t come across well, but it’s a classroom setting. He’s not doing a major speech, he’s trying to get kids to think about what the role of the military is. It’s not simply to protect freedom, as they say generically. The question is, freedom to do what and whose freedoms? That’s the question that should be asked. Why would a kid record a teacher like that in the first place without him knowing? I think that’s a level of cowardice and of unwillingness to participate that is unfathomable to me. It was done with malice. All education is about integrating people into what it means to be an American. One of the most important things is to be someone who questions, who thinks critically and dissents. That’s the most patriotic thing someone can do. Williams told us that as a veteran, he found Salcido’s comments about the intelligence of service members to be unfounded and an excellent example of intellectual elitism: What happens is the U.S. military is the last option for folks in rural and poverty-stricken areas. There’s no other opportunity for them. But the idea that these folks are not smart, I don’t agree with that at all. That’s how I got through college. I had to do it because I didn’t have money. That’s why you have a voluntary army, because these people have nothing else they can do. Then they go and die while the kids with money go to college and don’t even think about the fact that we’re in eternal war. Nevertheless, Williams cautioned that lacking the freedom to criticize the military is akin to fascism. He added: At this historical moment in time, people are more interested in how something is said, rather than what is said and what it means. Quinonez told local news station KTLA he recorded Salcido because he wants to join the Marine Corps and was tired of the teacher’s negative commentary on the military. Pico Rivera is a thriving community with a growing economy, but it’s no stranger to cut-throat politics and controversy — and neither is Salcido. However, much of the controversy in the city’s past has been contained to the local level. In 2010, he ignited debate when he took the helm in the city’s rotating mayoral position, then removed a Bible from the Council chamber’s dais and put a halt to invocation, saying it was unconstitutional. He was also placed on administrative leave by the school district that year after admonishing a student to be quiet by saying, “Shut up, Kelly, before I kill you.” Salcido said at the time the comment was purposefully over-the-top and intended in jest. The child’s parent, Gerald Kelly, said he was angry because Salcido was talking about marriage equality for LGBTQ people, criticizing organized religion, and (again) speaking critically of the military in class: This is the mayor and he’s out here destroying these kids’ minds. Why allow him to lead this city when he stands for non-religious beliefs and that it’s OK to be against the Bible, [says it’s OK to be] homosexual and defames people in the military? Salcido has clashed with his peers on the city council in the past as well, often as their vocal critic amid allegations of public corruption. Although Salcido has faced widespread criticism for his remarks, he has historically been a popular teacher with students. Some of his current and former students have come to his defense, averring that the teacher also promised to fully support a student if he decided to join the military in spite of Salcido’s discouragement. (This purported gesture of reassurance was not shown in the videos.) More generally, students have described Salcido as “real,” “inspiring” and “loved.” One of Salcido’s current students, a senior at El Rancho High School, spoke to us anonymously. (We have verified the student’s identity.) That student described Salcido as a teacher who “cares greatly about his students’ success” but deliberately provokes debate in his classes and encourages his students to have “deep conversations.” The student also told us that Salcido “sometimes has a very sarcastic sense of humor, and sometimes it may be taken the wrong way,” but offered the opinion that the teacher was expressing his “genuine beliefs” in the video clips: Not a lot of teachers can keep their students captivated as much as he can. He really is one of a kind. He likes to get us thinking and he genuinely cares about what the students think… He’s one of those guys that you would be happy to see every day and a person to always make you laugh. On 20 March 2018, the El Rancho Unified School District Board voted to terminate Salcido’s employment as a teacher at El Rancho High School. As reported by the Whittier Daily News, Salcido has one month in which he can appeal the decision, during which time he will remain on unpaid leave.
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