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3971
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Minnesota farm shutters under deal to contain deer disease.
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A central Minnesota farm where deer were found infected with a fatal brain disease has closed and the U.S. Department of Agriculture compensated the owner for euthanizing his entire herd.
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true
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Animals, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Health, Deer, Minnesota, Animal health
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The Minnesota Board of Animal Health announced Wednesday that captive deer were killed on a Crow Wing County farm to try to prevent chronic wasting disease from spreading to wild deer in the region, the Star Tribune reported. The board didn’t disclose how much Trophy Woods Ranch in Merrifield was paid or how many deer were euthanized. All carcasses from the pay-to-hunt shooting farm will be tested for the disease, according to the board. Chronic wasting disease hadn’t been detected in wild deer in central or northern Minnesota until February, when state officials announced that an emaciated deer found nearby the Merrifield farm had tested positive for the fatal illness. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources was first informed that the farm could be harboring the disease in 2016. Since then, state officials tested more than 8,600 deer harvested by hunters in a zone around the farm. At least seven captive deer at the farm have been confirmed as infected with the disease since 2016. The USDA, which negotiated and funded the deal, will work with the state animal health regulatory board to implement a management plan at the shuttered farm since the prions that cause the disease remain in the soil. The disease, which is transmissible through deer-to-deer contact, has been found concentrated in other parts of the state, such as southeastern Minnesota. The department permitted special deer hunts in December to limit the spread of chronic wasting disease in the area. ___ Information from: Star Tribune, http://www.startribune.com
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11413
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Breast MRI after mammography may identify additional aggressive cancers
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Mammography (left) and MR imaging (right). Credit: RSNAThis cautiously worded release suggests that preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans of breast cancer patients may reveal additional cancers, while noting that it is not known whether additional treatment aimed at these newly discovered cancers helps or hurts patients. However, the release leaves out some of the study limitations, and the rather technical language may obscure the narrow group of patients that these results may apply to. The study behind this release may be useful to surgeons planning treatment for certain women with breast cancer. While the release does describe the relevant circumstances, as well as some of the uncertainties about the potential benefits or harms of additional treatment aimed at cancers discovered through preoperative MRI scans, we would have liked the writers of the release to anticipate that readers might believe the study results apply far more broadly than they do.
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mixture
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Association/Society news release,Breast cancer,Diagnostic tests
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The release does not discuss the cost of breast MRI or the cost of altering treatment based on the results of the imaging. In addition, we’d note that MRI may not be covered depending on insurance, and given the way some of the plans are currently structured, the cost may be prohibitive. The release notes that potential benefits are uncertain and that the researchers’ conclusions that additional cancers found through MRI imaging might justify altering treatment plans is based on a belief that tumors larger than 1 cm are clinically significant, not specific study evidence. But we believe that the release should have specifically noted (as the journal article did) that other studies have not found benefits to treating tumors discovered through preoperative MRI, and then explained the different way this study looked at the issue. We have no data to suggest that treatment of the additional cancers (which in the case of multicentric disease would require mastectomy) improves outcomes. We know that if we look harder for additional cancers, we will find them. What is unclear is which of the additional cancers need to be found. A quote near the top of the release notes that some women may be overtreated. But the release provides no specifics about what that means. In the case of an MRI-detected additional cancer, it could mean an unnecessary mastectomy. We’ll give a borderline satisfactory rating here, although more detail would have been welcome. The release notes that this study is based on a review of patient records. It also points out that the study did not look at the results of treating the cancers found through MRI imaging, only that some of them were large enough to be considered clinically relevant based on general practice. The release would have been better if it specifically noted (as the journal article did) that many of the cancers found on MRI were not biopsied, thus making it more difficult to judge the potential threat they posed. We will give the release a satisfactory rating on this criterion because it does point out that the MRI images were obtained during preoperative planning for women already diagnosed with breast cancer. However, the release would have been much better if it specifically warned that the researchers were not looking at MRI breast scans of women in the general population and that this study is not relevant to discussions about whether or not to include MRI in screening women. Also, the wording of the release, in particular the final quote, could create confusion about how often MRI scans revealed “a larger tumor burden.” The quote refers to “a quarter of patients,” but it appears to refer to a quarter of patients who had tumors found through MRI (18 of 73 women), not a quarter of all 2,021 patients in the study. Writers of releases should be careful about technically-accurate language that could confuse or even mislead readers. The release does not say how the study was funded. The journal article says the researchers “disclosed no relevant relationships.” Still, we think it is important to clearly note funding and disclosures in all releases, even when there are no apparent conflicts of interest. As noted above, the release does not mention other studies that have indicated that cancers found on preoperative MRI scans don’t affect at least short-term patient outcomes. It also does not discuss using ultrasound to check the breasts of patients prior to surgery for a breast tumor discovered through mammography. The release notes that MRI is widely used for screening high-risk patients and for pre-surgical planning. The release nods to the fact that previous research in this area has been done. And it establishes what’s new when it acknowledges that “there has been some debate about the clinical significance of multicentric cancers found with MRI.” These new results, in the researchers’ view, suggest that these cancers are in fact clinically significant. The release is careful to say that preoperative MRI may reveal additional cancers that breast cancer patients and their physicians may want to take into account as they plan treatment.
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2900
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Aegerion gets DOJ subpeona over marketing of cholesterol drug.
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Aegerion Pharmaceuticals Inc said on Thursday that it received a subpoena from the U.S. Department of Justice, requesting documents related to the marketing and sale of its cholesterol drug Juxtapid in the United States.
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true
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Health News
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Aegerion shares fell more than 12 percent in extended trading. Juxtapid was approved by U.S. health regulators in December 2012 to treat patients with homozygous familial hypercholesterolemia (HoFH), a rare genetic disease that impairs the function of the receptor responsible for removing LDL-C or “bad” cholesterol from the body. The company said it intended to cooperate fully with the government investigation. Chief Executive Mark Beer had received a warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in November over statements that the regulator said misleadingly suggested Juxtapid was safe and effective in decreasing cardiovascular events and could be used as a standalone therapy. The FDA asked that the company respond with a plan to show it would not use promotional material containing the misleading statements and a strategy to adopt corrective measures in the marketing of the drug. (link.reuters.com/zup85v) Juxtapid is the sole approved Aegerion product. Aegerion on Thursday also reported preliminary net product sales of between $48 and $49 million, in line with its most recent guidance of between $45 and $50 million. The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company now expects net product sales of $190 million to $210 million in 2014. Analysts on average were expecting the company to post revenues of $204 million for the period, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Aegerion’s shares were trading at $64.40 after the bell. They closed at $73.75 on the Nasdaq on Thursday.
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8638
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Indonesia coronavirus cases top 2,000 amid concerns over data.
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Indonesia said on Saturday that coronavirus cases had topped 2,000 and deaths risen to 191, but doubts have been raised over official figures by data showing a big jump in funerals last month in the capital Jakarta.
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true
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Health News
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Health Ministry official Achmad Yurianto said there had been 106 new confirmed infections, taking the total number of cases in the Southeast Asian country to 2,092, with 10 new deaths. “We are still on high alert over infections that are taking place in the community that are caused by positive cases among people who are not showing symptoms,” said Yurianto. Indonesia is relying mainly on social distancing policies to combat the virus since President Joko Widodo has opposed the harsh lockdown measures adopted in many neighboring countries. The country reported its first case of the virus a month ago, but epidemiologists say a relatively low level of testing means the number of cases may be vastly under-reported. Indonesia has almost doubled tests in the past week but has conducted only 7,896 tests in a country of more than 260 million people. According to a Reuters review of statistics from Jakarta’s Department of Parks and Cemeteries, there were nearly 4,400 funerals in the city in March, 40 percent higher than any month since at least January, 2018. The city has been at the epicenter of COVID-19 infections in Indonesia, accounting for 1,028 cases and around 90 deaths, according to central government data, or roughly half the country’s total for both. Jakarta’s governor, Anies Baswedan, and some public health experts suspect the number of infections and deaths in the city has been significantly under-reported due to the low rates of testing. “It is extremely disturbing,” Baswedan told Reuters on Friday, referring to the funeral statistics. “I’m struggling to find another reason than unreported COVID-19 deaths.” Officials at the health ministry and at the presidential office did not respond to requests for comment. In an interview on Thursday, before Baswedan had made his comments, Yurianto defended the reporting and testing system and said the central government based its data on lab results using the accurate polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method.
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10344
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Alzheimer’s drugs double death risk in elderly
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This news report does a solid job of describing study findings that show Alzheimer’s patients taking anti-psychotic drugs face an increased risk of death. It does several things particularly well: It describes the study methods and results in clear detail It provides comments from two independent experts It puts the findings in the context of previous research and current treatment practices It does all of this in fewer than 450 words. The reader takeaway is clear: These drugs are dangerous and, if used, should be done so very carefully.
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true
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"The story fails to mention the price of the anti-psychotic medications. While this information is not crucial here, as a matter of course the cost of drug regimens under study should be mentioned. In this case, some of the anti-psychotic medications are expensive when taken long-term. The story made a modest attempt to explain the possible benefits of the anti-psychotic drugs for Alzheimer’s patients – effectively painting a picture of doubt about their value. It states that the drugs may help control aggression and hallucinations ""for a few months."" And the story included the damning comment from the Alzheimer’s Association spokesman: ""At some point, some people will be better off with no medication."" The story does a commendable job of describing the harms of the drugs in a variety of ways: It also mentions other side effects linked to the drugs, including respiratory problems and stroke. The news report does an excellent job of describing how the study was conducted and what outcomes it measured. It would have been valuable to mention that, as a randomized controlled trial, this is a well-designed, high-quality study. The story does not sensationalize the condition or its treatment. The reporter interviewed three people: the study’s lead author, the head of an advocacy group with no connection to the study, and an independent psychiatrist. The report properly discloses that the study’s author has received grants from companies that make Alzheimer’s drugs. The article uses two quotes suggesting that taking no medication is an option. It also usefully quotes a source who says environmental and behavioral treatments can be used to control some symptoms of dementia. The first sentence states the drugs are ""commonly used."" Later on, the story says that up to 60 percent of patients with dementia in the US and UK are given the drugs for one to two years. [This latter detail, unfortunately, is unsourced.] Since the treatment is common, novelty is not an issue. The story does not appear to draw from the medical journal’s press release."
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35590
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A 2007 study showed burning sage kills 94% of bacteria.
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Evidence also suggests that the virus spreads when an individual touches a contaminated surface and then touches their mouth, eyes, or nose, though recently published guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) caution that “this is not thought to be the main way the virus spreads.” It is not known how long SARS-CoV-2 may persist on surfaces and research from the U.S. National Institutes of Health suggests the virus may last at least several hours and up to three days on certain surfaces. Different surfaces and different conditions – such as humidity, temperature, sunlight, and air movements – may see different results. Higher humidity, higher temperature, more airflow, and more sunlight or UV light are less-than-ideal conditions for SARS-CoV-2.
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false
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Science, COVID-19
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Since as early as October 2019, Snopes readers have inquired about headlines and social media posts that claim burning sage “kills 94% of bacteria.” In 2020, the question took on new significance for some readers as the United States grappled with a surge of reported cases of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease. Though burning some plants has been scientifically shown to eliminate airborne bacterium, there is inconclusive evidence to suggest that burning sage – or “smudging” – is capable of purifying the air in confined spaces. The “94%” claim is based on a 2007 study published in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology in which researchers analyzed the ability of “medicinal smoke” to cleanse a room of certain airborne bacteria. Reports have since circulated the internet, incorrectly lumping sage into a long ingredient list that included dried roots and leaves tested as part of the experiment. “This is highly controversial since breathing in smoke has known harms, yet the antibacterial benefits are uncertain,” Dean of Yale School of Public Health Dr. Sten Vermund told Snopes. Vermund added that there is no evidence that burning sage kills either bacteria or viruses like SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for the severe respiratory disease COVID-19. As part of the 2007 study, researchers from the National Botanical Research Institute in India burned medicinal smoke from havan samagri within a confined space to determine whether certain herbs contained antimicrobial properties. Havan samagri is a “mixture of odoriferous and medicinal herbs” that contains dozens of various types of wood, herbs, fruit and seeds used in Vedic Hindu tradition. However, sage was not included in the study’s ingredient list. One hour of burning havan samagri was shown to kill more than 94% of airborne bacteria – and the effects were not short-lived. The evidence further suggested that medicinal smoke had the ability to “purify” or “disinfect” the air for up to 24 hours in a closed room. Even after a month, the researchers found that certain pathogenic bacteria were still absent from the room, such as those that cause respiratory and gastrointestinal infections. Though it appears havan samagri may have some antimicrobial properties when burned, the findings do not suggest its use has any impact on viruses like SARS-CoV-2. This is, in part, due to the biological differences between bacteria and viruses. The Mayo Clinic notes that bacteria are capable of thriving in “many different types of environments” whereas viruses require living hosts to multiply. The way that COVID-19 spreads and how long it is present in the air also plays a role. The virus is known to transmit via respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, or talks and land in the mouth or nose of someone nearby.
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9839
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Prozac May Reduce Symptoms of Autism in Adults
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This story covers a study that adds to prior research. A quick PubMed search finds an astonishing lack of randomized clinical trials evaluating antidepressants for autism. Although the study is small, it is a randomized clinical trial and addresses a gap in the evidence. We would have like to have seen: Overall, though, nice job of reporting. The autism community is active, motivated and passionate about finding treatment solutions for their children and themselves. There is a huge amount of debate about the benefits of medication and whether some forms of autism need be treated as a medical disorder at all.
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true
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antidepressants,Prozac
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It’s not that costs are high, it’s just that they weren’t discussed. The costs of Prozac are well known and could have been included in this story. Taking just one pill a day for 30 days would cost $214 through Drugstore.com.Prozac is generic at $10 for 3 months at one big box chain. There are also medical followup costs and possibly costs of managing adverse effects. After explaining that the story was quite small and covered only a few months time, the story provides a quick summation of the benefits found in the study saying, “half of the participants taking Prozac had significant reductions in obsessive-compulsive symptoms, compared with 8% taking placebo.” But given the very small sample size, natural frequencies would have been more informative and less likely to be misinterpreted. Also, a bit more detail on what a “significant reduction” means in an autistic disorder would have been welcome. The story does say that, “Side effects were mild to moderate and participants taking Prozac did not show increases in suicidal thoughts or ideas.” It could have noted, though, that 12 weeks may not be long enough for side effects to emerge. We liked how the story put up high some of the basics of the study, that it was limited to 37 subjects, that they were “high-functioning autistic adults, mainly diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome,” and that they were followed for 12 weeks. Even though it sometimes feels like boilerplate language, it would have been appropriate to emphasize how small and short-term was this study and that it needs to be replicated in a larger, longer-term study. The story does not engage in disease mongering but it could have provided a little more detail about the differences between Asperger’s syndrome and other forms of autism. The story briefly quotes another story in which Yale Child Study Center director Fred Volkmar commented on the study, indicating that more research was needed. We would have liked to have seen more independent voices helping readers understand whether there was anything new here. The story also says, “Hollander has previously received funding from pharmaceutical companies, but the current study was paid for by a grant from the Food and Drug Administration’s “orphan” drug program.” Here’s where the story both excels and disappoints. It takes note of prior research on antidepressants and notes that the “only drugs approved to treat irritability and repetitive behaviors in autistic children are the atypical antipsychotics Risperdal (risperidone) and Abilify (aripiprazole), which tend to have more severe side effects than Prozac does.” What the story does not explain, though, is that Hollander himself has researched this exact topic and arrived at very similar conclusions, which may bolster his case in some ways and weaken it in others. In 2005, he found in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology that “Liquid fluoxetine in low doses is more effective than placebo in the treatment of repetitive behaviors and that “Limitations include small sample size”. There was also no mention of the possibility of behavioral treatments. The story makes it clear that Prozac is widely available and that other drugs are approved for use in autistic patients. The novelty of the finding is at least implied. This small study increases the number of patients studied in randomized clinical trials by about 15% and it is in adults. With the exception of the earlier RCT published in Archives Gen Psy (N=149) – in children – there are just a handful of small studies on this topic. The story does not rely on a press release.
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10932
|
More not always better with in vitro fertilization
|
Although the story did not hit all our marks, it did provide some important context for readers, especially patients who are considering fertility options. We wish most of all that it had spent more time with a few independent experts to provide some stronger analysis of the study and to help readers understand the potential harms involved in fertility treatments. The world of fertility medicine can be maddening — both for patients and reporters. Costs are high. New techniques are being touted with some frequency. And even though there appears to be a wealth of data about outcomes, the information is incomplete and hard to assess. Because fertility patients are dealing with one of life’s most difficult health challenges — the inability to have a child — it is all the more important for reporters to separate the emotions surrounding infertility from the evidence behind fertility treatments. This refreshing story accomplishes this, for the most part, with just a few missing elements.
|
true
|
Associated Press
|
Important information about costs is provided here. The story quantifies the benefits of multiple IVF treatments (and the diminishing returns) in two different ways. Here’s the best summation: “Over the five-year period, some 300,000 women had more than half a million IVF cycles that resulted in 171,327 first-time deliveries. The live birth rate was 36 percent on the first IVF try, 48 percent with a second cycle and 53 percent with a third attempt. Among those who tried seven or more times, the chance of success was 56 percent — hardly any better than the 53 percent after three tries.” This story skips over any potential harms. This is problematic because women undergoing fertility treatments are often given high doses of hormones and other drugs that can have side effects and often are experimental. The story does a good job evaluating the quality of the evidence. It also provides some great context about why data about success rates can be misleading. It also presented some of the study’s limitations. The story could have pointed out that these results have not been published and have not been peer reviewed. It does say they were presented at a conference but so are a lot of published results. The findings sound dramatic, so that additional context would be important lest the peer review process take some of the drama out of the results when they are published (one assumes) at a later data. The story does not engage in disease mongering. The story clearly draws on a range of sources and research, but we only are allowed to hear from one clinical voice in the the story: the study’s lead author. There is a paraphrase from a fertility advocacy organization at the very end of the story, but what was needed here was some clear eyed analysis of the evidence from an independent perspective. The story at least touches on alternatives to IVF, but it does not make any clear comparisons. It is clear from the story that IVF treatments are widely available. The study encompassed more than 300,000 women nationwide. The story did a good job of covering what is new here: more is not more. The story could have done a better job showing how frequently couples actually go through three cycles of IVF. This is a bit of an omission. Also it’s not clear how often couples with fertility choose IVF over less-invasive treatments. The story does not rely solely on a press release.
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27879
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A list collects statements about rape made by Republican politicians.
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“I have always been passionate about my beliefs, and years ago I said things that I regret. I hold no animosity toward anyone by virtue of their gender or sexual orientation, and today I am focused on ensuring freedom and economic prosperity for all Mainers,” he said.
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true
|
Politics Quotes
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A “Republicans on Rape” graphic widely circulated online since 2014 collects various comments about that crime supposedly made by GOP politicians in recent years: The remarks collected in that graphic were indeed all uttered by the persons to whom they have been attributed; below we offer four of the statements on video (also on YouTube), as well as the context in which they were made, and any clarifying remarks subsequently offered by their speakers. “Rape is kinda like the weather. If it’s inevitable, relax and enjoy it.” On 24 March 1990, Texas oilman Clayton Williams, the Republican nominee in the Lone Star State’s upcoming gubernatorial election, was preparing for a cattle roundup at his West Texas ranch while undesirable weather conditions threatened to spoil the event. As he sat around a campfire with ranch hands, campaign workers, and reporters, Williams likened that day’s cold, foggy weather to rape, saying, “If it’s inevitable, just relax and enjoy it.” Later that day Williams asserted that his comment had been a joke, and a few days later his campaign offered an apologetic statement about it: Mr. Williams said it was merely a joke and apologized “if anyone’s offended.” “That’s not a Republican women’s club that we were having this morning,” he said. “It’s a working cow camp, a tough world where you can get kicked in the testicles if you’re not careful.” Asked if some people might be offended, Mr. Williams said: “I’m not going to give you a serious answer. It wasn’t a serious deal. It wasn’t a serious statement.” But his campaign issued a statement in which Mr. Williams said: “I feel just terrible about this. I had no intention in my heart to hurt anyone, especially those women who have been traumatized by rape. “Looking back, I realize it was insensitive and had no place at the campfire or in any setting.” “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to shut that thing down.” On 19 August 2012, U.S. Representative Todd Akin of Missouri, a Republican who was challenging incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill for her seat in the U.S. Senate, was interviewed by St. Louis television station KTVI. During that interview, Akin was asked whether he believed abortion was justified in cases of rape, and he responded by asserting that “legitimate rapes” rarely resulted in pregnancy: “It seems to be, first of all, from what I understand from doctors, it’s really rare. If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.” After his words touched off widespread outrage, Akin then issued a statement maintaining that his remarks were “off-the-cuff” and that he “misspoke in this interview”: As a member of Congress, I believe that working to protect the most vulnerable in our society is one of my most important responsibilities, and that includes protecting both the unborn and victims of sexual assault. In reviewing my off-the-cuff remarks, it’s clear that I misspoke in this interview and it does not reflect the deep empathy I hold for the thousands of women who are raped and abused every year. Those who perpetrate these crimes are the lowest of the low in our society and their victims will have no stronger advocate in the Senate to help ensure they have the justice they deserve. I recognize that abortion, and particularly in the case of rape, is a very emotionally charged issue. But I believe deeply in the protection of all life and I do not believe that harming another innocent victim is the right course of action. I also recognize that there are those who, like my opponent, support abortion and I understand I may not have their support in this election. Two years later, while appearing in another television interview with MSNBC to promote his new book Firing Back, Akin asserted that “legitimate rape” was a law enforcement term and that his original remark had been “intentionally misunderstood”: “Legitimate rape is a law enforcement term, it’s an abbreviation for ‘legitimate case of rape,’” he told Chuck Todd. “A woman calls a police station, the police investigate, she says ‘I’ve been raped,’ they investigate that. So before any of the facts are in, they call it a legitimate case of rape,” explained Aiken. Akin believes that everyone took what he said out of context. “This was intentionally misunderstood and twisted for political purposes. It doesn’t make any sense to say ‘a conservative is saying that rape is legitimate,’ that doesn’t even add up.” Time magazine noted that they were unable to find a law enforcement official familiar with the term “legitimate rape”: But is “legitimate rape” really a law enforcement term? We asked some experts. “I’ve taught police officers, and worked with police officers on every continent in the world, and that’s something I’ve never heard in my 50 years in law enforcement,” says Dr. James A. Williams, former Chief of Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces for the U.S Department of Justice, who also worked in municipal law enforcement in New Jersey. “I’ve never heard of that. Never.” Richard Lichten, a veteran of the LA County Sheriff’s Department and expert on sexual assault investigations agrees: “I have 30 years of experience, I’m qualified to testify in federal court on the way to investigate sexual assault crimes, and I’ve never heard of that,” said Lichten. “In all my life I’ve never heard of that.” “Rape victims should make the best of a bad situation.” On 20 January 2012, Rick Santorum, a former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania who was then campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, appeared on CNN’s Piers Morgan Tonight program and was asked by that show’s host about his stance on abortion and whether he believed abortion was wrong even in cases of incest and rape. Santorum responded by saying that although a pregnancy resulting from a rape might be “horrible,” it was nonetheless a “gift of human life” and that “we have to make the best out of a bad situation”: MORGAN: On abortion, you did harden your position on that as you got older. Why was that? SANTORUM: Life. You know, when I decided to run for public life, I was informed very quickly people wanted to know what my position on that was. So I went through the process of trying to better understand the facts. It became very clear to me that life begins at conception and persons are covered by the Constitution and since life — people, a human life is the same as a person, to me it was a pretty simple deduction to make. That’s what the Constitution clearly intended to protect. MORGAN: But do you really — do you really — let me ask you this. Do you really believe, in every case, it should be totally wrong, in the sense that — I know that you believe, even in cases of rape and incest — and you’ve got two daughters. You know, if you have a daughter that came to you who had been raped. SANTORUM: Yes. MORGAN: And was pregnant and was begging you to let her have an abortion, would you really be able to look her in the eye and say, no, as her father? SANTORUM: I would do what every father must do, is to try to counsel your daughter to do the right thing. MORGAN: And they are looking at their daughter, saying, how can I deal with this, because if I make her have this baby, isn’t it going to just ruin her life? SANTORUM: Well, you can make the argument that if she doesn’t have this baby, if she kills her child, that that, too, could ruin her life. And this is not an easy choice. I understand that. As horrible as the way that that son or daughter and son was created, it still is her child. And whether she has that child or doesn’t, it will always be her child. And she will always know that. And so to embrace her and to love her and to support her and get her through this very difficult time, I’ve always, you know, I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you. As you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life. We have horrible things happen. I can’t think of anything more horrible. But, nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation. “Even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen.” On 23 October 2012, Richard Mourdock, the Republican candidate for one of Indiana’s U.S. Senate seats, was engaged in a debate with his Democratic and Libertarian rivals when he expressed his view that “life begins at conception” and that he would only allow abortions in circumstances in which the mother’s life was in danger: I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. And I think even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen. After the debate, Mourdock explained that when he said “it is something that God intended to happen,” he was referring to the creation of life and not the act of rape itself: Mourdock, seeking to clarify his comments in a press conference following the debate, said he had intended to say that “God creates life,” and that any interpretation of his comments to mean God “pre-ordained rape” were “sick” and “twisted.” “What I said was, in answering the question form my position of faith, I said I believe that God creates life. I believe that as wholly and as fully as I can believe it. That God creates life,” Mourdock said. “Are you trying to suggest that somehow I think that God pre-ordained rape? No, I don’t think that. That’s sick. Twisted. That’s not even close to what I said. What I said is that God creates life.” “In the emergency room they have what’s called rape kits, where a woman can get cleaned out.” On 23 June 2013, Jodie Laubenberg, a Republican member of the Texas House of Representatives, was debating a measure she had introduced to the House that included a ban on abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. When Rep. Senfronia Thompson proposed an exemption for victims of rape and incest, Laubenberg argued against that exemption, saying that when a victim seeks medical care after a rape, “they have what’s called rape kits, that the woman can get cleaned out, basically like” [a procedure known as D and C that is often performed after a miscarriage]. She also noted that emergency contraception is available. A few days later, after she was mocked over her remark, Laubenberg said she was “confused by Democrats’ questions and misspoke” and meant to say that rape victims could “obtain emergency contraception and other treatment” at medical facilities: Rape kits are used to collect evidence in hopes of prosecuting the perpetrator. They play no role in preventing pregnancy or serving as an abortion. Laubenberg was widely mocked on social media, and opponents of the bill called her comments evidence of the misguided science behind Laubenberg’s proposal. Laubenberg told North Texas talk radio host Mark Davis that she was momentarily confused by Democrats’ questions and misspoke. “What I was trying to say is, when a woman goes to the hospital, that they have the procedures there” to help her obtain emergency contraception and other treatment, she said. “No, rape kits do not cause an abortion.” As for the reaction, Laubenberg added: “If that’s the worst that you can complain about me, go ahead.” “If a woman has (the right to an abortion), why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman? At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in anyone’s death.” In February 2014, the Maine Democratic Party called for the resignation of Lawrence Lockman, a Republican member of the Maine House of Representatives, when a liberal activist made a blog post detailing negative public statements about gays, abortion and rape that Lockman had made years earlier: The post by Maine People’s Alliance activist Mike Tipping mined press clippings to unearth several offensive comments. In one, Lockman implied that HIV and AIDS could be spread by bed sheets and mosquitoes. In another, he said that the progressive movement assisted the AIDS epidemic by assuring “the public that the practice of sodomy is a legitimate alternative lifestyle, rather than a perverted and depraved crime against humanity.” In a 1995 letter in the Sun Journal in Lewiston, a reader quoted a press statement by Lockman, then part of the Pro Life Education Association, saying, “If a woman has (the right to an abortion), why shouldn’t a man be free to use his superior strength to force himself on a woman? At least the rapist’s pursuit of sexual freedom doesn’t (in most cases) result in anyone’s death.” Lockman responded to the controversy by issuing a statement affirming that he regretted his previous remarks: Most of the comments were made during the 1980s and 1990s, but Maine Democratic Party chairman Ben Grant issued a statement calling for Lockman’s resignation. Grant said the comments were “hateful, vicious and offensive” and he called Lockman a “disturbed individual who holds some of the most abhorrent beliefs ever heard from a public official in Maine.” Lockman released a written statement.
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29054
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Reusing, freezing, or heating plastic water bottles will cause them to break down into carcinogenic compounds or release dioxins.
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What's false: Reusing single-use PET bottles doesn't cause them to release carcinogenic DEHA into the fluids they contain; freezing plastic water bottles doesn't cause them to release carcinogenic dioxins into the fluids they contain. What's undetermined: Whether heating some types of plastic bottles could increase the leaching of harmful phthalates into the fluids they contain.
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mixture
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Medical, bisphenol a, bpa, plastic bottles
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Examples: [Collected via e-mail, 2007] No water bottles in freezer. A dioxin chemical causes cancer, especially breast cancer. Dioxins are highly poisonous to the cells of our bodies. Don’t freeze your plastic bottles with water in them as this releases dioxins from the plastic. [Collected via e-mail, 2004] Many are unaware of poisoning caused by re-using plastic bottles. Some of you may be in the habit of using and re-using your disposable mineral water bottles (eg. Evian, Aqua, Ice Mountain, Vita, etc), keeping them in your car or at work. Not a good idea. In a nutshell, the plastic (called polyethylene terephthalate or PET) used in these bottles contains a potentially carcinogenic element (something called diethylhydroxylamine or DEHA). The bottles are safe for one-time use only; if you must keep them longer, it should be or no more than a few days, a week max, and keep them away from heat as well. Repeated washing and rinsing can cause the plastic to break down and the carcinogens (cancer-causing chemical agents) can leach into the water that YOU are drinking. Better to invest in water bottles that are really meant for multiple uses. This is not something we should be scrimping on. Those of you with family — please advise them, especially for their children’s sake. [Collected via e-mail, 2007] Do Not Drink Water Bottles Left in the Car This information was given to me by my husband and I know all the ladies in my life should know and please forward it to all the ladies in your life. My husband has a friend whose mother recently got diagnosed with breast cancer. The doctor told her women should not drink bottled water that has been left in a car. The doctor said that the heat and the plastic of the bottle have certain chemicals that can lead to breast cancer. So please be careful and do not drink that water bottle that has been left in a car and pass this on to all the women in your life. [Collected via e-mail, 2009] On the Ellen show, Sheryl Crow said this is what caused her breast cancer. It has been identified as the most common cause of the high levels of dioxin in breast cancer tissue. Sheryl Crow’s oncologist told her: women should not drink bottled water that has been left in a car. The heat reacts with the chemicals in the plastic of the bottle which releases dioxin into the water. Dioxin is a toxin increasingly found in breast cancer tissue. So please be careful and do not drink bottled water that has been left in a car. Pass this on to all the women in your life. Origins: Sorting out the various claims made about potential health issues associated with plastic water bottles is a difficult process, both because so many different claims about them are circulated and because the generic term “plastic bottle” can in fact refer to any one of several different types of bottles with distinctly different chemical properties. Water, soda, and juice are typically sold in bottles made from polyethylene terephthalate, also known as PET or PETE. These containers are intended to be disposable, single-use bottles, although many consumers wash them and re-use them to hold drinking water or other beverages. Some of the example items reproduced above claim that freezing or re-using PET bottles releases unsafe levels of carcinogens such as “dioxins” or the plastics additive DEHA (diethylhydroxylamine) into whatever liquids they may contain. However, such claims are inaccurate on two counts: DEHA is not used in the manufacture of PET bottles (nor is it created through the breakdown of such bottles), and DEHA is not classified as a human carcinogen: DEHA is neither regulated nor classified as a human carcinogen by the U.S. Occupational Safety & Health Administration, the National Toxicology Program or the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the leading authorities on carcinogenic substances. In 1991, on the basis of very limited data, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency classified DEHA as a “possible human carcinogen.” However, in 1995, EPA again evaluated the science and concluded that ” … overall, the evidence is too limited to establish that DEHA is likely to cause cancer.” Further, DEHA is not inherent in PET as a raw material, byproduct or decomposition product. Moreover, DEHA has been cleared by FDA for food-contact applications and would not pose a health risk even if it were present. Finally, in June 2003, the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research conducted a scientific study of migration in new and reused plastic water bottles from three countries. The Swiss study did not find DEHA at concentrations significantly above the background levels detected in distilled water, indicating DEHA was unlikely to have migrated from the bottles. The study concluded that the levels of DEHA were distinctly below the World Health Organization guidelines for safe drinking water. The American Cancer Society also debunked such claims, stating: In fact, DEHA is not inherent in the plastic used to make these bottles, and even if it was the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says DEHA “cannot reasonably be anticipated to cause cancer, teratogenic effects, immunotoxicity, neurotoxicity, gene mutations, liver, kidney, reproductive, or developmental toxicity or other serious or irreversible chronic health effects.” Meanwhile, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), says diethylhexyl adipate “is not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity to humans.” As for the notion that freezing water in plastic bottles releases dioxin, the American Chemical Council asserted: There simply is no scientific basis to support the claim that PET bottles will release dioxin when frozen. Dioxins are a family of chemical compounds that are produced by combustion at extremely high temperatures. They can only be formed at temperatures well above 700 degrees Fahrenheit; they cannot be formed at room temperature or in freezing temperatures. Moreover, there is no reasonable scientific basis for expecting dioxins to be present in plastic food or beverage containers in the first place. Johns Hopkins researcher Dr. Rolf Halden also said of such claims that: Q: What do you make of this recent email warning that claims dioxins can be released by freezing water in plastic bottles? A: This is an urban legend. There are no dioxins in plastics. In addition, freezing actually works against the release of chemicals. Chemicals do not diffuse as readily in cold temperatures, which would limit chemical release if there were dioxins in plastic, and we don’t think there are. Dr. Halden did note that drinking water from plastic bottles that had been exposed to high temperatures could be problematic, though: There is another group of chemicals, called phthalates that are sometimes added to plastics to make them flexible and less brittle. Phthalates are environmental contaminants that can exhibit hormone-like behavior by acting as endocrine disruptors in humans and animals. If you heat up plastics, you could increase the leaching of phthalates from the containers into water and food. Another common type of plastic bottle is made with bisphenol A, also known as BPA. These products are typically rigid plastic bottles intended for multiple re-use, such as baby bottles or water bottles carried by cyclists. Concerns about tests that may link BPA ingestion with cancer and reproductive damage in some animals and the possibility that BPA could leach out of plastic bottles and into the liquids they contain has led to bans on the use of BPA in plastic products intended for children (such as baby bottles), and has prompted some consumers to seek out non-BPA alternatives.
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11252
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To Prevent Infection After C-Section, Chlorhexidine Better Than Iodine
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Women who deliver babies via cesarean section (C-section) surgery may develop infections of the incision, and this news release describes research that shows an alternative combination of skin-cleaning agents prior to surgery may prevent those infections more effectively. The randomized study, which took place at a single hospital, included more than 1,000 patients. It showed that patients prepped for surgery with chlorhexidine-alcohol had a 4% infection rate compared with 7.3% for patients prepped with iodine-alcohol. This well-written news release meets almost all of our criteria for accuracy and includes helpful context about the price of infection care. One area of concern is the recommendation to change the standard of care based on just one study in a single hospital. While it’s a strong study, perhaps it should be replicated in an unrelated setting and be blinded as well as randomized before recommending a change in practice. Like another release we recently reviewed on chocolate for preventing preeclampsia, this one focused on a study presented at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s annual meeting. This quality of this well-crafted release is a nice contrast to the previous one that was graded 0 stars. Delivering babies via C-section is common in the United States, and an estimated 1.3 million women delivered that way in 2013. Between 5 and 12 percent of those deliveries included an infection. Shortening post-surgical pain and reducing the risk of infection could improve many recoveries.
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true
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Academic medical center news release,pregnancy,Women's health
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We gave the release a passing grade on cost for including context on the cost of an infection. “An estimated 1.3 million women in the U.S. delivered their babies by C-section in 2013, with surgical-site infections complicating 5 to 12 percent of those deliveries. The average cost of treating those cesarean-related infections in the hospital is $3,500 and may be much higher for severe infections.” Our wish list for this release might include whether chlorhexidine is any more expensive (or cheaper) than the standard of care and what the cost is for treating an infection outpatient. These are details that would have added to the quality of the release. However, infections are costs that can be prevented, and that is the main issue which the release covers well. The story quantifies the benefits well, explaining that a randomized-controlled trial showed “patients in the chlorhexidine-alcohol group developed significantly fewer infections than patients in the iodine-alcohol group. Those who received the chlorhexidine-alcohol combination had a 4 percent infection rate, which is nearly half that of the patients who received the iodine-alcohol combination — 7.3 percent.” The news release includes both relative and absolute numbers — a big plus. The absolute numbers included the number of women who developed infections after being treated with either chlorhexidine-alcohol (23) or iodine-alcohol (42) and the size of their co-hort (572 vs. 575). The news release doesn’t mention any harms associated with either of the antiseptics used in the study. If there were no skin reactions, or some with one but not the other, it would be good to note that. This is a minor omission. The release did a good job of explaining the quality of the evidence from this randomized controlled trial. Here is one paragraph about that evidence. “The clinical trial included 1,147 patients who underwent cesarean sections at Barnes-Jewish Hospital from 2011 to 2015. Of 572 patients randomly assigned to receive the chlorhexidine-alcohol combination, 23 developed an infection at the site of the surgery within 30 days of the procedure. Of 575 patients who randomly received the iodine-alcohol combination, 42 developed a surgical-site infection.” One thing that was discussed in the study that would have made the release better had it been included was the differentiation between minor and severe infections. There’s no disease mongering here. The release clearly states the funding sources. There were no apparent conflicts. The study compares an alternative method of skin preparation to the current standard and also mentions antibiotics. Soap and water could be another alternative, as could foregoing an elective C-section, but it’s probably too big a digression to mention these when reporting on a head-to-head study on antiseptics. We believe both skin-cleaning agents are widely available. So while the release never explicitly addresses availability, we don’t dock points for this. The release explained that other studies have examined skin-prep, but this one was the first to directly compare dual-element preps for C-sections. Here is an excerpt: “Past trials comparing antiseptics before surgery included relatively few participants and often compared a chlorhexidine-alcohol combination with iodine alone. These studies could not determine whether the worse performance of iodine alone was due to the chlorhexidine, the alcohol or the combination.” The release does not resort to unjustifiable language. It uses a measured tone and acknowledged a potential weakness when pointing out that the study was limited to a single hospital. The call for a change in practice, which in our opinion may be premature based on one single-site study, is offered as an opinion expressed by the senior author: “This study is a tremendous addition to the literature on preventing surgical-site infections after cesarean. There are few circumstances when a single study should change our practice. But based on the biological plausibility and the striking reduction in surgical-site infections with chlorhexidine, this is one of those circumstances.” We think experts can be given latitude to express a range of opinions in a news release.
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2653
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French implant boss released, faces bodily harm charge.
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Jean-Claude Mas, the Frenchman who sparked a global health scare by selling substandard breast implants, was released from police custody on Friday and faces a charge of causing bodily harm, his lawyer said.
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true
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Health News
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Mas will not be investigated for the graver charge of manslaughter, as was expected, but does now face criminal charges which carry longer sentences than those he faces in a fraud case expected to go to trial around October. He was released on bail of 100,000 euros ($131,600), banned from leaving the country and from meeting former executives of his now defunct company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP). “We are satisfied that Mr Mas could explain himself to a judge,” his lawyer Yves Haddad said on iTele television. “This is a relief for him.” “On the charge of involuntary homicide, the judge decided that for now there is no link,” Haddad said. In the first arrests since the two-year-old scandal made headlines worldwide in December, Mas and a second PIP executive were seized at their homes in southern France just after dawn. Women who have been campaigning against PIP since French authorities banned its products nearly two years ago welcomed the move as giving them a sense that the law was now in action: “It’s been too long,” said Murielle Ajellio, who heads an association for women with implants. Up to now, she said: “You feel like you’re fighting against the wind.” French authorities have been criticized for being slow to react to a case that has sown fear among tens of thousands of women who carry PIP implants. French inspectors ordered them off the market in March 2010, due to concerns over their quality. But only last month did officials in Paris recommend their surgical removal, drawing attention to the problem for patients worldwide who had been fitted with products from the company, which was at one time the third biggest global supplier. Lawyers for women in France who have filed complaints over PIP implants welcomed the arrests and said there must be no escaping justice for the 72-year-old Mas, who has been quoted as deriding those suing him as being motivated only by money. “This is a comfort for the victims,” said Laurent Gaudon, whose clients are pursuing PIP and surgeons who used its implants for fraud. “It’s the feeling that justice is advancing and they have not been forgotten. It’s the assurance that the guilty are at last going to be held accountable.” Philippe Courtois, who represents 1,300 people with PIP implants, said Mas should not be freed pending any trial. Mas and PIP’s former chief executive Claude Couty were questioned at home, as police conducted searches. They were then moved to police custody in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille, under the orders of prosecutor Jacques Dallest. PIP enjoyed years of success with international sales, but behind the scenes employees, and Mas himself, have admitted to hiding from certification agencies the fact they were using cheap, industrial silicone, not approved for medical use. Health authorities in France and elsewhere have stressed that PIP’s products carry no proven link to cancer, but surgeons report that they have abnormally high rupture rates. Responses to the problem have varied among different foreign authorities. Thursday’s arrests follow an investigation opened in Marseille, close to PIP’s former premises, on December 8 after the death from cancer in 2010 of a woman with PIP implants. Mas and Couty can be held for up to 48 hours while a judge decides whether to open a formal probe and, if so, what bail conditions, if any, to set. A trial date could be years away, given the extent of inquiry required, but the bodily harm case could make it harder for Mas to avoid appearing in court later this year on other charges of fraud and deception. That latter case targets half a dozen former PIP executives and could also carry prison terms for them of several years. It has dragged on as investigators have had to quiz up to 2,700 women who have filed complaints over PIP implants. Mas, who sold some 300,000 implants around the world, has acknowledged that he used unapproved silicone but dismissed fears that it constituted a health risk. Earlier in January, leaks from a police document showed Mas admitting to lying about the quality of PIP’s implants and describing the women filing complaints against him as just seeking money. The comments sparked public anger against him. PIP closed down in March 2010 after regulators discovered it was using a non-approved, industrial silicone gel, and pulled its implants off the market. Last month, the French government advised women with PIP implants to have them removed, and said it would pay for the operations in France, sparking alarm around the world. Officials in several other countries, including Britain and Brazil, have asked women to visit their doctors for checks. France has called for tighter European Union regulations on medical devices in wake of the PIP affair, saying suppliers of prosthetics should require the same sort of authorization as manufacturers of prescription medicines.
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28888
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You can tell the size of a man's penis by looking at his hands.
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What's true: Studies indicate that finger length ratios (but not the size of the fingers themselves) can provide some clue about member length. What's false: Hand (or foot) size is a definitive indication of the size of a man's penis.
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mixture
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Politics, donald trump
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The Republican debate on 3 March 2016 took a turn for the raucous early in the evening, when Donald Trump responded to a jab Marco Rubio had made a few days earlier about the size of his hands: “I have to say this,” said Trump during the debate. “He hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands.” Trump went on: I have never heard of this. Look at those hands. Are they small hands? And he referred to my hands, if they are small, something else must be small. I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee you. Trump was referring to a comment Marco Rubio had made about his hands the previous Sunday in Virginia: “He’s always calling me ‘Little Marco’. And I’ll admit, he’s taller than me,” said Rubio: He’s like 6’2″, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who is 5’2″. And you know what they say about men with small hands? You can’t trust them. But, despite what the two presidential candidates were arguing over (hand size correlating to penile length) studies have shown that despite a mountain of anecdotal evidence, there appears to be no correlation between hand or foot size and penis size: Urologists at St. Mary’s Hospital and University College Hospital in London recorded the penile length of 104 men with foot sizes 8 through 13. For the purposes of the study, the men’s organs were “gently stretched” while in the flaccid state and measured. When analyzed, the data so collected yielded no link between the size of the male organ and a man’s feet. “A common misconception,” the researchers reported, concluding, “There is no scientific support for this relationship.” As hand size does strongly correlate to foot size, it follows that neither hand nor foot is a reliable way to infer the length, width, or any other dimension of the penis. However, there is another relationship between hands and putative penis size, which relates to the length of the fingers — specifically, the index and ring fingers. A 2011 study published in the Asian Journal of Andrology used the same “gentle stretching” technique on a group of 144 men, this time comparing their penis length (and, one would assume, stretchiness) to the ratio of their ring and index fingers: During the foetal period, high concentrations of testosterone lead to high testicular activity, resulting in a lower digit ratio. In the present study, patients with a lower digit ratio tended to have a longer stretched penile length. Stretched penile length was negatively associated with digit ratio. Based on this evidence, we suggest that digit ratio can predict adult penile size and that the effects of prenatal testosterone may in part explain the differences in adult penile length. Previous studies have indicated a relationship between the ratio of the ring and index fingers (“2D:4D”) and the amount of testosterone exposure a fetus receives in the womb — the longer the ring finger, the more testosterone exposure before birth. (However, studies also show that the finger ratio has little to no bearing on adult hormone levels.) So in order to get an idea of whether or not Trump is being bombastic about this particular personal detail, all you need to do is look at his 2D:4D ratios: Trump has endured comments about the size of his hands (and fingers) for years. Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair and co-founder of Spy magazine, wrote a piece in 2015 gleefully recalling his decades-long trolling of the Republican candidate over his finger length: Like so many bullies, Trump has skin of gossamer. He thinks nothing of saying the most hurtful thing about someone else, but when he hears a whisper that runs counter to his own vainglorious self-image, he coils like a caged ferret. Just to drive him a little bit crazy, I took to referring to him as a “short-fingered vulgarian” in the pages of Spy magazine. That was more than a quarter of a century ago. To this day, I receive the occasional envelope from Trump. There is always a photo of him—generally a tear sheet from a magazine. On all of them he has circled his hand in gold Sharpie in a valiant effort to highlight the length of his fingers. I almost feel sorry for the poor fellow because, to me, the fingers still look abnormally stubby. The most recent offering arrived earlier this year, before his decision to go after the Republican presidential nomination. Like the other packages, this one included a circled hand and the words, also written in gold Sharpie: “See, not so short!” I sent the picture back by return mail with a note attached, saying, “Actually, quite short.” Which I can only assume gave him fits. It’s worth noting that penis size has also been linked to body-image issues among men who worry that theirs is “too small,” and that a small penis is the worst thing that could happen to them (despite penis size having very little effect on overall sexual satisfaction, either your own or your partner’s). As we observed in a previous article: Although penis size has no bearing on sexual satisfaction, we live in a society which deals a consumeristic lesson of “bigger is better.” Some of this carries over to color males’ perception of themselves, convincing many a) they are undersized, and b) this is a terrible thing. Here are some penile facts that may prove helpful for those who spend more time than they should worrying about size:
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10424
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Early C-Section Carries Risks, Study Finds
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This report about the risks of an elective c-section before 39 weeks of gestation does a credible job presenting the findings of a significant study. It describes the results accurately and with sufficient details. Two shortcomings: * The story fails to include information about the cost of the surgery * The reporter should have talked to at least one independent expert on the subject of vaginal vs. c-section deliveries.
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true
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No data comparing costs of c-section vs. vaginal birth is provided. This is surprising, given the fact that one reason experts discourage elective c-sections is high cost. The reporter does a diligent job of quantifying the results, using both relative risks and percentage of bad outcomes in the studied population. The story usefully distinguishes among results for c-sections done at 37, 38 and 39 weeks. The risk of harm in elective c-sections is the focus of the study, and the news report explains them well. Overall, good job of describing the size, methods, and implications of the study. The story does nothing to exaggerate the risks or emotional aspects of elective c-sections. The story includes quotes from only two physicians, the lead researcher and the author of a related editorial. That is not sufficient for a story of this importance and length. At minimum, an experienced OB with no connection to the study should have been consulted. The story explains the risks of having an elective c-section at 37, 38 and 39 weeks. This information can help women and their doctors determine when to schedule an elective surgery. The widespread use of c-sections is clear in the story. The report makes clear, with some level of detail, precisely how common c-sections and elective c-sections are. We can’t be sure if the story relied solely or largely on a news release. Only an author and an editorial writer were quoted.
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32950
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Marco Rubio described Zika-linked birth defects as God's punishment of a mother, and abortion as an unacceptable evasion of that judgment.
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Previous Newslo, Religionlo, and Politicalo articles that confused social media users included items claiming that Marco Rubio said women should be placed in custody if it was suspected they were considering an abortion, that Pat Robertson said gay people should wear specific colors by which heterosexual people could easily identify them, that Pastor John Piper decreed bikini waxes a sin in the eyes of God, that David Bowie was alive but held hostage by operatives of Satan, that Ted Cruz believed God would not have allowed Antonin Scalia to die at a time that was potentially not politically expedient, and that a Republican lawmaker proposed saliva-based “hunger tests” for food stamp recipients.
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false
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Junk News, abortion, marco rubio, newslo
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On 21 February 2016, Newslo published an article reporting that Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio said he is against abortion even if “God were to intentionally infect a baby in the womb with the Zika virus”: During a weekend interview, CNN challenged pro-life Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio on his statement during last week’s Republican debate about posing abortion in cases of rape or incest. The Florida senator didn’t back down from his pro-life position. Host George Stephanopoulos said, “You also got called out by Jeb Bush and Chris Christie on the issue of abortion because you don’t support exceptions for rape and incest.” Rubio replied, “Well, first of all, I do require an exception for the life of the mother because I’m pro-life. Number two, I – as I’ve said, if they pass a law in Congress that has exceptions, I’ll sign it because I want to save lives. The broader point I’ve made, however, is I believe all human life is worthy of the protection of our laws.” … Rubio continued, “What I’m trying to say here is that God created all of us in His image for a reason, and despite the selfishness that is raging through the majority of our population, I believe He put us humans on this Earth to protect and preserve life, not to kill it before it’s even had a chance to start. We are committing murder and we are going to go to Hell for it. And let me just add, I do not believe – let me say that again: I DO NOT believe in abortion, because that’s equal to murder in my book. If God were to intentionally infect a baby in the womb with the Zika virus, for example – I would still forbid the mother to have an abortion and use it to avoid God’s judgment. That’s how adamant I am when it comes to people’s right to freedom and existence.” The quoted material in the first paragraph was actually legitimate, which caused further confusion. It came from Rubio’s 7 February 2016 appearance on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, during which he discussed his opposition to abortion: However, that was the only paragraph that wasn’t embellished, as indicated by Newslo itself. Articles on the self-labeled “hybrid” news site Newslo (and related sites Religionlo and Politicalo) use controversial news items into which they build fabrications that range from subtle to outrageous. Newslo and its sister sites’ pages display an interactive feature enabling readers to “Show Facts” or “Hide Facts”: All content published by Newslo, Politicalo, and Religionlo is displayed by default in “Hide Facts” mode, which masks the clear embellishments from site visitors. In addition to the “Show Facts/Hide Facts” feature, Newslo‘s disclaimer stated: Newslo is the first hybrid News/Satire platform on the web. Readers come to us for a unique brand of entertainment and information that is enhanced by features like our fact-button, which allows readers to find what is fact and what is satire.
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10636
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The Latest Advance Against Acne
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"This article descibes a treatment for persistent acne called Isolaz. By combining suction with a laser, it offers an approach different from the usual drug, topical or laser-based treatments. The article falls short of key health journalism best practices: It focuses on two anecdotes from patients satisfied with their treatments, and interviews two physicians with obvious commercial interest in the treatment. It describes the research in vaguely positive ways, allowing a quote from an independent doctor to summarize it by saying ""the science is sound."" Even in a short story like this, some information about the nature of the studies and the findings should be included. It fails to mention that the device is being marketed heavily and slickly to dermatologists and patients without substantial references to published research. The story is generally credulous in tone rather than skeptical. A reporter finding two enthused patients, two commercially motivated and enthused doctors and vague claims of efficacy would do better to dig deeper. The result is that the article feels more like a rewritten press release rather than a work of journalism done with the reader’s interest in mind. For instance, it turns out the only clinical study cited in company literature was conducted by a consultant to the maker of the device, and it focuses exclusively on use of the device for hair removal and something it calls ""skin rejuvenation."" While chronic acne is not a dangerous disease, it has serious psychological effects. People with this skin condition, as the reporter mentions in the first paragraph, are surrounded by commercial products that promise cures but rarely deliver. They deserve a more diligent report on yet another ""breakthrough"" treatment. One additional observation: This story was first published as a blog entry on the USNews website in February. It was published in the print version of the magazine on June 9. This is a practice common at USNews (though the editor says that in this case the time between blog and print article is unusually long). Web-first publication is becoming increasingly common industry-wide. One assumes the story was updated and rechecked before it was published in print. But it’s worth raising the question of whether the credulous view, breezy tone and failure to dig into research is a result of the story’s provenance. Blog entries are usually written faster than print stories, and receive less editing. The key question is, are blog entries destined to provide a lower level of public service due to how they are created? Or is there some way to embed best practices in the new medium?"
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mixture
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"The story reports the price as between $150 and $500 per session, and reports that insurance generally won’t cover it. The story elsewhere says that five sessions are considered a mimimum, and regular follow-ups may be required. It would have been useful to do the math for the reader–between $750 and $2,500 for the minimum treatment, plus continuing costs. The price should also have been reported much earlier in the story, to help readers frame the role the treatment could play in their lives. The article does not quantify the benefits of the treatment in detail. It says the device ""has been shown to yield high rates of acne clear-up"" with patients for whom topical treatments did not work. A physician who offers the treatment estimates that it works ""in about 90 percent"" of his patients. A patient says her skin is ""100 percent better."" None of these formulations helps a lay reader figure out how effective the device has been shown to be when studied carefully. The story reveals that the treatment has brief side effects such as swelling and reddening, none serious or lingering. It also mentions the concerns about use with dark-skinned patients, for whom the laser might cause changes in skin pigment. The only evidence supporting efficacy and safety of the technique is breezily mentioned as ""several small studies"" that confirm anecdotal reports. Verbal assessments of the efficacy are provided by two physicians and two patients. FDA marketing clearance is mentioned but no evidence from those trials is cited. The story overdramatizes the struggles and success of the two quoted patients with chronic acne. Since the machine presumably would be most useful on those with serious cases for whom other treatments fail, however, the reporting does not engage in egregious disease mongering. The article veers toward overselling the treatment with an artful but hyperbolic sentence: ""The two-pronged process both stuns and deactivates hyperactive oil glands and kills the bacteria they nourish, quashing the source of the breakouts in one 20-minute swoop."" This story just barely earns a satisfactory rating for this criterion. Sources include a physician who led a study on Isolaz, a physician who treated (apparently with success) one of the patients quoted, and a third doctor portrayed as a skeptic who believes the science is sound. Two patients who are satisfied with their treatments are also used as sources. The story would have been more balanced had it quoted doctors and/or patients who had less success with the treatment. Any doctor who has invested in one of these machines–and seeks to build a cash-only business that is not limited by insurance reimbursements–is not a disinterested source of information about the treatment’s efficacy. The story should have mentioned this. The first paragaph of the article whisks through the usual treatments for acne, but only as a list of failures. The story would have been more valuable had it reported first-line treatments for chronic acne–as well as on Accutane, which (at least for boys) is often successful at treating the most serious acne cases. The story certainly should have mentioned the use and benefits of various common laser treatments. The story does not indicate how widespread the use of Isolaz is. Readers wouldn’t know whether a typical dermatologist would offer this, or whether they would need to go to a specialized skin care center. The article reports that the device received marketing clearance in 2006. It also reports that Isolaz is the only acne treatment that combines suction with laser. This appears to be true. The article should have mentioned though that laser treatment alone has been used for a number of years. There does not appear to be a press release associated with this story."
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8218
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Taiwan reports six new coronavirus cases in largest single-day rise, all imported.
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Taiwan reported six new cases of the coronavirus on Sunday, all imported and marking the biggest daily rise in infections, in people who had returned to the island from countries including Spain and Japan, bringing its total tally to 59.
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true
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Health News
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The government is working on tracking down all the people who had contact with the new cases, it said in a statement. The other countries those infected had traveled to were Greece, Turkey, Egypt and Thailand, while two of the patients had transited in Dubai, the government added. While Taiwan has won plaudits from international experts for its early prevention measures to stop the spread of the virus, it has now stepped up measures to stop cases being brought back to the island from other countries. On Saturday the island said it would begin requiring a 14-day quarantine for all people arriving from Europe’s Schengen border-free travel zone as well as Britain and Ireland. Taiwan has only reported one death from the virus, while 20 have recovered and been released from hospital. The other cases are all in stable condition. Taiwan’s health minister has advised people not to travel at all and to stay in Taiwan.
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23187
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"Rebecca Kleefisch Says ""Tom Barrett supports a government takeover of our health care"
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Republican Rebecca Kleefisch says Democrat Tom Barrett supports government takeover of health care
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false
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Health Care, Message Machine 2010, Wisconsin, Rebecca Kleefisch,
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"Even in the run-up to the Sept. 14, 2010 primary, most voters probably paid little attention to Republican Rebecca Kleefisch or any of the candidates for the get-no-respect position of Wisconsin lieutenant governor. Since her victory, Kleefisch has proven hard to ignore. First, Kleefisch garnered headlines when she revealed she had been diagnosed with colon cancer in the weeks before the primary, had surgery and was declared cancer free. Then, with that in the background, she took center stage in a campaign ad with running mate Scott Walker that assails Democratic gubernatorial nominee Tom Barrett. Little surprise the ad focuses on health care. In the ad, Kleefisch talks directly to the camera: ""Thanks to the highest quality health care system in the world,"" she says, ""I won my battle with cancer. I can watch my little girls grow up. Tom Barrett supports a government takeover of our health care. A plan that would increase costs, lower quality and put government in charge of our health care choices. As a mother and a cancer survivor, that’s unacceptable."" As Walker enters the shot and nods in agreement, Kleefisch concludes: ""Scott and I and our families think you should be in charge of your health care decisions."" Strong words. Powerful message. But is it true? The ad drew cheers on the right and howls from the left, in part because while Kleefisch attacks a ""government takeover"" of health care, her own coverage comes through a state-government plan that covers she and her husband, state Rep. Joel Kleefisch, R-Oconomowoc, and their family. We’ve been here before, when it comes to the charge that the health care reforms -- ""ObamaCare"" to critics -- amount to a government takeover. But this ad has a bit of a wrinkle, since it also points back to Barrett’s time in Congress and an earlier health-care reform effort. Let’s sort it all out. The Walker campaign starts by pointing to Barrett’s support for the Obama-led reforms. It cites a Aug. 31, 2010 story from the Capital Times that includes this line: ""Unlike his opponents, Barrett touts his support of the federal health care reform bill. For those who call for its repeal, he says he has a few questions."" The story then quotes Barrett: ""Why do you want to take health insurance away from a sick 3-year-old who may now, for the first time, be able to have health insurance? Or why do you want to take health insurance away from a 23-year-old woman who has diabetes but wants to go to college?"" The Walker campaign also points to the fact that, as a U.S. House member from Milwaukee in 1993, Barrett was a co-sponsor of Hillary Clinton’s ill-fated health-care proposal. Finally, to support the ""government takeover"" charge, Walker campaign spokesperson Jill Bader points to a chart from the conservative Heritage Foundation that predicted the percentage of national health care spending under government control would pass 50 percent by 2013. Let’s look at the evidence, piece by piece: The Obama reforms: Leaving aside, for the moment, whether Barrett supports all or some of those reforms, PolitiFact National and its state affiliates have ruled repeatedly on the government takeover charge and found it ridiculously false -- a . In truth, the health care law creates a market-based system that relies on private health insurance companies. To be sure, government regulation of the existing system increases under the new system. More people will be covered. The government will create exchanges to provide coverage for Americans who have trouble getting it now. Medicaid, the government-run health insurance program for the poor, will be expanded. It is not, as the ad suggests, a single-payer system with government running the sole plan. Indeed, the lightning-rod ""public option"" -- which would have added a government-run plan to the mix -- was dropped from the bill before it passed. Coverage would be paid for the same way it is now, by private employers and individual premiums. Universal coverage advocates such as Citizen Action of Wisconsin say the national changes mean nearly half a million Wisconsin residents will now have access to private health insurance as Kleefisch and her husband already do. As for the Heritage Foundation chart cited by the Walker campaign, the study notes its projection that government spending on health care will now exceed 50 percent of the market sometime in 2013 is part of a decades-long trend. Indeed, even without the Obama-backed reforms, the government was on track to pay more than half sometime in 2014. The Hillary Clinton plan: Before Obama’s plan, there was the 1993 plan that grew out of Clinton’s work on a health care task force as first lady. Critics shorthanded it ""HillaryCare."" Two national health care experts -- one deeply involved in work on Clinton’s health care proposal -- told PolitiFact Wisconsin that the Clinton approach was more aggressive and far-reaching than Obama’s plan. A third, Robert Moffit from the conservative Heritage Foundation, judges them equally far-reaching. Clinton’s plan had national spending limits and tried to build a new insurance market with an aggressive regulatory structure, said Judith Feder, a former high-ranking Clinton administration official who is now a professor in Georgetown University’s Public Policy Institute. Both PolitiFact National and the New York Times have described Hillary Clinton’s plan, which was dead on arrival in Congress, as a ""radical"" proposal. But neither Feder nor Robert Blendon, a Harvard University professor of health policy and political analysis, think ""government takeover"" fits the Clinton plan -- or the Obama one. Neither do we. Let’s return to the TV ad, which emphasizes Barrett supports such a plan: At a news conference after the ad debuted, Barrett said it is ""not true at all"" that he supports a government takeover of health care and said he had never supported a single-payer system. Coverage of Barrett’s 1992 congressional bid in the Milwaukee Journal shows that Barrett endorsed universal coverage -- that is, efforts to cover everyone -- but he rejected a government-run system. But to Kleefisch, Barrett’s view that he does not favor a takeover is undermined by his support for the Clinton plan and his views on the Obama-led reforms. In an Oct. 14, 2010 interview with conservative talk radio host Charlie Sykes on WTMJ-AM (620), she put it this way: ""He’s a liar."" Barrett spokesperson Phil Walzak responded: ""Every plan Tom has forwarded has private insurance as the centerpiece. They are trying to generate false fear on this issue."" As for the Obama-led reforms now in place, Walker has argued they should be repealed and the state should join a lawsuit against them. Barrett has rejected the idea of joining the suit but has said Wisconsin's next governor needs to find ways to make sure the law is implemented fairly for the state. Where does that leave us? With the emotional emphasis provided by cancer survivor Rebecca Kleefisch, the Republican ticket echoes the GOP attacks used against Democrats across the country and characterizes the Obama-led health care reforms as a ""government takeover."" But repeating a falsehood -- however often and however loudly -- does not make it true. The Obama reforms would expand the government’s role, but a key principle of the plan is to rely primarily on private health insurance to provide coverage. The government ""exchanges"" would encourage private insurers to compete for workers from small businesses who currently may not have coverage. As for Barrett, they argue that Barrett backed the whole bill, but provide evidence only that he talked up some aspects of it months after it passed. On the support of Hillary Clinton’s plan in 1993, Barrett was a co-sponsor, and some experts say it went further than Obama’s plan. But it still would have retained a private-insurance based system. It didn’t amount to a takeover either. Can we light two matches?"
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9918
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Drugmakers develop pill to boost female sexual desire
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"This story reports on a new drug, flibanserin, that is being touted by some as ""Female Viagra."" Preliminary study results were reported at the 12th Congress of the European Society in Sexual Medicine in Lyon, France. The studies were sponsored by the drug’s manufacturer and have not been published in peer reviewed scientific journals. The drug is reported to help pre-menopausal woman with acquired hypoactive sexual desire disorder, a somewhat controversial diagnosis. The story is general, provides few facts and relies on interviews to present the drug in a positive light. The story fails to address the key issue of whether low sexual desire in pre-menopausal women is a condition being promoted by pharmaceutical manufacturers to create a market for a new drug and to sell more drugs. In the end the story focuses on one finding without placing it in context for the reader. The story noted that women taking flibanserin had a significant increase in ""sexually satisfying events"" compared to women taking placebo. What the story failed to note is that in absolute terms the women taking flibanserin had an average increase of 1.7 ""sexually satisfying events"" over the course of 6 months compared to an average increase of 1 event in women taking placebo. While this result is statistically significant, the medical or individual significance appears to be quite small. Overall, the story failed to present both sides of the story or adequate detail to give the reader the bigger picture."
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false
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"No cost data was provided for flibanserin. But an estimate of the potential U.S. market, up to $100 million in sales, was given. Those sales estimates had to be based on some price assumptions. What where they? It doesn’t seem that you should provide the one number without providing the other. How might the cost of flibanserin compare to the cost of drugs to treat erectile dysfunction? Most of the benefits reported in the story were described in general, lay terms: having more sex, wanting more sex and experiencing less distress related to lack of desire. The only detailed benefit reported in the story was the result of 2 clinical trials in 1,378 women that reported a 22% increase in ""satisfying sexual experiences"" compared to women taking a placebo. ""Satisfying sexual events"" was not defined and the 22% is not accurate based upon the data presented in the research abstracts. The story should have placed any benefits in context and noted that while results were statistically significant the medical or individual significance appears to be quite small. For example, the story should have noted that women taking flibanserin had an average increase of 1.7 ""sexually satisfying events"" over the course of 6 months compared to an average increase of 1 event in women taking placebo. No adverse effects of the drug were reported in the story. Safety data reported indicates that potential side effects include dizziness, nausea, fatigue, somnolence, and insomnia. This article cites very little medical or scientific evidence. It cites some general results of 1 of 4 abstracts of preliminary research presented at a recent scientific meeting. The story failed to report important details such as the length of the study, 24 weeks, or that women took a once daily pill at bedtime. Results were not presented in absolute terms and were inaccurately calculated in relative terms. The story should have noted that more reliable information would have come from more rigorous research published in peer-referred scientific journals. This story misses the mark by failing to address the larger issue of whether acquired hypoactive sexual desire disorder in pre-menopausal women is a condition being promoted by pharmaceutical manufacturers to create a market for a new drug and to sell more drugs. Is interest in this drug based upon the hugely successful marketing of Viagra and other drugs for erectile dysfunction? Instead of addressing these issues the story focuses on the potential benefits of flibanserin and relies mainly on interviews (See Evidence comments) to provide information. The story acknowledges that sexual desire, anxiety and satisfaction is multi-factorial and in many cases cannot be helped by a pill. However, commenting on the economic costs of divorce presumably attributed to a woman’s low sexual desire blames women. The information in this story comes primarily from expert interview and quotes from a representative of the drug manufacturer. But there was no comment on whether any of the expert interviewees had financial ties to the drug maker. This story correctly indicates that there are no drugs currently approved to to treat acquired hypoactive sexual desire disorder in pre-menopausal women. The story does acknowledge that hyposexual desire disorder is multi-factorial and that a drug would not address other contributing factors. The article accurately states that flibanserin is an experimental drug and is not FDA approved or commercially available. This story is accurate in stating that if approved, flibanserin would be the first drug of its kind for pre-menopausal women. It does acknowledge that other efforts to produce a similar drug have been unsuccessful. We can’t judge the extent to which the story may have been influenced by a news release."
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33720
|
A cactus can explode and spew baby tarantulas everywhere.
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Did a cactus explode and spew baby tarantulas everywhere?
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false
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Horrors, ASP Article, cactus, desert
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Variations: Legends about spiders nesting in cactuses or yuccas imported from Central America surfaced in Scandinavia and Great Britain in the early 1970s. In 1985, an outbreak of “Spider in the Yucca” lore featured a plant supposedly bought from Marks & Spencer, a leading British department store. Though at times this story has slipped past the watchdogs of the mainstream media and been reported as a news story, it’s never been true. There has never been a spider-spewing exploding cactus, and there never will be. You see, the tale is impossible. According to Dr. Clifford S. Crawford, professor of biology at the University of New Mexico, a tarantula might possibly lay eggs or build webs on, but not in, a cactus. Curators at the Desert Museum in Tucson, Arizona, point out that tarantulas live in burrows in the ground, especially the female, which rarely moves around on the surface. No tarantulas or spiders of any type ever have been known to burrow into plants, says Rod Crawford, curator of arachnids at the Burke Museum. Even if a small spider happened to climb into a hole in a cactus and lay eggs there, he says, the plant wouldn’t explode when the eggs hatched. Tarantulas take several years to reach full size. Okay, so what about scorpions? Unlike the tarantula, a scorpion and her young might seek shelter within a cactus. It is therefore theoretically possible to find a scorpion lurking in a succulent. However, hatching scorpions aren’t going to come flying out of a houseplant. A scorpion’s pregnancy lasts up to a year and a half. Offspring are born live and then crawl onto their mother’s back for another two to six weeks of external development. The little horrors take up to seven years to mature and can live to an age of 25. At no point in their growth is there a sudden spurt that would cause a cactus to erupt. Although there haven’t been any spider-filled cactuses, venomous eight-leggers have been found lurking in bunches of bananas and clusters of grapes which made their way to American consumers. Spiders can — and do — show up in shipments of fruit. Oftentimes those fruits are American-grown. Freeloading scorpions are a much rarer find, but they have been known to turn up. In 1993, a British supermarket worker was stung by one which had been napping in a bunch of bananas. In 1989, a British housewife discovered a similar hitchhiker when she began unwrapping her purchases at home. She escaped unscathed. It’s a pretty clear-cut message: Leave ‘foreign’ things where you find them; don’t bring them home. The same theme runs through The Mexican Pet legend — the cute little doggie adopted abroad turns out to be vicious sewer rat. As a final note, I leave you with this charming variant of the legend, as published in 1992 by FOAFtale News, the newsletter for the the International Society for Contemporary Legend Research: A lady buys STACKER software for her home computer, a program that compresses data on her hard disk at a ratio of 1:1.8, giving her more usable storage space. One day she finds her computer buzzing and vibrating, even though it was turned off. A computer service man warns her to leave the house at once, but before she can do so, the monitor glows green and explodes, scattering tarantulas all over the house. “What happened is this,” the version continues. The STACKER program was shipped from Carlsbad, CA, where these deadly arachnids are in indegenous creature. A breeding pair had inadvertently been shipped in the box with the software. When [the lady] installed STACKER on her hard disk she also unknowingly installed this pair of deadly tarantulas. Being on the same disk as STACKER, these deadly creatures were also compressed 1.8:1. That meant that by the time the full-size AT cabinet was full, there were literally millions of them. When the case ruptured, the spiders were immediately decompressed and back to the normal size . . .” “By the way, my lady friend only needed four pallbearers. It seems that the spider bites had compressed her 1.8 to 1.”
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5842
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Newborn syphilis cases in US reach highest level in 20 years.
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The number of U.S. babies born infected with syphilis has reached the highest level in 20 years.
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true
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Health, Sexually transmitted diseases, Syphilis
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It is still rare for babies to get syphilis from their infected mothers, but figures released Tuesday show more than 900 cases were reported last year. That’s more than double the number in 2013. Most cases were in the Southeast and Southwest. The last time the number was that high or higher was in the 1990s. In adults, cases of syphilis and other sexually transmitted diseases also are rising. Health officials say possible reasons include a wave of illegal drug use. They say women should be tested during pregnancy so they can be treated with antibiotics Syphilis can deform or kill babies. At least 77 of last year’s cases were stillborn or died.
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3507
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Governors interested in regional approach for vaping rules.
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The governors of Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut said Thursday that they’re interested in taking a regional approach to regulating vaping in the future.
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true
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Rhode Island, Ned Lamont, Charlie Baker, Health, Gina Raimondo, Providence, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vaping, General News
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They met privately Thursday to discuss issues of regional importance. Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo, a Democrat, hosted Republican Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Democratic Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut for lunch at Rhode Island College in Providence. They said after the meeting that they agreed a consistent regulatory framework for vaping would make sense, given the proximity of the states, though their states’ legislative leaders would have to agree. They also discussed education, health care and transportation. Baker announced a statewide ban in September on the sale of vaping products for four months, a measure that has been challenged in court. Raimondo signed an executive order banning sales of flavored vaping products, also in September, which was challenged in court Wednesday. Lamont is trying to figure out how to regulate vaping, after expressing an interest in banning flavored vaping products. A new law just took effect in Connecticut that increased the age to 21 for someone to purchase vaping products. Going forward, Raimondo said, “we are going to make an effort to try to regionalize our approach.” If the states take drastically different approaches, that creates enforcement issues, Baker added. The governors held their first private meeting with one another in July at Eastern Connecticut State University, an event organized by Lamont. Baker plans to host the group in the next few months. Lamont described it as a “very constructive relationship.” The governors said they’ve made progress since their first meeting on data sharing and transportation issues, with transit officials continuing to discuss an express commuter train route between Providence and Boston. The states are sharing wage and workforce data and the governors discussed sharing educational attainment data as well, to evaluate which strategies are helping students the most. Since the state of Rhode Island is taking over the struggling Providence school district, Baker told Raimondo Thursday about Massachusetts’ experience with Lawrence Public Schools entering into state receivership. Baker also shared his state’s experiences with legalizing recreational marijuana and talked about legislation he introduced Friday aimed at overhauling Massachusetts’ health care system by restricting how hospitals and doctors bill patients and requiring walk-in clinics to treat low-income patients on Medicaid. The governors said they’ve requested proposals so they can purchase information technology software together to save money. “If you can work together on the small things, you can work together on the big things,” Raimondo said. “We have all come from the private sector. We want to fix things. We want to fix problems in our states and we’re looking for practical solutions.”
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39733
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Senior White House advisor Valerie Jarrett is a Muslim and previously said she wanted to help America become more like Islamic countries.
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Valerie Jarrett is a Muslim and Controls the White House – Fiction!
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false
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9/11 Attack on America
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Valerie Jarrett has never identified herself as a Muslim, and there’s no record of her saying that she wanted to help make America “more like Islamic countries.” Valerie Jarrett supposedly she wanted to make America more like Islamic countries while she was study at Stanford University in 1977. The quote circulated on Twitter throughout President Obama’s time in office: “I am a Iranian by birth and of my Islamic faith. I am also an American and I seek to help change America to be a more Islamic country. My faith guides me and I feel like it is going well in the transition of using freedom of religion in America against itself.” The first red flag is how the quote is phrased. It’s not consistent with how an American students at an elite university like Stanford would talk. It was likely uttered by someone who isn’t very familiar with the English language, and Jarrett doesn’t fit the bill. In 1977, she was a junior at Stanford and had been living in the U.S. since she was five years old It’s unlikely she would say something like, “I am a Iranian by birth and of my Islamic faith.” In truth, Valerie Jarrett was born in Iran — but to American parents. Her father was a geneticist and pathologist named Dr. James Bowman who was born in Washington, D.C. In 1955, he accepted a position in Iran to study favism, a glucose deficiency disease. Valerie Jarrett’s mother, Barbara Bowman, was born in Chicago and became a professor and expert in early childhood education. Valerie Jarrett was born in 1956 while her parents were living in Shiraz, Iran. The family lived in London from 1961-1962 while James Bowman studied genetics. Then, the family moved to Chicago, the Stanford Alumni reports: “Jarrett grew up in Hyde Park, the racially diverse neighborhood that abuts the University of Chicago, where her father worked. She went to Massachusetts for prep school, and on to the Farm (Stanford). Her conviction to attend Stanford was so strong it didn’t even occur to her to visit beforehand.” Valerie Jarrett earned a degree in psychology at Stanford and then earned a law degree from the University of Michigan. She entered politics in the 1980s, working for former Chicago Mayor Harold Washington. It was while traveling in Chicago’s social and political circles that Jarrett met Barack and Michelle Obama. Valerie Jarrett has served as a senior advisor to President Obama since his inauguration — and it’s true that a number of former White House staffers like press secretary Robert Gibbs and chief of staff Rahm Emanual reportedly resigned or were fired after run-ins with Jarrett. So, as the rumor claims, she had a great deal of sway in the Obama White House. The press has also had an uncomfortable relationship with Valerie Jarrett, with a number of news outlets reporting that it’s not clear exactly what she does in the White House. Politico reports: “For starters, even today, nobody knows precisely what Jarrett does in the White House. What exactly do her titles—senior advisor to the president, assistant to the president in charge of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, the Office of Public Engagement, the White House Council on Women and Girls—mean? More to the point, Jarrett has often used the aura of authority that these titles give her to stand in the way of talented White House staffers and a smoother-running administration, according to several books that have been written about the Obama presidency.” So, Valerie Jarrett has had a number of well-documented run-ins with former White House staffers and has faced questions about what exactly her role in the Obama Administration is. But claims about Jarrett’s religious beliefs, or her intention to make America more like Islamic countries are false. Comments
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5865
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Jets’ Claiborne a happy father after newborn’s health scare.
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Morris Claiborne was in the middle of a walkthrough practice last summer when he got the call — finally — that he was eagerly anticipating.
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true
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NFL football, Health, Morris Claiborne, North America, New York Jets, Football
|
It was time for his twin daughters to enter the world. A New York Jets trainer had the cornerback’s cellphone and was tasked with letting him know if and when Claiborne’s now-wife Jennifer was heading to the hospital. “I remember I saw the trainer walking on the field and he gave me, like, a look,” Claiborne recalled in an interview with The Associated Press at the family’s home. “I just ran. I took off running. I grabbed my phone from him and I went to Coach (Todd) Bowles and I was like, ‘Coach, it’s time,’ and he was like, ‘All right, congratulations.’ “And I remember just running out of the building and running to the hospital, and when I got up there I just looked at her.” It was July 30, 2017, and Jennifer was 35 weeks along — two weeks before her scheduled cesarean section. But her water broke while she was watching the couple’s two English Bulldogs outside their home. She had to immediately head to Morristown Medical Center, about 2 1/2 miles away. Meanwhile, Morris zipped from the Jets’ training facility in Florham Park to the hospital just over 3 miles away in time to be there to welcome his daughters. “He came and it all happened within the hour,” Jennifer recalled. “It happened so fast, it was scary.” Doctors performed the C-section and first delivered Ma’Kaila, who was quite underweight at 3 pounds, 8 ounces. Ma’Liah came a few moments later, weighing in at a more robust 4 pounds, 13 ounces. Ma’Kaila was immediately taken to the neonatal intensive care unit, separated from her sister — and mother — for the first time. “I was asking, ‘Is everything OK?’” Morris said. “They were like, ‘She’s good. Everything’s good. It’s just that she’s underweight — too underweight.’ They wanted to take her back and start feeding her and try to get her to gain some weight.” Ma’Kaila stayed in the NICU for the next two weeks, working up the strength to be sent home to her parents and sister. For Morris, who was entering his first season with the Jets on a one-year, prove-it deal after four years with the Cowboys, it was a whirlwind of anxiety and excitement. Somehow, he needed to keep his mind focused on football, while also wanting to make sure his wife and daughters had everything they needed while he was working. “Oh, man,” he said, shaking his head. “We’d have meetings early in the morning and we had to stay over at the (players’) hotel, but Coach was giving me a little time to come here and stay with (Jennifer and Ma’Liah) instead of going to the hotel. I’d come (home) after meetings. We’d get done around 11 or so and I’d come here, check on her and make sure everything’s OK with her and then I’d head up to the hotel for curfew and we’d FaceTime all night.” Claiborne’s coaches and teammates never knew of the hectic routine he was keeping throughout the summer. Playbooks and Pampers. Meetings and feedings. Football and baby blankets. “I don’t care if it was 10 minutes, I live so close to the facility that I was running home every single break to check on them and see if everything’s OK and then I’d get back to my job,” he said. “It was like that for a while, for the whole training camp. ... It was chaos, but it was fun.” Claiborne was in for the biggest surprise of all on Aug. 15 when he arrived home during a short break. “I was like, ‘Babe, come here, look,’” Jennifer called out to him. “I was like, ‘Can you watch her real fast?’ And I was speaking of Ma’Liah.” But she had brought Ma’Kaila home from the hospital earlier in the day and had both girls in the bed, laying them beside her with a video camera set on record to capture the moment. “I wasn’t expecting to see both of them at all,” a wide-eyed Claiborne recalled. “I wasn’t ready for it at all. When I walked in, I was so used to seeing her (Ma’Liah) in the bed when I’d come in, and when I saw both of them laying there, my heart just dropped. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God.’ It really hit me: We’ve got twins at the house. This is real now.” Ma’Liah and Ma’Kaila are now 10 1/2 months old, healthy and full of personality. Ma’Liah, according to Jennifer, is the more demanding of the two, and “she’s a Daddy’s girl.” Ma’Kaila is still slightly smaller than her sister, but is more independent — moving around on her own, playing and feeding herself. “It gave me a sense of what I’m really playing football for, what I’m really doing it for,” said the 28-year-old Claiborne, who re-signed with the Jets on another one-year deal in the offseason. “It’s for my family and bringing these two precious little babies into the world, it opened my eyes to a much bigger picture. “I’ve really learned that it’s not about yourself. Once you have kids, it’s about the kids, but I think I got a re-understanding of that once these two babies were born. I enjoy every moment of it.” The family was planning to fly to its home in Dallas over the weekend to join Claiborne’s son Morris, who turns 9 in November, and daughter Madicyn, who’s 3, for a special Father’s Day. “Having these girls made me understand that I really missed some valuable time with my son, but I was off in college (at LSU) and there was nothing I could really do about that,” Claiborne said. “My mindset was on making a way to feed him at that time. Just having them made me realize how much time at this age that I really missed that I would’ve loved to be there. “I missed that time with him, but God’s given me another chance to experience that and I’m happy for it.” And Morris and Jennifer, who got married in March in Texas, are still growing their family. They’re expecting another daughter in mid-November. “I love being a father,” said Claiborne, who Jennifer rates as “really good” at changing diapers. “I love coming home to these faces. I love after games, these kids don’t know whether you had a good game or not, they don’t know what went on at practice. They don’t understand none of that. But when I come home, it’s all smiles because they light up when I walk into the room. “That puts a smile on my face, just to know they love me unconditionally.” ___ For more NFL coverage: http://www.pro32.ap.org and http://www.twitter.com/AP_NFL
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8657
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Russian regions join coronavirus lockdown as toll rises.
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More than a dozen Russian regions including the city of St Petersburg introduced a partial lockdown on Monday after Russia recorded its biggest one-day rise in coronavirus cases for the sixth day in a row.
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true
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Health News
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Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin had told Russia’s more than 80 regions to consider ordering people to stay at home after the official tally of coronavirus cases rose by 302 to 1,836. Nine people have died, authorities say. Moscow’s authorities have already ordered residents to stay at home, and Mishustin said he thought the measures now needed to be rolled out nationwide. “I ask the leaders of (Russia’s regions) to pay attention to (Moscow’s) experience and to work out the possibility of introducing such measures in their regions,” he said. President Vladimir Putin said decisive measures had helped Russia win time in its battle to contain the virus and to prevent an explosive infection rate, but that it was vital authorities used that time effectively. “This work must be done in reality, I would like to underline this - in reality and not just on paper or for reports. No exceptions whatsoever,” Putin told regional heads in comments broadcast on state television. At least 14 regions, including Kaliningrad, Tatarstan and the Arctic region of Murmansk, which shares a border with Finland and Norway, heeded the call. Others have implemented different measures. The southern, mainly Muslim region of Chechnya has imposed an entry ban, while several towns run by state nuclear corporation Rosatom that are closed to foreigners have imposed further entry restrictions. Murmansk region has restricted entry to the towns of Kirovsk and Apatity where fertiliser producer Phosagro has plants and to other, small industrial settlements. The northern region of Karelia has prohibited the elderly from using public transport. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, a Putin ally, said 20% of residents were ignoring his order to self-isolate, but that he hoped an IT system would be operational by the end of the week that would allow authorities to control the movement of people. Under the new rules, Muscovites are allowed to go out only to buy food or medicines at their nearest shop, get urgent medical treatment, walk the dog, or take out the bins. “This may now seem to some of you like some kind of game, a kind of Hollywood thriller. This is no game...,” Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council, said in a video address. “Unfortunately, what is happening now is a real threat to all of us and to all of human civilisation,” said Medvedev, a former president who was prime minister until earlier this year. Some doctors have voiced scepticism about the accuracy of Russia’s coronavirus figures given what they say has been the patchy nature and quality of testing, allegations that the authorities deny.
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17116
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Pregnant women who stand for five to six hours at a time increase their risk of pre-term pregnancy by 80 percent.
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"Providence City Council President Michael Solomon said, ""Pregnant women who stand for five or six hours at a time increase their risk of pre-term pregnancy by 80 percent,"" attributing the statistic to the Women's Fund of Rhode Island. That's a very specific claim. But the evidence is based on a few studies, cherry-picked from a larger body of research that suggests that the risk, if there is one, is significantly smaller. Because the statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression. (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, email us at [email protected] And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.)"
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false
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Rhode Island, Families, Health Care, Government Regulation, Public Health, Science, Women, Workers, Michael Solomon,
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"On April 3, 2014, legislation intended to protect pregnant women from workplace discrimination and safeguard the health of both the mother and child was introduced before the Providence City Council. It called for accommodations such as extra break times and the right to transfer to lighter duty. Arguing in support of the legislation, Council President Michael Solomon, a co-sponsor, said in a news release, ""Pregnant women who stand for five or six hours at a time increase their risk of pre-term pregnancy by 80 percent."" Pre-term pregnancy means a woman gives birth before 37 weeks -- about eight and a half months -- of pregnancy; 37 to 42 weeks is considered normal. Currently about 1 in 8 babies are born pre-term in the United States and they account for about 35 percent of infant deaths. We knew that studies have shown that most physical activity does not pose a risk during pregnancy, but we were unaware that prolonged standing could hike the risk of prematurity by 80 percent -- which is almost double the normal risk. In his news release, Solomon attributed the information to the Women's Fund of Rhode Island. We are fact-checking his statement because, although he clearly cited the source of his information, public officials are still responsible for the statistics they repeat. Solomon released a statement defending the idea behind the proposal, saying, ""Providing reasonable accommodations and taking common sense steps to protect the health of pregnant women and their babies is the right thing to do."" He did not offer any evidence to support the 80 percent statistic. As it turns out, the issue has been studied for years and the findings have been all over the map, with some researchers discovering a risk comparable to 80 percent -- and sometimes greater -- but most finding a much smaller risk, if any risk at all. Also, the definition of ""prolonged standing"" can vary from study to study, which can make it hard to compare studies. ""The Face of Pregnancy at Work"" page on the Women's Fund website essentially has the same claim Solomon made: ""Women who stand for 5 to 6 hours at a time increase their risk of pre-term delivery by 80 percent."" It lists no source. A spokeswoman promised to get back to us with more information. Meanwhile, we called the 57,000-member American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, which sent us some material that raised questions about the 80-percent claim. For example, the American College sent us a 1995 study that involved women who stood at work for longer periods -- in this case five hours per day. They were 20 percent more likely to have a premature delivery than pregnant workers who stood for two hours or less each day. That's significantly lower than 80 percent. An overview of such studies was published in 2000 in the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology. It combined the results from 14 studies published between 1983 and 1998. Eight found no link between prolonged standing (defined as more than three hours a day, not five or six hours), two showed a clear link and three showed a barely significant increase. The studies from the mid-1990s onward tended to show no link. Overall, the researchers calculated, prolonged standing increased the risk by 26 percent. When the people at the Women's Fund got back to us, they directed us to the summaries of seven studies. Some were part of the Obstetrics and Gynecology analysis (which was included in their list). There were also some more-recent examinations of the question. One found no significant risk for premature delivery for women standing more than seven hours a day. A second found that the risk was 69 percent greater. A third, a 2004 report in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, found that a woman would have to stand for more than six hours a day to produce a significant risk. Doing so increased the chances of preterm birth by 26 percent. It was the same degree of risk seen among women who reported that the satisfaction of their job was low. However, in the countries where the infant mortality rate was low and women could take long prenatal leaves, standing for more than six hours did not increase the risk at all. When it comes to body posture, ""the worst position a pregnant woman can be in is standing and being motionless,"" said Dr. Raul Artal, chairman of the department of obstetrics, gynecology and women's health at the Saint Louis University School of Medicine in Missouri. A woman who is on her feet but moving around doesn't face the same risk, he said. ""Actually, I would encourage women to walk around."" Instead of a risk that's 80 percent higher, an estimate in the 20-30 percent range ""is much more reasonable,"" said Atral, who edits the Clinical Updates in Women's Health Care for ACOG. In general, ""healthy pregnant women should be encouraged to continue to live a normal life,"" he said. We also note for the record that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has a list and poster of things a woman can do to prevent a pre-term delivery. Avoiding prolonged standing is not listed as a big risk factor. Our ruling Providence City Council President Michael Solomon said, ""Pregnant women who stand for five or six hours at a time increase their risk of pre-term pregnancy by 80 percent,"" attributing the statistic to the Women's Fund of Rhode Island. That's a very specific claim. But the evidence is based on a few studies, cherry-picked from a larger body of research that suggests that the risk, if there is one, is significantly smaller. Because the statement contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, (If you have a claim you’d like PolitiFact Rhode Island to check, email us at [email protected] And follow us on Twitter: @politifactri.)"
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29214
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A video shows President Obama agreeing with President Trump on immigration policy.
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However, Obama repeatedly said in this speech — as well as in the “Immigration Accountability Executive Action” plan — that he was opposed to family separation.
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false
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Politics, family separation, immigration, obama administration
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In June 2018, the Trump administration received heavy criticized for enacting a short-lived policy to separate children from their families at the border of the United States and Mexico, sending them to detention centers across the country as an apparent attempt to deter asylum-seekers. As outrage over the issue continued, so did the disinformation. On 19 June, a video purportedly showing former United States President Barack Obama agreeing with Trump’s immigration policies was posted to Twitter by political analyst Oliver McGee: Wow. Obama really did agree with @realDonaldTrump on Immigration. Show this to your friends. pic.twitter.com/oQGcz5Ng87 — Oliver McGee PhD MBA (@OliverMcGee) June 19, 2018 This footage is disingenuous at best. It is true that Obama, like Trump, wished to take action against people entering the country without documentation, and argued that he had the authority as president to take certain legal actions. In terms of separating families at the border, however, there is nothing in this clip to suggest that Obama agreed with the current policy — and as a matter of fact, Obama’s full speech contains a number of passages that directly contradict this particular claim or inference. The footage compiles several moments from a speech Obama delivered in 2014 about immigration reform and his “Immigration Accountability Executive Action” plan. Although he did genuinely say the words used in this clip, the quotes are out of order and out of context. The relevant portions of the speech can be found below. The words in bold are the passages included in the video. The full speech can be read in its entirety here: My fellow Americans, tonight, I’d like to talk with you about immigration. For more than 200 years, our tradition of welcoming immigrants from around the world has given us a tremendous advantage over other nations. It’s kept us youthful, dynamic, and entrepreneurial. It has shaped our character as a people with limitless possibilities — people not trapped by our past, but able to remake ourselves as we choose. But today, our immigration system is broken — and everybody knows it. Families who enter our country the right way and play by the rules watch others flout the rules. Business owners who offer their workers good wages and benefits see the competition exploit undocumented immigrants by paying them far less. All of us take offense to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities of living in America. And undocumented immigrants who desperately want to embrace those responsibilities see little option but to remain in the shadows, or risk their families being torn apart. […] Had the House of Representatives allowed that kind of bill a simple yes-or-no vote, it would have passed with support from both parties, and today it would be the law. But for a year and a half now, Republican leaders in the House have refused to allow that simple vote. Now, I continue to believe that the best way to solve this problem is by working together to pass that kind of common sense law. But until that happens, there are actions I have the legal authority to take as President — the same kinds of actions taken by Democratic and Republican presidents before me — that will help make our immigration system more fair and more just. Tonight, I am announcing those actions. First, we’ll build on our progress at the border with additional resources for our law enforcement personnel so that they can stem the flow of illegal crossings, and speed the return of those who do cross over. Second, I’ll make it easier and faster for high-skilled immigrants, graduates, and entrepreneurs to stay and contribute to our economy, as so many business leaders have proposed. Third, we’ll take steps to deal responsibly with the millions of undocumented immigrants who already live in our country. I want to say more about this third issue, because it generates the most passion and controversy. Even as we are a nation of immigrants, we’re also a nation of laws. Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable — especially those who may be dangerous. That’s why, over the past six years, deportations of criminals are up 80 percent. And that’s why we’re going to keep focusing enforcement resources on actual threats to our security. Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids. We’ll prioritize, just like law enforcement does every day. But even as we focus on deporting criminals, the fact is, millions of immigrants in every state, of every race and nationality still live here illegally. And let’s be honest — tracking down, rounding up, and deporting millions of people isn’t realistic. Anyone who suggests otherwise isn’t being straight with you. It’s also not who we are as Americans. After all, most of these immigrants have been here a long time. They work hard, often in tough, low-paying jobs. They support their families. They worship at our churches. Many of their kids are American-born or spent most of their lives here, and their hopes, dreams, and patriotism are just like ours. As my predecessor, President Bush, once put it: “They are a part of American life.” Now here’s the thing: We expect people who live in this country to play by the rules. We expect that those who cut the line will not be unfairly rewarded. So we’re going to offer the following deal: If you’ve been in America for more than five years; if you have children who are American citizens or legal residents; if you register, pass a criminal background check, and you’re willing to pay your fair share of taxes — you’ll be able to apply to stay in this country temporarily without fear of deportation. You can come out of the shadows and get right with the law. That’s what this deal is. Now, let’s be clear about what it isn’t. This deal does not apply to anyone who has come to this country recently. It does not apply to anyone who might come to America illegally in the future. It does not grant citizenship, or the right to stay here permanently, or offer the same benefits that citizens receive — only Congress can do that. All we’re saying is we’re not going to deport you. […] That’s the real amnesty –- leaving this broken system the way it is. Mass amnesty would be unfair. Mass deportation would be both impossible and contrary to our character. What I’m describing is accountability — a common-sense, middle-ground approach: If you meet the criteria, you can come out of the shadows and get right with the law. If you’re a criminal, you’ll be deported. If you plan to enter the U.S. illegally, your chances of getting caught and sent back just went up. The actions I’m taking are not only lawful, they’re the kinds of actions taken by every single Republican President and every single Democratic President for the past half century. And to those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill. I want to work with both parties to pass a more permanent legislative solution. And the day I sign that bill into law, the actions I take will no longer be necessary. Meanwhile, don’t let a disagreement over a single issue be a dealbreaker on every issue. That’s not how our democracy works, and Congress certainly shouldn’t shut down our government again just because we disagree on this. Americans are tired of gridlock. What our country needs from us right now is a common purpose — a higher purpose. Interestingly, the heavily edited video did not include passages from the same speech in which Obama specifically spoke out against the practice of separating families. Near the end of the speech, he rhetorically asked if the United States was a nation that would tolerate taking children away from families: Because for all the back and forth of Washington, we have to remember that this debate is about something bigger. It’s about who we are as a country, and who we want to be for future generations. Are we a nation that tolerates the hypocrisy of a system where workers who pick our fruit and make our beds never have a chance to get right with the law? Or are we a nation that gives them a chance to make amends, take responsibility, and give their kids a better future? Are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents’ arms? Or are we a nation that values families, and works together to keep them together? A few sentences later Obama adds: Over the past few years, I have seen the determination of immigrant fathers who worked two or three jobs without taking a dime from the government, and at risk any moment of losing it all, just to build a better life for their kids. I’ve seen the heartbreak and anxiety of children whose mothers might be taken away from them just because they didn’t have the right papers. I’ve seen the courage of students who, except for the circumstances of their birth, are as American as Malia or Sasha; students who bravely come out as undocumented in hopes they could make a difference in the country they love. Obama also emphasized in this speech that his immigration policy targeted “felons, not families” and “criminals, not children”: I want to say more about this third issue, because it generates the most passion and controversy. Even as we are a nation of immigrants, we’re also a nation of laws. Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable — especially those who may be dangerous. That’s why, over the past six years, deportations of criminals are up 80 percent. And that’s why we’re going to keep focusing enforcement resources on actual threats to our security. Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids. We’ll prioritize, just like law enforcement does every day. President Obama’s “Immigration Accountability Executive Action” plan tackled a wide range of immigration issues, not just those concerning the border. The three main points of his plan involved cracking down on unauthorized immigration at the border, deporting undocumented felons, providing undocumented immigrants already in the United States a chance to avoid deportation by passing background checks and paying taxes. The “felons, not families” portion of the plan even included a provision to reduce family separations: DHS will also create a new deferred action program for people who are parents of U.S. Citizens or Lawful Permanent Residents (LPRs) and have lived in the United States for five years or longer if they register, pass a background check and pay taxes. Reducing family separation for those waiting to obtain LPR status. Due to barriers in our system, U.S. citizens and LPRs are often separated for years from their immediate relatives, while they wait to obtain their LPR status. To reduce the time these individuals are separated, DHS will expand an existing program that allows certain individuals to apply for a provisional waiver for certain violations before departing the United States to attend visa interviews. The viral video attempted to make it seem as if Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump were in lockstep with one another when it came to immigration issues such as the separation of families at the border by dishonestly cherry-picking out-of-context quotes and omitting passages that disagreed with the chosen narrative.
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384
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Court ruling could help J&J defeat St. Louis talc lawsuits.
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A Missouri Supreme Court ruling on talc lawsuits could reduce the liability and number of large trials Johnson & Johnson faces over allegations its talc products, including baby powder, cause cancer.
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true
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Health News
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The ruling will likely offer some respite to the healthcare conglomerate as it deals with growing pressure over the safety of its talc products, some defense lawyers said. The company revealed in its annual report on Wednesday that it had received subpoenas from the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission related to talc litigation. Some plaintiffs’ lawyers, however, played down the impact of the ruling. It was a trial in St. Louis’s 22nd Circuit Court, brought by 21 plaintiffs from outside of the city whose cases were joined to that of a single St. Louis resident, that in July produced a record $4.69 billion talc verdict against J&J. The company is facing several more such lawsuits in St. Louis. However, Missouri’s high court on Feb. 13 ruled in a separate talc case that allowed a non-resident to participate in joined cases was “a clear and direct violation” of state law barring the use of joinder - combining two or more cases - to allow courts to hear cases they otherwise could not. Most state courts can only hear cases involving plaintiffs or defendants from that state or alleging injuries occurring within their jurisdiction. The U.S. Supreme Court strengthened those restrictions in a 2017 decision. But the St. Louis court had allowed out-of-state residents to continue to sue New Jersey-based J&J through liberal use of joinder. In the case that produced the July verdict, 18 of the plaintiffs were from outside Missouri and three were from outside the city of St. Louis. Of the roughly 700 talc cases filed in St. Louis, only 40 involve Missouri residents, according to court filings. If the Feb. 13 ruling closes off the St. Louis court to non-resident claims, J&J may have a stronger hand defending itself in smaller talc cases spread out among other, potentially less plaintiff-friendly state and federal courts. “There’s no real way of reading this decision other than this court clearly saying you can’t join claims if the injury did not occur in the venue,” said Mark Cheffo, a New York-based product liability defense lawyer not involved in talc litigation. J&J in a statement said it was pleased with the decision. “One claim that is properly before a court cannot provide a basis for drawing into a trial other claims that are not. We believe that decision is clearly correct, and we continue to believe that the science doesn’t support plaintiffs’ claims,” the company said, declining further comment. Some plaintiffs’ lawyers said the Feb. 13 ruling was not as definitive as Cheffo suggests. “If defendants are celebrating this ruling as the end of St. Louis mass tort, they have not read the entire Missouri case law,” said Eric Holland, a St. Louis-based plaintiff lawyer involved in the talc litigation. Holland pointed to a 2016 Missouri Supreme Court decision that upheld a $38 million verdict in a pharmaceutical product liability case the defendant claimed had been improperly joined. The court let the result stand, saying that even an improper joinder did not render the trial unfair to defendants. Though the 2016 ruling involved a case already decided, Holland and other plaintiffs’ lawyers said they planned to argue its fairness analysis also applies to out-of-state talc claims in cases yet to go to trial. They said they would also argue joining the cases was the most efficient use of judicial resources. Defense lawyers said the Feb. 13 decision would likely mean dismissal or severing of the out-of-state claims from four upcoming multi-plaintiff cases scheduled for trial in St. Louis. Two of the cases were halted by the Missouri Supreme Court ahead of its ruling. Holland and other plaintiff lawyers said they would challenge J&J requests to sever or dismiss talc cases by arguing the Feb. 13 decision did not overrule the 2016 ruling. Cheffo said the 2016 ruling could make it harder for J&J to overturn the July verdict and its record penalty because the company would have to prove the joinder led to an unfair trial. ‘FORUM SHOPPING’ BY OUT-OF-STATE PLAINTIFFS The St. Louis court has been a venue for more talc trials and has seen larger verdicts than any other jurisdiction. Outside of St. Louis, the only other significant talc verdicts against J&J to date have come in lawsuits filed by individual plaintiffs in New Jersey and California, where the company is currently facing jury verdicts totaling $142 million. A Los Angeles jury delivered a $417 million talc verdict against J&J in 2017, but the judge threw out the award weeks later as unsupported by the evidence. All talc verdicts against J&J are on appeal. The St. Louis court has a history of issuing large punitive damages against companies and has often been criticized by business groups as allowing “forum-shopping” by out-of-state plaintiffs. While J&J faces some trials brought by individuals in other jurisdictions, the multi-plaintiff St. Louis cases are the largest and have the most potential to produce additional billion-dollar verdicts. Plaintiffs allege that the talc in Johnson’s baby powder and other J&J products causes ovarian cancer, or that asbestos contamination in the talc causes ovarian cancer and mesothelioma. Asbestos is a known carcinogen linked to mesothelioma. J&J and its talc supplier, Imerys Talc America, a co-defendant in the litigation, deny the allegations, saying numerous studies and tests by regulators worldwide have shown their talc to be safe and asbestos-free. Reuters on Dec. 14 published a report detailing that J&J knew that the talc in its raw and finished powders sometimes tested positive for small amounts of asbestos from the 1970s into the early 2000s - test results it did not disclose to regulators or consumers. (reut.rs/2Gh88KO) J&J is currently facing roughly 13,000 lawsuits over talc, most of which have been consolidated in federal court in New Jersey. Many plaintiff’s lawyers have fought to keep cases out of federal court, which they feel favors corporate defendants. Three juries have rejected claims that Baby Powder was tainted with asbestos or caused plaintiffs’ mesothelioma. Five other juries have failed to reach verdicts, resulting in mistrials. In a statement, Imerys Talc America said the Missouri ruling affirmed legal arguments it has made in litigation for the last four years. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Feb. 13, saying it lacked the financial clout to defend against talc lawsuits.
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1011
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North Korea steps up measures to prevent spread of African swine fever.
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North Korea has stepped up measures to prevent the spread of the highly contagious and deadly African swine fever, its main state newspaper said on Wednesday, breaking its silence on the outbreak which was first reported in late May.
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true
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Health News
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In late May, North Korea reported an outbreak of African swine fever (ASF) to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), South Korea’s agriculture ministry said but the North has not made any official comment on its outbreak. North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper said on Wednesday nationwide preventive measures are being carried out to contain the virus, quoting North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as saying “prevention is the key to production in livestock industry”. “Increasing livestock production goes hand in hand with raising farm animals safe from various diseases,” said Kim according to the newspaper. “Once highly contagious diseases like African swine fever are spread .... herds of farm animals could die.” Preventative measures include disinfecting farms and restricting sales of pork and processed meat, the newspaper said. North Korea raises mainly chicken, ducks and rabbits. Its pig population was 2.6 million as of 2017, according to data from Statistics Korea. In the wake of the North’s outbreak, South Korea has stepped up disinfection measures near the shared border to keep the viral disease spreading to the South. So far, no further cases have been reported in North Korea. African swine fever (ASF) is fatal and highly contagious to pigs and wild boards, but it does not affect humans. Since the first outbreak of ASF in East Asia was reported in China in early August last year, the virus has spread across China including Vietnam.
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9746
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Acupuncture Best for Hot Flashes in Breast Cancer Survivors: Study
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This story is about a small but intriguing study that tests four different methods to manage the kind of hot flashes experienced by women who have been treated for breast cancer. Testing acupuncture, “sham” acupuncture, the drug gabapentin and a placebo pill, it found that real acupuncture was better than the other three. The story includes plenty of interesting commentary on the placebo effect and its role in the treatment of hot flashes. It would have benefited from a bit more detail on what acupuncture and ‘sham’ acupuncture entails, some sense of the magnitude of effects from these treatments, and an explanation of potential study limitations. Hot flashes are a persistent and bothersome symptom for women having gone through menopause, and the effects of breast cancer treatment can make those symptoms more severe. Because hormone replacement therapy is not seen as an option for women who have had breast cancer, there is a need for alternative treatments, including non-drug treatments like acupuncture so it is good that this kind of research is being done.
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mixture
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acupuncture,breast cancer,hot flashes,menopause
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There is no discussion of costs of any of the treatments studied. The benefits of the treatments were measured at 8, 12 and 24 weeks after receiving the treatment yet the magnitude of those effects are not quantified nor explained in any detail. Measurements looked at frequency and severity of hot flashes but we don’t have any idea what the baseline was, or how that may have changed due to the different modalities. We’re told that acupuncture had the greatest effect, but not how big that effect was or how meaningful it was for patients. Acupuncture is likely safe but we have no idea if the women who received it, the sham acupuncture or gabapentin experienced any adverse effects of those treatments. The story includes a very detailed and interesting discussion of the placebo effect and its potential impact on the results. And because there was sufficient detail about what was compared to what, what kind of women were involved in the study, and how long they were studied, the story deserves a Satisfactory rating here, although more detail in a few areas would have been welcome. There were only about 30 women in each arm of the trial and was this enough to see statistically-significant differences in the hot flash scores or not? This aspect of the study isn’t addressed, although the paper itself cautions, “Our trial was not powered to examine the efficacy of acupuncture or gabapentin,” and that “Without a no-treatment group, the responses cannot be separated from that of natural history or regression to the mean.” Some explanation of that caveat would have been useful. More specifics on what exactly constituted acupuncture and sham acupuncture would have been helpful as well (“sham” acupuncture means non-penetrating needles put in spots not used for real acupuncture). There is no evidence of disease mongering here. The fact that two of the study authors consult for Pfizer, which makes gabapentin, merited a brief disclosure/acknowledgment in the story, and the lack of such disclosure is the basis for our Not Satisfactory rating here. We did enjoy the observations of outside expert Dr. Gary Deng, who was consulted about the effects of placebo and had some interesting comments to share with readers. We wish the story had also included a direct expert comment regarding the quality of the study and the patient-care implications of the findings. The study was all about comparing alternatives so by that means, rates a satisfactory score. Acupuncture is widely available and while the report did not establish the availability of the treatment, consumers certainly know about it. The story could have noted that insurance may not pay for acupuncture treatment, however. Gabaptentin is described as a drug that’s typically used to treat nerve pain, and readers can work out from that that the drug is available. Close call here, but the story doesn’t really establish what is new about the research. There are questions raised in previous studies about whether real acupuncture is more effective than a sham treatment or if the benefit from the needling is all essentially a placebo effect. Researchers also wonder whether the acupuncture placebo effect is bigger than the effect seen with placebo pills because of all the attention patients get from the acupuncture session that they don’t get with a pill. The story does allude to the question, but doesn’t specifically address the fact that these issues have been raised in previous research on pain and that’s why the new study in women with hot flashes is important. The presence of an outside observer’s comments, and the lack of exaggeration of the findings, would suggest that this story goes beyond any news release.
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31557
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Hiding finely-ground glass in food is an effective method for killing a person.
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Sightings: In the first season of the HBO television prison drama Oz, two inmates kill another prisoner by secretly mixing crushed glass into his food until he begins to bleed from his ears and nose.
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false
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Medical, Poisonings
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The use of finely-ground glass secreted in food is often mooted in murder mysteries and idle gossip as an effective technique for poisoning the unwary. Simply crush some glass into a fine powder, surreptitiously add the pulverized fragments to something your putative victim is about to ingest, then sit back and wait. It may take more than one glass-laden feeding, but eventually your target will fall to the floor, writhing in agony, before dying a grisly and painful death — and better yet, he’ll expire in a manner which will baffle all but the most experienced of medical examiners. Although the use of ground glass as a murder weapon is usually described as a method of “poisoning,” the ostensible effects of the substance when employed in the fashion described above are not poisonous in the usual sense of the word (i.e., it does not bring about illness or death through chemical means): the glass supposedly works its fatal consequences by chewing up the gastrointestinal tract of the hapless victim, causing him to bleed out (in some versions, eventually spouting blood from every opening in his body). In earlier times, however, powdered glass was believed to be poison in the ordinary sense of the word (i.e., it killed through toxicity rather than by cutting up one’s innards). However you describe it, though, the bottom line is that the “ground glass in the food” killing technique just doesn’t work. The primary problem is that people really don’t care to eat food full of hard, gritty nuggets, and they really don’t like chewing on shards of glass that cut up their mouths. So, in order to make your glassified food palatable enough for your victim to eat it, you have to grind the glass very finely. But, as Dr. D.P. Lyle notes in his 2003 book, Murder and Mayhem, a guide to medical and forensic issues posed by mystery writers, ingesting powdered glass won’t kill an otherwise healthy person: The glass would have to be very finely ground, or the victim would notice it as he ate. As we chew, we sense even tiny pieces of gravel, sand, glass, gristle, and so forth. Salt dissolves but glass doesn’t, so the food would seem gritty unless the glass was ground into a powder. But very fine glass is unlikely to cause any lethal damage to the GI tract. It would be more of an irritation, with minor bleeding if any at all. If you could get the victim to eat coarser glass, such as crushed instead of ground, the glass shards would damage the stomach and intestine and could cause bleeding . .. [but] a person would know something was wrong with the food, and if not, he would go to a doctor about the bleeding. Even with coarser glass, the bleeding would probably not be massive or life-threatening but slow and lead to anemia and fatigue. The stools would become black from the blood, and the victim would see a doctor. According to Dr. Lyle, unless your chosen victim had a serious heart condition which caused ongoing angina, and was extraordinarily resistant to seeking medical attention, it’s unlikely that hiding ground glass in his food would kill him. As a matter of fact, the belief in powdered glass as an effective poison remains prevalent even though doctors have been dismissing it for about two hundred years now. In 1967’s The Prevalence of Nonsense, for example, we turn up the following: Chances are that if you asked the next dozen people you meet tomorrow morning if ground glass is lethal if eaten, those who do not immediately hasten away from you will answer in a strong affirmative. This is one of those things we’ve always known. “Of course ground glass will kill a person if he eats it.” Actually, ground glass is harmless. One does not suggest a diet composed entirely of ground glass; it is said to be singularly tasteless and is generally eschewed by gourmets. But if you feed it to your rival and wait to see him writhing on the floor, you’ll have a long wait. Splinters of glass, now, provide a different story. Splinters and broken sections of glass may cut the esophagus, the stomach, and the intestines, with most unpleasant consequences, including death. But it is harder to get people to accept glass splinters: they begin to get suspicious. Going back to 1941, we find the following in Doctors Don’t Believe It — Why Should You? : That powdered glass can cause death when mixed with food, and that it can be used as a poison unknown to the victim, is a popular age-old belief. The glass, of course, must be very finely powdered — otherwise it would not mix intimately with the food and would not escape detection by the intended victim. Even within recent years a man was put on trial, charged with committing murder by means of powdered glass. The physicians who went on the witness stand scouted the idea that powdered glass could act as a virulent poison, and one of them offered to swallow a tablespoonful in open court. The belief in powdered glass as a poison may be dismissed as just another popular fallacy. And 1923’s Popular Fallacies Explained and Corrected cites several articles from 1916-17 that note the belief in “ground glass as poison” had long since been experimentally debunked: POWDERED GLASS — This was long believed to act as a poison, and was even known as ‘succession powder’; over a hundred years ago experiments in varied form were made showing that it is harmless. Details are given in Dr. Cabanés’s ‘Les Curiosités de la Médecine,’ pp. 146-8. The belief lingers in the Orient; for instance, ‘powders’ of finely pounded glass were in evidence at a murder trial in Agra reported in The Times, Dec. 19, 1912, p. 5. A poisoner testified in New York City, in the spring of 1916, that he first tried ground glass; finely powdered glass, however, is harmless (see ‘The Traumatic Causation of Appendicitis,’ by S.G. Shattock, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, London, 1915-16, ix., Pathological Section, at pp. 26-7, July 1916), confirming the experiments of about a century ago, cited at 12 S. i. 335. Sir Thomas Browne dealt with this fallacy in Book II., Chap. V., Sec. 2, of his Vulgar Errors, wherein he said, “That glass is poison, according unto common conceit, I know not how to grant. Not only from the innocency of its ingredients, that is, fine sand, and the ashes of glass-wort or fern, which in themselves are harmless and useful, or because I find it by many commended for the stone, but also from experience, as having given unto dogs above a dram thereof, subtilely powdered in butter and paste, without any visible disturbance.” If you really want to use glass as a murder weapon, your best bet is to pick up a large shard and stab your victim with it.
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5416
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Nebraska environmental group dedicates June to ‘plogging’.
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A Nebraska environmental advocacy nonprofit is dedicating the month of June to “plogging,” a Swedish fitness trend that’s gaining popularity in the U.S.
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true
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Fremont, Environment, Jogging, Nebraska, Exercise
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Plogging mixes fitness with environmentalism, as joggers pick up stray trash and litter during their exercise. The name combines the Swedish word for pick up, “plocka upp,” with jogging. Keep Nebraska Beautiful plans to host activities through June to introduce residents to the sport with its affiliate groups, the Fremont Tribune reported . Activities may include organizing group “plogs” or getting existing running or jogging groups involved, said Jane Polson, the nonprofit’s president. The nonprofit is working with its affiliate groups statewide, such as Keep Fremont Beautiful. “It actually burns more calories than just jogging or walking because you stop and you pick up, and it takes more energy,” said Polson. The organization is partnering with a fitness app Lifesum, which can track ploggers fitness habits. “Plogging is brilliant because it is simple and fun, while empowering everyone to help create cleaner, greener and more beautiful communities,” said Mike Rosen, Keep America Beautiful’s senior vice president of marketing and communications. “All you need is running gear and a bag for trash or recyclables, and you are not only improving your own health, but your local community too.” Leila Hybl, executive director of Keep Fremont Beautiful, hopes the group’s “plogging month” event will demonstrate how residents can make a positive environmental impact on a statewide level by working together. “If we care about the environment, we need to show that,” she said. “We can’t just count on our elected officials to make everything happen.”
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26481
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”If you line up all the countries that have done (Covid-19) testing on a per-capita basis, we’re at the bottom of the list.”
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"Scott said on April 2, ""If you line up all the countries that have done (Covid-19) testing on a per capita basis, we’re at the bottom of the list."" His statement was based on an early-March estimate by Vox that was outdated when Scott spoke. U.S. testing had expanded 130-fold by April 2, and has doubled again in the last two weeks. Vox now estimates the U.S. is somewhere near the middle. Other, more expansive research notes that nations differ in how they collect data, preventing ""meaningful comparisons."" There’s widespread agreement the U.S. got off to a slow start on testing and, despite gains, far greater testing is still essential. But the burden falls on Scott to prove his claim that the U.S. was last per capita in early April, and his evidence doesn’t stand up."
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false
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Coronavirus, Bobby Scott,
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"U.S. Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., recently criticized President Donald Trump for not taking the Covid-19 pandemic ""seriously."" As proof, Scott cited the critical lack of test kits in the United States despite almost two months of warnings early this year before the disease hit American shores. ""If you line up all the countries that have done testing on a per capita basis, we’re at the bottom of the list,"" Scott said during an April 2 radio interview on the conservative John Fredericks Show based in Portsmouth. Governors from both parties and health-care experts have complained that the lack of Covid-19 tests has hampered efforts to combat the disease. Trump has said things have picked up and the U.S. has now conducted more tests than any nation. PolitiFact has debunked a similar Trump claim, noting that the U.S. has a high population and it lags in the key comparison measurement - the number of conducted tests per capita. But we wondered whether the U.S. really is at the bottom of nations in per capita testing, as Scott said. So we did a fact check. Statistical stew Let’s start by emphasizing that global comparisons of Covid-19 testing are tenuous because nations measure it differently. Our World in Data, a research organization funded by philanthropists Bill and Melinda Gates, collects statistics from 50 nations and notes some countries count the total number of tests performed, others report the number of people tested, others tally the number of tests that have been analyzed. The organization says for many nations, it’s unclear what method is used. The group says the varied reporting does not produce ""meaningful comparisons"" of nations. The U.S. does not have a central source of statistics on testing, most of which is done by private labs. A widely-cited unofficial count comes from The Covid Tracking Project, a data set that journalists and scientists collect statistics from states and localities - which also have different ways of compiling numbers. Scott’s proof We asked Scott’s press office for the source of the congressman’s claim that the U.S. ranks last among testing nations. We were sent a March 12, 2020 Vox article with a chart showing the U.S. had conducted only 23 Covid-19 tests per 1 million people. That was the fewest among eight comparison nations: Japan, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Israel, Taiwan, Italy, South Korea and the Guangdong Province of China. Vox said it drew its statistics from a variety of sources, including the Covid Tracking Project. Even if we overlook the difficulties in comparing testing data, a huge problem remains: Scott was using March 12 figures to describe the situation on April 2 - the day of his interview. Conditions change fast with the coronavirus. The U.S. had conducted 10,262 tests through March 12, according to Tracking Project estimates. By April 2, it was up to 1.3 million. On the day Scott made his statement, Vox put a note on its three-week-old article saying there had been "" significant developments in the coronavirus pandemic since this story was last updated, and details may no longer apply."" As of April 13, the project estimated the U.S. had run 2.9 million tests. Vox no longer ranks the U.S. last in per capita testing. On April 13, it placed the U.S. fifth among nine nations: Italy, Germany, Canada, South Korea, Netherlands, U.K., France and Taiwan. Our ruling Scott said on April 2, ""If you line up all the countries that have done (Covid-19) testing on a per capita basis, we’re at the bottom of the list."" His statement was based on an early-March estimate by Vox that was outdated when Scott spoke. U.S. testing had expanded 130-fold by April 2, and has doubled again in the last two weeks. Vox now estimates the U.S. is somewhere near the middle. Other, more expansive research notes that nations differ in how they collect data, preventing ""meaningful comparisons."" There’s widespread agreement the U.S. got off to a slow start on testing and, despite gains, far greater testing is still essential. But the burden falls on Scott to prove his claim that the U.S. was last per capita in early April, and his evidence doesn’t stand up. So,"
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36108
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"Infants look away from people after they smile because they are ""overwhelmed with joy"" and ""have to regulate"" by looking somewhere else."
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Do Smiling Babies Have to Look Away from People Because They’re ‘Overwhelmed with Joy’?
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unproven
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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An October 10 2019 post to Reddit’s r/wholesomememes featured an uplifting claim by way of screenshot, claiming that when babies first start “emoting,” they have to look away after a few seconds of smiling:Overwhelming joy! from wholesomememesA tweet screenshot bore no date, but the username was visible and attached to Washington Post writer Elizabeth Bruenig. We were unable to find the tweet by the time the screenshot made it to Reddit, but it was accessible via the Internet Archive:apparently when babies first start emoting, they sometimes turn away in the middle of smiling at you because they’re so overwhelmed by joy they can’t handle all the emotion and have to regulate by looking somewhere elseRemaining retweets indicated the tweet was live for at least a day:😭😭😭 https://t.co/j5bMqlZ7im— Rebecca Goodman (@RebeccaHGoodman) September 29, 2019Comments on the September 28 2019 tweet preserved in archived versions largely responded in the manner Reddit users did, expressing their own joy at such a delightful fact. But a handful expressed some skepticism about the claim, or requested a citation:cute if true, but how on Earth do they know *that’s* why they look away, rather than just, like, babies have mushbrainsI’d love to see the research that led to that conclusion.Our attempts to locate a citation led to a similarly-worded claim on the site JustTheFactsBaby.com. In an undated post titled “Why Babies Smile,” the cite claimed:By [the age of] four to six months, your baby will start to smile, then look away. “Babies are learning to regulate emotions and the joy may be too intense,” says Dr. [Daniel] Messinger. Let her look away, then reengage once she returns her smile to you.JustTheFactsBaby.com did not provide a source for the claim other than Messinger (although it did include a link to “fashionable baby headbands.”) A subsequent related entry stated:Dr. Daniel Messinger is an associate professor of psychology and pediatrics at the University of Miami. He has written numerous research papers on the topic of infant smiling.Messinger was listed as a co-author of a study on infant smiling in September 2015, but the press release did not include the “overwhelmed with joy” claim, nor did it offer anything more of the study. Messinger was also listed as co-author of a 2007 study [PDF] published by Advances in Child Development and Behavior, involving “the results of studies of infant perception, infant smile production, observers’ ratings of those smiles, and the smiling of nonhuman primates.”That research cited earlier research into infant smiles and their underlying emotions, citing prior studies that observed infant behavior when smiling, as well as theoretical explanations for the observed behavior:[Infants] tend to gaze at mother’s face, smile, gaze away, and then end the smile. Such gaze aversions — at least among 5-month-olds playing peekaboo — tend to occur during higher intensity smiles and smiles of longer durations (Stifter & Moyer, 1991). It is suggestive that toward 6 months of age infants become especially likely to control their own positive emotion by gazing away from mother during the course of a smile. This is also the period in which infants become adept at using intense open-mouth smiles with eye constriction to participate in highly arousing social situations. Infants are simultaneously becoming more actively positive during interactions and becoming more active at regulating the conditions under which they will become positive engaged (Messinger et al., 2001; Yale et al., 2003). […]Although infants’ goals are relatively inchoate, Carver’s (2001, 2003) proposal may be relevant to infant’s proclivity to gaze away from the parent’s face during a smile. Infants are learning to expect peaks and declines in arousal associated with interactive smiling. The infant’s growing tendency to gaze away from the parent’s face during a smile may index the infant’s developing comprehension that an affective climax has been reached; that is, in the most primitive sense, a goal has been achieved. In this sense the infant’s smiling behavior may index the infant’s affective and cognitive comprehension of their interface with the environment at a particular moment (Fogel, Bosma, & Kunnen, 2001).An abstract for the same study said that infants regulated emotion by “gazing away” from those people at whom they smiled:Smiling may simultaneously index a desire to interact and the dissipation of arousal associated with that interaction. Infants’ capacity to become actively and vigorously caught up in emotionally positive smile-mediated interaction is linked to their ability to regulate that emotion by gazing away from their interactive partners. Ultimately, this attentional control paves the way for infant’s tendency to use smiles to initiate early referential communication with a partner. These anticipatory smiles may provide a developmental bridge between early emotionally positive dyadic responsivity and later patterns of social competence.Messinger was also quoted in a November 2015 Wall Street Journal article about the 2015 study and infant smiling behaviors in general. The paper reported:Yet there are clear signs that, between six weeks and six months, baby smiles become increasingly responsive to social cues. They smile less when they are alone and more when with people, particularly familiar people who also are smiling. Patterns of gazing and smiling become more coordinated.In the classic “still face” experiment, babies 3 months old and older will become distressed if an adult who has been smiling at them suddenly stops and becomes unresponsive. And at about the same age, babies who are gazing and smiling at a parent will look away on their own while still smiling. Scientists think that is a sign that they are starting to regulate their own emotions and need to take a break from the intensity of the one-on-one interaction.The Wall Street Journal referenced a “classic ‘still face’ experiment,” linking to a 2008/2009 Developmental Review meta-analysis, “The many faces of the Still-Face Paradigm.” In that research, authors used the findings of a 1978 experiment during which the mothers of infants maintained a “still face,” not providing facial cues to infants so that the babies’ reactions could be measured. Building on those findings in the meta-analysis, researchers described various instances in which infants responded to “mismatched” facial cues and other stimuli:Infants’ affective displays reflect their appraisal of the interaction, and function as powerful communicative messages to the adult partner. Reciprocity is not always achieved however. In fact, imperfect interaction and mismatching of communication is the rule rather than the exception in mother–infant interactions. This chain of events is applicable to ‘normal’ mismatches that happen regularly in interaction, but in the still-face episode of the SFP [The Still-Face Paradigm], the mismatch is more prolonged, and more intense. Infants’ attempts to repair the mismatch by showing negative affect as a message to the adult partner will obviously fail as long as the still-face episode persists. This failure of the infants’ interactive regulatory capacities may lead to self-regulation and coping strategies such as gazing away to avoid the stressful stimulus, or self-soothing behavior (e.g., hand-to-mouth actions).In that particular context, it seemed the infants’ responsive gazing away pertained specifically to the introduction of “mismatch” stimuli, i.e., parental “still face” behavior upending the infants’ understanding of a progression of facial cues. The meta-analysis referenced 1982 research into infant stimulation thresholds, smiling, and affection, as part of a broader feedback loop between smiling infants and various adults:Fogel (1982) hypothesized an affective tolerance model, based on the work of Solomon (1980). Fogel’s model describes how infants become increasingly more capable of tolerating high-intensity stimulation without withdrawing from the interaction. Infants develop skills to regulate the arousal caused by face-to-face interaction, as evidenced by so-called tension-release cycles as proposed by Sroufe and Waters (1976). These cycles are characterized by initial attentive behavior accompanied by increased tension as shown by increases in heart rate, followed by a release of tension in the form of smiling or laughter (Brazelton, Koslowski, Main, Lewis, & Rosenblum, 1974; Sroufe & Waters, 1976). The smile seems to function as a regulator of arousal, and as a communicative signal toward the adult partner who can infer that the infant is at an optimal level of arousal. Using these signals, a sensitive and responsive adult can facilitate regulation, which will increase the infant’s capacity to tolerate affective arousal. […]When failing to [optimally self-regulate emotions] during the still-face episode, the infant is left to regulate its own emotions, which is reflected in increases in negative affect and gaze aversion as the infant has only a limited array of regulatory capacities.We were unable to clarify from that specific study that the claim about infants becoming “overwhelmed with joy” was supported by it. The context in which it appeared was typically as a response in infants for SFP behaviors resulting in “negative affect and attempts to ‘escape’ by gaze aversion.”Research in 2012 applying the SFP to slightly older children attempted to apply existing findings to older children, and reported:Seventy mothers and children were videotaped in the Toddler Still-Face paradigm (T-SF), an age appropriate adaptation of the Face-to-Face Still-Face paradigm. Similar to their younger counterparts, 2½ year-olds displayed the traditional “still-face effect,” including an increase in negative affect, gaze aversion, and a wide array of behaviors indicative of proximity seeking to the mother, solicitation of her attention, and avoidance and a “reunion effect,” characterized by a carryover of negative affect and avoidance behavior (e.g., moving away from the mother) from the still-face episode to the reunion play episode.Messinger was also quoted in a 2013 article published by the National Science Foundation (NSF) on the overall meaning of infant smiles at varying stages of development:In an experiment at the University of Miami’s Early Play and Development Lab, babies are secured in a special seat, so they can get a good view of mom or dad, and move both their arms and legs. Babies are tested at four months, and again at one year.Several video cameras capture this short, structured playtime.“They play. Then, after two minutes, the mom will stop responding to the baby. We want to see what the baby does. How the baby either chooses to try to re-engage the mom, or maybe uses that time to look away and disengage, and then, start playing again,” explains Messinger.The videos are analyzed with a software program that precisely measures the facial movements of both the baby and the mom … The key, he adds, is to use those measurements to better understand how interaction occurs, and how babies learn early social rules.“One of the things we found is that when a baby looks away from the parent, it just means they are interested in other things, it doesn’t mean they are less interested in the parent. It just means they need to look around and see what else is going on,” says Messinger.Messinger — who credited for the original explanation about baby smiles on JustTheFactsBaby.com — provided an alternative hypothesis for “gaze aversion” in that reporting, indicating that babies might “need to look around and see what else is going on.” A 2015 Wall Street Journal article suggested babies might avert their gazes to “take a break from the intensity of the one-on-one interaction,” similar to the original tweet’s claim. But the linked research applied primarily to multiple observed experiments, in which parents deliberately nullified their facial reactions to gauge infant responses to that modulated behavior.A tweet claimed that infants “sometimes turn away in the middle of smiling at you because they’re so overwhelmed by joy they can’t handle all the emotion and have to regulate by looking somewhere else.” We were not able to verify that based on research co-authored by the researcher cited in the article from which the claim was likely sourced, as the research seemed to be more dynamic than that particular claim hinted. And that same researcher also said that infants sometimes look away out of curiosity, not disinterest. However, the claim was not made up out of thin air, either.nknown.
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27820
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Deputy Scott Wood was shot by black convenience store robbers, and the incident was not widely reported in the national media.
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Deputy Scott Wood was shot when three black men attempted to rob a convenience store in March 2015.
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true
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Crime
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Scott Wood, white Kansas City Deputy, shot 7x by 3 black men & no mention made of race. Had roles been reversed? PLEASE SHARE! This is deputy Scott Wood of the Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Office (Kansas City, Kansas). Deputy Wood had finished his shift and stopped at a 7-Eleven before going home. While at the counter, Deputy Wood was attacked from behind by three armed black men. They shot Deputy Wood seven times and robbed him and the store. There is no national media coverage of this brutal attack on an unsuspecting person. There is no news show crying outrage over this or even mentioning it. I think people should know how dangerous it is for Police and how unfair they are treated by the news to boost ratings and sell ads. Deputy Wood is still alive and fighting for his life in stable but critical condition. He is a better man than the three that attacked him. Wishing him a speedy recovery. A fundraising page has been created by the WyCo Sheriff’s office to help the Wood family… In the very early morning hours of 4 March 2015, off-duty Wyandotte County, Kansas Deputy Scott Wood was shot at a local 7-11 store. On 5 March 2015, WDAF-TV in Kansas City reported that Deputy Wood called in the crime (then in-progress) and subsequently reported he sustained gunshot wounds before he was shot again in the face: Deputy Wood’s shift had just concluded at about 1 a.m. on Wednesday when he stopped by the 7-Eleven off of Shawnee Drive and I-635 when three men entered the store. Investigators say the men were believed to be involved in two other convenience store robberies and were planning to rob the 7-Eleven when they hit a clerk with a gun and shot the deputy. Deputy Wood fell to the ground, but was able to use a portable radio to call in “officer down” before he was shot once more in the face. Sheriff Ash said the suspects then robbed the store, robbed the deputy and fled the scene, sparking a manhunt. On 9 March 2015, the same station reported that three men in custody were under investigation in relation to the ambush that seriously injured Deputy Wood. In other articles, the suspects were described as “multiple persons of interest” in the incident during which Wood was shot: All three men, who before the robbery were already convicted felons, have been charged with some very serious crimes stemming from the incident, which police say took place the same night Wyandotte County Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Wood was shot multiple times, critically injuring him. Charles Bowser was first to face the judge in the courtroom. Next was Dyron King and then King’s cousin, Cecil Meggerson. Each man was charged with two counts of aggravated robbery, conspiracy and criminal possession of a firearm. Deputy Scott Wood’s shooting and recovery were reported extensively in the news media, although the coverage was primarily local in nature. According to the FBI’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted (LEOKA) tally, about 50,000 police officers are assaulted in the line of duty each year, with about 250 of them suffering injuries from assaults with firearms. Obviously all of these incidents involving the shooting of police, as unfortunate and tragic as they may be, don’t make the national news. In Deputy Wood’s case, there were no additional reported factors present that served to propel his case into the national sphere: the shooting was not fatal, the assault on him was not premeditated (he was coincidentally present when armed robbers entered a convenience store), and there was no indication that he was targeted due to his race. Thankfully, Deputy Wood was not killed in the assault and recovered from the brutal crime relatively speedily. By 13 March 2015 Wood (who suffered seven gunshot injuries) had made remarkable strides and was breathing and walking on his own, a factor which (sadly, some might reflect) made his shooting a somewhat less noteworthy story outside of Wyandotte County by news media standards: Another factor that may have played into less extensive news coverage is that Wood’s assailants had not been officially identified at the time the above-reproduced meme began to circulate, and no arrests had been made in the shooting. It wasn’t even clear if police had determined that the men described as persons of interest in early media reports were in fact connected with the crime. By April 2018, however, three men had been arrested, convicted, and sentenced for their part in the attempted killing of Deputy Wood: Charles Bowser was sentenced to life plus 447 months in prison on [20 April 2018], according to the Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office. Bowser, 21, was found guilty by a Wyandotte County jury [in May 2017] for attempting to kill Scott Wood in March 2015. The deputy was inside a Kansas City, Kan., convenience store when three armed robbers burst in. The two others involved, Cecil Meggerson, 36, and Dyron King, 25, were also convicted. They were sentenced to life in prison in 2016 and each received an additional 37 years for other convictions in the case. Wood testified at an earlier trial that he was in uniform when he stopped on his way home from work at a 7-Eleven on Shawnee Drive near Interstate 635. The deputy was talking to the store clerk and had his back to the door when three armed men burst in and forced him to the ground at gunpoint. Both Wood and the clerk were pistol-whipped. One of the gunmen took Wood’s handgun before they began firing shots at him. One bullet shattered his jaw. Another hit him in the shoulder, and five more struck him in the chest and abdomen. “When I look into the mirror at my scars and wounds, I am reminded of what these men tried to take away from me,” Wood said in his statement. “Not only did they try to take my life away from me, they also tried to take away from me the chance to spend one more day with my wife and son.”
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8793
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Drug restores speech in Alzheimer's; experts worry.
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Alzheimer’s patients given a popular rheumatoid arthritis drug showed seemingly dramatic improvements in a small study, but some doctors worried that the early findings will raise premature hopes in patients and their families.
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true
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Science News
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File photo shows a young carer holding the hands of an elderly woman in a residential home for the elderly in Planegg near Munich June 19, 2007. REUTERS/Michaela Rehle The study, reported on Sunday in the journal BioMed Central BMC Neurology, involved 12 patients who had greatly improved language recall shortly after treatment with Enbrel, or etanercept, an anti-inflammatory drug co-marketed by Amgen and Wyeth. “We often see verbal effects within a few minutes of the first dose,” said Dr. Edward Tobinick, director of the Institute for Neurological Research, a private medical group inc., in Los Angeles, who led the study. Tobinick invented and holds several patents on a special method of injecting the drug into the neck. He said he charges anywhere between $10,000 and $40,000 per patient for the treatments. In January, Tobinick’s report on a single patient, and release of a striking video, drew the attention of the Alzheimer’s Association, which released a statement expressing concern. “People with Alzheimer’s and their families may place undue value on this new finding based on the dramatic language used in its description and the apparent immediate effect,” the group said. “We need to see work in other laboratories by scientists without financial interest in the product,” it added. Dr. Sam Gandy, chairman of the Alzheimer’s Association’s medical and science council, said the latest study, done at Tobinick’s clinic, does not offer that independent confirmation. “It’s still not a proper trial,” Gandy said. Tobinick believes the drug may work in the brain by blocking an excess of tumor necrosis factor-alpha or TNF-alpha, which may affect communication in the brain. The study looked at language difficulties, such as in finding words, in 12 patients with mild-to-severe Alzheimer’s disease who were administered etanercept weekly for six months. “There was a significant improvement in the majority of the verbal measures that were studied. The remainder showed a tendency toward improvement, which was not significant,” Tobinick said in a telephone interview. He said the study provides evidence that “excess TNF, in the Alzheimer brain, may offer a new way to address this language dysfunction.” Tobinick acknowledged the study is limited because people knew they were getting the drug. Alzheimer’s patients in such open-label studies often show improvement. “Placebo effect is an enormous problem in open-label studies,” said Dr. Scott Turner, incoming director of the Memory Disorders Program at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington. Turner said the true test must come from a more scientifically rigorous double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized clinical trial. In such studies, patients receive either a dummy treatment or an active agent, and neither the doctor nor the patient knows which. Amgen has also expressed concern about the research, claiming there has been insufficient evidence so far. “This off-label, unapproved treatment, administered by Dr. Edward Tobinick, is not supported nor endorsed by Amgen,” the company said in April on its Web site. A video showing one woman's response to the drug in a sister study can be found at : here
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9524
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Never Too Old to Be an Organ Donor
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This Well blog post is about a study that looked at the medical records from 647 kidney transplants, analyzed by the age of donors to try to determine if age made the transplants less successful. Results showed that the five-year survival rate for recipients was not changed much by the age of the donor, however, donors over 80 years of age had kidneys that could not be used–and had to be discarded–almost half the time. The post is a quick summary, and left out important details: What are the risks of using kidneys from older donors? What are the rules regarding the age of donors in the U.S.? We also found the headline (“Never too old to be a organ donor”) and some of the story framing off the mark by overgeneralizing the findings. Kidney failure and the shortage of donors is staggering. The Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network estimates about 100,000 people are waiting for a kidney in the United States this year. Donors can be recently deceased or living. This story raises hopes by suggesting older deceased donors may not need to be excluded on the basis of age. Many people will want to know how these findings will impact kidney availability in the U.S., if at all. The New York Times’s blog post left out that important information.
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false
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kidney donation
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The story doesn’t discuss costs. Couldn’t the transplant surgery be more expensive for older donors due to increased rate of complications? And just in general, cost is almost always an issue with surgery, and this needed at least a brief mention. The story quantifies benefits here: In an average follow-up of five years, they found that the rate of unusable donor kidneys and the long-term outcomes of recipients varied little among the first three age groups — around 18 percent of the organs had to be discarded, and the five-year survival was about 88 percent. With donors over 80, survival outcomes were similar, but the discard rate increased sharply to 48 percent. However, the story appears to make a jump in correlation about the benefits that isn’t supported by its own facts. At the beginning the story makes this claim: “A new study has found a kidney transplanted from a deceased 79-year-old can be as effective as one from a person 30 years younger.” But the researchers never compared a 79-year-old kidney to a 49-year-old kidney in similar recipients — which is what many readers may assume the story is talking about. The story later says the researchers only transplanted kidneys at most seven years older than the recipient. Kidney transplants vary in success rates according to many factors. There is no mention of harms that might come to a patient from receiving a kidney from a much older deceased donor. Or the harms that an older donor might face compared with a younger donor. This very brief blog post does not give us enough information to evaluate the quality of evidence. There is no disease mongering. The post included no independent sources. There is a complicated measuring of risk and benefit for patients facing kidney transplants. Transplants are usually better than dialysis for patients, but transplants carry their own risks of infection, just to give one example. This post did not include any context about the risk equation and how it might be changed if more organs from older donors were available. Given that this study ran in a U.S. publication, we wanted to know what the guiding rules are on age of donors, in case they differ from what is standard in Italy. If older donors can donate in the U.S. already, then this study isn’t very newsworthy, for example. We found other research on the same topic, so it’s not clear to us what’s new about this latest study. The post does not appear to rely solely on the news release (because it has unique quotes), but it didn’t provide anything beyond what the news release stated.
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3977
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Federal shutdown affected probe into unique bovine TB case.
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The longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history affected an investigation into a strain of bovine tuberculosis in a North Dakota beef cattle herd, say state officials who have so far have shouldered most of the probe into the strain similar to cases in Mexican cattle and not previously seen in the U.S.
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true
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Health, Animal health, North Dakota
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Chances are low the situation will imperil other cattle herds or people, particularly since the herd in southeastern North Dakota’s Sargent County has been quarantined. But it could delay solving the mystery of how a strain of bovine TB similar to cases associated with cattle south of the U.S. border surfaced in cows near the northern border. “We are the workforce right now in the field, and we have limited staff,” State Veterinarian Susan Keller said Wednesday of the North Dakota Agriculture Department’s Animal Health Division, which has only a handful of workers. She said federal officials wanted to help but couldn’t because of the shutdown tied to a dispute over funding a southern border wall. President Donald Trump and congressional leaders on Friday struck a short-term deal to reopen the government for three weeks, ending a record, 35-day partial shutdown. Two cows from the Sargent County herd tested positive for bovine TB at slaughter plants in South Dakota and Minnesota, and the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Iowa confirmed the diagnosis late last year. The herd was then tested, and five more cows were confirmed to have the infectious disease that can be passed between cattle and people. The source is still unknown. The ranchers have not bought any cattle from Mexico, have no ties to the country and have no workers from south of the border, according to Keller. “It’s a very slow-growing organism. It could have been there (in the herd) for quite a while. We don’t know when it was introduced or where it came from,” she said. “Maybe it’s a strain that has been here (U.S.) for a while but it’s mutated.” Bovine TB is a public health concern worldwide, though the risk to people in developed countries is low given advances in prevention and control measures such as testing, culling of diseased animals and pasteurizing of milk, according to the National Institutes of Health. North Dakota is not alone in recently identifying a new strain of bovine TB — officials in Canada are investigating cattle infections in the province of British Columbia that involve a strain not previously documented in that country, according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. “You can have mutations of TB, similar to influenza,” Keller said, stressing that a new strain is not comparable to a new disease — it doesn’t change measures in place to guard against bovine TB. The new case is still a concern to ranchers, according to Julie Ellingson, executive vice president of the North Dakota Stockmen’s Association. “The livestock industry is concerned about any and all cases of TB, no matter what the strain,” she said. “We have worked hard to maintain a healthy herd in our state, and identifying and addressing the situation as quickly as possible is our highest priority.” Responses to such animal disease cases are a cooperative effort of state and federal agencies, particularly the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and its Veterinary Services and Wildlife Services components. North Dakota’s Animal Health Division has received only limited help so far from those agencies and in particular is waiting on information that will help determine whether the entire herd of about 100 animals is slaughtered or whether the owners can continue managing the rest of the herd with ongoing testing. Officials also are working to determine where all of the animals in the herd originated, and to ensure that none ended up in other herds over the past five years. Keller said the likelihood of that is remote given that the ranchers raise cattle for beef, not to provide seed stock to other ranchers. It wasn’t clear how many APHIS officials have been available to work on the case. Agency spokeswoman Lyndsay Cole, who was herself furloughed but on call, said only that the agency “is assisting with diagnostic testing” and would provide further help “once the lapse in appropriations is over.” The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, which represents more than 175,000 cattle ranchers and feeders around the country, did not directly comment on the federal shutdown’s impact on the North Dakota investigation. Chief Veterinarian Kathy Simmons in a statement to The Associated Press expressed confidence that Keller and other North Dakota officials working in conjunction with federal officials “can manage a successful disease response.” Keller said the investigation could stretch out for several months, but she hopes to be able to say definitively by early summer that officials have taken all necessary actions to ensure no spread of the disease. “Neighbors, people in the community, neighboring states, they want to know — do you have things tied up?” she said. ___ Follow Blake Nicholson on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/NicholsonBlake
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1738
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Global population living six years longer than in 1990: study.
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Global life expectancy has risen by more than six years since 1990 thanks to falling death rates from cancer and heart disease in rich countries and better survival in poor countries from diarrhea, tuberculosis and malaria.
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true
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Health News
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In an analysis from the 2013 Global Burden of Disease (GBD) study, health researchers said, however, that while life expectancy is rising almost everywhere in the world, one notable exception is southern sub-Saharan Africa, where deaths from HIV/AIDS have erased some five years of life expectancy since 1990. “The progress we are seeing against a variety of illnesses and injuries is good — even remarkable — but we can and must do even better,” said Christopher Murray, a professor of global health at the University of Washington in the United States, who led the study. It was published in The Lancet medical journal. Murray said a huge increase in collective action and funding given to potentially deadly infectious diseases such as diarrhea, measles, tuberculosis, HIV and malaria has had a real impact, reducing death rates and extending life expectancy. But he said some major chronic diseases have been neglected and are rising in importance as threats to life, particularly drug disorders, liver cirrhosis, diabetes and kidney disease. The GBD 2013 gives the most comprehensive and up-to-date estimates of the number of yearly deaths from 240 different causes in 188 countries over 23 years — from 1990 to 2013. Murray’s team’s latest analysis found some poorer countries have made exceptional gains in life expectancy over that time period, with people in Nepal, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Niger, Maldives, East Timor and Iran now living on average 12 years longer. Yet despite dramatic drops in child deaths over the last 23 years, malaria, diarrhea and respiratory infections such as pneumonia are still in the top five global causes of death in children under five, killing almost two million children between the ages of one month and 59 months every year. Another mixed success is that, while worldwide deaths from HIV/AIDS have fallen every year since their peak in 2005, HIV/AIDS is still the greatest cause of premature death in 20 out of 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
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36608
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Images show a calcified fetus found in the cervix of an 80-year-old woman after three decades.
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Did a Medical Scan of an 80-Year-Old Woman Reveal a Calcified Fetus?
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mixture
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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On December 11, 2018, a Facebook user shared the following image and caption purportedly showing a genuine calcified fetus:80 year old lady [emoji], went to have a cat-scan, and they found a fetus that’s been in her cervix for 30 yearsThe referenced phenomenon (a calcified fetus or lithopedion) is real, but many readers noted that the images did not depict a cervix, the narrow two to three centimeters-long opening to the uterus.Another questionable aspect of the quoted portion were the ages provided. The original Facebook poster claimed that the images depicted the pelvic area of an 80-year-old woman and that the calcified fetus had been there for 30 years. Although it’s not impossible for a woman to become pregnant at the age of 50, it is highly unusual.The confluence of two highly atypical phenomena (advanced maternal age and fetal calcification) would be exponentially rare.We were unable to locate firm statistics on the exceptionally unusual latter condition, but a linked list described several documented instances:According to one report there are only 300 known cases of lithopedia in the world, recorded in over 400 years of medical literature. While the chance of abdominal pregnancy is one in 11,000 pregnancies, only between 1.5 and 1.8% of these abdominal pregnancies may develop into lithopedia.Two days prior on Reddit, u/Derpazor1 shared the same quadrant of photographs to r/interestingasfuck.A different description appeared in that post: “CT scans of a 30-year old calcified fetus inside the uterus of a 73-year old woman.”In a comment, the original poster added that the purported subject was from Algeria, but they did not share any additional information about the source of the images.The same image was shared on December 10, 2018 to r/WTF, but it appeared to be a repost and included no further information. Shares to Instagram on December 9, 2018 received considerable traction, but it appeared to reiterate the original Reddit post (sometimes with additional images attached). Reverse image searches did not shed much additional light on the source of the images, save for their age.TinEye showed that the photograph was shared as early as October 2016 (the month and year visible on the first radiograph), and it appeared on Twitter in January 2017:doctors found a calcified fetus of 30 years old in the uterus of a woman aged 70 years old pic.twitter.com/7L3VYPI81w — The Bridge 2.0 (@TheBridgeKAU) January 26, 2017Otherwise, attempts to specifically verify the image circulating on Facebook and Reddit in December 2018 largely led to a dead end.It should be noted that the phenomenon is well documented in medical literature, first observed as early as 1582. Cases were reported in March and April 2014, and again in June/July 2016. All three cases appear to have occurred outside the United States:Lithopedion is a rare phenomenon resulting from an extra-uterine pregnancy that advances to fetal demise and calcification and there are less than 300 cases reported in 400 years of medical literature. This rare condition was first described by a surgeon of the Arabic era of medicine in the 10th century. This case report is a 26-year-old, multiparous woman who had presented a lower abdominal pain for long time and she had never attended in pre-natal clinic. She came to our hos-pital with pain and tumoral mass in infra-umbilical area and then we referred to radiology center, after that ultrasound examination of radiology center demonstrated an extra-uterine abdominal 30-week pregnancy measuring the femoral length, this for first diagnosis of radiology center. After laparotomy was performed we met an oval shaped mass that attached the omentum in peritoneal cavity and this mass was a fetus retention of 5 years without calcified ovular membranes but the fetus was calcified so this type is called lithopedion that describes according to the Kuechen-meister classification in 1881. She made good post-operative recovery after extraction [sic] the stone baby.Although there is no question the medical condition known as a lithopedion or calcified fetus is real and documented, albeit rare, the legitimacy and source of the viral images above remains undetermined. Further, some of its descriptors were medically invalid. Several backstories and ages of the woman and purported fetus were provided in myriad social media appearances, but none seemed to be substantiated with identifying information or a verifiable point of origin.It appears that this particular image was first published online in October 2016, but the possibility remains that these specific images (tagged as “#medicalart” in early versions) existed for illustrative rather than diagnostic purposes.Because the phenomenon is real but the image is uncertain.
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8025
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Iran to use 20% of state budget to fight coronavirus.
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Iran is to allocate 20% of its annual state budget to fighting the coronavirus outbreak in the country, one of the worst-hit in the world, President Hassan Rouhani said on Saturday.
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true
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Health News
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Iran’s death toll from coronavirus rose to 2,517 on Saturday, with 139 fatalities in the past 24 hours, as cases rose 3,076 to 35,408, Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour said on state television. “We are in difficult conditions, in conditions of sanctions but we have allocated 20% of our budget this year to corona, ... and this might be surprising for the world from a country under sanctions,” Rouhani said in comments broadcast on state TV. Shut out of international capital markets and facing a further hit to its finances with the collapse in oil prices coming on top of U.S. sanctions, Iran is struggling to shield its economy from the coronavirus pandemic. Rouhani reassured the public that the country had a strong healthcare system able to cope should there be a rapid progression of the disease. The state health insurance would cover 90% of coronavirus-linked costs of patients, he said. The budget allocation, amounting to about 1,000 trillion rials, would include grants and low-interest loans to those affected by COVID-19, Rouhani said. The allocated amount is worth some $6.3 billion at the rial’s free market exchange rate of about 160,000 rials per dollar. But the government may decide to allocate some of the funds at the official rate of 42,000 which is used to subsidize food and medicine On Thursday, Rouhani said the government was seeking approval to withdraw $1 billion from Iran’s sovereign wealth fund for the fight against coronavirus. Tapping the sovereign fund requires the agreement of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last say on all state matters. Tensions have risen between Iran and the United States since 2018, when U.S. President Donald Trump exited Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and reimposed sanctions that have crippled Iran’s economy. Iranian authorities, blaming U.S. sanctions for hampering Tehran’s efforts to curb the outbreak, have urged other countries and the United Nations to call on Washington to lift the sanctions. Washington has rejected easing the sanctions.
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5235
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California voters may be asked to steer homeless to services.
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California voters could decide next year whether to create new county courts to steer homeless people to mental health and drug addiction treatment programs.
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true
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Mental health, Addiction treatment, Health, General News, California, Courts, Drug addiction
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Former Assemblyman Mike Gatto, a Democrat, proposed a ballot measure on Thursday aimed at providing services to people who commit crimes like defecating in public or using drugs. “When someone breaks the law, it should be enforced. However, certain criminal acts should be treated not as something meriting harsh punishment, but as a ‘cry for help,’” the introductory text to his proposed ballot measure reads. The text still needs approval from the state for Gatto to start gathering signatures, and it would need signatures of roughly 620,000 Californians to make it onto the ballot. As of now, Gatto has no large donors willing to bankroll a signature collection campaign, but he hopes to attract some. His proposal comes as California is in the throes of a worsening homeless crisis, with a growing number of people living on the streets in cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles, where Gatto is from. But it met quick criticism from some, who argued it would take away power from counties to decide how best to serve people and would effectively institutionalize people. “The initiative is an embarrassing attempt to make California more visually appealing to those who have no interest or knowledge in addressing the root causes of what is happening to people in our state and country,” the Western Center on Law and Poverty, a nonprofit legal organization, wrote in a statement. Gatto’s proposed measure would require every county with more than 100,000 people to set up a specialized court that can steer people to services. Anyone arrested for committing crimes ranging from indecent exposure to defecating on public transit could be sent through the court if their behavior is determined to be a result of economic hardship, mental health or drug addiction. The courts would then help people access housing, counseling and treatment or mental health services and prescription drug help. Gatto said he views the measure as primarily targeting people who are suffering from mental illness rather than people who are on the streets for other reasons, like economic hardship. He’s proposing taking funding from the “millionaire’s tax” that Californians approved in 2004, which taxes income of more than $1 million at 1%, sending the money toward mental health programs. Twenty percent of that money would go to the county courts under his proposal. The state has faced criticism in part for being slow to deploy money under the Mental Health Services Act, which brings in well over $1 billion annually. The state auditor faulted a commission overseeing the money for inadequately evaluating the effectiveness of county programs. Many California police officers are struggling to enforce laws affecting people living on the streets, he said. “A lot of these police forces are demoralized,” he said. “They want to do something about the problem but it’s a matter of giving them the resources and the place to put those individuals.” Eduardo Vega, a former commissioner on the oversight body, said the idea of diverting homeless people away from the criminal justice system is a good one. “It’s not a crime to be homeless, and it’s not a crime to have a mental health condition,” he said. But he said spending money from the “millionaire’s tax” on county court systems might conflict with the law governing how it can be used. California’s 58 counties are the “front line” providers for mental health services, said Graham Knaus, executive director of the California Association of Counties. The organization is still reviewing and has not taken a position on the proposed ballot measure, but he said counties already work closely with the state and local government to provide services to homeless people with mental health needs. Jonathan Sherin, director of Los Angeles County’s Department of Mental Health, offered a blunter assessment, saying counties need more money, not new requirements on how to spend what they already have. “Tell us the outcomes you want us to achieve with the money and get out of our way or facilitate our success,” he said. “Do not tell us what to do with the money because you’re not down here trying to get it done.”
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23637
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There's no negative advertising in my campaign at all.
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Negative campaigning? Not me, says Bill McCollum
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false
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Elections, Florida, Bill McCollum,
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"Bill McCollum tried to put his tougher-than-expected Republican primary for governor into perspective during a discussion with reporters in Tallahassee on July 29, 2010. Here's the upshot: Rick Scott has spent millions of dollars crafting a negative lie-filled television campaign that has distorted voters' impressions of both Scott and McCollum, and voters don't yet have the full story. Asked what he needs to do to turn his campaign around ahead of the Aug. 24 primary, McCollum told reporters, ""I'm simply going to be telling the truth about myself. This man's been telling lies on television with millions of dollars for weeks now. And I'm going to get an opportunity to finally spend my own money where I talk about the governor's race."" Later, when reporters suggested that McCollum hasn't exactly been Mr. Clean Campaigner himself, the candidate bristled. ""Well, look, there's no negative advertising in my campaign at all,"" McCollum said. ""Some of the outside groups have been running advertising that are pointing out the truth about Mr. Scott and that's not negative."" No negative advertising at all? As slightly more than casual observers in the governor's race, we found McCollum's statement puzzling. To us, the Scott-McCollum primary duel has been filled with plenty of vitriol -- on both sides -- for the better part of three months. We decided to put our recollection to the test. Let's go to the tapes. First, we need to mention that McCollum's initial TV ad was plenty nice. It features the endorsement of former Gov. Jeb Bush and highlights parts of McCollum's record as attorney general and his 500,000 jobs plan. The ad, you can see it here, includes the traditional images of McCollum speaking with groups of voters and then walking and seemingly giving orders or instructions to worker-type folks. McCollum's second TV ad directly takes on Scott, a former health care CEO who is self-financing his tea party-inspired campaign. The ad starts by playing a soundbite from Scott's own ads. Then, McCollum jumps in. ""Rick Scott, let's get real. While your hospitals were profiting from abortions, I voted 100 percent pro-life. ""You cashed in helping illegals send American dollars to Mexico. I led the conservative fight to secure our borders and against amnesty. ""And while you pocketed $300 million by ripping off taxpayers, as attorney general, I recovered record millions from Medicaid fraud. ""You put profit over principle, and that's wrong."" But it's McCollum's next TV ad that comes with all the hallmarks of negative campaigning -- namely grainy photos, haunted house-style music, text flying across the screen, and nary a mention of McCollum. The ad is labeled ""Innertube"" by the McCollum campaign. ""He's a special interest insider whose company defrauded Medicare and taxpayers while he pocketed $300 million,"" a narrator says. In another frame of the ad, a narrator says that while Scott has publicly opposed the federal stimulus, he's involved in companies who received stimulus funds. The claim comes with three images -- stacks of money kind of flopping in a breeze, a screen grab of President Barack Obama and then a screen grab of Scott. There's more: June 10: The St. Petersburg Times gets a hold of a McCollum mailer that is attempting to attack Scott on his abortion position. The front of the mailer has a woman slumped with her back against an industrial style wall, covering her face and pulling her hair. In big red letters that could give a voter the impression of blood, the mailer begins, ""It's a shame,"" then continues in white lettering, ""it's clear when it comes to pro-life issues, Rick Scott is ruthless -- his bottom line comes first."" The mailer continues on the back, with more blood-red type, by saying that Scott profited from abortions as CEO of the hospital chain, Columbia/HCA. June 27: A robocall from the McCollum campaign: ""Meet Mr. Slick -- Rick Scott. ""He's been busted twice this week by Florida newspapers for telling whoppers about Bill McCollum. According to the experts, Mr. Slick -- Rick Scott -- and his campaign have been lying about Bill McCollum's position on the issues of abortion and immigration. ""Between Obama and Crist, Floridians are tired of typical politicians willing to say anything to be elected. In August Republicans have a choice. Let's restore principled conservative leadership to Tallahassee. Vote for Bill McCollum."" June 28: A fundraising letter by McCollum calls Scott a ""disgraced"" and ""lousy manager"" whose hands are ""filthy"" regarding Medicaid fraud at Columbia/HCA. ""He's lucky he's not in prison,"" McCollum writes in the letter. ""And now with a shameless audacity that would make Bill Clinton blush, he says he wants to bring his business savvy and acumen to Tallahassee."" July 2: In a web ad, the McCollum campaign says Scott's excuse -- that he didn't know about the fraud at Columbia/HCA -- is ""like saying a mafia kingpin doesn't know about his henchmen's crimes."" As the narrator says the line, a floating head of Scott is given a black fedora and a trench coat. Then money starts flying through the frame of the ad. Then Scott starts to spin in circles and gets bigger. Then someone starts laughing. July 15: A new mailer, called the Two Faces of Rick Scott doesn't include any mention of McCollum. Instead, it claims that ""Rick Scott's company is partners with Playboy"" (which PolitiFact Florida rated) and that ""Rick Scott's company creates products for the gambling industry."" July 27: A new web ad attacks Scott's time at Columbia/HCA, saying he got a $310 million golden parachute ""courtesy of American taxpayers."" The $310 million represents Scott's severance package when he left Columbia/HCA. The ad is set to Rick Astley's song, ""Never Gonna Give You Up,"" which has become part of a Internet fad called ""Rickrolling,"" where people think they're watching one thing, then get bait-and-switched with Astley's song. We should note that these are all advertisements by McCollum's campaign, and not the 527 groups that are supporting his candidacy. That means McCollum has final approval over their content. And we should make clear that Scott's hands aren't clean himself (See here, here and here, for starters). Determining whether McCollum's ads are all truly ""negative,"" or rather what politicians like to call ""contrast"" ads, is something of a subjective exercise. Contrast ads typically say things like ""Candidate A is for this, well I'm for that."" Or, ""Candidate A says he'll be tough on crime, but he voted for this."" Leaving some room for leeway, we don't want to make a blanket statement that everything we found should be classified as negative. But calling your opponent Mr. Slick, or dressing him up in a fedora and trench coat meets a common-sense definition of negative advertising. So does an abortion mailer with blood-red type, or a TV ad that focuses entirely on your opponent, and uses gimmicks like spooky music and grainy photos. McCollum said ""there's no negative advertising in my campaign at all."" But there's plenty of evidence to the contrary, and a seasoned campaigner like McCollum has to know it."
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39681
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Baylor Fredrickson, a 7-year-old boy from Albany, N.Y., is looking for a bone marrow donor.
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Baylor Fredrickson Needs Bone Marrow Match.
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true
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Medical, Pleas
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The appeal is real, according to a May 7, 2014, ABC News article that said the family of Baylor Fredrickson, a 7-year-old bi-racial boy who is battling Leukemia, are seeking donors who need to be ethnically similar to him. The article said, “Baylor needs a bone marrow transplant and his sister Maddie is not a match. Their parents are Japanese and German, so a mixed race donor — Asian and Caucasian — would be ideal, but so far a worldwide search has come up empty.” Asian American Donor Program spokesperson Jonathan Leong told reporters that trying to encourage more Asian Americans to register on the national donor list has been his mission for more than two decades. At present, there are about 400,000 mixed race donors listed in the national registry. There are 10 Million donors listed on the national registry. There is special page for Baylor posted on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/amatchforbay Posted 06/04/14 Comments
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8340
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India will allow some exports of anti-malaria drug after Trump appeal.
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India will allow some exports of the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, the foreign ministry said on Tuesday, after U.S. President Donald Trump urged New Delhi to release supplies of the drug seen as a possible treatment for COVID-19.
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true
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Health News
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The Indian government had earlier put a hold on exports of hydroxychloroquine as well as on the pain reliever, paracetamol, saying it had to meet its internal demand. But Trump spoke to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the weekend seeking supplies and later hinted that India may face retaliation. “It has been decided that India would licence paracetamol and HCQ in appropriate quantities to all our neighbouring countries who are dependent on our capabilities,” said Indian foreign ministry spokesman, Anurag Srivastava. “We will also be supplying these essential drugs to some nations who have been particularly badly affected by the pandemic,” he said.
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3326
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Grin and bear it: Berlin panda gets CT scan for kidney exam.
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A Berlin zoo says a giant panda whose twin cubs have captured international attention has undergone a CT scan after veterinarians discovered one of his kidneys was smaller than the other.
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true
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Wildlife, Animals, Bears, CT scans, Health, Berlin, Giant pandas, Science, Europe, General News, International News
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The zoo said Tuesday that 9-year-old Jiao Qing was examined last week by experts at the city’s Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research after the discrepancy was picked up on an ultrasound. The 110-kilogram (243-pound) bear underwent the scan while under anesthesia. Doctors confirmed one kidney is smaller. The panda’s urine will be tested to determine whether the smaller kidney is functioning properly. Even if not, animals can live healthy lives with only one kidney. Jiao Qing is the father of twin cubs born Aug. 31. They are doing well.
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24635
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On a single-payer health care system.
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Obama statements on single-payer have changed a bit
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mixture
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National, Health Care, Barack Obama,
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"President Barack Obama has been prodding Congress to follow his principles on health care reform. He's advocating the same principles he supported during the campaign: Keeping employer-provided insurance in place, making it easier for people to shop for private insurance through a regulated exchange, expanding programs to help low-income people, and requiring large employers to offer insurance or contribute to a health care fund. But at almost every town hall he's held, though — five since March 26, 2009 — Obama has been asked a variation of this question: Why won't you support a single-payer health care system? ""It seems to me,"" said a questioner at one of the town halls, ""that we would take that same scenario and increase it outward for the entire country, and that is why I still support single-payer. And I know that at one point you did."" We've gotten similar messages from readers pointing us to a YouTube video as evidence that Obama once supported a single-payer plan, which the readers say indicates he has flip-flopped. For those who haven't followed the details of health care reform, a single-payer health care system would mean the government pays hospitals and doctors directly for every person's health care. It's not socialized medicine, like in the United Kingdom, where the government owns the hospitals and doctors are government employees. In essence, it's Medicare, the government-sponsored health care plan for seniors, with no age restrictions. The YouTube video , which isn't the greatest quality, shows Obama speaking in a meeting room to an audience that interrupts him from time to time with applause. A sign on the podium says ""AFL-CIO Civil, Human and Women's Rights Conference,"" and Obama sounds like he's giving a campaign speech: ""I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. And that's what Jim is talking about when he says everybody in, nobody out. A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we've got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House."" Reports on the Internet date this statement as June 30, 2003. (We'll address the alleged date more in just a bit.) That was a long time ago, but there's no statute of limitations for the Flip-O-Meter. The possibility that Obama may have flipped on the issue is relevant because Obama's conservative opponents sometimes claim that the public option — health insurance run by government that acts as insurer of last resort — is a stalking horse for a single-payer health care system. According to their theory, private insurance will wither in the face of a public option and Obama will get the single-payer system he secretly wants. We reviewed Obama's public remarks and statements, and found no statements that quite match that video. To give you the context, in 2003, Obama was a second-term state senator and beginning a campaign to win the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. The Democratic field was crowded — there were candidates both better known and better funded than Obama — and he was considered a long-shot at best. He ultimately won, but at the time, nobody was paying much attention to him. In other statements, Obama has spoken favorably of single-payer in concept, but always adding qualifiers. But the video strikes a very different tone from the remarks above. To find out more about the video, we tracked down some of the people who worked on health care reform with Obama when he was a state senator in Illinois. Dr. Quentin Young said he has followed Obama's career since Obama first decided to run for state senator in 1995; he lives in Obama's Hyde Park neighborhood in Chicago. A longtime activist in health care matters, Young left his medical practice a few years ago to volunteer full time for Physicians for a National Health Program, a Chicago-based advocacy group for single-payer. The group features Obama as part of its Web site. Young is an ardent supporter for single-payer, he said, because private insurers have an incentive to deprive people of care. ""They do what they're supposed to do, which is maximize revenue, so they can pay their investors and their executives. Their profits are breathtaking and obscene"" he said. ""And you wonder why the health system is so costly."" Single-payer makes sense, he said, and Obama used to believe that, too. ""It isn't as though this is an import from Europe or Canada. We have had 45 years of experience with Medicare,"" Young said. Young believes he was in the room when the YouTube video was made, and if he wasn't, it's only because he heard Obama speak often in favor of a single-payer plan during 2003 and earlier, he said. ""As I recall, this was his categorical response, that he thinks single-payer is the way to go,"" Young said. ""Over the years, there's been ever more edging on his part, to the point where what he has now is a multitiered program, but it ain't single-payer."" Young said the ""Jim"" Obama refers to in the video is Jim Duffett, director of the Illinois advocacy group Campaign for Better Health Care. It's true, Duffett said, when we contacted him. He's the ""Jim"" in the video and was at the AFL-CIO speech. He remembered it as having been in December 2003, but it's possible it was in June, he said. Yes, Obama did support single-payer, but Duffett said Obama also talked about the need to be strategic and work within political limitations, which he attributed to Obama's background as a community organizer. ""You have to figure out who's with you, who's against you, how you divide and conquer and move that football down the field,"" Duffett said. ""It just can't be the same little group of liberals who have health insurance and sit around the table and verbalize their great policy ideas. You have to have more people than that."" Duffett said if the entire video were aired, it would show Obama making statements about the need to be practical, much like his later public statements. ""I've never felt that his core principles for accessible, guaranteed health care for everyone were ever compromised. He's an organizer, and you have to figure out as strategically as you can how to win,"" he said. Duffett urges his supporters to strongly support the public option, the details of which are still in the works. If the public option gets passed and operates well, he said, perhaps it will lead to a single-payer system. ""We truly believe a public health option will work to lessen those negative fallacies of what the role of the government can be,"" he said. Young, on the other hand, calls the public option ""wimpy"" and part of ""a really deceitful set of reforms"" pushed by the health care industry to make sure they don't lose any of their profits, even if reform passes. ""I don't think they'll even let a watered-down public option go forward. And if it does, they'll use their political clout to weaken it,"" he said. Both Duffett and Young served on the Adequate Health Care Task Force, a 29-member state board created by the Illinois General Assembly in 2004 to research and recommend a health plan for the state. The legislation that created the board was the Health Care Justice Act, and its chief Senate sponsor was Barack Obama. The chair of the board was Dr. Wayne Lerner, who holds a doctorate in public health policy and a master's degree in hospital administration. Lerner is currently the president of Holy Cross Hospital in Chicago. We asked Lerner if Obama was a single-payer supporter when Obama was a state senator. Lerner said he didn't know what Obama's opinion was on the best health care model, though he definitely felt the task force had the freedom to explore all options. ""I never felt constrained one way or the other,"" Lerner said. ""You're not going to find a smoking gun in the act or the task force that there was support for a single-payer system from Obama."" Lerner said he, like many others in Illinois, noticed that Obama moved more to the center on several issues during his run for president, and Lerner was pleased by that. ""There has to be compromise if we're going to have health care reform,"" he said. But back to our ruling: Did Obama flip on support of single-payer, as the woman at the town hall implied? The video shows he plainly said, ""I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer universal health care program. ... A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I’d like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we've got to take back the White House, we've got to take back the Senate, and we've got to take back the House."" Well, Democrats now have the White House, and the Senate and the House. And Obama still doesn't support a single-payer system. We also have at least one eyewitness — the ""Jim"" mentioned in the video — who says the 54-second snippet shown on YouTube isn't a full accounting of Obama's more nuanced position. And we have a single-payer supporter, Dr. Quentin Young, who said Obama definitely was for single-payer and switched. So let's put this to the Flip-O-Meter. Opponents of Obama's health plan who watch the video see a stark flip (and possibly hints of what they believe he's wanted all along). Indeed, his comments seem quite clear that he supported a single-payer plan. But a full examination of his comments then and now reveals they have not changed that drastically. Yes, when he was trying to appeal to the Democratic base, he was a bigger supporter of the single-payer plan. But as we note, he still says that he'd prefer such a plan if he was starting from scratch. So what we see here is a candidate who in 2003 was trying to appeal to a liberal electorate and today has moderated his comments to appeal to a broader national audience. That's a in our view."
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20459
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"Because of the new health care law, ""2.5 million young adults now have coverage."
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Barack Obama film touts coverage for 2.5 million young Americans
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true
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National, Health Care, Message Machine 2012, Barack Obama,
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"The Road We’ve Traveled -- a 17-minute film from President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign -- touts his achievements in health care, saying that the Affordable Care Act has substantially expanded coverage for millions of Americans. We’re checking several claims from the film, including one that ""2.5 million young adults now have coverage."" The law requires insurers to provide dependent coverage for children up to age 26 on all policies. The goal is to prevent young adults from becoming uninsured when their parental or college plans would otherwise run out. This provision took effect in September 2010. We found support for the film’s statistic in a Health and Human Services analysis of data from the National Health Interview Survey, a longstanding survey conducted by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The survey found an 8.3 percentage point increase in insurance coverage for the 19-to-25 age group between the third quarter of 2010 and the second quarter of 2011 -- from 64.4 percent to 72.7 percent. The analysis then multiplied 8.3 percent by 29.7 million -- the number of people nationally in that age group -- to come up with the number 2.5 million. We’ll note that the original CDC study, using slightly different methodology, found a smaller number. Using annual and semi-annual figures rather than quarterly numbers, the number grew by 1.3 million. The HHS analysis makes the case that, for various technical reasons, its method is superior. We think both estimates are reasonable, and while the 2.5 million figure got more traction in the media, we also think it’s worth noting that the underlying federal study offers an alternative -- and smaller -- number. In essence, the film cherry-picks the higher number. So the statement is accurate but needs clarification, which fits our definition of ."
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8174
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Netanyahu threatens Israeli lockdown orders in coronavirus crisis.
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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday lockdown orders would be issued unless people stepped up compliance with guidelines urging them to stay at home to help halt the spread of the coronavirus in Israel.
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true
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Health News
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In a controversial new measure for containing infections, the Health Ministry said it alerted people who had been exposed to coronavirus carriers, based on information it gleaned through “technological means” - an apparent reference to cyber-surveillance on loan from the Shin Bet counter-terrorism agency. “Yesterday we gave clear instructions ... asking people to stay at home as much as they can and to go outside only when it’s vital, for food supplies and other such needs we specified,” Netanyahu said in an interview with Channel 12 TV. But, Netanyahu said, some members of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jewish community and “part of the minorities” - a reference to its 21-percent Arab minority - have not taken in the message. “If the message is not understood, then I will not hesitate to impose an order.” He gave no details on the extent of any lockdown and said he would address the issue further in public remarks on Thursday. A lockdown, enforced by police under government order, would put further strain on the Israeli economy, The government has already announced a 15 billion shekel ($4 billion) aid package to help businesses damaged by the crisis and boost health services. Confirmed coronavirus cases in Israel numbered 433. An earlier tally on Wednesday marked a 40% jump from Tuesday. In the interview, Netanyahu cited instances in which large weddings were held by the ultra-Orthodox community while some religious schools remained open despite a national closure of educational institutions. The Health Ministry has limited gatherings to no more than 10 people. Many businesses have reduced staff. Restaurants have shifted to delivery-only operations and public transport has been cut back. Supermarkets remain open. On Wednesday, Israel imposed a blanket ban on entry by foreigners. The Health Ministry said it sent text messages to around 400 people instructing them to self-isolate because they had been within infection distance of a coronavirus carrier. The Netanyahu government fast-tracked approval for access to Israelis’ communications data. Israel’s Supreme Court was due on Thursday to hear challenges to the Shin Bet’s involvement by civil liberties activists who fear it will open the door to domestic spying. Netanyahu said testing for coronavirus infection would be stepped up, with 3,000 tests administered daily, which will rise to 10,000 a day within two weeks. No fatalities from the coronavirus have been reported in Israel or in the Palestinian territories to date. But Moshe Bar Siman-Tov, the Israeli Health Ministry’s director-general, told Army Radio that he expected there would be “many hundreds of new patients each day, and possibly more”. In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Authority announced tighter restrictions on the movements of Palestinians, saying no one could enter or leave the biblical town of Bethlehem and its residents must remain indoors. Palestinian health officials have confirmed 44 cases of coronavirus infection. None has been detected in the Gaza Strip, where Israel and Egypt enforce tight border restrictions.
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9518
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Taking Fish Oil During Pregnancy Is Found to Lower Child’s Asthma Risk
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This New York Times story looks at a new study showing a reduced risk of asthma in the children of mothers who took high doses of fish oil during the last trimester of pregnancy. The story was strong–it did a lot of things well. We were especially pleased to see the Times use both absolute and relative risk numbers when conveying the measured benefit. We learn, for example, that fish oil reduced the risk of asthma 31 percent, the relative risk benefit. That is tempered by inclusion of the absolute risk reduction–16.9% of mothers who supplemented had children with asthma, compared to 23.7 of mothers taking a placebo. This helps readers keep expectations in check. The main shortcoming is the story’s failure to disclose relevant conflicts of interest. One of the researchers has a financial interest in the genetic testing he advocates in the story — and readers should be aware of that interest as they consider his recommendations. Other than avoidance of smoking by the mother, there is currently no known way to prevent asthma from developing in a child, and the World Health Organization defines its global health and economic impact as “severe.” Given how common this disease is, news coverage on this study will be highly read, making it vital to distill the results accurately. This story did so, and provided important context to let parents know that researchers aren’t yet ready to recommend high-dose fish oil supplementation to pregnant women.
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true
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fish oil,supplements
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The story did not discuss cost. There are dozens of fish oil supplements on the market and their cost varies widely. The story could have given some sense of the financial impact that this regimen would have. This was a strong point of the story, giving us both absolute and relative risk figures up front in the second paragraph: Among children whose mothers took fish-oil capsules, 16.9 percent had asthma by age 3, compared with 23.7 percent whose mothers were given placebos. The difference, nearly 7 percentage points, translates to a risk reduction of about 31 percent. Too often, even when stories do provide absolute risk figures, they highlight relative risks high up in the story and bury the absolute risk information far down in the text where it’s less likely to be read. The story explains that no adverse events were associated with the intervention. However, the harms assessed by the researchers were things like maternal or infant death, emergency caesarean delivery, and preterm birth. They didn’t assess (and the story didn’t mention) less serious harms like fishy taste, nausea, belching, and heartburn that are commonly associated with fish oil capsules and which might make this regimen burdensome for pregnant women. Moreover, it would have been useful if the story had also noted that the reason researchers want to replicate the results in a larger group of women is to make sure these very high doses of fish oil are indeed safe. The story gives us details of the study–how many women were enrolled, that there was a placebo group, and that the children were followed for seven years. An independent source also explains that the study was “well designed and carefully performed.” The story does not disease monger–childhood asthma is a common and often exasperating condition that many parents grapple with. The story clearly explains who funded the study, and includes an independent source. But it doesn’t note the extensive conflicts of interest reported by the lead author who’s quoted in the piece: Dr. Bisgaard reports receiving consulting fees from Chiesi Pharmaceuticals and Boehringer Ingelheim, and Drs. Bisgaard and Bønnelykke report being named on a pending patent related to the prevention of childhood asthma through FADS genotyping and the assessment of blood levels of eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid in pregnant mothers. The patent filing related to genetic testing is particularly relevant, given that the researcher advocates genetic testing and testing of fish oil levels in pregnant women to determine who might benefit most from supplementation. Aside from avoidance of maternal smoking, there are no known ways to reduce the risk of developing asthma in childhood. The story explains this is why doctors are testing this method, and excited by the findings. The story explains that the “capsules were an over-the-counter product called Incromega TG33/22, a fish extract made by the British chemical company Croda Health Care.” And in regard to whether women should start taking the supplement to lower asthma risk in their babies, the story lets us know researchers “are not ready to recommend that pregnant women routinely take fish oil” due to the very high dose used in this study. Further research is needed first to establish safety and confirm benefit. We learn that previous studies on this topic were inconclusive, and so the inference is that this is the first time more conclusive results were seen, especially regarding the benefit in women who had lower-than-normal levels of the fatty acids in their blood. This story did not rely on the news release.
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33652
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Thieves who work shopping malls are robbing women in washrooms and leaving them naked.
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Are shopping mall thieves robbing women in washrooms and leaving them naked?
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false
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Crime, crime warnings
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The spurious “warning to women” alert below began appearing in inboxes in mid-August 2002 as an article “from the AP news wire,” and a slightly rewritten version (minus the Associated Press attribution) initiated another round of forwardings in mid-2005 and again in late 2007. This story is (and always was) fiction, and nothing even remotely approaching it has come from Associated Press. If nothing else, the sloppy phrasing (“The way it works is ….”) and poor grammar (“He orders her to remove all of her clothing and kick them out of the stall”) betray this as a clumsy attempt to imitate a genuine article issued by a real news service. Moreover, we haven’t turned up a single news account (then or now) of a mall robbery’s being pulled off in the manner described, much less that this crime occurs with “amazing regularity.” In any case, this sort of robbery wouldn’t leave hordes of naked women skulking in mall washrooms for hours and hours after thieves had made off with their clothing. Most shopping malls maintain regular schedules of checking their restrooms for cleanliness and service problems every hour or so, and even if “out of order” placards really dissuaded every woman who just wanted to check her make-up or had to deal with a child doing the cross-eyed, hopping-from-one-foot-to-the-other “I have to go!” dance from entering a bathroom, neither slavish obedience to signs nor embarrassment of nakedness would likely bar a putative “victim” from simply sticking her head out the door and calling for help. Examples: [Collected via e-mail, 2018] Please can you check if this message has any truth to it? It is a message making the rounds via whatsapp: GUYS PLS FORWARD TO YOUR SISTERS, MOMS, GIRLFRIENDS & OTHERS. Hasina Habib – Regional Magistrate Please pass on to all the ladies u know & care about. Don’t be surprised to see a naked woman walking out of a shopping mall restroom: With what is being called amazing regularity, victims of this new crime wave have been found walking out of shopping mall restrooms completely naked. The scam begins when a man slips into a women’s restroom and sneaks into a stall. He waits until there is only one woman in the restroom in a neighbouring stall. He then quickly puts an out of order sign on the outside of the restroom door. The out of order sign guarantees no one will soon come t o the woman’s rescue. The criminal stands on the toilet & points a handgun into the next stall, demanding the woman’s valuables binding her hands and mouth, and RAPING HER. After getting her cash, jewellery & credit cards, he orders her to remove all of her clothing & kick them out of the stall. The thief tosses the clothing into a shopping bag, & slips back into the mall. In some instances the sight of the woman’s nakedness sparks his lust & he then rapes her b4 fleeing the scene. It usually takes an hour or 2 b4 the woman work up the nerve to leave the restroom in the nude, giving the criminal ample time to make his getaway, sometimes with her own car. The woman is eventually left naked & humiliated in a mall full of strangers. Main targeted areas include Gateway- 1 incident – 1 criminal – woman valuables taken La Lucia- 3 incidents – 2 criminals – 3 women valuables taken 1 raped Pavillion- 1 incident – 1 criminal – woman raped Sanlam Centre- 1 incident – 1 criminal – woman hijacked Cresta Mall – 4 incidents – 2 criminals – 3 women valuables taken – 1raped South Gate Mall – 9 incidents – 4 criminals – 3 women valuables taken – 6raped The Glen Mall – 4 incidents – 2 women valuables taken – 2 raped Sandton Mall – 5 incidents – 2 criminals – 3 women valuables taken – 4raped The best defence is to never go into a shopping mall restroom alone, as only women who are by themselves are being targeted. Take a lady friend or a family member with. If u do find yourself in this situation, do not be passive. Make as much noise as possible. These criminals are looking 4 quiet victims so they can make an easy escape. Be careful out there this holiday season & all year. This has so far been a nearly perfect crime, as none of the perpetrators have been caught. Don’t let this happen to another woman. [Collected via e-mail, 2005] Warning-be aware / Ladies Please Read !!!!! The Latest Scam: The way the scam works is, a man slips into a women’s restroom and sneaks into a stall. He waits until there is only one woman in the restroom in a neighboring stall. The criminal then stands on the toilet and points a hand gun into the next stall, demanding the woman’s valuables. After getting her cash and jewelry, he demands that she remove all of her clothing and kick them out of the stall. The thief tosses the clothing into a shopping bag, hangs an out of order sign on the restroom door and slips back into the mall. The out of order sign ensures no one will soon come to the woman’s rescue. It usually takes an hour or two for the woman to work up the nerve to leave the restroom in the nude, giving the criminal ample time to make his get away. The woman is left naked and humiliated in a mall full of strangers. The best defense, say police, is to never go into a shopping mall restroom alone, as only women who are by themselves are targeted. PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW. This has so far been a nearly perfect crime, as none of the perpetrators have been caught. Don’t let this happen to another woman. [Collected via e-mail, 2002] From the AP news wire. Don’t be surprised to see a naked woman walking out of a shopping mall restroom: The latest scam being perpetrated in our nations shopping malls is not the cost of gourmet ice cream cones or Harry Potter collectible figurines. With what is being called amazing regularity, victims of this new crime wave have been found walking out of shopping mall restrooms completely naked. This has almost always been done by men to women, with a few exceptions. The way it works is, a man slips into a women’s restroom and sneaks into a stall. He waits until there is only one woman in the restroom in a neighboring stall. Then he quickly puts an out of order sign on the outside of the restroom door. The out of order sign guarantees no one will soon come to the woman’s rescue. The criminal then stands on the toilet and points a hand gun into the next stall, demanding the woman’s valuables. After getting her cash, jewelry and credit cards, he orders her to remove all of her clothing and kick them out of the stall. The thief tosses the clothing into a shopping bag, and slips back into the mall. It usually takes an hour or two for the woman to work up the nerve to leave the restroom in the nude, giving the criminal ample time to make his get away. The woman is eventually left naked and humiliated in a mall full of strangers. The best defense, say police, is to never go into a shopping mall restroom alone, as only women who are by themselves are targeted.
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9160
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Investigational dose of oral interferon-free treatment can cure hepatitis C in children
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This news release from the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) heralding the safety and efficacy of a combination drug therapy for children with hepatitis C does a good job in several areas. It explains the scope of benefits and harms, how the study was conducted, and how the therapy could improve treatment options for kids with this contagious disease. On the other hand, the news release overlooks discussion of the enormous cost of this therapy and of potential adverse effects that may emerge when the therapy is used in a large population. We also disagree with its use of the sensational words “cure” and “breakthrough.” Editor’s note: This review contains an update under the benefits criteria that adds a caution about not equating reduced viral load with a cure. One estimate puts the incidence of chronic hepatitis C infection in U.S. children at between 23,000 and 46,000. Pediatric hepatitis C is usually contracted at birth from mothers with a history of IV drug abuse. More than one-third of infected kids eventually develop a life threatening long-term liver disease. Approving more effective and safer treatment options for these kids — options that are already available to adults — would be an important benefit.
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true
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European Association for the Study of the Liver,hepatitis c
|
There’s no mention of costs. The manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, has been charging $94,500 for a 12-week regimen of this combination therapy, marketed to adults as Harvoni. While government and private payers have balked at the cost, the company says the price tag is justified by its effectiveness in eradicating the virus, which will save the cost of treating serious liver disease down the road. The news release states that 99 percent, or 89 out of 90, children treated with the ledipasvir/sofosbuvir combination had undetectable levels of hepatitis C virus 12 weeks after treatment. We do caution that sustained virological response (SVR) and the reduction in viral load, which is what this study measured, may or may not reflect outcomes that people care about. As discussed in another review on a different hepatitis C drug announcement, “Patients care most about conditions that affect them and not how many virus particles are in their blood.” The news release does an adequate job, stating that the combination therapy “was well-tolerated, and no patients experienced a serious adverse event considered related to the study drug.” It adds: “The most common side effects reported in 10% or more of patients were headache, fever, abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting, cough, fatigue, sore throat and nausea.” But one important caveat wasn’t mentioned: Often negative effects aren’t apparent until after a drug goes on the market and is used by a large and diverse population of patients. For example, if the drug resulted in a fatal complication in 2 out of 100 children, this small study could easily have missed that. It’s risky to call a drug “safe” until it’s been used in a very large number of patients. This is particularly true when drugs are fast-tracked for approval by the FDA, as Harvoni’s use in children is expected to be. As HealthNewsReview.org reported in January, Harvoni is among the new generation of hepatitis C drugs that are generating serious adverse effects that warrant further scrutiny. Hence, there could be unknown risks in extending this therapy to kids. The news release gives information about the length of the study, the number of participants, and the study population. It states that most were male, white, and had no prior treatment, and had been infected by their mothers at birth. And it states that this is an open-label study, so no standard treatment or placebo was used as a comparison. The release doesn’t engage in disease mongering. It notes the prevalence of hepatitis C among children, which “varies from 0.05%-0.36% in the United States and Europe and up to 1.8%-5.8% in some developing countries.” It would have been even better with specific numbers. The news release says research funding came from the manufacturer, Gilead Sciences, and the National Institutes of Health, and the study authors own stock in Merck. Kudos for transparency. The news release offers a comparison with the current standard of care: “While direct-acting antivirals have been used to treat and cure adult patients with HCV,4-7 until now children have been mainly treated for 24 to 48 weeks with pegylated interferon plus ribavirin (RBV), an older treatment which causes severe side effects.” The news release doesn’t explain what hurdles, such as FDA approval, are required to make this therapy available to children. The news release explains the significance of this study via quotes from two researchers: “Direct-acting antivirals have transformed the treatment of adults with chronic HCV (hepatitis C), however, studies of these new therapies in children are required,” said Dr. Karen Murray, University of Washington School of Medicine and Seattle Children’s, Seattle, United States, and lead author of the study. “These data establish the use of the oral direct-acting antivirals as an important treatment option in HCV-infected children aged six to 11 years old.” “This study is a breakthrough for the management of children aged six to 11 years old with Hepatitis C, demonstrating that the new DAA regimen is highly efficacious and, more importantly, safe in this group of HCV-infected children”, said Prof. Frank Tacke, University Hospital Aachen, Germany, and EASL Governing Board Member. The news release uses two words — “cure” and “breakthrough” — that we advise journalists to avoid because they are imprecise and tend to sensationalize.
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9084
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Cooling treatment reduces epilepsy in children
|
The news release focuses on a recent journal article that describes findings from a long-term study about the effects of “therapeutic hypothermia” on newborn infants who have been deprived of oxygen at birth. Specifically, the release focuses on the finding that lowering the body temperature of infants after perinatal asphyxia reduces the rate — and severity — of epilepsy in those patients as they get older. The release does not, however, do much to place the work in context. There is a great deal of research available in this area, and the release would have been much stronger if it had made more clear what sets this work apart. While the use of therapeutic hypothermia to reduce neural damage in newborns who have suffered from oxygen deprivation is fairly recent, it is not new. For example, a 2012 paper notes that “There is now strong clinical evidence that moderate post-asphyxial total body cooling or hypothermia in full term neonates results in long-term neuroprotection, allowing us to proclaim this innovative therapy as ‘standard of care. '” It would be easy to read this release and get the mistaken impression that the use of therapeutic hypothermia had never been tried before under similar circumstances.
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false
|
perinatal asphyxia,Therapeutic hypothermia,University of Bristol
|
The release doesn’t address cost. Given that the cost can run into thousands of dollars, that’s a significant issue. The headline claims a reduction in epilepsy but the release does not provide any numbers backing up that claim. The closest the release comes to describing a benefit is stating that the children “had much less epilepsy than before cooling treatment was introduced.” How much less? The release would have been somewhat stronger if it had offered some firm numbers for this group of patients given the lack of a control group. Therapeutic hypothermia is widely regarded as safe, if the treatment is provided by practitioners with the right expertise to patients who meet the relevant criteria. Forcing the human body to the wrong temperature can cause many potentially serious side effects, including bleeding, infection, dehydration and low magnesium. It is relatively safe only because of expert management by ICU personnel familiar with the procedure. All of that needs to be mentioned, whereas the release doesn’t address the risks. As we’ve pointed out above, this is an observational study. But the headline claim is “Cooling treatment reduces epilepsy in children.” That’s a cause and effect claim, and an overstatement of what this study could measure. Observational studies do not prove cause and effect. The release points out that in babies born after 2007, 7 percent had an epilepsy diagnosis, however, far fewer, only 2 per cent, were on regular antiepileptic drugs. But other advancements in caring for infants in neonatal ICUs (along with cooling treatments) could account for reduced epilepsy rates compared with historical controls. That’s a consideration that could have been noted in the release. No disease mongering here. Funding sources are noted and there is no apparent conflict of interest. Therapeutic hypothermia is the only widely accepted preventative treatment for brain injury from neonatal asphyxia. Some researchers have experimented with antioxidants, and general improvements in care (such as adjusting ventilators to avoid too much oxygen) may help neurologic outcomes. There are other treatment options that can be used in conjunction with induced hypothermia, but none that would be used as an alternative to induced hypothermia when it comes to mitigating potential neural damage. As such, even though it doesn’t list alternatives, we’ll rate this Satisfactory. Someone reading the release could easily think that therapeutic hypothermia is a treatment currently available only from the researchers who worked on this study. That’s not the case. It’s not something available at every hospital, but it is available at many hospitals. A 2014 report from the American Academy of Pediatrics addressed related limitations and challenges regarding the use of hypothermia to treat neonatal encephalopathy. This quote from that report would seem to apply here as well: “Infants selected for cooling must meet the criteria outlined in published clinical trials. The implementation of cooling needs to be performed at centers that have the capability to manage medically complex infants. Because the majority of infants who have neonatal encephalopathy are born at community hospitals, centers that perform cooling should work with their referring hospitals to implement education programs focused on increasing the awareness and identification of infants at risk for encephalopathy, and the initial clinical management of affected infants.” The novelty here would appear to be that this is the first study to look specifically at the extent to which therapeutic hypothermia reduces the rates and severity of epilepsy in children who suffered from perinatal asphyxia as newborns. However, the release doesn’t tell us that. Nor does it do anything to let readers know that this subject has been the focal point of at least half a dozen large, randomized, clinical trials. To be clear, this new journal article may offer important new information to researchers, clinicians and parents — but the release needs to do a better job of articulating what is new and how this work builds on (or differs from) previous work. No unjustifiable language here.
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8186
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Mexico, former swine flu hub, tests nerves with coronavirus strategy.
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Mexican officials are dragging their feet on border closures and coronavirus containment measures, in what critics call a high risk strategy driven by bad memories of a shutdown a decade ago that deepened the country’s recession during the swine flu epidemic.
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true
|
Health News
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The United States and neighbors in Latin America have suspended flights, banned public gatherings and closed schools. In Mexico City, however, tens of thousands of music fans rocked out to Guns and Roses at a festival at the weekend. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador also went on tour, hugging surging crowds of supporters and kissing babies. The gamble is straightforward: Mexico’s economy was stagnating even before the COVID-19 outbreak shuttered factories worldwide and the government has said it wants to limit economic damage by not over-reacting. Some Mexican scientists, receiving news of Europe’s growing lockdown, South Korea’s widespread testing and global travel bans, are increasingly worried that Mexico’s softly-softly approach could lead to a bigger epidemic down the road. “I am worried that we end up in a situation like Italy, where measures weren’t taken on time, and the number of cases started to get away from them,” said Rosa Maria del Angel, who heads the Department of Infectomics and Molecular Pathogenesis at Mexico’s National Polytechnic Institute. In 2009, a new strain of swine flu that emerged in Mexico raised fears of a global pandemic. Authorities acted swiftly, shutting down public life in the densely populated capital, Mexico City, and swathes of the country. The silent streets foreshadowed scenes today in towns under lockdown from China to Europe and the United States. The disease was quickly contained and normal life resumed within weeks, but by some estimates the response shaved a percentage point from that year’s economic activity. The economy, already reeling from the global financial crisis, ended 2009 contracted by more than 5%. The lesson is not lost on the officials running Mexico’s response in 2020, many of whom were also involved in fighting the influenza epidemic. Mexico’s economy last year suffered its first recession since 2009. “The economic loss was directly related, in the most past, to the disruption of tourism, trade and services,” said Deputy Health Minister Hugo Lopez-Gatell, who was a senior official in the epidemiology department during the flu crisis. That is “why it is so important, with very careful precision, not to take pre-emptive actions that do not correspond to the magnitude of the risk,” Lopez-Gatell, who is now the public face of the government’s response, told reporters last week. The finance minister and other senior officials have voiced the same sentiment, while Lopez Obrador has said he will continue public activities until Lopez-Gatell tells him to stop. This week, the government announced initial measures, including more testing. It recommends school closures from next Monday and canceling cultural events with more than 5,000 people. While nations from Canada to Peru have suspended flights or limited free movement, Mexico has yet to propose any restrictions on travel around or in and out of the country. Tourism accounts for about one-sixth of Mexico’s roughly $1.3 trillion economy. Lopez-Gatell said on Tuesday countries around the world were repeating Mexico’s mistake in 2009, making decisions based on anxiety and social pressure rather than science. The lesson from the flu epidemic is that acting too soon is counterproductive, he said. “Acting responsibly, we can’t and should not take measures that exhaust our society. Let’s not use up all the interventions too soon. Let’s keep our calm.”
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22077
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The health care price tag for childhood obesity in Georgia is $2.4 billion annually and rising.
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Deal uses wrong number to make case about childhood obesity
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false
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Georgia, Public Health, Nathan Deal,
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"Georgia’s weight problem is making us lighter in the wallet. And we’re not just talking about the adults. Gov. Nathan Deal last week went to an intermediate school in White County to talk about his plans for a statewide initiative to battle childhood obesity. Not only did the governor speak to students about the health concerns that come with obesity, Deal also mentioned its financial impact. ""The health care price tag for childhood obesity in Georgia is $2.4 billion annually and rising,"" Deal said, according to the Gainesville Times. Atlanta Braves president John Schuerholz, who is also involved in the effort, led by the SHAPE Partnership, used the same cost estimate for childhood obesity in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed. The SHAPE Partnership is a public-private partnership that includes several state agencies. Considering these austere times for Georgia families and state government, we thought it worthwhile to dig deeper into the $2.4 billion estimate. Deal’s office sent us a 2009 report on obesity in Georgia to back up the governor’s point. It mentioned that obesity costs the Peach State about $2.4 billion a year. However, that did not specify children. The report mentioned that the average cost in medical care for the obese is $250 a year. We called the authors of that report. One of them, Justin Trogdon, said the average annual medical cost for children is $200. He did not have a specific total for how many obese children there are in Georgia. Trogdon said the $200 estimate comes from examining annual medical spending for obese people and comparing it with non-obese people. The estimate includes out-of-pocket costs and other expenses. The annual cost for children is less than adults because they face fewer health problems, said Trogdon, a research economist at RTI International, an institute that does studies on topics that include health, education, the environment and technology for businesses and governments in more than 40 countries. Researchers are noticing more cases of high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes among children, Trogdon said. ""A lot of the expensive issues don’t manifest until later in life,"" Trogdon said. Nearly 22 percent of Georgia’s children between the ages of 10 and 17 are obese, according to one study sent to us by Deal’s office. The U.S. Census Bureau does not keep specific data on how many children in Georgia are between 10 and 17, but it does mention that nearly 7.2 million of Georgia’s 9,687,653 residents are 18 or older. That leaves us with about 2.4 million Georgians younger than 18. We did some more math using that census estimate to determine the percentage of children considered obese and the $200 annual medical cost estimate to see how close that came to what the governor told those students. The total was about $110 million. Not close to $2.4 billion. Was our estimate wrong? We talked about it with Deal’s office. His communications director, Brian Robinson, said the governor misspoke. ""The figures he offered are for obesity overall,"" Robinson said, noting the $2.4 billion annual medical care estimate for all obese Georgians mentioned in the 2009 Georgia study. ""His overall point is accurate,"" Robinson added. ""Obesity comes at a high cost to our state and Governor Deal wants to give children a chance to learn about healthy living and engage in healthy living practices."" The $2.4 billion estimate was used by various Georgia news organizations and mentioned to students. We appreciate the efforts of the governor’s office to clarify the estimate. Still, it was the wrong estimate and rates the claim ."
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38634
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Halos Cuties mandarin oranges are grown in California using toxic wastewater from oil refineries, according to viral reports.
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Halos Cuties Are Grown Using Toxic Waste Water.
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false
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Food / Drink
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Reports that Halos Cuties are grown using wastewater from oil refineries can be traced back to mid-2015. The real question isn’t whether or not this occurs. The real question is whether or not treated wastewater from oil refineries is safe to use for crop irrigation, or if, as the rumor claims, it’s “toxic.” Mother Jones broke news that food producers in southern California had been using oil wastewater to irrigate crops in July 2015. The story goes that California’s long drought, and regulations that prohibit oil companies from pumping wastewater from oil production back into the ground, have made a perfect recipe for oil wastewater irrigation, Mother Jones reports: The Cawelo Water District blends oil wastewater with water from other sources such as the Kern River before sending it to farms. Last month, Food & Water Watch received from the district the names and addresses of companies that use its water. A few examples of the brands owned or supplied by those companies are listed below (though some of their fruits and vegetables may come from other parts of the state). Halos mandarins, formerly marketed as Cuties, are grown by Wonderful Citrus, part of the farming mega-conglomerate owned by the Beverly Hills billionaires Stewart and Lynda Resnick. The Resnicks, who also own Fiji Water, POM Wonderful, and the world’s largest pistachio and almond growing operation, aremajor players in California water politics. For its part, Wonderful Halos has responded to repeated questions on Facebook about whether or not it uses oilfield wastewater with the same response: Wonderful Halos is deeply committed to bringing you the highest-quality, most nutritious, and best-tasting citrus available. Our crops are irrigated with water from a variety of sources, all of which meet or exceed the standards for agricultural irrigation. To be sure, all of our produce is continuously and rigorously tested as part of our strict quality control process and adhere to all FDA regulations and guidelines. We’re proud of the delicious, premium citrus we grow, harvest and deliver to our customers around the world. The State Water Resources Control Board requires regular tests of oilfield water used for irrigation, but Mother Jones notes, it has not set limits for contaminants found in the water. One such test found that irrigation water supplied from Chevron had higher concentrations of the carcinogen benzene than is allowed in drinking water.But, given that recycled wastewater is mixed with water from other sources, it’s not clear what the benzene levels would be in water from various sources that’s applied to crops. The California Council on Science and Technology partnered with UC-Berkley researchers on an independent assessment that concluded: Operators in California use about 800 acre-feet (about a million m3) of water per year for hydraulic fracturing. This does not represent a large amount of freshwater compared to other human water use. Depending on the local scarcity of water, recycling the water used to create hydraulic fractures may have modest benefits. Far more water is used for enhanced oil recovery using water or steam flooding in the same fields, and large volumes of water of various salinities and qualities get produced along with the oil. Produced water from oil and gas production, appropriately tested and treated, has potential for beneficial reuse. The report recommends identifying opportunities for water conservation and reuse in the oil and gas industry as a whole. The Los Angeles Times reported in May 2015 that Chevron sells 21 million gallons of treated oilfield wastewater to farmers in central California every day. It’s used to irrigate about 45,000 acres of crops. State officials praised oilfied water recycling as a solution to the state’s drought, and took steps last year to shore up regulation and testing, the Times reports: Until now, government authorities have only required limited testing of recycled irrigation water, checking for naturally occurring toxins such as salts and arsenic, using decades-old monitoring standards. They haven’t screened for the range of chemicals used in modern oil production. No one knows whether nuts, citrus or other crops grown with the recycled oil field water have been contaminated. Farmers may test crops for pests or disease, but they don’t check for water-borne chemicals. Instead, they rely on oversight by state and local water authorities. But experts say that testing of both the water and the produce should be expanded. Last month, the Central Valley water authority, which regulates the water recycling program, notified all oil producers of new, broader testing requirements and ordered the companies to begin checking for chemicals covered under California’s new fracking disclosure regulations. The law, which legislators approved last year, requires oil companies to tell the state which chemicals they use in oil-extraction processes. The water authority gave producers until June 15 to report their results. So, it’s true that treated wastewater from oil production is used to irrigate crops (possibly including Wonderful Halos), but whether or not the practice is safe is still up in the air. Comments
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33626
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A woman sued her ex-boyfriend for surreptitiously tattooing a pile of excrement on her back.
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Exactly who is pictured in the original photograph, and what the tattoo shown was intended to depict, remain unknown. Some viewers have suggested that the tattoo might be a representation of moths being drawn to a candle flame that is sitting atop a pile of stones rather than of flies buzzing around a pile of feces.
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false
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Fauxtography, Body Modifications
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In November 2011, news outlets (such as the UK’s Sun) picked up a news story about a “furious woman suing her ex-boyfriend after he tattooed a steaming poo on her back”: Rossie Brovent wants £60,000 in damages from Ryan Fitzjerald. Rossie, from Dayton, Ohio, US, wanted a scene from the Narnia trilogy inked on her back. Instead she was left with a pile of excrement with flies buzzing around it. Tattoo artist Ryan turned rogue after discovering that Rossie had cheated on him with his best friend. Rossie originally tried to have her ex-lover charged with assault but she had signed a consent form agreeing the tattoo design was “at the artist’s discretion”. She said: “He tricked me by drinking a bottle of cheap wine with me and doing tequila shots before I signed it and got the tattoo.” “Actually I was passed out for most of the time, and woke up to this horrible image on my back.” However, as other news outlets (such as the Daily Mail) found after investigating the story, it didn’t pan out: the proffered photograph was a much older one that had originally appeared in a different context and had since been reused to illustrate a fabricated backstory, as the Smoking Gun noted of the claim: The photo appears legitimate. In fact, it first surfaced online about 18 months ago as part of a “Worst Tattoo of the Day” post on the blog I Am Bored. The image reappeared this week — complete with a backstory about the fractured love of “Rossie” and “Ryan” — on a sketchy “weird news” web site that appears to be dedicated to ginning up its Google AdSense impressions. A review of court indices, of course, shows no such civil complaint has ever been filed (either in federal or state court) by “Brovent.” James Druber, administrator of the Montgomery County Common Pleas Court (where Dayton residents file their six-figure complaints), said that he had heard nothing about the purported tattoo lawsuit. Records for Dayton and Montgomery County show no evidence that “Fitzjerald” (or “Fitzgerald”) has been licensed as a tattoo parlor operator or employee, according to Alan Pierce, an official with the Public Health department.
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10066
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Study: Breast-Feeding Won’t Deter Obesity
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The story reports on recently published data from the Nurses Health Study showing no association between breast feeding as an infant and protection again obesity in adulthood. The story appropriately mentions that there are many factors related to lifestyle and nutrition – in childhood and in later life – that can affect a person's BMI. Breast feeding was previously thought to act as prevention against obesity in later life because breast-fed infants gain weight more slowly than formula-fed infants, and formula-fed infants have increased insulin resistance, possibly affecting metabolism. Therefore, the CDC and other groups who support breastfeeding programs may consider this latest data in an effort to provide up-to-date, evidence-based promotional materials. Despite the evidence from this observational cohort study of women who were breast fed and those who were not, breast feeding is still a positive health behavior, and the story lists some of the positives of breast feeding, but only for children. The story does not list the potential health benefits of breast feeding for new mothers. There is evidence for both short-term and long-term health benefits of breastfeeding for both mothers and infants. Babies who are not breastfed are more likely to develop otitis media, gastrointestinal problems, and urinary tract infections. Women who breastfeed more quickly use the body fat stores from pregnancy and may loose pregnancy-related weight more quickly compared to women who do not breastfeed. Thus, they may reduce their risk of conditions related to additional weight (e.g. diabetes, high-blood pressure, etc.) The story interviews the lead author of the study, an official from the CDC's maternal and child nutrition branch and pediatricians who provide clinical perspective on the results of this latest research regarding breast feeding and obesity. Overall, a well-done story – and in only 605 words.
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true
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"The story does not list the cost of bottle formula, which may be a significant issue for some. It would have been easy to note one of the benefits not called into question about this report is that breastfeeding is ""free"". The story does not provide data showing there is no association between breastfeeding and protection against adult obesity. There is some evidence linking breastfeeding and reduced childhood obesity, but again, the data are not provided. Additionally, there is evidence for both short-term and long-term health benefits of breastfeeding for both mothers and infants. The story doesn't quantify either. The story does mention some of the positives of breastfeeding, but does not mention some of the downsides of bottle-feeding compared to breast feeding. Breast feeding is not associated with reduced risk of obesity in adulthood, but neither is formula-feeding. Babies who are not breastfed are more likely to develop otitis media, gastrointestinal problems, and urinary tract infections. Women who breastfeed more quickly use the body fat stores from pregnancy and may lose pregnancy-related weight more quickly compared to women who do not breastfeed. Thus, they may reduce their risk of conditions related to additional weight (e.g. diabetes, high-blood pressure, etc.). This is alluded to in the article but not emphasized. The story adequately describes the design of the observational cohort study and provides some of the major results of the study. The story does not engage in disease mongering. The story does talk about childhood obesity, which has increased in recent years. The story interviews the lead author of the study, an official from the CDC's maternal and child nutrition branch and pediatricians who provide clinical perspective on the results of this latest research regarding breast feeding and obesity. The story reviewed evidence seen in breastfeeding versus bottle-feeding. It's clear from the story how widespread is the practice of breastfeeding. The story reports on recently published data from a cohort study showing no association of breast feeding with reduced BMI in adulthood. Breast feeding was previously thought to act as a prevention against obesity in later life. Therefore, the CDC and other groups who support breastfeeding programs may consider this latest data in an effort to provide up-to-date evidence-based promotional materials. The story used several independent sources, so it's safe to assume it did not rely solely or largely on a news release."
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36220
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Comedian Kevin Hart was paralyzed as a result of an auto accident that also damaged his vocal cords.
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Was Kevin Hart ‘Paralyzed’ in a Car Crash?
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false
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Disinformation, Entertainment, Fact Checks
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On September 2 2019, a blog seemingly devoted to ginning up traffic for “shocking videos” on a separate website made a detour into disinformation by attempting to capitalize on comedian Kevin Hart’s real-life auto accident.According to the post, which appeared on UrbanIndustryNews.com:The comedian suffered trauma to the nerves in his spine and throat which have left him paralyzed from the neck down. In addition to being diagnosed with quadriplegia, he also suffered trauma in his neck, causing irreversible damage to his larynx, leaving both vocal cords paralyzed.Hart was involved in an actual crash on August 31, 2019. California Highway Patrol officials said that a man driving Hart’s car lost control of the vehicle, sending it off the road while driving near Hart’s home in Calabasas.However, not only was Hart not paralyzed in the accident, he was able to escape the car and go to his home to call for help. Authorities said that neither Hart nor the driver, identified as Jared Black, were under the influence of alcohol at the time of the accident. Both men along with the third passenger, Rebecca Broxterman, were hospitalized.As for the blog itself, the post about Hart stood out because most of its content is actually promoting another site, flyheight.com. The latter blog bills itself as “the hottest source for the latest shocking videos on the planet,” as seen in this screen capture:Hart reportedly did suffer “major back injuries” as a result of the accident, but his wife Eniko Hart told reporters, “He’s going to be just fine.” Lead Stories further debunked the blog post.
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18449
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"Ted Poe Says new Medicare billing guidelines ""have nine codes for (injuries by) turkeys."
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Poe said doctors face a new regulatory burden, requiring them to use a system that includes nine different codes for turkey injuries. His office pointed us to the new codes, which will be required for Medicare claims by October 2014. Indeed, if your Thanksgiving tradition takes a tragic turn that year, your doctor will be able to describe it in seven-digit detail. (We hope it’s just W61.42XA and not W61.43XS.)
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true
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National, Animals, Health Care, Government Regulation, Medicaid, Medicare, Regulation, Ted Poe,
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"Doctors’ offices, already burdened by federal billing bureaucracy, will soon find themselves pecked to death by new rules, Texas congressman Ted Poe says. New diagnosis codes required for reimbursement are so specific, he told Fox Business Network host John Stossel, there are a set of them just for injuries caused by turkeys. ""Whether you run into a turkey or the turkey runs into you, you're pecked by a turkey or you're bitten by a turkey, there's a difference between being pecked and being bitten,"" he said in an interview April 25, 2013. ""So they have nine codes for turkeys."" Poe, a fifth-term Republican who’s a member of the Tea Party Caucus, argues doctors shouldn’t have to face the expense of complying with new rules or penalties for screwing up. ""Do they need to go through this much detail to get information to the federal government? I don’t think they do,"" he said. We had to know: Do new Medicare billing guidelines include ""nine codes for turkeys""? Outdated codes First, a little background about this code thing. It’s not just a U.S. system — it’s international. (And in case you were wondering, it has nothing to do with Obamacare.) The ""new"" set of diagnosis codes that Poe talked about is known as ICD-10. ""ICD"" stands for ""International Classification of Diseases."" It’s published by the World Health Organization, then adapted for use in the United States. The United States now uses ICD-9, which is more than three decades old. Doctors’ offices use the codes to fill out Medicare and Medicaid claims, among other things. Their billing and practice management software is based on them. Their employees are trained to use them. The American Medical Association says that depending on the size of the medical practice, it’ll cost $83,290 to more than $2.7 million to switch. Doctors are dealing with so many other expensive regulatory changes, the association has begged since 2011 to delay or give up on the switch altogether. Other countries have charged ahead. They started to adopt the ""new"" set of codes nearly 20 years ago, and most developed countries now use it, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. CMS will require American doctors, indeed, any organization covered by the 1996 health care law known as HIPAA, to switch by Oct. 1, 2014. The federal government says the United States needs to upgrade partly because ICD-9 has outdated medical terms and not enough detail for accurate claims processing. Claims for two different injuries might seem like duplicate filings if you couldn’t specify right vs. left hand, for example. As Poe suggested, the new system does have far more diagnosis codes than the version developed in the 1970s — 68,000 instead of 13,000. (Poe, in his Stossel interview, said the new system has 140,000 codes, but that’s only if you group both diagnosis and procedure codes — not a direct comparison with 13,000.) How much detail are we talking? The codes allow doctors to specify not just injuries from turkeys, but from parrots, macaws, ducks and geese. There’s a different code for being ""struck"" vs. ""pecked"" or suffering from ""other contact""— with specification for the first time, an unlucky repeat or even worse, ""sequela."" (That would be some ""negative afteraffect"" resulting from your turkey encounter. Headaches! Panic attacks!) Poe’s office pointed us to this: W61.4 Contact with turkey W61.42 Struck by turkey W61.42XA initial encounter W61.42XD subsequent encounter W61.42XS sequela W61.43 Pecked by turkey W61.43XA initial encounter W61.43XD subsequent encounter W61.43XS sequela W61.49 Other contact with turkey W61.49XA initial encounter W61.49XD subsequent encounter W61.49XS sequela If you’ve seen TV ads about the need to prepare for a bright new career in medical billing and coding — this is part of the reason why. Our ruling Poe said doctors face a new regulatory burden, requiring them to use a system that includes nine different codes for turkey injuries. His office pointed us to the new codes, which will be required for Medicare claims by October 2014. Indeed, if your Thanksgiving tradition takes a tragic turn that year, your doctor will be able to describe it in seven-digit detail. (We hope it’s just W61.42XA and not W61.43XS.)"
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3019
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Wisconsin child dies of flu; hundreds hospitalized in state.
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A child in Wisconsin has died from influenza, marking the state’s first pediatric flu-related death of the season, health officials said Friday.
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true
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Health, Wisconsin, Flu
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Officials said the child was under 10 years old and died on the way to a hospital in southeastern Wisconsin. Officials said they don’t know if the child was vaccinated; the child had moved to Wisconsin just a couple months ago. Department of Health Services influenza surveillance coordinator Tom Haupt said 622 people have been hospitalized for the flu and flu-related complications in Wisconsin this season. Of those, 97 were placed in intensive care. He said 60% of the hospital admissions were people under age 65. Health officials say flu season typically peaks in February. According to DHS, the child tested positive for influenza B, the strain that’s been rapidly spreading and has been increasingly problematic nationwide, particularly in younger patients. Haupt said the best way to prevent the flu from spreading is to get vaccinated.
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1768
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Ebola gives U.S. 'preppers' another reason to prepare for worst.
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With the closest known U.S. cases of Ebola diagnosed about 160 miles away in Dallas, Cary Griffin is taking no chances.
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true
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Health News
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If, as the former correctional officer fears, the virus spreads to hundreds of people, Griffin is headed to the woods. “I’ll do what the English royalty did to survive the bubonic plague,” Griffin said, referring to King Charles II’s flight to the countryside during the Great Plague of London in 1665-66. “I’m going into the country.” Griffin, 27, of Huntsville, Texas, is among a growing if loosely-defined segment of Americans, known as “preppers,” who plan, train and stockpile in preparation for a natural calamity or societal breakdown. For many, the three cases of Ebola diagnosed in the United States so far since late September represent a new potential disaster and a reason to run to the store. Preppers are at the extreme edge of concern over Ebola, which has led to a series of false alarms driven by fear. Government efforts to stop the virus spreading from the three worst-hit West African countries, where more than 4,500 have died, include some travel restrictions and enhanced screening at airports. Chad Huddleston, an anthropologist at the University of Southern Illinois at Edwardsville, who studies preppers and estimates their numbers in the United States in the low hundreds of thousands, said those he has talked to are more concerned with undue public fear than with contracting Ebola. The virus was diagnosed in a Liberian visitor who was infected in his home country and two nurses who treated him at a Dallas, Texas hospital when he was dying and at his most contagious. Both nurses have been moved out of the state for treatment in hospitals equipped to treat Ebola patients. U.S. preppers have their roots in Cold War-era civil defense programs, said Vincent DeNiro, editor of Prepper & Shooter magazine. The movement’s profile rose thanks in part to the National Geographic Channel TV show “Doomsday Preppers,” and includes strains as disparate as off-grid homesteaders in the Great Plains, wilderness experts in the Mountain West and suburbanites across the country with caches of food and guns. For many of them, gearing up for Ebola has meant fortifying their stocks of freeze-dried food, water, filtration devices and hazardous material, or hazmat, suits, which experts say can be useless if not taken off properly. Some are also honing plans to meet teams of fellow survivalists at prearranged locations, or, like Griffin, who has no spouse or children, preparing to go it alone in the wilderness. Stockpiling has led to shortages of a range of survival gear, from food with a shelf-life in excess of 20 years to impermeable medical suits, according to vendors. At Cheaper Than Dirt, a leading online survivalist retailer based in Texas, dozens of varieties of freeze-dried meals are out of stock, from packets of cheesy lasagna to 60-serving buckets of mushroom stroganoff. Supplies such as hazmat suits and protective gloves - sometimes called Nuclear, Biological and Chemical (NBC) gear - are running low, said Richard Smith, general manager of The Survival Center, an online retailer in Washington state, about 1,500 miles from Texas. Smith boasted of snagging last week the final wholesale personal protection suits and respirator masks to be had on the West Coast. Using hazmat gear without proper training is of limited benefit, said magazine editor DeNiro, who has encouraged his readers to stock up on at least six months of food. “Buying NBC equipment and not learning how to use it properly is like buying a gun and ammunition and never practicing with it,” he said. Many preppers, who have focused their planning on everything from solar storms and earthquakes to nuclear holocaust, are skeptical of government - a view that dovetails with concerns, voiced by lawmakers and medical experts, that U.S. authorities mishandled the response to the virus when it emerged at a Texas hospital. At a prepper and self-defense school in south Florida, fear over Ebola has meant a rush of students, about 54 in the past two weeks, to take a primer course on how to avoid contracting the virus, said David D’Eugenio, founder of the HomeSafety Academy in Lake Park. “For the past week, I can’t even tell you what our hours are like with all the people coming through,” he said. An avid prepper and retired firefighter in West Palm Beach, Florida, Bob Boike, who attends D’Eugenio’s school, believes that an Ebola outbreak in the United States will likely be averted, but he is taking no chances. Boike, 58, who co-leads of a team of 32 preppers and their families, with multiple secret locations provisioned to last them a year or more, has stocked up on water and canned food, having already socked away an ample supply of masks, gloves and other medical supplies, he said. “This is our insurance for if and when there is societal breakdown,” Boike said.
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41040
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You should gargle as a prevention with salt in warm water.
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There’s no evidence this will prevent or cure the virus.
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unproven
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online
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If you have a runny nose and sputum, you have a common cold. 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. The new virus is not heat-resistant and will be killed by a temperature of 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. Environmental factors impact how far droplets from a sneeze can travel, 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. It’s not yet known exactly how long the virus survives on surfaces. It can survive for 6-12 hours on fabric and will be killed by normal laundry detergent . There’s no evidence the virus can survive in clothing and be transmitted this way. 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 protect you from viruses. Wash your hands frequently as the virus can only live on your hands for 5-10 minutes. There is no evidence yet on how long the virus can survive on the skin. But it is important to regularly wash your hands. You should gargle as a prevention with salt in warm water. There’s no evidence this will prevent or cure the virus. Covid-19 starts with a sore throat lasting 3-4 days. It then blends into a nasal fluid that enters the trachea and the lungs, causing pneumonia, which takes about 5 or 6 days. With pneumonia comes high fever and difficulty breathing. The nasal congestion makes you feel like you’re drowning. This is a roughly accurate description of the most common symptoms, although not everyone with Covid-19 gets pneumonia. The symptoms may not come in this order or at these times. There have been no reports of sufferers experiencing nasal congestion that makes them feel they are drowning. Claim 1 of 11
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11544
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New Test Aids Prognosis for Colon-Cancer Patients
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"As the ratings show, this story about a new genetic test for colon cancer falls short of journalistic best practices in several ways. Among other things it fails to report costs, explain the results clearly, provide necessary caveats or put the test in context of clinical use. Worse than that, viewed as a whole the story is simply misleading. The current study demonstrates that the test, Genomic Health’s Oncotype DK, can help identify patients at lower and higher risks of recurrence. But the study failed to show that the test could identify people more likely to benefit from chemotherapy. Several other news reports treated these results with care: Sources in those stories are quoted saying that since the test can identify only higher and lower risk of recurrence, it might be useful as ""a tie-breaker"" in a yes-or-no-chemo decision; another says that it’s ""not as powerful as we’d like"" in order to be of significant clinical value; a third that ""it’s a first step""; yet another calls it ""half a loaf."" Several stories included in the lead or high up in the story the important fact that the test was not proven to identify people more likely to benefit from treatment. Why did this story take such a different approach, allowing sources to imply the test has clinical value in the absence of evidence? Possibly because the story didn’t include quotes from any truly independent sources. Given the fact that the study is unpublished and financed by the test maker, this is an alarming omission. And what are the consequences of this sort of incomplete reporting? After this story appeared in the printed Wall Street Journal in the morning, shortly after 3 p.m. the same afternoon the publication’s Health Blog reported the following: Genomic Health was trading higher on data suggesting its test for early-stage colon cancer may help patients and doctors decide whether they needed chemotherapy after their tumors are removed with surgery. Read the WSJ story on the colon-cancer test here. Supposedly, in some way, the early release of abstracts from the American Society of Clinical Oncoloy meeting, according to another story by the WSJ, was supposed to avoid stock manipulation. We are troubled by the early release – which heightens speculation – and by the reporting on that speculation."
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false
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"A company official declines to estimate how much the test will cost. This information is in the last line of the story. It’s tempting to assign a satisfactory rating for at least asking the question. But a more complete story would have asked the official to estimate a price compared to the company’s similar breast cancer test now on the market. In fact, one did: A Bloomberg story reported that the company’s breast cancer test costs about $3,800. An even more complete story, from the Associated Press, mentioned that despite their price insurers often pay for some tests like this because they may be able to avoid spending $30,000 to $40,000 for chemotherapy on patients who do not benefit. Reporting costs is important for at least two reasons: The story makes an astonishing mess of the key data: After more than six years of tracking, the study found that 44% of the patients had tumors that had a 12% risk of recurrence within three years, which the researchers considered low risk. An additional 26% had a three-year recurrence risk of 22%, which researchers put in the high-risk group. The rest were in the middle. Even a reader lucky enough to have within easy reach a calculator and a high school student taking advanced statistics is unlikely to figure out what this means in practical terms. But this is what you get when you report on abstracts far in advance of any possible publication. Because the study failed to prove that the Oncotype DX test could identify the patients most likely to benefit from chemotherapy, the risk is that the test would be used for this purpose anyway. This triggers the risk of ""false reassurance""–that a resassuring test result would lead to no aggressive treatment yet a bad outcome. The story fails to warn about the potential risks of clinical over-use and over-reliance on a test that may not improve survival rates. The story states that the company has ""unveiled"" results of the study and they will be presented at an upcoming oncology conference. This is another story based on an incomplete abstract released far in advance of the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting that hasn’t even taken place yet. The story fails to include the caveats that the study has not been peer-reviewed and has not been published. In a study funded by the test’s maker, it’s essential to mention those facts. Further, the study–a retrospective review of patients whose tumor biology was analyzed and a predictive model created from those analyses–lacks the power of a prospective clinical trial. The story should have said this. The reporter does a good job describing the prevalence, incidence and mortality of the disease without exaggeration. The story quotes three sources: Given the fact that [as the story discloses] the study was paid for by the test maker, the lack of independent sources is glaring. The story would have been much stronger if it had comments from a disinterested oncologist who could speak to the test’s practical value in a clinical setting. The story explains that the current alternative option to the genetic test is to assess risk of recurrence based on a patient’s age, other illnesses and tumor characteristics–a method that results in a clear recommendation for or against chemo in only 30 percent of patients. The story says the company that makes the Oncotype DX test, Genomic Health, plans to start selling the test early next year. But the reader has no idea how realistic this prediction is. Given the economic self-interest of the source, the story should have indicated what regulatory or commercial barriers the company faces before it can bring the test to market. The story makes clear that the test is similar to the company’s genetic test to identify more lethal breast cancers, yet that it is the first such test for colon cancer. The story does not appear to draw excessively from the company’s press release."
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20287
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"Mike Dovilla Says President Obama's decision to not issue a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline meant ""we were denied the ability immediately to reduce prices at the pump."
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Mike Dovilla: Obama's refusal to allow the Keystone Pipeline thwarted ability to reduce gas prices
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false
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Ohio, Climate Change, Economy, Energy, Gas Prices, Mike Dovilla,
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"Both houses of the Ohio General Assembly approved resolutions in the past 10 months urging Congress to ask Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to approve the controversial TransCanada Keystone XL pipeline project from Alberta to Oklahoma. The Ohio House acted last June. The Senate passed its resolution in January, as President Obama announced he was putting the project on hold by extending the deadline one year to rule on a permit for pipeline operator TransCanada. One of the sponsors of House Resolution 97, State Rep. Mike Dovilla, a Republican from Berea who represents the 18th District, wrote to the Strongsville edition of Patch.com that he would introduce a new resolution supporting the pipeline. Delaying the project hurt U.S. energy security and cost ""the ability to create over 20,000 construction and manufacturing jobs,"" he said. Obama's decision to not issue a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline meant ""we were denied the ability immediately to reduce prices at the pump."" With the price of gas bubbling under $4 a gallon and becoming a political football, PolitiFact Ohio was interested, immediately, in his statement that permit approval would immediately reduce pump prices. We asked Dovilla's office how he backed it up. They steered us to the U.S. Energy Information Agency and its statement, ""The single biggest factor in the price of gasoline is the cost of the crude oil from which it is made."" Not approving the pipeline, they said, citing the State Department, would lead to increased imports of oil from unreliable sources, leading to increased speculation that contributes to price fluctuation. Dovilla quoted a memo of last June 22 from the Department of Energy's deputy assistant secretary for policy analysis, saying that Keystone XL would eliminate transportation constraints. ""Gasoline prices in all markets served by PADD I and III refiners would decrease, including the Midwest,"" the memo said. (PADD stands for Petroleum Administration for Defense District. PADD I is the East Coast, PADD III is the Gulf Coast.) Supporting Dovilla's statement that prices would drop immediately, his office cited economist and commentator Larry Kudlow, who asserted in 2008 that oil prices dropped more than 6 percent ""on news that President Bush was moving forward with plans to develop new areas in the Outer Continental Shelf despite the fact that the oil would not make it to market for 7 to 10 years."" ""Oil prices,"" Dovilla's spokesman said, ""will react to an announcement regarding future supply long before that supply is actually delivered."" We looked further. We found that the Department of Energy memo of last June came in response to a paper by energy economist Philip Verleger, an adviser to the Ford and Carter administrations, who heads a Colorado consulting firm on oil market economics. Illuminating the debate among industry analysts about Keystone's likely impact, Verleger says the pipeline would increase gas prices, particularly in the upper Midwest, by about 10 cents per gallon. The companies involved with Keystone told Canadian regulators that the pipeline will allow Canadians to manipulate prices and add at least $4 billion to the U.S. fuel bill annually, Verleger said. He called Keystone ""a long, torturous way to move crude oil from Canada to China."" His assessment was echoed in a report in January from the Cornell University Global Labor Institute and by a new study from the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental advocacy group. Both said that the Keystone XL pipeline is designed to divert heavy crude tar sands oil from the Midwest -- where it has overwhelmed refinery demand and depressed the price of crude -- to Gulf Coast refineries, where much of it can be exported to international markets. They quoted the testimony and studies of TransCanada, the principal company behind the pipeline, in saying that the diversion of heavy crude oil to the Gulf would cut ""discounting"" in the glutted Midwest and bring Canadian oil producers an added $2 billion to $3.9 billion annually. Our colleagues at the Washington Post's Fact Checker, examining another statement about Keystone XL and gasoline, noted that TransCanada itself makes no claims that the project will reduce prices -- only that it will not increase prices. The company's Keystone XL fact sheet says: ""The price of international oil prices has no impact on the operation of our pipeline and we do not profit from changing market changes,"" TransCanada said. ""Prices are set on a global level."" Ray Perryman, an economist employed by TransCanada, told Forbes magazine that the pipeline would bring down gasoline prices by 3.5 cents to 4 cents a gallon once fully operational. Moody's, the investment ratings firm, had a lower estimate: 1.6 cents per gallon. Even those small reductions would not come until the pipeline was operational, however. The Fact Checker, which was examining the question of whether Keystone XL would lower prices at all, said: ""We could not find any experts to say that the prospect of the pipeline being built in the future would somehow impact the price of gasoline today."" That would seem to settle the question of whether the pipeline's approval would reduce prices immediately -- except for Dovilla's citation of Larry Kudlow about President Bush influencing prices in 2008. What happened then? In July 2008, Bush lifted a presidential ban on offshore oil drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf that was established by his father. It carried symbolic and political significance in an election year, but had no immediate effect on exploration because of prohibitions by Congress against offshore drilling. Petroleum prices did drop, but they were continuing what was becoming a dramatic retreat from record high prices. Energy analysts and economists pointed to one reason for it: recession. ""Oil markets, analysts said, have been spun around by lower consumption in a U.S. economy weakened by financial instability and by a change in sentiment among financial players, many of whom are scurrying to stem losses or protect much-needed capital,"" the Washington Post reported at the time. ""The overwhelming cause of the collapse in oil prices has been the faltering world economy, which has fueled the drop in consumption,"" the Post reported. In other words, Bush's announcement was coincidental but not causative. Energy analyst Joseph M. Dukert, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former president of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics, expressed it more plainly to the liberal research group Media Matters when it looked at a similar claim: ""Most energy economists applauded President Bush's action in regard to offshore drilling,"" he said, ""but suggesting that this 'caused' the precipitous drop in global oil prices is akin to the rooster's boast that his crowing brought the sun up."" Even former Bush White House chief economist Douglas Holtz-Eakin discounted a president's impact on oil prices: ""You can‘t change the oil price very much with the U.S. exploration. It certainly can‘t change it quickly,"" he said in a television discussion. And that returns us to the statement that Obama's decision to not issue a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline meant ""we were denied the ability immediately to reduce prices at the pump."" We found debate among oil analysts over the effect the pipeline would have on gasoline prices, especially in the Midwest, where some expect it would drive prices up. And while estimates varied, our research (and that by our colleagues at the Washington Post) found that those experts didn’t expect there would a price impact until after the pipeline were built. Even TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline, expressed doubts about any price impact, and an economist with the company projected that wouldn’t happen until after the line was operational. That’s a far cry from Dovilla’s claim of immediacy. On the Truth-O-Meter, Dovilla’s claim rates ."
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11698
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Paul Sperry Says border fencing finished near El Paso in 2010 dramatically curtailed illegal crossings, local crime and drug smuggling.
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Sperry wrote that the fencing finished near El Paso in 2010 dramatically curtailed illegal crossings, local crime and drug smuggling. Such crossings evidently plunged after the fencing was built (though they later rebounded a bit) and it could be that drug smuggling fell off as well. Yet this claim fails to account for El Paso's violent crime rate trending down long before the fencing went up nor does it acknowledge other factors affecting security including a pre-1995 shift in enforcement strategy and stepped-up Border Patrol staffing. We give the fencing some, not all, credit and rate this statement Half True. HALF TRUE – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context.
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mixture
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Immigration, Homeland Security, Texas, Paul Sperry,
|
"Conservative Paul Sperry highlighted fencing erected near El Paso a decade ago as evidence that President Donald Trump’s proposed border wall could enhance security. Sperry wrote in a January 2018 New York Post commentary that the fencing, described as completed in 2010, explains a dramatic decrease in violent crime in the West Texas city and plummets in illegal crossings and drug smuggling. We wondered about that after Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, promoted Sperry’s commentary on Twitter and Bob Moore, former executive editor of the El Paso Times, asserted in his own tweet that El Paso had low violent crime rates as far back as 2005 while illegal border crossings, Moore wrote, decreased for varied reasons around 2010 including the Great Recession. Sperry, whom we emailed without hearing back, wrote that once the fencing went up, illegal crossings and levels of violent crime and drug smuggling rapidly subsided and that since then, El Paso has consistently topped rankings for cities of 500,000 residents or more with low crime rates, based on FBI-collected statistics. We'd suggest that claims about any city’s safety rank be considered with caution. Such rankings are oft tied to FBI statistics that the agency counsels against using to rank or compare communities. We’ve also done several separate fact-checks noting flaws in claims about El Paso’s safety standing. On another front, it appears the fencing touted by Sperry was not finished in 2010. Ramiro Cordero, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s El Paso sector, which takes in New Mexico, El Paso County and part of adjoining Hudspeth County, advised by email that from 2007 to approximately 2014, two types of fencing got built near the El Paso metro area: double-layered mesh 18 feet tall and mesh on movable barriers going up 22 feet. In 2009, David Aguilar of the Border Patrol specified at a U.S. Senate hearing that 626 miles of congressionally ordered fencing had been completed along the border. When fully built, Aguilar said, the additions would cover 661 miles from Texas into California, counting 115 miles each in New Mexico and Texas. Decreased ‘illegal alien’ apprehensions We explored each part of Sperry’s statement separately, starting with whether the new fencing greatly diminished border crossings. All along the southwestern border, it’s worth noting, apprehensions by the Border Patrol peaked in 2000 at 1.6 million (yearly total) and later generally declined starting around the time of the 2008-09 recession, Michelle Mittelstadt of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank that studies worldwide immigration, has noted. Mittelstadt told PolitiFact in April 2017 that factors in Mexico had contributed to the drop-offs including lower birth rates, increased educational levels and an improved economy. In his commentary, Sperry wrote that according to Homeland Security data, ""the number of deportable illegal immigrants located by the U.S. Border Patrol plummeted by more than 89 percent over the five-year period during which"" the fencing between El Paso and neighboring Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, was completed. Sperry said that when the El Paso fencing project ""started in 2006, illegal crossings totaled 122,261, but by 2010, when the 131-mile fence was completed from one end of El Paso out into the New Mexico desert, immigrant crossings shrank to just 12,251. They hit a low of 9,678 in 2012, before slowly ticking back up to a total of 25,193 last year. But they’re still well below pre-fence levels, and the Border Patrol credits the fortified barrier dividing El Paso from Mexico for the reduction in illegal flows,"" Sperry wrote. We found that he accurately recapped government-posted tallies of ""illegal alien apprehensions,"" which are generally used as a metric to measure illegal immigration. An exception: When we checked, the Border Patrol was reporting a slightly greater number of apprehensions in 2006, 122,656 making the 9,678 apprehensions in the sector in 2012 92 percent less than apprehensions in 2006. Unaddressed by Sperry: All along the nation’s southern border, according to the Border Patrol, apprehensions decreased each year from 2007 through 2011. That is, the agency’s pre-2017 low of 327,577 apprehensions in 2011 was down 69 percent from 1,071,972 apprehensions in 2006 and down 72 percent from 1,171,396 apprehensions in 2005. Border Patrol video singles out change in tactics Next, we reached out to the Border Patrol to ask about the fencing alone driving down apprehensions. We fielded no comment from Carlos A. Diaz, the agency’s Southwest Border branch chief, though he pointed us by email to a 2017 Customs and Border Protection video describing enforcement actions from 1992 through 2016 to stem illegal crossings. The El Paso portion of the video doesn’t mention fencing. Rather, it singles out the 285,000 apprehensions made in the El Paso sector in 1993--which a narrator says was the year that the Border Patrol implemented Operation Hold the Line at El Paso calling for the ""forward deployment of agents and technology to high-traffic areas. ""Focusing on prevention through deterrence,"" the narrator continues, ""the strategy proved successful and apprehensions decreased over 70 percent"" in the sector in one year ""and in 2015, 14,495 apprehensions were made in the El Paso sector."" That snippet led us to revisit federal tallies of apprehensions, which show both a post-1986 high of 285,981 apprehensions in the sector in 1993 and a 72 percent plummet to 79,688 apprehensions in 1994 though apprehensions increased the next two years, reaching 145,929 in 1996. In subsequent years through September 2017, the sector reported decreased apprehensions in 13 years and increased apprehensions in eight years; its 25,193 apprehensions in 2017 amounted to the sector’s third-most in a decade, possibly a reminder that economic conditions on both sides of the border, or unsafe conditions in parts of Central America, also can sway decisions to cross the Rio Grande. Other Border Patrol views When we asked, a couple of Border Patrol officers credited the El Paso fencing with enhancing enforcement. Doug Mosier, a Customs and Border Protection spokesman, said he’s worked as an El Paso-based agency public affairs officer since 1986. By email, Mosier said Operation Hold The Line ""revolutionized the way that border security was conducted in terms of federal law enforcement prevention efforts."" Mosier said Silvestre Reyes, later elected to the U.S. House, ""had tried a similar strategy on a smaller scale when he was a Border Patrol chief in McAllen, Texas, and it worked well for that community."" According to a 2013 El Paso Times news story, the approach instigated by Reyes, described as still in place, ""called for the deployment of every available Border Patrol agent to different sites along 20 miles of the El Paso-Juarez border, roughly from Sunland Park, N.M., to the Zaragoza port of entry."" Mosier elaborated to us: ""So, as the chief of El Paso Sector in 1993, he essentially positioned as many U.S. Border Patrol agents as he could spare (approximately 250 agents) along a primary 20-mile stretch of border separating El Paso/Juarez, over a three-week period. The result was astounding, since illegal apprehensions immediately dropped by approximately 80-percent overnight. Crime and loitering also fell by the wayside in the downtown district, which was later substantiated in several surveys and polls taken by the El Paso Times, and the then--El Paso Herald Post. ""At first the border community was in shock, but that soon gave way to widespread support which manifested in improved living conditions for residents in El Paso, and in some areas of N.M."" The Times story said that after Hold the Line was implemented, Reyes went on to urge more strategic fencing. Mosier, asked to assess the effects of the fencing, said that when ""primary pedestrian fencing (18-feet) was implemented in 2008, it provided effective infrastructure in much-needed areas of the border. It also improved USBP effectiveness by better directing illegal immigration into areas where Border Patrol had more resources to monitor traffic via technology, aircraft, combined with increased agent personnel. We said at that time, and still say today, that those combined resources, our strong working relationship with law enforcement partners, and the support by residents in El Paso were essential to the success of El Paso border security efforts,"" Mosier said. Cordero, who also told us he’s worked for the agency in the sector for 18 years, agreed the fencing helped reduce apprehensions but, he said, other enforcement activities and cooperation between law agencies and with Mexican authorities also mattered. Victor Manjarrez Jr. of the University of Texas at El Paso told us he was the sector chief when the fencing went up. By email, Manjarrez deemed the fencing a factor in driving down apprehensions along with increased Border Patrol personnel, expanded technology and infrastructure including lights and roads. ""Although the pedestrian wall had a huge impact,"" Manjarrez said, ""so did the increase in Border Patrol agents"" driven by a 2004 congressional directive to beef up the agency. ""I would disagree that the wall was the sole reason for the decline in criminal activity, but"" it ""was a MAJOR factor in improving the quality of life."" El Paso crime Sperry wrote that FBI crime-rate information shows the fencing drove down crime in El Paso. In fact, Sperry wrote, El Paso before 2010 ""was mired in violent crime and drug smuggling, thanks in large part to illicit activities spilling over from the Mexican side. Once the fence went up, however, things changed almost overnight."" His commentary also said: ""According to FBI tables, property crimes in El Paso have plunged more than 37 percent to 12,357 from their pre-fence peak of 19,702 a year, while violent crimes have dropped more than 6 percent to 2,682 from a peak of 2,861 a year."" Moore countered in a post-publication tweet that El Paso’s violent crime rate was on the slide long before the fencing got built. Our search of the Nexis news database showed too that the El Paso County sheriff, Richard Wiles, told a U.S. Senate committee in 2009 that by that year, El Paso had been considered one of the country’s safest cities for a dozen years, ""long before the new fence was built,"" Wiles testified. Moore, answering our request for more information, emailed us his spreadsheet suggesting that each year from 2000 through 2016, El Paso’s violent crime rate based on FBI data far trailed the average violent crime rate for like cities of 500,000 to 1 million residents. The FBI’s posted figures enabled us to confirm that El Paso’s violent crime rate trailed the national average for cities of 500,000 to 1 million residents from 1985 through 2016. The city’s rate also mostly decreased year to year, the figures indicate, though the city still saw 11 year-to-year increases with the biggest rate bump, 10 percent, occurring in 2008. Conversely, El Paso’s rate sank 10 percent or more 10 times in the 30 years including 1994, 1995, 1998, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2006--all before the new fencing was mandated or fully installed--with the other big drops occurring in 1987 and 2013. Drug smuggling Sperry wrote that drug smuggling at the El Paso ""border entry point has also fallen dramatically. In fact, since the fence was completed, the volume of marijuana and cocaine coming through El Paso and seized by Border Patrol agents has been cut in half."" ""The year before the wall was fully built in 2010,"" Sperry went on, ""the volume of illegal drugs confiscated by the feds along the El Paso border hit 87,725 pounds. The year after, the amount of drug seizures plummeted to 43,783 pounds. Last year, they dropped even further to a total of 34,329, according to Border Patrol reports obtained by The Post."" We found slightly different figures. Regardless, a chart provided by Cordero showed that the dollar amount of illegal drug seizures in the El Paso sector substantially declined from 2007 through 2014, when the agency’s $35.2 million in seizures was more than 400 percent less than the nearly $151 million in seizures in 2006. While seizures escalated in 2015 and 2016, reaching $54 million, they declined to $39 million in 2017, the agency’s chart says. Drug Seizures, El Paso Sector, U.S. Border Patrol, Fiscal 2006 though Fiscal 2017 SOURCE: Email, Ramiro Cordero, agent, U.S, Border Patrol, El Paso sector, Jan. 18, 2018 We later ran these mostly reduced interdictions of illegal drugs past Sanho Tree, director of the Drug Policy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, which calls itself ""Washington’s first progressive multi-issue think tank."" Tree said by phone he wasn’t aware of research on the effect of the El Paso fencing on drug smuggling. Yet generally, Tree said, declines in captured drugs don’t necessarily signal fall-offs in smuggling, which relies on frequent shifts in methodology extending to drones, tunnels, even catapults. ""What you interdict shows you what you’re catching, it doesn’t show what you’re not catching,"" Tree said, adding that it’s hard to model the effects on smuggling of particular law enforcement tacks. Local police agencies didn’t engage with this fact-check. Sgt. Enrique Carrillo of the El Paso Police Department replied by email: ""We are not commenting on this."" Our requests to interview Sheriff Wiles went unfulfilled. Our ruling Sperry wrote that the fencing finished near El Paso in 2010 dramatically curtailed illegal crossings, local crime and drug smuggling. Such crossings evidently plunged after the fencing was built (though they later rebounded a bit) and it could be that drug smuggling fell off as well. Yet this claim fails to account for El Paso's violent crime rate trending down long before the fencing went up nor does it acknowledge other factors affecting security including a pre-1995 shift in enforcement strategy and stepped-up Border Patrol staffing. We give the fencing some, not all, credit and rate this statement . – The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context."
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8083
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Israel's Netanyahu says complete lockdown unavoidable unless new infections ebb.
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday there would be “no avoiding” a complete lockdown of the country without a decrease in the rate of new coronavirus infections.
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true
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Health News
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Israel has seen five deaths and close to 2,400 cases so far. Citizens hoping for a stroll or jog were instructed earlier on Wednesday to stay within 100 metres (110 yards) of their homes for a week under tightened restrictions to curb the contagion. The new restrictions further reduced public transport, required employers to check workers for fever and set sanctions for people who defy rules. Israelis have been instructed to stay home where possible, schools have been shut and many businesses have closed, prompting more than 500,000 lay-offs. “If we do not see an immediate improvement in the trendline there will be no avoiding a full closure,” Netanyahu said in televised remarks. “(The decision) is a matter of a few days (away). And we are making all of the preparations for it.” The sight of people, out for fresh air, jogging and congregating on city streets has alarmed health authorities. The new 100-metre limit is meant to end such activity. The private sector has had to limit employees at the workplace to 10 people or 30% of the company’s workforce, and most of the public sector has been put on leave. Israelis, though, could still drive themselves to work or to shops for essentials under the new restrictions, and food delivery services were operating. Penalties ranging from fines to a six-month jail term were set for anyone defying the orders. Israel’s central bank on Tuesday projected an economic contraction of 2.5% in 2020 as long as the partial lockdown eases by the end of April. In his remarks, Netanyahu said his caretaker government was setting up an economic plan to help businesses and the self-employed, and that a team was set-up to prepare for the day after the virus ends. The coronavirus crisis comes as Israel is grappling with political deadlock after three inconclusive elections in less than a year. Netanyahu’s centrist political rival, former military chief Benny Gantz, has been tasked with forming a new coalition government. But neither Gantz nor Netanyahu won a stable parliamentary majority in the March 2 election and negotiations to form a unity government comprising both their parties have come to a halt in the past few days.
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9592
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Kids With Anxiety Disorders ‘Significantly’ Benefit From Mindfulness Exercises By Changing Brain Activity
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The story addresses the use of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy as a means of treating anxiety disorders in children, focusing on a recent study of nine children who had been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and who had a parent with bipolar disorder. The story reports that the study found cognitive therapy was effective at reducing anxiety in study participants. The story does a good job of highlighting that these findings are preliminary, and that additional research is needed to determine how effective cognitive therapy may be as a treatment option for the general population. However, the story does not discuss the extent of the therapy’s benefits in this study, the availability and cost of such cognitive therapy for children, or whether the study participants were also being treated with medications while undergoing cognitive therapy. The story also appears to draw heavily on a news release, and does not incorporate input from independent experts. Anxiety disorders are not uncommon in children. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, approximately 25 percent of 13-18 year olds will experience an anxiety disorder — and approximately 6 percent of 13-18 year olds will experience a severe anxiety disorder. These disorders may include obsessive-compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and phobias, among others. A 2010 paper published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine Journal notes that pediatric anxiety disorders can cause “considerable functional impairment,” impose significant economic costs, adversely affect a child’s education, and increase a child’s risk for adult psychiatric disorders. In other words, pediatric anxiety disorders affect a great many people and can have long-term consequences for both children and their families. Research on new treatment options that can ameliorate the effects of anxiety disorders in children is well worth covering. However, as always, it is important to note both the limitations of new research, and the extent to which potential patients will have access to any treatment options being discussed. A more fundamental question may be: what’s new here? This isn’t the first study to address mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for treating either children or anxiety disorders.
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false
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anxiety,cognitive behavioral therapy
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Cost is not discussed at all. How much does cognitive therapy cost for children with anxiety disorders? Does it require long-term treatment with multiple sessions? Is it usually covered by health insurance providers? These are all important questions for families who have a child experiencing an anxiety disorder — and this story doesn’t address them. The story does a good job of not “over-selling” the benefits seen in the cognitive therapy study on children with anxiety disorders. It refers to “integrative approaches” and expanding treatment options. When discussing study results, the story talks about “the potential that mindfulness therapy could bring to the table,” and notes that “If nothing else, it might allow people who would be reluctant to take medication more treatments to choose from.” That sort of cautious language is all to the good. However, when it comes to describing the study’s findings, the language is extremely vague: “Cotton noted the anxiety of [study] patients was significantly reduced following treatment, and the more mindfulness they practiced, the less anxious they felt.” What does “significantly reduced” mean? Even a tiny improvement can be statistically “significant” — is that what we’re talking about here? It’s not clear. This is why the criterion asks for quantified benefits, and that’s lacking here. The story doesn’t address harms. However, that may be because there are few (if any) risks associated with cognitive therapy for anxiety disorders. We’ll rate this not applicable. The story does a fair job of describing the study and, as noted above, stresses both that this is an early study with a small number of patients and that a lot of additional work needs to be done in this field before we will have a decent understanding of cognitive therapy’s effects on children with anxiety disorders. But some important limitations were not specifically addressed that should have been, such as the fact that there was no control group. This raises the possibility that the benefits seen are due to a placebo effect that might also occur with any similar caregiver-led intervention. Moreover, the story would have been stronger if it had addressed a threshold issue: were the patients in the study also being treated with medications? The story itself notes in its opening paragraph that “many” adolescents are “treated with antidepressants and other medications to try and help them live a relatively normal childhood.” That raises the issue of pharmaceutical treatment for readers who, naturally enough, may wonder if the patients in the study being discussed were receiving medication. That said, it’s easy to see why the story doesn’t address this issue: the paper the story is reporting doesn’t address the issue either. But the use of medication in treating these disorders in children is particularly relevant, given that recent research (also with a small number of patients, and with some of the same authors as the cognitive therapy study) suggests that many children respond adversely to anxiety disorder medication. So, even though the cognitive therapy paper may not clearly state whether study participants were receiving pharmaceutical treatment, the reporter should have either pressed the researchers for an answer, or stated that it’s not clear what sort of treatment the study participants were receiving. No disease mongering here. The story quotes only two researchers — and both were authors of the paper being discussed. The story mentions pharmaceutical interventions, but doesn’t actually offer a comparison. How might mindfulness-based cognitive therapy be better or worse? And how does mindfulness-based cognitive therapy compare to (or differ from) other forms of cognitive therapy for children with anxiety disorders? It’s not clear to readers whether mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for children with anxiety disorders is still in experimental development by a select group of researchers or is widely available. Can local therapists learn this technique? The story does note that mindfulness-based therapy for children with anxiety isn’t new, stating that “there is some encouraging, if early, evidence showing that these techniques can be used to prevent relapses of depression or anxiety.” However, that doesn’t quite capture the amount of work that has already been done in the field. For example, the book Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for anxious children: A manual for treating childhood anxiety came out five years ago. We’re not saying that there’s nothing new in this study; we are saying that it is very difficult to determine what is new, when it is not placed in the context of previous research. The story gets a Satisfactory grade here but fails in spirit. It draws extensively from a University of Cincinnati news release. However, because it acknowledges the source of the quotes used and doesn’t appear to plagiarize any other content from the release, it technically meets the standard for this criterion.
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8076
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Bindi Irwin ties knot ahead of Australian clampdown on weddings.
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Bindi Irwin, daughter of the late ‘Crocodile Hunter’ Steve Irwin, wed on Wednesday at her family’s Australia Zoo, in an event that spurred online protest as it came just hours before a ban on ceremonies with more than two witnesses took effect.
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true
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Environment
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Irwin posted a wedding snap on social media late Wednesday, saying: “We held a small ceremony and I married by best friend.” “We’ve planned this beautiful day for nearly a year and had to change everything, as we didn’t have guests at our wedding. This was a very difficult decision but important to keep everyone safe,” Irwin said. Images of a wedding dress glimpsed from under a huddle of umbrellas at the family’s Australia Zoo in northeastern Queensland state were broadcast on TV on Wednesday less than 24 hours after Prime Minister Scott Morrison imposed a limit of just five people at weddings - the couple, a celebrant and two witnesses - from Wednesday midnight, to rein in the spread of a coronavirus. Ahead of her tweets, when images of the wedding first appeared, outraged viewers complained Irwin was setting a bad example amid nationwide coronavirus lockdowns. “How many people will get #COVID-19 from this wedding?” one person asked on Twitter, referring to the disease spread by the virus. Powell said on social media he had met Bindi at the zoo, where he now works, six years ago. “After almost a year of planning, we changed everything so we could have safe & small private ceremony at our home, Australia Zoo,” he said in a post early on Thursday. Bindi Irwin leapt to fame as a child when her quirky conservationist father, whose television programs were popular around the world, died in 2006, after a stingray’s barb pierced his heart while he was filming off the Great Barrier Reef. She won reality show Dancing with the Stars in the United States in 2015, when she was 17.
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6868
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Lions QB Stafford sits out workout as wife has brain tumor.
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Detroit Lions quarterback Matthew Stafford did not join his teammates at voluntary workouts Tuesday and later in the day, his wife was packing for a hospital visit.
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true
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Health, Tumors, NFL, Detroit, Detroit Lions, Matthew Stafford, Graham Glasgow, Football
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Stafford’s wife, Kelly, announced earlier this month she plans to have surgery to remove a brain tumor . She posted on Instagram two days later, thanking everyone for an outpouring of support . “I’m excited for this journey to come to an end and move on with my life!” Kelly Stafford posted Tuesday night. Lions center Graham Glasgow sent Stafford a text about two weeks ago after Kelly Stafford shared details of her health and spoke to him recently. “It seems like he’s doing well and I think their family is doing well,” Glasgow said. Matthew and Kelly Stafford have three children. They began dating at Georgia, where he was the star of the football team and she was a cheerleader. She had vertigo spells within the last year, and an MRI showed a tumor on cranial nerves. “Him and Kelly are extremely tough people and this is something that is bigger than football,” Glasgow said. Stafford, who has been at the team’s training facility this offseason, was drafted by Detroit No. 1 overall in 2009. He has spent his entire career with the franchise. ___ More AP NFL: https://apnews.com/NFL and https://twitter.com/AP_NFL
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9567
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No More Readers? New Implant May Help Aging Eyes
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This story tells a single anecdote about a woman who has trouble reading close-up materials, known as presbyopia. To fix this, she has a product known as Raindrop Near Vision Inlay, which was recently approved by the FDA, implanted in one eye. The story claims she can see better within 15 minutes, but readers aren’t given any evidence for her vision pre-and-post implant. The story does not share any research information for how this implant, and another known as KAMRA, performed in clinical trials–it instead leans hard on this one woman’s experience. The story would been much better with numbers to help readers compare this new surgery to other alternatives for patients. On the other hand, we were pleased to see the story explicitly discuss the costs of the surgery, and the likely lack of private insurance and Medicare coverage for it. Presbyopia means the eye cannot focus well on near objects and is considered a gradual consequence of aging that affects millions. Though many people function well by using low-cost reading glasses, newer solutions to this problem may have wide appeal.
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mixture
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vision loss
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The story gives us the price of $4-5,000 for surgery, which is not likely to be covered by insurance or Medicare. This story gives us an anecdote about a single patient, who is apparently the first person to have the implant outside of clinical trials. This is not helpful for the readers who want to know the research evidence about the surgical implant(s)–what were the measured benefits in clinical trials? The story does include an important sentence about how all surgery has risks. Here is that sentence. “Any time you do surgery there is a risk of infection—about one in 2,000,” Hamilton says. “And an infection in the cornea can cause scarring that can affect your vision.” But we wish the story had included the entire context for a patient considering one of two implants mentioned: What were the measured rates of side effects in the research? The story mentions that because the implants only correct vision for near objects in one eye, the other eye sometimes has to be operated on to give it perfect distance vision. We also wanted to know more about the impact of having two eyes with grossly different visual function. The story does not give any references for clinical research studies on the two implants mentioned or how many people were studied or any of the benefit results. There was no disease mongering, though including everyone older than 35 years old in the “aging” category may have been overkill. It was not clear from the story whether either one of the experts quoted – Ralph Chu or D. Rex Hamilton – had any conflicts. In fact, Chu is one of the researchers in a clinical study of the Raindrop implant, according to a peer-reviewed journal article we found. We weren’t satisfied with the story weighing the risks vs. benefits of these two surgical implants, Raindrop and KAMRA. The story did not compare the two of them to give people any idea of how they differ. Many patients who are candidates for vision correction for near vision may use glasses to correct it. The implant surgery carries risks, which include worsening vision, according to an FDA announcement on the Raindrop device. Both of these implants are approved by the FDA, the story tells us, but are they widely available? We are assuming that surgeons need training in how to handle these new devices. Is surgery only available in large metropolitan areas? Is it performed in a doctor’s office? We wish the story had included some details on this. The story explained that both of these devices have recently been approved by the FDA. The story does not appear to rely on a news release.
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28086
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"Sen. Bernie Sanders once supported a proposal to ""dump nuclear waste"" in the ""poor Latino community"" of Sierra Blanca, Texas."
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"What's true: Sanders did support a proposal in which Maine and Vermont could dispose of low-level nuclear waste a proposed site in Sierra Blanca, Texas, which is a predominantly Latino and relatively poor community. What's undetermined: It's not clear whether Sanders told activists he would ""absolutely not"" visit the proposed disposal site. This was corroborated by an activist who was present, but a spokesperson for Sanders did not address it in response to our queries."
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true
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Politics, bernie sanders, nuclear waste, texas
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In April 2018, the right-leaning Turning Point USA posted a Facebook meme which attacked Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders for once supporting a proposal to “dump nuclear waste” in a “poor Latino community in Texas”: In the 90’s, Trump supported a bill to dump nuclear waste in Sierra Blanca, a poor Latino community in Texas where the average yearly income was $8,000. When asked if he would visit the site, he said “Absolutely not.” Oh wait! Never mind, that was Bernie Sanders! And he actually co-sponsored the bill! The meme was re-posted by the “Capitalism” Facebook page: In 1997 and 1998, Sanders did indeed support a measure that gave Congressional approval to an arrangement that would have allowed the states of Maine and Vermont to transport and dispose of nuclear waste at a proposed site in the sparsely populated town of Sierra Blanca in Hudspeth County, close to the Mexican border in West Texas. As the meme suggests, Sierra Blanca was (and is) a predominantly Latino community. U.S. Census Bureau records show that in 2000, two years after the proposal, 73 percent of the town’s 533 residents identified as Hispanic or Latino, and almost all of those as Mexican. In 2016, some 69 percent of Sierra Blanca’s 557 residents identified as Hispanic or Latino. In 1999, the annual per capita income of Sierra Blanca residents was $10,768, which was 45 percent lower than that of Texans at large ($19,617). In 2016, the median household income in Sierra Blanca was estimated to be $41,875 as compared to $54,727 in the state of Texas. As an Independent member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Vermont, Sanders was one of 23 co-sponsors of House Resolution 629, which called for Congress to give its consent to the Texas Low-Level Radioactive Waste Disposal Compact — an agreement between the states of Texas, Maine, and Vermont. Speaking on the floor of the house in October 1997, Sanders said he was in “strong support” of the resolution for environmental reasons, and stressed that he personally was opposed to the use of nuclear power, but that the waste it produces had to be disposed of as safely as possible. It is worth reading a relatively extensive excerpt from his remarks in order to get a good sense of Sanders’ stated reasoning: Let me touch, for a moment, upon the environmental aspects of this issue. And let me address it from the perspective of someone who is an opponent of nuclear power, opposes the construction of nuclear power plants and if he had his way, would shut down the existing nuclear power plants as quickly and as safely as we could. One of the reasons that many of us oppose nuclear power plants is that when this technology was developed, there was not a lot of thought given as to how we dispose of the nuclear waste. But…the reality, as others have already pointed out, is that the waste is here. We can’t wish it away. It exists in power plants in Maine and Vermont, it exists in hospitals, it is here…So the real environmental issue here is not to wish it away, but to make the judgement, the important environmental judgement as to what is the safest way of disposing of the nuclear waste that has been created. …Leaving the radioactive waste at the site where it was produced — despite the fact that that site might be extremely unsafe in terms of long-term isolation of the waste, and was never intended to be a long-term depository of low-level waste — is horrendous environmental policy…No reputable scientist of environmentalist believes that the geology of Vermont or Maine would be a good place for this waste. In the humid climate of Vermont and Maine, it is more likely that ground water will come in contact with that waste and carry off radioactive elements to the accessible environment. There is widespread scientific evidence to suggest, on the other hand, that locations in Texas — some of which receive less than 12 inches of rainfall a year, a region where the groundwater table is more than 700 feet below the surface — is a far better location for this waste. This is not a political assertion, it is a geological and environmental reality. A video clip of his comments can be viewed here. Congress passed the resolution comfortably by 305 votes to 117, as did the Senate, by 78 votes to 15. The proposal had much stronger support among Republicans than among Democrats. GOP members of the House voted 197-26 in favor, while Democrats were more evenly split, voting 107-91 in favor. In the Senate, not a single Republican opposed H.R. 629, while 51 of them voted for it. Fifteen Democratic Senators opposed the bill, while 27 of them voted in support. At that time, five out six Senators from Texas, Vermont, and Maine were Republicans. All five of them voted in favor of the proposal. Both of Maine’s Representatives voted for the disposal site, as did 10 out of the 13 Republican Congress members from Texas. In the House, the proposal had 23 co-sponsors. Eleven were Republicans, eleven were Democrats, and one was Sanders himself, an Independent. The author of the resolution was Joe Barton, a Republican from Texas. Despite Congressional approval for the agreement, authorities in Texas ultimately rejected the proposal to establish a disposal site at Sierra Blanca. In October 1998, the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission voted 3-0 against issuing a permit for the construction of a nuclear waste dump there. According to the Associated Press, commission chairman Barry McBee said the disposal site could have provided a much-needed economic boost to the area, but commission members were sufficiently concerned about safety issues to deny the permit. According to a September 1998 article in the Texas Observer, a group of activists opposed to the Sierra Blanca waste site approached Sanders at an anti-nuclear weapons rally in Vermont that year: Sanders left the stage, which surprised no one in the small Texas delegation. Earlier, he had told them, “My position is unchanged, and you’re not gonna like it.” When they asked if they would visit the site in Sierra Blanca, he said, “Absolutely not. I’m gonna be running for re-election in the state of Vermont.” We contacted Bill Addison, a leading opponent of the Sierra Blanca proposal, who was identified in the Texas Tribune article as having attended that Springfield rally. He confirmed that he was present and corroborated the article’s account of the activists’ interaction with Sanders. We asked a spokesperson for Sanders whether he agrees that this exchange took place, but we did not receive a response to that specific question. Instead, the spokesperson offered a broader explanation and defense of the Senator’s support of H.R. 629: The only reason Senator Sanders was ever involved is because the constitution requires Congress to approve interstate compacts. Texas Representative Joe Barton introduced such legislation in 1998, and twenty-three members of the Vermont, Texas and Maine congressional delegations cosponsored it. The bill did not endorse a specific site — in fact, it did not mention Sierra Blanca at all. Nor did the bill override the local and state approval process. In the end, the Texas agency in charge of permitting ruled against the Sierra Blanca site, choosing another site in Texas instead. So, the process worked. The compact, much less the site selection were never Sen. Sanders’ idea. He disagrees with the very premise of the 1980 law that led to the Texas-Vermont-Maine compact, since it put the burden of disposing of low-level waste on the states, rather the nuclear energy companies that produced much of the waste. In fact, he has long been an opponent of nuclear power precisely it produces waste for which we still have no solution (the Texas site is just for low-level contamination — there is still no plan for all of the high-level nuclear waste all across the country). Sanders’ spokesperson is right to point out that the text of H.R. 629 did not mention Sierra Blanca, but the town was widely known and discussed as the proposed location of the disposal site throughout the time that Sanders and others supported the bill. For example, in April 1998 (three months before Sanders and others in the House voted in favor of H.R. 629) the late Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone condemned the proposed Sierra Blanca site from the floor of the Senate: What has troubled me from the very beginning is that this legislation would result in the dumping of low-level radioactive waste in a small, poor, majority-Latino community in rural West Texas — a town called Sierra Blanca. The Texas legislation in 1991 identified the area where the dump will be located. The Texas Waste Authority designated the site near Sierra Blanca in 1992. A draft license was issued in 1996. Whether we like it or not, this knowledge makes us responsible for what happens to Sierra Blanca. The Turning Point USA meme is accurate in claiming that Sanders supported and co-sponsored a proposal that would have seen nuclear waste from Maine, Vermont and (principally) Texas disposed of at a site in Sierra Blanca, and that Sierra Blanca was (and still is) a predominately Latino and relatively poor community. The meme leaves out important and relevant context by failing to mention the key role that Republicans played in crafting and passing that proposal; instead, it singles out Sanders and does not offer the reader any inkling of his environmentalist rationale. Sanders stood to gain politically from supporting a plan that would remove nuclear waste from his constituency, but this does not necessarily mean he wasn’t motivated by a sincere desire to dispose of the waste in a manner and location that he genuinely believed to be safer. However, whether or not you believe his stated rationale was sincere, no proper analysis of a particular politician’s policy position or Congressional vote should leave out the reasons put forward by that politician. Finally, we were not able to corroborate the “Absolutely not” quotation attributed to Sanders, and his spokesperson did not address our question about it.
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8224
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UAE cancels events, flights as central bank announces coronavirus fiscal plan.
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The United Arab Emirates said on Saturday it was shutting major tourism and cultural venues to contain the spread of coronavirus and announced a $27-billion plan to counter the outbreak’s economic impact.
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true
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Health News
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Attractions such as the Louvre Abu Dhabi museum and the Ferrari World theme park will be closed from March 15-31, the Abu Dhabi Government Media Office said, while the country’s civil aviation authority indefinitely suspended flights to and from Lebanon, Turkey, Syria and Iraq from March 17. The UAE, which has reported 85 coronavirus infections but no deaths, and other Gulf Arab states are intensifying measures to halt the virus as the number of cases rises. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have taken the most drastic steps, cancelling all international flights. Dubai, the UAE’s regional business and transit hub, said it was cancelling all events planned in March and asked hotels to stop hosting wedding celebrations. Some shops have voluntarily closed to boost containment efforts. In the capital, Abu Dhabi, cinemas, arcades and entertainment venues have been shuttered, state news agency WAM reported. Seeking to soften the impact of the shutdowns on key sectors such as tourism and transportation, the central bank said its program would help banks and companies weather the crisis. Saudi Arabia also announced $13 billion to support small and medium enterprises. Saudi Arabia, which reported 17 new cases on Saturday bringing its total to 103, said two-week flight suspensions would start on Sunday, while Kuwait did not specify a length for its grounding which began on Saturday. Saudi Arabia has already suspended the Umrah pilgrimage and locked down its eastern Qatif region where many infections are located. On Saturday, it also closed popular family entertainment zones located inside many shopping malls. Health ministry spokesman Mohammed Abdelali urged the population of 30 million to avoid gathering in public, minimize movements and stay at home as much as possible. “(Such) measures slow the growth of cases so that we can control it, while the countries that take delayed measures experience fast growth which the health systems cannot deal with,” he told reporters. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a group of six oil-rich Arab monarchies which also includes Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, has reported nearly 900 coronavirus cases, mostly in people who had traveled to Iran or who been infected by visitors to Iran. No deaths have been reported in the GCC, unlike Iran where the toll rose by nearly 100 on Saturday to 611, out of 12,729 total infections. Oman, with the lowest number of infections in the region at 20, said on Saturday all schools and educational institutions would close for a month, a precaution also taken by other GCC states and Yemen. Saudi Arabia and Oman canceled all sporting events until further notice, state media said. The UAE will stop issuing visas, except for foreign diplomats, from March 17, WAM reported, citing immigration authorities. Qatar will halt the issuance of visas upon arrival to a number of European nationalities from Sunday, the government communication office said, while the Qatar Olympic Committee suspended all local sports activities until March 29. Qatar confirmed 17 new infections on Saturday, bringing the total number of cases to 337, the highest in the GCC, followed by Bahrain with 211 and Kuwait with 104. Gulf health authorities have stepped up pleas to avoid gatherings and are sanitizing public places. Police in Kuwait used drones fitted with loudspeakers to urge people on the streets to avoid gathering. Health Minister Basel Al-Sabah said on state television: “I urge you by God to stay at home.” The competing sides in Yemen’s civil war announced airport closures including in the capital Sana’a, a measure that will affect flights operated by United Nations organizations taking part in humanitarian relief efforts.
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33786
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Hospitals experienced a sharp increase in births nine months after September 11.
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Catastrophe, be it a personal tragedy or a communal horror, often serves as a wake-up call to those who’ve been letting their lives slip through their fingers, but how individuals will choose to react to such a clarion call is unpredictable. Yes, important decisions may be spurred by horrifying events, but people don’t simply rush out en masse and all follow the same course of action, because they all have different lives and viewpoints. Individual lives will change course, but society as a whole generally ends up berthed in the same spot.
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false
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September 11th
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The search for even the smallest positive arising from the horror that was the September 11 terrorist attacks led to the resurrection of a cherished legend so often kited in the wake of intense, short-lived disasters: a terrible event led to a significant spike in the birth rate nine months later. This belief was widely seized upon in post-9/11 America, and many medical facilities made ready for the impending assault on maternity wards nationwide. Just as those faced with the daunting task of making sense of America’s greatest tragedy found temporary solace in the rumor that a fireman had miraculously survived his fall of 80-some storeys during the collapse of the twin towers by surfing to safety on a piece of board borne on air currents and comfort in the apocryphal news report that a Bible had been found untouched by flame amidst the charred remains of the Pentagon, so did they reassure themselves that some lasting good would come out of the day in the form of a post-9/11 baby boom. But the baby boom was merely wishful thinking that never materialized. Hospitals across the nation failed to report the sharp increase in births that was expected in the summer of 2002. Although some communities did receive a few more visits from the stork than the norm, there were other communities of comparable size that saw fewer births than usual. Even in those communities that did experience an uptick in arrivals, there was nothing that couldn’t be explained by ordinary statistical variance. Babies are not born at a steady rate, and it is normal to see fluctuations, both upwards and downwards, in any given community’s birth rate. Sometimes those fluctuations can be dramatic, but even steep spikes and troughs are perfectly natural variances that occur independent of outside events. Many who look to tie a jump in the number of births to a power outage or devastating snowstorm nine months earlier are guilty of the selective application of patterns, focusing on the data that fit their hypotheses and ignoring the rest. Because variances in birth rate are an ordinary phenomenon, spikes in the number of births will occasionally coincide with a newsworthy event that took place three-quarters of a year earlier. Those who cling to the belief in blackout babies fail to accept that the same communities they point to as proof of the theory saw even greater leaps in number of births in years that weren’t preceded by memorable events. Blackouts, snowstorms, and the like are more usually followed by perfectly ordinary birth rates nine months afterwards, but because human nature is what it is, we tend to remember only the events that fit the pattern we’re determined to see and unconsciously discard all the rest, Thus, we’ll recall that the Great Storm of 1983 was followed by a deluge of babies in the Fall of 1984, but we’ll completely forget that the Great Storm of 1987 was followed by a perfectly ordinary turnout at the maternity hospitals in the Fall of 1988, or that the Great Baby Boom at the end of 1999 wasn’t presaged by anything unusual that occurred in the Spring of 1999. The posited cause of a blackout babies onslaught differs from that of a post-disaster deluge. Blackout babies, we’re told, arrive as a result of folks’ having nothing else to do in the dark than indulge in physical intimacy with their nearest and dearest, just as a similar “increased birth rate” legend also builds upon a theme of casual conception: In the Baby Train, a freight train that rumbles through town at an ungodly hour every morning leads to numerous unplanned progeny because those whose sleep it disturbs find themselves awakened too soon to get up but too late to get much more sleep. By contrast, a post-disaster spike in the birth rate would be attributed to deliberate choices to begin or enlarge families, decisions knowingly taken as a result of a catastrophe that led people to re-examine their immediate priorities. The September 11 attack on America caused many to take a long, hard look at their lives. For some, that re-evaluation led them to realize that the time to start a family was now. September 11 was a major shock to their systems, jolting them from a state of sonambulistic “We’ll get around to it someday; we’ve all the time in the world” complacency into the wide-awake appreciation that life was both precious and uncertain, and that the perfect tomorrow they were waiting for might never come. There were those who in the wake of the attacks quit putting off what they’d previously been half-hearted about, and they started families, got married, or recommitted to their existing marriages. Times of crisis cause us all to look into our hearts and see if we’re truly concentrating on what really matters rather than stumbling along in unthinking routines. But that realization is a double-edged sword, a fact the pundits who predicted a startling upsweep in the number of weddings and births failed to take into account. For every gal who decided that yes, this man was the one, and it was time to take the walk down the aisle, there was just as likely another woman who realized the fellow she’d been considering marrying wasn’t the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. For every fellow who decided to make peace with his wife, there might just as well have been another who realized he was throwing away his life on the wrong woman. And just as there were couples who deemed that no matter how the world was faring, now was the time to begin a family, there were others who experienced second thoughts about having children and opted to postpone the project until the world had steadied itself.
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7969
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Somali doctor, veteran of many battles, girds for war with coronavirus.
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Somali doctor Abdirizak Yusuf Ahmed has escaped an execution, battled deadly diseases and treated war victims. Now - at 35 years old - he’s been tapped to lead his nation’s response to the coronavirus.
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true
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Health News
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So far, Somalia has reported only three cases. But if the disease is unleashed, it could spread like wildfire through camps housing malnourished families who huddle under makeshift domes built from sticks and rags. Many of the 2.4 million Somalis displaced by conflict and other disasters live in such camps. Out of a total population of 15 million, around six million Somalis may not have enough to eat this year, the United Nations says, weakening their immune systems and ability to survive the pandemic. Islamist al Shabaab insurgents also hold parts of southern Somalia, making it hard for health workers to visit and impossible to do testing there. “I have witnessed wars, cholera, dysentery,” Ahmed, tall and bespectacled, told Reuters. “A doctor who fears for his life cannot save people. I have learned to forget worrying and instead help rescue people.” A decade ago, al Shabaab seized him as he was trying to stem a cholera epidemic in territory they held. They had seen a cross inside his ambulance and - wrongly assuming it meant he was a foreign spy - arrested him and his team. A phone call from a high-level contact saved their lives, he said. Right now, Somalia only has about 25 intensive care beds, 110 quarantine beds and 100 treatment beds available, Ahmed said. More are being built. In the capital, patients at the old Italian-built maternity Martini Hospital have been moved out to make way for a new coronavirus ward. The sound of hammering echoes through its wide, tree-lined compound as construction workers rush to finish repairs. The health ministry and prime minister’s office have allocated about $11 million for coronavirus preparation, Ahmed said. Expenses are high - all medical equipment is imported and coronavirus tests are sent to Kenya for processing. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has trained 500 health workers in Somalia since January, said Dr. Mamunur Rahman Malik, the organization’s country representative. The WHO also brought in personal protective equipment to handle the first 300 or 400 cases, Malik added. Ahmed’s biggest worry is that the disease may spread very fast. Somalia has a tradition of physical greetings, and even wealthy people are reluctant to quarantine away from family. Many, like Faduma Abdikadir, simply have nowhere to isolate themselves. The 38-year-old mother is sleeping under a tree in a makeshift camp in the capital Mogadishu with her eight children, having fled fighting in the countryside. “Most of the time we use ashes and sand to wash hands. We are hungry. We beg people to buy water to drink and wash our hands,” she said.
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33259
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The artificial sweetener aspartame is responsible for an epidemic of cancer, brain tumors, and multiple sclerosis.
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Reports of the ingestion of aspartame in patients who later have suffered multiple sclerosis or systemic lupus is obviously not scientifically sustainable evidence.
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false
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Medical, aspartame, Toxin Du Jour
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The following message about the alleged dangers of the artificial sweetener aspartame has been circulating online for two decades now: I have spent several days lecturing at the WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL CONFERENCE on “ASPARTAME marketed as ‘NutraSweet’, ‘Equal’, and ‘Spoonful”‘. In the keynote address by the EPA, they announced that there was an epidemic of multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus, and they did not understand what toxin was causing this to be rampant across the United States. I explained that I was there to lecture on exactly that subject. When the temperature of Aspartame exceeds 86 degrees F, the wood alcohol ASPARTAME coverts to formaldehyde and then to formic acid, which in turn causes metabolic acidosis. (Formic acid is the poison found in the sting of fire ants). The methanol toxicity mimics multiple sclerosis; thus people are being diagnosed with having multiple sclerosis in error. The multiple sclerosis is not a death sentence, where methanol toxicity is. In the case of systemic lupus, we are finding it has become almost as rampant as multiple sclerosis, especially Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi drinkers. Also, with methanol toxicity, the victims usually drink three to four 12 oz. cans of them per day, some even more. In the cases of systemic lupus, which is triggered by ASPARTAME, the victim usually does not know that the aspartame is the culprit. The victim continues its use aggravating the lupus to such a degree, that sometimes it becomes life threatening. When we get people off the aspartame, those with systemic lupus usually become asymptomatic. Unfortunately, we can not reverse this disease. On the other hand, in the case of those diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, (when in reality, the disease is methanol toxicity), most of the symptoms disappear. We have seen cases where their vision has returned and even their hearing has returned. This also applies to cases of tinnitus. During a lecture I said “If you are using ASPARTAME (NutraSweet, Equal, Spoonful, etc.) and you suffer from fibromyalgia symptoms, spasms, shooting pains, numbness in your legs, cramps, vertigo, dizziness, headaches, tinnitus, joint pain, depression, anxiety attacks, slurred speech, blurred vision, or memory loss — you probably have ASPARTAME DISEASE!” People were jumping up during the lecture saying, “I’ve got this, is it reversible?” It is rampant. Some of the speakers at my lecture even were suffering from these symptoms. In one lecture attended by the Ambassador of Uganda, he told us that their sugar industry is adding aspartame! He continued by saying that one of the industry leader’s son could no longer walk – due in part by product usage! We have a very serious problem. Even a stranger came up to Dr. Espisto (one of my speakers) and myself and said, ‘Could you tell me why so many people seem to be coming down with MS? During a visit to a hospice, a nurse said that six of her friends, who were heavy Diet Coke addicts, had all been diagnosed with MS. This is beyond coincidence. Here is the problem. There were Congressional Hearings when aspartame was included in 100 different products. Since this initial hearing, there have been two subsequent hearings, but to no avail. Nothing as been done. The drug and chemical lobbies have very deep pockets. Now there are over 5,000 products containing this chemical, and the PATENT HAS EXPIRED!!!!! At the time of this first hearing, people were going blind. The methanol in the aspartame converts to formaldehyde in the retina of the eye. Formaldehyde is grouped in the same class of drugs as cyanide and arsenic DEADLY POISONS!!! Unfortunately, it just takes longer to quietly kill, but it is killing people and causing all kinds of neurological problems. Aspartame changes the brain’s chemistry. It is the reason for severe seizures. This drug changes the dopamine level in the brain. Imagine what this drug does to patients suffering from Parkinson’s Disease. This drug also causes Birth Defects. There is absolutely no reason to take this product. It is NOT A DIET PRODUCT!!! The Congressional record said, “It makes you crave carbohydrates and will make you FAT”. Dr. Roberts stated that when he got patients off aspartame, their average weight loss was 19 pounds per person. The formaldehyde stores in the fat cells, particularly in the hips and thighs. Aspartame is especially deadly for diabetics. All physicians know what wood alcohol will do to a diabetic. We find that physicians believe that they have patients with retinopathy, when in fact, it is caused by the aspartame. The aspartame keeps the blood sugar level out of control, causing many patients to go into a coma. Unfortunately, many have died. People were telling us at the Conference of the American College of Physicians, that they had relatives that switched from saccharin to an aspartame product and how that relative had eventually gone into a coma. Their physicians could not get the blood sugar levels under control. Thus, the patients suffered acute memory loss and eventually coma and death. Memory loss is due to the fact that aspartic acid and phenylalanine are neurotoxic without the other amino acids found in protein. Thus it goes past the blood brain barrier and deteriorates the neurons of the brain. Dr. Russell Blaylock, neurosurgeon, said, “The ingredients stimulates the neurons of the brain to death, causing brain damage of varying degrees. Dr. Blaylock has written a book entitled EXCITOTOXINS: THE TASTE THAT KILLS” (Health Press 1-800-643-2665). Dr. H.J. Roberts, diabetic specialist and world expert on aspartame poisoning, has also written a book entitled DEFENSE AGAINST ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE” (1-800-814-9800). Dr. Roberts tells how aspartame poisoning is escalating Alzheimer’s Disease, and indeed it is. As the hospice nurse told me, women are being admitted at 30 years of age with Alzheimer’s Disease. Dr. Blaylock and Dr. Roberts will be writing a position paper with some case histories and will post it on the Internet. According to the Conference of the American College of Physicians, ‘We are talking about a plague of neurological diseases caused by this deadly poison”. Dr. Roberts realized what was happening when aspartame was first marketed. He said “his diabetic patients presented memory loss, confusion, and severe vision loss”. At the Conference of the American College of Physicians, doctors admitted that they did not know. They had wondered why seizures were rampant (the phenylalanine in aspartame breaks down the seizure threshold and depletes serotonin, which causes manic depression, panic attacks, rage and violence). Just before the Conference, I received a FAX from Norway, asking for a possible antidote for this poison because they are experiencing so many problems in their country. This poison is now available in 90 PLUS countries worldwide. Fortunately, we had speakers and ambassadors at the Conference from different nations who have pledged their help. We ask that you help too. Print this article out and warn everyone you know. Take anything that contains aspartame back to the store. Take the “NO ASPARTAME TEST” and send us your case history. In response to an inquiry on the subject, the FDA replied as follows: I have been requested by the FDA Center for Drug Evaluation and Research to respond to your request for an evaluation of the article received via an e-mail message on the alleged toxicities of the artificial sweetener, aspartame. My name is David Hattan and I am currently Acting Director of the Division of Health Effects Evaluation in the United States Food & Drug Administration (USFDA) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition. I have worked on questions relating to the safety of aspartame repeatedly since 1978 and am familiar with the safety studies that have been conducted to support the safety of this food additive. There were well over 100 separate toxicological and clinical studies conducted to establish the safety of aspartame before it was approved for regulatory acceptance. Since its approval in 1981 by the USFDA, there have been many additional studies performed to follow up on some of the more creditable reports of aspartame- mediated adverse effects. Below I have tried to succinctly respond to certain of the allegations of toxicity proposed in the e-mail message. First, reports of the ingestion of aspartame in patients who later have suffered multiple sclerosis or systemic lupus is obviously not scientifically sustainable evidence that aspartame is responsible for the occurrence of either disease. Both of these disorders are subject to spontaneous remissions and exacerbations so it is entirely possible that when patients stopped using aspartame they might have also coincidentally have had remission of their symptoms. There is no credible evidence that I am aware of that suggests that aspartame elicits multiple sclerosis or systemic lupus. Second, the claim that aspartame ingestion results in the production of methanol, formaldehyde and formate: These claims are factual. In the gastrointestinal tract aspartame is hydrolyzed to one of its component materials, methanol, as well as the two amino acids, phenylalanine and aspartic acid. This methanol is taken up by the cells of the body and metabolized first to formaldehyde and then to formate. The key information that is missing in the description by Ms. Markle is that the levels of ingestion are very modest. In fact, there are other foodstuffs that we ingest that supply as much and sometimes even more methanol; e.g., citrus fruits and juices, and tomatoes or tomato juice. There are even higher quantities of methanol ingested when ethanol is consumed. Thus, in the final analysis this methanol is the same as from other sources and in the quantities consumed from aspartame, it is readily and naturally metabolized via the one-carbon biochemical cycle to entirely innocuous and natural body components. Third, the claim that the two amino acids, phenylalanine and aspartic acid have neurotoxic effects. This is true in certain individuals and in high enough doses. The only subpopulation of individuals potentially susceptible to adverse effects from phenylalanine is homozygous phenylketonurics and in this case, food itself with much higher levels of phenylalanine from the protein in the diets contributes much higher toxicity for these unfortunate individuals. For those individual phenylketonurics that want to carefully control their intake levels of phenylalanine, they can do that by simply taking into consideration the amount of phenylalanine supplied by the aspartame product or, even more likely, simply refraining from use of these products. The USFDA requires that the aspartame product be labeled specially for phenylketonurics patients so that they will be aware of its presence in these products. As for the other amino acid in aspartame, the levels of aspartic acid ingested with aspartame use are many fold less than those levels responsible for causing adverse effects on the brain of animals and/or man. In fact, it is not clear that the experimentally derived data from animals is relevant to man. In any case, the levels of aspartic acid intake from aspartame are many fold below those needed to mediate neurologic effects. Fourth, there have been numerous animal and human studies done to evaluate the possibility that aspartame causes seizures or enhances the susceptibility to seizures. In clinical studies done in adults and children with pre-existing seizures, there was no evidence of contributing to the frequency of occurrence or severity of seizures in seizure-prone individuals. There were additional studies done on seizure-prone experimental animal models to assess the possible influence of aspartame on their seizuring activity. Again, the result was the same and no influence was demonstrated on the frequency or severity of seizures. Fifth, aspartame was comprehensively evaluated for its potential to mediate reproductive effects and birth defects. In all cases of animal testing, there was no evidence of aspartame-mediated effects on the experimental animals at doses many times higher than those to which the human population is exposed. Sixth, more recent allegations about aspartame mediating an increase in the incidence of brain tumors in the human population has been thoroughly refuted by both government and academic scientists. The legitimate attempts that have been made to confirm and replicate allegations of adverse reactions from aspartame ingestion have not been successful and the USFDA continues to consider this to a be among the most thoroughly tested of food additives and that this information continues to confirm the safety of aspartame. David G. Hattan, Ph.D. Acting Director, Division of Health Effects Evaluation Last updated: 8 June 2015
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9171
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FDA approves new eczema drug Dupixent
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This news release from the FDA announces the agency’s approval of a new drug, dupilumab (to be marketed as Dupixent), for treating eczema, or atopic dermatitis. It briefly describes the type of clinical trials leading to the approval and identifies the possible harms that might arise from use of this injectable drug. It omits, however, any measurements showing how effective the drug is, referring to benefits only in general terms. Some estimates suggest as many as 18 million Americans suffer from moderate-to-severe eczema — and for them it is a miserable disease. A new medication that is potentially effective against this condition would therefore be welcomed. But the enormous cost of this drug, similar to others aimed at thwarting eczema, might play a major role in patient access to the treatment.
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true
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Dupixent,eczema,FDA
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The FDA evaluates drugs without considering costs, which is why they are not discussed in this news release. We hope the FDA will also begin commenting on the projected cost of a drug and its cost-effectiveness. In this case, costs are very steep. An NBC.com story on the approval which we also reviewed, predicts the drug will cost $37,000 annually. It’s unknown if Dupixent will be covered by health insurance. In terms of benefits, the release offers the following: “Overall, participants who received Dupixent achieved greater response, defined as clear or almost clear skin, and experienced a reduction in itch after 16 weeks of treatment.” But readers are left to interpret on their own what “greater response” and “a reduction in itch” mean. The release would have been better if it had told readers how the improvement was measured and how many patients experienced improvement rather than using the term “overall.” The release gets an acceptable rating in this category since it mentions that the drug can cause serious allergic reactions and eye problems including conjunctivitis (pinkeye) and keratitis (inflammation of the cornea). It also cautions that people with asthma shouldn’t use the drug since it hasn’t been tested for safety in these patients. The release should also have noted that regulators don’t know if there are any long-term harms associated with Dupixent use. None of the trials exceeded 16 weeks. The release describes who was studied and for how long, and offers a bare-bones description of the types of studies: “The safety and efficacy of Dupixent were established in three placebo-controlled clinical trials with a total of 2,119 adult participants with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis not adequately controlled by topical medication(s).” The FDA doesn’t provide a link to the studies or their titles and where they were published. The release would be more complete had that information been included. It would help journalists and people with eczema and would be a significant improvement to FDA releases. The release does not engage in disease-mongering. Instead it offers a clear description of what eczema is and what causes the condition. There is no mention of who funded the research leading to the FDA approval, although many readers will assume it was supported by the manufacturer Regeneron. The release gets a borderline satisfactory for mentioning topical corticosteroids as an alternative treatment for eczema but neglects to mention that other pharmaceuticals are also now available for treating it. Whether or not this medication will be covered by insurance is a huge concern. Its high cost will affect how many people can access this new drug. Its availability should have been addressed in the release. It’s newsworthy whenever the FDA approves a new drug. This appears to be the first biologic, injectable treatment for eczema. The release does not use any unjustifiable language.
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4658
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Board to consider new conditions for medical marijuana use.
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The state Medical Board is accepting new petitions through the end of the year from those seeking to add illnesses as qualifying conditions for physicians to recommend medical marijuana to Ohio patients, cleveland.com reported.
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true
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Ohio, General News, Medical marijuana, Marijuana
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Once an illness is added to the list of approved conditions, the board cannot remove it because state law does not give the board authority to do so, according to board spokeswoman Tessie Pollock. Petitions will be reviewed early next year. AIDS, Alzheimer’s disease, and Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS, are among the 21 current approved illnesses, along with cancer, epilepsy, glaucoma and Parkinson’s disease. Earlier this year the board rejected petitions seeking to add anxiety and autism spectrum disorders as qualifying conditions. The board will for the first time open up a public comment period, beginning after its Jan. 8 meeting, said executive director Stephanie Louka. Final decisions on new accepting conditions would come after several months. ___ This story was first published on Dec. 25, 2019. It was updated on Dec. 27, 2019, to correct the name of the State Medical Board of Ohio spokeswoman. She is Tessie Pollock, not Tessa Pollock. It was also updated to clarify that the board says state law does not give it the authority to remove conditions from the list of approved conditions for which doctors can recommend medical marijuana to patients.
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6122
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Trump cites his support for Medicare, slams Medicare for All.
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President Donald Trump on Thursday accused Democrats of an all-out attempt to “totally obliterate Medicare” and portrayed himself as the program’s defender as he signed a directive to expand the program’s private insurance options.
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true
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Seniors, Health, General News, Politics, Impeachments, Medicare, Donald Trump
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Trump skipped past his own proposals for Medicare budget cuts, and he ignored the fact that no Democrat is proposing to take coverage or benefits away from seniors. During a visit to The Villages, a bustling community for adults in Central Florida, Trump was trying to turn attention away from House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry and focus on pocket-book issues instead. “That’s why they do the impeachment crap, because they know they can’t beat us fairly,” he told the friendly audience, which included many seniors. That part of Florida voted overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016. Health care has emerged as a central issue for Democrats competing for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination. Much of the debate has centered on Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for All” plan, which would cover everyone under a government-run plan and eliminate most private insurance. Trump said electing a Democrat would jeopardize seniors’ access to health care. “Medicare is under threat like never before,” Trump said. “Almost every major Democrat in Washington has backed a massive government health care takeover that would totally obliterate Medicare.” Far from “obliterating’’ Medicare, Sanders says his plan would lower costs and provide new benefits, including coverage for long-term care. Medicare, which covers about 60 million seniors and disabled people, is the government’s flagship health care program. Trump also signed an executive order directing his administration to pursue changes to Medicare. Much of what he wants to do is geared toward enhancing Medicare Advantage, the private insurance option picked by about one-third of seniors. Medicare Advantage plans offer savings on premiums and an annual limit on out-of-pocket costs. These plans provide one-stop shopping, eliminating the need for separate supplemental insurance. Offered by major insurers, the plans also cover prescription drugs in most cases. But there are trade-offs. People joining a Medicare Advantage plan generally must accept limits on their choice of hospitals and doctors as well as prior insurer approval for certain procedures. If they change their minds and decide to return to traditional Medicare, they’re not always guaranteed supplemental “Medigap” coverage, which is also private. The president’s order is basically a to-do list for the Department of Health and Human Services that will require months of follow-up. Among the other priorities are an expansion of telemedicine and changes to avoid overpaying for procedures just because they get done in a hospital instead of a doctor’s office. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Trump’s order directs his department to examine whether its current policies and practices put traditional Medicare ahead of the private Medicare Advantage option. Some advocates for older people say that it’s the other way around and that the administration is trying to put private plans ahead. The executive order does not involve a major overhaul of Medicare, which would require congressional approval. So far the debate about Medicare for All has mainly been about its projected costs to the government, estimated at $30 trillion to $40 trillion over 10 years. The Sanders plan would eliminate most private health insurance, including the Medicare Advantage option. Sanders, who unexpectedly underwent a heart procedure this week, says Medicare for All would nonetheless offer seniors broader benefits and lower costs. Sanders’ style of single-payer health care has long been popular among liberals. But recent polling has shown that a majority of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic prefer expanding coverage by building on the Affordable Care Act, or the Obama-era health law. Trump is asking federal courts to overturn that law as unconstitutional. As a presidential candidate, Trump promised not to cut Medicare. As president, he has avoided calling for privatization of the program, raising the eligibility age beyond 65 or rolling back benefits. But Trump’s latest budget proposed steep cuts in Medicare payments to hospitals and other service providers, prompting protests from the industry and accusations by Democrats that he was going back on his promises to seniors. The Medicare cuts went nowhere in Congress. ___ Alonso-Zaldivar reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Deb Riechmann in Washington contributed to this report.
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28039
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A photograph shows a tombstone from 1875 that marks the resting place of Kate McCormick, who reportedly died after a botched abortion.
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The inscription on the stone reads: “Kate McCormick Seduced and pregnant by her father’s friend, unwed, she died from abortion, her only choice. Abandoned in life and death by family. With but a single rose from her mother. Buried only through the kindness of unknown benefactors. Died Feb. 1875 age 21. Victim of an unforgiving society, Have mercy on us.”
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true
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Fauxtography, abortion
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A photograph supposedly showing the gravestone of a woman named Kate McCormick, who passed away in the 1870s from a fatally botched abortion, has been circulating online for several years. In May 2019, the Facebook page “American News X” revived interest in the image: This is a genuine photograph of a tombstone marking the grave of a woman who passed away in the 1870s after claiming she took abortion-inducing drugs, and we were able to corroborate many of the details of the inscription via contemporaneous news reports. Our one caveat with this Facebook post is the stated date for when the tombstone was erected. While McCormick passed away in the 1870s, it wasn’t until more than a century after her death, in 1997, that an anonymous donor placed the pictured gravestone on her final resting place. The Story of Kate Simpson (AKA Kate McCormick) McCormick’s story can be gleaned from various articles published by newspapers in Tennessee in 1876 concerning an inquiry into her death, the death of her child, and the doctor who was charged with (and ultimately acquitted of) providing her with abortion-inducing drugs. While these reports contained a fair amount of detail such as eyewitness testimonies, a few facts of the case are still a bit unclear. We have done our best to piece together the events that led to McCormick’s death, the trial of the man who reportedly killed her, and the circumstances of her burial below. Katie’s story starts in Humboldt, Tenn., where she was seduced and impregnated by a shoemaker named George Burgess. After becoming pregnant, Burgess sent McCormick to Memphis to have the child with the promise that he would soon follow to marry her. But Burgess never followed. In late January 1876, a stillborn child was discovered at what news accounts referred to as “Mrs. Widrig’s boarding house.” Police arrived and found that the child’s mother, Kate Simpson (alias Kate McCormick), was also deathly ill. She passed away the following day: Katie McCormick Page 1 Wed, Feb 2, 1876 – Page 3 · Public Ledger (Memphis, Tennessee) · Newspapers.com The Trial of Dr. D.S. Johnson Dr. D.S. Johnson was arrested and indicted on three charges related to the death of McCormick and her child. The Memphis Public Ledger described the charges against Johnson in a 9 February 1876 article, stating that the doctor was indicted for administrating “large quantities of deadly, dangerous, unwholesome, deleterious and penicious pills, herbs, drugs, potions, teas, liquids powders and mixtures” with the intent of causing an abortion, for causing said abortion, and for “feloniously, willfully, deliberately, premeditated and with malice aforethought kill[ing] and murder[ing] the said Kate McCormick.” A number of witnesses who were with McCormick in her final days provided testimony to authorities. Widrig, the woman who ran the boarding house where the bodies were discovered, told authorities that McCormick had paid Dr. Johnson $25 to terminate her pregnancy. A woman named Mollie Brown provided similar testimony: Mrs. Widrig was sworn and stated that the girl came to her house some time before Christmas, but only stayed one night that she came back three weeks ago, and on Saturday night, or, rather, Sunday morning, she was delivered of a dead child; that Dr. Johnson had been attending her; that her suspicions were aroused and she asked Katie to tell her the whole truth; on Sunday Dr. Frayser had been sent to see Katie by Chief Athy and told her that the girl would die; this she told to Katie, who seemed much affected and made a confession; she said: “Mrs. Widrig, I think my time is short,” and then she added: “Dr. Johnson gave the medicine to destroy my child; tell Dr. Johnson that I promised not to deceive him or tell any person but the time has come when I can keep the secret no longer; I paid Dr. Johnson twenty-five dollars for the medicine; he gave me the medicine some three weeks ago, and said if it did not do its work in six days it would be a failure; I took the medicine from Dr. Johnson to kill my child and paid him twenty-five dollars for it.” Mollie Brown sworn: Katie told me last night that Dr. Johnson sent her medicine by express; she said to me she was satisfied she was going to die, and that Dr. Johnson was the cause of it. Wed, Feb 2, 1876 – Page 3 · Public Ledger (Memphis, Tennessee) · Newspapers.com Dr. Johnson’s version of events differed. Johnson, as well as two other doctors who visited McCormick before her death, testified that McCormick had been treated only for diarrhea: Dr. Marable testified as follows: On Sunday morning was called by Dr. Johnson to make a call; he told me about the case, and said he had prescribed for diarrhea; the treatment was correct as stated by Dr. Johnson; he said that he had discovered that she had a baby last night, but that she was in danger of dying from the afterbirth; I attended to her immediately, and gave her the necessary remedies to stop the flooding, and the remedies resulted successfully; the girl appeared very weak; Dr. Johnson and I went to see Chief Athy at once with reference to the dead child, and at my instigation Dr. Johnson called upon coroner Spelman to hold an inquest on the dead infant, which inquest was held on Sunday; I advised Dr. Johnson as to the necessary treatment to place the girl under with a view to her recovery; the girl had diarrhea and I prescribed with Dr. Johnson for its treatment; the girl was nervous and troubled in mind; she said she was out of money and had no friends; trouble of mind and excitement very often cause abortions or miscarriages, and the greatest trouble physicians have in such cases is to keep the patients quiet; I think flooding and mental anxiety was the cause of her death. Johnson testified as follows: Three weeks ago I first saw the deceased; she came to my office and told her story, and wanted to hide her disgrace; I advised her not to commit abortion as it was against the law; I called to see her at Mrs. Widrig’s boardinghouse and prescribed for diarrhea; on Sunday morning I called and found that she had a miscarriage; I then called on Dr. Marable; the prescription given her by me was ascitate of lead and morphine; the girl seemed troubled and said she would sooner die than live; she said this both before and after the abortion had taken place. Johnson was eventually acquitted of the charges against him. The Burial of Kate McCormick The story of McCormick did not end with her death. While McCormick’s mother traveled to Memphis after learning of her daughter’s death, she left the city without making arrangements for burial. Similarly, Burgess, the man who reportedly impregnated McCormick, didn’t undertake a visit to view the body. A particularly depressing passage published by the Public Ledger on 4 February 1876 (which contains some racial language common to the era) noted that McCormick’s body was stored in a “pauper’s coffin” in a stable that served as a morgue for the impoverished in Shelby County: Fri, Feb 4, 1876 – Page 3 · Public Ledger (Memphis, Tennessee) · Newspapers.com The reporter who found McCormick’s body sought to remedy the situation by obtaining the help of a Capt. George W. Miller of the Cut Off Saloon. Miller agreed to finance a proper burial, and McCormick’s body was taken to Elmwood Cemetery: Fri, Feb 4, 1876 – Page 3 · Public Ledger (Memphis, Tennessee) · Newspapers.com McCormick was interred at Elmwood Cemetery sometime in 1876, but the gravestone shown above was not originally present at her final resting place. This tombstone was erected in 1997 and was paid for by an anonymous person who was apparently moved by McCormick’s sad tale.
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13385
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"Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Says marijuana use among Colorado high school students ""has not increased since legalization."
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"The ad claimed, ""according to the Colorado state government, marijuana use among high school students has not increased since legalization."" Based on the numbers cited, there does appear to have been a slight increase in marijuana use among Colorado’s high school students. However, multiple experts we spoke with said that increase is not statistically significant. They also said it was too early to draw conclusions about marijuana use, and that more years of study will be needed."
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mixture
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Arizona, Marijuana, Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol,
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"Colorado has been the measuring stick for both supporters and opponents of an initiative to legalize recreational marijuana in Arizona this November. A recent ad from the Campaign to Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol, a pro-marijuana group, attempts to show the positive effects of marijuana regulation in Colorado, highlighting millions of dollars going toward public education and the lack of an increase in pot use among teens. ""According to the Colorado state government, marijuana use among high school students has not increased since legalization,"" the ad, which started airing Sept. 27, claims. We should also note that the anti-pot camp has used Colorado teen pot statistics in their ads. Colorado legalized recreational marijuana in 2012. The first retail store opened in January 2014. We have seen multiple numbers on teen pot use, so we wondered if this claim held up. Barrett Marson, a spokesman with the pro-marijuana campaign, pointed us to the 2015 Healthy Kids Colorado Survey. The ad cites a June 2016 Denver Post article, which references the survey. This survey, which takes place every two years, is done by the Colorado Department of Health and Environment. The 2015 version surveys about 17,000 middle and high school students at random. According to the results, 38 percent of high school students surveyed said they used marijuana at least once their life. In 2013, that number was 36.9 percent. The 2015 survey also noted that 21.2 percent of high-schoolers used marijuana in the last 30 days. That number was 19.7 percent in 2013. However, the stats are not significant, according to multiple experts we spoke with. This means the data has wiggle room. ""There was not a statistically significant increase in 30-day or lifetime marijuana use among high school students between 2013 and 2015,"" said Mark Salley, a spokesman with Colorado’s health department. The state’s top health official, Dr. Larry Wolk, said the same thing in December 2015 when looking at federal data -- from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health -- on the topic. The national survey notes that 11.16 percent of Colorado 12- to 17-year-olds in the 2012-13 cycle used marijuana in the last 30 days . That number was 12.56 percent in the 2013-14 cycle. ""This is not a statistically significant increase at the 5 percent level of significance,"" said Brad Stone, a spokesman with the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Jonathan Caulkins, a public policy professor at Carnegie Mellon University, said the clock hasn’t even really started on the full effects of legalizing recreational marijuana. ""We’re not going to see the full effects of legalization until something like 25 years after national legalization,"" Caulkins said. ""It takes time for the industry to adapt to new opportunities, go through the usual shake-out period."" Our rating The ad claimed, ""according to the Colorado state government, marijuana use among high school students has not increased since legalization."" Based on the numbers cited, there does appear to have been a slight increase in marijuana use among Colorado’s high school students. However, multiple experts we spoke with said that increase is not statistically significant. They also said it was too early to draw conclusions about marijuana use, and that more years of study will be needed.
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2078
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Surgery prevents breast cancers in high-risk women.
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Women with mutations in the well-known BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes who have their breasts and ovaries removed are much more likely to survive than women who do not get preventive surgery, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday.
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true
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Health News
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Vasiliki Kostoula, a Greek breast cancer patient, is framed through a breast x-ray after a radiological medical examination in an Athens hospital October 29, 2008. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis The study shows the benefits of genetic tests that give women with a family history of cancer the chance to take steps to increase their chances of survival, they said. “This is the first study to prove women survive longer with these preventive surgeries and shows the importance of genetic testing when there is a family history of early breast or ovarian cancer,” Dr. Virginia Kaklamani of Northwestern University in Chicago wrote in a commentary about the study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Women with mutations in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes have a 56 to 84 percent higher risk of developing breast cancer during their lifetimes. Those with the BRCA1 mutation also have a 36 to 63 percent higher risk of ovarian cancer and those with the BRCA2 mutation have a 10 to 27 percent higher risk of ovarian cancer. Because of this, many women make the difficult choice to have their breasts or ovaries and fallopian tubes surgically removed to reduce their risk. Dr. Susan M. Domchek of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia and colleagues studied the effectiveness of these procedures in 2,482 women with BRCA mutations, including 247 women who had risk-reducing surgery to remove their breasts and 993 who had risk-reducing surgery to remove their ovaries. No woman who had a mastectomy developed breast cancer during the three years of follow-up testing. Seven percent of women who decided against a mastectomy were diagnosed with breast cancer in the same period. “Our results confirm that risk-reducing mastectomy is associated with a significant reduction in breast cancer risk,” Domchek and colleagues wrote. Women with BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations who had their ovaries and fallopian tubes removed had similar results. About 10 to 20 percent of breast and ovarian cancers are due to BRCA1 or BRCA2 genes. “Most of these women will die of ovarian cancer, so you can save 20 percent of them with the prophylactic surgery,” Kaklamani said. “And you can save the majority of women who would have died of their breast cancer,” she added. She said primary care physicians, gynecologists and women “need to be more aware that these tests exist.” Dr. Sandhya Pruthi, a breast cancer expert at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who counsels women with BRCA mutations, said the study adds more evidence that the surgery can help save lives, but the choice is never easy. “It’s not cookie-cutter medicine,” Pruthi, who was not involved in the study, said in a telephone interview. She said women need to come to terms with the psychological issues involved in having their breasts removed, and younger women who have their ovaries removed must contend with early menopause symptoms. “It’s not a decision made on a single visit,” she said. According to the American Cancer Society and the International Agency for Research on Cancer, 1.3 million new breast cancer cases are diagnosed around the world every year and it kills 465,000 women annually, making it the leading global cancer killer of women.
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2462
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U.S. obesity leveling off, but at high rate: report.
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Obesity levels among adults appear to be holding steady across the United States, adding to recent evidence that the growth rate for U.S. waistlines is slowing, according to an analysis released on Friday.
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true
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Health News
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But within the holding pattern there is a dramatic rise in “extreme” obesity among adults and children. The annual “F as in Fat” report from the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that the proportion of adults who are extremely obese - at least 100 pounds (45.4 kilograms) overweight - has climbed over the last three decades from 1.4 percent in the late 1970s to 6.3 percent in 2009-2010. That is about a 350 percent increase, researchers for the health nonprofit groups said. About 5 percent of children and teenagers are also now severely obese, they added. Rates of extreme obesity were nearly twice as high for women as for men, and were also particularly high for Hispanic boys and black girls. “As long as we continue to see those increases in extreme obesity, I think we need to be worried,” Trust for America’s Health Executive Director Jeffrey Levi told Reuters. Overall, the report found obesity rates stabilizing across the United States, though at historically high levels with nearly 36 percent of U.S. adults obese as of 2010. Only one state, Arkansas, had an increase in obesity levels. The findings follow this month’s announcement that the obesity rate among low-income children between the ages of 2 and 4 dropped slightly, after 30 years of increases. “After decades of bad news, we’re finally seeing signs of progress,” researchers for the two health groups wrote in Friday’s report that said government efforts to encourage healthier diets and more exercise were paying off. “I’m delighted but not surprised,” said Kelly Brownell, dean of Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University. “The collective effect is having an impact and turning things around ... We’ve managed the plateau, we may remain there. We will have to do more to achieve a downturn.” The analysis, based on data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, underscored America’s continuing battle with weight. Obesity rates were highest in the South and Midwest in states including Louisiana, Mississippi and Oklahoma. In addition to geographic differences, rates were higher for people with less education and lower incomes, it found. Rates for those ages 45 to 64, the bulk of the so-called Baby Boomer generation, were also a concern as their obesity rates were 30 percent or higher in 41 states. In Alabama and Louisiana, their rate reached 40 percent. Increasingly heavy men also narrowed the obesity gender gap. “Ten years ago, the obesity rate for women was significantly higher than the rate for men,” 33.4 percent compared to 27.5 percent, researchers wrote. Now, their “rates are essentially the same” at nearly 36 percent, they said. Health experts agreed with the report’s conclusion that various government programs making school lunches healthier, mandating calorie counts on menus, discouraging soda consumption, integrating physical activity into the daily life and other weight-conscious changes were adding up to widespread behavior changes. The report recommended strengthening such programs. It said food and beverage companies should market only their healthiest products to children, the nation’s transportation plans should encourage walking and biking, and everyone should be able to buy healthy, affordable foods close to home. Obesity is commonly measured by body mass index (BMI), a measure of one’s height to weight. A BMI score of 30 or more is defined as obese, while extreme obesity is a score of 40 or higher. A score of 25 to 29 is considered overweight.
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28181
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Scientific studies support the conclusion that marijuana can play a role in healing broken bones.
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It is also important to note that this is an ongoing area of investigation hampered by legal restrictions on research, that few large-scale studies have been performed, and that these studies are dominantly on laboratory animals or isolated cells, not on humans.
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true
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Medical, drug rumors, drugs, marijuana
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Despite being used both recreationally and medicinally for millennia, the mechanisms by which cannabis affects the human body have only recently come to light. The most significant development in this body of work is the discovery of what scientists term the “endocannabinoid system,” a collection of chemical pathways found in mammals whose existence wasn’t demonstrated until the 1990s. The endocannabinoid system is made up of specific receptors that are primarily affected by chemicals already in your body — endocannabinoids. As it turns out, many of the chemicals in cannabis, termed “phytocannabinoids”, are nearly identical to the endocannabinoids already present and can therefore also affect these receptors as well if they make their way into your bloodstream. The most famous of these chemicals is tetrahydrocannabinol (commonly known as THC), which produces the psychoactive “high” people seek when they use the drug recreationally. Later research has yielded the discovery of a plethora of other phytocannabinoids that do not produce a psychoactive effect, but do demonstrate therapeutic potential. The most notable of these “other” chemicals is cannabidiol (referred to as CBD), which studies suggest has strong pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory properties, and has been shown essentially to halt seizures caused by the neurologic condition Dravet’s Syndrome. A 2008 paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggested that CBD acted on a previously undescribed endocannabinoid receptor, GPR55, and that this receptor likely plays a role in the regulation of bone mass by inhibiting the growth of cells — osteoclasts — that promote the resorption of bone minerals: Our observations also suggest that CBD can inhibit bone resorption in vivo via modulation of GPR55 signaling. They go on to suggest, however, that because THC has the opposite effect on this receptor, that this interaction may negate the positive effects on bone density caused by CBD: Our observations suggest that blocking GPR55 also may have direct beneficial effects on bone turnover in arthritic or metabolic bone diseases. Finally, although CBD is a major constituent of cannabis, it remains to be determined whether cannabis smoking may increase bone density, because [THC], another constituent, also is thought to be a GPR55 ligand and may oppose the effects of CBD. In this context, two studies took a closer look at the possible mechanisms by which CBD, specifically, might help bones heal from a fracture. A 2014 study published in Biochemical Pharmacology that utilized isolated cells suggested that CBD may activate a receptor in the endocannabinoid system (CB2) that enhances the migration of mesenchymal stem cells (which play a role in creating calcified bones) to the site of the fracture. A 2015 study published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research reaffirmed the possibility that CBD can help with healing fractures: Here we report that the major non-psychoactive cannabis constituent, cannabidiol (CBD), enhances the biomechanical properties of healing rat mid-femoral fractures. The maximal load and work-to-failure, but not the stiffness, of femurs from rats given a mixture of CBD and Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) for 8 weeks were markedly increased by CBD. They found that, indeed, CBD increased the strength of the healed broken femurs of laboratory rats. The authors noted that CBD, with all other constituents removed, was more effective. They suggest a different mechanism for this effect: CBD increases the expression of a gene that codes for a series of reactions that results in the production of collagen, which is then transformed into harder bone material, a process termed collagen cross-linking. Each of these three mechanisms that link CBD to bone physiology has support in the scientific community, as attested to by their inclusion in a September 2016 review of phytocannabinoid pharmacology in the journal Physiological Reviews. It is important to note, however, that CBD specifically, and not the cannabis plant as a whole, is implicated in the therapeutic effects on bones. As such, consuming just any cannabis would not necessarily be effective. Any treatment would require an effort to isolate or increase the concentration of CBD and remove or reduce THC.
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8075
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New York sees glimmer of progress against coronavirus, New Orleans worsens.
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New York state, leading the nation in coronavirus infections and deaths, is showing tentative signs of curbing the spread of the disease, the governor said on Wednesday, even as fatalities in New York City jumped while the health crisis deepened in hard-hit New Orleans and elsewhere.
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true
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Health News
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The rate of hospitalizations in New York has slowed in recent days, Governor Andrew Cuomo said, with numbers he called “almost too good to be true.” He also hailed the enlistment of 40,000 retired nurses, physicians and other medical professionals signing up for a “surge health care force,” but warned much remains to be done. In an ominous sign he and other governors are preparing for the worst, the states of New York, North Carolina and Hawaii requested the Federal Emergency Management Agency send special mortuary teams that can be deployed for mass casualties, FEMA said on Wednesday. New Orleans, where large crowds celebrated Mardi Gras a month ago, was on track to become the next U.S. epicenter, as Louisiana’s Gulf Coast metropolis recorded the world’s highest growth rate in coronavirus cases. Cuomo announced new steps aimed at containing the virus. New York City - home to over 8 million people - closed some of its largely empty streets to vehicle traffic to allow more room for pedestrians to walk with greater “social distancing.” At a news conference, Cuomo said the city also would ban basketball and other contact sports in public parks, while lamenting the challenges posed by dense populations. “Our closeness makes us vulnerable,” he said. Nationwide, nearly 68,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the highly contagious virus, as the U.S. death toll approached 1,000. Only two other nations - China and Italy - have more cases of the virus, which is particularly perilous to elderly people and those with underlying chronic health conditions. At least 30,800 people have tested positive for the virus in New York state and more than 17,800 in New York City alone. By Wednesday night, the number of coronavirus fatalities had climbed to 280, up 81 from the number reported hours earlier when the statewide death toll stood at 285. An updated toll for the state was not immediately available. New York state as a whole, accounting for roughly half the country’s known infections, followed California last week in ordering non-essential businesses to close and to direct residents to stay home as much as possible. As of Wednesday, the governors of at least 21 states, representing more than half the U.S. population of 330 million, have imposed such restrictions, designed to curb transmission of the virus by limiting congregations of people. Even before states began adopting those measures last week, the pandemic paralyzed parts of the U.S. economy and upended daily life as schools and colleges closed and workplaces shuttered voluntarily or under local government orders. The crisis, sparking projections of a global recession amid tumbling stock prices, has put public health authorities at odds with President Donald Trump, who had pointed to a robust economy and stock market in making his case for reelection in November. Trump this week has pushed to reopen commerce by April 12, Easter Sunday, and on Wednesday blamed news outlets for exerting pressure to keep restrictions in place. “The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible in the hope that it will be detrimental to my election success,” Trump wrote in a tweet. “The real people want to get back to work ASAP.” Health experts insist reopening businesses and schools too soon would only risk fueling transmission of the virus, overwhelming a hospital system already facing equipment and personnel shortages, and ultimately worsen the economic fallout. Cuomo cited recent coronavirus hospitalization figures in his state as evidence that social distancing was starting to work. While hospitalizations had been doubling every two days as of Sunday, those numbers were doubling every 3.4 days by Monday, and by Tuesday the rate was every 4.7 days, Cuomo said. “This is a very good sign and a positive sign, again not 100% sure it holds ... but the arrows are headed in the right direction,” Cuomo said. Diagnostic testing remained a challenge in New York and around the country. At Elmhurst Hospital Center in New York’s Queens borough, scores of people, most wearing surgical masks, lined up on Wednesday to be tested at a tent outside. Dr. Ashley Bray, 27, a general medicine resident interviewed by the New York Times, described the situation inside the 545-bed hospital as “apocalyptic,” recounting how she performed chest compressions on at least three coronavirus patients, one after the other, all of whom eventually died. The deteriorating situation in New Orleans dashed hopes that less densely populated cities and those in warmer climates might escape the worst of the pandemic. Local authorities have warned that hospitals in the Mississippi River port city could reach the point of collapse by April 4. Trump issued federal disaster declarations for Louisiana and Iowa late on Tuesday and for Texas and Florida on Wednesday, freeing up federal funds to help states cope. The three states hardest hit so far - New York, California and Washington - were given such status previously. Dr. Rebekah Gee, head of Louisiana State University’s healthcare services division, said that Mardi Gras, when 1.4 million tourists descended on New Orleans for celebrations that included tightly packed street parades, fed the city’s outbreak. New Orleans restaurant owner Ronnie Evans said everyone in New Orleans was “freaking out.” “People don’t know what to expect or how long this will last. Everyone is worried about their jobs,” said Evans, 32, whose restaurant Blue Oak BBQ is a few steps from the renowned Bourbon Street. The restaurant is offering takeout orders only. “This is as bad as Katrina or worse,” he said, referring to the hurricane that devastated the city in 2005.
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5895
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Former President Jimmy Carter celebrates 95th birthday.
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Jimmy Carter celebrated his 95th birthday on Tuesday, becoming the first U.S. president to reach that milestone as he continues his humanitarian work and occasionally weighs in on politics and policy.
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true
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Georgia, Health, General News, Politics, Africa, AP Top News, Donald Trump, Atlanta, U.S. News, Jimmy Carter, United States
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Carter still lives in tiny Plains, Georgia, and planned no public celebrations on Tuesday. But he’s had plenty to say recently, warning that re-electing President Donald Trump would be “a disaster” and expressing hopes that his Carter Center will become a more forceful advocate against armed conflicts in the future, including “wars by the United States.” “I just want to keep the whole world at peace,” Carter said as he presented his annual Carter Center report last month. “We have been at war more than 226 years. We have been at peace for about 16 years” since the Declaration of Independence in 1776, he said. And every U.S. military conflict from the Korean War onward has been a war of “choice,” he said. The 39th president survived a dire cancer diagnosis in 2015 and surpassed George H.W. Bush as the longest-lived U.S. president in history this spring. He’s had some trouble walking after a hip replacement in May, but still teaches Sunday School in Plains, and with his wife of 73 years, Rosalynn, now 92, still plans an upcoming trip to help build houses with Habitat for Humanity in Nashville, Tennessee. In his latest appearances at the Carter Center and in a town hall at Emory University, Carter blasted money in politics, urged action to combat the climate crisis, and celebrated the Carter Center’s work on public health, election monitoring and conflict resolution. But he said the center can do more to constructively criticize U.S. military engagements. The Carter Center has “never voiced an opinion publicly” on individual wars, he said with some regret, adding: “This is primarily my fault.” “The United States is very deeply inclined to go to war,” Carter said, partly to “implant American policies” in other countries, and partly to “make a hero” out of wartime commanders in chief. This has significant economic consequences, he said: China has “been at peace” since he normalized relations with Beijing in 1979, and while the U.S. has spent trillions on military conflict, China has invested similar amounts in high-speed rail, new college campuses and other infrastructure. Carter talks with the realism of a nonagenarian, born in 1924 when the world population was quarter of what it is today and life expectancy for American males was 58 years. Saying he plans to start spending more time with his extended family, he told the Carter Center audience that “this may be our last conversation with you ... we may or may not have one next year.” Carter has been accepting visits from several 2020 presidential candidate s, but he’s held back on endorsing any of his fellow Democrats, offering only clues to his thinking. Carter said he voted for Bernie Sanders over Hillary Clinton last time, but warns that embracing single-payer, government-run health insurance could cost the Democrats votes among moderates and independents. That could rule out Sanders and another progressive favorite, Elizabeth Warren. But Carter also said he’d like to see a woman as president. He said he couldn’t have managed his presidential duties when he was 80, which would nix not only Sanders, at 78, but former Vice President Joe Biden, who is 76. Warren is 70, meaning she’d be nearly 80 at the end of a two-term presidency. Carter said only that he’ll be “voting Democratic” in the general election. By then, he’ll be 96. --- Follow Barrow on Twitter at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP .
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3782
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1 in 2 seriously ill Medicare enrollees struggles with bills.
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More than half of seriously ill Medicare enrollees face financial hardships with medical bills, with prescription drug costs the leading problem, according to a study published Monday.
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true
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Seniors, Health, General News, Legislation, Politics, Prescription drug costs, Prescription drugs, Medicare
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The study in the journal Health Affairs comes as legislation to curb drug costs for seniors languishes in Congress and the growing financial exposure of patients with insurance is getting more attention in the nation’s health care debates. The survey findings were a surprise to researchers, since Medicare is considered relatively good coverage and most people have supplemental insurance to fill its gaps. After drug costs, the most often cited issues were hospital bills, ambulance rides and emergency visits. “It points to a real issue that has gone under the radar,” said Tricia Neuman, a Medicare expert with the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation who was not involved with the study and reviewed it for The Associated Press. “Survey after survey shows that people are satisfied with Medicare, but this analysis shows that people with Medicare who have serious health problems can face very high out-of-pocket costs, and that’s an issue that hasn’t gotten much attention.” All told, 53% of seriously ill Medicare patients said they had major trouble paying their medical bills. More than a third reported using all or most of their savings to pay medical bills, 27% said they were contacted by a collection agency and 23% were unable to pay for basics such as food, heat and housing. Nearly half (45 reported emotional or psychological distress, and 1 in 4 said their medical costs had become a major burden on their families. “We did not expect to see this extent of financial hardship in the Medicare population,” said Michael Anne Kyle, lead author of the study and a doctoral candidate at Harvard University. She said lawmakers may need to devote more attention to the needs of Medicare beneficiaries with catastrophic costs. “Out-of-pocket costs are very concentrated,” Kyle said. “The sickest population is also getting the biggest bills. Especially if you are sick over time, you are slowly draining your bank account.” The study defined seriously ill people as those with a condition that over the past three years required two or more hospitalizations and visits to three or more doctors. Included in the study were Medicare recipients 65 and older as well as younger beneficiaries who qualified for coverage because of disability. Over half had seen five to nine doctors in the past three years. Among the most prevalent conditions were heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Thirty percent reported that the cost of prescription drugs was their major hardship. Legislation to curb the costs of medicines for seniors has advanced this year in Congress, but it’s unclear if it can pass because the House and Senate remain far apart. House Democrats want Medicare to directly negotiate prices for the costliest drugs — a nonstarter for Senate Republicans. However, there is widespread agreement on putting an annual out-of-pocket limit on drug costs for Medicare enrollees. Although President Donald Trump wants a bill, the House impeachment inquiry has overshadowed efforts to move legislation. As a candidate, Trump had backed Medicare drug price negotiations. It’s uncertain if the White House will try to find a compromise now between the House and Senate positions. A second study out Monday also called attention to seniors’ out-of-pocket costs. Focusing on people with traditional Medicare, the Kaiser Family Foundation estimated that the average enrollee spent $5,460 out of their own pocket for health care in 2016, counting premiums and medical services. That figure also included long-term care costs. The average was lower — $4,519 — for people living in their communities and not in institutions. The Health Affairs study was based on a 2018 national survey of people of any age who suffered from a serious illness. Researchers decided to go back and take a closer at the Medicare group because of the unexpectedly high degree of problems. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.6 percentage points.
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32412
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"Edward Snowden was ""pronounced dead"" by his girlfriend in Russia in August 2016."
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"A fake news web site's claim that Edward Snowden was ""pronounced dead by his girlfriend"" has been aggregated by other low-credibility sites but remains false."
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false
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Junk News, dead man's switch, disclose.tv, edward snowden
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On 10 August 2016, the unreliable web site Disclose.tv published an article reporting that former National Security Agency (NSA) employee and whistleblower Edward Snowden was “pronounced dead by his girlfriend” in Russia: Days after Edward Snowden‘s rumored death was debunked by journalist Glenn Greenwald and a Russian lawyer, a report emerged that his mistress and girlfriend have confirmed the leaker’s demise. HE WAS KILLED SATURDAY BY A DRUNKEN KNIFE WIELDING BURYAT Quoting MKRU News of Russia, a conservative site called Get Off the BS said Monday afternoon that Snowden’s mistress said he was killed Saturday by a drunken knife wielding Buryat man in the Republic of Buryatia. The article from which the claim was aggregated was presented in the style of fiction rather than reporting and was interspersed with salacious fabrications: Late Monday afternoon, the mistress of the infamous Edward Snowden announced the death of Snowden, who was allegedly killed this past Saturday by a drunken knife wielding Buryat man in the Republic of Buryatia. MKRU News (Russia) reported this past Saturday that a drunken man who for some reason took exception to a man, presumably Snowden, saving his wife from drowning, attacked a woman by slicing her neck and stabbed her male companion in the thigh, who later died from severe blood loss in a local hospital … The injured were taken to a nearby hospital, where one of them died as a result of the extensive blood loss. The unidentified man was allegedly 27 years old. (Snowden who was born on June 21, 1983, would be 33 now) That outlet connected the purported death of Snowden to a cryptic, since-deleted tweet issued by the exiled contractor on 5 August 2016: While it was true the disappearing tweet was interpreted by many as an ominous signal, an insurance key, or a dead man’s switch, journalist Glenn Greenwald (who works closely with Snowden to publish leaked material) quickly confirmed that Snowden is alive and well: @HannahhhBeth @Snowden He’s fine — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) August 6, 2016 Disclose.tv and Get Off the BS are sites known for publishing outlandish fabrications and fake news in order to attract readers. On 15 August 2016 Snowden reappeared on Twitter, putting concerns for his safety to rest: The world's first confirmed, publicly-ID'd victim of NSA's #PRISM: a pro-democracy activist. https://t.co/C7GPiojhHT pic.twitter.com/GDvTDhyBHg — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) August 15, 2016
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8127
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Spain lauds the medics on the front line of coronavirus crisis.
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Spain paid tribute on Monday to front-line staff battling a worsening coronavirus outbreak that has infected nearly 4,000 health workers, who make up more than a tenth of known cases in the country.
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true
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Health News
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The virus killed a further 462 people overnight in Spain, Europe’s second hardest hit country after Italy, bringing the death toll to 2,182. Nurses, doctors and other health workers have echoed the complaints of their counterparts in other countries, saying they lack protective equipment like masks. The national health service is “demonstrating a great capacity to respond in an exceptional situation”, Health Minister Salvador Illa told a news conference. He warned the next week would be difficult, and that the epidemic could reach its peak in Spain in the coming days. Health workers account for nearly 12% of Spain’s total 33,089 registered cases which rose from 28,572 on Sunday. Military personnel have been visiting the nursing homes that have come under increasing pressure as the disease spreads, Defence Minister Margarita Robles told broadcaster Telecinco. “On some of its visits, the army has seen some old people, the elderly, absolutely abandoned if they were not dead in their beds,” Robles said. She did not say what had caused those deaths. Soldiers were also deployed to Barcelona to help build a temporary homeless shelter at the city’s Fira event centre. The shelter, to be managed by the Red Cross, will allow up to 1,000 homeless people to isolate themselves in hygienic conditions, Barcelona’s Mayor Ada Colau said. In Madrid, struggling with the highest number of cases, the municipal funeral home said it would stop collecting bodies from Tuesday due to a shortage of equipment. Private funeral homes are still operating in the capital. City authorities decided to use an Olympic-sized ice rink as a morgue, near a conference centre which has been kitted out with hospital beds and already received 126 of the 1,300 patients it expects in the coming week. Deputy Prime Minister Carmen Calvo was hospitalized on Sunday with a respiratory infection, the government said on Monday, adding that the minister, who has born in 1957, is awaiting coronavirus test results. Two other ministers and the wife of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez have tested positive for the virus over the past weeks. The official in charge of the health emergency, Fernando Simon, said 87% of those who had died were aged 70 or older. Economy Minister Nadia Calvino said a nationwide lockdown, which has kept most Spaniards confined to their homes, was beginning to take a heavy toll on the economy. “Economic activity, which was dynamic until February slowed significantly last week,” she said, adding that the food, electricity and telecoms industries had continued to function normally. Supermarket group Corte Ingles said it had set up a phone number and email address for health workers to do their shopping, with free delivery to their homes.
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30494
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Singer Toni Braxton has passed away at age 50 of unknown causes.
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That this report of Braxton’s death is mere misinformation is not surprising, as the REPORTS site at breaking-cnn.com is a known purveyor a fake news, including previous death hoaxes about singers such as Marilyn Manson and Phil Collins.
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false
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Junk News, breaking-cnn.com
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On 4 April 2018, a web site reported that Grammy Award-winning singer Toni Braxton had passed away at age 50 of as yet undetermined causes: American singer Toni Braxton has died after been rushed to hospital on Tuesday night for feeling “unresponsive” at home, family tells the media. According to the family’s spokesperson Anita Arthur, the cause of her death is not immediately known as the family awaits an autopsy report. Braxton was hospitalized in 2016 due to complications with her lupus which led her to postpone Cleveland show. Braxton revealed in 2011 that she was living with lupus, a chronic autoimmune disease that causes inflammation in the sufferer’s internal organs, joints and skin. She also appeared on “The Dr. Oz Show” in 2013 to talk about her diagnosis. Her sister Traci Braxton who was kicked out of her upcoming tour “Sex and Cigarettes” solo tour amid family feud, said the singer “showed no sign of illness and never complained of Lupus”. The web site reporting this information was highly dubious, as it was labeled with no identifying name other than “REPORTS” and hosted under an ersatz domain name intended to mimic that of the CNN news network (breaking-cnn.com): Indeed, this news about Braxton’s passing was just another celebrity death hoax. Although the singer has been hospitalized in the past for medical issues related to lupus, no legitimate news organization has reported her death, nor has either of Braxton’s official Facebook or Twitter accounts made any mention of her passing.
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17812
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"Suzanne Bonamici Says ""nearly 30,000"" federal employees in Oregon were furloughed during the government shutdown."
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Were 30,000 Oregonians employed by federal government furloughed during shutdown?
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false
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Oregon, Economy, Federal Budget, Jobs, Suzanne Bonamici,
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"The federal government is finally reopening its doors, and hundreds of thousands of furloughed employees are back on the job. Still, the cost to the economy lingers. Recently, Standard & Poor’s, the financial services company, estimated that the 16-day shutdown cost the U.S. economy some $24 billion. In an opinion piece published on OregonLive.com a few days before the government reopened, U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici, D-Ore., bemoaned such costs. ""The government shutdown is already causing damage,"" she wrote. ""Veterans’ benefits have been held up, national parks and museums are closed, federal research has been halted, and small business loan applications are not being processed. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees, including nearly 30,000 in Oregon, have been furloughed, and millions more continue to do their jobs without knowing when they’ll receive a paycheck."" The consequences of the political brinksmanship are no doubt profound. Still, the piece about 30,000 Oregonians being on furlough caught our attention. We’d read lots of articles that mentioned the state’s nearly 30,000 federal employees, but surely they weren't all on furlough, right? We started where we usually do, with the source, and called the representative’s office. Bonamici’s spokesman, Mike Morosi, looked into the matter and quickly issued a clarification. ""The Oregonian and other news outlets have reported that there are approximately 30,000 federal employees in the state of Oregon,"" read the widely circulated clarification. ""The precise number of federal employee furloughs fluctuated throughout the duration of the 16 day shutdown. Our office has requested an analysis of furloughs in Oregon, but it will take some time before that information is made available. ""The guest editorial was careful to not claim that all federal employees in Oregon had been furloughed, but the use of the word ‘nearly’ may have been an overstatement. Some news reports indicate that roughly a third of federal employees nationwide have been furloughed, but that number differs greatly by agency and state. ""In the absence of more specific information, it would have been more appropriate to say that ‘many of the approximately 30,000 federal employees in Oregon have been furloughed.’ "" We asked Morosi how long it would take to get the furlough analysis the representative’s office has requested. Unfortunately, he said, it could take longer than a week given how backlogged much of the federal government is following the shutdown. The quick response and clarification from the office was definitely appreciated, but PolitiFact Oregon generally continues to pursue the question even if the speaker admits a mistake. Words matter and such statements can last a long time in the political arena, even if they are revised later. So we called Nick Beleiciks, a state employment economist with the Oregon Labor Market Information System. He told us that the most recent data put the state’s number of federal workers at 26,926. Of those, 6,567 work for the U.S. Postal Service and were not furloughed. That left a possible 20,000 employees. But even that number is an overstatement because 3,500 work for federally run hospitals such as the Veterans Affairs medical centers. And 3,000 work for federal environmental programs and nearly 1,500 in national security and international affairs positions, including the Transportation Security Administration. Now, some of those 8,000 employees may have been furloughed, but others were considered essential and continue to work and still others, like those working for Veterans Affairs, have positions funded a year in advance or through other sources. That is all to say that the number of Oregon workers on furlough was not ""nearly 30,000."" In fact, State Economist Mark McMullen told Oregonian reporter Molly Young that about ""one-thid of those employees, or about 9,000 workers"" would likely be furloughed when the shutdown first began. In our various discussions, Morosi did note that those working still had to forgo paychecks. They’ll receive back pay, but until the government opened again, checks couldn’t be written. That was no doubt a huge strain on many households -- it certainly would be for ours -- and it’s good context. Bonamici said nearly 30,000 federal employees in Oregon were furloughed because of the government shutdown. Now it’s true that those nearly 30,000 federal employees in Oregon were affected by the shutdown, but they weren’t all furloughed. We’d love to have the full forthcoming analysis requested by the representative’s office, but even without its specifics, we know this statement isn’t accurate."
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3373
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Austin measles case not a threat, officials warn of fevers.
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An Austin resident who was diagnosed with measles is no longer a health threat, but officials are urging some people to get medical attention if they develop a fever before New Year’s Day.
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true
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Measles, Health, Austin, Public health, Texas
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Public health officials made the plea to anyone who visited specific Austin locations that the affected resident was in between Dec. 14 and Dec. 17. The Austin American-Statesman created a map of those locations. The resident is currently not in Texas. Measles is a virus that can cause high fever, cough, runny nose and red watery eyes, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A rash appears 3 to 5 days after the first symptoms, but other complications include pneumonia and encephalitis. Health officials first alerted people in Austin about the measles case and potential exposure on Sunday, a day after state agencies were informed by Virginia officials, said Dr. Mark Escott, the interim health authority at Austin Public Health. The person traveled to Virginia on Dec. 17. The person, whom officials are not identifying, contracted the disease while traveling in Europe from late November to early December and became sick on Dec. 14, Escott said. He noted that the person developed a rash on Dec. 17, which is the day they boarded United Airlines Flight 790 from Austin to Chicago, with a connecting flight to Virginia. The person’s measles case is the first reported in Travis County since 1999, the Statesman reported. Officials didn’t disclose if the person was vaccinated. As of July 31, Texas has had 21 reported cases of measles in 2019, according to the most recent data available on the Texas Department of State Health Services website.
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23423
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I can put 10,000 people to work. Electricians, plumbers, sheet metal workers -- by retrofitting all of the state buildings for energy independence or efficiency.
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Barnes ad claims he can put 10,000 people to work through energy program
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mixture
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Georgia, Energy, Roy Barnes,
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"It is one of the most striking claims of this campaign season. Roy Barnes, former Georgia governor who is hoping to return to the Governor's Mansion in January, said in a televised campaign ad he can put 10,000 people to work. How? ""By retrofitting each state building to make them more energy-efficient,"" he said in the ad, which premiered June 23. ""The best part is,"" Barnes added, ""the energy savings will pay for the improvements."" Ten thousand jobs is a pretty hefty claim in this sluggish economy, particularly when the state's unemployment rate is 9.9 percent, slightly above the national average of 9.5 percent. So how did Barnes come up with this estimate? Is it accurate? And how soon could it be accomplished? The Barnes campaign said it based its estimate of how many jobs can be created on two findings in two separate reports. One, by the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority, suggests the state can create up to 5,000 new jobs. About 6,000 people already employed would also see the benefits by working on retrofitting state buildings. The other is a 2008 study by the Political Economy Research Institute, which describes itself as an independent unit of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The report estimates about 20 jobs can be generated for each $1 million spent on energy-efficiency efforts. Dennis Creech, executive director of Southface, an Atlanta-based company that works with government agencies and others to promote sustainable workplaces, has seen similar estimates of how many jobs can be generated by retrofitting a building. By the PERI calculation, Barnes must spend about $500 million to achieve his goal of putting 10,000 people to work. The GEFA estimate would require a $528 million investment. But is that doable? Georgia government has suffered financially in recent years. State leaders passed a $17.8 billion budget in April that took effect July 1. The budget was about $3 billion less than the 12-month spending plan adopted three years ago. State agencies saw across-the-board cuts. GEFA based its $528 million estimate on financing projects over the span of 15 years. Apparently, Barnes has joined the parade of people supporting the latest hot idea in government: performance contracting. It's the practice of hiring companies to retrofit a building to make it more energy-efficient, saving money on energy bill and water costs. The company typically gets a cut of the money from the energy savings. Many states and cities have entered into performance contracting with companies to produce energy savings. Georgians will vote on Nov. 2 whether to amend the state constitution to allow state agencies to enter into multiyear contracts with companies to improve energy efficiency in state buildings. The state of Georgia has 15,757 buildings, ranging from storage buildings to park cabins to state office buildings to the Capitol, according to Katy Pando, spokeswoman for the Georgia Building Authority. ""I think it's the right number,"" said Jason Rooks, an Avondale Estates resident who recently formed a group, Taxpayers for Energy Efficiency, to support a referendum later this year to fund retrofitting projects. Each state agency is responsible for conducting building assessments and potential cost savings opportunities for any renovation projects, Pando said. Many of Georgia's buildings are old and not energy-efficient, said state Sen. Steve Henson, a DeKalb County Democrat. Gov. Sonny Perdue committed all state agencies to reduce energy consumption per square foot by 15 percent below 2007 levels by 2020. State officials estimate they can save as much as 30 percent on energy and water costs by retrofitting a building. Henson, one of the co-sponsors of legislation to propose a referendum, said the companies would be paid for the retrofitting through a portion of energy cost savings. If there are no cost savings, Henson said, the company would not get paid. Barnes campaign spokesman Emil Runge said the candidate would fund the work through the cost savings. Henson said 10,000 jobs could be created or retained through the plan, but ""not in one year."" Henson said the number of workers necessary to do the work depends on how much time it takes for the companies to perform the retrofitting and the willingness of state government to fund the program. GEFA estimates the state spends about $225 million annually in energy and water costs in state facilities. A 30 percent cost savings would be about $67.5 million. Perdue's 15 percent energy reduction consumption mandate would be about $34 million a year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hailed performance contracting in a 2008 report but warned of some potential pitfalls, such as the complexities of the process to hire contractors. The EPA also noted some early contracts did not deliver the expected results, which created some skepticism. The EPA added that some of the skepticism has declined with familiarity of state needs and procedures. Robert Pollin, who helped write the PERI report, said he and the other researchers used federal government data that outline how businesses operate. From that data, Pollin determined how many jobs can be created, retained or supported through the retrofitting of state buildings. Some who have analyzed the PERI report contend there is at least one flaw in the research. The Institute for Energy Research noted the unemployment rate for workers with the skills needed to do retrofitting is one-half of the national average. The institute, which has offices in Washington, D.C., and Houston, concluded there will be fewer unemployed workers hired. No one we spoke with disputed whether 10,000 people could be put to work by retrofitting state buildings. The research by agencies on this topic shows these positions would be new hires and people who would directly benefit from the work. By Barnes saying he could put ""10,000 people to work,"" we believe he gave the impression that all of these workers would be new hires. Some of those 10,000 would already be employed. The positions could be filled, but as Henson noted, the work will require some political will that will be necessary after the end of a potential Barnes administration. Barnes' statement is accurate, but it leaves out important details that might lead to a different impression."
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25764
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"Senate Majority PAC Says Susan Collins ""voted against accountability for opioid makers” and denied taking campaign money from a family who made its wealth selling OxyContin."
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Collins voted against one measure that would have punished opioid manufacturers and their executives because she said it was overly broad. She also voted for measures to hold opioid manufacturers accountable for the distribution of suspiciously large orders of drugs and for drug diversion. Collins did say no when asked if she had taken campaign money from members of the Sackler family that owns the company that makes OxyContin. She received one contribution — $2,300 in 2007 — from one family member.
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false
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Campaign Finance, Drugs, Government Regulation, Senate Majority PAC,
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"The opioid addiction crisis, along with the billions earned by the maker of OxyContin, are being invoked in a race that could help determine whether Republicans keep control of the U.S. Senate. The target is four-term GOP incumbent Susan Collins of Maine. The attack comes from Senate Majority PAC, which works to elect Democrats to the Senate. Collins ""voted against accountability for opioid makers"" and ""lied"" when she said she didn’t take campaign money from a family who made its wealth selling OxyContin, the political action committee claims in a TV ad. The claim misleadingly cherry-picks one Collins vote. But while being videotaped in 2020, Collins did deny taking any campaign funds from the family, when she did receive one donation in 2007. Collins has served in the Senate since 1997. Her opponent Sara Gideon has served in the Maine’s House since 2013 and as its speaker since 2016. With polls showing a tight contest, the Cook Political Report has rated the race a tossup. Many news accounts say the race is one that could determine whether Republicans keep a majority in the Senate, where they now control 53 seats. Purdue Pharma began selling OxyContin, a slow-release pill based on the pain reliever oxycodone, in the mid-1990s and heavily promoted it. Between 1991 and 2011, the number of opioid prescriptions, as well as the number of opioid-related deaths, nearly tripled. Since 2000, four opioids — oxycodone, hydrocodone, heroin and fentanyl, a synthetic — have killed more than 400,000 Americans. That includes nearly 15,000 people who suffered fatal overdoses from prescription opioids in 2018, the latest year for those figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Purdue Pharma is seeking bankruptcy protection as part of an effort to settle nearly 3,000 lawsuits brought against it by state, local and tribal governments that blame the company for sparking the opioid crisis. The company's settlement plan calls for the members of the Sackler family who own the company to pay at least $3 billion and give up ownership of Purdue. The PAC’s 30-second ad starts by citing a figure for the number of opioid pills ""pushed to Maine"" by opioid distributors and how much money opioid distributors have given to Collins’ campaign. Then it says Collins accepted campaign money from Jonathan Sackler (who died of cancer on June 30.) Senate Majority PAC cited a donation of $2,300 that Sackler made to Collins’ campaign in 2007. Then comes the two parts of the ad we’re checking. Claim No. 1. Collins ""voted against accountability for opioid makers."" The reference is to Collins’ vote in a Senate committee against a failed amendment, proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to the Opioid Crisis Response Act of 2018. Sanders said his amendment would have imposed retroactive fines on companies and executives and set new punishments for future activities. Collins campaign spokesman Kevin Kelley, noting that three Democrats on the committee also voted no, told PolitiFact that Collins’ concern was the amendment ""was written so broadly that anyone involved in a transaction could have been implicated."" Kelley cited instances in which Collins voted to hold opioid companies accountable, including voting for a 2018 law. One provision in that law aims to hold drug distributors and manufacturers accountable for stopping delivery of drugs on suspiciously high orders by pharmacies and stopping the diversion of drugs. A 2016 law she voted for requires any new drug application for an opioid to be referred to an advisory committee for recommendations prior to FDA approval. Claim No. 2. Collins ""lied"" about campaign money This part of the ad features a video clip, recorded in January, showing Collins on an airplane having a conversation with a woman who is not visible: Woman: ""Your campaign has taken money from the Sacklers?"" Collins: ""From the Sacklers? No, I have not."" Woman: ""Never?"" Collins: ""Never."" Collins did not know she was being videotaped and was thinking about donations for the current campaign when she answered the question, Kelley said. ""But, to be more accurate, the senator has said that she should have said that she does not recall receiving such a donation,"" he said. The woman in the conversation is Amy Halsted, co-director of the Maine People’s Alliance, according to a January article by MaineBeacon.com, which is a project of the alliance. The alliance is a progressive grassroots group. The article includes video of the full six-minute conversation. An attack ad claimed Collins ""voted against accountability for opioid makers"" and ""lied"" when she said she didn’t take campaign money from a family who made its wealth selling OxyContin. The first part of the claim is misleading. On holding manufacturers accountable, Collins voted against one measure that failed, but voted for several others that became law. When asked if she had ever taken campaign money from the Sackler family, Collins said no, and was wrong. One member of the family gave her one donation, of $2,300, in 2007. The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."
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3903
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State will pay $10M to mental health providers after suit.
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New Mexico will pay out $10 million to resolve the last remaining lawsuits over a shake-up of its behavioral health system in 2013 under the prior administration of Republican Gov. Susana Martinez.
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true
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Mental health, General News, Susana Martinez, Business, Medicaid, New Mexico, Lawsuits, Santa Fe
|
Disclosed Wednesday by the Human Services Department, the settlement locks in payments to five businesses and turns the page on a bitter confrontation that drove many mental health care providers away or out of business completely. Martinez’s administration froze payments to 15 mental health service providers in 2013 after an audit identified $36 million in Medicaid overpayments. The state attorney general later cleared the providers of any criminal wrongdoing, but 10 filed lawsuits. Medicaid payments were frozen without any credible allegations of fraud, the settlement states. “Some providers were forced to close their doors and discontinue provision of any behavioral health services,” the agreement states. “Other providers were forced to discontinue provision of nearly all behavioral health services. Employees of Providers lost their jobs. Individuals needing behavioral health services in New Mexico were unable to obtain such services.” The largest portion of the settlement — a 29% share — is earmarked for Santa Marta El Mirador of Santa Fe and Alcalde — formerly known as Easter Seals El Mirador. The other beneficiaries are Border Area Mental Health Services, Southwest Counseling Center, Southern New Mexico Human Development and Families and Youth Inc. First-year Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham campaigned on rebuilding mental health and substance abuse treatment services in a state with the highest rate of alcohol-related deaths in the nation. Many counties in the sparsely populated state lack licensed providers of mental health services for patients who rely on government assistance, according to a recent study by the U.S. Health and Human Services Department’s inspector general. Patsy Romero, CEO of Santa Marta El Mirador, says her organization employs about 200 people, down from 650 people before the shakeup in 2013. Services were discontinued for children and adolescents with severe emotional issues, including alternative classrooms in Española and Taos. She said it is still unclear whether the organization will restore discontinued behavior health services. Romero said the settlement “represents the money that we spent as an organization over the last six years to defend ourselves and maintain our business.”
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4177
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Advisory in place for Idaho’s Winchester Lake.
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A public health advisory is in place for Winchester Lake after testing indicated elevated levels of toxins produced by blue-green algae.
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true
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Health, General News, Lakes, Algae, Public health, Idaho
|
The Lewiston Tribune reports health officials and the Nez Perce Tribe have urged people to use caution when spending time in or near the water. A release from Public Health Idaho North Central District states that blue-green algae is a natural part of Idaho’s water bodies. But when temperatures rise, their populations can bloom, and toxic chemical compounds can be released into the water. Those spending time near surface water with a health advisory are urged to avoid swimming, wading or other activities. Health officials say people should not drink or cook with water containing a bloom. ___ Information from: Lewiston Tribune, http://www.lmtribune.com
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26548
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Facebook post Says for otherwise healthy people “experiencing mild to moderate respiratory symptoms with or without a COVID-19 diagnosis … only high temperatures kill a virus, so let your fever run high,” but not over 103 or 104 degrees.
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A fever makes it harder for some viruses to survive, but it’s not yet known whether that’s true for the novel coronavirus. You might not need to treat a fever that’s under 103 degrees. But it depends on age, general health, other symptoms and other factors. If you have COVID-19 symptoms such as fever, cough and shortness of breath, and think you have been exposed to COVID-19, call your healthcare provider.
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false
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Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"If you’re a mostly healthy person who contracts the coronavirus, will letting your fever run high help get rid of it? That’s what a post shared on Facebook suggests. It says: ""Passing along corona advise from a retired respiratory therapist"" for ""the otherwise generally healthy population."" It lists eight recommendations, starting with: ""For people experiencing mild to moderate respiratory symptoms with or without a COVID-19 diagnosis. … Only high temperatures kill a virus, so let your fever run high. … Use common sense and don't let fever go over 103 or 104 if you got the guts."" The final recommendation is: ""If your still dying go to ER."" (Yes, it says, ""advise"" instead of ""advice"" and ""your"" instead of ""you’re"" in the post.) The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) We’ll first note that it’s best to take your medical advice from health care professionals, not from random Facebook posts. Doctors say it’s true that a high temperature can help the body fight off a virus, but not enough is known about the new coronavirus to support the post’s advice, and running a high fever could be dangerous. A fever means you have a temperature of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) or higher, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Fevers are a common sign of illness, but they also play a key role in fighting infections. Generally speaking, a fever is ""basically a symptom of your immune system trying to fight the virus"" Richard Watanabe, a professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California, told PolitiFact. ""The higher temperature does make it more difficult for some viruses to survive."" The Mayo Clinic offers general tips — for otherwise healthy people and not specifically for coronavirus — on deciding whether to treat a fever or let it run its course. For example, for adults with a temperature above 102, Mayo recommends acetaminophen (Tylenol and other brands), ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin IB) or aspirin. But it says treatment decisions also depend on age, medical history, other symptoms and other factors, not just temperature. Fever, along with cough and shortness of breath, is among the symptoms of COVID-19. If you have symptoms and think you have been exposed to COVID-19, call your healthcare provider, the CDC advises. CDC’s Self-Checker tool can help you make decisions about seeking medical care. Mayo Clinic also offers a tool that helps you decide on seeking medical care and whether you need a COVID-19 test. If you’ll be treating COVID-19 symptoms at home, get enough rest, stay well-hydrated, and take medications to relieve fever and aches and pains, Harvard Medical School says. For fever, aches and pains, the school recommends acetaminophen. But if you are taking any combination cold or flu medicine, keep track of all the ingredients and doses, and make sure not to exceed a total of 3,000 milligrams of acetaminophen per day. Mayo Clinic recommends rest and fluids, as well as cough medication, and pain relievers such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen. There have been some claims that using ibuprofen to treat coronavirus symptoms is risky. We found that some medical experts believe ibuprofen’s anti-inflammatory properties could damp the immune system’s ability to fight off COVID-19. But experts say this is just a theory and that there’s no scientific evidence that links ibuprofen and other anti-inflammatory medications with COVID-19 complications. That said, there is no rule that says you need to lower a fever with over-the-counter medication if you’re feeling only mild symptoms and are not uncomfortable, Consumer Reports says in an article on COVID-19 and fevers. It lists a cold compress for sweating and blankets for chills, along with rest and liquids, as alternatives. The article says there is an argument for letting a fever run its course, because lowering a fever with medication might suppress your body’s ability to fend off illness, ""but if your fever is running at or above 103 degrees, you should call a doctor. A high fever could lead to a seizure or brain damage."" Dr. Myron Cohen, professor of medicine, microbiology and immunology, and epidemiology at the University of North Carolina and director of its Institute for Global Health & Infectious Diseases, told PolitiFact that while there is research suggesting that fever can defend against infection, ""it is extremely difficult to relate the magnitude of fever to the severity of infection, or to demonstrate the benefits of fever for any given microorganism,"" including the COVID-19 virus. The body’s immune response is the most important factor in killing the virus, said Dr. Wilbur Chen, an infectious disease physician-scientist at the University of Maryland. ""The fever response is just one of the symptoms that are experienced when the immune response is revved up when fighting the virus. It is like what smoke is to fire—the point is that you are not focusing your concern on putting out the smoke; you want to put out the fire,"" he said. Said Watanabe: ""The caveat here is how heat-tolerant is COVID-19? That is, as far as I am aware, an unanswered question. There are viruses that are relatively heat-tolerant, so your body’s fever defense may not be effective."" A Facebook post advises that generally healthy people ""experiencing mild to moderate respiratory symptoms with or without a COVID-19 diagnosis"" should ""let your fever run high"" to kill a coronavirus. Generally speaking, a fever under 103 degrees doesn’t necessarily need treatment. But that depends on other factors, such as age, underlying health conditions and other symptoms. Higher temperatures and persistent fevers are dangerous. And it isn’t yet known whether a fever might help the body fight the novel coronavirus, as it does other viruses. The advice on letting a fever run high to fight the coronavirus, even with generally healthy people and mild to moderate respiratory symptoms, is too broad."
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810
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French mayors ban glyphosate weedkiller, defying government.
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Some 20 French mayors have banned glyphosate from their municipalities, defying the government, which is now taking legal action to impose national legislation which allows the controversial weedkiller’s continued use for now.
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true
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Environment
|
In 2017, President Emmanuel Macron had pledged to ban glyphosate in France within three years, rejecting a European Union decision to extend its use for five years after heated debate over whether glyphosate, developed by Bayer-owned Monsanto, can cause cancer. But Macron has since said that a blanket ban is not possible within that time frame. Bayer says regulators and extensive research have found glyphosate to be safe. On Thursday, the administrative tribunal of Rennes, western France, heard the mayor of Langouet, Brittany, who has banned the use of pesticides in his town within 150 meters of people’s homes and workplaces. Mayor Daniel Cueff told the court - which is set to rule next week - the ban was aimed at protecting residents from molecules considered a health risk. About 300 people attended the hearing and nearly 100,000 have signed a petition to support Cueff’s ban. A lawyer for the French state argued that is not in a mayor’s powers to ban phytosanitary products, which are regulated by the agriculture ministry. The ministry declined to comment, but Agriculture Minister Didier Guillaume said in January France will phase out 80% of its glyphosate usage by 2021. [reut.rs/2PbvrGE] Farmers’ unions opposed the ban, saying there are no viable alternatives for the chemical and that a transition to organic farming is too costly. Allowing the mayor to override the state over glyphosate “would be the return of the local barons and the reign of the lords over their serfs,” Cedric Henry, head of Brittany farmers union FDSEA-35 said in a statement. Under current legislation, glyphosate application needs to stay five to 10 meters away from housing. Wheat growers’ union AGPB said in a statement that extending the non-treatment zone would withdraw thousands of hectares of land from production. Environment Minister Elisabeth Borne said on Wednesday that the government would review pesticides regulation soon. The government is also disputing local glyphosate bans in several other rural communes around France. Glyphosate is widely used in France, the European Union’s largest grain producer, mainly by farmers, gardeners and railway operators who want to get rid of unwanted grasses at low cost. Developed by Monsanto under the brand Roundup, Glyphosate is now off-patent and marketed worldwide by dozens of other firms including Dow Agrosciences and BASF.
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3431
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Northern Irish nurses strike over pay, staffing levels.
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Nurses in Northern Ireland walked off the job Wednesday in outrage over poor staffing and pay that lags in comparison to their counterparts in England and Wales.
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true
|
England, Health, Europe, General News, Strikes, Europe, Wales, Northern Ireland
|
Picket lines formed outside hospitals as men and women waved signs including “Safe Staffing Saves Lives,” and “Fair Pay Now.″ Passing ambulances let sirens wail in solidarity. Cars honked horns. “We don’t do this lightly — it is the first time we have gone on strike in 103 years,″ said Donna Kinnair, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing. ”But I am here because I think it is important that care is delivered to our patients in Northern Ireland.” Some 9,000 members of the Royal College of Nursing went on strike and were supported by other healthcare workers. That forced the cancellation of routine appointments and delays to ambulance services. The situation of the nurses has been complicated by the collapse of the power-sharing government in Northern Ireland. Since no government has been in place for nearly three years, there are no ministers in place to make spending decisions — such as whether to grant the pay demands of the nurses or use extra cash to reduce Northern Ireland’s long waiting lists for treatment.
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27952
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An article accurately recounts details of Senator John McCain's divorce from his first wife, Carol.
|
As for the subjective parts of the article, a number of different people who knew the McCains, including John and Carol themselves, have offered widely differing opinions and interpretations regarding John McCain’s first marriage and the reasons why it ended — the “why” is a question with no definitive answer. It’s worth noting, however, that John and Cindy McCain remained married for over 38 years, until the former passed away in August 2018; they had four children (one of them adopted) together; and that in a portion of the Daily Mail article referenced above (which was not included in the excerpt circulating via e-mail), Carol McCain was quoted as saying of her former husband: “He’s a good guy. We are still good friends. He is the best man for president.”
|
true
|
Politics Politicians, john mccain
|
Carol McCain McCain likes to illustrate his moral fiber by referring to his five years as a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam. And to demonstrate his commitment to family values, the 71-year-old former US Navy pilot pays warm tribute to his beautiful blonde wife, Cindy, with whom he has four children. But there is another Mrs. McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator’s presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain’s three eldest children. She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and torture in Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison and the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting anxiously for news. But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries. When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter. Today, she stands at just 5′ 4″ in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering. For nearly 30 years, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about the accident, McCain and their divorce. But last week at the bungalow where she now lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200 miles south of Washington, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain divorced her in 1980 and married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona brewing fortune, just one month later. “My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens … it just does.” In 1979 — while still married to Carol — he met Cindy at a cocktail party in Hawaii. Over the next six months he pursued her, flying around the country to see her. Then he began to push to end his marriage. Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centered womanizer who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the field’. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons. Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: “I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is — deceit.” “When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it. Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better.” “McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,” he said. “After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.” Ross Perot, a billionaire Texas businessman, and a former presidential candidate, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel — even by the standards of modern politics. The text reproduced above is a shortened version of a June 2008 Daily Mail article about Carol McCain, Arizona senator John McCain’s first wife, which was circulated as an e-mail forward at the time. A similar social media version made the rounds when John McCain passed away in August 2018: Shorn of their vitriolic and subjective comments, these article present factually true frameworks regarding the circumstances surrounding the break-up of John McCain’s first marriage. On 3 July 1965, 28-year-old Naval aviator John Sidney McCain III married 27-year-old Carol Shepp of Philadelphia, whom he had initially met while attending the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, several years earlier. John McCain adopted Carol’s two sons (Douglas and Andrew) from a previous marriage, and the couple had a daughter (Sidney) together in 1966. In July 1967, Lt. Commander John McCain was taken prisoner after his plane was shot down on a bombing mission over North Vietnam and was held as a POW for over five years. During her husband’s captivity, Carol McCain was involved in a near-fatal automobile accident that left her with permanent injuries, a circumstance that posed some difficult adjustments for the couple after they were finally reunited in March 1973: One fact was especially difficult to deal with [after McCain’s return to the U.S.]: Carol’s physical condition. At Christmastime in 1969, while McCain was imprisoned in Vietnam, Carol was almost killed in a car crash. “Carol had taken the kids to her parents’ house for the holidays,” McCain later wrote. “After dinner on Christmas Eve, she drove to our friends, the Bookbinders, to exchange gifts. It had begun to snow by the time she started back to her parents, and the roads were icy. She skidded off the road, smashed into a telephone pole, and was thrown from the car. The police found her some time later in shock, both legs fractured in several places, her arm and pelvis broken, and bleeding internally. “Several days passed before she was out of immediate danger. It would be six months and several operations before she was released from the hospital. Over the next two years, she would undergo many more operations to repair her injured legs. By the time the doctors were finished, she would be four inches shorter than she was before the accident. After a year of intense physical therapy, she was able to walk with the aid of crutches.” Carol’s new appearance was one of the more shocking details McCain had to deal with during his period of adjustment; quite simply, Carol was a different person from the one she was when he left. By the end of the 1970s, the McCains’ marriage was strained to the breaking point, even if it was not evident to those who knew them: Even though friends saw a rosy picture when they looked at John and Carol McCain’s marriage from outside, privately the couple was having difficulty. After years in captivity, McCain was not totally able to return to the life he had led with Carol before he went to Vietnam. As the marriage became rocky, McCain was unfaithful to Carol, or perhaps the marriage became rocky because McCain was unfaithful. Later, there would even be reports that he had, as the Boston Globe put it, “affairs with subordinate female personnel.” The McCains had tried to achieve some semblance of a normal life after McCain’s return home — and, to a great extent, they had accomplished this — but the problems continued nonetheless. Years later, Carol would tell a reporter the main trouble was not complicated: McCain may have been 40, but he was acting like he was 25. In 1979, then 42-year-old John McCain first met Cindy Lou Hensley, a 25-year-old school teacher who was also the daughter (and heir) of James Hensley, the founder of one of the largest Anheuser-Busch beer distributorships in the United States; the two began dating and married the following year. Sources differ as to the timing of McCain’s separation from his first wife, Carol, and the beginning of his relationship with the woman who would become his second wife, Cindy Hensley; whatever the circumstances, McCain remarried five weeks after divorcing his first wife: McCain has made several statements about how he divorced Carol and married Hensley that conflict with the public record. In his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For,” McCain wrote that he had separated from Carol before he began dating Hensley. “I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow,” McCain wrote. “I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980.” An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had “cohabited” until Jan. 7 of that year — or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley. Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife. McCain stated in his autobiography that he was solely responsible for the failure of his first marriage: “My marriage’s collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity. The blame was entirely mine.”
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