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17970
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Rep. Frank Wolf voted to allow terror suspects to buy guns.
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"There’s no doubt that Wolf, sitting in the House Appropriations Committee, voted against an amendments to budget bills that would have allowed the attorney general to deny firearm sales to those suspected of abetting terrorism. Wolf had concerns that the legislation could trample the civil liberties of innocent people and objected to the procedure of bypassing Judiciary Committee -- a panel that has quashed similar bills since 2007. Mayors Against Illegal Guns goes a step further in saying Wolf ""voted to allow terror suspects to buy guns."" That’s an inflammatory statement that suggests Wolf put gun rights ahead of protecting the nation from terrorists. It ignores Wolf’s spurned offer in 2011 to work with the sponsor of the amendment to find a compromise that could keep guns away from suspected terrorists while protecting the rights of those who have been unfairly placed on the government’s watch list. So the mayors’ statement has accuracy, but omits important details about Wolf’s position."
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mixture
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Terrorism, Guns, Virginia, Mayors Against Illegal Guns,
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"U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf, R-10th, was recently targeted by the Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a group led by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. ""Rep. Frank Wolf voted to allow terror suspects to buy guns,"" the group proclaimed on a web ad. We decided to look at this claim, which clashes with Wolf’s tough-on-terrorism record. The 32-year congressman has accused the Obama administration of covering up details about a terrorist attack last September on an American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. He has vehemently opposed efforts to close the Guantanamo Bay prison and allow civilian trials for 9/11 terrorists. Kelly Steele, a spokesman for the mayors’ group, said the ad is based on a July 17 vote in the House Appropriations Committee on an amendment to the nation’s Commerce, Justice and Science appropriations bill. The amendment, introduced by Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., would have allowed the attorney general ""to deny transfer of firearms to persons known or suspected to be engaged in conduct related to terrorism."" It failed on a largely party-line 29-19 vote. The mayors’ group has targeted each of the representatives who voted against the amendment. ""Under current law, someone can be too dangerous to board an airplane -- but can still legally buy guns and explosives,"" the group says in a web posting. ""This dangerous loophole in our gun laws is called the Terror Gap."" The group is focused on an omission in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which the federal government and most states use to screen those buying firearms from licensed dealers. People may be barred from buying guns for a number reasons, including felony convictions, fugitive status, drug addiction, adjudication as mentally defective, status as an illegal immigrant, stay in the U.S. on a non-immigration visa, dishonorable discharge from the Armed Forces, a domestic violence conviction and criminal indictment. But the ban does not extend to those who are suspected of terrorist activity and are on the FBI’s terrorist watch list. That could include U.S. citizens, people in the U.S. on immigrant visas and people here from about 40 allied nations for which the U.S. does not require a visa. Since 2004, the federal government has kept data on the number of prospective firearm purchasers who are on the terrorist watch list. The 2011 cumulative figures showed of 1,453 people on the terrorist watch list who sought to purchase firearms or obtain an explosives license, 132 were denied for other reasons, while 1,321 were allowed to proceed. The FBI could not determine whether the purchase was actually made. The Bush administration in 2007 asked Congress to pass legislation to allow the attorney general to deny a firearm purchase or explosives license ""when the background check reveals the purchaser is a known or suspected terrorist and the attorney general reasonably believes that the person may use a firearm or explosives in connection with terrorism."" Every session since 2007, a bill to that effect has been introduced by Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., and referred to the House Judiciary Committee, where it has never come up for a vote. The National Rifle Association has strongly opposed the legislation, saying it could be used to persecute law-abiding gun owners. A 2009 report by the General Accounting Office said if Congress wants to ban firearm sales to suspected terrorists, it should require the Justice Department to establish guidelines to protect privacy and civil liberties. Wolf is open-minded to closing the ""terror gap"", but believes the thorny issues should be resolved in the Judiciary Committee, according to Dan Scandling, the congressman’s chief of staff. Scandling said the congressman’s vote against the bill reflected his dissatisfaction with the ""gotcha"" procedure of bringing it up in the Appropriations Committee. Matthew Dennis, a spokesman for Rep. Lowey, said the congresswoman sidestepped the Committee because the it was killing ground for the legislation. ""Members of Congress who support closing this dangerous loophole have tried every avenue possible,"" he said. In 2011, Lowey offered an identical amendment in the Appropriations Committee that was defeated by a 27-18 vote with Wolf voting against it. An article in The Hill said Wolf offered to work Lowey to ""refine the amendment,"" but the congresswoman rejected his offer. The article said, ""Wolf said the amendment affected too many Americans since more than 500,000 people are on the terrorist list, according to the Justice Department. He noted that he regularly helps ordinary constituents get off the no-fly list after being put there by mistake."" A few final notes: Tom Culligan, Wolf’s legislative director, said the congressman supports the federal background check system and has voted to expand its funding. We should also mention that Wolf was endorsed by the NRA in last fall’s elections and received a B+ rating from the organization. Our ruling There’s no doubt that Wolf, sitting in the House Appropriations Committee, voted against an amendments to budget bills that would have allowed the attorney general to deny firearm sales to those suspected of abetting terrorism. Wolf had concerns that the legislation could trample the civil liberties of innocent people and objected to the procedure of bypassing Judiciary Committee -- a panel that has quashed similar bills since 2007. Mayors Against Illegal Guns goes a step further in saying Wolf ""voted to allow terror suspects to buy guns."" That’s an inflammatory statement that suggests Wolf put gun rights ahead of protecting the nation from terrorists. It ignores Wolf’s spurned offer in 2011 to work with the sponsor of the amendment to find a compromise that could keep guns away from suspected terrorists while protecting the rights of those who have been unfairly placed on the government’s watch list. So the mayors’ statement has accuracy, but omits important details about Wolf’s position."
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10187
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Dogs Sniff Out Lung Cancer in Humans
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Other than the too-simple headline, this story about four dogs in Europe finding 71 out of 100 lung cancers is pretty responsible. For readers who get all the way to the end, it will be clear that the dog-detection system is far from available now and might require technology to replicate it into a device that works accurately almost all the time. But we wish the story had looked at some other valid questions about the research: They don’t provide any data about test-retest over time, or the other challenges that might exist with training large numbers of dogs over time and space. The US spends an estimated $10 billion on treatment for patients with lung cancer. It is the second most common form of cancer in the US, and the leading cause of cancer death. An estimated 220,000 people will be diagnosed this year and about 157,000 will die of lung cancer, according to the National Cancer Institute. If there were a way to detect it earlier, it might add years to those lives and save the cost of more invasive testing for those who don’t have the disease. This story does not include any of this context for the reader. Of course, preventing smoking addiction in the population also helps save lives.
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true
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Cancer,WebMD
|
The story does not mention costs. At the very least, what does it cost to train dogs? If you can let someone call this the “holy grail,” you can tell people how much the search for the grail costs. The study was not designed to compare CT with dog-sniffing, yet the researcher is allowed to say that the dog-sniffing “even surpasses the combination of chest computed tomography (CT) scan and bronchoscopy.” The story does not explicitly discuss harms from a potential “sniff” test by dogs or machines imitating dogs. It does discuss contradictory research on whether cancer-sniffing dogs can achieve high accuracy. The obvious “harm” of inaccuracy is that a patient goes untreated for cancer, or conversely, is exposed to invasive testing because of a false positive. Without early detection by dogs, patients are already getting exposed to tests such as computer tomography and bronchoscopy. The story shares that the European study involved only 100 samples from patients, and the dogs identified lung cancer accurately in only 71 samples. The story also points out that the length of training of the dogs, and the variability between dogs, makes this technique largely useless for clinical work. A machine equivalent of the sensing system in the dogs is necessary before this can be useful as a clinical tool, one expert says. There is no disease mongering of lung cancer here. The story quotes independent sources and identifies that one expert, who is not tied to the European research, is also working in a related area – developing technology to mimic the canine sniff test. The story does a good job of explaining how lung cancer is detected by existing CT scan and bronchoscopy, and discusses the exposure of the patients to some risk during these procedures. Where it fails is in giving us numbers for how the earlier detection might show an increase in survival for patients. The story explains that this very preliminary research procedure with dogs is not available yet. Yes, the story explains that this new research on canine cancer detection is for lung cancer, which is a new application of a sniff-testing that has already been done for colon and skin cancers. The story shows reporting beyond a news release.
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6755
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State oversight expected at assisted living center.
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A western Indiana assisted living center where a woman died after wandering outside on a cold night is expected to be placed under state oversight after an agreement was reached with the facility.
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true
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Health, Indiana, Assisted living, Terre Haute
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An earlier request filed on behalf of the State Department of Health had sought an injunction to stop Bethesda Gardens in Terre Haute from providing nursing care outside the scope of an unlicensed assisted living facility. The Tribune-Star reports, however, that an agreement filed Wednesday in court says the state will file a consent decree allowing the state to have continuing oversight of the facility. The facility was inspected in February after 75-year-old Veronica Hoffman died Jan. 26 of apparent hypothermia after being found outside the center. ___ Information from: Tribune-Star, http://www.tribstar.com
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30507
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A scuba diver was hospitalized due to an allergic reaction after his penis got stuck in a giant clam.
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Sometimes the truth is as strange as fiction, but at least no penises were involved in the real case.
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false
|
Junk News, world news daily report
|
In March 2018, well-known satire site WorldNewsDailyReport.com published a fake news article about a scuba diver who suffered a severe allergic reaction after he got his penis stuck inside of a giant clam: A scuba diver is being hospitalized at Ka’u hospital on the island of Hawaii after he inserted his penis into a giant clam while recreational diving. Sean Madison, 22, was transported to Ka’u hospital after suffering from severe breathing complications, vomiting, extreme swelling and low blood pressure. Doctors believe physical contact with the giant mollusk may have triggered his allergy to seafood and exposed him to high levels of arsenic. World News Daily Report is a satire web site that has a long history of publishing misinformation. The site, which appears to have a slight fixation on bestiality as evidenced by their previously published stories about humans sexually assaulting octopuses, alligators, orangutans, and gorillas, carries a disclaimer in the footer stating: World News Daily Report assumes all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website — even those based on real people — are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any person, living, dead or undead, is purely a miracle. In addition to the source of this story, one could also determine that this article is a piece of fake news by examining the three included photographs: The first image comes from a 2012 video featuring doctor and Hawaii state senator Josh Green (not “Dr. Andrew Smith” as claimed by World News Daily Report) and the middle image shows an unrelated photograph of a giant clam taken by underwater photographer and Red Bubble user “Spring.” Interestingly, the final image does deal with a man who was hospitalized after a curious interaction with an animal. According to ABC News, it shows an 18-year-old man from Florida who was hospitalized after he tried to kiss a cottonmouth snake: A Florida man was bitten in the face by a venomous snake after trying to kiss it, authorities told ABC Tampa affiliate WFTS-TV. Austin Hatfield, 18, of Wimauma, told his friends he took a liking to the snake and decided to keep it as a pet, Robin Belcher, the mother of his best friend, Jason Belcher, told ABC News. “It was a cottonmouth snake, 4 foot, and he pulled it out of pillow case and laid it on his chest and it ended up striking him on the face,” Belcher said.
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4960
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Medical insurance bypasses Native Americans in New Mexico.
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Native Americans go without medical insurance at a much higher rate than other residents of New Mexico, a state-commissioned study has found as state health officials seek new strategies to expand coverage.
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true
|
Access to health care, General News, New Mexico, Native Americans
|
Released Wednesday, the study from the Urban Institute policy research group in Washington explores gaps in medical insurance coverage by race and ethnicity as well as age, location and education level. New Mexico fares relatively well overall in terms of paid access to health care services in comparison with the U.S. as a whole. The study found that 187,000 non-elderly residents go without health insurance — about 10.5% of the state population. The national average is just over 11%. Among Native Americans, 37,000 people go without insurance — or 16.2% of that population. Health insurance coverage also is relatively scarce in the northwest area of the state that is home to the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation announced plans this week to become one of the first Native American tribes to create a managed health care entity by contracting with Molina Healthcare under the state’s Medicaid program. New Mexico is developing an outreach and enrollment strategy for parts of the state where the study found the highest ratios of uninsured residents, said Abuko Estrada, coverage innovation officer for the state Human Services Department Officials will focus on ways to reach Medicaid-eligible patients who are not insured and on matching uninsured people with New Mexico’s federally subsidized individual insurance marketplace. It’s important for Native Americans to have health insurance in coordination with services from the federal Indian Health Services, Estrada said. In part, that’s because the federal program has been underfunded by Congress, he said. The Urban Institute found that Native Americans working in the health care and educational fields are especially prone to go without health insurance. New Mexico’s expansion of federally subsidized Medicaid health care gave coverage in 2014 to more people on the cusp of poverty, cutting in half the number of people without insurance. Currently, health insurance coverage is especially widespread among children and people living in extreme poverty. The first-year administration of Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is turning to new technology to facilitate Medicaid enrollment, offering “real time” eligibility checks through mobile devices such as smart phones.
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25974
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John Cornyn Says “no one under the age of 20 has died of the coronavirus. We still don’t know whether children can get it and transmit it to others.”
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People of any age can contract the coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19. National and state data for Texas show that children have contracted the virus and some have died.
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false
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Texas, John Cornyn,
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"Texas schools will be open this fall, but parents will be allowed to choose between sending their children to in-person classes or keeping them home for virtual instruction, per new guidance issued by the state’s education agency on Tuesday. The decision received mixed reviews from educators, parents and state officials, some of whom cited rising infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths from COVID-19 in the state as a point of concern. In an interview with a television station in Dallas on Thursday, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said he thinks the most important factor in opening schools should be safety. ""The good news is, when you look at the numbers, no one under the age of 20 has died of the coronavirus,"" said Cornyn, a Republican. ""We still don’t know whether children can get it and transmit it to others."" But is that accurate? Cornyn did not return a request for comment seeking more information about his statement. A spokesperson for the senator told NBC DFW on Friday that Cornyn ""could have been more precise with his language,"" but his information came from a July 9 tweet shared by Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration. In reply to a question about children and the coronavirus, Gottlieb wrote: ""Balance of data clearly shows they’re less likely to become infected and less likely to transmit infection. But IMHO we need to have humility on this question and recognize we don’t fully understand all the risks; and while kids are less vulnerable, less risk doesn’t mean no risk."" Cornyn spokesman Drew Brandewie told the Houston Chronicle that Cornyn ""was not questioning whether children can catch the virus — of course they can. He was questioning the likelihood that children can catch it and THEN transmit it."" Let’s dive in. Looking at infection numbers, deaths People of any age can contract the coronavirus, which causes the disease COVID-19. ""Everyone is at risk for getting COVID-19 if they are exposed to the virus,"" reads a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage on the virus. ""Some people are more likely than others to become severely ill, which means that they may require hospitalization, intensive care, or a ventilator to help them breathe, or they may even die."" Some independent research and a preliminary report from the CDC show that children may be less likely to contract the virus than adults. Plus, the risk of severe illness from COVID-19 increases with age. But that does not mean children cannot contract the virus or experience illness as a result. The latest analysis from the CDC shows that roughly 6% of confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States have been among people 17 years old and under — 1.4% have been in people under 4 and 4.6% between 5 and 17. In Texas, about 7% of the 24,459 coronavirus cases with a completed investigation have been people under 19 — 2.3% have been people under 9 and 4.8% between 10 and 19. National and state data also show that Cornyn is wrong to say no person under 20 has died from the coronavirus. Across the United States, 29 people under the age of 14 and 142 people between the ages of 15 and 24 have died after contracting the coronavirus. In Texas, state data does not show any coronavirus fatalities for people younger than 19 — but the state has investigated just 703 of the state’s reported 2,918 fatalities. According to media reports, some children have died after contracting the virus in the state. In April, a 17-year-old girl in Lancaster died of complications related to the coronavirus, according to the Dallas Morning News. On Friday, health officials in Corpus Christi reported ""a COVID-19 related death of a six week old infant,"" according to Ben Molina, a city council member in the area. Exploring transmission Dr. Jeffrey Kahn, chief of Pediatric Infectious Disease at UT Southwestern Medical Center, told NBC DFW in a July 3 interview that children are able to contract and transmit the virus. ""We know that children should be less prone to severe disease and viral infections, that’s not to say children can’t get sick,"" he said. ""We’ve had many examples of children getting sick. We also know that children can spread the virus and not be symptomatic."" But the extent to which children spread the virus remains under-studied, and it is likely that children play a small role in the bulk of virus transmission. ""So far, researchers agree that children are not contracting the new coronavirus at the same rate as adults,"" reads a report from the Advisory Board, a health care research and consulting firm. ""But research has yet to show whether young children transmit the new coronavirus at a similar rate as adults."" Robert Redfield, director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, spoke about whether children returning to schools pose a risk of spreading the virus during a briefing of the White House Task Force on Wednesday. ""We really don’t have evidence that children are driving the transmission cycle of (the coronavirus),"" he said. Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, said that could be due to lack of testing among children. ""It really comes to the evidence base of: what do we have as far as testing and children?"" she said during the same press briefing. ""So, if you look across all of the tests that we’ve done and when we have the age, the portion that has been the lowest-tested portion is the under-10-years-old."" Two international studies conducted on children— one focused on China and the other based in Germany — offer ""compelling evidence that children can transmit the virus,"" according to the New York Times. A preliminary report from the CDC on the coronavirus in children said children are less likely to show typical symptoms of the coronavirus like fever or cough. ""Social distancing and everyday preventive behaviors remain important for all age groups as patients with less serious illness and those without symptoms likely play an important role in disease transmission,"" the report reads. Our ruling Cornyn said that ""no one under the age of 20 has died of the coronavirus. We still don’t know whether children can get it and transmit it to others."" Cornyn’s claim is wrong on multiple counts: First, numerous children across the country and in Texas have contracted the coronavirus and some have died as a result. Research indicates that children are able to transmit the coronavirus, but there has been little research into how the rate of transmission may vary compared to adults. Transmission involving children does not appear to make up the bulk of the spread."
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27970
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Buddy Ebsen was slated to play the Tin Woodman in the 1939 film version of The Wizard of Oz, but he had to be replaced after the aluminum makeup used with his costume made him gravely ill.
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Because Ebsen had fallen ill away from the set, just before production was shut down for several days when original Oz director Richard Thorpe was fired, the rest of the cast was unaware of what happened to him. Haley and others assumed that he had been fired along with Thorpe. Although Ebsen was replaced before filming resumed, his voice can still be heard in the soundtrack, when the quartet of Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion sings We’re Off To See the Wizard.
|
true
|
Entertainment, classic movies, Films, Movies
|
As part of the shifting casting that often goes on in the lead-up to motion picture productions, the person first cast to play the Tin Woodman in MGM’s 1939 film version of The Wizard of Oz was Ray Bolger. Buddy Ebsen (later to become familiar to generations of TV viewers as Jed clampett, the patriarch of The Beverly Hillbillies sitcom family), was originally intended for the role of the Scarecrow, but Ray Bolger eventually managed to convince MGM to allow him to swap parts with Ebsen (not, as is often claimed, because a clause in Bolger’s contract stipulated that he could play the part of the Scarecrow if MGM ever made The Wizard of Oz). MGM initially had no idea exactly how to costume Ebsen for his role. They tried a variety of materials for his clothing (real tin, silver paper, cardboard covered with silver cloth) and makeup before finally settling on aluminum dust (applied over clown white) for the latter. When The Wizard of Oz began principal photography on 12 October 1938, Ebsen had finished all his costume and makeup tests, recorded his songs for the film soundtrack, and completed four weeks of rehearsal. Nine days later, he was rushed to the hospital and placed in an oxygen tent when his lungs failed. As Ebsen described the onset of symptoms in his autobiography: It was several days later when my cramps began. My first symptoms had been a noticeable shortness of breath. I would breathe and exhale and then get the panicky feeling I hadn’t breathed at all. Then I would gasp for another quick breath with the same result. My fingers began to cramp, and then my toes. For a time I could control this unusual cramping by forcibly straightening out my fingers and toes. One night in bed I woke up screaming. My arms were cramping from my fingers upward and curling simultaneously so that I could not use one arm to uncurl the other. My wife tried to pull my arm straight with some success, just as my toes began to curl; then my feet and legs bent backward at the knees. I panicked. What was happening to me? Next came the worst. The cramps in my arms advanced into my chest to the muscles that controlled my breathing. If this continued, I wouldn’t even be able to take a breath. I was sure I was dying. The aluminum dust used in Ebsen’s makeup had caused an allergic reaction or infection in his lungs that left him scarcely able to breathe, and he ended up spending two weeks in the hospital and another month recuperating in San Diego. While Ebsen was recovering from his illness, producer Mervyn LeRoy hired Jack Haley to replace him. (The aluminum makeup was modified as well, changing from a powder that was brushed on to a paste that was painted on. Haley missed four days of filming when the new makeup caused an eye infection, but treatment was rendered in time to prevent any permanent damage.)
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38329
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Shell Oil Company released a 1991 video about the “catastrophic risks” of climate change that warned about rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, climate refugees,
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Warning from Shell Oil Company About Climate Change.
|
true
|
Business
|
It’s true that Shell Oil Company warned about the dangers of climate change in a video produced by the company in 1991. The 28-minute video described scientific efforts to gather data from the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans to better understand climate change. The narrator explained how scientists’ views of climate change’s impact had evolved by the end of 1990: “What they see is not a steady and even warming overall, but alterations to the familiar patterns of climate, and the increasing frequency of abnormal weather. No two scenarios fully agree. But their strange, mesmerizing images of possible futures have each prompted the same serious warning, a warning endorsed by a uniquely broad consensus of scientists in their report to the United Nations at the end of 1990.” [embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTlYYlRN0LY[/embedyt] The video resurfaced in February 2017 when the Guardian and Wired both publishes stories on the 1991 film, “Climate of Concern.” The Guardian reported that “Shell knew” about the dangers of climate change for more than 26 years and had failed to take sufficient action to address it: But, despite this early and clear-eyed view of the risks of global warming, Shell invested many billions of dollars in highly polluting tar sand operations and on exploration in the Arctic. It also cited fracking as a “future opportunity” in 2016, despite its own 1998 data showing exploitation of unconventional oil and gas was incompatible with climate goals. The film was obtained by the Correspondent, a Dutch online journalism platform, and shared with the Guardian, and lauds commercial-scale solar and wind power that already existed in 1991. Shell has recently lobbied successfully to undermine European renewable energy targets and is estimated to have spent $22m in 2015 lobbying against climate policies. The company’s investments in low-carbon energy have been minimal compared to its fossil fuel investments. Shell has also been a member of industry lobby groups that have fought climate action, including the so-called Global Climate Coalition until 1998; the far-right American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) until 2015; and remains a member of the Business Roundtable and the American Petroleum Institute today. On its website, Shell describes the company’s current positions on climate change. The company acknowledges hat it remains “primarily an oil and gas company,” but adds, “we know that long-term success depends on our ability to anticipate the types of energy and fuels people will need in the future and remain commercially competitive and environmentally relevant”: Shell has long recognised the climate challenge and the role of energy in enabling a decent quality of life. We believe that, while technological developments will emerge, effective policy and cultural change is essential to drive low-carbon business and consumer choices and opportunities. The transition to low-carbon solutions is best underpinned by meaningful government-led carbon “pricing” mechanisms. We welcome the efforts made by governments to cooperatively reach the global climate agreement and support long-term climate goals that balance environmental pressures with development opportunities. The Paris Agreement of December 12, 2015, could provide greater certainty about how the world can provide more energy with much less CO2. So, reports about Shell Oil Company warnings about climate change are true. Comments
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9627
|
Chest Protectors Guard Against Deadly Blows to Chest
|
This is a story about the rare event known as “commotio cordis,” when the heart stops due to a blow to the chest. It reviews some evolving efforts to create protective gear for young athletes, with the implication that other alternatives are needed beyond portable defibrillators. The story did a good job describing why kids are at risk for this, but it doesn’t provide many details on benefits, costs and quality of the evidence. It also lacked sources who were unaffiliated with the research or the advocacy efforts. We also felt the story could have done a stronger job explaining how rare these events are: While there are 10 to 20 deaths per year associated with this type of chest trauma, there are approximately 14,000 cases of traumatic brain injury annually, according to the American Association of Neurologic Surgeons. Protecting kids who play in sports is a no brainer and stories about new approaches are attention grabbers. Improved chest protection–especially if affordable–would be a welcomed addition to the safety equipment in sports.
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mixture
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cardiac arrest,chest protection,defibrillators,student athletes
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The story does mention costs, explaining “it’s not clear how much such gear would cost.” We recognize that the death of an otherwise healthy athlete is a tragedy and that a protective garment would be welcomed by many. But this amounts to about 10-20 such events a year, so the costs of prevention needs to be put into perspective. The HART shirt mentioned in the story produced by Unequal Technologies costs $100. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal there are 5.3 million children ages 7 to 17 playing baseball in the U.S. That means you would have to protect 265,000 to 530,000 to save one life if the protective gear was 100% effective at a cost of $26.5 million to $53 million. As an aside, a portable defibrillator costs about $1,000. The reader is really not given much to go on in terms of quantification of benefits. We are told, “Link’s team published lab tests in the Journal of Clinical Sports Medicine suggesting a combination of foams and polymers used by Pennsylvania-based Unequal Technologies is likely to be effective.” How that was determined is unclear, although the previous paragraphs notes an experimental model using pigs. No quantification is supplied in the story. But, here is what the research abstract says: “Results: Of 80 impacts without chest protectors, 43 (54%) resulted in VF. Ventricular fibrillation with chest protectors ranged from a high of 60% to a low of 5%. Of 12 chest protectors assessed, only 3 significantly lowered the risk of VF compared with impacts without chest protectors. These 3 chest protectors were combinations of Accelleron, Airilon, TriDur, and ImpacShield of different thicknesses. Protection increased linearly with the thicker combinations.” No apparent harms needed to be included. There was not a sufficient discussion of the quality of evidence or details about how the study was conducted. For example, including some context about how well pig hearts stand in for human hearts would have improved the story. The story does not disease-monger, although it perhaps could have more strongly pointed out how rare these events are compared to, say, sports-related head injuries, by showing a comparison of numbers. The story provides comments from two company representatives, the mother of a young man who suffered from an injury and a researcher whose research was funded by one of the companies. We would have liked to have seen comments from someone uninvolved with the products or the research. There are two main approaches to the problem: Prevention with athletic gear and “treatment” with a defibrillator. Both are mentioned in the story, though they are presented as two separate solutions. We’d have liked to seen some discussion about benefits where both are available simultaneously. The story makes it clear that the National Operating Committee on Standards for Athletic Equipment, or NOCSAE has yet to establish a standard but is expected to do so by January. We are also told that at least one manufacturer has a protective device that is said to be “likely effective.” It remains to be seen if in fact this is true. The story makes it clear that chest protection for contact sports is not new but new technology is potentially on the horizon. The story does not appear to be based on a press release.
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4060
|
West Virginia reports increasing Lyme disease cases.
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Tick-borne Lyme disease has spread across West Virginia over the past six years with cases reported in 52 of the state’s 55 counties, according to state health officials
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true
|
Health, Lyme disease, Ticks, West Virginia
|
Most cases are reported in the northern and eastern panhandles probably because of their proximity to the high-incidence states of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the Department of Health and Human Resources said. In an advisory Monday to health care providers, Health Commissioner Dr. Rahul Gupta wrote that the increase could be from increased reporting or from more ticks infected with the bacteria. Most cases appear between May and September, but ticks have become more active in winter months, he said. According to the department, 580 cases have been reported so far this year, up from 97 statewide in 2012. “Based on the change, West Virginia is considered a high incidence Lyme disease state,” Gupta wrote. Patients treated early with antibiotics usually recover quickly. He recommended a two-step blood test to confirm evidence of antibodies against the Lyme disease bacteria. Symptoms often include a circular rash around a tick bite and fever, headaches and fatigue, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. If left untreated, the infection can spread to joints, the heart and the nervous system. The CDC says there were more than 36,000 probable cases in the U.S. last year, with 26,203 confirmed.
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9947
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Drug Shows Promise in Curbing Compulsive Gambling, Study Says
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This story discusses nalmefene, an opioid antagonist, which is a drug that affects the brain’s dopamine system and is thought to reduce the pleasurable sensation associated with addictive behaviors such as compulsive gambling. The drug was FDA approved for the treatment of alcoholism in 1994, but it is still under study for the treatment of other addictions. Nalmefene was tested in a multi-site, randomized, double-blind trial; however, there were only 207 participants, and of these, only 73 actually completed the full 16-week trial. There was no mention of this in the news story, and only brief discussion that a third of the participants dropped out due to nausea and “other side effects”. Other side effects included insomnia and dizziness and were slightly greater in those given a higher dose of nalmefene. Though the study was well-designed, results would not likely be generalizable to a larger population based solely on this small group of compulsive gamblers treated with nalmefene. No quantitative data is provided on the efficacy of the drug, and no information is provided on potential long-term side effects, namely the long-term side effects of this class of drug on the liver. Other opioid antagonist drugs such as naltrexone have shown some toxicity to the liver. Nalmefene does not appear to have the same incidence of toxicity, but long-term safety has not been studied. If this is a pill taken daily, as might be expected in patients with a chronic condition, more long-term data on liver and other toxicities is needed. No information is provided on the cost of the drug. Lastly, the journalist cites the primary author of the study, noting he has “no financial stake in BioTie”, maker of nalmefene, however, two other researchers are employees of BioTie Therapies, and in the disclosure section of the journal article there is a note that the study was supported by BioTie Therapies Corp.
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false
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No mention of the cost of treatment. This study was only 16 weeks and since compulsive gambling, like other addictions, is a chronic disease, long-term data would be needed to prove efficacy and safely of this medication. The story provided no absolute quantitative data on safety of efficacy or relative risk reduction in those who took nalmefene. What’s the number needed to treat (NNT) in order to see a benefit? Additionally, results were slightly better in higher dose of the drug, but these people experienced more intolerable side effects and were less likely to remain in the study. Mentions side effects such as nausea so bad that 1/3 of participants dropped out of the study. Insomnia and dizziness were also common in the groups which took nalmefene. Not discussed was the potential long-term side effects of this class of drug, namely the effect on the liver. The trial was only 16 weeks. Other opioid antagonist drugs such as naltrexone have shown abnormalities in liver tests. Nalmefene does not appear to have the same incidence of toxicity, but long-term safety has not been studied. If this is a pill taken daily, more long term data on liver toxicity is needed. Does not mention that this was a multi-site, double-blind, randomized controlled study. Study included 207 people initially, but only 24 people in the placebo group and 49 in the nalmefene group completed the 16-week trial. Though the study was well-designed, results would not likely be generalizable to a larger population based on this small group of compulsive gamblers. Story includes a caveat that this is “not a magic pill”. Gives U.S. incidence of compulsive gambling. Cites primary author of the study, noting he has “no financial stake in BioTie”, maker of nalmefene. However, 2 other authors are employees of BioTie and in the disclosure section of the journal article there is a note the study was supported by BioTie. The story didn’t mention this. Mentions other biomedical research for addictions such as gambling and the need for combined pharmacology and behavioral interventions, such as therapy. No real comparison with other agents/studies in terms of treatment efficacy or safety profile. Not mentioned. Approved by FDA in 27 for treatment of alcoholism. Investigational drug not currently approved for treatment of other addictions, such as gambling. Mentions novelty of treatment for gambling addiction. Not novel for other addictions. The ability of opiate antagonists to block compulsive behaviors has been well described previously. See (Opioid antagonists in the treatment of impulse-control disorders. J Clin Psychiatry. 191 Apr;59(4):159-64. )
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32136
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A woman who used a recalled brand of tampons saw herself become infested with ants and had to be treated with a grotesque fungus that turned those ants into zombies.
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This process of behavior alteration allows the fungi to move to a location that will maximize their ability to disperse spores and infect more hosts. It is, however, a near impossibility that either the fungus or ants zombified by the fungus would actually survive inside a human body, since both are adapted to very specific environments.
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false
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Fauxtography, ants, Medical, tampons
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On August 8, 2016, the Thought Catalog web site published a piece of fiction written by by horror writer E. Z. Morgan titled “I Was Offered a **Very** Generous Settlement Not to Tell You the Disgusting Truth of the Tampon Recall.” The tale, which originally appeared in the horror story subreddit /r/nosleep in January 2016, was told from the perspective of a woman who became ill after using what she later found out to be a contaminated tampon, was treated with a **very** unorthodox ‘drug’, and was offered a substantial bribe to keep quiet about her experience: I have decided to document my exact experience, in case something even worse starts to happen. I bet a lot of you reading this have had a similar experience with the recall. If so, please let me know. You are not alone. I live in America so I can only speak to my own experience, although I know similar events occurred in the UK, Canada, and other countries. I was offered large sums of money to keep my story quiet. We all were. But I am not taking their money. Women died because of this. I saw a woman waste away in front of me and they want me to shut up? Never. I don’t care what happens now. But readers need have no fear this might happen to them or someone they know. The story was plainly tagged as fiction, and the author of the post, as she noted on her Facebook page, is described as someone who likes to make us uncomfortable: E.Z. Morgan (EZmisery) looks like an adorable librarian but writes stories that will keep you up at night. If you’re wondering about the plausibility of the scenario described in this story — becoming infected with flesh-eating ants from a tampon only to be treated with a fungus that turns said ants into zombies fleeing your body any way they can — it’s pretty low. Still, it is rooted in some actual science. The “medicine” the doctor gave the story’s victim was “Ophiocordyceps unilateralis,” a real organism that scientists classify as an emtomopahogenic fungus — a spooky class of fungi that changes the behavior of its host. This fungus does actually infect the brain of ants in the way described in the story, as described in a 2012 paper published in the Journal of Invertebrate Pathology: Infected ants develop erratic behaviors that include leaving their nests and foraging trails. They climb trees or shrubs and hang themselves upside down under the leaves by biting the leaves with their mandibles and remain there until death.
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3817
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California could be 1st state to sell own prescription drugs.
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California could become the first state to make its own prescription drugs under a proposal announced Thursday by Gov. Gavin Newsom, who says it would “take the power out of the hands of greedy pharmaceutical companies.”
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true
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Medication, Health, General News, Business, California, Prescription drugs, Gavin Newsom, U.S. News
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The Democratic governor wants the nation’s most populous state to contract with generic drug companies to make medications on its behalf so it could sell them to its nearly 40 million residents. The goal is to lower prices by increasing competition in the generic drug market, Newsom said. His proposal also would create a single market for drug pricing in California, with companies having to bid to sell their medicine at a uniform price. One expert said that piece would have the bigger impact. “Other countries control or negotiate the price of drugs, and if there is one state that could do it, it’s California, which is the size of a country,” said Larry Levitt, executive vice president of health policy for the Kaiser Family Foundation. “A drug company could walk away from Rhode Island. It’s much harder to walk away from California.” Lawmakers would have to approve the proposal before they could become law. A legislative leader in charge of reviewing the plan gave a tentative endorsement Thursday. “If Costco can have a Kirkland brand, why can’t California have our own generic brand?” said Democratic Assemblyman Joaquin Arambula, an emergency room doctor from Fresno who chairs the House Budget Subcommittee on Health and Human Services. “I really do think there is quite a bit of merit in having us produce the medications.” Priscilla VanderVeer, vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which represents brand-name drug companies, said she’s waiting for more details from Newsom before commenting. A representative from the Association for Accessible Medicines, which represents generic drug manufacturers, did not respond to a request for comment. The drug plan is part of Newsom’s budget proposal, which he must present to lawmakers by Friday. The state could have as much as a $7 billion surplus this year, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office. Newsom’s office did not say how much the drug proposal would cost, prompting criticism from some Republican lawmakers who said the state should not compete with private companies. “When the state runs it, it costs more money,” said Republican Assemblyman Devon Mathis, who’s also on the health subcommittee. “The money is coming out of families’ pockets paying all those crazy taxes.” California law requires drug companies to report any price increases to the state. Generic drugs saw a three-year median increase of 37.6%, according to a report from the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. That analysis was based on the list prices of the drugs and did not include discounts or rebates. But the report doesn’t include generic drugs that decreased in price because companies are not required to report that. Nationally, generic drug prices have been decreasing overall, according to a report that AARP produced with the University of Minnesota. Supporters say California’s generic drug label could help lower the cost of a common drug that has steadily increased in price — insulin for diabetes patients. Three drug companies control most of the market for insulin. “Consumers would directly benefit if California contracted on its own to manufacture much-needed generic medications like insulin — a drug that has been around for a century yet the price has gone up over tenfold in the last few decades,” said Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California. Jon Roth, CEO of the California Pharmacists Association, said the state might be surprised, however, at how much it ends up charging for its own generic drugs because of factors beyond its control, including raw material shortages and disruptions in the supply chain. “There are other factors in the actual manufacturing that the state may not be able to escape,” he said. While most Americans get generic prescriptions, they only account for a small part of the total drug spending in the U.S. That’s because unlike the name-brand drug market, generics are very competitive, said Jeff Joyce, chairman of the Department of Pharmaceutical and Health Economics at USC’s School of Pharmacy. “What he is proposing to do would help in specific cases, but it’s not a panacea by any means,” Joyce said. The proposal is another step in Newsom’s effort to overhaul California’s prescription drug market. Last year, in one of his first acts in office, Newsom ordered the state to take over the Medicaid program’s prescription drug benefits, which affects 13 million people.
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After an off-duty police officer shot Brian Hundley, a jury found the officer had acted negligently and lied about the event, but Judge Brett Kavanaugh overturned the finding.
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What's true: Judge Kavanaugh overturned a lower court ruling that had awarded damages to the family of a victim of a police shooting on the grounds that the jury's logic had been inconsistent. Thus, Kavanaugh ruled in favor of the officer and the police department. What's false: While this appeal did result in the loss of damages awarded by the lower court, Kavanaugh also remanded the case for a new trial in order to reconsider two complaints for which the original jury had exonerated the officer. This part of the ruling was in favor of the victim and his family.
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mixture
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Politics, brett kavanaugh, police shootings
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At 1:30 am on the morning of 23 March 2002, a 41-year-old dental surgery student was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer while pulling his car from a parking lot in front of a D.C.-area apartment complex: In the middle of a night in March 2002, Brian Hundley and a woman were in a car parked outside an apartment complex in Washington, D.C. Off-duty Metropolitan Police Department Officer Marcus Gaines tapped on the window of the car as he walked past. Hundley, who was in the driver’s seat, began to drive the car in the direction of Officer Gaines. Officer Gaines pulled his gun, yelled “police,” and ordered Hundley to stop and get out of the car. Hundley complied and exited the car. According to Officer Gaines, while Hundley was standing outside the car, Hundley suddenly moved his right hand from behind his back and began lunging toward Officer Gaines, who was about 10 to 15 feet away. In apparent self-defense, Officer Gaines shot and killed Hundley. The Hundley family brought a civil suit against Gaines, another officer, and the District of Columbia in three separate areas: First, a tort law claim of assault and battery based on the officer’s fatal shot; second, a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s ban on excessive force; and third, a tort law claim of negligence based on Gaines’ initial stop of Hundley. A jury awarded the Hundley estate $242,000 based on the the third claim, ruling that Hundley’s death was the result of a the officer’s negligence in performing this initial traffic stop. Both sides were unhappy with the ruling, according to the Washington Post‘s 2004 coverage of the trial: The jury found that Officer Marcus Gaines was negligent in the steps leading to the shooting of Brian Hundley, 41, in a Northwest Washington parking lot. But it rejected the family’s bid for more damages, finding that Gaines did not abuse Hundley, violate his civil rights or inflict emotional distress upon him when he killed him with a single gunshot to the chest … Although the verdict was a victory on paper, Hundley’s relatives and lawyers called the amount of the award a bitter insult to Hundley’s life and said they will appeal. “It really defies logic,” said Carl Hundley, who brought the wrongful death suit on behalf of his late brother. “They found the [traffic] stop was negligent, they found my brother didn’t threaten the officer. One is left to wonder if they are just deciding his life had no value.” The family’s attorney, Gregory L. Lattimer, called the award a “travesty … A 41-year-old man dies at the police’s hands without threatening him or doing anything wrong, and his life is worth $241,000. How are the police allowed to get away with this?” … A spokeswoman for the D.C. attorney general’s office, which defended the department, said that the jury erred in siding with the family and that the city might seek to overturn the award. On appeal, both the defendants (Officer Gaines et al) and the plaintiffs (the Hundley family) challenged that ruling, as described in court documents: Hundley’s estate challenges the assault and battery and excessive force verdict, arguing that the jury’s verdict was inconsistent with the written interrogatory answer. Defendants challenge the judgment for plaintiffs on the negligence claim. This appeal was heard by the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and the opinion was written by Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who later became President Trump’s controversial nominee to the Supreme Court. The crux of the appeal argument centered on jury inconsistency. In the original trial, the jury was asked to rule on the three issues brought to the court and, in what is known as an interrogatory jury question, on the reliability or truth of Officer Gaines’ version of events: In addition to asking the jury to render a verdict on the assault and battery and excessive force claims, the judge also instructed the jury to answer a written interrogatory: “Do you find that Brian Hundley was shot after placing his right hand behind his back and then making a lunging motion toward Officer Marcus Gaines?” … The written interrogatory tracked Officer Gaines’s testimony regarding the apparent self-defense shooting. The jury answered “No.” Both the lawyers representing Gaines as well as the lawyers representing the interests of the Hundley family pointed to this fact as a reason for appeal, as jury inconsistency is a valid grounds for appeal under in Federal Law. In the Hundley family’s case, they argued that “the jury’s written interrogatory response is inconsistent with the jury’s findings for defendants on the assault and battery and excessive force claims.” Gaines et al, on the other hand, pointed to the finding as a reason to reject the damages awarded to the Hundleys by the jury, as their verdict with respect to negligence relied on a narrative the jury themselves said was not truthful. Kavanaugh agreed that the jury verdict was inconsistent: Two distinct versions of events were presented to the jury. The jury could conclude either that Officer Gaines shot Hundley in self-defense as described by Officer Gaines, or that he shot Hundley without justification. In making their cases to the jury, both sides agreed that liability turned on which version of events the jury believed … Yet the jury found for defendants [Gaines et al] on the assault and battery and excessive force claims while simultaneously answering a written interrogatory indicating that the jury did not believe Officer Gaines’s version of events. The two answers cannot coexist; they make no sense in the context of the evidence presented in this case. Ultimately, Kavanaugh rendered a 180-degree shift on both sides of this argument. He ruled that because the negligence claim relied on a narrative deemed false by the jury, that that charge and the damages awarded because of it should be overturned. This aspect of the decision has led to the online narrative that “a jury found that a cop lied [but] Brett Kavanaugh threw out the verdict”: While this meme expresses a factually accurate statement, it tells only a portion of the story. Using the same logic that prompted the reversal of the negligence charge, Kavanaugh also overturned the earlier rulings that did not hold the officer liable for assault or excessive force, remanding that aspect of the case for a new trial: We agree with Hundley’s estate that the jury verdict on the assault and battery and excessive force claims was inconsistent with the jury’s answer to the written interrogatory. We agree with defendants that the negligent stop, as a matter of law, did not proximately cause the shooting death and thus cannot justify the damages for the shooting death. We therefore reverse the judgment of the District Court and remand for a new trial for Hundley’s estate on the assault and battery and excessive force claims. It is uncertain if the Hundley family sought a retrial after this ruling or reached a settlement with the defendants. (An email to the lawyer who represented the Hundley’s in this matter was not immediately returned.) Regardless, Kavanaugh’s ruling did have the effect of reversing a cash settlement given to the Hundley family, but it also allowed for a new trial on first two claims the Hundleys had lost during their initial trial.
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4850
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New York names facilities that treated drug-resistant fungus.
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New York is the first state to release the names of medical facilities that have treated patients with a deadly, drug-resistant fungus that is spreading.
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true
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Health, New York, Brooklyn, General News, Queens, Manhattan, United States
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The New York Times reported Wednesday that 64 hospitals, 103 long-term care nursing homes, a long-term care hospital and three hospice units in New York have cared for patients with an especially virulent germ called Candida auris. Most of the patients were in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. The Times said New York health officials disclosed the names of the facilities because Candida auris has been spreading quickly. Michael Craig, an antibiotic resistance expert for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the newspaper that someone in the United States dies of a resistant infection every 15 minutes. The Times said Candida auris has been such a secretive subject that various governments have declined to identify or confirm the names of hospitals and nursing homes where the fungus was present, or even to discuss cases after families or physicians confirmed them. New York health officials said they decided to disclose the names of the facilities with cases in the state over the past three years to help stop its spread and provide transparency to the public. However, the state did not say how many cases were at each institution. More than 800 cases of the fungus have been recorded in the United States — about half of them in New York. The Candida auris germ tends to resist major antifungal medications and is often found in patients with weak immune systems. About half of those who are infected tend to already be in poor health and die within three months. ___ Information from: The New York Times, http://www.newyorktimes.com
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28996
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Rhythmically coughing during a heart attack increases your chances of surviving it.
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Rhythmically coughing during a heart attack may increase your chances of surviving it, but self-undertaking that procedure can be problematic.
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mixture
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Medical, cough cpr, Home Cures
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This supposedly helpful narrative about surviving heart attacks began its life on the Internet in June 1999: This one is serious … Let’s say it’s 4:17 p.m. and you’re driving home, (alone of course) after an unusually hard day on the job. Not only was the work load extraordinarily heavy, you also had a disagreement with your boss, and no matter how hard you tried he just wouldn’t see your side of the situation. You’re really upset and the more you think about it the more up tight you become.All of a sudden you start experiencing severe pain in your chest that starts to radiate out into your arm and up into your jaw. You are only about five miles from the hospital nearest your home, unfortunately you don’t know if you’ll be able to make it that far. What can you do? You’ve been trained in CPR but the guy that taught the course neglected to tell you how to perform it on yourself. HOW TO SURVIVE A HEART ATTACK WHEN ALONE Since many people are alone when they suffer a heart attack, this article seemed in order. Without help the person whose heart stops beating properly and who begins to feel Faint, has only about 10 seconds left before losing consciousness. However, these victims can help themselves by coughing repeatedly and very vigorously. A deep breath should be taken before each cough, and the cough must be deep and prolonged, as when producing sputum from deep inside the chest. A breath and a cough must be repeated about every two seconds without let up until help arrives, or until the heart is felt to be beating normally again. Deep breaths get oxygen into the lungs and coughing movements squeeze the heart and keep the blood circulating. The squeezing pressure on the heart also helps it regain normal rhythm. In this way, heart attack victims can get to a phone and, between breaths, call for help. Tell as many other people as possible about this, it could save their lives! From Health Cares, Rochester General Hospital via Chapter 240’s newsletter. AND THE BEAT GOES ON… (reprint from The Mended Hearts, Inc. publication, Heart Response) Those kindhearted souls who started it on its way likely had no inkling the advice they were forwarding could potentially be harmful to someone undergoing a heart attack, but that is indeed the case. If you knew exactly what you were doing, this procedure might help save your life. If, however, you were to attempt cough CPR at the wrong time (because you misjudged the kind of cardiac event being experienced) or went about it in the wrong way, it could make matters worse. Cough CPR is not a new procedure: it has been around for years and has been used successfully in isolated emergency cases where victims realized they were on the verge of fainting and about to go into full cardiac arrest (their hearts were about to stop) and knew exactly how to cough so as to keep enough oxygen-enriched blood circulating to prevent them from losing consciousness until help could be sought, or they were under the direct care of physicians who recognized the crises as they were taking place and were on hand to instruct patients step by step through the coughing. Even were the afflicted to correctly recognize they were experiencing the sort of cardiac event where cough CPR could help, without specific training to hit the right rhythms their coughing could turn mild heart attacks into fatal ones. This is not to say cough CPR couldn’t be effectively taught to patients deemed at risk of further heart attacks. According to a widely circulated news report surfacing in September 2003, a doctor in Poland has been attempting exactly that. Dr. Tadeusz Petelenz of the Silesian Medical Academy in Katowice Province claims to have successfully instructed a number of his patients in the procedure, but it should be noted his results have not been independently confirmed. While a September 2003 Reuters report detailed the Polish doctor’s championing of cough CPR, a similar Associated Press report on the same subject noted that “Experts said while the concept is provocative, it needs more study” and that “Dr. Marten Rosenquist, professor of cardiology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and an expert in heart beat abnormalities, said the concept is interesting but that Petelenz showed no evidence his patients actually had arrhythmias.” It is unclear from the news reports whether the Polish heart patients who supposedly experienced success with cough CPR were doing so under strict medical supervision in a hospital or were going about their private lives at the time of the cardiac events that prompted them to attempt the procedure. It is one thing for success to be achieved in a hospital setting where patients know intervention will swiftly follow if problems are encountered, and quite another when patients are in unscripted settings (at home, at work, or while driving in a car). Would such instruction hold up in field conditions, where those about to go into full cardiac arrest know there’s no net under the tightrope? Yet even if cough CPR can be effectively taught by physicians, it’s not going to be learned from an e-mail, at least not well enough to be safe. Even if Dr. Petelenz’s findings prove out, there’s a wide (and dangerous) gap between in-person one-on-one training by a professional on hand to quickly correct a patient’s mistakes before they become habit and generic printed instruction wholly lacking in direct feedback and guidance. Thinking one is a valid substitute for the other would be akin to believing studying a typed set of instructions is all it takes to learn how to drive a car well enough to take it down the freeway and back. The e-mailed advice about coughing during a heart attack leaves the impression the “cough CPR” technique is endorsed by Rochester General Hospital and Mended Hearts. Rochester General had nothing to do with any of this — how its name came to be attached to this message is a mystery. See its denial of having endorsed this e-mail. Although the text of the e-mailed advice was published in a newsletter put out by Mended Hearts (a support group for heart disease patients and their families), that organization has since disavowed it and has a page on its web site asking readers not to heed the advisory. The piece on cough CPR found its way into that publication through a blend of too much enthusiasm and a dearth of fact checking. From there, other chapters picked it up, spreading the notion to an even wider audience. Attempts now to distance the organization from it don’t begin to undo the damage done by the piece having been picked up from there. Darla Bonham, Mended Heart’s executive director, has since issued a statement about cough CPR: I’ve received email from people all across the country wanting to know if it is a valid medically approved procedure. I contacted a scientist on staff with the American Heart Association Emergency Cardiac Care division, and he was able to track a possible source of the information. The information comes from a professional textbook on emergency cardiac care. This procedure is also known as “cough CPR” and is used in emergency situations by professional staff. The American Heart Association does not recommend that the public use this method in a situation where there is no medical supervision. Dr. Richard O. Cummins, Seattle’s director of emergency cardiac care, explains that cough CPR raises the pressure in the chest just enough to maintain some circulation of oxygen-containing blood and help enough get to the brain to maintain consciousness for a prolonged period. But cough CPR should be used only by a person about to lose consciousness, an indication of cardiac arrest, he cautions. It can be dangerous for someone having a heart attack that does not result in cardiac arrest. Such a person should call for help and then sit quietly until help arrives, he says. In other words, the procedure might be the right thing to attempt or it might be the very thing that would kill the afflicted depending on which sort of cardiac crisis is being experienced. Without a doctor there to judge the situation and, if cough CPR is indicated, to supervise the rhythmic coughing, the procedure is just far too risky for a layman to attempt. Forget about coughing — key to surviving a heart attack is obtaining proper medical assistance within a very limited window of opportunity. Once an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) has been diagnosed, speedy injection of thrombolytic agents to dissolve clots is of the utmost importance — the more quickly those drugs are delivered, the better the chances of survival are. It’s a race against the clock. Most patients who present with minor chest pains usually look healthy and show no signs of a heart attack. Electrocardiogram (ECG) results tell the story though, so be sure to insist upon one being performed if you’ve any doubts at all. Often mild heart attacks are left untreated and undetected because hospital staff mistake a heart attack for something more benign because the presenting symptoms are minor. Rather than risk killing yourself with cough CPR, those experiencing a heart attack should heed the advice of physicians the world over — down a couple of Aspirin as an emergency remedy. Doctors believe that during the early stages of a heart attack, Aspirin — which is known to prevent blood platelets from sticking together — can prevent a clot from getting bigger. In 1991 Dr. Michael Vance, president of the American Board of Emergency Medicine, recommended that people who think they are having a heart attack should “Call 911, then take an Aspirin.” Oh, and it probably makes a great deal of sense to chew the Aspirin before swallowing. The sooner it is dispersed by the stomach, the sooner it gets to where it is needed. During a heart attack, waiting for the enteric coating surrounding the pill to break down naturally could be a mistake. In 1993 The American Heart Association began recommending a 325 mg Aspirin at the onset of chest pain or other symptoms of a severe heart attack. That bit of advice is going unheeded, though; a follow-up report published in 1997 shows as many as 10,000 American lives a year could be saved if more people who think they’re having a heart attack took an aspirin at the start of chest pains. In terms of the drama of it, swallowing an Aspirin seems quite a come-down from bravely trying to induce a perfectly timed coughing fit. Less flamboyant is better, though; Aspirin saves lives, whereas coughing might well cost them.
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13176
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In one Colorado hospital, 50 percent of newborns tested had marijuana in their system.
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"The ad claimed, ""In one Colorado hospital, 50 percent of newborns tested had marijuana in their system."" That hospital -- St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center -- did have more than 45 percent of their newborn babies tested test positive for marijuana in their systems. The big issue with the talking point is it cherry-picks one month of data. Overall, from January 2015 through September 2016, almost 1 in 3 newborn babies tested for marijuana at St. Mary-Corwin came up positive for marijuana in their systems. That’s not half, but it’s still pretty high."
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mixture
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Arizona, Marijuana, Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy,
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"The last-minute contributions opposing an initiative that would legalize recreational marijuana in Arizona continue to pile up, with even Las Vegas billionaire Sheldon Adelson shelling out $500,000 against the cause. Much like the money, the ads against recreational marijuana continue to flow as well. An Oct. 11 ad from Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy, an anti-pot group, uses testimonies from two former Colorado politicians in highlighting the supposed dangers of recreational marijuana. ""In one Colorado hospital, 50 percent of newborns tested had marijuana in their system,"" former Denver Mayor Wellington Webb says. This claim stood out to us right away. Could half of all newborn babies tested at this particular hospital really have marijuana in their system? Deceptive data The ad cites a September 2016 report from the Rocky Mountain High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area -- an interagency group focused on combating drug trafficking. According to the report, ""nearly half"" of newborns tested in March 2016 at St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center in Pueblo, Colo., tested positive for marijuana. Ciara Archer, a spokeswoman for the anti-pot group, also pointed us to a July 2016 CBS Denver story on the hospital. The article notes that the head of the neonatal unit, Dr. Steve Simerville, is reporting a ""dramatic increase"" in newborns with marijuana in their system. We reached out to the hospital and dug into the numbers. Colorado legalized recreational marijuana in 2012, but St. Mary-Corwin spokeswoman Wendi Dammann said babies have been drug tested at the hospital for at least a decade. ""The screening criteria was developed by both local hospitals (St. Mary-Corwin and Parkview) and Children’s Hospital Colorado,"" she said. As far as the numbers cited in the ad, Dammann confirmed that five out of the 11 newborn babies tested in March 2016 did test positive for marijuana. So that’s less than 46 percent -- not half -- of a handful of births in one month. Cherry-picking one month of data makes the number of newborns who test positive for marijuana seem higher than it actually is. That is not the case. From January 2016 through September 2016, 403 babies were born at St. Mary-Corwin. About one-quarter of those, or 101, were tested for marijuana. Of those 101 newborns, 27 tested positive for marijuana in their systems. That’s a rate slightly under 27 percent. And in 2015, the hospital saw 519 births. Of the 93 newborn babies tested for marijuana, 31 came up positive for marijuana. That’s a rate of 33 percent. Marijuana use during and after pregnancy can be quite harmful. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, exposure to THC ""could have profound and long-lasting consequences"" to a baby’s brain and behavior, including neurological development. We wanted to know how these statistics compared to the country or states where marijuana is not legal, but we could not find much research on that point. However, Dr. Edith Allen of Phoenix Children’s Hospital, studied drug habits for pregnant women with criteria including personal or family history of drug use at St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center between 2006 and 2010. Her study found THC in 431 babies out of 727 mother-baby pairings tested -- almost 60 percent. However, Allen pointed out that not every pregnant woman was tested. Our ruling The ad claimed, ""In one Colorado hospital, 50 percent of newborns tested had marijuana in their system."" That hospital -- St. Mary-Corwin Medical Center -- did have more than 45 percent of their newborn babies tested test positive for marijuana in their systems. The big issue with the talking point is it cherry-picks one month of data. Overall, from January 2015 through September 2016, almost 1 in 3 newborn babies tested for marijuana at St. Mary-Corwin came up positive for marijuana in their systems. That’s not half, but it’s still pretty high.
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11232
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Long-shot stem-cell treatment gives two brothers a future
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This was a well-written story from the human interest perspective. The disorder is not well known and there are currently no effective treatments. The potential benefit offered by the transplant program is significant but the potential downsides are as well. Facts are missing related to potential harms, the small number of cases performed to date and limited follow up. This leaves the reader with the impression that this experimental approach is a cure for the disorder. While we can all hope that impression is valid, hope should not cloud the reality that it is too soon to tell the value of the approach, much less to label it a cure. The words used in a story like this carry a great deal of weight. It was a mistake to print without challenge the investigator’s claims about taking “one more disorder off the incurable list” and labeling this a “home run.” He may feel that way. But the story should have provided some independent expert perspective on these claims. Maybe others would feel that way as well. But the story doesn’t help us know that. We only get the conflicted view of the investigator.
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false
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"There were no cost estimates or mention of whether the treatment would be paid for by insurance. However as the story was clear that the approach was experimental, perhaps it is too early to expect information about costs. It would have been ideal, however, for the report to have noted the significant cost of a bone marrow transplant and note the likelihood of similar costs with this procedure. The benefits of the experimental approach were heralded as a cure. However, it is too soon to know whether it is a cure or a treatment that provides a temporary respite from disease complications. There was no mention of possible harms associated with the treatment. The potential harms related to a bone marrow transplant are significant and all were ignored in the story. While the disease is horrible, bone marrow transplantation is a major process with a signifcant potential for major side effects and a lack of guarantee of success. The story mentioned that the older brother of the featured child is soon to be treated. Are there additional complications when the treatment is used in older children? Or for individuals that don’t have a ""perfect match""? The harms associated with treatment in such cases also should have been addressed. The evidence presented in this story inflated the outcomes which have been observed to date. The story referred to the experimental approach as a cure for the disease, when it is really premature to make this claim. Although the little boy who was treated currently has had wonderful resolution of some of the symptoms of the disorder, which is terrific – symptom resolution in one child does not constitute a cure. It also remains to be seen whether this will be a long term fix for the disorder, even in this child. So, while the resolution of symptoms in this child is good news, the jury is still out on the final value of this experimental approach. The story did not engage in disease mongering; it made clear that the disease being discussed was rare and its cause was of genetic origin. All of the medical professionals quoted in this story are involved in the specific case reported on. Comments from experts in this disease and/or long term effects of bone marrow transplantation would have provided much needed balance. There was no discussion of treatments currently used in the management of this condition. A simple statement noting that all current treatments simply treat symptoms would have sufficed. The DebRA website lists two clinical trials so there appears to be additional research interest in this disorder. The story reported on the experimental approach used for the featured child as though it were part of an active clinical trial. It would have been very easy to have included information about the trial for those who might be interested. If the investigators have only recruited 3 of the planned 30 participants, it would have been useful to include info about access to the trial. This appears to be a novel experimental approach to this disease. We can’t be sure if the story relied largely on a news release. The University did issue a news release on 6/3/08 and an earlier one on Nov. 1, 2007. We do know that the story didn’t quote any independent sources."
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26384
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The CDC recommends that only people with COVID-19 symptoms should wear masks.
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A Facebook post claims the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recommend that people who are healthy wear face masks to protect themselves from respiratory diseases, including COVID-19. That was the CDC’s advice — until a change made April 3. Now, to guard against the spread of the coronavirus, the CDC recommends nearly everyone wear a face covering when out in public and where social distancing is more difficult.
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false
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Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"President Donald Trump has said he can’t see himself wearing one. Vice President Mike Pence didn’t when he visited the Mayo Clinic. But generally, when it comes to protecting against the coronavirus, who should wear a face mask? A widely shared Facebook post appears to offer direction from an authoritative source, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. ""Please note: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do not recommend that people who are healthy wear face masks to protect themselves from respiratory diseases, including COVID-19,"" says what looks like a partial screenshot from a UPMC web page. ""Face masks should be worn by people who show symptoms of COVID-19 to help prevent the spread of the disease to others."" The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) This post, published April 27, is offering old advice. The CDC now recommends that nearly everyone wear a face covering when out in public and where social distancing is difficult. Early in the coronavirus outbreak, the CDC’s guidance did deter people from wearing face masks unless they had COVID-19 and were showing symptoms. ""This is to protect others from the risk of getting infected,"" the guidance stated. But that changed. Trump announced April 3, weeks before this Facebook post, that the CDC was revising its recommendations on face coverings. The CDC said it was making the change based on continuing studies that found that the virus can be transmitted by people who are asymptomatic and that even those who eventually develop symptoms can transmit the virus to others before showing symptoms. In a question-and-answer posting about cloth face coverings, the CDC broadly recommended their use in public settings where six-feet distancing is more difficult to maintain. The new guidance does not differentiate between people who are healthy and people who have symptoms, as the Facebook post did. The CDC said: People should ""wear a cloth face covering to cover their nose and mouth in the community setting,"" including grocery stores and pharmacies, and especially in public in areas of widespread COVID-19 illness. Cloth face coverings can be fashioned from household items or made at home from common materials. Surgical masks or N-95 respirators should be reserved for healthcare workers and other medical first responders. A cloth face covering ""is not intended to protect the wearer, but it may prevent the spread of virus from the wearer to others. This would be especially important if someone is infected, but does not have symptoms."" Cloth face coverings should not be placed on children younger than 2 years of age, ""anyone who has trouble breathing, or is unconscious, incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the cover without assistance."" The most effective homemade masks are made of thick cloth and make a tight seal around the wearer’s face. ""Given the current crisis, and lacking an alternative, many layers of densely woven fabric would be the most effective, because it allows for lots of voids in the layers where particles can be trapped,"" Richard Peltier, an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, previously told PolitiFact. ""The mask needs to seal as tightly as possible to the face to avoid leaks, though this may not be possible with different designs, fabrics, or face shapes. Thin or porous fabrics are the least likely to be effective."" Cloth masks, he added, ""should be treated as contaminated materials that you bring in to your home — they need to be laundered in hot soapy water, and you’d need to consider sanitizing in bleach or hydrogen peroxide regularly."" A Facebook post reflects outdated information in claiming that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does not recommend that people who are healthy wear face masks to protect themselves from respiratory diseases, including COVID-19. That was the CDC’s advice — until a change made April 3. Now, to guard against the spread of the coronavirus, the CDC recommends nearly everyone wear a cloth face covering when out in public and where social distancing is more difficult."
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2967
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Ariad to resume sales of cancer drug Iclusig, shares jump.
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A leukemia drug that was suspended amid safety concerns nearly two months ago is being allowed back on the U.S. market, though restricted to a smaller group of patients.
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true
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Health News
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Shares of Ariad Pharmaceuticals Inc, which makes the drug, Iclusig, rose as much as 40 percent after news that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the more restricted use of on Friday. Iclusig was approved a year ago to treat chronic myeloid leukemia and Philadelphia chromosome positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia in patients who had failed to respond to at least one other therapy. It was suspended on October 31 after being associated with a higher-than-expected risk of life-threatening blood clots and narrowing of blood vessels. The FDA said it approved a revised label for the drug, limiting its use to patients with a specific genetic mutation and to those who are unable to use alternative treatments such as Novartis AG’s Gleevec or Bristol Myers Squibb Co’s Sprycel. The drug’s label will note that vascular blockages, which have the potential to cause heart attacks, strokes and death, have occurred in at least 27 percent of patients treated with Iclusig. It will also warn of an increased risk of heart failure. “While this new restricted label will clearly cap Iclusig’s sales potential, we still believe it can be a meaningful drug,” Cory Kasimov, an analyst at J.P. Morgan, said in a research note. “The key question will now be whether Iclusig will be relegated to last line of defense (resulting in more modest sales potential) or will it begin to creep up the treatment algorithm.” Doctors are allowed to prescribe drugs on an “off-label” basis for indications other than those approved by the FDA, though companies are not allowed to market them for such unapproved uses. Ariad said it will start selling the drug, its only approved product, from mid-January. Ariad’s chief executive, Harvey Berger, told analysts on a conference call that about 1,300 patients a year will be eligible for Iclusig under the new label, down from 2,500 previously. The drug is expected to generate sales of $315 million by 2019 according to the average estimate of three analysts polled by Thomson Reuters. Iclusig costs at least $115,000 a year. The FDA is requiring the company to implement a risk management program to promote awareness of the risks associated with Iclusig. The company must also conduct additional trials to test different, potentially less toxic, doses of the drug. Dr. Richard Pazdur, head of the FDA’s cancer division, said in an interview that if a less toxic dose was to be identified, “it would be reasonable,” though speculative at this stage, to test Iclusig to another therapy for potential use in a broader patient population. Ariad’s Berger said he expects the company to begin the dosing trial in the second half of 2014. “We believe these requirements are straightforward and manageable,” he said. Ariad’s shares rose 24 percent to $6.85 in afternoon trading on Nasdaq. Earlier they rose as high as $7.75.
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8591
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New coronavirus cases in Italy fall to 25-day low, deaths rise by 604.
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Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy rose by 604 on Tuesday, a lower daily tally than the 636 seen the day before, while the number of new cases posted the smallest increase since March 13.
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true
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Health News
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The total death toll in the world’s hardest-hit country since its outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 rose to 17,127, the Civil Protection Agency said. The total of confirmed cases increased by 3,039 on Tuesday to 135,586, the second successive daily decline, underscoring growing confidence that the illness is on the retreat thanks to a nationwide lockdown introduced on March 9. New cases rose by 3,599 on Monday. Previous daily increases since March 17 had all been in a range of 4,050-6,557. Of those originally infected, 24,392 were declared recovered on Tuesday against 22,837 a day earlier. There were 3,792 people in intensive care against 3,898 on Monday — a fourth consecutive daily decline.
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4266
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Report calls for hog farm moratorium, new permit system.
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A new report on the rapid expansion of hog farms in Iowa calls for a moratorium on new barns and concludes that the state’s regulatory system is failing to protect the environment and public health for the sake of profit of the politically powerful livestock industry.
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true
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Iowa, University of Iowa, Health, Environment, Environmental health, Public health
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“A tipping point has been reached. Rural Iowans have every reason to be concerned,” said the report released Thursday by retired University of Iowa professors James Merchant and David Osterberg. Merchant is professor emeritus of Public Health and Medicine and founded the College of Public Health and Osterberg is professor emeritus of Occupational and Environmental Health. He is co-founder of the Iowa Policy Project, a liberal-leaning Iowa City-based nonprofit group that offers research on environmental, economic, energy and tax policies, which released the report. They point out that the number of Iowa livestock farms called concentrated animal feeding operations or CAFOs has grown to more than 10,000 from 722 in 2001. The annual growth has been around 500 new or expanded barns a year for the last decade. Most of them are built to house pigs to satisfy the rapidly growing export market for pork, which grew to nearly $6 billion in 2016, up 7 percent in one year. Exports to the China and Hong Kong markets broke the $1 billion mark for the first time in 2016 and exports are expected to further expand to meet China’s insatiable appetite for pork. The report concludes that livestock production contributes to degradation of water quality, increased cases of asthma and other illnesses among residents near hog confinement operations and a 20 to 40 percent decline in the value of homes near hog farms because of the odor. “The current industrial model is not sustainable given its high input costs, rising energy demands, fresh water needs, climate change, and adverse environmental and public health impacts,” the report concluded. “The very real pushback from rural residents and communities will, however, be sustained.” Merchant and Osterberg made several recommendations including revision of the permitting process for new barns that would allow for increased local input, a moratorium on new construction and establishment of land covenants and other local legal strategies to limit local livestock barn growth. The pork industry acknowledges growth in the industry but considers it good for farmers and good for the economy of Iowa, the nation’s leading pork producer which had nearly 23 million pigs as of the USDA December inventory report. That was nearly a quarter of the national supply of 73.2 million. The next closest state was North Carolina with 9.3 million hogs. “We understand there are concerns out there and we believe those concerns are being addressed by the current system understanding that others don’t,” said Eldon McAfee, an agriculture law attorney who represents the Iowa Pork Producers Association. He said producers believe the current permit system in effect for 16 years has worked and farmers have complied with its requirements and continue to be held responsible when there are accidental spills of manure into creeks or streams. “A moratorium would be devastating to the Iowa economy and livestock producers,” he said. On the health claims, McAfee said he knows of no court case where it has been proven that a hog farm has been proven responsible for causing individual’s illness. A spokeswoman for the Iowa Farm Bureau, one of the state’s largest agriculture lobbying groups, declined to comment on the report and spokesman for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, which oversees livestock farm permitting and inspections, did not immediately respond to a message. There are signs that a public groundswell is building in opposition to sustained rapid growth. County supervisors from 20 of Iowa’s 99 counties lobbied lawmakers changes in the permit process which has allowed for 97 percent of new livestock barn applications to be approved even when local county officials, local citizens and neighbors have protested. Nine livestock farm nuisance lawsuits are pending in Iowa courts. The Iowa Supreme Court will hear arguments on Feb. 12 in a case in which a group of southeast Iowa landowners are trying to strike down as unconstitutional a law that provides livestock farms with immunity from nuisance lawsuits.
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12485
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There is no ‘backlog’ of untested rape kits in Wisconsin.
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"Schimel says it is wrong to describe the untested rape kits as a ""backlog,"" arguing it implies blame on the department under his watch. But the definition of the term does not involve how or when a backlog began. The department has decided that the work should be done — a process that began slowly and is on pace to stretch out for up to two years, based on the current capacity and pace. That’s a large accumulation of uncompleted work. And that’s the definition of a backlog. The fact that Schimel himself previously used the term makes his claim not only wrong but ridiculous."
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false
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Criminal Justice, Crime, States, Wisconsin, Brad Schimel,
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"Thousands of rape kits collected in Wisconsin in recent decades are now scheduled to be tested as officials seek to identify serial rapists or find leads on unsolved crimes. Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel has agreed the work needs to be done, but he has repeatedly contested the description in news reports that the untested kits comprise a ""backlog."" He argues the term unfairly casts his agency in a negative light. ""I do disagree with the term backlog because the Wisconsin crime lab is up to date with all current, pending investigations,"" Schimel said April 9, 2017 on Up Front with Mike Gousha. ""It’s not a backlog. These are things no one ever asked the state crime lab to test."" Is Schimel — a Republican who is up for reelection in 2018 — right to claim the untested kits are not a ""backlog""? The background Rape kits have accumulated over decades in police evidence rooms and hospital storage areas — both in Wisconsin and nationwide. A July 2015 USA TODAY Network investigation revealed that 70,000 rape kits were untested nationally. In Wisconsin, the figure was about 6,000. They include cases where victims choose not to pursue charges, defendants confessed or the issue was consent rather than identity, Schimel said in the Up Front interview. But, he said, authorities have realized in recent years the value in going back and testing those cases, since sex offenders typically have more than one victim. ""If you test that DNA, you might link that defendant to another unsolved case out there,"" Schimel said. ""So we’ve recognized the need to go back and look at these, but it’s not a backlog."" The state Justice Department determined 3,800 of the untested kits would be tested, though only if the rape survivor consents. But the process hasn’t moved quickly. In September 2015, the department received a $4 million grant to begin testing, but it didn’t have the capacity to handle that volume in house. Instead, the private lab Bode Cellmark Forensics was hired to run the tests. The lab can process about 200 kits per month, said department spokesman Johnny Koremenos. But it will take about two years to test all the kits, based on figures DOJ provided. About 800 kits have been sent to Bode so far, and the testing process can take as long as six months for a single kit. In February 2017, Schimel said ""a few hundred"" kits had been tested, but his office acknowledged days later that only nine had been completed. Koremenos said as of early May the state crime lab had completed testing on 13 kits, and Bode Cellmark had completed 50, though DOJ was awaiting the ""formal results."" Backlogs have been an issue at DOJ before. The crime lab it oversees fell far behind as DNA testing exploded in frequency in the mid-2000s, with 1,800 cases on crime lab shelves awaiting testing in 2007 when Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen took office. He hired 31 additional analysts and declared in 2010 that the backlog had been eliminated. Schimel has emphasized the state crime lab has kept up with testing new sexual assault evidence under his watch and rape kits didn’t become viewed as uncompleted work until state authorities shifted their perspective of it recently. Schimel disagreeing with himself Schimel’s claim that the word ""backlog"" is inaccurate runs into trouble when compared with, well, his own past statements. A May 2015 letter from Schimel accompanying a federal grant application referred to ""the state’s backlog of unsubmitted sexual assault kits."" An identically worded letter seeking a similar grant in April 2016 used the phrase again, though the letter was signed that time by Bonnie Cyganek, a DOJ administrator. That word choice is in line with the definitions used by popular dictionaries. Oxford says backlog describes ""an accumulation of uncompleted work or matters needing to be dealt with,"" and Merriam-Webster says it is ""an accumulation of tasks unperformed or materials not processed."" Dictionary.com uses the definition of ""a reserve or accumulation, as of stock, work, or business."" It says the word originally described a large log placed at the back of a fire in the late 1600s and evolved over the next two centuries to figuratively mean ""something stored up for later use."" Now, however, Schimel and his spokesman are saying that word is not appropriate. Koremenos said the term implies DOJ is to blame for the untested rape kits when ""this is not a DOJ shortcoming."" Our rating Schimel says it is wrong to describe the untested rape kits as a ""backlog,"" arguing it implies blame on the department under his watch. But the definition of the term does not involve how or when a backlog began. The department has decided that the work should be done — a process that began slowly and is on pace to stretch out for up to two years, based on the current capacity and pace. That’s a large accumulation of uncompleted work. And that’s the definition of a backlog. The fact that Schimel himself previously used the term makes his claim not only wrong but ridiculous. USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin reporter Keegan Kyle contributed to this story."
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3418
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Teacher, Arizona couple among missing California divers.
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A broken-hearted mother posted on her Facebook page Tuesday that her three daughters, their father and his wife were among those presumed dead after flames engulfed a dive boat off Southern California over the holiday weekend.
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true
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AP Top News, Stockton, General News, Santa Barbara, Fires, Arizona, California, Science, U.S. News
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Susana Rosas of Stockton, California, thanked people for their prayers and support. The family of five, celebrating a birthday with an activity they enjoyed, was among 34 people presumed dead in the blaze. All were sleeping below deck when the fire started early Monday. Other victims included students from a Northern California charter school serving grades 7-12, a high school science teacher and his daughter, an Arizona couple and a marine biologist who owned the diving company and was leading the tour. Five crew members were rescued, and the bodies of 20 victims have been recovered so far. Many need to be identified by DNA analysis, and officials are collecting samples from family members. Rosas posted that her three daughters — Evan, Nicole and Angela Quitasol — were on the Conception with their father Michael Quitasol and stepmother Fernisa Sison. Evan Quitasol was a nurse at St. Joseph’s Medical Center of Stockton, where her father and Sison had worked after attending nursing school at San Joaquin Delta College. Sison also worked at the college teaching first-year nursing students full-time in 2005 and 2006 and later as an adjunct instructor, according to the school’s spokesman, Alex Breitler. “Everybody’s devastated. It’s a totally unexpected thing that happened,” said Dominic Selga, Sison’s ex-husband. “What caused the fire, that’s the big question, that’s what we all want to know.” Selga said his ex-wife’s family had been on the boat “five or six” times and had been diving for a decade. Selga said the two families spent Mother’s Day and Father’s Day holidays together and called the Quitasols “great people.” Rosas’ husband, Chris, told the Los Angeles Times that Nicole Quitasol worked as a bartender in Coronado near San Diego and her sister, Angela, was a science teacher at a middle school in Stockton. The sisters were on the trip to celebrate their dad’s birthday, Chris Rosas said. He described them as “the most kind, most loving people I’ve ever met — and I’m not just saying that because they’re family.” Scott Chan, a physics teacher at American High School in Fremont, also was on board with his daughter, said Brian Killgore, a spokesman for the Fremont Unified School District. The district said in a statement that Chan taught Advance Placement physics classes for the past three years at the school and was well liked. “His students knew him to be an innovative and inspiring teacher who developed a passion for physics among his students,” the district said in a statement. “His loss is a tremendous tragedy for our school district.” Chan said on his LinkedIn page that his teaching was fed by his “passion and wealth of real-world experience from research laboratories, and the electronics, computer, and high-performance automotive industries.” Also below deck were students from Pacific Collegiate School in Santa Cruz. School director Maria C. Reitano declined Tuesday to say how many students went on the trip, which was not sponsored by the school. ABC affiliate KNXV-TV in Phoenix reported that an Arizona couple, Patricia Beitzinger and Neal Baltz, were also on the trip. “They went to heaven doing something they loved together,” Neal’s father, John Baltz, told the station. Brett Harmeling of Houston said that his sister Kristy Finstad, 41, was leading the scuba tour off Santa Cruz Island, part of California’s Channel Islands. Harmeling thanked everyone in a post on his Facebook page for their “unconditional love and support during this incredibly tragic time.” Finstad was co-owner of Worldwide Diving Adventures based in Santa Cruz, which is about 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of Santa Cruz Island. Finstad knew the area well, having done hundreds of dives in the Channel Islands, where she first swam with her father as a toddler. She first dove with a tank off Mexico at age 9, according to her company’s website. Harmeling described his sister to the Los Angeles Times as extremely strong-willed and adventurous. “If there was a one percent chance of her making it, she would have made it,” Harmeling, 31, said. Their mother founded the diving company in the 1970s. Finstad studied damselfish and corals in the Tahitian Islands, dove for black pearls in the French Polynesian Tuamotus Islands and counted salmonids for the city of Santa Cruz, where she lived. She also did research for the Australian Institute of Marine Science and wrote a restoration guidebook for the California Coastal Commission. “My mission is to inspire appreciation for our underwater world,” she wrote on her company’s website. She and her husband had just returned from sailing across the South Pacific. It was part of their 10-year plan that started on the back of a napkin in 2006. They left from the Channel Islands in 2015 on the journey and planned to return in 2018. Before they set off, Finstad wrote: “Our new boss is King Neptune: when it blows we hunker down; when there’s surf we paddle in; when there’s rain we wash up. In terms of time-lines, the best we can do is point in the right direction.” _____ Har contributed from San Francisco and Watson from San Diego.
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1936
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Body contouring rare after weight-loss surgery.
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Patients who have had weight loss surgery rarely have excess skin removed, although it can be such a bother for people who have shed a lot of weight that it has a negative impact on their quality of life, a poll said.
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true
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Health News
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Registered Nurse Amanda Tyacke (L) injects saline solution through the abdomen of Jazmine Raygoza, 17 (R) into an under-skin port which will fill Raygoza's Lap-Band at Rose Medical Center in Denver August 3, 2011 about 6 weeks after Jazmine's surgery. After trying multiple diets and exercise Raygoza decided on the surgery with the encouragement of her mother Veronica who recently had gastric bypass. At the six week mark Jazmine had lost 21 pounds. REUTERS/Rick Wilking Plastic surgeons said patients either don’t know about this extra surgery, called body contouring, or simply can’t afford it — yet doctors say it’s more than just a cosmetic procedure. “It is surgery that improves patients’ quality of life,” said Jason Spector at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, to Reuters Health. The excess skin that is left after severe weight loss can get in the way of exercising, interfere with patients’ ability to wear clothes properly, and cause rashes and serious infections. Spector said weight loss surgery, also called bariatric surgery, is just the first step. “In order to complete the journey, patients really do need to undergo the appropriate post-bariatric body contouring. Even though that has a slightly cosmetic ring to it, it’s certainly something that we, as plastic surgeons, would consider reconstructive,” he added. To get a sense of how many patients were actually going on to have body contouring surgery, Spector and his team mailed a survey to 1,158 patients whose operations were done by two surgeons between 2003 and 2011. They received 284 responses. Only a quarter of the patients said they discussed body contouring with their surgeon around the time of the operation, with about 12 percent actually undergoing the procedure, said Spector, who presented the findings at the annual meeting of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. The most frequent reasons for not having body contouring were expense and lack of awareness of the procedure. Nearly 30 percent of the patients said they might have chosen differently if they had received more information. The excess skin can pose a very real danger, Spector said. He described a patient whose overhanging skin was caught underneath the electronically controlled seat of her car as she was adjusting it. “A large piece of skin was ripped off and caused a big open wound and subsequent infection. UP to that point, her insurance company had told her, ‘sorry, you can’t have the surgery. You don’t need it.’” According to Healthcare Blue Book, a consumer guide to healthcare costs in the United States, body contouring comes with a price tag of about $13,000.
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23142
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"The new health care law will ""force seniors into Barack Obama's government-run health care program."
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The health care law forces seniors into Barack Obama's government-run health care plan, says Dan Coats
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false
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National, Medicare, Message Machine 2010, Retirement, Dan Coats,
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"We've fact-checked lots of ads about health care reform and Medicare. But an ad in the Indiana Senate race makes the novel claim that seniors will now be forced into ""Barack Obama's government-run health care program."" That sounds like a scary prospect -- until you realize that seniors are already in a government-run health care program, Medicare, and have been for 45 years. The law wouldn't force them to join any plan they aren't already in. The ad is from Dan Coats, a Republican attorney and former ambassador to Germany, who is running for the U.S. Senate in Indiana. He has a wide lead against Democratic Rep. Brad Ellsworth. (The seat is now held by Evan Bayh, who announced earlier this year he would not seek re-election.) Here's how the ad goes. ""Congressman Brad Ellsworth said he would protect seniors. But when he got to Washington, Congressman Ellsworth voted for the largest cuts in Medicare history - over $500 billion. That's right, Ellsworth voted with Nancy Pelosi to force seniors into Barack Obama's government-run health care program, reducing the protection Medicare provides. That's wrong. Dan Coats will fight to strengthen Medicare and protect seniors."" We'll start by noting that the ad gets some things right, starting with the fact that Ellsworth voted for the Democratic health care law. And the law does include reductions in future spending for Medicare. But here, we're checking whether the health care law forces seniors into ""Barack Obama's government-run health care program."" First, some background about how the law handles Medicare. The $500 billion in cuts is actually a reduction in the future growth of Medicare costs over 10 years. Medicare spending will still increase over that time -- the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects Medicare spending will reach $929 billion in 2020, up from $499 billion in actual spending in 2009. But it won't increase as fast as it would have otherwise. The cost reductions have two aims: to make Medicare more efficient and to help fund coverage for the uninsured. Some of the savings comes from relatively minor changes, such as $36 billion from increases in premiums for higher-income beneficiaries and $12 billion from administrative changes. The law directs a new national board -- the Independent Payment Advisory Board -- to identify $15.5 billion in savings, by recommending improved practices while preserving basic coverage. Congress retains the power to overrule the board's recommendations. More significantly, there's $136 billion in projected savings that would come from changes to the Medicare Advantage program. The program was intended to bring more efficiency from the private sector to the Medicare program, but it hasn't worked as planned. A June 2009 analysis from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission said that the Advantage programs cost taxpayers an average of 14 percent more than the traditional Medicare plan. President Barack Obama has said repeatedly that Medicare Advantage wastes public money that could be put to better use. The health care law that Obama signed in March phases out extra payments for Medicare Advantage programs over the next three to six years to bring their costs in line with traditional Medicare and institutes other rules for the program. Finally, there's $220 billion in Medicare savings achieved by reducing annual increases in payments health care providers would otherwise receive from Medicare. The reductions are part of programs intended to improve care and make it more efficient, such as reducing payments for preventable hospital re-admissions. These adjustments are aimed at hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, and home health agencies. There's a good deal of debate as to whether these reductions in payments are reasonable or overly ambitious, and only time will tell which side is right. But the law also includes new benefits for Medicare. Those improvements include more coverage for prescription drugs, or ""closing the doughnut hole,"" as its commonly known. The law also funds free preventive care for seniors, so that they don't have to pay for routine check-ups. Finally, the law increases payments to primary care physicians who take Medicare patients. Most of these benefits start in 2011. The ad is nonsensical in two ways. It says that ""Ellsworth voted with Nancy Pelosi to force seniors into Barack Obama's government-run health care program."" But there's no such requirement in the law. Seniors are not ""forced"" into a government plan any more than they have been. Also, Medicare is already a government-run health care program. It has been for 45 years, ever since President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the law creating it in 1965. Under Medicare, the government pays most of the health care bill for virtually every person over 65 in the United States, even when they see private physicians and visit private hospitals. The government determines what it pays those health care providers, and it sets the rules for what's covered and what's not. Indeed, when liberal supporters of a universal, single-payer health care system make their case, they often describe such a system as ""Medicare for all."" Obama specifically rejected such a plan during the presidential campaign as too dramatic a change from the current system. The new health care law cannot ""force"" seniors into a government-run health care program to which they already belong. We asked the Coats campaign about this point, and they said Medicare may have already been a government-run health care program, but it wasn't Barack Obama's government-run health care program until the health care law went into effect. That argument doesn't make sense to us because we don't think that a major government program that's been in place for 45 years becomes a new program when a president passes legislation that affects it. Maybe you could make a case that some people in Medicare Advantage will see their programs changed. But Medicare Advantage programs changed their offerings from year to year before the health care law passed. And if seniors are being forced into regular Medicare, a government-run health care program, it's one they've collectively been forced into for 45 years. Ellsworth's vote did nothing to change that. The ad is capitalizing on confusion about the nature of the Medicare program and making a ridiculous claim. !"
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7576
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UN chief: Use pandemic to ‘rebuild our world for the better’.
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U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres challenged leaders Tuesday to use the coronavirus pandemic to “rebuild our world for the better” by also working together to tackle other global threats such as climate change.
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true
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Climate, Climate change, Health, General News, Antonio Guterres, International News, Pandemics, United Nations, Europe, Science
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The outbreak has resulted in at least 200,000 deaths globally and widespread economic hardship as countries impose lockdowns to prevent the spread of the virus. “It has exposed the fragility of our societies and economies to shocks,” the United Nations chief said, adding that “the only answer is brave, visionary and collaborative leadership.” “The same leadership is needed to address the looming existential threat of climate disruption,” Guterres, noting that the past decade was the hottest in history since measurements began. Speaking by video link at a two-day international conference on global warming, Guterres warned that the cost of inaction on climate change would be immense, but said that “technology is on our side.” “These are dark days, but they are not without hope,” Guterres said. “We have a rare and short window of opportunity to rebuild our world for the better.” “Let us use the pandemic recovery to provide a foundation for a safe, healthy, inclusive and more resilient world for all people,” he added. The U.N. chief called on all countries to commit to pumping no more carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas — into the atmosphere by 2050, and proposed a six-point plan to ensure climate change features prominently in government efforts to recover from the pandemic. The steps proposed by Guterres include making sure that trillions in stimulus spending boost green jobs and sustainable businesses “Where taxpayers’ money is used to rescue businesses, it must be creating green jobs and sustainable and inclusive growth,” he said. “It must not be bailing out outdated, polluting, carbon-intensive industries.” This includes ending fossil fuel subsidies and making sure that polluters pay for the damage they cause, he said. The French government is requiring companies that receive state bailouts to use the money to become more environmentally sustainable. But climate campaigners have noted that recipients include national carrier Air France, which is reopening domestic routes to cities that also have high-speed rail connections. The U.N. chief warned that just like the pandemic, climate change can’t be tackled by any one nation on its own. “Like the coronavirus, greenhouse gases respect no boundaries,” said Guterres. “Isolation is a trap. No country can succeed alone.” Together, the Group of 20 major developed and emerging economies accounts for more than 80% of global emissions, Guterres said. “The Paris Agreement was largely made possible by the engagement of the United States and China,” he said. “Without the contribution of the big emitters, all our efforts will be doomed.” Scientists have warned that there’s little time left if the world wants to achieve the headline goal of the 2015 Paris climate accord — keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), ideally 1.5 C (2.7 F). Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. has moved to withdraw from the agreement. Guterres also urged the European Union to show “global leadership” by presenting updated emissions reduction plans by the end of the year that would put it on course to become the first climate neutral continent by 2050. German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated Tuesday that her country was willing to support a more ambitious emissions reduction target for the EU by 2030, from 40% at the moment to as much as 55%. Such an increase would likely require Germany, which has Europe’s biggest economy, to make even steeper cuts nationally to balance out lower reductions by other countries in the bloc. She cautioned that the drop in emissions likely seen due to the pandemic ’s effect on the global economy would be temporary and shouldn’t prompt countries to lessen their efforts to cut greenhouse gases. Merkel’s speech to the annual Petersberg Climate Dialogue was beset by technical difficulties at the start. Another planned speaker, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, didn’t attend after recently falling ill with COVID-19. He returned to work Monday. Johnson’s deputy, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, told participants by video link from London that when the threat from coronavirus recedes “it will be the duty of every responsible government to see that our economies are revived and rebuilt in a way that will stand the test of time.” “That means investing in industries and infrastructure that can turn the tide on climate change,” he said. “And it means doing all we can to boost resilience by shaping economies that can withstand everything that nature throws at us.” __ Read all the AP stories about the impact of climate change at https://apnews.com/Climate
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US FDA staff seek new warning on Baxter anesthetic.
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U.S. regulatory staff have recommended updating the prescribing instructions for a Baxter International (BAX.N) anesthesia drug after three reports of cardiac arrest in children, documents released on Friday said.
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true
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Health News
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Food and Drug Administration staff said it was possible the cases were associated with the Baxter drug Suprane. But they also said each of the patients was being treated with other drugs that may cause cardiac arrest. The label for Suprane, known generically as desflurane, already carries warnings about other cardiac problems including heart attacks, irregular heart beats and unstable blood pressure. “The contributory role of desflurane could not be excluded” in the three reports of cardiac arrest in children, FDA staff wrote in a summary prepared for an outside advisory panel. “However, the simultaneous use of concomitant medications during anesthesia confounded the causality assessment of these cases,” the agency reviewers said. All three of the patients recovered with treatment. The FDA reviewers said Suprane’s label “should be revised to include cardiac arrest.” Baxter spokeswoman Erin Gardiner said the company would review the FDA staff analysis. “Patient safety is our top priority and we will accordingly evaluate the information in FDA’s document with our clinical data,” Gardiner said in an e-mail. An FDA advisory panel meets Tuesday to hear reports about the safety of Suprane and other drugs used in children.
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10841
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Hormones given through the skin are worth a look
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This story reports on the increasingly popular–but largely untested–so-called “bioidentical” or “compounded” hormones. This well-balanced piece balances opinion with fact, quoting leading researchers, clinicians in private practice, the American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists, and a Wyeth spokeswoman to demonstrate the range of opinions (and dearth of hard evidence) about these products.
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true
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No mention of costs of bioidentical, transdermal, oral forms. Doesn’t actually mention outcomes for which hormone therapy is being used, other than “keep feeling good” in the last paragraph. Given the lack of quality of life data for those taking hormone therapy, this deserves attention. Story addresses competing views on harms. Story cites review by American College of Obstetricians & Gynecologists that found no evidence of INCREASED efficacy or safety (not clear whether it found them to be AS effective or safe) No disease mongering Good use of multiple sources. Story notes FDA-approved non-oral forms; however, story doesn’t compare their effectiveness w/compounded forms. Story makes clear that compounded hormones are not FDA-approved. FDA-approved transdermal forms long been available
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676
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Disaster under the waves: the race to save the coral of the Caribbean.
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Emily Hower, a research assistant at Nova Southeastern University doing field work on coral off Key West in Florida, bobs up out of the water and removes her diving mask. The news is not good.
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true
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Environment
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Most of the pillar coral that her team have been monitoring for years are dead. Hower and her colleagues are on a race against time to find what causes a disease dubbed Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease, which since 2014 has been raging like an inferno through reefs under the deceptively calm blue paradise of the Caribbean. In just five years, it has wreaked devastation on the fragile coral ecosystems that are already at risk of extinction from the effects of climate change. Of 40 reef sites in the Florida Keys monitored by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, 38 are already affected. “It is a huge disaster that’s going on underneath the waves,” says Karen Neely, a coral ecologist at Nova. “This is on the level of the Amazon burning. It is on the level of a disease that’s wiping out all of America’s forests.” Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease attacks the tissue of coral, transforming healthy, vibrant marine ecosystems into drab, dead worlds within weeks. The disease has ravaged much of the Atlantic reef off Florida, spread across parts of the Caribbean, and has recently been reported near Belize in central America. Pillar coral, whose clusters of spiky fingers appear to reach up from the sea bed, is “reproductively extinct” off the Florida coast, says Keri O’Neil, chief coral scientist at the Florida Aquarium. At the aquarium, a rare ray of hope comes from a room that has the lights off for much of the year. Here, an elaborate and expensive system of LED lights is designed to emulate sunrises, sunsets and phases of the moon to coax pillar coral in tanks into reproducing as if they were in the ocean. Neely’s team has also been laboriously applying a paste combined with amoxicillin to the coral, which they say has been effective in treating the disease. Stony Coral Tissue Loss Disease kills over 20 species of coral, including most of the important ones that build the reef, hold it together and protect the shoreline, says Neely. Scientists are working together to try to find solutions. A Disease Advisory Committee has been set up to help coordinate and scientists are performing fieldwork to bolster each others’ research. They are, they say, like first responders at the scene of a disaster. Despite that, little is known yet about what causes the disease. In Sarasota, Erinn Muller and her team at the Mote Marine Laboratory’s Coral Reef Research & Restoration Center are among those trying to identify the pathogen behind it and how it spread from Florida to the Caribbean. “We’re getting these jumps and so that would suggest that there’s some type of human influence that is allowing that jump to occur,” says Muller. Near the start of 2019, it was spotted off the coast of the Virgin Islands. There, Marilyn Brandt of the University of the Virgin Islands’ Center for Marine and Environmental Studies and her graduate students are ripping out the diseased coral to try to stop it spreading. Her team - like Neely’s and others - are joining forces and working frantically to prevent the loss of this delicate and complex underwater world, with its iridescent colors and rippling textures. Such a loss would represent “a loss of biodiversity which could be a source for future medicines, the loss of fisheries, the loss of tourism value,” says Brandt. “A lot of Caribbean islands have part of their culture based around coral reefs and if you lose those reefs you lose an aspect of their culture.” Photo essay here reut.rs/2lfuEtX
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“Local governments are making these (COVID-19) decisions on inaccurate data because the negatives are not being entered … across the state of Wisconsin.”
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Some counties have had delays reporting negative results, typically one to three days. But we don’t yet know how widespread that is or was. Dane County saw the longest delays, up to 10 days. But after a reporting change July 24, 2020, they now report all negative results as soon as they’re known. Outside Dane County, these delays wouldn’t have had much effect on the more trusted seven and 14-day rolling averages of how many tests were positive. And percent positive is just one of several key indicators that guide local decision-making — the others weren’t affected by the backlogs.
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mixture
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Wisconsin, Coronavirus, Steve Nass,
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"A growing list of Wisconsin communities are mandating mask use in public amid rising COVID-19 case counts. Debate over those decisions has increasingly split on party lines, with Democrats generally favoring masks and other broad measures while many Republicans favor fewer or no limitations. The sides have consistently sparred over what is a reasonable response to the latest trends in the pandemic. But are these politicians and decision-makers relying on bad data? That was the claim from state Sen. Steve Nass, R-Whitewater, in a recent appearance on a conservative radio show. ""Local governments are making these (COVID-19) decisions on inaccurate data because the negatives are not being entered,"" Nass told host Vicki McKenna in a July 24, 2020, interview on Madison’s WIBA. ""They’re sitting on these things across the state of Wisconsin."" The longtime lawmaker took aim at Dane County in particular, asserting 17,000 negative COVID-19 tests ""have not been reported"" by Public Health Madison & Dane County, which when factored in lowered the occurrence of positive tests to 2.1%. That would be drastically below the statewide average of around 10% and the 5.5% figure Dane County had most recently reported for a two-week average. Nass then went a step farther to claim the tests were delayed intentionally. ""This is all about fear and scare: We want a mask mandate, we’re going to get it one way or another,"" he said. ""Dane County I believe purposely held back these negatives long enough so they could get their mask mandate and they can restrict restaurants and bars even more."" Nass made similar points in a later news release, saying the backlog ""dramatically skews"" daily and longer-term averages. He called on health officials to publicly announce if they have or had backlogs since June. For this check we’ll set aside Nass’s claims about Dane County’s motivations and focus in on his initial claim: Is he right that negative tests aren’t being reported across the state, skewing data used by decision-makers? We’ll start with the claim of missing tests. There have, indeed, been delays reporting negative test results. The day before Nass’s interview, state Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm acknowledged to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that health departments around the state were behind in processing and reporting negative tests. She said the delays were generally one to three days, but Dane County officials were about 10 days behind at that point. Palm said that certainly impacted the percent positive stats on a ""day-to-day basis"" and encouraged the public to rely on the seven-day average for a more accurate picture. Health officials have consistently pointed to longer-term averages like this, since one-day tallies for positive cases and percent positive can jump up and down for a variety of reasons. The state Department of Health and Human Services did not say how many health departments had such backlogs. That question remained unanswered as of July 29, 2020, though a department spokesman said then it was less than half. To better understand why this happens, let’s zoom in on Dane County, where Nass focused his comments. People who take tests are notified as soon as results are available — whether results are positive or negative. But those two groups were not reported in the same way, Public Health Madison & Dane County said in a news release and Facebook post. All tests must be manually verified to ensure the person taking the test lives in Dane County and that other information like the address is properly filled out. This happens immediately on positive tests, for which officials must conduct contact tracing. Positive tests are then immediately added to the tallies reported to the state health department and on the Dane County COVID-19 dashboard. But this manual verification caused a backlog among negative tests as testing volume increased. Dane County didn’t report those numbers until the locations were verified, which was taking as long as 10 days. So while long-term averages were in the ballpark, daily counts could be significantly skewed. Other health departments had similar delays while the negative test results were in what officials call a ""staging area"" awaiting verification, but delays elsewhere weren’t as long. On July 24, Dane County changed its methodology and began reporting negative test results as soon as results were available. They now adjust those tallies down later to account for tests from people who live outside Dane County — typically about one-third of the tests. Through July 28, the health department said 19% of the tests it processed had been for people with addresses outside Dane County, and another 15% were missing addresses. This change resulted in 17,000 negative tests being added to the dashboard on July 24 — the number referenced by Nass. The health department said the seven-day average at that point was 2.1%. But the county had acknowledged a delay in negative tests starting almost a month earlier. The weekly data releases starting June 29, 2020, said the backlog was affecting the reported numbers. And as the backlog grew, the weekly release for July 20 didn’t even include a percent positive calculation. But those data releases from June 29 to July 20 didn’t explicitly state the delay was wrongly inflating the percent positive tallies. And it was affecting the tallies. For example, the July 13 update listed the percent of positive cases over the preceding two weeks at 5.5%, above the targeted threshold of 5%. But the updated data released July 24 showed the actual two week-average at that point was 3.8%, once all negative tests were factored in. This brings us back to Nass’s fundamental claim — that this skewed data is especially problematic because it is being used by local decision-makers. Wisconsin has not implemented any statewide mask requirement, though the majority of states have one at this point. So the state has a patchwork of local government-imposed mask mandates, including from Milwaukee and Madison. The percentage of COVID-19 tests with a positive result has been a key indicator of virus prevalence, but Nass’s assumption that the negative test delays skewed local decisions has a couple of problems. First, the delays outside of Dane County have been described as limited to a few days at most. That will affect daily counts, but not the seven- or 14-day averages that health officials have long pointed to as more reliable indicators. And that’s just one of many indicators that could factor into decision-making, along with the number of positive tests, hospitalizations and deaths. Second, this assumes decision-makers wouldn’t be aware of the negative test backlog. We don’t know all of the counties that have a backlog, so we can’t trace decision-making processes everywhere. But we know in Dane County this logic doesn’t hold water. The restrictions put in place there the first week of July came from the health department, which was of course aware of its own backlog of negative tests. It even referenced the delay publicly before that point. A blog post from the health department July 27 said the negative test backlog did not alter the decision to add restrictions. ""To be clear, percent positivity is just one metric we monitor and was not the reason for the new orders that were issued in July,"" the post said. The release went on to note that Dane County had posted its highest seven-day totals for positive tests in the week before the new restrictions on July 2, and again in the week before the mandatory mask order July 7. It said metrics on lab timeliness, contact tracing and community spread were also red at that point. It’s important to note, however, that mask mandates in other places around the state have been imposed by county boards and city councils, who would not have such intimate knowledge of testing data. But it seems reasonable to presume such decisions would typically be made in consultation with local health officials, who would know that data. Nass said local governments across the state are making decisions based on inaccurate COVID-19 data ""because the negatives are not being entered."" Nass is right that a delay reporting negative tests led to the release of inaccurate data, which local decision-makers could have partially relied on while deciding to implement additional restrictions. But his description overreaches on several fronts. The backlogs outside Dane County were generally just a couple of days, so they wouldn’t have much effect on the more trusted seven and 14-day rolling averages of how many tests were positive. And percent positive is just one of several key indicators that guide local decision-making — the others weren’t affected by the backlog. For the longer backlog in Dane County, it makes no sense to claim local decision-makers were unaware of the 10-day backup, since the orders came from the health department itself. Factoring in those elements, we have a statement that is partially accurate but leaves out important details. That’s our definition of ."
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2293
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Mindfulness therapy as good as medication for chronic depression - study.
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Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) may be just as effective as anti-depressants in helping prevent people with chronic depression from relapsing, scientists said on Tuesday.
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true
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Science News
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Depression is one of the most common forms of mental illness, affecting more than 350 million people worldwide. It is ranked by the World Health Organization as the leading cause of disability globally. Treatment usually involves either medication, some form of psychotherapy or a combination of both. Yet many patients fail to get better and suffer recurring bouts of illness. MBCT was developed to help such people by teaching them skills to recognize and respond constructively to thoughts and feelings associated with relapse, aiming to prevent a downward spiral into depression. In the first large study to compare MBCT and anti-depressants, researchers found little difference in outcomes. In terms of cost, mindfulness training — often viewed as more costly because it requires more time with a trained therapist — was not significantly more pricey, particularly when given in group sessions, the study found. Richard Byng, a professor at Britain’s Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry, said that, while current standard treatment for chronic depression is to keep taking anti-depressants, many people don’t want to take them for long periods and others want to avoid side-effects. In this study, 424 adults with recurrent major depression who were on maintenance anti-depressant drugs were randomly assigned either to come off their anti-depressants slowly and receive MBCT or to stay on their medication. While 212 patients continued taking their anti-depressants, the other 212 attended eight group mindfulness therapy sessions and were given daily home practice as well as an option to have four follow-up sessions over a 12-month period. Study results published in The Lancet medical journal showed that after two years, relapse rates were similar in both groups — at 44 percent in the therapy group versus 47 percent in the anti-depressant drug group. “Whilst this study doesn’t show that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy works any better than maintenance anti-depressant medication in reducing the rate of relapse ... these results suggest a new choice for the millions of people with recurrent depression on repeat prescriptions,” said Willem Kuyken of Oxford University, who worked with Byng on the research.
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10043
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Artificial retina gives woman limited vision after decades of darkness
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The journalistic challenge with a story like this is to balance hype and hope. This review takes in both the broadcast segment that appeared on CNN and the similar but longer print version that appears on the CNN web site. First, by choosing a study subject who has had promising but unspectacular results, the story provides a more realistic view of outcomes than would a piece wrapped around a subject, like one referred to in the story, who is said to be able to shoot baskets. Second, the story supplements positive comments with those tempered by realism. Eight paragraphs are devoted to purely positive comments. Four tamp down expectations with more realistic statements about the limits of current outcomes and future benefits. Five paragraphs are internally balanced with positive and tempered views. The tempered comments come lower in the story, however, and follow an opening anecdote brimming with emotion and hope. The story ends in a similar fashion. Taking all things into account, the story tilts too positive. What could have balanced the scales? A quote from a truly disinterested source. All three sources in the story are involved with the research: a physician treating the patient, a source from an advocacy group involved with the research, and a spokeman for Second Sight Inc., the company that makes the device. The perspective of an ophthalmologist who treats patients with retinitis pigmentosa, yet has no involvement with development of an artificial retina, could have added balance. And finally, the story fails to put this device in context of other artificial retina development efforts and other technologies intended to improve or restore sight. The result is a false sense that we are learning of a dramatic breakthrough of one device. Not true. Many other devices and treatments are in development, enough so that a government agency is supporting them all. The viewers should have been told that. For a long time researchers have worked to develop devices to restore vision to the blind. This CNN segment on early testing of one company’s second-generation artificial retina provides a useful snapshot of one product as it’s being used on one patient.
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false
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"The story fails to mention the cost of the technology being used in the research, a figure that is certainly available. For example, the New York Times – when it reported on this work 3 months ago – simply asked the manufacturer, who said the device ""would cost up to $100,000."" At a time of debates about controlling the costs of health care, reporters can play an important role by reminding the public that every breakthrough has a price tag. When a news organization decides to report on early Phase I research in 14 patients so far, it runs the risk of implying that benefts exist when, indeed, they have not yet been proven. There are numerous studies of various artificial retina devices dating back at least 15 years, including those published by this device maker. A diligent story would have at least discussed those results to provide context. The story fails to mention any potential harms, including risks of the surgery and whether remaining vision, or retinal and surrounding tissue, could be damaged. The story fails to point out that there are no hard data on outcomes–that essentially at this point the results are anecdotal. It could have simply emphasized that in this phase I trial – with 14 patients – it is too early to tell what the real benefit would be. The story does not exaggerate the prevalence or impact of retinitis pigmentosa. The first few paragraphs use overly emotional language. But the condition is real, blindness is disabling and the story ultimately portrays the condition accurately. The story draws on three sources, all of whom are self-interested: At least one independent source should have been consulted. The self-interest of the three sources used should have been explained. The story fails to compare this artificial retina with similar products in clincial testing, or to other approaches to restoring vision that are in development. It also fails to indicate what standard care is for patients with retinitis pigmentosa, and whether treatments exist to stablize or slow the progress of the disease. The story plainly says that only 14 people in the U.S. are involved with a study of the artificial retina device, making it clear it’s not in clinical use. The story incorrectly implies novelty of this device. Many companies and research teams worldwide are pursuing artificial retinas; some others’ technologies are more technically advanced. Indeed, there is a federal government program to support the many development efforts. Other treatments to restore vision are being researched actively. Oddly, one of them was featured in a September 2009 story that appears on…CNN’s website. The story does not draw excessively from a press release. But it has an interesting provenance nonetheless. Second Sight Medical Products Inc. issued a press release in May announcing new enrollments in the study featured in this report. Several stories in the popular press followed. The New York Times article published on Sept. 26 bears similarities to the CNN story, including a focus on the same study subject, Barbara Campbell."
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13763
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"Florida retirees and families ""lost tens of thousands of dollars"" in deposits on failed Trump condo projects, but he ""pocketed their money and walked away."
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"Kaine said Florida retirees and families ""lost tens of thousands of dollars"" in deposits on failed Trump condo projects, but he ""pocketed their money and walked away."" It’s clear that many buyers, whatever their occupation or familial status, indeed lost at least that much in the failed Trump projects in Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. Some were further compensated partially with settlements after suing the billionaire. Whether Trump cheated them is another matter. While his licensing agreements with the developers were secret, he was entitled to a certain amount of money for putting his name on the building. He was sued by several dozen angry buyers and either settled or was found not at fault, which is not the same as walking away without addressing the problems. Kaine’s statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details."
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mixture
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Candidate Biography, Housing, Florida, Tim Kaine,
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"Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine questioned Donald Trump’s business ethics, saying the Republican presidential candidate swindled customers in a past real estate deal in the Sunshine State. ""Retirees and families in Florida — they believed Donald Trump when he said he'd build them some condos. Thousands of them,"" Kaine said on the third night of the Democratic National Convention. ""They paid their deposits, but the condos, they were never built. He just pocketed their money and walked away. They lost tens of thousands of dollars, all because they believed Donald Trump."" A Kaine spokesman told us the senator was referring to not one, but two failed condo projects: One in Tampa and one in Fort Lauderdale. Trump’s campaign did not respond. We wanted to know if people lost tens of thousands of dollars in deposits while Trump took the money without consequence. Since there are two projects, we’ll take them one at a time. Trump Tower Tampa In 2004, at the height of the Tampa real estate boom, local developers incorporated under the name SimDag/Robel contacted Trump to ask him to partner on a condo tower they wanted to build. The group eventually reached a licensing agreement with Trump: He would lend his name to Trump Tower Tampa for $2 million plus a percentage of condo sales. The document stipulated that neither the developers nor Trump would ""under any circumstances disclose or permit to be disclosed the existence of this agreement.'' No one would know Trump’s involvement was in name only. Trump announced the deal on Jan. 10, 2005, saying he would ""partner"" with SimDag/Robel to build a 52-story, 190-unit condo tower in downtown Tampa. (Less than two weeks later, Trump married Slovenian model Melania Knauss in a Palm Beach wedding attended by now-rival Hillary Clinton.) The next month, Trump and his new bride attended a sales launch in Tampa. Trump told reporters at a gala reception with 600 guests that he had a ""substantial stake"" in the project and that units were selling well. Now, it’s here we’ll note that Kaine said in his speech there were ""thousands of them,"" which his spokesman said was referring to thousands of dollars. By the time Trump came to Tampa, customers had placed sizable deposits on all 190 units, which cost between $700,000 and $6 million. The amount of those deposits varied depending on the unit. With 190 units, Kaine’s description of the customers as ""retirees and families"" is a plausible definition. Tampa Bay Times reporter Susan Taylor Martin noted customers included doctors, NFL coaches, a video game developer and more. Under the sales agreement, half of the deposit cash went into an escrow account, while the other half went to construction costs. But the project ran over budget quickly. The site required a redesign of the foundation, and construction issues soon ballooned the cost of the project from initially being $227 million to $300 million. In 2006, the developers held a groundbreaking, but had yet to secure financing. Trump’s licensing agreement was modified that year, giving him $4 million but conceding a cut of the sales. SimDag/Robel stopped paying, and Trump sued in May 2007, claiming he was owed $1.03 million in licensing fees. That lawsuit was the first indication for buyers that Trump was only slapping his name on the project. SimDag/Robel countersued Trump for breaking the confidentiality of the licensing agreement by complaining publicly about the project. Trump and the developers settled in 2008. SimDag/Robel called off the entire project and declared bankruptcy. Buyers, meanwhile, were out of luck. While the escrow half of their deposits was returned, the other half had been eaten up by construction costs. Some customers were out as much as $250,000 or more. Several dozen buyers sued Trump in 2009, arguing that they had been misled with ""fraudulent and negligent misrepresentations"" that the billionaire was more involved with the project bearing his name. Within three years, the buyers in the lawsuit reached settlements. Some were repaid as little as $11,115, according to the Times. Other buyers not a part of the suit received nothing. Jay McLaughlin, a physical therapist from Connecticut, told the Times he lost almost $90,000. An attorney named Mary Ann Stiles told the newspaper she was out $200,000. Other investors who gave SimDag/Robel money said they lost six- and seven-figure sums. Trump International Hotel & Tower Fort Lauderdale A similar scenario played out on Florida’s Atlantic coast, when Trump struck a secretive deal with a group of developers to lend his name to a building. The Trump International Hotel & Tower Fort Lauderdale was slated to be a 24-story, 298-unit condo hotel, in which owners rent out their units like hotel rooms. When the project was unveiled in 2004, units cost between $500,000 and $3 million, with 20 percent deposits required. Buyers were wooed with brochures touting Trump’s involvement, including one in which Trump said the resort was ""the finest and most luxurious experience I have created."" Units sold well through 2006, and these deposits were split the same way as Trump Tower Tampa. Also like Tampa, construction costs soon spiraled out of control. The building was slated to be finished by December 2007 but was nowhere near done. Then one of the developing partners, Bayrock Group, sold its interest to an Icelandic investment firm for $50 million. The following year, Trump began to voice major concerns to development partner Roy Stillman of SB Hotel Associates that work wasn’t being completed, despite some $140 million being spent on construction. The real estate market began its tailspin and the partners had difficulty securing more financing. In 2009, Trump decided to strip his name off the project after Stillman attempted to close with buyers to get more money, even though the building wasn’t yet completed. With $185 million in debt and no billionaire name recognition, Trump International Hotel & Tower Fort Lauderdale was dead. What Trump actually made on this deal is much more obscure, because the entire project ended in more than a dozen lawsuits among Trump, the developers and the buyers. (Lawsuits against Trump also have resulted in other developments in which Trump licensed his name in places like Canada, Hawaii and Mexico.) One depositor, Naraine Seecharan, told the Miami Herald he was recovering from the removal of a brain tumor when he learned about the fate of his $289,000 down payment. J. Michael Goodson of New Jersey said he put down $345,000 and sued Trump. Pembroke Pines attorney Joseph Altschul represented more than 70 clients who said they had paid about $8 million in deposits. In all, more than 100 buyers filed lawsuits. CFLB Partnership bought the unfinished project in 2013 for $115 million, finishing the building and renaming it the Conrad Fort Lauderdale Resort & Residences. Trump and the developers continued to argue. Trump also sued the developers, saying he lost millions in licensing and hotel management fees over the deal. He maintained in the various lawsuits he held no liability, while the partners struggled to reach settlements with buyers. (Trump’s attorneys also got in trouble for hiding a $5 million insurance policy to help cover lawsuits for making misleading statements.) ""Well, the word ‘developing,’ it doesn't mean that we're the developers,"" Trump said in a 2013 deposition. ""We worked on the documents, we worked on the room sizes and the things, but we didn't give out the contracts, we didn't get the financing, we weren't the developer, but we did work with the developer."" Trump and his affiliated companies have not been found at fault in the Fort Lauderdale lawsuits, thanks to contract language that stated Trump’s involvement was in name only. His legal team maintained the suits against him were more about Trump’s money and anger over the housing crash. The billionaire maintained that buyers were better off losing deposit money than taking more of a bath in a bad real estate investment, as the condos were worth roughly half what people would have paid in full. In one 2014 trip to the witness stand, he said someone would have to be ""very stupid"" to have still attempted to buy a condo in the building after the real estate crash. ""Only a fool would have closed under those circumstances,"" Trump said. In April 2016, a Florida appeals court ruled on the last two active cases seeking deposits. The three-judge-panel upheld prior findings that Trump did not misrepresent his role in the development. Our ruling Kaine said Florida retirees and families ""lost tens of thousands of dollars"" in deposits on failed Trump condo projects, but he ""pocketed their money and walked away."" It’s clear that many buyers, whatever their occupation or familial status, indeed lost at least that much in the failed Trump projects in Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. Some were further compensated partially with settlements after suing the billionaire. Whether Trump cheated them is another matter. While his licensing agreements with the developers were secret, he was entitled to a certain amount of money for putting his name on the building. He was sued by several dozen angry buyers and either settled or was found not at fault, which is not the same as walking away without addressing the problems. Kaine’s statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details.
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3397
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Dozens sickened by outbreak of norovirus-like illness.
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Health officials say at least 43 people have been sickened by an outbreak of norovirus-like illness - including vomiting, diarrhea, body aches, chills, and fever - linked to Brave Horse Tavern in Seattle.
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true
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Health, General News, Seattle, Public health, Food and drink
|
KOMO-TV reports the outbreak was investigated by Public Health Seattle-King County after at least 30 people reported becoming ill after consuming food and drinks at the tavern on November 23 and 24. During the investigation, inspectors identified at least 11 employees who experienced norovirus symptoms since Nov. 24. At least two of those employees had household members with symptoms dating back to Nov. 20, health officials said Wednesday. In response to those findings, Brave Horse Tavern closed down on Nov. 27 and carried out a thorough cleaning and disinfection. All ready-to-eat foods were discarded as well, and the restaurant reopened on Nov. 29.
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7386
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Trump speculates that China released virus in lab ‘mistake’.
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President Donald Trump has speculated that China could have unleashed the coronavirus on the world due to some kind of horrible “mistake,” and his intelligence agencies said they are still examining a notion put forward by the president and aides that the pandemic may have resulted from an accident at a Chinese lab.
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true
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Intelligence agencies, AP Top News, Understanding the Outbreak, Technology, General News, Politics, Wuhan, Health, Infectious diseases, Science, Asia Pacific, Donald Trump, China, Virus Outbreak, Pandemics
|
Trump even suggested Thursday that the release could have been intentional. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the clearinghouse for the web of U.S. spy agencies, said it had ruled out the virus being man-made but was still investigating the precise source of the global pandemic, which has killed more than 220,000 people worldwide. Though scientists suggest the likeliest origin of the pandemic remains natural, that it spread from an infected animal to a human, Trump claimed to have seen evidence to support the theory that the origin was an infectious disease lab in Wuhan, the epicenter of the Chinese outbreak. He said the U.S. now “is finding how it came out.” “It’s a terrible thing that happened,” the president said. “Whether they made a mistake or whether it started off as a mistake and then they made another one, or did somebody do something on purpose.” The intel statement said the federal agencies concur “with the wide scientific consensus that the COVID-19 virus was not manmade or genetically modified.” “The IC will continue to rigorously examine emerging information and intelligence to determine whether the outbreak began through contact with infected animals or if it was the result of an accident at a laboratory in Wuhan.” In recent days the Trump administration has sharpened its rhetoric on China, accusing the geopolitical foe and vital trading partner of failing to act swiftly enough to sound the alarm about the outbreak or to stop the spread of the virus that causes COVID-19. U.S. officials have said the Chinese government should “pay a price” for its handling of the pandemic. This all comes as the pace of Trump’s own original response continues to come under scrutiny, questioned as too meager and too slow. Earlier Thursday, before Trump’s comments, the Chinese government said that any claims that the coronavirus was released from a laboratory are “unfounded and purely fabricated out of nothing.” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang cited the institute’s director, Yuan Zhiming, as saying the lab strictly implements bio-security procedures that would prevent the release of any pathogen. “I would like to point out again that the origin of the virus is a complex scientific issue, and it should be studied by scientists and professionals,” Geng said. He also criticized those in the U.S. who say China should be held accountable for the global pandemic, saying they should spend their time on “better controlling the epidemic situation at home.” At the White House, Trump repeatedly blamed China for its handling of the outbreak, criticizing the country for restricting domestic travel to slow the virus but not international travel to keep it from spreading abroad. “Certainly it could have been stopped,” Trump said during an event in the East Room on his administration’s efforts to aid seniors during the outbreak. “They either couldn’t do it from a competence standpoint, or they let it spread.” “It got loose, let’s say, and they could have capped it.” Earlier this month, Trump addressed the lab theory saying, “More and more, we’re hearing the story.” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo added at the time, “The mere fact that we don’t know the answers — that China hasn’t shared the answers — I think is very, very telling.” Pompeo also pressed China to let outside experts into the lab “so that we can determine precisely where this virus began.” While Trump and Pompeo have made their feelings clear, a U.S. intelligence official disputed the notion that there was pressure on agencies to bolster a particular theory. The intelligence official was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue and spoke only on condition of anonymity. Scientists say the virus arose naturally in bats. Even so, Pompeo and others have pointed fingers at an institute that is run by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It has done groundbreaking research tracing the likely origins of the SARS virus, finding new bat viruses and discovering how they could jump to people. “We know that there is the Wuhan Institute of Virology just a handful of miles away from where the wet market was,” Pompeo said two weeks ago. The institute has an address 8 miles, or 13 kilometers, from the market that is considered a possible source. U.S. officials say the American Embassy in Beijing flagged concerns about potential safety issues at the lab in Wuhan in 2018, but they have yet to find any evidence the virus originated there nearly two years later. Scientists studying the virus for months have made clear they believe it wasn’t man-made but are still working to determine a point at which it may have jumped from animals to humans. Early attention focused on the live-animal market in Wuhan where the first cases were reported in December. But the first person identified with the disease had no known connection to that market. Kristian Andersen, who studies the virus at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California, puts the odds of it being accidentally released by the Wuhan lab at “a million to one,” far less likely than an infection in nature. But virus expert David O’Connor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said he thinks too little is known to rule out any source, except the idea the virus was man-made. Finding the source is important, he said, because it may harbor the next pandemic virus. The U.S. was providing funding to the Wuhan lab for its research on coronaviruses, Michael Morell, former acting director and deputy director of the CIA, said Thursday. He said State Department cables indicate that there have been concerns in past years among U.S. officials about the safety protocols at that lab. If the virus did escape from a Chinese lab, it not only reflects negatively on China but also on the United States for providing research funding to a lab that has safety concerns, Morell said during an online forum hosted by the Michael V. Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy and International Security at George Mason University. “So if it did escape, we’re all in this together,” Morell said. “This is not a gotcha for China. This is a gotcha for both of us.” ___ Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann in Washington and Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report.
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7991
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Amid criticism, Macron vows to raise medical gear output to tackle coronavirus.
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President Emmanuel Macron pledged on Tuesday to make France self-sufficient in protective masks by year-end and learn lessons from the coronavirus emergency, firing back at growing criticism of his government over painful equipment shortages.
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true
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Health News
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France has already ordered 1 billion masks to ease an acute shortage nationwide that has angered front-line healthcare officials and politicians as the coronavirus outbreak has swept across the country, killing at least 3,523 people. Speaking at a mask-producing factory on Tuesday, Macron said he had ordered a tripling of domestic mask production by the end of April to 10 million and production of 10,000 extra respirators by mid-May. “The priority today is to produce more in Europe and France,” Macron said at the Kolmi-Hopen factory near the western town of Angers. “By the end of the year I want to us to be fully and completely independent (in production),” he said, adding that 4 billion euros ($4.39 billion) had been set aside for the Public Health Authority to buy equipment. The pandemic has triggered a massive surge in demand for protective gear in France and neighboring European countries including Italy and Spain, with the world’s worst and second worst death tolls from the respiratory illness respectively. China, where the virus originated and where countless factories were shut down to contain its spread, accounts for more than half the global production of masks, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). New mask producers like car parts maker Faurecia, tire maker Michelin and retailer Intermarché will also push total output to 15 million per week, Macron said. The number of people in France infected with the virus rose to 52,128 on Tuesday, a 17% rise on the previous day. In 2013, France’s previous government took the decision to sharply reduce the number of face masks held in strategic reserve after a public outcry over the cost of bolstering stocks during the H1N1 bird flu crisis. Mask consumption since the onset of the coronavirus crisis has soared from four million per week to more than 40 million, but the state’s pre-crisis inventory of 140 million has proved insufficient as has the import of billions of masks. Nowhere has the shortage been felt more than in hospitals and nursing homes where health professionals have criticized the government’s slow reaction to the unfolding crisis. Sarah, a nurse in a coronavirus wing of a Paris hospital, told Reuters on Tuesday that the lack of masks for staff, but also patients, was getting worse despite government pledges. “Each patient should have their own mask, but we don’t have enough to change them and some don’t even have any. I had one (patient) who coughed on me and we didn’t have any gel left either to disinfect,” she said. “What makes me angry is that we don’t have the equipment to protect ourselves. Who will look after the patients when we fall sick?” The management of the crisis, which has halt the economy and forced the government to lock down France until at least April 15, has also been condemned by opposition lawmakers. Far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen said on Monday the government had lied about “absolutely everything, without any exceptions”. Macron hit back on Tuesday. “When we fight a battle, we must be united to win it and I think that all those who are already trying to hold trials when we have not won the war are irresponsible,” he said. “The time will come for accountability.”
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20538
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All travelers -- even babies -- arriving in the U.S. by air must have a passport.
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Milwaukee Brewers pitcher John Axford says even babies need a passport to enter the U.S. by air
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true
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Homeland Security, Wisconsin, John Axford,
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"For the third year in a row, the Milwaukee Brewers’ lights-out closer John Axford faced a challenge when it came to getting to spring training on time. In 2010, it was an auto accident; in 2011 a case of food poisoning. This season it was red tape involving his 8-month-old son, J.B., also known to Axford’s Twitter followers as ""Little Ax."" The boy was born in Milwaukee, and is a U.S. citizen. The elder Axford, however, is a Canadian. And his trip to Arizona was delayed because he didn’t have a passport for the baby when he was planning to fly from Canada into the United States. His Twitter followers (@JohnAxford) got a play-by-play of his travel travails. Among the offerings: ""Thank you Homeland Security for not letting my AMERICAN son into AMERICA! #3YearValentinesCurse #WontBeSeeingYouTodayWarmWeatherInPhoenix"" He was more expansive in an interview with the Journal Sentinel, which is what prompted us to turn our version of the radar gun -- the Truth-O-Meter -- on Axford. ""Homeland Security requires passports for every age, no matter what,"" Axford said in the interview. ""You can arrive by land or sea if you're under the age of 15 with a birth certificate, but if you go by air Homeland Security requires passports for everybody, no matter what the age."" Is he right? Passports only by air, though birth certificates suffice by car or boat? Now, it’s Axford is a sports figure. But his statement touches squarely on U.S. policy. So we checked with the State Department, Homeland Security, border control and several federal government websites. Turns out the rules are different for border-crossing babies, depending on the mode of travel. If you’re traveling by air, you need a passport. Period. And, yes, you have to get a photograph of the kid. A kid passport costs $105. However, if you’re coming by land -- such as the border crossing in Detroit -- the rules are less strict, and less expensive. ""U.S. children ages 15 and under arriving by land or sea from a contiguous territory may present an original or copy of his or her birth certificate (issued by the Vital Records Department in the state where he or she was born), a Consular Report of Birth Abroad, or a Naturalization Certificate. If the child is a newborn and the actual birth certificate has not arrived from the Vital Records Department, we will accept a Hospital issued birth certificate."" Each year, the federal government issues about 450,000 passports to infants, a spokeswoman for the State Department said in an email. The department even provides helpful hints for how to take a passport picture of your little one. Kiddie passports are valid for five years. In the end, Axford got to spring training the hard way, again. His father drove the family across the border to Detroit and they caught a flight from there to Arizona. Our conclusion Axford’s trip back to the mound took a detour. He said it was because of travel delays and said federal law required his baby to have a passport to fly back into the country. He learned a valuable lesson about border crossing: The feds are always right."
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32230
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Radiation from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster has caused 100% infant mortality among orca whales.
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While radiation from the Fukushima disaster did have a major impact on marine life, the leak of radiactive material from the plant leak did not cause a proven “100% infant mortality” rate among orca whales. Moreover, the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration do not list nuclear radiation (from any source) among the threats currently facing the world’s whale population.
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false
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Critter Country, Animal Welfare, fukushima, orca
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Fear-mongering articles reporting that radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster (triggered by the tsunami that followed the Tōhoku earthquake of 11 March 2011) had caused a 100% infant mortality among orca whales born since then have been circulated online for several years. The web site Humans Are Free renewed interest in that rumor in September 2016 when they published an article with the clickbait title “Radiation from Fukushima Now Causes 100% Infant Mortality Rate in West Coast Orcas”: The Humans Are Free piece was sourced from an article by the disreputable Natural News web site that employed a similarly misleading title (“West Coast Orcas Experiencing 100% Infant Mortality Rate as Radiation from Fukushima Drifts Across Ocean”) even though the text of that article plainly admitted that there was no proven connection between the Fukushima disaster and the mortality of infant orcas: No one has yet proven that there is a direct link between the 100 percent mortality rate seen among orca infants and the effects of the radiation contamination of the Pacific Ocean from the Fukushima reactor leak in Japan, but it certainly can’t be ruled out as a possibility. Natural News listed several sources about whale deaths at the bottom of their article, but none of those sources mentioned radiation from Fukushima as likely or definitive cause. Quotes from Ken Balcomb, executive director of the Center for Whale Research in Friday Harbor, Washington, were also misleadingly reproduced out of context by Natural News to bolster a claim that Balcomb’s statement didn’t support: The recent discovery of a carcass off the coast of British Columbia — that of a 19-year-old orca female, which was believed to be in the late stages of pregnancy, is just one example of the recent orca deaths that have scientists and conservationists worried. Ken Balcomb, executive director of the Center For Whale Research in Friday Harbor, Washington, said: Her death doesn’t bode well for the southern resident population and certainly not for that matriline. Her mother died young. Her aunt had two sons and she’s probably post-reproductive. She hasn’t had any babies in the last 12 years. So there’s no future. Balcomb also remarked: We haven’t had any survivals in babies for a couple of years. We have had stillborns and newborns die and a number of whales that appear to be pregnant but didn’t ultimately produce any calves. It’s like zero survival in birth rate here. While Balcom did say that “we haven’t had any survivals in babies for a couple of years,” he was talking about the local Puget Sound orca whale population only, and he didn’t in any way connect a 100% infant orca mortality rate to radiation from Fukushima. His quotes originated with a story published by the Seattle Times in December 2014 about a baby orca whale that had died in the Pugent Sound, and while the exact cause of that whale’s death was unclear, Balcolm suggested that the whale likely died due to a diminished food supply (and not radiation): But two of the whales’ three biggest problems — the buildup of pollutants such as DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls in their blubber, and disturbance by marine traffic — appear to be worsened by a third, a reduction in available prey. These whales can eat sockeye and halibut, but overwhelmingly prefer fatty chinook from Puget Sound and Canada’s Fraser River, distinguishing them from other fish by using sonar to sense differences in the animals’ swim bladders. And Puget Sound chinook numbers have dropped to about 10 percent of their historic high. They, too, are listed for protection under the ESA. For Balcomb, the loss of J32 suggests it’s time to consider drastic measures, such as a ban or steep curtailment in chinook fishing, even though fishing is likely the least of the threats chinook face. “It’s a wake-up call — we know what the problem is, whether it’s dams or fishing or habitat destruction,” he said. “It’s just what happens when millions of people move into the watershed. (But) stopping fishing, at least for a while, is something we can do immediately.” […] “The reality is, the basic problem is food,” Balcomb said. Although apparently no baby orcas survived long after birth in Puget Sound in 2013 or 2014, that wasn’t the case in the immediately following years, as 2015 saw nine successful orca births in Puget Sound: In just over a year, Puget Sound has welcomed nine baby Southern-resident orcas to the fold, as the pod continues to rebound from 30-year-low numbers reported at the end of 2014.
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9481
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FDA OKs new drug to treat all forms of hepatitis C
|
This AP story on the latest hepatitis C drug was strong on one point that’s often weak in health care news reporting: The price of treatment. But, it missed the opportunity to go beyond a standard quick report on the new drug, known as Mavyret, and give readers the kind of context that will help them make more informed decisions. For example, missing was a description of the type of research that was done, so patients could have a better sense of the strength of the results reported–as well as the limitations. Additionally, perspectives from a scientist or physician unaffiliated with the drug company would have made this article much more balanced. Most importantly, we think stories like this need to be far more cautious when using the word “cure” to describe a reduction in measurable viral levels in a person. Despite lowering the viral load, it remains to be seen if this drug–and many others like it–actually lower the rate of liver cancer, cirrhosis or early death. A flurry of new drugs have been developed for hepatitis C in the past few years. While this may seem like good news for patients, many of these drugs are expensive and their long-term benefit to patients remain unknown (such as: Do they actually prevent liver cancer or cirrhosis?)
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mixture
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antivirals,Hepatitis C,liver
|
The article nicely spells out the costs of drug treatment for eight, 12, and 16 weeks. Readers are also told these would be the costs incurred by uninsured patients. One detail to note, though: The story says that Maryvet is cheaper than all other drugs in the market, but only mentions the price of Harvoni and not that of the other six competitors, so readers have to do their own legwork to verify that claim. Readers learn that 97.5% of patients without cirrhosis and 98% of patients with severe kidney damage were “cured” of hepatitis C (i.e. had undetectable levels of the virus in their blood) after treatment. This overlooks the realities of hepatitis C treatment, however. Very reduced viral loads after a short course of treatment sounds like a good thing, however as we reported in 2016, this is what’s known as a “surrogate outcome.” We don’t know yet if reduced viral load has any impact on patient health. Yet what patients want and need to know is: Do they drugs help anyone live longer or have reduced rates of complications of like cirrhosis or liver cancer? The story should have made it very clear that until longer studies are conducted, no one knows. Both mild and more serious potential side effects of the drug are mentioned including nausea, headache, fatigue, itchiness, and reactivation of the virus in patients who previously had hepatitis B infections. That’s enough to merit a satisfactory rating. Ideally, though the story also discussed how many patients experienced these side effects in the studies. It also should have noted that there has never been good evidence that new hepatitis c drugs’ clinical benefits outweigh their harms, as this healthcare blogger pointed out last year. While the article notes that some “testing” was done to determine the drug’s effectiveness, it doesn’t describe the type of study conducted, the length of the study, or the number of patients who fell into the two categories (i.e. those without cirrhosis, and those with severe kidney damage). Was there a control or comparison group? Did the study go beyond the 12-week follow up that was mentioned? Readers don’t know from this article. There is no disease mongering in this piece. However, language like the following “…grueling shots and pills that gave patients flu-like symptoms and still barely cured half of them,” is potentially biasing and should be limited. The story also used the word “breakthrough” without explaining that this isn’t what many patients think it means. Also, it would have been helpful for the article to better explain that hepatitis C leads to cirrhosis (relevant to the fact that this drug is not indicated for patients who develop cirrhosis). The only sources mentioned in the article are a company spokesperson and an analyst discussing the drug’s potential market share. There is no context provided about the research results by any independent experts. The article discusses several treatment alternatives describing how they compare to this newest drug. Based on the information provided, the newest drug appears to be both a cheaper and more effective treatment option in comparison to others currently on the market. (However, see the cost criterion for why the pricing claim may not be accurate.) The article does a good job discussing the complexities of how an insurance company might decide to cover the drug. It is much less clear when the drug will most likely be available for use (FDA approval is just one step) and patients will definitely want to know more about that. This article implies that’s what novel here is the drug’s cost (cited as being significantly cheaper than other options) and success rate. We’ll give the benefit of the doubt here and consider this satisfactory. But, the drug is a combination of two existing medications. The article doesn’t discuss how those individual medications were being used before and why this combo is novel (were doctors not combining them before?) The story did not appear to rely solely on the news releases from the FDA and AbbVie, though it missed an opportunity to go beyond the information shared in the news releases.
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4138
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Future of fish farming in federal waters at issue in court.
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The potential environmental and economic consequences posed by proposals for fish farming in federal waters dictate that Congress — not a federal agency — must decide how to regulate the industry, an attorney told a federal appeals court Monday.
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true
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New Orleans, Fish, Environment, Courts, General News
|
At issue before the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was a September 2018 ruling by a federal judge who threw out National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s rules for fish farms in the Gulf of Mexico, saying Congress never gave the agency authority to make them. An attorney for groups representing commercial and recreational fishing interests, food safety advocates and conservationists urged the three-judge appellate panel to uphold the 2018 ruling. Those groups cite numerous worries about the effect of fish farming on market prices for wild-caught fish and the effects on fishing communities, the environmental consequences of the use of antibiotics to control disease, the unpredictable genetic effects on wild, native fish stocks if farmed fish escape from farm pens and other concerns. NOAA maintains that fish farming, including that on the open sea, is vital to future seafood production and can help provide year-round jobs while rebuilding protected species and habitats. A three-judge appellate panel closely questioned NOAA attorney Frederick Turner on whether current fisheries law enables the agency to develop regulations — and about past failures by Congress to pass legislation addressing the issue. “Why would we step in and say you get what Congress hasn’t given you?” Judge Stephen Higginson asked Turner at one point. Turner argued that the existing law is broad and gives NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service the authority to permit and regulate fish farming, not just the taking of wild-caught fish. The appellate panel is expected to rule later this year. Attorney George Kimbrell, speaking for a variety of groups who say Congress must act first, said after the hearing that NOAA may indeed be the right agency to permit and regulate federal water aquaculture, but not until Congress addresses the issue and passes a law. “Don’t shoehorn it into a law that was never intended for that purpose and whose metrics just don’t match,” Kimbrell said.
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2350
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California county tries to ban pot farms as medical weed business thrives.
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Citing marijuana fields springing up next to high schools and in abandoned barns, Sacramento County supervisors are set to declare pot gardens a public nuisance in the latest move by a local government to rein in California’s cannabis industry.
|
true
|
Health News
|
U.S. states are increasingly moving to drop curbs on marijuana following landmark voter initiatives in Colorado and Washington state in 2012 that legalized the drug for recreational use. But in California, where medical marijuana is legal but recreational use is not, state laws are hazy on who is allowed to grow and sell the drug, leading to a chaotic and largely unregulated marketplace of street-corner pot dispensaries, illegal cannabis farms and inappropriate prescribing by unethical doctors. Cities and counties have struggled to impose order on an piecemeal basis as the state wrestles with developing a regulatory framework for the thriving if messy medical marijuana industry. “A huge number of complaints were received last year from residents with regard to outdoor marijuana cultivation,” said Sacramento County Supervisor Roberta MacGlashan, who introduced the measure to ban marijuana gardens as a public nuisance. “Many were close to schools, group homes and other sensitive uses.” The fields can also be dangerous, as owners use weapons and dogs to guard their investments. Ten slayings currently under prosecution in the county have been linked to attempted marijuana theft, she said. On Tuesday, the board unanimously signaled its intent to approve MacGlashan’s ordinance, which will be up for a final vote on May 13. The board postponed a decision on banning indoor cultivation of marijuana to study whether an all-out prohibition would infringe on the rights of medical cannabis patients to grow plants for their own use. Sacramento County’s plan would apply to unincorporated areas outside of the city of Sacramento, many of which have large lots and a semi-rural feel. Two state bills to regulate the cultivation, selling and prescribing of medical pot are working their way through the legislature, but differences remain on whether health officials or the alcoholic beverage control department should oversee rules on cultivating and distributing the drug.
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21507
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People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals estimates 200 animals will be spared annually as the result of former President Bill Clinton adopting a vegan diet.
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PETA Claims Clinton Saving 200 Animals Annually
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mixture
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Georgia, Animals, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals,
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"Former President Bill Clinton was well known for his appetites while at the White House. The man jogged to McDonald’s for a Big Mac. His ability to pile a plate high with crispy pieces of fried chicken, mounds of barbecued pork and slabs of smoky ribs was legendary. But last year the former chief executive shocked America with a real dietary stunner. Clinton announced he was giving up meat and dairy and undertaking a vegan diet. Following a vegan diet means Clinton will not eat any product that comes from animals. He told reporters that he made the decision after suffering through two major heart procedures.Clinton has undergone bypass surgery and has had stents put in some of his arteries to keep them open. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals responded by naming Clinton its ""Man of the Year."" It said: ""By choosing a plant-based diet, President Clinton has spared the lives of nearly 200 animals a year..."" Did they say 200? We understand that beef is what’s for dinner, but 200 sounds like Bill was ravaging pastures of cows, not to mention barnyards of chickens and pigs -- the other white meat. PETA’s estimate is still being disseminated widely -- it appeared just last week in a Los Angeles Times article. A PETA spokeswoman told PolitiFact Georgia the group actually has no way of knowing precisely how much meat Clinton ate or how many animals were slaughtered to satiate his carnivorous cravings. But the organization conducted a study that determined the average meat-eating American is responsible for the deaths of 198 animals annually. It used statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration and other sources to calculate the total number of animals raised in the United States and imported for American consumption. PETA then divided the total number of butchered animals by the U.S. population, minus the estimated number of vegetarians and vegans of course. It didn’t count eggs. But it did count every chicken, cow, pig, fish and duck. But -- and this is where it gets a bit murky -- PETA also counted shrimp, clams, lobsters, oysters, scallops and any other animals that died as part of dairy and meat production. Chris Hurt, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University, said this sounds like a reasonable approach and could provide an accurate average. But he still thinks the number is misleading the way PETA used it. The USDA estimates the average American eats about 85 pounds of chicken, 58 pounds of beef, 46 pounds of pork, 16 pounds of turkey, 1 1/2 pounds of veal and 1 pound of lamb each year. Hurt estimated -- and he stressed estimated -- this would equal about 28 chickens, one turkey, and a fraction of a cow, pig, and lamb per person annually. This comes to about 30 animals per year, well short of PETA’s 200 number. Hurt, however, did not include sea creatures in his estimate. The majority of the animals killed would have to be small sea creatures for PETA’s estimate to stand, Hurt said. ""Perhaps the misinterpretation is that these are farm animals we’re talking about,"" he said. ""That’s a little misleading."" The average American eats 15.8 pounds of fish and shellfish a year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That includes an average of 4.1 pounds of shrimp per person, 4.6 pounds of fish filets and steaks, and 2.5 pounds of canned tuna. James Dunn, a professor of agricultural economics at Pennsylvania State University, said even counting the small creatures he thinks the PETA number still sounds ""way too high."" The National Meat Association said the number doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. ""They’re only saying that because it sounds good and people can wrap their minds around,"" said Jeremy Russell, director of communications and government relations for the association. While PETA’s spokeswoman acknowledges its number includes bivalves and other creatures, its number seems to imply a vegan is saving the lives of cute cows, adorable baby chickens and Wilbur-like pigs. Those are, after all, the animals PETA chooses to showcase on its website. PETA’s statement is technically accurate. But it leaves out important details. That’s our definition of ."
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29981
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CBS reported that elites are ingesting the blood of young children in order to achieve ‘eternal youth.'
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The important points here are that 1) Nobody involved in any such studies (which are still largely confined to rodents) is “ingesting” the blood of children — the few research efforts using humans to date involved subjects’ receiving infusions/transfusions of blood plasma, not drinking blood, and 2) Even the controversial Ambrosia trial used blood plasma donated by young adults, not “young children.” In no case are “world leaders and elite businessmen … lining up to ingest the blood of young children,” as falsely claimed by News Punch.
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false
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Junk News, news punch
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On 26 December 2018, the News Punch junk news site (formerly the equally disreputable Your News Wire junk news site) published an article claiming that CBS had reported on “world leaders and elite businessmen” who supposedly “ingest the blood of young children in order to achieve ‘eternal youth’”: CBS: Elites Are Lining up to Ingest the Blood of Children World leaders and elite businessmen are ingesting the blood of young children in order to achieve ‘eternal youth,’ a CBS report warns. What was once dismissed as a ‘conspiracy theory’ is now being publicly acknowledged by billionaires and the mainstream media. That News Punch report was typically distorted and deliberately misleading, intended to foster a false picture of vampiric patrons feasting on the blood of children to maintain themselves in a state of youthful immortality. The underlying information that formed basis of the News Punch article did not come from CBS News, but rather from a two-minute, speculative health segment produced by Philadelphia television station KYW. And that segment did not state, or even remotely suggest, that anyone was “ingesting” the blood of “young children” in order to “achieve eternal youth.” That KYW segment was itself mostly a brief rehash of some recent studies which found that giving older mice infusions of blood plasma from younger mice seemingly improved the former’s performance in learning and memory tests. Other studies are ongoing to determine whether the process might have any applicability in human beings: The segment also referenced the efforts of a company called Ambrosia, which as reported by Wired, performed a controversial human trial on a small group of subjects over age 35 whom they charged $8,000 each to receive a few liters of plasma donated by young adults: In 2016, a company called Ambrosia launched the first human trial of young plasma transfusions, charging patients $8,000 a pop to participate. Anyone over 35 with the necessary cash was eligible to receive two liters of plasma donated by young adults, which Ambrosia purchases from blood banks. Given the fee and the lack of a placebo treatment to compare it to, scientists and bioethicists have questioned the rigor of the study. But those barbs haven’t stopped Ambrosia’s founder, Jesse Karmazin, from being bullish on the (unpublished) results of the trial, which he announced for the first time at the Recode technology conference last May. “We measured 113 biomarkers 30 days after the transfusion and we saw a durable, but not permanent, effect,” says Karmazin, who has an MD from Stanford but no license to practice medicine. (He initially conducted the trial with a physician who runs a private intravenous therapy center in Monterey, California, but later moved to sites in San Francisco and Tampa after a falling out between them.) Karmazin says the study participants described feeling stronger, more awake, and as if their memory had improved. “We saw results that were consistent with the preclinical work in mice.” Ambrosia’s trial initially intended to enroll 600 patients, but in the end only included 81 individuals. The effectiveness — and advisability — of even that small Ambrosia trial has been challenged by those who maintain it holds the potential to do more harm than good: Irina and Michael Conboy, two University of California at Berkeley researchers who’ve published research on young blood transfusions in mice, called Ambrosia’s plans “dangerous.” “They quite likely could inflict bodily harm,” Irina Conboy [said]. Michael Conboy said part of the problem is simply the fact that there’s too much old blood for the young blood to have a substantial effect on its own. “Is there really something in the young blood that would override all the negative effects from the old blood?” Conboy said. “Until someone repeats that I’m not sure that I believe it. Even scientists with the best of intentions can observe something that’s a fluke.” Meanwhile, the Conboys said there are substantial risks with giving older people the young blood of donors. Those include a heightened immune response which is triggered with increasing magnitude every time the procedure is completed.
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14129
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"Before 2005, ""the percentage of"" Texas high school ""students meeting the college readiness standards of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board stood at 28% in English and 42% in math. Those figures stood at 65% and 66% in 2013."
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"Willett, writing for the court majority, said that before 2005, ""the percentage of"" Texas high-school students meeting the coordinating board’s college readiness standards ""stood at 28% in English and 42% in math. Those figures stood at 65% and 66% in 2013."" This statement doesn’t acknowledge readiness metrics such as ACT or SAT scores. But it almost perfectly reflects the state’s tallies of high school graduates in 2004 and 2013 who scored high enough on state English and math tests to be considered college-ready."
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true
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Children, Education, Texas, Don Willett,
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"Deep in the May 2016 Texas Supreme Court ruling that upheld and critiqued the current school funding system is encouraging news about the performance of Texas students. On Page 58 of the majority opinion, Justice Don Willett (who subsequently showed up among individuals that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said he’d consider to succeed Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court) refers to a November 2005 decision by the court that required lawmakers to change the system. At the time of the West Orange-Cove II ruling, Willett writes, ""the percentage of students meeting the college-readiness standards of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board stood at 28% in English and 42% in math. Those figures stood at 65% and 66% in 2013,"" Willett continues. Did Texas high school graduates get so much more college-primed that fast? Best we could tell, the cited figures track with state test results tracked by the Texas Education Agency. Then again, as few as 26 percent of Texas high-school graduates lately show a readiness for college according to a couple of other respected metrics. Texas Success Initiative With help from Texas Education Agency officials, we found figures very close to what Willett presents in the 2016 majority opinion. According to the agency, in 2004, 29 percent of students fulfilled college readiness standards for English language arts and 43 percent did so for math while in 2013, 65 percent of students met readiness standards for English, 66 percent for math. With rare exception, according to the agency, the percentage of students fulfilling each readiness standard escalated steadily through the intervening years. And most recently, in 2014, 68 percent of students met the English readiness standards with 67 percent doing so in math, the agency says. We wondered what the percentages meant. They reflect student test results, TEA spokeswoman DeEtta Culbertson advised, in keeping with a state law that requires college and universities to assess incoming high school graduates for their readiness to take college courses and offer remedial instruction as needed. Under the program, called the Texas Success Initiative, the TEA has reported on the readiness of high-school students by calculating the share of students who meet related expectations on the state-mandated English language arts and math 11th grade/exit-level Texas Assessment of Knowledge & Skills. Asked if perhaps standards loosened between 2004 and 2013, Culbertson pointed out by email that in each of the years, a student classified as ready for college needed ""scale scores of 2200"" on each relevant TAKS including a 3 (out of a possible 4) on the writing portion of the English test. To our inquiry, Shannon Housson, TEA director of performance reporting, said by phone the 124 percent and 54 percent respective improvements in students meeting the readiness standards over nine years reflected schools and students adjusting to and, in some cases, mastering the English and math TAKS, which were given from 2003 through 2011 before yielding to the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness. At its inception, Housson said, the TAKS added up to a ""significant increase in rigor"" for students accustomed to the previous state-mandated exams. ""I remember the angst in the schools,"" Housson said, as teachers and others came to terms with the new focus on ""higher-order thinking skills"" linked to the state-set curriculum rather than simply academic skills. Finally, Willett’s citation of the 2005 court decision on school finance led us to look back at how that opinion by Justice Nathan Hecht presented the percentages of students meeting the readiness standards. In the ruling, Hecht showed results for all students plus break-outs suggesting considerable performance lags among African American, Hispanic and Limited English Proficient students. Results for 2013 suggest such gaps have closed quite a bit except among students the state deems English Language Learners. Texas Students With Test Scores Suggesting College Readiness, 2004 and 2013 Subject All Students African-American Hispanic White LEP/ELL* English (2004) 29% 19% 20% 36% 3% Math (2004) 43% 21% 29% 56% 13% English (2013) 65% 55% 60% 74% 14% Math (2013) 61% 51% 55% 71% 12% *Limited English Proficient/English Language Learners SAT, ACT scores There are other ways to gauge college readiness. In 2014, nearly 34 percent of the state’s students who took the pre-college SAT (or 32 percent of public school students taking the test) did well enough to demonstrate a readiness for college work without remediation, according to the College Board, which associates an SAT score of 1550 out of 2400 with a 65 percent probability of obtaining a first-year college GPA of B- or higher. The same year, among 60 percent of 116,147 Texas high school graduates to take the ACT scored well enough to show a readiness for college English, the Iowa-based group says, with 47 percent doing so in math and 36 percent demonstrating readiness in science--and only 26 percent clearing all the tests’ college-readiness benchmarks. ACT says its readiness benchmarks are ""scores on the ACT subject-area tests that represent the level of achievement required for students to have a 50% chance of obtaining a B or higher or about a 75% chance of obtaining a C or higher in corresponding credit-bearing first-year college courses."" Our ruling Willett, writing for the court majority, said that before 2005, ""the percentage of"" Texas high-school students meeting the coordinating board’s college readiness standards ""stood at 28% in English and 42% in math. Those figures stood at 65% and 66% in 2013."" This statement doesn’t acknowledge readiness metrics such as ACT or SAT scores. But it almost perfectly reflects the state’s tallies of high school graduates in 2004 and 2013 who scored high enough on state English and math tests to be considered college-ready. – The statement is accurate and there’s nothing significant missing."
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26570
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“We’ve got to give the American public a rough estimate of how long we think this is going to take, based mostly on the South Korean model, which seems to be the trajectory that we are on, thankfully, and not the Italian model.”
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A Pennsylvania congressman said the spread of the coronavirus in the U.S. matches the spread of the virus in South Korea, not Italy. The U.S. and South Korea have similar case fatality rates – Italy’s is higher – but all three countries have age-specific mortality rates that are about the same. Public health experts say the fatality rate wouldn’t be the only or the most important metric used to determine when businesses may reopen.The growth in cases and hospitals’ capacity to treat new patients is the most important factor.
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mixture
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National, Coronavirus, Pennsylvania, Brian Fitzpatrick,
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"Last week, U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick spoke about the coronavirus pandemic on a local talk radio show, and he told the host that the outbreak in this country looks more like the one in South Korea than the one in Italy. ""We’ve got to give the American public a rough estimate of how long we think this is going to take, based mostly on the South Korean model, which seems to be the trajectory that we are on, thankfully, and not the Italian model,"" the Republican congressman from Bucks County said on The Dom Giordano Program. We wondered how the spread of the coronavirus in the United States compares with the spread of the disease in other parts of the world. When Fitzpatrick made those remarks, he was comparing the three countries’ case fatality rates, said Will Kiley, his spokesperson. That’s ""the key metric we’re all watching,"" he added. Fitzpatrick is right that the fatality rate in the United States roughly matches South Korea’s and is far lower than Italy’s. But Drexel epidemiologist Michael LeVasseur cautioned against reading too much into those numbers. The virus appears to be deadlier in Italy because the population there is older, and elderly coronavirus patients are the most likely to die. For example, 23% of people in Italy are over age 65, compared with only 14% in South Korea and 16% in the U.S. The age-specific case fatality rates in the three countries are about the same, LeVasseur said. He also pointed out that the curve epidemiologists keep talking about depicts the number of coronavirus patients and hospitals’ capacity to care for them — not deaths caused by the virus. ""Flattening the curve"" means slowing the virus’ rate of transmission and reducing the number of new cases so that fewer sick people need to seek treatment all at once. The latest data on coronavirus cases show that South Korea did flatten the curve, while case counts in the United States and Italy keep climbing. Another way to compare the virus’ impact in the three countries is to look at their economies. Fitzpatrick’s comments came amid a discussion with Giordano about the economic pain the virus has already inflicted on Pennsylvania business owners, and how much longer the closures ordered by Gov. Tom Wolf might last. The congressman argued that businesses need to know when things will go back to normal if they have any hope of surviving this crisis. In South Korea, businesses have remained open even as the country fights the virus, whereas in Italy, businesses have been closed for weeks. The latest modeling suggests the outbreak will peak in the United States in two weeks. But that doesn’t mean that Pennsylvania businesses should necessarily expect to reopen by May, said Nate Wardel, a spokesperson for the State Department of Health. The scarcity of coronavirus tests and the time it takes to get results remain the biggest hurdles to relaxing restrictions. Asked whether Wolf would use the state’s case fatality rate to determine when businesses may reopen, Wardle said it would be one of several metrics used to make that call. And no, he said, the similarity between the fatality rate in the United States and South Korea doesn’t mean Pennsylvania is ready for South Korea-style normalcy. Fitzpatrick said the spread of the coronavirus in the United States matches the spread of the virus in South Korea, not Italy. The U.S. and South Korea have similar case fatality rates — Italy’s is higher — but all three countries have age-specific mortality rates that are about the same. In addition, public health experts say the fatality rate wouldn’t be the only or the most important metric used to determine when businesses may reopen. The growth in cases and hospitals’ capacity to treat new patients is the most important factor, and in that department, the United States looks more like Italy than South Korea."
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28358
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Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum has suspended his campaign for governor of Florida.
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In a remote island outpost on the edge of the Antarctic, hundreds of miles from the southern tip of Chile, scientists at a research base are scouring the ice for clues about everything from climate change to cures for cancer.
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mixture
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Politics
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Chile’s Escudero base on King George Island acts as a research hub for a frozen expanse that extends to the South Pole, with more than 300 international scientists taking turns to brave the bitter Antarctic temperatures. The Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH) has supported research into a biomolecule called “Antartina,” derived from a plant native to the region, which has shown positive early results in diminishing colorectal, liver and gastric cancers in mice. Scientists there also look at lichens that could treat Alzheimer’s disease, enzymes to remove lactose from milk and others to improve lettuce crops. This month a multinational team embarked on a research trip to investigate what causes the break-up of ice shelves, a phenomenon associated with climate change. In 2017, an iceberg the size of Trinidad and Tobago broke off a shelf in Antarctica, sparking widespread alarm, fears of shipping accidents and a further rise in sea levels. “There are different theories related to changes in sea temperatures eating the platforms, and another that has to do with the behavior of water and its drainage,” New Zealand glaciologist Shelley MacDonell, the team leader, as she prepared to travel to one of the icebergs affected. MacDonell’s team wants to be able to predict where and when ice shelves might rupture in future. The scientists hope their research will help the mapping of the shape of world’s southernmost continent in the decades to come, and allow island and coastal nations to plan for rising sea levels. “There is a whole dynamic (of the Antarctic ecosystem) that needs to be studied quickly, like the upcoming scenarios of climate change,” said INACH’s director, Marcelo Leppe. Ice shelves act as a retaining wall that prevent Antarctic ice from spilling more quickly into the ocean. Icebergs have historically broken off over centuries but their break-up has accelerated in recent years. The loss of ice from the “white continent” rose to an annual net figure of 252,000 million tonnes between 2009 and 2017 from the average of 40,000 million tonnes from 1979 to 1990, according to a study released in January. “Large platforms have collapsed in the past. What is not known if the collapses were gradual or instantaneous, like the ones we are seeing today,” MacDonell said. The Antarctic Peninsula, the northernmost part of the continent and site of the Chilean base, is the focus as one of the areas most affected by melting ice - scientists believe because it had more exposure to the ocean. “We have a long-term trend that is pointing to this process of warming and collapse of these platforms,” said Chilean glaciologist Francisco Fernandoy, part of MacDonell’s team. The Netherlands and several island territories are eager for the results of the study. Were the ice caps of Greenland and Antarctic to melt entirely, a 10-meter rise in sea level expected to result would inundate them, according to INACH data. MacDonell and her team have embarked on a lengthy journey by plane, boat, helicopter and on skis to reach a camp on the Müller ice shelf, which itself lost a 1.6-km long iceberg at the end of last year. They will have to brave blizzards and the sub-zero temperatures of the Antarctic summer to conduct two weeks of sampling before winter descends in the coming month. The team will use radar waves to take measurements of the icebergs and extract ice cores, columns that allow researchers to effectively look back in time. The cores will be transported to specialist labs in central Chile for analysis in chilled chambers that keep the temperature at -20 degrees Celsius. The scientists hope the models for future melts they will be able to build will serve as a basis for agreements among nations to tackle climate change. “We cannot make these political decisions but we can say what the scenarios are: if the temperature increases, stays the same or drops, this or that will happen,” glaciologist Fernandoy said. “That’s what we can contribute. The decisions themselves are in another sphere.”
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10485
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To build a knee: Done right, it’s fast, safe, and effective
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Knee osteoarthritis afflicts millions of Americans. Total knee replacement is but one treatment approach—one that yields often-remarkable results. Despite its good reputation though, there’s more to the operation than this article’s glancing overview suggests. For starters, knee replacement is a major surgery with potentially important complications, including blood clots in a leg or lung, infections, and (rarely) death. The costs include not only the price of the implant and the hospital and surgeon fees, but also time off of work, intensive rehabilitation, and sometimes an inpatient rehab facility or visiting nurse. While many people return to a relatively active lifestyle, others continue to have limitations (for example, in kneeling, squatting, climbing stairs, and getting into and out of cars). Other treatments often help people stave off worsening symptoms and mobility—and surgery. Reasonable alternatives to knee replacement include strengthening and exercise, weight loss, medications, injections, bracing, in-shoe orthotics, and others. For younger surgical candidates, this is important information, because knee implants have a limited life span, and young patients concerned about the need for a second operation later in life often prefer to wait as long as possible before having their first. Unfortunately, in the absence of a balanced view of surgery’s pros and cons and an independent voice (the sole source is an enthusiastic surgeon), the story finally feels more like a puff piece for a top-rated hospital than a balanced look at a medical problem.
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false
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The article does not mention cost. In knee replacement there is more to cost than the price of the implant and the hospital and surgeon’s fees. After surgery, patients must plan for time away from work, intensive rehabilitation, and perhaps the cost of an inpatient rehab facility or visiting nurse. There is no attempt to quantify the benefit of total knee replacement, either for older patients or younger ones, except in the testimony of one knee surgeon. Although the scientific literature reports that most patients are satisfied after surgery, the results are neither as spectacular nor as risk-free as the article suggests.
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17019
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"A majority of Americans ""since Harry Truman days"" support single-payer health insurance, or ""full Medicare for all."
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"Nader said a majority of Americans ""since Harry Truman days"" support single-payer health insurance, or ""full Medicare for all."" While there are individual poll results dating back to 1945 that indicate majority support for single-payer, overall the results are mixed, at best. In fact, one review of more than 100 polls over 50 years found that most people opposed single-payer."
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false
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Federal Budget, Health Care, History, Medicare, Polls and Public Opinion, Public Health, Wisconsin, Ralph Nader,
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"Americans are more politically polarized than they were a generation ago. Yet consumer activist and four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader argues in his new book that there is ""an emerging left-right alliance"" in the country that could ""dismantle the corporate state."" Interviewed about the book on May 7, 2014, Nader told Wisconsin Public Radio host Joy Cardin that majorities of liberals and conservatives agree on a number of issues, such as raising the minimum wage. Then he made an attention-getting claim about the enduring popularity of ""single-payer"" -- a health insurance system in which everyone is covered by the government and the government pays all the bills. Nader’s quote is a bit jumbled, but his claim is clear. ""The reason why single-payer is not discussed -- even though a majority of the American people since Harry Truman days supported full Medicare for all, everybody in nobody out, free choice of doctor and hospital; very efficient, much more than the present wasteful system -- even though that is the status in terms of public opinion, it's not on the table,"" he said. Wait. How often have most Americans agreed on any one thing for nearly 70 years? And more specifically, has a majority of Americans supported single-payer -- or ""Medicare for all,"" as Nader also referred to it -- dating back to the presidency of Harry Truman (1945-’53)? Single-payer and politicians Under single-payer, private insurers would be eliminated, although private medical providers would remain. Everyone would get health coverage from the government and government would pay all the bills. In that sense, it’s like Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people who are 65 or older and certain younger people. Single-payer received mention in the debate during the run-up to Obamacare, which became law in 2010. But even some of its most prominent supporters have wavered on it. In 2009, Obama earned a Half Flip on PolitiFact’s Flip-O-Meter. Compared to his earlier years in politics, Obama had moderated his statements in support of single-payer as he tried to appeal to a wider audience, our PolitiFact National colleagues found. Similarly, after Republican former Gov. Tommy Thompson made single-payer an issue in the 2012 race for a U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin, we gave a Half-Flip to Democrat Tammy Baldwin. Just before she defeated Thompson, Baldwin deflected questions about single-payer and said she was setting aside at least temporarily her efforts toward getting single-payer in place. Nader’s evidence For his part, Nader -- who won 2.74 percent of the vote in the razor-thin 2000 presidential race -- cited through a spokesman portions of three articles to back his claim about the public’s support for the concept. But none of the articles constitute evidence that most Americans have backed single-payer over the past seven decades. A 1982 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, citing polls, argued that most Americans believed there was a ""need for national health insurance and that it would require larger government intervention."" A 2003 article in the American Journal of Public Health said public opinion generally ran in favor of health care reform. And a 2009 article by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a widely recognized authority on health care, said polls as far back as the 1930s show Americans have generally supported ""the goals of guaranteed access to health care and health insurance for all, as well as a government role in health financing."" We wanted to know more about what polls have shown. The polls A Rasmussen Reports poll in April 2014 found that only 37 percent of Americans favored single-payer. And although the proposal has largely been out of the public debate since before Obamacare became law, earlier polling also didn’t find clear support. In 2009, with the Obamacare bill being pushed in Congress, filmmaker Michael Moore said a majority of Americans favored a single-payer system. PolitiFact National rated his statement . Polls had consistently shown that a majority of Americans wanted some form of universal health care coverage — they want uninsured people to have insurance -- but there was wide disagreement about how to do that. For example, some people supported keeping the current the system, but with tax credits to help uninsured people buy private insurance, while others backed requiring employers to provide employee health insurance, or to pay into a government fund that would pay to cover those without insurance. In other words, not majority support for a government-run health insurance system. To get a longer view of the polling, we contacted two polling experts: Liz Hamel, the Kaiser foundation’s public opinion and survey research director; and Karlyn Bowman, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. Kaiser’s latest poll on single-payer, in September 2009, found that less than a majority of Americans -- 40 percent -- favored single-payer. Conversely, seven other ways to expand health insurance coverage -- such as expanding Medicare or instituting an individual mandate requiring all Americans to have coverage -- all received higher levels of support. Three years earlier, a 2006 Kaiser poll indicated possible majority support for single-payer -- but it was constructed as a limited either-or question: ""Which would you prefer -- the current health insurance system in the United States, in which most people get their health insurance from private employers, but some people have no insurance; or, a universal health insurance program, in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that's run by the government and financed by taxpayers?"" Fifty-six percent said they preferred a universal system. Going back further, however, there was no such majority support. In 2001, two directors of the Harvard Opinion Research Program reviewed more than 100 public opinion polls over a 50-year period. One key conclusion was that ""most Americans remain satisfied with their current medical arrangements, do not trust the federal government to do what is right and do not favor a single-payer type of national health plan."" Given that it covered much of the period Nader referred to, that article is strong evidence refuting his claim. But we were curious about polling going back to the start of Truman's presidency. The results were mixed. Two examples from that period: On an either-or Gallup poll question in 1945, 53 percent said they favored ""a plan set up by the government which would require every person to take part,"" while 34 percent preferred a voluntary plan ""set up by the medical profession"" and 13 percent had no opinion. But when asked this question in 1949 -- ""Should the U.S. Congress pass the government's compulsory health insurance program, which would require wage or salary deductions from all employed persons to provide medical and hospital care for them and their families?"" -- the results were: Yes, 44 percent; No, 47 percent; No opinion, 9 percent. Our rating Nader said a majority of Americans ""since Harry Truman days"" support single-payer health insurance, or ""full Medicare for all."" While there are individual poll results dating back to 1945 that indicate majority support for single-payer, overall the results are mixed, at best. In fact, one review of more than 100 polls over 50 years found that most people opposed single-payer. To comment on this item, go to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel website."
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29391
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Raggedy Ann dolls were created by a grief-stricken father who lost his daughter to a vaccine-related illness, and who wished to broadcast the risks of vaccination.
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What's true: Raggedy Ann was created in 1915 by Johnny Gruelle, whose daughter Marcella died at the age of 13 after receiving a vaccination. What's false: Raggedy Ann was patented before Marcella's death and had nothing to do with vaccine opposition.
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false
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Horrors, anti-vaccine, raggedy ann, vaccine misinformation
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In January 2017, Facebook pages “The Truth About Vaccines” and “VacTruth.com” shared memes promotion the notion that the Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls were created as part of an anti-vaccination movement: Different versions of this claim had appeared as early as 2009, and the alternative health site RealFarmacy published a 2014 article that linked Raggedy Ann with a death caused (they said) by vaccination: In 1921, Johnny Gruelle’s 8-yr old daughter was vaccinated in school without her parents’ permission. Between the time she became ill from the vaccination and her death a few months later, her body was completely limp, like a rag doll. It was this sick vaccine-injured child that inspired Gruelle to create the Raggedy Ann doll. This myth was hinted at by the Wall Street Journal in February 2015. In general, the memes and articles advanced the claim that Raggedy Ann dolls were created by Johnny Gruelle in 1915 as symbols of the dangers and deaths purportedly associated with vaccines. The rumor clearly had sticking power and regularly made the rounds on social media, and although aspects of it may be correct, the gist of the “vaccination” claim is easily disputed. Historians at doll enthusiast site DollKind.com noted that Gruelle’s purported creation of a “dead” and “lifeless” tribute to his daughter with X marks over the doll’s eyes were “absurd”: Raggedy Ann has been historically associated with the anti-vaccination movement, and there is some truth and some fiction associated with this belief. The tragic truth that still wrenches our hearts to this day is that Johnny Gruelle’s little daughter died after being given a mandatory smallpox vaccination at school. The child was just 13 years old, and her loss was devastating to Johnny Gruelle, who then became a proponent of the anti-vaccination movement. However, there is an absurd school of thought that asserts that the Raggedy Ann doll was created as a limp and lifeless-looking creature to symbolize Gruelle’s dead child. This is certainly not the case, and Gruelle’s registered patent of the Raggedy Ann character occurred right around the time of Marcella’s death. Evidence indicates that he had been working on perfecting Raggedy Ann prior to this tragedy in his family. On the Raggedy Land web site, author Patricia Hall noted that the legend was one of many associated with Raggedy Ann, a brand popular with children for several decades: Johnny Gruelle’s little rag dolls have also found themselves at the center of several legend cycles — groups of stories that, while containing kernels of truth, are more myth than they are history. What makes this even more intriguing is that fact that Johnny Gruelle, either unwittingly or with the great sense of humor he was known for, initiated many of these legends, a number of which are continuously repeated as the factual history of Raggedy Ann and Andy. According to that site, plans for what would become an extremely popular rag doll were well underway when Marcella becae ill and died of an infection at the site of a previously administered vaccination: When the real-life Marcella Gruelle died, at age 13, from the ravages of an infected vaccination, her parents were, understandably devastated. Under different circumstances, this would have been a time of great rejoicing for Gruelle and his family. He was connecting with juvenile publishers, and was working on several sets of illustrated fairy stories. In November (the same month of Marcella’s death) Gruelle had been granted final approval by the U.S. Patent office for his doll called “Raggedy Ann.” But all was overshadowed by the death of his beloved daughter. As both doll historians stated, Marcella died not because of a vaccination, but possibly because of an infection related to the vaccination. Advances in medical sterilization and clinical protocols suggest a death like Marcella’s would be highly implausible under typical circumstances more than a century later. Antibiotics and sterilization changed dramatically between the 20th and the 21st centuries. No honest comparison could be drawn between medicine in 1915 and 2017, as illustrated by Centers for Disease Control statistics (unrelated to vaccines): At the beginning of the 20th century, for every 1000 live births, six to nine women in the United States died of pregnancy-related complications, and approximately 100 infants died before age 1 year (1,2). From 1915 through 1997, the infant mortality rate declined greater than 90% to 7.2 per 1000 live births, and from 1900 through 1997, the maternal mortality rate declined almost 99% to less than 0.1 reported death per 1000 live births (7.7 deaths per 100,000 live births in 1997). Environmental interventions, improvements in nutrition, advances in clinical medicine, improvements in access to health care, improvements in surveillance and monitoring of disease, increases in education levels, and improvements in standards of living contributed to this remarkable decline. Despite these improvements in maternal and infant mortality rates, significant disparities by race and ethnicity persist. This report summarizes trends in reducing infant and maternal mortality in the United States, factors contributing to these trends, challenges in reducing infant and maternal mortality, and provides suggestions for public health action for the 21st century. Both Doll Kind and Hall’s myths about Raggedy Ann’s origins were well circulated, and Marcella’s death is an integral part of the doll’s apocrypha. However, Johnny Gruelle filed his patent for the dolls on 28 May 1915 and received it on 7 November 1915. Marcella coincidentally passed away on 8 November 1915, one day after her father’s patent was granted. Given that Gruelle filed the patent several months before his daughter died, it is impossible that he created the dolls as a response to his daughter’s death. Raggedy Ann was in the works long before Marcella received any vaccinations, became ill, or died.
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12808
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"Citizen Action of Wisconsin Says ""people who come to"" their dissent actions ""get a ‘cease and desist’ letter"" from Ron Johnson's office."
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"Citizen Action says ""people who come to"" their dissent actions ""get a ‘cease and desist’ letter"" from Johnson's office. Despite the broadness of the claim, the group produced a cease-and-desist letter written to only one person who it says has been involved in Citizen Action initiatives such as preserving the Affordable Care Act. The letter demands that the man stop visiting or calling any of Johnson’s staff or offices, but says written communications will be received. And Johnson’s staff says it issued the letter, on the advice of the U.S. Capitol Police, because the man had been harassing and threatening to staff, not because he protested any of Johnson’s actions."
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false
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Civil Rights, Health Care, Polls and Public Opinion, Wisconsin, Citizen Action of Wisconsin,
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"A website posting on Feb. 28, 2017 spurred a bashing the next day of U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, with charges that the Wisconsin Republican was cracking down on free speech. Tweets such as these: Sen Ron Johnson sends constituents a ""cease and desist"" letter so as to not hear their concerns! Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) has sent ""cease and desist"" letters to constituents trying to meet with him. Sen Ron Johnson orders citizens to ""Cease and Desist"" pleading for #ACA! What we found is that the posting by Citizen Action of Wisconsin -- which claimed that ""people who come to"" the group’s actions ""get a ‘cease and desist’ letter"" from Johnson's office -- is overly broad and misleading. The claim Milwaukee-based Citizen Action describes itself as an ""issue-focused coalition of individuals and organizations committed to achieving social, economic and environmental justice."" The posting it put on its website said: Dissent is patriotic, that's what we believe. That's why for months we've been showing up to Congressional offices, calling every day, writing letters/emails/postcards & more. And it's why our members took part in town halls and rallies across the state last week during the Congressional Recess, including a 500+ person rally in Greenfield and 150+ in Wausau. Complete with empty chairs for, and a large cardboard cutout of, Senator Ron Johnson. And what do the people who come to our actions get? A ""cease and desist"" letter (click for full letter) from the Senator's office (signed ""staff""). Senator Johnson is trying his best not to hear our concerns about the future of healthcare, about the future of our country and the fate our of families. The post ends with a reference to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and the chance to sign an online petition saying ""we will not cease and desist."" By the morning of March 2, 2017, the count was more than 2,800 signatures. Citizen Action included with its post a link to a photograph of a Feb. 27, 2017 letter on Johnson’s official Senate stationery. The name of the recipient of the letter is blacked out, but we confirmed that the letter was sent to Earl Good, a 72-year-old Milwaukee retiree. The letter The Johnson letter to Good, which is signed by ""Staff,"" says: This Cease and Desist letter is to inform you that any further communication from you to U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s office can only be done in writing. This means that you are not to call or visit any of Senator Johnson’s staff or any of his offices at any time. Our office has done all that we can to assist you with your concerns. This letter acts as a written notice of our expectation for you to discontinue your unwanted telephone calls and office visits. If you fail to comply with this notice, then we will have no other alternative but to contact the United States Capitol Police and report your noncompliance. Perspectives Good told the Journal Sentinel that since the November 2016 elections, he has been calling Johnson's office on various issues and has joined others who visit Johnson's Milwaukee office to raise concerns about issues such as health care. He said that in mid-February, he called Johnson's office 40 times on one day and 83 times another day. He said he kept calling until someone answered the phone rather than letting his call go to voicemail. He said he is persistent but has always been polite when interacting with Johnson's staff on the phone or in person. Kevin Kane, the organizing director for Citizen Action, told us Good has been involved in recent months in the group’s initiatives, including visits to Johnson’s office in an effort to preserve the Affordable Care Act. Kane said he has observed Good as being persistent but respectful. But Kane said he was not familiar with all of Good’s interactions with Johnson’s staff and that Good is the only person involved with Citizen Action that is known to have received a cease-and-desist letter from Johnson. Finally, here’s what Johnson staff members Patrick McIlheran and Ben Voelkel told us (they would not identify Good as the recipient of the letter, but confirmed the letter is legitimate): The letter was sent to Good because of repeated behavior over the previous two months, in person, that was harassing and threatening to Johnson's staff, not because of any dissent voiced by the resident about politics or policy. They would not provide more details. Johnson's staff believed the man was acting on his own and the staff was not aware of whether he was involved with Citizen Action or any other group. The behavior led Johnson's office to contact the Capitol Police, which suggested that the letter be sent. Johnson's office has sent four or five cease-and-desist letters since Johnson took office in January 2011, and this was the first since the November 2016 elections. Our rating Citizen Action says ""people who come to"" their dissent actions ""get a ‘cease and desist’ letter"" from Johnson's office. Despite the broadness of the claim, the group produced a cease-and-desist letter written to only one person who it says has been involved in Citizen Action initiatives such as preserving the Affordable Care Act. The letter demands that the man stop visiting or calling any of Johnson’s staff or offices, but says written communications will be received. And Johnson’s staff says it issued the letter, on the advice of the U.S. Capitol Police, because the man had been harassing and threatening to staff, not because he protested any of Johnson’s actions. Editor's note: Four days after this fact check was published, Citizen Action posted an apology about its claim against Johnson."
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7379
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Dentists carefully reopen in France after 2-month lockdown.
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Anyone who suffered through France’s two-month lockdown with a toothache or other oral affliction of a non-emergency nature has a hope of licking the pain.
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true
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AP Top News, Health, General News, France, Lifestyle, Paris, Dentistry, Virus Outbreak, Europe, International News
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Dental practices around the country are cautiously reopening and accepting appointments after the French government eased restrictions on some businesses, services and public activity. Yet getting back to work in the age of coronavirus requires caution, especially for over 40,000 dentists in France who are among the health professionals at highest risk of becoming infected. Because respiratory droplets are a way the virus spreads among people, dentistry demands protecting patients and especially practitioners. That means not only disinfecting tools and surfaces, but layer upon layer of extra screens, wraps, gloves and masks. The World Health Organization has recommended specialized face masks for health care providers performing medical procedures such as ventilation and intubation that produce fine, airborne particles, which might transmit the coronavirus. Drilling teeth for fillings is also known to generate aerosolized viral particles. Paris dentist Sabrine Jendoubi said the trade-off for safety is the discomfort of additional head and body wear. “A surgical suit is something that we wear in the operating theater. Today, we wear it for everything.” Jendoubi said. Of the various filtering face masks certified to protect against viruses in the air, she finds the FFP2-rated model “the most complicated, as it’s really tight.” “It filters out every virus and bacteria, so it’s quite heavy to wear but it protects us and the patients,” Jendoubi said. The additional precautions are also an added expense. An operator of medical clinics and offices in France, Doctocare, told the AP it is costing 50,000 euros ($54,000) to supply each of the company’s centers with the hygiene and protective equipment recommended by the French government. “We will communicate to the government these difficult adjustments in terms of profitability, but for now we’re focused on this public health issue,” Carine Benharrous, director of dental operations at Doctocare, said. The limited distance between the faces of dentists and their patients also is a potential concern, as some experts have theorized that people who get a bigger infectious dose of the coronavirus may become more seriously ill with COVID-19. In Britain, all routine dental care has been suspended except for telephone consultations and prescriptions. While dentists in Denmark are returning to their offices, they are wearing protective suits and plastic face shields while tending to patients lying with their mouths wide open. Cleaning teeth to remove plaque is being done by hand instead of with ultrasonic devices that would increase the risk of producing spit. Yet in some European countries, dental practices never closed because of the virus. Dentists in Italy, one of the nations hit hardest by infections and virus-related deaths, reduced their services to take only urgent cases in person, managing other patients by telephone. Proof that a pandemic wasn’t an excuse to avoid an Italian dentist chair was an April 23 photo on Twitter of U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Callista Gingrich wearing a protective hairnet and paper drape. “A trip to the dentist in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Gingrich tweeted with emoji of an Italian flag and smiley face in sunglasses. ___ Adamson reported from Leeds, England. Jan Olsen in Copenhagen, Nicole Winfield in Rome and Maria Cheng in London contributed.
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1730
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'Baby, It's Cold Outside': large part of U.S. in deep freeze.
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Schools in large cities across the Midwest and into the Northeast announced they will close on Thursday to protect children from bitterly cold temperatures as wind chill warnings were issued for most of the eastern half of the United States.
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true
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Environment
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The National Weather Service (NWS) warned of an Arctic air blast from Canada continuing to provide subzero temperatures for the U.S. Midwest, Southeast, Mid-Atlantic and Northeast on Wednesday evening and into Thursday. On Wednesday, public school officials in Chicago, Milwaukee and Boston canceled Thursday classes out of caution, saying the frigid temperatures in the forecast pose a danger to children. “Our top priority remains the safety of our students, and tomorrow’s weather conditions could again be dangerous to students traveling to and from school,” said Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett in a statement to parents. Chicago Public Schools, the third-largest U.S. school district with 400,000 students and almost 800 schools, told students on Wednesday to stay home and indoors as temperatures dropped to between 20 and 30 degrees Fahrenheit below average. Overnight readings were expected to be as low as 16 below zero. There was little snow-day fun for children freed from school. Sledding hills and cross-country ski areas were shut down around Chicago, and in South Dakota, the city of Sioux Falls closed six ice-skating rinks, citing wind chill peril. Pat Powers, 48, of Brookings, S.D., about 50 miles north of Sioux Falls, put on snow gear to go shopping for sugar to take home for his teenaged daughter who wanted to bake on her day off from classes. He said he preferred to run the errand rather than let her out in the cold. “It’s a good day to stay home and blog in your pajamas,” said Powers, a political blogger. Although Chicago was sunny and clear, commuters said uncovered hands and faces became painful after a few seconds in the brutal cold. The National Weather Service warned that frostbite could happen with just 15 minutes of exposure and advised people to keep pets indoors. Chicago’s trains and buses were less crowded than normal as some workers stayed home. There also were some delays of buses and trains due to the weather. The NWS issued wind chill alerts for cities including Chicago and Detroit as strong Arctic high pressure built into the Midwest. Overnight wind chill values could reach 25 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit below zero, the weather service said. “Dangerously cold wind chills will continue Thursday morning,” in northern Illinois and northwest Indiana, the weather service said. BLIZZARD-LIKE BLOWING SNOW The weather service forecast blizzard conditions for parts of South Dakota on Thursday afternoon because of blowing snow, not fresh snow. All Sioux Falls public and parochial schools were shut on Wednesday. Atmospheric pressure hit possible record highs in Aberdeen, S.D., the NWS said. High barometric pressure is associated with cold air from the polar regions. In Chicago, parents scrambled to line up child care after schools closed. Kim Dooley, 52, was on the elevated train into work after rushing to find a nanny for her 6-year-old special-needs daughter. “People aren’t as hardy as they used to be,” she said. In Minneapolis, where the temperature was 8 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, commuters left their parka hoods up inside trains and pedestrians walked with their hands over their faces. Most Midwesterners took the cold in stride and said the temperatures seemed normal compared to last year’s polar vortex storms. “This is nothing. It does not compare to any of the epic storms that we’ve had,” said businessman Matt Minar, 42. Ohio saw snowfall overnight but nothing unseasonable. “This time last year was worse,” said Steve Carlson, 49, a Cleveland native and customer service worker for AT&T who had calls scheduled for outdoor work all day. Farther south, outdoor workers in Kentucky doubled up on coats to protect against wind chill temperatures of 4 degrees below zero. “I drink a lot of hot chocolate,” said Eddie Rainbolt, 50, in Louisville, a sign holder for Solid Gold, which buys gold and silver. Several Southeastern states also braced for frigid cold. In Atlanta, the medical examiner’s office said it was investigating the death of a man found outside a bus stop that may have been weather-related.
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8782
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MS drug may work against viral infection: study.
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A drug that Novartis AG is testing in people with multiple sclerosis also has the potential to treat certain viral infections, perhaps including the AIDS virus, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
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true
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Health News
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Low doses of the drug FTY720, also called fingolimod, given to mice once a day for three days eliminated an infection by a virus that can cause meningitis, an inflammation of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord. The findings suggest the drug, which boosted anti-viral immune responses in the mice, may be useful against viruses that cause high-level, long-lasting infections in people such as hepatitis C and HIV, the researchers said. Microbiologist and immunologist John Altman of Emory University in Atlanta, who led the study, said the researchers plan to assess the effects of the drug on other viruses including the monkey version of the AIDS virus. Altman, whose findings were published in the journal Nature, expressed cautious optimism that the drug might work against certain chronic viral infections in people. “We think it’s crucial that we do experiments to check it out,” Altman said in a telephone interview. The drug is generally considered to be an immunosuppressant that works to restrain the body’s natural defenses. That could be helpful in multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks body parts as if they were foreign invaders. But one effect of the drug seems to facilitate the immune response, the researchers said. FTY720 among other things traps white blood cells — key soldiers in the immune system’s fight against infections — in the lymph nodes, Altman said. With viral infections, the lymph nodes are where the immune response can get primed and started, Altman said. Some viruses replicate themselves at high levels in lymph nodes, including the human immunodeficiency virus that causes AIDS. They tested the drug against a mouse virus called lymphocytic choriomeningitis, which causes chronic infections by escaping immune responses. “In the absence of treatment (with FTY720) we have an exhausted immune response. In the presence of treatment, we regain a robust cellular immune response,” Altman said. Swiss drug maker Novartis said in June two multiple sclerosis patients taking FTY720 in clinical trials had problems with infections and one died, but the role of the drug in the cases was unclear. Novartis plans at the end of 2009 to seek approval by the European Union for FTY720 to treat MS, spokeswoman Valerie Tate said by e-mail. The drug is currently in late-stage trials. Altman said his study was backed by the U.S. government’s National Institutes of Health and was not funded by Novartis.
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1326
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EpiPen shortages seen in Canada, UK but U.S. supply intact.
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Mylan N.V.’s (MYL.O) emergency allergy antidote EpiPen is in short supply in Canada and Britain, but remains available in the United States, the treatment’s manufacturer said on Friday.
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true
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Health News
|
EpiPens deliver potentially lifesaving doses of the generic drug epinephrine, via an automatic injector that a patient or caregiver can administer in the event of severe allergic reaction. “We are shipping product. Currently there is no shortage in the U.S.,” said Steve Danehy, a spokesman for Pfizer Inc (PFE.N), which produces the global supply of EpiPens for Mylan out of a single facility near St. Louis, Missouri. Mylan is in charge of managing allocation of the EpiPen supply, Danehy said in an email to Reuters. It was not immediately clear why Canada and the UK would be subject to a shortage at this time. A Mylan spokeswoman was not available for comment. Mylan’s EpiPen sales practices in the United States sparked public outrage in 2016 as consumers saw the price for a pack of two auto-injectors rise sixfold to $600 in less than a decade, making the devices unaffordable for a growing number of families. Since then, the company has launched a generic version of EpiPen for half the price, though the U.S. market is still the most lucrative. Meridian Medical Technologies Inc, the unit of Pfizer that manufactures EpiPens, has been hit by a series of manufacturing problems. In March 2017, Mylan recalled tens of thousands of devices after complaints that some had failed to activate. In September, Meridian received a warning letter from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The FDA said Meridian had failed to thoroughly investigate product failures, including EpiPen products that were associated with patient deaths and severe illnesses. It said the company failed to take corrective actions until FDA’s inspection. At the time, Mylan said it did not anticipate any impact on EpiPen supply based on the warning letter. But on Thursday, Pfizer Canada said it was “experiencing supply constraints” for EpiPens used by both adults and children “due to delays at the manufacturing facility,” as well as problems in sourcing a component for the device from an outside supplier. There are no alternatives on the market in Canada, federal health officials there said. They advised patients and caregivers to use expired EpiPens in an emergency if they have nothing else on hand, and then call 911. “Pfizer understands and regrets the challenges that these ongoing supply constraints pose to patients and the healthcare community,” the company said in a statement on its website. On Friday, the UK website for EpiPen notified consumers of “intermittent supply constraints” for the adult injector. It said the next shipment to EpiPen’s distributor in the country was expected toward the end of April. Mylan’s revenue from EpiPen dropped sharply over the last year due to increased competition, the launch of its own cheaper generic and higher rebates that it has had to pay to as a result of a settlement for overcharging the U.S. government.
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9291
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Novel imaging technique improves prostate cancer detection
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This news release is about a new method of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for use in the diagnosis and guiding of treatment for prostate cancer. The release claims that the new technique “measurably improves upon current prostate imaging,” is “more reliable” than existing techniques, and “provides a better target for biopsies.” No data are provided to support any of these assertions, and the original study that sparked the release included just 27 patients and should be considered highly preliminary. Even the title of that study calls the results merely a “proof of principle.” [Editor’s note: This review was completed in January while we were still developing and honing this news releases review service. Although it’s a few months old, this review contains valuable information for those who write and consume health-related news releases, which is why we’re still publishing it.] Prostate cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in men. However, some prostate tumors, even if malignant, may be slow growing and warrant nothing more than watching. If this new MRI method can help identify low-risk tumors, or assess the likelihood that a tumor will spread beyond the prostate, it would be a useful tool for guiding treatment. But the release doesn’t offer any data to show that this technique performs better than existing assessment approaches, and so its ability to justify a role for this new technology in prostate cancer treatment is extremely limited.
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false
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gleason score,overdiagnosis,overtreatment,prostate cancer,University of California San Diego
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It is unclear if this MRI method is more, less or equally expensive as contrast enhanced MRI or diffusion MRI. It is also unclear if special equipment is necessary for this new MRI approach or if that equipment is currently common. Another cost not mentioned is the extra time needed to schedule the appointment and perform the imaging study. The news release provides no data to justify repeated claims that this technique performs better than existing technology. And we think the release misstates the findings of the study that forms the basis for these claims. For example, the releases talks about the new technology’s ability to find small, localized tumors to guide biopsy. However, the actual study addresses only the ability of the new technology to detect cancers that have extended beyond the prostate. In addition, we found the closing quote from professor Robert Reiter, MD, about the value of the new technology, to be misleading. He says, “If by imaging we could predict the tumor grade, we may be able to spare some patients from prostate resection and monitor their cancer with imaging.” But some patients currently already enjoy the option of watchful waiting. If the biopsy grade, clinical exam, and PSA all indicate a low-risk tumor, then the patient can be offered active surveillance and avoid the need for resection. Potential harms are not discussed. One conceivable concern is that “provid[ing] a better target for biopsies, especially for smaller tumors” might lead to overdiagnosis — finding low-risk cancers that would never cause a problem. The patient is subsequently burdened with a cancer diagnosis and complication risks related to ensuing treatment/surveillance protocols. There is nothing in this news release that tells us anything at all about how the new technology was tested or what those tests found. Our perusal of the original study did not turn up much additional information. The article states that the new technology detected 8/9 extracapsular cancers (cancers that extend beyond the prostate capsule), and the old technology only 2/9. The authors did not present a statistical analysis, but by our calculation, the differences are not statistically significant. This story does not disease monger and is actually tipped toward the idea that with this method, in some cases, nothing but watching and waiting is necessary. However, there is some “mongering” of the idea that MRI has a more important role in cancer management than is supported by the evidence. The release states that contrast enhanced MRI is the current “standard of care,” but many prostate cancers are not imaged (other than by ultrasound during biopsy). The funding sources are fully listed. There is no indication of a conflict of interest. We don’t think the story discusses the relevant comparison techniques. It talks mainly about the new technique’s performance compared with other types of MRI. But as noted above, many prostatic cancers, especially those with low PSA and Gleason scores, are not imaged at all (other than by ultrasound during biopsy). For us, the meaningful comparison of the new MRI technology would be with clinical staging, not another MRI technology. Unfortunately, such a comparison is never made or discussed. It’s not clear from the release when or whether this technology might become available, if it’s not available already. The news release indicates that this is a fairly new method that operates differently than other MRI methods. As discussed above, this release harbors many unsupported claims that are not justifiable based on the evidence presented.
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17028
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"There is no ""incontrovertible proof that speed, in and of itself, is the contributing factor to increasing (vehicular) fatalities."
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"Caldwell said he had ""yet to see any incontrovertible proof that speed, in and of itself, is the contributing factor to increasing fatalities."" Traffic studies and experts agree that higher speeds can lead to more fatalities in accidents, which makes Caldwell’s use of the word ""incontrovertible"" suspect. But opinions diverge when discussing whether higher speeds are the cause of those fatal accidents. Speed is no doubt a factor in accidents, but it’s rarely considered the factor leading to fatal crashes."
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mixture
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Public Safety, Transportation, Florida, Matt Caldwell,
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"As the Florida legislature neared the finish line this spring, some legislators were in a hurry to increase the speed limit on major highways to 75 mph. But there was plenty of debate about whether the state should put on the brakes. SB 392 cleared the Senate, but the House was split during its April 30 debate, with many arguing that the bill was moving too fast. House sponsor Rep. Matt Caldwell, R-Lehigh Acres, waved off opponents, disputing concerns that the higher speed posed a danger. (The legislation eventually passed 58-56.) ""I have yet to see any incontrovertible proof that speed, in and of itself, is the contributing factor to increasing fatalities,"" he said. We wondered: Is speed alone a factor in higher car crash fatalities? Let’s take this claim for a test drive. Pedal to the metal The first thing to note about the legislation is that it doesn’t decree an increase in the current 70 mph limit. Rather, Caldwell said, it allows the Florida Department of Transportation the ability to raise limits as high as 75 if they deem that advisable under the right conditions. So how do engineers determine the proper speed limit? They use something called the 85th percentile rule, a widely accepted formula that dictates the safest speed is the one at which 85 percent of drivers travel. (You can read more about the 85th percentile rule here.) Caldwell said that considering the speeds at which most Floridians travel, and given normal conditions (sunny, dry roads, etc. ), 75 was an acceptable limit. And he argued that raising the speed alone was not going to increase fatalities. ""There’s certainly a huge correlation between speed and accidents,"" he told PolitiFact Florida. ""The real question is whether that’s the real cause of accidents."" Factoring in more factors We checked with the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration and the Florida Department of Highway Safety, which both referred us to the Florida Highway Patrol, since they’re the ones who would have to deal with future increases in state speed limits. Public affairs officer Steve Gaskins said the FHP had reached out to other states that increased their speed limits and didn’t find a dramatic impact impact on the number of fatal crashes. Gaskins said there were three other factors that caused crashes: -- Impairment (drunken or drugged driving) -- Distraction (texting, talking, putting on makeup, etc.) -- Aggressiveness (swerving, road rage and so on) Russ Rader, the vice president of communications of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, said it was wrong to discount the effects of speed on a crash. He pointed specifically to a 2002 study that said 23 states that raised limits to 70 or 75 mph ended up with 35 and 38 percent more deaths per million vehicle miles traveled, respectively. But Rader acknowledged while speed is a problem, it’s not usually the only problem in fatal accidents. ""Crashes rarely have a solo cause. But higher speeds exacerbate other factors,"" he said. ""It’s clear from decades of research that when speed limits go up, crash risk goes up, and the crashes that happen are more likely to be deadly."" The Council of State Governments in 2013 noted that while lawmakers and researchers can agree higher speeds cause more deadly accidents because of the physics involved, ""Intense debate still surrounds the idea that speed-limit hikes alone make roadways more dangerous."" The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported last year that the number of speeding-related deaths through 2011 has been dropping steadily, but maintained a steady 31 or 32 percent of total fatal accidents over several years. Michael Knodler, associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst College of Engineering, agreed that blaming speed increases alone is a difficult way to frame a public safety discussion. ""This is certainly something up for debate. If you backed me into a corner I could defend either case,"" he said. Speed variance is a much more pertinent issue in fatal accidents, he said. If the speed limit is 70 and everyone’s going 90, for example, the difference in the speed among cars is the dangerous factor. Knodler did stop short at Caldwell’s use of ""incontrovertible,"" though, saying the concrete physics of increased speed proves that speed does cause more fatalities in accidents. Those two concerns -- differences in speed and the effects of higher speeds on the severity of accidents -- still don’t mean more fatal accidents will happen, University of Kentucky transportation engineering professor Reginald Souleyrette told PolitiFact Florida. Souleyrette worked on a 2005-10 study of Iowa’s move to increase their speed limit to 70. Initial findings showed there was a slight increase in fatal and serious accidents, but in the long run crash rates went down. ""If what the representative implies is true, there should be no speed limit at all. … He is correct if he is implying that we should set ‘appropriate’ speed limits. There is no magic safe speed,"" Souleyrette said. Our ruling Caldwell said he had ""yet to see any incontrovertible proof that speed, in and of itself, is the contributing factor to increasing fatalities."" Traffic studies and experts agree that higher speeds can lead to more fatalities in accidents, which makes Caldwell’s use of the word ""incontrovertible"" suspect. But opinions diverge when discussing whether higher speeds are the cause of those fatal accidents. Speed is no doubt a factor in accidents, but it’s rarely considered the factor leading to fatal crashes."
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11411
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What are you made of? The BOD POD knows all
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This story did a fine job of explaining the various ways body composition can be measured and what the measurement means and how it might be used. But a major shortcoming of the story was that it did not do a good job of providing a critical appraisal of the evidence behind the BOD POD device. Do we really know that it is worthwhile to measure our body fat percentage? At what cost? If it is so beneficial, why doesn’t my health care provider have a BOD POD in the office? What do clinical experts in body composition measurement say about the evidence that the BOD POD is a more useful tool than the body mass index? All unanswered, but important, questions for this story to address. This may be a case where our star ratings are deceptively high.
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true
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"The story had a sidebar explaining the cost of Bod Pod testing in Puget Sound locations ranges from $25 – 50. The story indicated one might benefit from the information generated by BOD POD measurement by helping set realistic weight loss goals. It did not actually provide the reader with any information about whether evidence exists demonstrating that it is of benefit for weight loss or improvement in adiposity-related risks. The story indicated that obtaining body composition information could be anxiety or guilt provoking. Although the story stated that ‘Data suggest the BOD POD is accurate’, it didn’t actually indicate what sort of evidence exists documenting this. While there may be evidence that the BOD POD is ""accurate"" the story did not state whether the evidence is solid or controversial. Most importantly, the story did not address the question as to whether there is any quality evidence that knowing your body fat percentage is truly helpful in improving your health. There also wasn’t any evidence presented about how effective it is to measure body fat percentage prior to engaging in a weight loss program in terms of whether it helps people lose weight. The story did not engage in overt disease mongering. In fact, it concluded that having the test is ""not a good idea if the number will be just one more thing to obsess over or feel guilty about."" Both professionals interviewed were from the private commercial sector – one from a center that uses the Bod Pod (hardly an independent voice on the topic) and one who is a book author. The story would have been enhanced with the inclusion of insight from a clear expert in the field of body composition assessment. The story did a very nice job of running through the various techniques for measuring body composition and even included a link to an online calculator of body mass index (BMI). The story explained that body composition measurement with the BOD POD is hard to find because there are few locations with the apparatus. The story accurately portrayed the BOD POD as a piece of equipment that had been around for a while. We can’t be sure if the story relied largely or solely on a news release."
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28860
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643,000 Americans declare bankruptcy over medical bills every year.
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In short, using some very specific analyses, one could make the case that (at least within the last several years) about 643,000 Americans declared bankruptcy annually due to medical bills. But the accuracy of those analyses is open to question, the playing field has changed significantly since they were undertaken (due to the implementation of the ACA), and it’s far from an absolute that the other countries listed in the meme experience zero medical-related bankruptcies.
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mixture
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Medical, bankruptcy, medical bankruptcy, meme math
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In April 2016, a meme was published by the Facebook page “The Other 98%” (among others) holding that 643,000 Americans declare bankruptcy over medical bills every year, while in a number of other first-world countries, bankruptcies over medical bills are non-existent (due to the implementation of national social health insurance/medical care systems in those other countries): At the fine print at the bottom of the meme was a citation: “Source: NerdWallet Health Analysis.” No link to the specific analysis referenced was provided, but presumably the item in question was a 19 July 2013 item published by NerdWallet pertaining to medical bankruptcies. However, in that analysis NerdWallet repeatedly stated that their findings were “estimates” or “extrapolations,” and some of their data were quite old even back in 2013. The primary portion of that article held that: “In 2013 over 20% of American adults are struggling to pay their medical bills, and three in five bankruptcies will be due to medical bills. While we are quick to blame debt on poor savings and bad spending habits, our study emphasizes the burden of health costs causing widespread indebtedness. Medical bills can completely overwhelm a family when illness strikes,” says Christina LaMontagne, VP of Health at NerdWallet. “Furthermore, 25 million people hesitate to take their medications in order to control their medical costs. Unfortunately this can lead to even worse financial outcomes as preventative treatments are not rendered and patients end up using expensive ambulance and ER care as their health worsens.” Finally, many question whether President Obama’s universal health insurance mandate will protect Americans from problems with medical bills. “Insurance is no silver bullet,” says LaMontagne. “Even with insurance coverage, we expect 10 million Americans will face bills they are unable to pay.” Although the “643,000” figure didn’t expressly appear in that article, if we take the number of bankruptcy filings in the U.S. in 2013 (1,032,236) and apply NerdWallet‘s statement that “three in five (60%) bankruptcies will be due to medical bills,” then we arrive at a number of medical bill-related bankruptcies (619,342) reasonably close to the 643,000 figure (although technically a bankruptcy filing can represent more than one person). Likewise, a 2013 CNBC item based on the 2013 NerdWallet Health Analysis included a chart showing the estimated total number of medical-related bankruptcies in the U.S. in 2013 to be 646,812, which is also quite close to the cited 643,000 figure: Since the number of bankruptcy filings in the U.S. is a matter of public record, the accuracy of this figure hinges on how reliable is the estimate that 60% of those filings are medical-related. In NerdWallet‘s “Methodology & Sources” section, the site said their medical bankruptcy estimates were based on a 2009 Harvard study, which in turn used bankruptcy data from 2007 and involved interviewing a random national sample of a bankruptcy filers: BACKGROUND: Our 2001 study in 5 states found that medical problems contributed to at least 46.2% of all bankruptcies. Since then, health costs and the numbers of un- and underinsured have increased, and bankruptcy laws have tightened. METHODS: We surveyed a random national sample of 2314 bankruptcy filers in 2007, abstracted their court records, and interviewed 1032 of them. We designated bankruptcies as “medical” based on debtors’ stated reasons for filing, income loss due to illness, and the magnitude of their medical debts. RESULTS: Using a conservative definition, 62.1% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were medical. NerdWallet themselves reported that they employed a more conservative estimate than the Harvard study figure regarding the proportion of bankruptcies that are medical-related: We relied on a widely cited Harvard study published in 2009. NerdWallet Health chose to include only bankruptcy explicitly tied to medical bills, excluding indirect reasons like lost work opportunities. Thus we conservatively estimated medical bankruptcy rates to be 57.1% (versus the authors’ 62.1%) of US bankruptcies. We also used official bankruptcy statistics, released this month through March 2013, from US Courts. Still, quantifying the occurrence of medical bankruptcies can be problematic, as noted in a January 2016 New York Times article on the subject: Research on medical bankruptcies has been controversial because it can be hard to untangle how medical bills fit into a family’s overall pattern of financial troubles. Twenty-nine percent of the people with medical bill problems said a family member had been forced to stop working or cut back on hours. (On the other side, about 41 percent of people said they’d taken on extra work to help pay bills.) “Is that a job problem or a medical bill problem?” said David Himmelstein, a professor of public health at the City University of New York’s Hunter College School of Public Health who has studied medical bankruptcies. “It’s both of those things.” However, that article also factored in a large development that occurred after NerdWallet‘s 2013 analysis: the activation of major provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (also known as PPACA, ACA, or Obamacare): The [ACA] has led to a decline in the number of Americans suffering financial stress from health problems, thanks to the new options for receiving coverage, especially for the poor. But the problem is still widespread, touching roughly a quarter of Americans under 65, when the insured and uninsured are looked at together. Americans older than 65 are covered by Medicare, which more frequently protects people from major financial trouble. Unlike other polls, which have focused on the ways that insurance affects health care, the new Times-Kaiser survey explored the effects of medical bills on people’s daily lives well beyond the medical system. We found that medical bills don’t just keep people from filling prescriptions and scheduling doctors’ visits. They can also prompt deep financial and personal sacrifices, affecting their housing, employment, credit and daily lives. The potentially ameliorating effect of the ACA on bankruptcies was also cited by a July 2015 Wall Street Journal article which (in part) described research into medical bankruptcy done by Northeastern University law professor Daniel Austin: So what does Prof. Austin think will happen with mandatory health care in all 50 states? Could the system designed to give people access to affordable health insurance make families more financially stable and keep them out of bankruptcy? “It absolutely should show a reduction in bankruptcies [filed] due to medical debt,” Prof. Austin said in an interview. Plenty of studies have pinpointed medical debt as the No. 1 reason why people turn to bankruptcy for a fresh start. In rallying for health-care reform in his 2009 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama said that 62.1% of consumer bankruptcies are medical bankruptcies, citing a study Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) co-wrote as a Harvard law professor. Prof. Austin’s study found the percentage of medical bankruptcies to be far smaller. Overall, 18% to 25% of personal bankruptcies filed in the U.S. were prompted by medical debt. But even prior to the implementation of the ACA, some sources questioned the true impact of medical debt on bankruptcy rates. A 2012 piece published by The Hill compared rates of bankruptcy between the United States and Canada (the latter a country with single-payer healthcare system): It’s difficult to conclude that bankrupt folks are awash in healthcare debt when nearly 90 percent of their obligations are unrelated to health care … Will ObamaCare’s increased regulation of the healthcare marketplace help put an end to the phenomenon? Data from countries with government-run healthcare systems suggest not. Consider Canada. Our neighbor to the north features a government-run, single-payer healthcare system where private insurance is outlawed for procedures covered under the law. So you’d think that Canada would have a lower rate of bankruptcy than the United States, what with one big potential cause of bankruptcy — the cost of health care — absorbed by the government. But according to researchers at the Fraser Institute, a nonpartisan Canadian think tank, bankruptcy rates are statistically the same on both sides of the 49th parallel. In both the United States and Canada, less than one-third of 1 percent of families file for bankruptcy each year. Further, even with a socialized healthcare system, some Canadians go bankrupt because of medical expenses. Approximately 15 percent of bankrupt Canadian seniors — those 55 and older — cited medical reasons, including uninsured expenses, as the main culprit for their insolvency. Canada wasn’t the only country in which the presence of single-payer healthcare reportedly wasn’t a total shield against bankruptcies (medical-related or otherwise). A 2010 World Health Organization (WHO) paper [PDF] found that: Outside of the US, research on links between over-indebtedness and health has been quite limited to date, consisting largely of rankings of factors in consumer debt. For instance, within the United Kingdom, sickness or disability accounted for 5% of households in financial difficulties in 2002. A ranking of causes of over-indebtedness and private bankruptcy in Germany found that “psychological problems” and “own sickness”, if added together, would rank in fourth place of reasons for over-indebtedness and private bankruptcy. There have been a number of interesting recent studies in Germany on the subject. These have found a high risk of mental disorders among those facing the threat of over-indebtedness as well as the association of over-indebtedness with an increased prevalence of overweight and obesity apart from traditional socioeconomic factors. Additionally, there is evidence that over-indebted persons refrain from seeking medical treatment or purchasing prescriptions even under Germany’s health system. One-third of participants in a study of insolvency counseling services in Rhineland–Palatinate indicated that their financial difficulties were a result of accident, illness or addiction.
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4715
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6th fatality linked to Eastern Equine Encephalitis reported.
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Michigan health authorities are reporting a 6th fatality linked to Eastern Equine Encephalitis.
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true
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Health, Kalamazoo, Michigan, St. Joseph
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Berrien County Health Department officials said Monday the victim was one of two people who contracted the mosquito borne virus. The death occurred Saturday. Cases of Eastern Equine Encephalitis first appeared in West Michigan at the end of August. The virus has been reported in Barry, Berrien, Calhoun, Cass, Kalamazoo and Van Buren counties. The outbreak has resulted in 10 human cases and 46 animal cases. Dr. Joneigh Khaldun of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services says the risk from the virus continues because there hasn’t been a sustained period of freezing temperatures. He says residents in the affected areas should continue to take precautions against mosquito bites.
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13877
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Do you know what the second sport with the most concussions is? Women’s soccer… And the third most dangerous sport? Cheerleading.
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Drew Brees says women's soccer, cheerleading pose concussion risks second only to football
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mixture
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Health Care, Sports, Women, Texas, Drew Brees,
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"Drew Brees, the New Orleans Saints quarterback headed into his 16th NFL season, insists he doesn’t fret about concussions. But the Austin native, who led the Westlake High School Chaparrals to a state football championship in 1996, stirred our curiosity in his June 2016 interview with Kirk Bohls of the Austin American-Statesman when he said: ""Do you know what the second sport with the most concussions is? Women’s soccer. But do you see anyone telling their daughters not to play soccer? And the third most dangerous sport? Cheerleading. You understand the risk with every sport you play."" Our attempts to draw Brees’ backup information failed. But we took him to be saying women’s soccer and cheerleading rank second and third, respectively, in the incidence of concussions. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, we confirmed that football consistently poses the greatest concussion risks. Women's or girls soccer, which has surged in popularity since the 1980s, often places a distant second by this metric, we found, with the chances of a concussion from cheerleading much lower. Women's soccer As we looked into the soccer portion of Brees' claim, experts pointed out a 2014 report, ""Sports-related Concussions in Youth,"" sponsored by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with backing from the National Football League, the Department of Defense and the National Institutes of Health. The report, collating several studies, said: ""Soccer, lacrosse, and basketball are associated with the highest rates of reported concussions for U.S. female athletes at the high school and college levels."" A report chart shows that according to four studies of concussions in sports, football consistently placed first with six to 11.2 concussions per 10,000 ""athletic exposures,"" a term meaning the number of practices and competitions in which an individual actively participates (i.e., in which he or she is exposed to the possibility of athletic injury). Significantly, two of the cited studies showed women’s soccer with the second-highest concussion rate, 3.6 or 3.5 per 10,000 athletic exposures while the sport was close to No. 2 in the other studies. Per one study, men’s lacrosse had higher concussion rates and in the other, men’s hockey and men’s and women’s lacrosse had higher rates. The chart: SOURCE: Chart in report, ""Sports-related Concussions in Youth,"" National Academies Press, 2014 In a 2015 report, Dawn Comstock, a professor at the Colorado School of Public Health, and others synthesized nearly 50 studies to pinpoint the causes of concussions among American youth soccer players. According to a summary, the authors found that contact with another player was the most common cause with heading the ball the reason for 25 percent of concussions among girls."
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16076
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"Since the United States began negotiations with Iran, ""that's probably the first year and a half in which Iran has not advanced its nuclear program in the last decade."
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"Obama said that we have seen ""probably the first year and a half in which Iran has not advanced its nuclear program in the last decade."" The agreement signed in November 2013 has made it harder for Iran to produce weapons-grade nuclear material. International observers report that Iran complied with the terms of the temporary agreement. The amount of enriched uranium is less, and the country’s facilities to produce weapons-grade material has been curtailed. But that does not mean the country has completely stopped all activities that could produce nuclear weapons material in the future. There is also concern about broader aspects of a nuclear weapons program, such as weapons design and missile development."
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true
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National, Foreign Policy, Nuclear, Barack Obama,
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"When you close out the year by ditching America’s 50-year isolation of Cuba, you can expect a few broader questions about your style on the international stage. President Barack Obama said in a year-end interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley that he has been ""consistent in saying that where we can solve problems diplomatically, we should do so."" Crowley pressed Obama to respond to the charge that he is too willing to cut deals that produce little in return for the United States. ""The gist of it is that you're naive and they're rolling you,"" Crowley said, speaking of other world leaders. Obama shot back that on a couple of major fronts, his track record is looking pretty good. Russia now has a crisis on its hands as its economy stalls and the value of the ruble tumbles. On Iran, the president said there have been real gains. ""Over the last year and a half, since we began negotiations with them, that's probably the first year and a half in which Iran has not advanced its nuclear program in the last decade,"" Obama said. The fear that Iran is developing nuclear weapons, a charge that Iran denies, has bedeviled the international community for over 15 years. We decided to take a closer look at whether Iran’s program has advanced or not. We found general agreement that in terms of curtailing the means to produce enriched uranium and plutonium, the essential fuels needed for an atomic bomb, negotiations between the United States, Iran and other United Nations countries contributed to real progress. However, some analysts define Iran’s nuclear program more broadly to include suspected efforts to design nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles. The negotiations don’t address those elements, however, and what Iran is doing or has done in that area is subject to much debate. By way of refresher, in November 2013, the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, and Iran signed an agreement that temporarily stopped or rolled back Iran’s production of potentially weapons grade nuclear material. In November 2014, that agreement was extended by four months, with some additional restrictions on Iran. In exchange, Iran has been able to sell more of its oil and gain access to millions of dollars that had been frozen in overseas bank accounts. The key elements in the agreements Negotiators focused on nuclear fuel. This had three main aspects. Stopping the production and accumulation of uranium enriched to the 20 percent level of the isotope U-235 and converting a large fraction of what it had to a form harder to use in a weapon. Stop the installation of additional centrifuge machines at Iran’s two enrichment facilities. Centrifuges are essential to the enrichment process. Put the brakes on construction of Iran’s heavy water reactor in Arak. If it were operational, this reactor could produce enough plutonium in its spent fuel for one to two nuclear warheads. Importantly, Iran agreed to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. That agency has found that Iran complied with the terms of the original November 2013 agreement. In its November 2014 report, the agency said, ""All of the enrichment related activities at Iran’s declared facilities are under Agency safeguards, and all of the nuclear material, installed cascades, and feed and withdrawal stations at those facilities are subject to Agency containment and surveillance."" To be clear, Iran continues to enrich uranium, but only to the level of 5 percent of U-235, a form that falls well short of the needs of weapon makers. Regarding heavy water facilities, the IAEA said that Iran had not stopped all work across all of its heavy water projects, but it had not installed any major components. What the experts say As far as nuclear material is concerned, the experts we reached said the agreements successfully, though perhaps only temporarily, curtailed production. ""When President Obama says that for the first time in the past decade Iran has not advanced its nuclear program he is correct,"" said Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, a research group that advocates for arms control policies. ""Leading up to the interim deal, Iran had nearly amassed enough 20 percent enriched uranium gas, which when further enriched to weapons grade is enough for one bomb."" That material is no longer available, Kimball said. Matthew Bunn, a principal investigator with the Project on Managing the Atom at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, also said Obama basically has it right on Iran. ""They don’t have any more equipment in place for producing bomb material than they had a year and a half ago,"" Bunn said. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington-based group that aims to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, offered a more qualified view. Albright called progress on enrichment, centrifuges and the heavy water facilities in Arak, a ""great accomplishment."" But Albright noted that, ""Iran continues to run almost 10,000 centrifuges, enriching and stockpiling 3.5 percent low enriched uranium."" And Iran’s research on advanced centrifuges, with limits, is ongoing. Albright is also concerned that Iran has so far not allowed the international inspectors the access they need to learn more about any nuclear weapons research Iran had in the past. Matthew Kroenig, a professor of international relations at Georgetown University, also focused on the weapons side of the equation. Kroenig noted that the agreements that limited and rolled back the production of nuclear-grade material were silent on this front. ""Iran's missile production continues, and we are uncertain about the nuclear weapons design work, although many experts believe that continues as well,"" Kroenig said. But Kroenig also described curtailing the production of nuclear fuel as the ""most important"" piece of the nonproliferation effort with Iran. Two notes on the time elements mentioned in Obama’s comments. He said this is the first time in a decade that Iran’s nuclear program did not advance. Iran restarted its uranium enrichment program in 2005. That would mean it has been a bit over nine years. Also, the president’s year and a half is a bit of a stretch. The first agreement with Iran was signed barely over a year ago, although the terms were announced earlier. Our ruling Obama said that we have seen ""probably the first year and a half in which Iran has not advanced its nuclear program in the last decade."" The agreement signed in November 2013 has made it harder for Iran to produce weapons-grade nuclear material. International observers report that Iran complied with the terms of the temporary agreement. The amount of enriched uranium is less, and the country’s facilities to produce weapons-grade material has been curtailed. But that does not mean the country has completely stopped all activities that could produce nuclear weapons material in the future. There is also concern about broader aspects of a nuclear weapons program, such as weapons design and missile development."
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6580
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Delhi shuts schools, halts construction to tackle pollution.
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India’s capital announced a slew of measures Sunday to combat the crippling air pollution that has engulfed the city, including closing down schools, halting construction and ordering that all roads be doused with water to settle dust.
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true
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Health, India, Air pollution, Asia Pacific, Smog, New Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal, Pollution
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New Delhi, one of the world’s dirtiest cities, saw levels of PM2.5 — tiny particulate matter that can clog lungs — soar to over 900 micrograms per cubic meter on Saturday. That’s more than 90 times the level considered safe by the World Health Organization and 15 times the Indian government’s norms. The severe weekend pollution followed a week of constant gray smog. New Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, told reporters after an emergency meeting of his Cabinet on Sunday that schools would be shut for three days, and all construction and demolition activity halted for at least five days. He also said a coal-fueled power plant on the edges of the city would be shut for 10 days. The other measures announced include a 10-day ban on the use of all diesel-powered electricity generators, except at places such as hospitals and cellphone towers. Starting Thursday, all major roads in the city will be vacuum cleaned once a week, Kejriwal said. The chief minister also said people should avoid going outdoors until the pollution levels drop and should try to work from home as much as possible. New Delhi’s air pollution soars during the cooler winter months, bringing health troubles to millions, especially children and older people. Kejriwal said that a major contributor to New Delhi’s pollution is the crop fires in neighboring states. At the start of every winter, farmers in the states of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh begin burning straw from their rice paddy crop to clear the fields for planting wheat. The Centre for Science and Environment, a New Delhi-based research and lobbying organization, said government data shows that the smog that has covered the city for the last week is the worst in 17 years. Over the last few years, New Delhi’s government has tried a handful of methods to control air pollution, including stricter emission norms for cars and a tax on diesel-fueled trucks that enter the city. It has also barred the burning of leaves and garbage in the city. Earlier this year, the city reduced the number of cars on the roads during the winter months, when air quality is at its worst. Twice the city imposed a two-week period in which cars were allowed on the roads only on even or odd days, depending on the vehicle’s license plate number. On Sunday, Kejriwal said that the government was assessing whether it needed to reduce the number of cars again.
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2565
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California health officials sound alarm over hookah smoking.
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California public health officials warned on Thursday of a sharp rise in tobacco smoking from hookahs, and a proliferation of cafes and lounges offering the Middle Eastern-style water pipes, which experts say can be at least as harmful as cigarettes.
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true
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Health News
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Hookah smoking among Californians jumped more than 40 percent between 2005 and 2008, said Dr. Ron Chapman, the state director of public health, citing a 2011 state tobacco survey published in the American Journal of Public Health. He said the trend was particularly pronounced among college-age adults, with nearly a quarter of men 18 to 24 years old reporting they had used a hookah at least once, according to the same study. Experts say the growing popularity of hookahs has been fueled in part by a perception that the water pipes are more socially acceptable than cigarettes and the erroneous belief that inhaling tobacco smoke drawn through the water filters out some of its toxins. But smoke from hookah tobacco — which comes in such flavors as apple, strawberry, honey and mint — retains all the carcinogens of cigarette smoke while adding more carbon monoxide and extra carcinogens from the use of burning coals that are used to keep the nicotine flowing, health officials say. During a typical hour-long session, a hookah user inhales 100 to 200 times the volume of smoke inhaled from a single cigarette, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “There is a very, very concerning misperception about the use of hookahs among youth, thinking it’s somehow safer. In fact, it puts you at the same risk,” Chapman said. The warning came as Chapman announced an anti-smoking advertising campaign aimed at those most likely to light up - low-income, minority youth, especially African-Americans. While California has in many ways led the nation in discouraging smoking, “tobacco use is still the No. 1 cause of death and disease in California,” he said. Tobacco kills nearly 34,000 Californians a year and leads to annual healthcare costs of $6.5 billion, or $400 for each state taxpayer, he said. Although pubs and restaurants in California have banned smoking since 1998, hookah bars and cafes are permitted under exemptions for owner-operated tobacco shops or other businesses where no food or beverages are sold without employees or staff, said Corey Egel, a state public health department spokesman. The growing popularity of hookahs among young adults in California mirrors a broader trend nationwide. A study in May by the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine of 152 universities nationwide found that over 30 percent of students had smoked tobacco from a hookah during the previous month. Hookah smoking, which originated in Persia and India, has seen a resurgence in Middle Eastern countries and elsewhere, too, with water pipes referred to as narguila in Syria, Lebanon and Turkey and as sheesha in Egypt.
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2942
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Trebling tobacco tax 'could prevent 200 million early deaths'.
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Trebling tobacco tax globally would cut smoking by a third and prevent 200 million premature deaths this century from lung cancer and other diseases, researchers said on Wednesday.
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true
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Health News
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In a review in the New England Journal of Medicine, scientists from the charity Cancer Research UK (CRUK) said hiking taxes by a large amount per cigarette would encourage people to quit smoking altogether rather than switch to cheaper brands, and help stop young people from taking up the habit. As well as causing lung cancer, which is often fatal, smoking is the largest cause of premature death from chronic conditions like heart disease, stroke and high blood pressure. Tobacco kills around 6 million people a year now, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), and that toll is expected to rise above 8 million a year by 2030 if nothing is done to curb smoking rates. Richard Peto, an epidemiologist at CRUK who led the study, said aggressively increasing tobacco taxes would be especially effective in poorer and middle-income countries where the cheapest cigarettes are relatively affordable. Of the 1.3 billion people around the world who smoke, most live in poorer countries where often governments have also not yet introduced smoke-free legislation. But increasing tobacco tax would also be effective in richer countries, Peto said, citing evidence from France, which he said halved cigarette consumption from 1990 to 2005 by raising taxes well above inflation. “The two certainties in life are death and taxes. We want higher tobacco taxes and fewer tobacco deaths,” he said in a statement. “It would help children not to start, and it would help many adults to stop while there’s still time.” While smokers lose at least 10 years of life, quitting before age 40 avoids more than 90 percent of the increased health risk run by people who continue smoking. Stopping before age 30 avoids more than 97 percent of the risk. Governments around the world have agreed to prioritize reducing premature deaths from cancer and other chronic diseases in the United Nations General Assembly and in the WHO’s World Health Assembly in 2013. They also agreed to a target of reducing smoking by a third by 2025. The CRUK analysis found that doubling the price of cigarettes in the next decade through increased taxes would cut worldwide consumption by about a third by that target, and at the same time increase annual government revenues from tobacco by a third from around $300 billion to $400 billion. This extra income, the researchers suggested, could be spent on boosting health care budgets. Peto noted that the international tobacco industry makes about $50 billion in profits each year, saying this equated to “approximately $10,000 per death from smoking”. “Worldwide, around half a billion children and adults under the age of 35 are already - or soon will be - smokers, and many will be hooked on tobacco for life. So there’s an urgent need for governments to find ways to stop people starting and to help smokers give up,” said Harpal Kumar, CRUK’s chief executive. He said the study, which examined 63 research papers on the causes and consequences of tobacco use in many different countries, showed tobacco taxes are “a hugely powerful lever”. They are also potentially a triple win, Kumar said, cutting the number of people who smoke and die from their addiction, reducing the health care burden and costs linked to smoking and at the same time increasing government income.
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5850
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Wisconsin sees increase in reports of STDs.
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Wisconsin saw an increase of about 13 percent in reported chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis cases in 2016, according to a report from the state Department of Health Services.
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true
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Sexually transmitted diseases, Wisconsin, Chlamydia, Health, Gonorrhea, Syphilis, Public health
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Brandon Kufalk, a public health educator with the agency’s Sexually Transmitted Diseases Control Section, told Wisconsin Public Radio that the increase may be due to more testing. The state had more than 26,400 chlamydia cases, more than 6,600 gonorrhea cases and more than 400 syphilis cases last year. All three STDs can be treated with antibiotics. The data can help public health officials identify communities that may need testing for sexually transmitted diseases. “In some ways it’s good because obviously the more cases that we find, the more we’re able to stop the spread to other people,” Kufalk said. People who test positive for an STD are encouraged to have their sexual partners seek testing and get medication. Southeastern Wisconsin had the most reported cases in the state, with more than 19,000. Specific groups, such as 20- to 24-year-olds or African-Americans, have higher infection rates than other groups. These communities are typically the focus of testing efforts or funding, Kufalk said. “If we can concentrate some resources in that area, we can help reduce the overall rate for everybody,” he said. The nation as a whole saw an increase in STDs in 2016, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ___ Information from: Wisconsin Public Radio, http://www.wpr.org
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11006
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Watching a diet’s progress
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This was the second of a four-part NBC Today show series on the experiences of individuals engaging in weight loss programs. This segment was about the Weight Watcher’s program and provided some useful information about the skills gained through participation in the program that may better enable a person to lose weight. It could be seen from the example of the person followed that weight loss is not automatic and that it doesn’t proceed at breakneck speed. There was acknowledgement that weight loss can be difficult and it is not uncommon for it to proceed with fits and starts. However – the value of this segment would have been greatly enhanced if information had been included about the short and long term benefits associated with this strategy for weight loss; comparing its effectiveness to other approaches would have enabled viewers to better assess its value. We got a very brief and sketchy comparison at the end between WW and Jenny Craig – but far short of what we expected from all of this airtime. The glaring missing pieces are the failure in both of the first two parts of this series to include evidence supporting short and long term efficacy, and quantification of treatment benefits (beyond the experience of one person). In addition, the addition of comment from a researcher in the field of diet and obesity would provide much needed balance and information.
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mixture
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"There was a graphic that indicated the costs involved in participating in this weight loss program. Although there was good discussion about some important features of the program beyond simple limitation of caloric intake today (i.e. psychological, behavioral change, tools for weight loss and maintenance of weight loss) that the Weight Watcher’s program provides, the story did not provide quantitative data about weight loss achieved through the Weight Watcher’s program. To its credit, this story acknowledged that this sort of program ‘doesn’t work for everyone’ and provided some discussion about the types of people for whom the program is less likely to work. It would have been interesting to include some estimate about what proportion of the population interested in losing weight for whom this program might be predicted to work. There was some discussion that for people with ‘complicated medical histories’, Weight Watchers was likely not an appropriate first place to go for help with weight loss. While discussing that the Weight Watcher’s program utilizes an assigned point system as its method of limiting caloric intake, the story did not provide data about the percentages of people using the program who successfully lose weight and/or maintain the weight that they have lost. Even if such numbers do not exist, it would be good to have an above-board acknowledgement of that. The segment would have benefited from the inclusion of an expert to comment on the short and long term efficacy of the Weight Watcher’s program as well as provide some quantification of treatment benefit beyond the experience of the single woman profiled. The story opened with a disease mongering segment, leading off with ""It’s a health hazard across America…. "", which was unfortunate because the overall tone of this piece was very balanced. The segment should have included the medical definition of obesity to insure that viewers had a clear understanding of the level of excess weight that was being addressed. The story, to it’s credit, did not make use of a company spokesperson from Weight Watchers and instead, relied on a consumer who had participated in the program and a certified dietician/nutritionist. This piece would have been greatly enhanced by including a researcher who could have commented on the effectiveness of this weight loss program and compared its results with those attained through other approaches to weight loss. After two segments in a four-part series, wer’e starting to wonder: is the same dietician/nutritionist going to appear in all four segments? And why her? How was she chosen? Although there was still no mention about the spectrum of options available to aid people with weight loss,this portion of the series did a much better job than yesterday’s segment about discussion the components of the Weight Watcher’s program contribution to weight loss and weight loss maintenance and how this compared to the approach of the Jenny Craig program. The story had a graphic with information about the availability of this weight loss program and mentioned on-line access to the program as well. There was not a complete discussion about the history of the Weight Watcher’s program, but there were no claims made about Weight Watcher’s being a novel approach to weight loss. This story did not appear to rely on a press release."
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36624
|
"A medical committee withheld a heart transplant from a woman saying that she needed to have at least $10,000 for immunosuppressant medication and suggested ""a fundraising effort."
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Did a Medical Committee Recommend Fundraising for a Heart Transplant?
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true
|
Fact Checks, Health / Medical, Politics, Viral Content
|
In November 2018, a Grand Rapids, Michigan woman who needed a heart transplant due to complications from chemotherapy was turned down by a Spectrum Health medical committee due to lack of funds:Martin’s son, Alex Britt, said she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2005 and the chemotherapy treatment, while curing her cancer, damaged her heart to the extent that she requires a transplant and had to leave her job on disability. Britt said she walked dogs and would pet-sit to raise funds.Martin said she was supposed to have a procedure Monday for an assistive device to help sustain her while waiting for a new heart. At the time, Martin had already raised $4,600 on GoFundMe for her prior medical bills.Britt set up a new GoFundMe page to raise the additional $10,000 needed to cover the cost of the immunosuppressive drugs. The medical center reportedly would not consider Martin for a heart transplant without her being able to pay for the drugs.The letter to Hedda Martin reportedly said, in part:Your medical situation was presented to our multidisciplinary heart transplant committee on Tuesday, October 20, 2018. The decision made by the committee is that you are not a candidate at this time for a heart transplant due to needing a more secure financial plan for immunosuppressive medication coverage. The Committee is recommending a fundraising effort of $10,000.The story went viral when it was shared by Rep-Elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York):Insurance groups are recommending GoFundMe as official policy – where customers can die if they can’t raise the goal in time – but sure, single payer healthcare is unreasonable.h/t @DanRiffle pic.twitter.com/zetPW0MgDd— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 24, 2018The story is true. Spectrum Health acknowledged the letter in a lengthy statement on their official website, although the organization stopped short of discussing Martin’s specific circumstances:It is important for patients to understand the long-term commitment they are making when accepting an organ donation. For this reason, we strive to ensure each patient is the best match so the donation contributes to a renewed life.Each transplant candidate is evaluated by our highly-skilled multidisciplinary team of physicians, nurses, social workers, clinical ethicists, dieticians and other experts. Transplant eligibility is a complex process. It requires consideration of a multitude of factors based on established best practice standards used by transplant centers across the country. Physical health, psychological and social well-being, and financial resources are among the factors considered for each patient. The ability to pay for post-transplant care and life-long immunosuppression medications is essential to increase the likelihood of a successful transplant and longevity of the transplant recipient. We help patients understand the long-term health implications of a transplant along with their total financial commitment, such as post-transplant medication expenses paid to pharmacies of their choice.Martin’s GoFundMe has raised more than enough to cover the costs of the immunosuppressant medication she needs, but her story is far from unusual. At least a third of the money raised on GoFundMe in 2017 was to help with medical issues, because health care costs in the United States are so high:It’s become a go-to way for people in need to help pay their doctors. Medical fundraisers now account for 1 in 3 of the website’s campaigns, and they bring in more money than any other GoFundMe category, said GoFundMe CEO Rob Solomon.“In the old paradigm you would give $20 to somebody who needed help,” Solomon said. “In the new paradigm, you’ll give $20, you’ll share that and that could turn into 10, 20, 50 or 100 people doing that. So, the $20 could turn in hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.”Since at least 2017, a majority of Americans have listed access to affordable healthcare as one of their most pressing concerns.
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35410
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A photograph shows the damage to a person's lung from the COVID-19 coronavirus disease.
|
“A lung transplant was her only chance for survival,” says Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the Northwestern Medicine Lung Transplant Program. “We are one of the first health systems to successfully perform a lung transplant on a patient recovering from COVID-19. We want other transplant centers to know that while the transplant procedure in these patients is quite technically challenging, it can be done safely, and it offers the terminally ill COVID-19 patients another option for survival.”
|
true
|
Medical, COVID-19
|
On June 11, 2020, a disturbing photograph purportedly showing a lung that had been removed from a COVID-19 patient started to circulate on social media: This is a genuine photograph of a lung removed from such a patient. The picture was shared in a news release from Chicago’s Northwestern Memorial Hospital after surgeons there performed a successful double-lung transplant on a COVID-19 coronavirus patient, an otherwise healthy woman in her 20s. Northwestern Medical writes: For the first time, surgeons at Northwestern Medicine performed a double-lung transplant on a patient whose lungs were damaged by COVID-19. The patient, a Hispanic woman in her 20s, spent six weeks in the COVID ICU on a ventilator and extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a life support machine that does the work of the heart and lungs. By early June, the patient’s lungs showed irreversible damage. The lung transplant team listed her for a double-lung transplant, and 48 hours later, performed the life-saving procedure at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
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33504
|
Popular R&B singer Ciara was born male.
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If the issue hadn’t been settled by then, Ciara’s pregnancy in 2014 should have put this particular rumor to rest.
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false
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Entertainment, ciara, music
|
Back in 2005, Ciara Harris was an 18-year-old who performed under the stage name of Ciara and was dubbed the First Lady of “Crunk & B,” a genre of music described as a grinding, dance floor-friendly alternative to R&B. Her 2004 album, “Goodies,” topped the charts, and she was nominated at the 19th annual Soul Train Music Awards in four categories, including best R&B/soul single, female (“Goodies”) and best R&B/soul or rap new artist. She was beautiful and talented. And around that time someone tied a salacious rumor to her — that she was born male but had been altered through surgical means to have the appearance of a female: I have been hearing from many people that the hip-hop artist Ciara used to be a man and had to have a sex change. Even more, I heard that she stated it on national televison! There has been rumor around the internet that hip-hop artist, Ciara, was once a hermaphrodite until the age of 11, when she had surgery to remove her male “appendages.” I have heard a rumor that the R&B star, Ciara, was born male. That he/she decided that he wanted to be a female at the age of 5, and his mother let him grow his hair out. I was told that he had surgery, so he no longer has a penis. And apparently he/she was on Oprah having an in depth conversation about it, along with discussing it in a magazine article. This rumor hit our inbox in a number of forms: (NOTE: ‘Intersexual’ is the preferred medical term for persons of ambiguous gender, replacing ‘hermaphrodite.’) The assertion that Ciara announced her transformation from male to female on the Oprah Winfrey Show is false: we found no record of her ever having appeared as a guest on that program at the time this rumor was current. Many urban legends that feature a shocking revelation being made on a television show identify Oprah’s as the one where it was voiced (e.g., designer Liz Claiborne confides she doesn’t design for African-American women because “their hips are too big,” designer Tommy Hilfiger states “If I knew that blacks and Asians were going to wear my clothes, I would have never designed them,” the CEO of Procter & Gamble admits his company tithes ten per cent of its revenues to the Church of Satan). The singer herself denied the rumor, with the New York Daily News quoting her as saying R&B sensation Ciara just wants everyone to know: She’s all woman. “You know what’s funny? The rumor that I used to be a man,” she told us at the launch party for Vibe Vixen magazine at Frederick’s. “They said Oprah said that on her show,” she laughed. “I’ve never been on Oprah in my life — we all know I have years before I go on Oprah, so come on!” Confusion between the songstress Ciara and a transsexual in Ireland who shares that name name may well have worked to create this rumor. Ireland’s Ciara was born in 1968 (about 20 years before the birth of the popular Crunk & B singer). The Emerald Isle’s Ciara came into this world male, but in 1999 he was surgically transformed into a female. Online searches for ‘ciara’ quickly found the Irish Ciara’s web page, which chronicled her experience of being surgically regendered. Perhaps the rumor about a talented young singer therefore properly lay at the feet of someone who could not conceive of there being more than one person in the world bearing that particular given name. Degrees of intersexuality vary in intensity from presence of an additional Y chromosome to being born with a mixed set of genitals. Treatment of cases of blatant intersexuality is generally (but not always) surgical in nature, with reconstruction performed on the infant patient to add or remove body parts so as to end up with a child completely male or female in physical appearance. Hormones are also given towards this end, but there is a limit to what can be corrected medically. Though an appearance of sexual normalcy can be constructed, fully functional reproductive organs cannot. According to Dr. Anne Fausto-Sterling, a recognized expert in this field of study, 1-1/2 to 2 percent of all births do not fall strictly within the tight definition of all-male or all-female, even if the child looks “normal.” In reaching her numbers, Dr. Fausto-Sterling is counting all incidents of intersexuality, from mild to extreme. The incidence of children with mixed genitalia is pegged at 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 3,000, or 0.033 to 0.05 percent of all births.
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21920
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Anywhere in the world, when someone uses a mobile phone, e-mail, the Internet or GPS, they are enjoying the benefits of the American miracle.
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Rubio says mobile phone, e-mail, Internet, GPS stem from 'American miracle'
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true
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Science, Technology, Florida, Marco Rubio,
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"U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio used his first speech on the Senate floor, on June 14, 2011, to evoke the American dream. The so-called maiden speech is a ""big deal for a senator,"" said fellow Florida Sen. Bill Nelson — and Rubio went for big ideas. ""America is not perfect,"" said the freshman Republican, the child of Cuban immigrants. ""... But since her earliest days, America has inspired people from all over the world. Inspired them with the hope that one day their own countries would be one like this one. Many others decided they could not wait. And so they came here from everywhere, to pursue their dreams and to work to leave their children better off than themselves. And the result was the American miracle."" As he held the floor for nearly 15 minutes, Rubio highlighted rags-to-riches stories that he said happen ""only in America,"" describing the founders of Nordstrom, Mattel and eBay. When he finished, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., commended him, saying, ""No one expresses American exceptionalism better than Sen. Rubio."" Rubio traced America’s role in the 20th century, from two world wars to the Cold War and the defeat of communism. Then he turned to other contributions: While our military and foreign policy contributions helped save the world, it was our economic and cultural innovations that helped transform it. The fruits of the American miracle can be found in the daily lives of people everywhere. Anywhere in the world, when someone uses a mobile phone, e-mail, the Internet or GPS, they are enjoying the benefits of the American miracle. Anywhere in the world, when a bone marrow, lung or heart transplant saves a life, they are touched by the value of the American miracle. And on one night in July of 1969, the whole world witnessed the American miracle firsthand. For on that night an American walked on the surface of the moon, and it was clear to the whole world that these Americans… could do anything. We briefly considered wading into fringe conspiracy theories about whether astronauts actually walked on the moon, but got control of ourselves. We were more curious about his other technology claims. Were Americans truly the ones responsible for innovation of the mobile phone, e-mail, the Internet and the global positioning system? We dropped a line to Rubio spokesman Alex Burgos, who provided us with links about inventors of the mobile phone, e-mail, the Internet and GPS. Indeed, stories from The Telegraph (via Huffington Post), NPR, the Internet Society, PBS and MITnews identify American origins for all four technologies. But these are complex systems that have developed over time. We wondered: Was there more to the story? Mobile phone A lot fits under the umbrella ""mobile phone"" -- including, say, early radio technology that led to car phones by the 1940s. But Rubio’s spokesman pointed to the inventor of the first portable cellular phone, which is fine by us. (Did you think of dawn-of-the-1900s ship-to-shore communication when Rubio said ""mobile phone""? We didn’t think so.) Martin Cooper worked for Illinois company Motorola as it developed the DynaTAC phone and the cellular network behind it in the early 1970s. The lead engineer for the team that developed the phone, Martin made the first wireless call from Manhattan in 1973. The FCC approved the phone -- the world’s first commercial portable cell phone -- for regular folks in 1983. Now, Japan and some European countries were quicker to deploy cellular networks, in the late ‘70s and very early ‘80s. But Paul Levinson, a Fordham University professor who wrote the 2004 book ""Cellphone: The Story of the World's Most Mobile Medium and How It Has Transformed Everything!"" says it’s the phone that matters. ""That was the breakthrough,"" he said ""There were several different companies and scientists working on it. … But no one believed that it could be done. … So everything that came afterwards was based on that first breakthrough."" An American breakthrough. Score one for Rubio. Internet & E-mail We read the work from the Internet Society and PBS that Burgos sent our way, then exchanged messages with Stephen Stein, who teaches the history of technology at the University of Memphis. Computer networks that led to the Internet we know today include Arpanet , a 1970s project of the U.S. Department of Defense, and NSFnet, created by the National Science Foundation in the 1980s. These projects, with their indisputably American roots, provided two cornerstones of the modern-day Web: the TCP/IP protocol and a major communications backbone. But Stein pointed out that the way we interact with the Internet owes much to the work of Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist who worked for CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland. It was there -- in the late ‘80s as NSFnet was being developed in the United States -- that Berners-Lee ""developed the whole concept of the World Wide Web,"" Stein said. (There’s more on this in a PBS article related to the one Burgos sent.) HTTP? HTML? Both Berners-Lee. ""So, yes, Americans developed the Internet, but Berners-Lee made it user-friendly,"" Stein said. Meanwhile, Virginia Tech scholar Janet Abbate says in her 1999 book ""Inventing the Internet,"" published by MIT Press, that even in the expansion of Arpanet , Americans enlisted the help of computer experts from England and France. She also points to Berners-Lee’s contributions, saying, ""The history of the Internet is not … a story of a few heroic inventors; it is a tale of collaboration and conflict among a remarkable variety of players."" The origins of e-mail, as you might expect, are entwined with the Internet. Electronic mail was part of the development of Arpanet in the early ‘70s, according to Stein, Abbate and others. American programmer Ray Tomlinson gets credit (and tongue-in-cheek blame) for the first working network mail program, picked up by users of Arpanet sites. Here's what Abbate told us when we asked her about Rubio's claim. ""I think it's an overstatement to call the Internet a purely American product. Certainly other countries were building their own computer networks (and inter-networks) in parallel with the U.S.; these other networks eventually became part of the Internet,"" Abbate said. ""Also, the Internet itself (as opposed to the earlier Apranet) was a collaborative effort with input from computer scientists in France and elsewhere, and I argue in my book that the diversity of input made the resulting system stronger. I do think the U.S. did a remarkably good job with the Internet design and expansion, maybe better than anyone else would or could have done. But if the resulting Internet hadn't suited other countries' needs, they were perfectly capable of creating their own networks (indeed, for a while there were a number of different competing network systems before TCP/IP eventually became the standard). ""And of course, the World Wide Web was invented at CERN, not in the US or by an American. So does that mean we in the U.S. are enjoying the benefits of the ""Swiss miracle"" every time we use the Web?"" GPS The satellite technology that puts some of the smart in your smart phone and informs your car’s navigation system is a system of satellites funded by taxpayers and operated by the U.S. government. So calling the global positioning system an ""American miracle"" is no stretch. The technology was born at Aerospace Corp., a military research contractor in El Segundo, Calif. Its founding president was New York native Ivan Getting. That isn’t to say there aren’t foreign navigation satellites. The United States cooperates with Australia, China, the European Union, India, Japan and Russia on global navigation satellite systems, sometimes referred to as GNSS. But Rubio said GPS, and the history there is fairly clear -cut. The ruling What to make of all of this? Rubio's basic point, that the technology behind mobile phones, e-mail, the Internet and GPS all have American roots, holds up. It’s true ""in a general sense,"" said Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who writes on our relationship with technology. Or, as the University of Memphis professor, Stein, put it: ""The statement is superficially correct, but there is (as usual) more to the story."" Stein was most concerned about the non-American role in the development of the Internet, especially the substantial contribution of England's Berners-Lee. It’s also important to note in the context of Rubio’s ""only in America"" rhetoric that while the United States led, it wasn’t alone in its innovation. Other nations’ researchers contributed to the early Internet; commercial mobile phone networks were available overseas before they were in America; other nations operate satellite navigation systems. But in these areas and many others, Americans can claim primacy."
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2908
|
Swiss biotech firm starts new Alzheimer vaccine trial.
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AC Immune, a privately held biotech company based in Switzerland, has launched the world’s first trial of a vaccine against a protein believed to cause Alzheimer’s after securing funding from private investors.
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true
|
Health News
|
Its ACI-35 vaccine aims to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies which target the tau protein that forms twisted fibers and tangles inside the brain. Many scientists believe tau is an important cause of Alzheimer’s, alongside another protein known as amyloid, that has been the main focus of drug development efforts so far. Although there is still no treatment that can effectively modify the disease or slow its progression, a number of big pharma companies - including Roche, Eli Lilly, Merck & Co and Johnson & Johnson - are pursuing a variety of approaches to get to the root cause. AC Immune’s most advanced Alzheimer’s drug is the anti-Abeta antibody crenezumab which it licensed to Roche’s subsidiary Genentech in 2006. Results of a Phase II trial of crenezumab are expected in the first half of this year and will be crucial for the company’s next steps. “At the moment we are keeping all options open,” Chief Executive Andrea Pfeifer said in a telephone interview, adding that the company would consider an initial public offering in the United States as an option. Earlier on Thursday, AC Immune said it had completed a fourth round of financing, raising 20 million Swiss francs ($22 million) from existing investors. The funds will enable the company to start Phase I clinical trials with ACI-35 earlier than expected and Pfeifer said the company would be open for a partner to advance it into later-stage trials that are costlier and require more patients. AC Immune has a further vaccine ACI-24 in Phase I/IIa clinical trials to prevent and clear amyloid plaques, another hallmark of the fatal brain-wasting disease. Despite the company having a promising number of drugs in development for the disease, Pfeifer said it was difficult to predict when one could be on the market. “I would say however that in the next three to five years there should be a medication for Alzheimer’s out there and hopefully it could be one of ours,” she said. Over the past 15 years more than 100 experimental Alzheimer’s drugs have failed in tests. Industry analysts believe that the prize for a truly effective drug could be a market worth $10 billion in annual sales. ($1 = 0.9090 Swiss francs) (This version of the story corrects name of vaccine in para 9 to ACI-24 from ACI-35)
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15546
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The American murder rate is 50 times that of any other developed nation.
|
"Brand said, ""The American murder rate is 50 times that of any other developed nation."" Yes, the American homicide rate is pretty bad, at least compared to most of its high-income peers. But it’s not even close to being as bad as Brand suggests. For instance, the homicide rate in the United States is just three times higher than that in the United Kingdom. Brand considerably overstated things."
|
false
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Crime, PunditFact, Guns, Russell Brand,
|
"In 2014, eccentric British comedian Russell Brand launched an Internet video show called The Trews, short for ""true news."" True news! Something PunditFact can get behind. The show usually features Brand offering his opinion on the topics of the day, often about his native England but also sometimes about the United States. In the 327th episode of The Trews, Brand criticizes Fox News pundit Greg Gutfeld for cheering the death sentence for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, convicted for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings that killed three people and injured scores more. Brand said Gutfeld and other Fox News pundits ignore the prevalence of gun violence in the United States that kills a lot more people, throwing out a slew of statistics to capture his point. ""In a country that has more guns per person than any other country in the world, where the American murder rate is 50 times that of any other developed nation, where women are estimated to be 11 times more likely to be murdered with a gun than women in any other developed country, why does the focus fall on this particular story?"" Brand said. ""Because it’s a story that helps to maintain the order."" Brand’s soliloquy continued after his round of fact-dropping, but the show being called The Trews and all, we were struck by the claim that the U.S. murder rate ""is 50 times that of any other developed nation."" Unfortunately, it’s not Trews. ""Fifty times is ridiculous,"" said James Alan Fox, Northeastern University professor of criminology, law and public policy. ""Fifty times the homicide rate is much too high,"" said David Hemenway, a Harvard School of Public Health professor of health policy who studies gun-homicide rates. ""Maybe it just was hyperbole."" The FBI-estimated homicide rate for the United States in 2013 was 4.6 deaths per 100,000 population. The World Health Organization estimate is a bit higher at 5.4. For our calculations, we’ll use the official and most recent FBI rate of 4.6, though it doesn’t matter either way to debunk Brand’s point. While either estimate is considerably higher than the homicide rate of other Western, high-income countries, it is not remotely as much as Brand suggests. Canada, for example, had a WHO-estimated homicide rate of 1.8 deaths per 100,000 population. So the U.S. rate is a little less than three times higher. The homicide rate in the U.S. was three times higher than the United Kingdom (1.5 per 100,000) and about eight times that of Switzerland (0.6 per 100,000). Compared to Japan (0.9 per 100,000), the U.S. rate is five times higher. We put together a table of of all the developed nations, using the World Bank definition of high-income countries. The reason the United States has such a high homicide rate compared to those countries is tied to the fact that it has more firearms per capita and more permissive gun control laws. A 2003 analysis, while more than a decade old, concluded the U.S. firearm homicide rate was more than 20 times the rate of Australia, France, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland), Israel, South Korea, Japan, Norway, Poland and Slovenia. (See a related fact-check.) The findings, published in the Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection and Critical Care, also found that the firearm homicide rate was strikingly larger among American 15-24-year-olds compared to peer countries — 42.7 times bigger, as a matter of fact. That’s closer to the number Brand presented, but it’s not how he presented it. Regardless, experts cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions about murder rates from country to country. Every nation presents a new set of societal differences, and developing countries in particular have various definitions and methods of counting homicides, said Alan Lizotte, University at Albany professor and dean of the School of Criminal Justice. ""It’s not really good to compare countries to each other without considering the culture,"" he said. The turbulent history of the United States partially explains today’s violent American society, he said, from Western settlers’ hostile encounters with the indigenous population to the haphazard move out west and the underlying history of defending oneself and one’s property. The Canadians, by contrast, were more peaceful as they settled their western territories, sending out mounties to look for new land to inhabit and making peace with the native population first, Lizotte said. ""The main point is when you’re comparing countries, you’re comparing things that don’t compare very well,"" he said. Emails to Brand’s representatives were not returned. Our ruling Brand said, ""The American murder rate is 50 times that of any other developed nation."" Yes, the American homicide rate is pretty bad, at least compared to most of its high-income peers. But it’s not even close to being as bad as Brand suggests. For instance, the homicide rate in the United States is just three times higher than that in the United Kingdom. Brand considerably overstated things. Update (6:30 p.m. June 2) -- After we published our fact-check, a producer for The Trews said Brand meant to say 15, not 50. She said the ""n"" may have been clipped off due to editing."
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27941
|
"A test message slipped into a live mailing, resulting in prospective customers receiving letters that greeted them with the salutation ""Dear Rich Bastard."
|
Wells Fargo spokesperson Kim Kellogg said, “From now on, we’re just going to type, ‘Testing One, Two, Three’ at the bottom.”
|
true
|
Business, Consumer Relations
|
Corrupted data, client pressures, and looming deadlines work to combine into a lurking potential for disaster in direct mail campaigns. Sometimes that potential gets realized in hilarious fashion when one small thing, one very little thing, is inadvertently overlooked in the maelstrom inherent to getting a project of such nature underway. Such was the case in the following example: The National Westminster Bank in England admitted last month that it keeps personal information about its customers — such as their political affiliation — on computer. But now Computer Weekly reveals that a financial institution, sadly unnamed, has gone one better and moved into the realm of personal abuse. The institution decided to mass-mail 2000 of its richest customers, inviting them to buy extra services. One of its computer programmers wrote a program to search through the databases and select its customers automatically. He tested the program with an imaginary customer called Rich Bastard. Unfortunately, an error resulted in all 2000 letters being addressed “Dear Rich Bastard”. The luckless programmer was subsequently fired. In the early 1990s, a small UK-based company that performed bureau work for direct marketing campaigns on behalf of third parties did indeed make the “Dear Rich Bastard” gaffe. That gaffe came about after the company had undertaken a project to assist one of the largest UK telecom companies in launching a new ‘gold’ calling card, a project that included drawing information from a database in order to address and personalize letters tendering the product to prospective customers. Some of the data the company had to work with was munged (i.e., badly or inconsistently formatted) beyond fixability, which meant that while most of those who received the offer would get letters properly saluting them as “Dear Dr. Smith” or “Dear Rev. Jones,” others would by nature of the poor quality of their name field data have to be addressed as “Dear Customer,” “Dear Reader,” or by whatever other generic salutation was eventually decided upon. And therein lay the trap. As potential wordings were bandied back and forth, the work on the actual data extraction program had to continue, and some placeholder phrase needed to be assigned for use with records containing munged name field data. A whimsical programmer hit upon his own temporary salutation for such records: “Dear Rich Bastard.” Such a greeting should have been wholly replaced as soon as word came down about what the official salutation was to be (e.g., “Dear Future Customer”), yet that step was overlooked because the work on the coding project was stopped and restarted a number of times, and during the interim a different programmer — one who did not know about the “Dear Rich Bastard” placeholder — took over the task. When the project finally came to fruition, the “Dear Rich Bastard” placeholder was still in place. Hundreds of thousands of letters were produced and mailed without anyone’s being the wiser as to what those potential customers whose name field data had proved irreparable would receive. Only a very small number of “Dear Rich Bastard” missives actually went out, rather than the 2,000 commonly stated in tellings of this event. (There weren’t that many munged entries in the database, after all.) However, visits to all of the affected companies had to be made and appropriate apologies tendered in person. (At one office so mea culpa’d, an enlargement of the “Dear Rich Bastard” letter was spotted framed and mounted on the wall.) Contrary to the myth that surrounds this story, the programmer responsible for the embarrassing salutation that inadvertently escaped into the wild was not fired. An interesting element not generally related as part of this story just goes to prove you can never please everyone: The little UK firm responsible for the gaffe received a complaint from a potential customer who felt himself qualified to be a rich bastard yet had not received the letter he deemed appropriate to his station in life. Mess-ups have found their way into other mass mailings. A similar situation occurred when U.S. vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro’s computer sent out letters thanking supporters for their help in her 1984 campaign. Supporters with the title “Mrs.” found themselves addressed as “Rabbi”, while all those with the title “Mr.” were promoted to “Colonel”. Someone performing data entry had mistyped the numeric code for certain fields, requiring 5,000 letters of apology to be sent out to correct the gaffe. In another related tale, also true, a Wells Fargo EquityLine statement of 2 February 1988 carried the following message at the bottom: You owe your soul to the company store. Why not owe your home to Wells Fargo? An equity advantage loan can help you spend what would have been your children’s inheritance. Nine days later, Wells Fargo sent out the following apology letter: I wish to extend my personal apology for a message printed on your EquityLine statement dated February 2, 1988. This message was not a legitimate one. It was developed as part of a test program by a staff member, whose sense of humor was somewhat misplaced, and it was inadvertently inserted in that day’s statement mailing. The message in no way conveys the opinion of Wells Fargo Bank or its employees. James G. Jones, Executive Vice President, South Bay Service Center
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20368
|
More children die in agricultural jobs than in any other industry.
|
Federal stats back up agriculture deaths claim
|
true
|
Georgia, Children, Labor, Rashad Taylor,
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"Most nonbinding resolutions that come before the Georgia House of Representatives garner little debate, but one involving child labor laws got a little testy. Some House members were angry about a U.S. Department of Labor proposal they say would make it tougher for children to work on the family farm. Agriculture is Georgia’s largest industry. So Georgia lawmakers wrote House Resolution 1561, which said the federal agency ""seeks to impose harsh, extreme, and uncalled for regulations attempting to ban students from working on farms."" Not so, said Rep. Rashad Taylor, an Atlanta Democrat who opposed the resolution. Taylor said he’s worried about the safety of children working on some farms. He offered several amendments to the resolution, claiming portions of it were incorrect. Taylor’s argument included a claim that some lawmakers quickly disputed. ""More children die in agricultural jobs than in any other industry,"" he said. One lawmaker suggested more children die playing football than from agricultural work. Another suggested the numbers may be higher because more children work in agriculture than other industries. Rep. Penny Houston, a Republican from South Georgia, asked Taylor several pointed questions that suggested she didn’t think the lawmaker from the big city understood the issue. Her questions included a query wondering if Taylor had ever picked peas. We dug deep on Taylor’s claim. Currently, minors may be employed by their parents at any time in any occupation on a farm owned or operated by his or her parents. Unfortunately, there’s not much research on child labor deaths. The most recent data came to us from a department within the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They put together a spreadsheet using Bureau of Labor Statistics data to determine the number of children 18 and under who died on the job between 2003 and 2010. During that time, there were 311 deaths nationwide. Nearly half of those deaths, 151, were in the agriculture industry, the data showed. A CDC spokeswoman told PolitiFact Georgia that 73 percent of all work-related deaths for children 15 and under were in the agriculture, forestry and fishing industries. They did not have a more specific breakdown for all industries. A 2006 study by two CDC researchers reached similar conclusions. The study was based on two sets of data from 1992 to 2002. In that report, they noted research that found an astounding 79 percent of all work-related deaths for youths 10 years of age and younger occurred in agriculture production. ""As a proportion of all young workers, young workers in agriculture production incur a disproportionate share of fatalities,"" the 2006 report says. The National Consumers League puts out an annual list of the most dangerous occupations for teenagers. In 2011, the most dangerous industry for young people 18 and younger was agriculture, with a death rate of 21.3 per 100,000 full-time employees, according to the report. Another report we saw, using BLS data, showed between 1992 and 1998 that nearly 43 percent of work-related fatalities for children 18 and younger were due to agricultural work. The second-highest percentage of fatalities was in retail trade. So why are a high proportion of children losing their lives in agriculture industries? One report found the most common cause of death of youths in agriculture is from farm machinery, such as a harvester or tractor. Between 1992 and 1997, 51 deaths of youths in agriculture nationwide could be specifically attributed to overturned tractors. Other research shows a high number of falls from moving vehicles or mobile equipment and being struck by the same. There are few reports on this subject, and there are very few deaths to study. But everything we’ve seen shows a high percentage of work-related deaths among children occur in agriculture. The most recent data shows it is nearly 50 percent. The numbers seem to back up Taylor’s claim. For the record, Taylor’s efforts to amend the resolution failed. The resolution passed. Maybe PolitiFact’s ruling will give Taylor some solace. Maybe not. Update The following section was inadvertently edited out of the print version of Tuesday’s PolitiFact Georgia regarding a statement by state Rep. Stacey Abrams on Georgia’s per-capita spending: (This item will not evaluate Abrams’ moose claim, though we warn her that she may receive calls from irate fans of South Dakota elk. Elk are common there. Their moose cousins tend to live farther north.)"
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5687
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Psychiatric hospital to add 56 new spots.
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Virginia plans to add more than 50 new spots at a psychiatric hospital in the state’s southwest.
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true
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Roanoke, Creigh Deeds, Mental health, Health, General News, Virginia
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The Roanoke Times reports that the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services is adding 56 beds at Catawba Hospital near Roanoke to comply with a state law requiring that no one in need be turned away. The state said the expansion will require hiring 94 employees. Virginia has made increased funding for mental health treatment since the suicide of Sen. Creigh Deeds’ son in 2013 exposed gaps in the state’s mental health system.
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3596
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School offers medicinal gardening class.
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Herbalism is about autonomy, according to Juliette Carr.
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true
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Health, Gardening, Herbal medicine
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“It’s promoting autonomy and self-empowerment to prioritize reclaiming lost wisdom,” she said. Carr, who is a founding member of The Women’s Action Team, wants to bring back home medicine traditions. She wants people to reclaim that lost knowledge so they can advocate for themselves and their family’s health. That’s why she opened up Old Ways Herbal School. During warm weather months, the school offers several classes and training programs. This year, Carr announced a medicinal gardening class so students could learn to grow their own herbs. Herbal medicine isn’t about making “major changes” to the body, “it’s not heroic medicine,” she said. It’s more about promoting general health and well being. “We’re literally talking about tea,” she said. Carr, who is a firm believer in modern medicine and a registered nurse, doesn’t think herbs can solve all health problems. But she can solve a simple headache. She also makes honey and tinctures that help people focus, or relax, or deal with depression or anxiety. “It works well with modern medicine,” she said. The act of infusing honey or making a cup of tea, she said, is a loving one. “You think of your mom or your grandma making you a cup of tea,” she said. Herbalism wasn’t a skill that belonged to just women, Carr said, but women were seen as the caregivers and herbalism lent itself to that. “I don’t mean that to say that women should stay home,” Carr said. “It’s the traditional role of women in the community and women in families. It’s health promotion, healing and the act of making tea.” Lately, though, she said people have become completely reliant on pharmacies and doctors. At one point, she said, “promoting health was part of our birthright.” The traditions of family-based healing or what Carr calls “rational medicines were taken from our cultural consciousness.” And those who offered home-remedies — your aunt, your mother, your grandmother — lost their power. Carr aims to give her students independence. She wants them to go to the doctor and have the confidence to ask for second opinions or to know for themselves when something’s wrong. “For women, we’re taught to be agreeable, to take ‘no’ for an answer,” she said. For her, herbalism is a way to give back to marginalized communities. Modern medicine, for instance, has a history of experimenting on people of color. The story of Henrietta Lacks, a woman whose cancer cells were used and experimented on without her permission, or the Guatemalan syphilis experiments, where the U.S. infected Guatemalans with syphilis without their consent, serve as of examples of this. Herbalism, Carr said, is a way for people to take back their health. That’s something she talks a lot about with students in her classes. She also works to make her classes accessible to everyone by using a sliding payment scale, instituting a work-trade program, and often using barter to pay for students’ classes. Though, she added, the ability to take time out of your day to do a course implies a certain level of privilege that not everyone has. The addition of the gardening class only helps Carr’s mission to teach independence. It gives people the tools to set up their own ecosystem within their gardens, she said. She’ll be teaching students how medical plants can be used as companion plants in gardens to keep away predators. She’ll be teaching, “how to grow these fussy plants,” she said. Herbs, she said, can be hard to grow and temperamental. She’ll also be teaching the correct way to harvest, soil rotation, and microclimates. There won’t be any actual making of medicine, but Carr encourages her students to make medicine at home. “Herbs are pretty safe,” she said. ___ Online: https://bit.ly/2GJhVFu ___ Information from: Brattleboro Reformer, http://www.reformer.com/
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37967
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"In September 2020, the CDC added and then removed ""airborne transmission"" as a way in which COVID-19 is likely to spread."
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On September 18 2020, a CDC page called “How COVID-19 Spreads” was updated to include prominent initial language about airborne coronavirus transmission. The changes attracted widespread attention on September 20 2020, and the updates were taken out of the CDC page the next day. Officials later said that “an early draft of a revision went up without any technical review,” because of “a failure of process at [the] CDC,” and that edits to the page were pending.
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true
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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"On September 21 2020, several prominent tweets suggested that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added, then removed guidance indicating that SARS-CoV-2 (the virus which causes COVID-19) was airborne — meaning it could potentially be spread through aerosolized droplets in confined spaces:BREAKING: The CDC now pulls down language saying COVID aerisolizes.It’s reasonable to wonder who is calling the shots at the CDC and what the scientists actually think.— Andy Slavitt @ 🏡 (@ASlavitt) September 21, 2020🚨HOLY HELL—CDC has now taken down the “coronavirus is aerosol & airborne” guidance from yesterday!!!! It’s like gone!! Instead it puts up some ‘a draft version was put up in error’ bullshit language. Ummm, HHS censorship??? #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/jps57DZ43R— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) September 21, 2020One tweet highlighted the changes:BREAKINGCDC changes COVID-19 guidance, airborne is primary way the virus spreads, touching surfaces is NOT the main way. #Ventilation is important, as it goes beyond 6 ft and remains suspended in the air.H/T @jljcolorado & @jmcrookston pic.twitter.com/8EZ86q3V6i— David Elfstrom (@DavidElfstrom) September 20, 2020Those tweets often followed tweets referencing and sharing the removed content from the CDC’s website:Huge—CDC now finally says coronavirus can commonly spread ""through respiratory droplets or small particles, such as in aerosols,"" when a person breathes. ""Airborne viruses, including #COVID19, are among the most contagious”➡️Airborne aerosols. #MaskUp 🧵https://t.co/ik2LrH4Iqk— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) September 21, 2020Initial News About the CDC’s ‘Airborne Spread’ ChangesIn the above tweet, published at 7:39 AM on September 21 2020, epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding shared a CNN link to a September 20 2020 article (“Updated CDC guidance acknowledges coronavirus can spread through the air”), which began:The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated guidance on its website to say coronavirus can commonly spread “through respiratory droplets or small particles, such as those in aerosols,” which are produced even when a person breathes.“Airborne viruses, including COVID-19, are among the most contagious and easily spread,” the site now says.Previously, the CDC page said that Covid-19 was thought to spread mainly between people in close contact — about 6 feet — and “through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks.”The page, updated [September 18 2020], still says Covid-19 most commonly spreads between people who are in close contact with one another, and now says the virus is known to spread “through respiratory droplets or small particles, such as those in aerosols, produced when an infected person coughs, sneezes, sings, talks or breathes.”A separate September 21 2020 article also published on CNN.com (“As doctors worry about ‘a very apocalyptic fall,’ the CDC retracts info on how Covid-19 spreads”) addressed the removal of guidance about airborne transmission of COVID-19 from the CDC’s website:Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the division of infectious diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said she agrees this fall “could be apocalyptic” after recent spikes. […][Marrazzo] cited a recent [September 18 2020] update from the CDC that said you can get Covid-19 just by inhaling tiny particles from an infected person’s breath that linger or travel in the air.“There is growing evidence that droplets and airborne particles can remain suspended in the air and be breathed in by others, and travel distances beyond 6 feet,” the CDC’s website said in an update [added September 18 2020]. “In general, indoor environments without good ventilation increase this risk.”Many doctors have known that for months — hence their pleas for the public to wear masks.“The updated guidance would have been fine if it came out last May [2020],” Hotez said. “We knew all of these things months ago.”But by Monday afternoon [September 21 2020], the CDC’s update was removed.“The fact that they retracted this, even though this is common scientific knowledge at this point, one has to wonder what’s behind it,” said Dr. Leana Wen, a CNN medical analyst and an emergency physician at George Washington University.As for the retraction, a copy of a page titled “How COVID-19 Spreads” was updated September 18 2020, and archived just before 10 AM on September 21 2020. The archived version of the page read:COVID-19 is thought to spread mainly through close contact from person to person, including between people who are physically near each other (within about 6 feet). People who are infected but do not show symptoms can spread the virus to others. We are still learning about how the virus spreads and the severity of illness it causes.COVID-19 most commonly spreadsAs of 5:49 PM on September 21 2020, the same page at the same link did not include the content about airborne transmission:COVID-19 is thought to spread mainly through close contact from person-to-person. Some people without symptoms may be able to spread the virus. We are still learning about how the virus spreads and the severity of illness it causes.Person-to-person spread The virus is thought to spread mainly from person-to-person.A note at the top of the edited page addressed the changes:A draft version of proposed changes to these recommendations was posted in error to the agency’s official website. CDC is currently updating its recommendations regarding airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). Once this process has been completed, the update language will be posted.CDC Officials Explain the Revision and Re-RevisionAccording to the second CNN article, two people with knowledge of the changes (one named, one not) spoke to the network:The removal was not the result of political pressure, according to a federal official familiar with the situation.“This was totally the CDC’s doing,” the official said. “It was posted by mistake. It wasn’t ready to be posted.”The official said the guideline change was published without first being thoroughly reviewed by CDC experts.“Somebody hit the button and shouldn’t have,” the official said.The official added that the guidance is “getting revised,” but didn’t say when the revision would be posted to the CDC’s website … When asked why the CDC retracted its update on aerosolized spread, a spokesman for the agency said it was posted in error.“A draft version of proposed changes to these recommendations was posted in error to the agency’s official website,” CDC spokesman Jason McDonald said in an email to CNN.“CDC is currently updating its recommendations regarding airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19). Once this process has been completed, the update language will be posted.”A CNBC article published just after noon on September 21 2020 reported that the World Health Organization had contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the changes:The WHO had not seen any “new evidence” on airborne particles and was checking with the CDC to “better understand” the exact nature of the change, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies program, said during a news conference at the agency’s Geneva headquarters.The WHO has said Covid-19 primarily spreads through respiratory droplets that pass when an infected person coughs, sneezes or breathes. Studies have shown that the coronavirus could spread through aerosols in the air, and the WHO has said it is monitoring “emerging evidence” of possible airborne transmission.The international agency’s position “on this remains the same,” Ryan said, “and we’ve always said going back over months and months about the potential for different kinds of roots of transmission and particularly driven by the context, the proximity, the intensity, the duration and the potential for different forms of transmission.”In the same article, CNBC referenced research supporting the airborne spread of coronavirus:Studies have suggested the virus can spread through the air. A study published by researchers at the National Institutes of Health earlier [in 2020] found that particles of the coronavirus released by talking can remain in the air for eight to 14 minutes.A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that Covid-19 was detectable in aerosols for up to three hours.In July [2020], the WHO said there is still no “definitive” evidence that indicates the virus is spreading widely by air, although it added that the possibility of airborne transmission in public settings “cannot be ruled out.”A September 21 2020 Washington Post article quoted CDC deputy director for infectious disease Jay Butler, who said the CDC could not explain how the “airborne” guidance was initially published:But Jay Butler, the CDC’s deputy director for infectious disease, said the Friday update was posted in error. “Unfortunately an early draft of a revision went up without any technical review,” he said.The edited Web page has removed all references to airborne spread, except for a disclaimer that recommendations based on this mode of transmission are under review. “We are returning to the earlier version and revisiting that process,” Butler said. “It was a failure of process at CDC.”SummaryOn September 18 2020, a CDC page called “How COVID-19 Spreads” was updated to include prominent initial language about airborne coronavirus transmission. The changes attracted widespread attention on September 20 2020, and the updates were taken out of the CDC page the next day. Officials later said that “an early draft of a revision went up without any technical review,” because of “a failure of process at [the] CDC,” and that edits to the page were pending.Comments"
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37543
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Hand sanitizer, in wider use during a coronavirus pandemic, is fatal to dogs and other pets because it contains the same ingredients as antifreeze.
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Does Coronavirus Put Dogs at Risk Because Hand Sanitizer Has the Same Ingredients as Antifreeze?
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false
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Disinformation, Fact Checks
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On March 14 2020, a Facebook status update (archived here) claiming that pet owners should be aware that hand sanitizer “has the same ingredients as antifreeze” went viral after an uptick in hand sanitizer use due to an ongoing COVID-19 outbreak that has become a global pandemic:White text against a purple background (with skulls for added effect) read:PET OWNERS PLEASE BE AWARE THAT HAND SANITIZER HAS THE SAME INGREDIENTS AS ANTIFREEZE. DON’T LET ANIMALS LICK IT OFF YOUR HANDS IT CAN KILLAs we’ve noted in many, many previous fact-checks, images generated in text-based Facebook status updates remained a breeding ground for disinformation on that platform. People can create highly shareable graphics with just a few clicks, and the character limitations are such that linked citations rarely accompany these easy-to-share posts.In this particular case, going on 300,000 people shared the post in under three days. That is more than a quarter million people (and likely many more who saw it and didn’t pass it on), all of whom were exposed to a claim tacitly working to demotivate the use of hand sanitizer in the early days of the COVID-19 global pandemic.Pet owners might read the post and think that to “be on the safe side,” eschewing hand sanitizer in favor of the implicitly safer act of washing ones hands. But — while soap and water is perfectly effective at killing the novel coronavirus — hand sanitizer is pocket-portable and sinks aren’t, so those heeding such advice might be more susceptible to both contracting and spreading the virus which causes COVID-19 (SARS-nCOV-2).But as many commenters noted, hand sanitizer in large commercial dispensers was a common sight at animal shelters as well as at veterinarian’s clinics. Surely, these organizations would be aware of the purported risk posed to pets and insist on hand-washing — but they don’t. Guidelines exist for use of hand sanitizer in such environments, in part to ensure the safety of handled dogs and cats.Google Trends data indicated searches for “hand sanitizer antifreeze” spiked dramatically during the second week of March 2020:Similarly, “hand sanitizer toxic to dogs” also demonstrated a concentration of searches in mid-March 2020:As of mid-March 2020, searches for “hand sanitizer ingredients” generally returned not material safety data sheets (MSDS), but recipes on how to make one’s own hand sanitizer at home. In one context, that arrangement of information fit a need (people in need of hand sanitizer home-brewing their own), but it also pushed down results which might assist concerned dog owners in determining whether the newly-vital product posed a risk.Some news organizations advised against “bathtub gin” versions of Purell:The shortages and buying limits have spurred people to make their own hand sanitizer using recipes from Twitter, Reddit, Pinterest, countless blogs and even a pharmacy. But just because these recipes exist doesn’t mean you should follow them … experts caution that making homemade hand sanitizer is harder than it seems. If you don’t get the concentration right, experts warn that you’ll end up with something that isn’t effective or is too harsh, and is a waste of ingredients.Worried searchers might also stumble upon an unrelated study reporting that hand sanitizer and antifreeze were capable of preserving DNA. It should be noted that a shared trait between the two is not the same as evidence that these products carried similar risks to humans and pets.Most pet owners were aware that antifreeze, even in small concentrations, could prove fatal to pets. Washington State University College of Veterinary Medicine’s page on antifreeze poisoning in pets explained that “dogs and cats find antifreeze quite tasty and if they find antifreeze they’ll drink it,” further noting:Very small amounts of antifreeze can be fatal. If a cat walks through a puddle of antifreeze and then licks its paws, it can ingest enough antifreeze to cause death. About five tablespoons can kill a medium sized dog. If you see your pet drinking antifreeze, or are at all suspicious that your pet may have had access to antifreeze, contact a veterinarian immediately. Signs of antifreeze poisoning depend upon the time after ingestion. In the first few hours after ingestion the pet may be depressed and staggering and may have seizures. They may drink lots of water, urinate large amounts and vomit. The pet may appear to feel better but in a day or two get much worse as the kidneys fail. Signs of kidney failure include depression and vomiting. The amount of urine they pass will often decrease to a very small amount.The diagnosis of antifreeze poisoning is made by blood and urine tests although some of these tests become negative by the time kidney failure develops. Antifreeze poisoning should be considered in any free-roaming dog or cat with consistent signs. Treatment for antifreeze poisoning needs to be started as soon after ingestion as possible to be effective. The earlier treatment is started, the greater the chance of survival. Once kidney failure develops, most animals will die.Risks posed to pets by antifreeze existed in part due to its sweet taste, which has poisoned pets and humans alike. As the previous excerpt said, pets are likely to lick pooled or spilled antifreeze for that reason — a byproduct of ethylene glycol as a main ingredient:Ethylene glycol is the ingredient that makes antifreeze tasty. Though colorless and odorless, the syrupy alcohol derivative—which is excellent at lowering the freezing points of vital engine fluids—has a sweet taste that jibes well with soda, juice, and other sugary beverages. As many concerned pet owners and parents are well aware, dogs, cats, and kids are prone to lap up puddles of antifreeze left on garage floors. Every year, 90,000 animals and 4,000 children ingest the toxic liquid; if not treated immediately, the consequences of the poisoning can include renal or cardiovascular failure, brain damage, and death.Pet Poison Helpline notes that hand sanitizer can be toxic to pets, but the context included was vitally important:Many hand sanitizers claim to kill almost 100 percent of germs, and this is possible because they contain high amounts of alcohol (ethanol) – sometimes up to 95 percent. Therefore, when a dog ingests a small bottle of hand sanitizer, it can have the same effect as a shot of hard liquor. This can cause a severe drop in blood sugar, incoordination, a drop in body temperature, neurological depression, coma and death.In that particular item, Pet Poison Helpline referenced the consumption of an entire bottle of hand sanitizer and it being equivalent to the ingestion of “a shot of hard liquor.” Trace amounts on human hands were not a risk factor cited in this context.Pet Poison Helpline also featured an entry specifically for hand sanitizer and pet health, where a key contrast with antifreeze was apparent:Hand sanitizer, which is typically unpalatable to pets, often contains ethanol (e.g., alcohol). Like other types of alcohol, a large ingestion of hand sanitizer can cause lethargy, vomiting, incoordination, weak respirations, and dangerous drops in blood sugar, blood pressure and body temperature. Severely intoxicated animals can potentially experience seizures and respiratory failure.You don’t need to be a dog or cat to know hand sanitizer is indeed unpalatable; all you have to be is a person who accidentally ingested some Purell at some point in your life. But in those excerpts, it is apparent that ethylene glycol is the ingredient that makes antifreeze specifically toxic to pets (and their humans. )According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ethylene glycol is a “useful industrial compound found in many consumer products, including automotive antifreeze, hydraulic brake fluids, some stamp pad inks, ballpoint pens, solvents, paints, plastics, films, and cosmetics; it also is used as a pharmaceutical vehicle.” That fact sheet did not indicate that ethylene glycol is present in hand sanitizer. On a MSDS for Purell provided by Staples [PDF], ethylene glycol was not listed as an ingredient of that common brand of hand sanitizer.A viral Facebook post claiming that hand sanitizer has the same ingredients as antifreeze and is thus potentially fatal to pets is a great example of bad information spreading virally during a crisis such as a pandemic, and sanitizer was one of the primary ways people without access to hand-washing facilities might stave off coronavirus exposure, and the post potentially frightened people away from using it. Antifreeze is specifically and notably dangerous because it tastes “sweet,” and many pets know no better than to consume it. By contrast, hand sanitizer is unpalatable. Trace amounts of hand sanitizer on human hands does not pose a risk to pets, only consumption of a relatively large amount of hand sanitizer, such as a small bottle — which is unlikely due to its unpleasant taste.
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26541
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“Unemployment now pays $24/hour, even if your wages were lower. Why don’t ‘essential’ people forced to still work get $24, too?”
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The federal stimulus bill in response to the coronavirus outbreak does not specify unemployment payments be made at a rate equivalent to $24 per hour. A $600-per-week federal boost in unemployment payments means some unemployed workers will receive the equivalent of $24 an hour, but that depends on how much their state pays for basic unemployment benefits. The stimulus contains no provision to raise pay for people still on the job.
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mixture
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Economy, Jobs, Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"A $600-per-week boost in unemployment benefits, part of the federal government’s $2 trillion stimulus response to the coronavirus outbreak, has sparked some backlash. As the bill neared final approval, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R.-S.C., was widely quoted as saying the bonus would incentivize people not to work and, in effect, force employers to compete with a $24 minimum wage. It didn’t take long for this claim to appear on Facebook: ""Unemployment now pays $24/hour even if your wages were lower. Why don’t ‘essential’ people forced to still work get $24 too?"" The post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The stimulus does not specify unemployment payments at a rate equivalent to $24 per hour — though, as a result of the $600 temporary boost, some unemployed people will receive weekly unemployment payments at that rate. Furthermore, the stimulus does not boost pay for people still on the job, including essential workers who earn less than $24 per hour. President Donald Trump signed the stimulus bill — known as the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, or the CARES Act — into law on March 27, 2020. The law includes what is known as the federal pandemic unemployment compensation provision. The temporary provision adds a bonus of $600 per week, for up to four months, to what you would already receive in state-based unemployment payments. Self-employed people, independent contractors and gig economy workers, who were not previously eligible for standard unemployment benefits, are now eligible through Dec. 31, 2020. The same law offers the same $600 per week of federal add-on assistance for out-of-work self-employed, contractor, gig and part-time workers as it does for full-time workers. The bonuses began April 5, 2020 and are available through July 31, 2020. Here’s how Graham came up with $24 per hour, or at least close to it, according to his Senate staff: In South Carolina, the maximum weekly unemployment benefit is $326. If you add the $600 federal bonus, that’s $926 per week. For a 40-hour work week, that comes to $23.15 per hour. (In some interviews about the $600 bonus, Graham said that would amount to $23 per hour.) So that’s pretty close to $24 per hour. But again, it’s only for the unemployed in South Carolina receiving the maximum weekly unemployment payment. Regular unemployment benefits vary by state. South Carolina’s maximum is on the lower end, according to the latest Congressional Research Service report, from July 2019. The highest maximum, $1,192 per week, is in Massachusetts, which is among 11 states that add benefits for unemployed people with dependents. Nationally, regular unemployment covers half your wages, up to a cap of about $450 in regular earnings per week, Heidi Shierholz, former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor, told PolitiFact. So, a person who normally earns $450 would receive $225 in regular unemployment benefits, plus the $600 bonus, or $825 per week — more than their regular pay. That’s about $21 per hour. Viewed another way, as of January 2020, the average weekly unemployment benefit was $385 per week, Gary Burtless, a senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, told PolitiFact. Add $600 to that and that comes to more than $24 per hour. But that’s based on an average, not a national standard. Burtless noted that unemployment payments vary not only by state, but also within a state from one recipient to another, because the benefit depends on each worker’s earnings record. Asked by Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity why the higher unemployment payments aren’t capped at what a recipient made on the job, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said state unemployment offices have 35-year-old computer systems, and a more complicated unemployment aid formula would have taken months to set up. ""The simplest way was, and the fairest way was, $600 per person,"" Mnuchin said. ""In certain states, that might be a little bit too much money; in other states, it’s less money. It’s not a perfect system, but the president’s objective was to make sure you get money in people’s hands."" The main complaint of the Facebook claim, though, seemed to be that people who are still employed but earning less than $24 per hour aren’t getting bonuses to boost them to that level. Most adults will receive a one-time stimulus payment of $1,200, which is expected to occur in April 2020. But that goes to the unemployed as well as the employed. In short, there is no additional pay from this stimulus package for people who remain employed. That includes people in essential jobs such as grocery store clerks, delivery workers, food and medical supply-chain workers, and lower-paid hospital staff. An earlier federal stimulus law — the Families First Coronavirus Response Act — gave all American businesses with fewer than 500 employees funds to provide employees with paid leave, either for the employee’s own health needs or to care for family members. That will help many workers who previously didn’t get paid sick leave from their employer. The post says, ""Unemployment now pays $24/hour, even if your wages were lower. Why don’t ‘essential’ people forced to still work get $24, too?"" This is an oversimplification. Other than a one-time stimulus payment of $1,200 that will go to most employed and unemployed adults, the latest federal stimulus law responding to the coronavirus outbreak does not contain any additional provision to boost the pay of workers still employed, including those in essential jobs earning less than $24 per hour. In addition, the law gives a $600-per-week boost in unemployment payments, meaning that some recipients will receive payments equivalent to a $24 hourly rate. However, the law does not specify that weekly unemployment payments be the equivalent of $24 per hour. Unemployed Americans who live in states with less generous unemployment benefits will receive less. The statement is partially accurate but needs additional context, so our rating is ."
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2091
|
Educated people cope better with dementia.
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Educated people are better able to cope with the physical effects of dementia, and even one extra year of education can significantly cut the risk of developing the brain-wasting disease, scientists said on Monday.
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true
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Science News
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The findings by scientists from Britain and Finland could have important implications for public health at a time when populations in many countries are rapidly aging and dementia numbers are expected to rise sharply. The researchers found that people who go on to university or college after leaving school appear to be less affected by the brain changes, or pathology, associated with dementia than those who stop education earlier. “More education is not associated with any differences in the damage to the brain, but people with higher education can cope with that damage better,” Hanna Keage from Cambridge University, who worked on the study with an Anglo-Finnish team, said in a telephone interview. Over the past decade, studies on dementia have shown that the more time you spend in education, the lower your risk of dementia — but until now scientists had not known whether this was because education somehow protected the brain against damage, or because it made people better able to cope. In this study, published in the journal Brain, post-mortem examinations showed that the pathology, or changes, in the brain, were similar in those who were educated for longer and those who were not, but the disease’s affects on more educated people was mitigated by their greater ability to cope. Keage said this may be due to psychological strength, which might allow those with more education to think around problems presented by their disease or find ways to overcome them. It also found that for every extra year of education there was an 11 percent decrease in the risk of developing dementia. Around 35 million people around the world have dementia. Its most common form is Alzheimer’s disease, in which patients gradually lose their memory, their ability to understand the world and to look after themselves. Despite decades of research, doctors still have few effective weapons against it. Developing ways of preventing dementia is becoming more and more important for governments worldwide as the number of dementia cases globally is expected to almost double every 20 years to 66 million in 2030 and over 115 million in 2050, and the cost of coping with the disease in aging populations is forecast to rise dramatically in the coming decades. Keage’s team said that in the United States for example, if the onset of dementia could be delayed by two years in those aged over 50, there would be nearly two million fewer cases of dementia over the next 40 years — a reduction that would also dramatically cut the projected economic costs of the disease. The scientists examined the brains of 872 people who were involved in three large European studies of aging and who, before their deaths, had completed questionnaires about their education, when they left school and if they went to university. “Our study shows education in early life appears to enable some people to cope with a lot of changes in their brain before showing dementia symptoms,” Keage said.
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Why is New Orleans' coronavirus death rate twice New York's? Obesity is a factor.
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The coronavirus has been a far deadlier threat in New Orleans than the rest of the United States, with a per-capita death rate twice that of New York City. Doctors, public health officials and available data say the Big Easy’s high levels of obesity and related ailments may be part of the problem.
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true
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Health News
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“We’re just sicker,” said Rebekah Gee, who until January was the health secretary for Louisiana and now heads Louisiana State University’s healthcare services division. “We already had tremendous healthcare disparities before this pandemic – one can only imagine they are being amplified now.” Along with New York and Seattle, New Orleans has emerged as one of the early U.S. hot spots for the coronavirus, making it a national test case for how to control and treat the disease it causes. Chief among the concerns raised by doctors working in the Louisiana city is the death rate, which is twice that of New York and over four times that of Seattle, based on Thursday’s publicly reported data. New Orleans residents suffer from obesity, diabetes and hypertension at rates higher than the national average, conditions that doctors and public health officials say can make patients more vulnerable to COVID-19, the highly contagious respiratory disease caused by the coronavirus. Some 97% of those killed by COVID-19 in Louisiana had a pre-existing condition, according to the state health department. Diabetes was seen in 40% of the deaths, obesity in 25%, chronic kidney disease in 23% and cardiac problems in 21%. Orleans Parish, which encompasses the city, reported 125 confirmed coronavirus deaths as of Thursday, the equivalent of 32 coronavirus deaths per 100,000 people. That rate for New York City was at 15.9 on Thursday. New Orleans could be a harbinger for the potential toll the pandemic could take in other parts of the South and Midwest that also have high rates of obesity, diabetes, and hypertension. A host of other factors could contribute to New Orleans’ high death rate from COVID-19, ranging from access to healthcare and hospital quality, to the prevalence of other conditions, including lung disease, health officials say. But they also note that it is clear that obesity-related conditions are playing a role in the deaths. That could be a warning sign for the United States at large, where chronic obesity is more common than in other developed countries, they said. Hospitals are reporting cases across the generations -mothers and daughters, fathers and sons - being intubated and cared for in the same intensive care units, said Tracey Moffatt, the chief nursing officer at Ochsner Health, the largest healthcare provider in Louisiana. The prevalence of obesity, diabetes, hypertension and heart disease in New Orleans and Louisiana plays into that, she said. Those family members often suffered from the same medical conditions before becoming sick, leaving them similarly vulnerable to the coronavirus despite their age gaps. “We had a case where a mom was already in the ICU and the daughter, who was obese, came in,” she said. “The daughter asked staff to wheel her by her mom’s room so she could say goodbye before she herself was intubated. We knew the mother was going to pass away.” Both patients suffered from obesity. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week released for the first time a report showing that 78% of COVID-19 patients in ICUs in the United States had an underlying health condition, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease and chronic lung disease. The CDC report was based on a sample of under 6% of reported coronavirus infections, but doctors in Louisiana said it was consistent with what they are seeing, and it is in line with what other countries like Italy and China have faced. Those percentages, said Dr. Joseph Kanter, an emergency department doctor and the top public health official in New Orleans, are likely similar in cities across the United States. “What we worry about here is that we have more people in our communities with those conditions,” he said. “We’re more vulnerable than other communities, and the number of deaths we’ve seen illustrates that.” The New Orleans metropolitan statistical area ranks among the worst in the United States for the percentage of residents with diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity, a Reuters analysis of CDC data shows. An estimated 39% have high blood pressure, 36% are obese and about 15% have diabetes. Nationally, the median is 32% with high blood pressure, 31% obese and 11% with diabetes. “The burden of disease in Louisiana and the Deep South is higher than in the rest of the country,” said Gee. “Invariably that means that the South is going to be hard hit by this.”
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39961
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Swishing oil around in your mouth for 20 minutes may reap some health benefits.
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Health Benefits of Oil Pulling.
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unproven
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Medical
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We have not found any evidence that this holistic treatment for gingivitis and other conditions of the mouth, gums, throat or the rest of the body is better than or equal to the methods used in modern medicine. According to the Foodmatter.TV website, “Oil pulling is an ancient Ayurvedic remedy for oral health and detoxification. It involves the use of pure oils as agents for pulling harmful bacteria, fungus, and other organisms out of the mouth, teeth, gums and even throat.” Ayurvedic is a traditional/alternative practice of medicine that comes from India and dates back to 5000 BCE. This is what ancient health practitioners used before the discovery of antibiotics. It is always sound advice to consult a medical professional before approaching alternative treatment for such conditions. Also, this should not replace dentist office visits to remove accumulating plaque on teeth, which is the primary cause for the gum disease gingivitis. Seeing a dentist twice a year with a daily regiment of brushing, flossing and mouth washing with a mouthwash is still what dentists consider to be the best maintenance program for chronic sufferers of gum disease. Posted 03/07/14 Comments
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10966
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Warm, beating hearts offer new hope for transplants
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This beautifully written story takes readers on an incredible journey and does a great job describing how this potentially innovative approach to heart transplants works. It also achieves the rare feat of showing readers exactly what this innovation might mean in terms of additional costs to the health system. Where it fails, though, is in parsing the evidence so that readers are able to separate the emotions around people dying on the waiting list waiting for a heart from the evidence supporting this new transplant method. We applaud the story for making a complicated topic crystal clear. We just wish more clarity had been brought to the science.
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mixture
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Associated Press
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This was one of the most thorough explanations of costs we have seen in a story, especially in a person-driven feature such as this. “There’s also the issue of cost. A typical heart transplant in the U.S. costs about $787,000 including hospital stay and anti-rejection drugs. An Igloo cooler costs $35 compared with the heart box, which is sold in Europe for about $200,000. The interior is not reusable so there’s an added expense each time a hospital does such an operation.” The story does attempt to point out that there is not yet any evidence that this method is better than the conventional method, It says, “Early signs from two European experiments involving 54 patients are encouraging. There has been 97 percent survival a month after the operation and few episodes of rejection and heart-related complications. But since there were no comparison groups in either study, it’s impossible to know whether a beating heart transplant is actually better.” However, that caveat is overwhelmed by the emotional story of a patient who is portrayed as having been saved by the new technique, when in fact that patient likely would have had a good outcome with the conventional methods, too. The harms are never quantified in any way or even raised as a possibility. For example, could the mechanical system possibly damage the delicate blood vessels within the hearts? Could warm organs be more susceptible to infections during transport? The story should have asked about the adverse events that have been observed so far or are theoretical possibilities. The story does point out that there is not yet any evidence that this method of transporting donor organs is superior to the standard method, but the caveat is overwhelmed by the emotional tale of a single, apparently successful case. The story also does not point out that the European results were presented at a medical meeting and apparently have not been published in a medical journal that would subject the report to more stringent peer review. Readers should have been more clearly notified of the lack of independent scrutiny of the claims of the manufacturer and the results of tests funded by the manufacturer. We feel that because the story played so much on people’s emotions that it ultimately had the effect of disease mongering. “No longer will patients be limited by location. Doctors could make cross-country heart runs without worrying about how long it takes. Hearts are now given first to people on the waiting list who live near where the donor is hospitalized. If there’s no match, then the circle widens until a recipient is found. … It may also potentially help ease the organ shortage crisis. Some 3,000 Americans are currently on the heart transplant waiting list. Last year, 359 died waiting for a heart — almost one person a day.” We are introduced to one of those people who was saved, Andrea Ybarra, in the first sentence. And even her heart is paraphrased, saying “Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub.” Later we are told that UCLA’s Dr. Richard Shemin, “performed Ybarra’s operation on his 39th wedding anniversary.” All of this tends to overshadow the limited evidence that is presented for the technique’s efficacy. We wish that a greater effort had been made to talk with people who were not connected to the study or to the technique in some way. You have to wait until the very end to see one quote from a doctor who is the chief of heart transplants at Johns Hopkins University. Because the story is so long, dense with information and emotional in nature, we feel that this one outside source is not enough to outweigh all the glowing reports from other physicians quoted in the story. The story does compare the two techniques, but it tells us nothing about survival rates from the existing “cooler” method. Instead, it presents the issue as a potential panacea for people dying on the heart transplant waiting list. The story establishes that this is an experimental method. If it works, this indeed would be a novel approach, and the story makes this clear. This story does not rely on a news release.
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"State laws mandating universal background checks ""have been shown to reduce gun violence by 50 percent."
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Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke advocated universal background checks for gun purchases, claiming that state laws mandating universal checks “have been shown to reduce gun violence by 50 percent.” But academic research doesn’t support that.
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unproven
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gun control, universal background checks,
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After the Colorado school shooting, Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke advocated universal background checks for gun purchases, claiming that state laws mandating universal checks “have been shown to reduce gun violence by 50 percent.”But academic research doesn’t support that.O’Rourke’s campaign said the statistic came from Everytown for Gun Safety, but the gun-control group told us it has updated its background material on the issue in light of “rigorous” new research that has “improved our understanding of this.”A study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine in March found that universal background checks are associated with about a 15 percent reduction in firearm homicide. But the study stopped short of concluding that the decline was caused by those laws.Federal law requires background checks on those who buy guns from federally licensed firearm dealers. There have been attempts in Congress to require universal background checks — which would cover private sales by unlicensed individuals, including some sales at gun shows and over the internet — but the policy has failed to gain enough support to pass.The Manchin-Toomey amendment, proposed in 2013 after the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, came close in a 54-46 procedural vote in the Senate. But the sponsors, Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican, needed 60 votes for the bill to advance for a final Senate vote.Responding to the recent school shooting in Colorado, O’Rourke said he supports universal background checks, but overstated the effectiveness of such laws in states that have adopted them. An O’Rourke campaign aide tweeted about O’Rourke’s remarks on gun violence in Fayette, Iowa.O’Rourke, May 7: Those students who walked out of their schools to protest this gun violence, who led the Marches for Our Lives, those moms who demand action, are forcing the conversation that this country needs to have, are ensuring that the silence, the complicity purchased by the NRA, the gun lobby, the political action committees, is defeated and that we finally get action on universal background checks, which in those states that have adopted them, have been shown to reduce gun violence by 50 percent, ensuring that we no longer sell weapons designed and engineered and sold to the United States military for the express purpose of killing people effectively, efficiently and in as great a number as possible, because that’s exactly what they do.It is a statistic that O’Rourke has cited repeatedly in the past.O’Rourke’s statistic comes from research released by Everytown for Gun Safety in 2015 that found “nearly 50 percent fewer police murdered with guns, women shot to death by intimate partners in states with background checks.”Everytown compared the number of law enforcement officers killed with handguns over a 12-year period in 13 states that require universal background checks and 36 states that do not.“Law enforcement officers are 48 percent less likely to be killed with handguns in states that require background checks for unlicensed, ‘private’ handgun sales than in states that do not,” a press release on the study states.Everytown did a similar comparison for the number of women killed with guns by current or former male partners over a five-year period.“Controlling for population, there are 46 percent fewer intimate partner gun homicides of women in states that require background checks for private handgun sales than in states that do not,” the group concluded.But determining that states with universal background checks have lower rates of certain types of violence is not the same as proving that universal background checks have been “shown to reduce gun violence by 50 percent” — the phrase used by O’Rourke.More recent research looked at the change in gun violence rates after states passed (or got rid of) universal background checks.A study led by Boston University Community Health Sciences Professor Michael Siegel and published in March in the Journal of General Internal Medicine looked at homicide and suicide rates in all 50 states over a 26-year period and analyzed the relationship between various firearm laws, including universal background checks. The research found that universal background checks are associated with about a 15 percent reduction in firearm homicide.“After reviewing the overall literature, I would estimate that the association is somewhere between a 10% and 15% reduction,” Siegel told us via email. “So the 50% claim sounds exaggerated. I’m not sure what data would support that.”Siegel, who has extensively studied gun violence, noted that his research found an “association” between universal background checks and reduced homicide rates, “but did not definitively conclude causality.”“I think that we are not quite at the level of research when we can conclude there is a causal relationship, but we’re probably close,” he said. “If there are a few more studies confirming this relationship, then I think the results will be robust enough to conclude causality with a reasonable degree of confidence. But I don’t think we’re quite there yet.”Siegel said states that have lower firearm violence rates to begin with are the ones that tend to pass laws requiring universal background checks. He and the other researchers who participated in the study “tried to account for that by looking at CHANGES in homicide rates over time from before to after these laws, while comparing the changes with those in other states during the same time period,” he said.Siegel said he’d like to see another study or two confirm their research using similar methods before concluding causality.In 2018, the RAND Corporation released several reports as part of its Gun Policy in America initiative, including one on the “Effects of Background Checks on Violent Crime.” The review identified eight studies since 2003 that examined the relationship between background checks and violent crime, and that met its research criteria. The report concluded, “Evidence that background checks may reduce violent crime and total homicides is limited, and studies provide moderate evidence that dealer background checks reduce firearm homicides. Evidence of the effect of private-seller background checks on firearm homicides is inconclusive.”A spokesman for Everytown for Gun Safety told us it has updated its information page about universal background checks as a result of new research.“The rigorous research that’s come out since that release has improved our understanding of this, and we replaced the statistics from that (2015) release in more recent materials, including the background checks page,” Adam Sege, a spokesman for Everytown for Gun Safety, told us. “Given that the 2015 release is still being cited when newer research is available, we’re in the process of updating that release page to direct visitors to our current background checks page.”David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and the Harvard Youth Violence Prevention Center, told us it is notoriously difficult for researchers to tease out the effects of various gun policies in states that often have a combination of policies. Results are further complicated because some states with strong gun policies are bordered by states with, say, universal background checks, while others are not.“It’s just so hard to control for everything,” Hemenway said.A 2017 paper he co-authored that reviewed the available peer-reviewed research on gun control laws from 1970 to 2016 “found evidence that stronger firearm laws are associated with reductions in firearm homicide rates” and the “strongest evidence is for laws that strengthen background checks and that require a permit to purchase a firearm.” But a reduction in violence of 50 percent “seems much, much too high to me,” he said.Hemenway noted that one study published in 2016 in The Lancet concluded that “federal-level implementation of universal background checks for firearm purchase could reduce national firearm mortality from 10.35 to 4.46 deaths per 100,000 people.” But Hemenway cautioned to “take that [study] with a grain of salt,” adding that he doesn’t buy its conclusion.Siegel also cautioned that because of the study’s single-year, cross-sectional design, “it is actually impossible to tell whether states with lower homicide rates were more likely to enact universal background check laws or whether the laws resulted in the lower homicide rates.” (Cross-sectional studies are a one-time measure of exposure and outcome in a population, and can be used to form a hypothesis about causality, but cannot prove causality. )In general, Hemenway said, academic research shows that states that have stronger gun laws tend to do better on gun violence. And the recent study authored by Siegel suggests federal universal background checks might (though the authors can’t say for sure) help reduce gun crime.But there’s no academic research supporting the idea that state universal background checks have cut gun violence in half in those states.
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322
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U.S. judge appoints Ken Feinberg mediator for Bayer Roundup settlement talks.
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A U.S. judge on Wednesday appointed prominent attorney Kenneth Feinberg as mediator for court-mandated settlement talks in the federal litigation over allegations that Bayer AG’s glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer caused cancer.
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true
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Health News
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Feinberg has been instructed to meet with lawyers for Bayer and plaintiffs within the next 14 days, U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in San Francisco said during a court hearing on Wednesday. Chhabria, who oversees some 900 federal Roundup lawsuits, on April 11 ordered the parties to start confidential mediation. He appointed Feinberg after the parties failed to agree on a mediator. Feinberg is well known for having facilitated dispute resolutions in high-stakes litigations in the past. He led mediation talks over the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster, Volkswagen’s diesel emissions scandal and General Motors ignition switch litigation. Chhabria on Wednesday also scheduled the next federal Roundup trial for February 2020. The case would mark the second bellwether, or test trial, to help determine the range of damages and define settlement options for federal cases. The judge also wants to prepare some 20 cases currently pending before him for trial and send them to other courts across the country. More than 13,400 plaintiffs nationwide allege Roundup caused non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and that the company failed to warn about that risk. The majority of lawsuits are pending in state courts across the country. Bayer, which acquired Roundup maker Monsanto in a $63 billion deal last year, denies the allegations, saying studies and regulators have deemed glyphosate and Roundup safe for human use. The company in the past said it would comply with Chhabria’s mediation order in good faith, while believing strongly in the “extensive body of reliable science supporting the safety of Roundup.” Bayer has also said it would defend itself in all cases and await the appeals process underway for the three cases that have gone to trial and resulted in jury verdicts against it. A California jury on May 13 awarded $2 billion to a couple alleging Roundup caused their cancer. In March, a federal jury in San Francisco awarded $80 million to a California man after finding Roundup caused his cancer. That decision came after another California jury in August 2018 awarded $289 million to a groundskeeper in the first U.S. Roundup trial. That award was later reduced to $78 million.
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4851
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Boulder County Jail inmate tests positive for hepatitis A.
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An inmate in Boulder County Jail has tested positive for hepatitis A, two days after news of a death from a recent outbreak of the disease in Colorado.
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true
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Boulder, Colorado, Health, General News, Hepatitis, Public health
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The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office says jail and public health officials were notified Friday that an inmate had tested positive for the contagious liver infection and was separated from the rest of the jail population. No other inmates or jail staff have shown symptoms of hepatitis A. However, the sheriff’s office says anyone released from the jail on or after Aug. 20 may be at risk for developing the disease. As of Sept. 11, 163 cases have been reported in the state this year, with most of the infected people needing hospitalization. Health officials Thursday announced the first death related to the outbreak.
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32312
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Dr. Hardin B. Jones recently revealed that chemotherapy doesn't work 97% of the time, and doctors only recommend it to get kickbacks.
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A compendium of misrepresentations led to a Facebook rumor claiming a long-dead doctor had recently revealed that chemotherapy doesn't work.
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false
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Medical, anonhq, cancer, chemotherapy
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In June 2016 several alternative health and conspiracy blogs published posts claiming that a Berkeley doctor had recently “blown the whistle” on chemotherapy as a treatment for cancer, revealing that it doesn’t work 97% of the time and is only recommended due to practitioner greed (i.e., oncologists get kickbacks from suppliers). Most of those posts featured a video published to YouTube under the title “Chemotherapy Does NOT Work 97% of the Time and Kills 97% of the Time,” a five-minute clip featuring a conversation between an interviewer and naturopathic physician Peter Glidden (in which the latter misrepresented a study to claim that “chemotherapy kills an average 97% of cancer patients”) and cited the work of a Dr. Hardin Jones: One aspect of note is that the clip was published to YouTube in May 2014, but identical blog posts trumpeting it as a bombshell showing a doctor “blowing the lid off the scam of chemotherapy” weren’t published by AnonHQ and RealFarmacy until 8 June 2016 and 10 June 2016, respectively: People who refuse chemotherapy treatment live on average 12 and a half years longer than people who undergo chemotherapy, says Dr. Jones. According to recent statistics, approximately 1 in 2 men and 1 in 3 women will develop cancer in their lifetimes. This saddening reality is made worse when it is acknowledged that modern methods of ‘treating’ the disease are often ineffective and only make the symptoms of the disease worse. In fact, according to one Berkeley doctor, chemotherapy doesn’t work 97% of the time. In the eye-opening video above, Dr. Hardin B. Jones, a former professor of medical physics and physiology at the University of California, Berkeley, discusses how ‘leading edge’ cancer treatment is a sham. He has personally studied the life expectancy of patients for more than 25 years and has come to the conclusion that chemotherapy does more harm than good. The bone-chilling realization prompted Dr. Jones to speak out against the billion-dollar cancer industry. “People who refused chemotherapy treatment live on average 12 and a half years longer than people who are undergoing chemotherapy,” said Dr. Jones of his study, which was published in the New York Academy of Science. “People who accepted chemotherapy die within three years of diagnosis, a large number dies immediately after a few weeks.” According to the physician, the only reason doctors prescribe chemotherapy is because they make money from it. Such an accusation doesn’t seem unreasonable, as cancer treatment runs, on average, between $300,000 — $1,000,000 per treatment. Is any of this true? First off, as David Gorski wrote for Science-Based Medicine, such claims about chemotherapy by alternative medicine practitioners and aficionados are quite common and are typically misleadingly based on cherry-picked statistics, misunderstandings (or misrepresentations) of how chemotherapy works, and a focus on chemotherapy’s very visible drawbacks rather than its (less-obvious) successes: If there’s one medical treatment that proponents of “alternative medicine” love to hate, it’s chemotherapy. Rants against “poisoning” are a regular staple on “alternative health” websites, usually coupled with insinuations or outright accusations that the only reason oncologists administer chemotherapy is because of the “cancer industrial complex” in which big pharma profits massively from selling chemotherapeutic agents and oncologists and hospitals profit massively from administering them. Usually, they boil down to two claims: (1) that chemotherapy doesn’t work against cancer (or, as I’ve called it before, the “2% gambit“) and (2) that the only reason it’s given is because doctors are brainwashed in medical school or because of the profit motive or, of course, because of a combination of the two. Of course, the 2% gambit is based on a fallacious cherry picking of data and confusing primary versus adjuvant chemotherapy, and chemotherapy does actually work rather well for many malignancies, but none of this stops the flow of misinformation. Chemotherapy, not surprisingly, is easy to demonize. There are few treatments that cause such odious side effects, and when taken to its fullest extreme, such as complete ablation of a cancer patient’s bone marrow in preparation for a bone marrow transplant, chemotherapy can be brutal. It’s also true that for advanced solid malignancies, it only tends to produce palliation or a prolongation in survival, not a cure, and people with cancer want a cure. Palliation just isn’t that appealing, for obvious reasons. When people think of chemotherapy, they think of hair falling out, nausea and vomiting, fatigue, and death. Since chemotherapy is often given for more advanced malignancies, it’s sometimes hard to tell how many of these symptoms (other than the hair loss) are due to the cancer and how much they are due to side effects of the chemotherapy, and many people incorrectly blame chemotherapy for the deaths of their loved ones with cancer. Also, because, like radiation therapy, chemotherapy is often given in the adjuvant setting (i.e., in addition to curative surgery in order to decrease the risk of recurrence and death), it’s very easy to produce stories in which people with cancer refuse chemotherapy and/or radiation therapy after surgery and attribute their survival not to the conventional therapy (surgery) but to whatever quackery they chose to use. When used in early stage cancer, although its relative efficacy can seem large, for example a 30% decrease in the risk of dying, if the risk of dying of cancer is only 10% to begin with, that’s only a 3% survival benefit on an absolute basis. In reality, the use of alternative medicine instead of effective treatment for cancer, where it’s been studied, is always associated much poorer survival, even in pancreatic cancer, for which conventional treatments don’t do so well. Still, among the treatments in the “cut, poison, burn” terminology that believers in alternative medicine like to use to describe conventional cancer therapy, it is the “poison” that causes the most fear and is most viciously demonized in the alt-med “literature.” As well, the key information that none of these alternative health sites presented regarding Dr. Hardin’s statements on the efficacy of chemotherapy was that they were based on work published in the Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences way back in 1956, and a paper (not a study) titled “A Report on Cancer” that he presented at a science writers’ conference on 7 March 1969. All of this material is fifty to sixty years out of date, and Hardin himself passed away in 1978, so even if he had researched cancer and chemotherapy until his dying days, all of his findings would now be upwards of forty years old. In the field of medical science that’s a huge time difference, as exemplified by the plethora of now standard medical technologies that didn’t emerge until 1978 or later: in vitro fertilization, MRI machines, the identification of HIV, hepatitis vaccines, the first draft of the human genome, etc. But even back in the 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Hardin’s conclusions were highly questionable due to his use of old and flawed studies as their basis: Hardin Jones was working with data from very early in the last century, mainly from four studies containing the remarkable numbers of 651, 100, 64, and 100 untreated breast cancer patients along with a treated group. These were published in 1926 (! ), 1937, (no reference given), and 1937 respectively. With the advanced cancers generally treated in those days, it is likely that most of these patients would be incurable even today. None of the studies he examined were properly controlled trials. Well-planned clinical studies of any kind were still rare in those times, and it would also have been quite unethical even then to randomise very destructive cancers to a “no treatment” group, as demanded by any reliable comparison of treated with untreated patients. Where, then, did the untreated patients come from? They were those who “refused operation or who had already advanced to an inoperable state.” There are innumerable possible misleading influences in such studies. Moreover, our understanding of cancer and its treatment has advanced greatly since Dr. Hardin’s days. Although what he said sixty years ago may have had at least some element of supportable plausibility to it, that information is now woefully out of date and has been supplanted by additional research and a superior understanding of cancer that has been developed in the last several decades: Hardin Jones’ views (the documented ones, as opposed to the alleged ones) were actually not far off the planet once he is placed in the context of his times. It happens that in the late fifties and early sixties there was some ‘therapeutic nihilism’ in relation to the treatment of cancer, especially breast cancer [on which he focused]. Despite numerous trials of different surgical operations for breast cancer, with and without radiotherapy, survival rates stayed frustratingly much the same (chemotherapy was still in its infancy and not mentioned at all in [his 1956 paper] — another area where truth seems to have been dealt with rather loosely). In addition, death rates of treated breast cancer patients did not seem to level out at those of the normal population at five or even ten years, as might be expected if patients surviving for that long were likely to be then cured. Hardin Jones used this and other data to build a whole statistical theory proposing that ” … the death rate for all kinds of cancer remains nearly fixed from the moment when cancer is identified …” It was becoming apparent to oncologists that breast cancer could metastasise (spread to distant parts of the body) much earlier than generally thought, and that, rather unusually among cancers, the tiny occult (hidden) metastases could remain dormant for years before making themselves known. Breast cancer patients thus had to be followed up for very much longer than the usual five or ten years before they could be pronounced cured, and on the data available at that time it was difficult to know how many were being permanently cured. The biology of the disease, rather than the treatment, appeared to be the main determinant of survival. While Hardin Jones was part right, his data and his overly pessimistic views are very much a product of his times. One obvious indication of this is that the overall five year survival from breast cancer in the studies he examined was a dreadful 25%, whereas NCI statistics for 2002 give an overall (all comers) five year survival of about 80%. Some of this difference will be simply due to “lead time bias” (i.e., longer survival simply due to most cases being diagnosed earlier in the course of their illness, but it illustrates the very different times. Finally, although chemotherapy undeniably causes bad side effects in many cases, doesn’t work well for some forms of cancer, and may be over-recommended by some practitioners, its benefits (especially in cases of breast cancer) are undeniable: The bottom line is that, contrary to what you will hear from cranks and alt-med supporters who believe in “alternative” cancer cures, in the case of early stage breast cancer, chemotherapy saves lives. In women with breast cancer, it decreases the risk of their dying from breast cancer by approximately one-third. This is nothing to sneeze at, as it means thousands upon thousands of women who would have died but did not, thanks to chemotherapy. This study simply represents yet another in a long line of studies, another strand in the web of evidence that support the efficacy of chemotherapy in prolonging the lives of women with breast cancer. It’s not perfect, and it has a lot of potential complications, but it works. This is but one example. Indeed, as [Vincent DeVita, one of the pioneers of chemotherapy] points out, besides its well-demonstrated role in treating hematological malignancies, chemotherapy now has a role in the primary treatment of advanced malignancies such as bladder cancer, breast cancer, cervical cancer, colorectal cancer, esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, head and neck cancer, nasopharyngeal cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, and prostate cancer. It’s also used to prolong survival in the adjuvant setting for breast cancer, colorectal cancer, cervical cancer, gastric cancer, head and neck cancer, pancreas cancer, melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, osteogenic sarcoma, and ovarian cancer. I realize that chemotherapy is imperfect and doesn’t work well for a lot of cancers. Many of the drugs cause bad side effects, and, as I’ve explained before, in the adjuvant setting you have to treat a lot of patients to benefit relatively few. I also realize that chemotherapy is sometimes oversold. At the same time, I also know that now is the best time there has ever been for treating cancer with drugs. Targeted agents allow us to attack more precisely the molecular derangements driving cancer growth with lower toxicity. Molecular profiling is paving the way for precision medicine, in which someday (or so we hope) we will be able to target treatments to the specific abnormalities in a specific patient’s tumor.
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10432
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Premature births may be reduced with hormone gel
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This story about a study on treatments to prevent preterm births could have taken some cues from a competing story by the Associated Press. It may end up confusing readers the way it introduced a drug that was not part of the study and explaining the cost information in a very disjointed way. AP also mentioned the other drug that’s been in the news lately – but explained the context much more clearly. We do applaud the LA Times blog piece, though, for making note of the small sample size of the study and for providing some of the raw numbers in the study. Preterm births can lead to serious complications for both the chlidren and the mothers and are a leading cause of neonatal death. So far, treatments to prevent preterm birth have had limited success. This study indicates that there is a superior intervention for women who meet certain criteria, and this story could have been more careful in making it clear to readers which intervention may be the best treatment.
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mixture
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Los Angeles Times
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The story discusses costs but, because of the way it interjects the drug Makena, the story confuses the costs issue. It says in the lead, “A simple, safe, relatively inexpensive hormone treatment might help some high-risk pregnant women carry their babies longer, a new study suggests,” but then it says, “Even better, the newest one would appear unlikely to cost $690 a dose — unless drug makers are slow learners.” This raises the idea that the maker of the drug being studied has been considering selling the drug for $690 a dose. The story further confuses matters by saying, “One new drug, also progesterone-based, is marketed for women who have already had a spontaneous preterm birth. That drug, Makena, was the subject of considerable controversy recently after its manufacturer boosted the price from $20 per dose to $1,500 per dose before finally lowering it to $690. … If the progesterone gel is as effective as the study suggests, women would likely find the price tolerable. But probably not at $690 a dose.” AP was much better on this, reporting: “Although the company didn’t address price, vaginal progesterone already is sold to treat different conditions, for roughly $20 for a day’s dose.” The story quantifies the benefits in a variety of ways. It excelled in providing numbers in absolute terms instead of merely in percentages. No discussion of harms. The study itself found that, “There were no differences in the incidence of treatment-related adverse events between the groups.” This is important context because pregnancy interventions can have consequences for both the mother and the child. Both stories were short on details about the study design, but this story did provide some basic information. Unlike the AP story, this story also provided this good context: “The data set isn’t very large: 21 of 235 women given progesterone delivered early compared with 36 of 223 women given a placebo.” The story makes it clear that the preferred treatment, as far as this study is concerned, would only work well with women in a specific category of pre-term labor risk. It was more specific than the AP story, saying, “The reduction applies only to women with a short cervix (between 1 centimeter and 2 centimeters), not for women at high risk for other reasons. But for these women, few medications have been found effective at keeping a baby in the womb longer.” We do wish that both stories had included some of the information provided by the National Institutes of Health, which said in its news release about the study, “Infants born preterm are at high risk of early death and long term health and developmental problems. In 2005, there were 12.9 million preterm births worldwide (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20428351). In the United States, 12.8 percent of infants were born preterm in 2008 (http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/health.asp). Preterm infants are at increased risk for death in the first year of life, and breathing difficulties, cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, blindness…” The story quoted no independent experts and actually no experts ar all. The story also undercut the significance of the research by saying, “And, of course, the trial was funded by the maker of the progesterone gel, to be marketed as Prochieve.” That’s worth noting, but the AP story states, “The study was a collaboration between NIH and Prochieve maker Columbia Laboratories Inc. of Livingston, N.J., which plans to seek Food and Drug Administration approval for the drug for women with short cervix.” The story did an adequate job explaining what the study examined but did not compare the progesterone treatments very effectively to existing methods of stalling birth. In addition, as stated in “availability” above,
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10687
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FDA ‘black box’ warning advised for cancer drug Avastin
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This story about the risk of blood clots linked to the cancer drug Avastin does a decent job of conveying the key findings. But it suffers from at least one significant flaw. On the positive side, the story explains the findings in a clear and fair way, with adequate detail, sourcing and context. The story is based on a credible study on a topic relevant to many readers. The reporter follows several practices of good medical reporting, as the ratings show. Having said that, reporting the increased risk as 30 percent rather than 33 percent is an inexplicable, fundamental error. There are two additional problems, however. 1. Some reporting at the end of the story takes up the question of total benefit and total risk for patients who take Avastin, but this could have been explored further. The bottom line most patients and physicians care about isn’t the risk of one side effect. It’s whether taking the drug improves survival. It’s true the meta-analysis did not take up that question. But the story could have explored this matter more thoroughly on the readers’ behalf, and would have put that reporting more at the core of the story, not as going-away thoughts at the end. 2. The report fails to distinguish the differences in risk among the different types of cancer for which Avastin is used. The study itself included this information, and it is important for the reader to know. This is a significant omission.
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true
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"The article reports that Avastin costs up to $55,000 per year. The reporter does a decent job of describing the results, reporting that 12 percent of Avastin patients in the study developed blood clots, a ""30"" percent higher risk than those who did not take Avastin. This formulation, which appears in the abstract of the study, provides both absolute and relative risks. But ideally the report would have provided a more apples-to-apples comparison of absolute risk, stating that 12 percent of Avastin patients developed blood clots, compared to 8 percent of controls. The story earns an unsatisfactory rating, though, because it reports the findings incorrectly. The study shows the risk linked to Avastin to be 33 percent greater, not 30 percent. Further, the story fails to indicate the differences in risk for different types of cancers, which vary considerably. This is a significant omission. The story exaggerates the risks associated with the use of Avastin. The opening lines note the seriousness of the clots. The study notes a 12% incidence of venous clots in patients treated with Avastin–yet fails to note that only about half required treatment. This leaves the reader with an incorrect belief about the true risk. By overstating the risks of serious blood clot, the story could leave patients who may benefit from treatment with an inaccurate impression of risk vs. benefit. The article is based on an analysis of previous research published in The Journal of the American Medical Association. The study author is quoted saying the results are more powerful than individual studies because it takes into account the results of 15 high-quality papers involving almost 8,000 patients. The story might have added that results of meta-analyses are often criticized, and rarely considered definitive, because they combine data from studies that used different methologies. This failure is significant in that it may add an undue degree of importance to the analysis. The article doesn’t exaggerate the severity or prevalence of the cancers Avastin treats. The story cites the study itself, the lead author, a company spokesperson, and one independent clinician. This is adequate sourcing for a story of this length. The story mentions, at least briefly, that Avastin treats cancer via a different mechanism from traditional chemotherapies. But the story falls short of a satisfactory rating by mentioning, only at the end and very briefly, that most Avastin patients also use conventional chemotherapy–and are therefore exposed to all of those side effects as well. This raises, but doesn’t answer, the fundamental question of the overall benefit and overall risk of adding Avastin to treatment. A reader exits the story with an unsettling piece of information that should have been put in context earlier. The article makes clear that Avastin is widely available to and used by cancer patients. The story explained the relative new-ness of the drug. With several sources used, it’s a safe bet this story didn’t rely largely on a news release."
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13046
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Say Bill Gates is linked to HPV vaccine related deaths in India.
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An anti-vaccination blog tied Bill Gates to the deaths of several girls who were part of an HPV vaccination roll out in India. A full medical investigation determined that the girls died from causes completely unrelated to the vaccine. Some were poisoned by insecticide, malaria took others, and one drowned. Many millions of young girls and boys have received the vaccine over the years and while there are some common side effects, they are mild. The blog post is a mash-up of outdated rumors that were disproven years ago.
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false
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Global News Service, Public Health, Bloggers,
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"The post on an anti-vaccination website was damning. The headline ""Bill Gates uses 30,000 Indian girls as guinea pigs to test cancer vaccine,"" appeared on the Organic & Healthy blog in October and is still being shared. The article described a 2009 human papillomavirus vaccination demonstration project in India. In the span of about a year, thousands of girls between the ages of 10 and 14 received one of two vaccines to prevent genital warts that are linked to cancer later in life. According to the blog, the project went terribly wrong. In one Indian state, ""some of the girls’ health deteriorated and five of them died the next year,"" the article said. In a second state, ""two deaths were reported."" One of our readers saw the blog post and asked us to check it out. We did and as with many false claims, it takes a thread of fact and weaves a blanket of misinformation. We specifically looked at whether the vaccinations led to any deaths. First, a little background on human papillomavirus, or HPV. HPV causes genital warts and cervical precancers that can lead to a variety of cancers. In the United States for example, HPV is responsible for over 30,000 cancers each year. Several vaccines to prevent the warts and precancers came on the market in 2006. Since then, about 200 million doses have been administered worldwide. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for the most common virus strains, the vaccines ""provide close to 100 percent protection against cervical precancers and genital warts."" So, what happened in India? In 2007, the Indian government’s Council of Medical Research and two state governments laid the groundwork for a project to see whether these vaccines could be delivered cost-effectively in lower income communities. An international nonprofit PATH was directly responsible for the work. The vaccinations began in 2009 and by March 2010, they had vaccinated about 24,000 girls between the ages of 10 and 14. The effort was funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and in addition to India, it took place in Peru, Uganda and Vietnam. The trouble began when local newspapers reported several deaths linked to the vaccinations. In October 2009, a coalition of community organizations and health activists called for a halt to the project. Their cries grew more insistent. In an April 2007 letter to the Minister of Health, in addition to the deaths, they said over 120 girls had suffered everything from mood swings to epileptic seizures. The government agreed to stop. No deaths The government commissioned a group of physicians and researchers to investigate whether the vaccination program caused any deaths. In February 2011, the group reported there was no connection. One girl drowned. Insecticide poisoning killed two others. Two others had severe malaria. One was bitten by a poisonous snake and one died from a disease that physicians said ""can not be linked possibly to HPV."" No reputable study has ever tied the vaccine to a death. The vaccines can have side effects, including fever, headache, fainting and nausea. But according to many studies cited by the CDC, these pass quickly. Not guinea pigs The article paints a picture of global pharmaceutical companies experimenting on unsuspecting young, poor girls. In fact, the vaccines have gone through years of testing and have become commonplace in the wealthiest nations. Australia provides it to every girl and boy between 12 and 13 years old in public school. Vaccinations are routine in France, Germany and Holland. The vaccines are on the market in over 100 countries and the World Health Organization recommends it as part of the national immunization program for any nation that can afford it. A problem of process A 2010 article in the British medical journal Lancet assessed what went wrong in India. Its basic conclusion? Officials were too slow to respond when local concerns first emerged. ""Reluctance by public health authorities to respond to issues of public distrust for fear that they will exacerbate the problem is dangerous,"" the authors wrote. The repercussions lasted for some time. In 2013, an Indian parliamentary panel chastised PATH, the international nonprofit, along with its Indian partners for failing to fully inform the parents of the girls of what they were doing and not having a system in place to track any side effects. Our ruling An anti-vaccination blog tied Bill Gates to the deaths of several girls who were part of an HPV vaccination roll out in India. A full medical investigation determined that the girls died from causes completely unrelated to the vaccine. Some were poisoned by insecticide, malaria took others, and one drowned. Many millions of young girls and boys have received the vaccine over the years and while there are some common side effects, they are mild. The blog post is a mash-up of outdated rumors that were disproven years ago. (Editor’s note: PolitiFact has received funding from the Poynter Institute as part of a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.)
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26267
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“Due to the large number of people who will refuse the forthcoming COVID-19 vaccine because it will include tracking microchips, the Gates Foundation is now spending billions to ensure that all medical and dental injections and procedures include the chips.”
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We found no evidence supporting this claim.
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false
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Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"Unfounded fears about governments microchipping citizens predate the new coronavirus, but we’ve debunked chipping claims inspired by the pandemic, too. To recap: The United States isn’t developing a vaccine with a chip to track people, Democrats aren’t pushing for ""an implanted microchip in humans and everyone to be vaccinated,"" and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, did not say every American should be microchipped."" A recent Facebook post ups the ante, alleging that Americans will need to forgo any medical care if they want to avoid getting chipped. ""Due to the large number of people who will refuse the forthcoming COVID-19 vaccine because it will include tracking microchips, the Gates Foundation is now spending billions to ensure that all medical and dental injections and procedures include the chips so that they only way to avoid being ‘chipped’ will be to refuse any and all dental and medical treatment,"" the post says. ""Please repost this information in as many media as possible to help this important warning to go viral. They will not be allowed to pull the wool over our eyes if freedom loving independent thinkers everywhere stand up to them and make the world aware of this scheme."" More than 44,000 people heeded this call and shared the post, which was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It also drew hundreds of comments, and not all of them were charitable. Between vows from people saying they wouldn’t be chipped, many users called him crazy among other names we won’t print here. ""Fake made up post!"" someone wrote. We think the person who published the claim might agree. On May 17, the account shared this quote attributed to ""Metallica drummer Bob Dylan"" (who bears a startling resemblance to Prince): ""Don’t believe everything you read on the internet about COVID-19."" Microchip implants for health care purposes is not a new idea, but we found nothing to support the claim that the Gates Foundation is spending billions to ensure all medical procedures include microchips. Other fact-checkers, like FactCheck.org and Reuters, have already debunked claims that Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder-turned-philanthropist, plans to use microchip implants against the coronavirus. Research unrelated to coronavirus and funded by the Gates Foundation proposed using invisible dye that could be read by a smartphone to record vaccination history on patients’ skin. The idea was proposed to help strengthen vaccination record-keeping in developing countries. But Kevin McHugh, a Rice University bioengineering professor who worked on the study, told Reuters that ""the quantum dot dye technology is not a microchip or human-implantable capsule, and to my knowledge are no plans to use this for coronavirus."" Dr. Wilbur Chen, an infectious disease scientist at the University of Maryland’s Center for Vaccine Development and Global Health, previously told PolitiFact that injecting someone with a vaccine containing a small radio-frequency identification technology chip is preposterous. ""Even the smallest version of RFID chips are rather large that none would ever fit into a vaccine needle — these are very small-bore needles,"" he said. ""The RFID chips that are routinely used for the tracking of pets are as small as a grain of rice … or in other words, they are as large as a grain of rice, and no vaccine needles in use are that large in diameter."" Though tracking technology has been used to combat the coronavirus — in Singapore, China and South Korea, for example — human-rights groups have privacy concerns. But any worries about widespread microchipping don’t reflect what’s actually happening. ""The fear of insertion of tracking chips and other things like that into our bodies has been a longstanding bogeyman for theorists,"" said Mark Fenster, a University of Florida law professor who has written extensively about conspiracy theorists and spoke to PolitiFact for another microchipping fact-check. ""There is a lot of tracking that goes on, but the suggestion that it’s being used in this manner and this way seems absurd. This comes from the stream of conspiracy theories of the last 50 years. It has nothing to do with science and everything to do with conspiracy theories."""
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9869
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Study offers potential breakthrough in care of children with autism
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This article in The Guardian reports on a study showing that parents who undergo a training program designed to help them pay rigorous and constant attention to their pre-school autistic children’s communications cues consistently improves the children’s symptoms and behavior. According to the article, the success of the Pre-school Autism Communication Trial (PACT), conducted by a team of British investigators “surprised even the researchers” who designed the six-year-long, randomized study of 152 children ages two to four with so-called “core” symptom severe autism. It reports that this “new form” of therapy, one that is parent-child driven rather than therapist-child driven, is a “potential breakthrough” in efforts to moderate the repetitive behaviors, tantrums, outbursts and other core symptoms, and that all of the children whose parents got the training showed significant and measurable improvement at the end of the one-year intervention. What the article fails to say, however, is that the main outcome measurement — improvement long term at a follow up evaluation after five years — did not show a statistically significant difference between the intervention group and a group whose parents got conventional “parent education.” The intervention group had better results than the control group immediately after the initial treatment period, but both groups had worsened somewhat at the long-term follow-up assessment. Although the intervention group results were still better, this difference could have been due to chance. It’s uncertain, therefore, whether the intervention clearly improves symptom scores more than conventional treatment. That more cautionary detail should have made its way into the story. We did like that the story mentions this is by no means a cure, and that children will still need plenty of support growing up. But saying that researchers have found a “potential breakthrough” for results that might have been due to chance seems misleading. It’s hard to overstate the desperation of families with severely autistic children who often cannot speak, follow any instructions, or communicate effectively in substantive, predictable, or manageable ways. To its great credit, the Guardian article does make clear that such families are often without hope and too often fall victim to unproven and false theories of origin and treatment, including the discredited claim that vaccines are responsible for the disorder. Any story about research suggesting even modest improvements in managing the core symptoms and behaviors of autism is likely, therefore, to garner wide attention. And although this study offers some promise that parental training and early intervention can help, care must be taken to reveal all of the findings and keep hyperbole out. A posting by Britain’s National Health Service also did a nice job of making this point.
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mixture
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The Guardian
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The article does a good job of noting the social, health, lost productivity and educational costs of autism in the UK and the United States, but it did not note the cost of the interventional program itself, and the time challenges that caregivers of autistic children face in pursuing this kind of intervention. The story attempts to quantify the benefits with this statement: At the start of the trial, 50% of those in the control group who did not get the therapy and 55% of those who did were assessed as severely autistic. The children in the intervention group, though, got better. The proportion assessed as severe in the control group was 63% by the end of six years, compared with 46% in the intervention group. But as we point out in the summary, there were some important limitations to this finding. The article quotes an outside expert who notes that the training intervention was non-invasive and non-intensive. Here the story missed important opportunities to put the findings in better perspective by noting the limitations of the study, including reliance on video excerpts (rather than direct observations) to assess parent-child interactions, and the variables in assessor training and definitions of severe autism. There was no disease mongering, although the article should have made clearer that the study was conducted on children with a severe form of autism and did not involve children elsewhere on the “spectrum.” Outside sources were included in evaluating the impact of the study, including one from an autism advocacy group. But none of the experts noted limitations or cautions about over-interpreting the data in the long-term follow up. Almost every source was cheerleading. The article noted that there are no cures or predictably effective treatments for severe autism, and that even a modest improvement in symptoms would be a boon. The training intervention is compared adequately to the traditional “direct therapist-child” type of treatment. The article leads the reader to conclude that the training program is a “potential breakthrough” but says nothing about a) how many children would qualify for this training program in the UK; b) whether there are enough trainers; or c) how or when people inside or outside the National Health Service can find the program and sign up. The story attempts to establish novelty with this statement: “A new form of therapy has for the first time been shown to improve the symptoms and behaviour of autistic children, offering a potential breakthrough in care for millions of families.” However, that’s erroneous: The investigators make clear in the study that there was a previous trial of PACT with promising results. What is clearly novel in this study was its size (152 children), randomization and long-term follow up. The article appears to have involved interviews and original reporting of the research summary published in the Lancet.
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22388
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Studies have shown that in the absence of federal reproductive health funds, we are going to see the level of abortion in Georgia increase by about 44 percent.
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Congressman says federal funding cuts could increase abortions 44 percent
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mixture
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Abortion, Georgia, Hank Johnson,
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"Federal budget wars have morphed into culture wars, and fiscal and social conservatives have set their sights on cutting family planning funds. The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives voted last month to take away $317 million in funds for the Title X program, which provides reproductive health services such as contraception and HIV testing for people who cannot afford it. Now the program’s fate lies with the Democratic-controlled Senate, and Title X defenders are launching a counterattack. In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson, a Lithonia Democrat, unleashed a statistic that could give even a staunch Title X critic pause. ""Studies have shown that in the absence of Title X, we are going to see the level of abortion in Georgia increase by about 44 percent,"" Johnson said. Really? Title X serves at least 144,000 Georgians, of whom 139,000 are women. Federal rules bar those funds from being used for abortion. But anti-abortion advocates believe that revoking them would hurt groups such as Planned Parenthood, which provides abortions at some of its clinics. The House also voted to bar all federal funding for Planned Parenthood. Johnson spokesman Andy Phelan sent us statistics from the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research and policy group, to back up the congressman’s claim. Guttmacher’s roots lie in the movement to support abortion rights, but advocates on both sides of the abortion debate use its research to back their positions. Johnson’s paraphrase of Guttmacher’s research was right on. The institute’s Title X fact sheet for Georgia says, ""In the absence of these services, the level of abortion in Georgia would be 44 percent higher."" Methods to determine whether publicly funded family planning services reduce the number of unintended pregnancies have existed for ""decades,"" said Guttmacher’s Jennifer Frost, a senior researcher and lead author of a 2008 paper about the group’s predictions. In the absence of affordable care, women tend to choose birth control methods that are less effective, Frost said. Since researchers cannot conduct actual experiments on what would happen if these services ended, Frost and her colleagues considered five types of behaviors -- ranging from switching contraceptive methods to dropping contraception all together -- that women might choose if funding disappeared. The research team knew from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey data how often women who adopt these behaviors had unplanned pregnancies and abortions. It used this information for its projections. Nationally, abortions would rise by about one-third, the team predicted. Because Georgia women use Title X services at greater than the national rate, Guttmacher predicted a 44 percent increase here. In 2008, 39,820 women obtained abortions in Georgia, according to Guttmacher. We were unable to find another study on Georgia similar to Guttmacher’s, but its research does align with studies on the broader topic of how contraceptive use affects abortion rates. When contraception increases, the abortion rate generally declines, said Charles Westoff, a Princeton University professor who has compared data for dozens of countries. ""It is obvious to most people that if the prevalence or availability of modern contraceptives is reduced, the unintentional pregnancy rate will rise and thus the abortion rate,"" Westoff said. Guttmacher may have underestimated the unintended pregnancies Title X averts, said Diana Greene Foster, a reproductive health expert at the University of California, San Francisco. She studied the group’s California numbers and thinks they are 20 percent too low. ""I can’t say that their estimate of pregnancies averted for Georgia is too low by 20 percent. But I believe that in general, their methodology produces conservative estimates,"" Foster told PoltiFact Georgia in an e-mail. University of Alabama professor Michael New, whose research is widely used to support anti-abortion positions, says Guttmacher’s figures are unpersuasive. New cited a 2002 Guttmacher study on women who had abortions. Of those who did not use contraceptives, 12 percent said they could not afford or gain access to them. This low percentage suggests Title X has little effect on abortions, New said. That same study, however, also found that women with lower income and education levels are less likely to use contraception, and those who use no contraception are more likely to have abortions. New also cited a Guttmacher analysis of abortion statistics in 13 countries. Abortions declined in seven of those countries after modern contraception became popular, but they initially rose in the U.S. and five other countries. Still, in the U.S. and at least three other countries where abortions increased, abortion rates eventually declined. Did Johnson get his facts right? Johnson said ""studies"" show Georgia’s abortion level would increase by 44 percent. In fact, he cited a single study from a widely respected group. While scholars have found that in general, increases in the use of contraceptives lead to decreases in abortion, and one expert said Guttmacher may have underestimated its Georgia figures, we found no other study that confirms or refutes its conclusions about this state. Johnson would have been right if he said that studies show contraception decreases abortion, and that without Title X funds, abortions could rise. But he didn’t. We therefore rate his statement ."
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4502
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Car bomb collides with vehicles in Egypt capital, killing 20.
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A car packed with explosives being driven to carry out an attack collided with other vehicles and exploded in central Cairo, killing at least 20 people, the Interior Ministry said Monday, the deadliest attack in the Egyptian capital in over two years.
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true
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Religion, Health, Cairo, General News, Egypt, Militant groups, Nile River, Accidents, Middle East, International News
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The blast went off Sunday night on the busy Corniche boulevard along the Nile River, setting other cars on fire and injuring at least 47. It damaged Egypt’s main cancer hospital nearby, shattering parts of the facade and some rooms inside, forcing the evacuation of dozens of patients. Authorities had initially said the explosion was caused by a multi-vehicle accident. But later Monday, the Interior Ministry acknowledged that a car bomb was involved. It accused a militant group known as Hasm, which has links to the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, saying it was moving the car to carry out an attack elsewhere. The ministry did not say what the intended target was. The car had been stolen months earlier in the Nile Delta, it said. President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi called it a “terrorist incident” in a tweet, expressing condolences for the dead and vowed to “face and root out terrorism.” The attack is the deadliest in Cairo since a bombing at a chapel adjacent to Egypt’s main Coptic Christian cathedral killed 30 people during Sunday Mass in December 2016. That attack was claimed by Egypt’s affiliate of the Islamic State group. Smaller bombings, usually by roadside devices, have taken place more often, targeting security forces and in two cases tourists near the Pyramids. Car bombs, however, have been far rarer in the capital. For years, Egypt has battled Islamic militants, led by an IS affiliate, in the Sinai Peninsula. That insurgency has at times spilled over into other parts of the country. Militant attacks increased after el-Sissi, as defence minister, led the military’s 2013 ouster of then-President Mohammed Morsi, a Brotherhood leader, after massive protests against his rule. Since then, the government has waged a major crackdown on the Brotherhood, banning it and declaring it a terrorist organization. Morsi collapsed and died in a Cairo courtroom in June. Sunday’s blast damaged the cancer hospital’s main gate and several patient rooms and wards, according to a statement from the Cairo University, whose medical school uses the institution as an educational facility. Windows and glass doors on the hospital building were shattered. “Parts of the ceiling of the hospital were collapsing as I got out of my room,” said one patient, Mahmoud el-Sayed. “People were running everywhere and shouting.” At least 78 patients were evacuated to other hospitals. The Health Ministry did not say whether any patients or hospital staff were among the casualties. Multiple vehicles on the street were damaged, burning those inside, said another witness, Mohamed Ashraf. “People were struggling to get the passengers out,” he said. In its initial account of the explosion, the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police, said a vehicle was driving against traffic on the boulevard and collided with up to three other cars, causing an explosion. It didn’t elaborate when it later announced the car bomb, and it was not clear which vehicle in that scenario was the vehicle with explosives. The police quickly cordoned off the area of the crash, as prosecutors began an investigation. Unidentified body parts were being collected in a body bag from the site, Health Minister Hala Zayed said in TV comments. The hospital is close to Cairo’s Tahrir Square, which became known internationally as the scene of mass protests in the 2011 uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak. After the blast, some patients with appointments Monday were left stranded, waiting outside the hospital with their relatives. Ahmed Ramadan, a farmer, had brought his daughter from their home 145 kilometers (90 miles) south of Cairo for chemotherapy. “We do not know where to go,” he said.
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2496
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WHO urges tougher food marketing rules to curb childhood obesity.
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The marketing of unhealthy foods to children has proven “disastrously effective”, driving obesity by using cheap social media channels to promote fat-, salt- and sugar-laden foods, the World Health Organisation’s Europe office said on Tuesday.
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true
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Health News
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The United Nations health agency called for tighter controls on such marketing, saying tougher regulations were crucial to winning the fight against childhood obesity. “Children are surrounded by adverts urging them to consume high-fat, high-sugar, high-salt foods, even when they are in places where they should be protected, such as schools and sports facilities,” said Zsuzsanna Jakab, director of the WHO’s regional unit for Europe. The promotion of foods high in saturated and trans-fats, sugars and salt has for years been recognized as a significant risk factor for obesity in children and for diet-related chronic diseases such as heart disease and some cancers later in life. In a report on food marketing, WHO Europe said the food industry increasingly uses cheap new marketing channels such as social media and smart phone apps to target children. Television remains the dominant form of advertising and a large majority of children and adolescents watch TV on average for more than two hours a day, it said. “Overweight is one of the biggest public health challenges of the 21st century: all countries are affected to varying extents, particularly in the lower socioeconomic groups,” Jakab said in a foreword to the report. And the picture is not improving, she added. Data from the WHO’s Childhood Obesity Surveillance Initiative show that, on average, one child in every three aged 6 to 9 years is overweight or obese. Jakab also said recent data suggest children become obese not just because they watch TV instead of being active but also because of exposure to advertising and other marketing tactics. Leading categories of advertised foods are soft drinks, sweetened breakfast cereals, biscuits, sweets, snacks, ready meals and fast food outlets, the WHO report said. “Unfortunately, marketing unhealthy food to children has been proven to be disastrously effective,” the report said. “Whereas adults are aware when they are being targeted ... children are unable to distinguish, for example, between adverts and cartoons. This makes them particularly receptive and vulnerable to messages that lead to unhealthy choices.” WHO Europe said that, while all 53 member states of its European region have signed up to restrictions on the marketing of unhealthy foods to children, most rely on general advertising regulations that do not specifically address the promotion of high-fat, -salt or -sugar products. More comprehensive approaches - via either legislation, self-regulation or co-regulation - have only been adopted in Denmark, France, Norway, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden, it said.
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403
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Exclusive: Top U.S. insurer to cover Amgen, Eli Lilly migraine drugs, exclude Teva.
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A top U.S. pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) owned by UnitedHealth Group Inc has included new migraine drugs from Amgen Inc and Eli Lilly and Co as preferred treatments on its lists of covered drugs, according to an OptumRx client note viewed by Reuters.
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Health News
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Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd’s rival migraine headache preventer is excluded on one list and patients can pay more for it in some cases on a second list, the note said. As with rival PBMs Express Scripts and CVS Health Corp, OptumRx’s lists of covered drugs, or formularies, cover tens of millions of consumers who receive their healthcare from employers and health insurers. About 39 million Americans suffer from migraine headaches, according to the Migraine Research Foundation, and global migraine drug sales could reach $8.7 billion by 2026, according to analytics firm GlobalData. OptumRx’s decision secures easier access to customers for Lilly’s Emgality at all three of the biggest PBMs - including CVS and Express Scripts - and gives Amgen’s Aimovig a leg up after CVS decided not to include it on its preferred drug list. Teva’s Ajovy only has preferred status at CVS, while Amgen also has it at Express Scripts, part of Cigna Corp. “We are pleased that all three companies have chosen Emgality to be one of the preferred medications, making it accessible to even more patients suffering from migraine,” Lilly said in an emailed statement. Inclusion on a preferred drugs list by the largest PBMs and health insurers is critically important for sales of new medicines. Increasingly, PBMs are choosing a subset of treatments for their coverage list when there are multiple treatments that are considered equivalent. The three treatments, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last year, belong to a class of drugs called CGRP inhibitors that have proven effective in helping to prevent migraines. A Teva spokeswoman said the company is committed to increasing access to Ajovy regardless of formulary decisions and is still offering discounts that allow patients to pay nothing in some cases, regardless of insurance. “Since Ajovy injection launched in September, we have experienced strong demand and steady growth, and we continue discussions with payers,” the spokeswoman said. An Amgen spokeswoman said that the company was pleased with the decision and is committed to ensuring affordable access to its drug. Amgen, which shares Aimovig U.S. revenue with Novartis AG, earlier this week reported fourth-quarter sales of $95 million, nearly doubling Wall Street estimates. The OptumRx decision becomes effective Feb. 1. The OptumRx select formulary relegates Teva’s drug to a lower access level that would typically require a higher out-of-pocket cost, it said. PBMs typically extract discounts from drugmakers in return for favorable placement on their preferred list of covered drugs, such as through a low co-payment, or coinsurance payment, for their members. All three migraine drugs have a list price of $575 a month, or $6,900 a year. Those prices do not reflect the rebates and discounts to PBMs, who design and negotiate benefits for employers and insurers. All three drugmakers are providing a limited duration supply of the new drugs at no cost directly to patients in addition to other assistance programs. Amgen’s Aimovig was first-to-market from the new class. But the rivals from Teva and Lilly followed soon after. The three large PBMs together cover the majority of the more than 150 million Americans who receive benefits through their employers. Their clients, including insurers and corporations, may choose not to follow a PBM’s recommendations on coverage, but that typically would cost more. Amgen shares were off 28 cents at $186.63, Lilly was up nearly 1 percent at $120.90 and Teva shares traded in New York were down nearly 1 percent at $19.69.
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18444
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"Long-term federal investment in U.S. airports is urgent because ""there was a recent survey of the top airports … in the world, and there was not a single U.S. airport that came in the top 25."
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"Obama said the United States needs to invest more in its airports over the long term in part because ""there was a recent survey of the top airports … in the world, and there was not a single U.S. airport that came in the top 25."" He is spot-on about the rankings, but the survey in question offers only imperfect support for the argument that the federal government should invest more in its airports, since the survey measures not just major infrastructure aspects of airports (which the federal government would help fund) but also passenger amenities (something the government would not get directly involved in)."
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National, Federal Budget, Transportation, Barack Obama,
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"During a press conference on April 30, 2013, President Barack Obama addressed a number of high-profile issues, including the fighting in Syria, the Boston Marathon attack, immigration legislation and the across-the-board cuts to federal spending known as the sequester. On the sequester, Obama expressed his ambivalence about signing a bill that passed Congress a few days earlier. The bill, which would ease the sequester’s hit on the Federal Aviation Administration, moved quickly through the House and Senate amid public frustration. The flight delays stemmed from cuts to air traffic control staffing; the bill shifted $253 million from an airport improvement fund to the air traffic control system. Obama said the pressure on air travelers left him with little choice but to sign the bill, but he also decried the piecemeal approach to solving the nation’s budget and infrastructure challenges. If lawmakers were ""seriously concerned about passenger convenience and safety,"" Obama said, ""then they shouldn't just be thinking about tomorrow or next week or the week after that. They should be thinking about what's going to be happening five years from now, 10 years from now or 15 years from now. … How are we making sure that we're investing in things like rebuilding our airports and our roads and our bridges, and investing in early childhood education?"" Obama added: ""There was a recent survey of the top airports … in the world, and there was not a single U.S. airport that came in the top 25. Not one U.S. airport was considered by the experts and consumers who use these airports to be in the top 25 in the world. I think Cincinnati airport came in around 30th. What does that say about our long-term competitiveness and future?"" We wondered whether this survey really showed U.S. airports to be such a dismal lot. As it turns out, Obama got the numbers right. He was referring to the World Airport Awards, an independent, annual survey of 12 million travelers that ranks nearly 400 airports. The survey has been conducted by a British-based firm called Skytrax since 1999. The top-ranked U.S. airport in the group’s 2013 survey was indeed Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport in the 30th spot. The airports ranking higher than that include a dozen in Asia (including the top two, Singapore Changi Airport and Incheon International Airport), seven in Europe, three in Africa, two in Australia, and just one in North America (Vancouver International Airport, at No. 8). In all, 17 U.S. airports cracked the top 100, with Denver 36th, San Francisco 40th, Atlanta 48th and none of the rest ending up higher than 50th. The 2013 results were not a fluke: We checked the 2012 and 2011 surveys as well and found that the top U.S. airport in both years was also Cincinnati, ranking 24th. We checked with Angela Gittens, director general of Airports Council International, a trade group for airports, to see what she thought of the rankings. She began by expressing skepticism about the survey’s rigor. (The firm says it surveys passengers online and by phone and uses systems to detect fraudulent submissions.) She added that the U.S. faces some stiff challenges competing in a global comparison of this sort. ""Major international hubs in the U.S. are sometimes hampered by long immigration and security queues, which would hurt their rankings in comparison to an airport with primarily domestic service, such as Cincinnati,"" Gittens said. Cincinnati, which outperformed no fewer than 50 U.S. airports that have larger traffic, is hardly an international hub on the scale of New York’s JFK, Los Angeles or Miami. Peter Miller, a spokesman for Skytrax, agreed. He said the U.S. may be suffering in the survey because of the importance of security processing and immigration to many passengers -- ""not just actual waiting times, but also traveler treatment in these areas."" Gittens added that U.S. airports have a hard time competing with newer airports in Asia. In many countries, she said, ""the national governments see their airports as key assets for their economic vitality and strive to make the visitors’ journey through the airport as smooth as possible."" So the rankings Obama cited should be taken with a grain of salt. More important, the rankings don’t entirely support the president’s argument that the federal government needs to spend more money ""rebuilding our airports"" and providing for ""passenger convenience and safety."" Of the 39 factors that went into the survey’s rankings, we count only 13 that address airport capital improvements -- projects like terminal and waiting-area design, signage, public transit access, ease of navigation, and baggage-handling systems. Another five factors in the survey involve security. This leaves a slight majority of factors that concern amenities and hospitality -- factors such as choice of bars, shopping options, restaurant prices, entertainment facilities, washroom cleanliness, availability of luggage trolleys, and ""friendliness of airport staff."" ""The survey covers a wide cross-section of amenities and facilities at every airport, but it is true to say that one of the most prominent sections is the focus on service, staff, convenience, and waiting times,"" said Peter Miller, a spokesman for Skytrax. ""These are the issues that are of prime importance to travelers, and which cause the biggest distinction between airports worldwide."" Our ruling Obama said the United States needs to invest more in its airports over the long term in part because ""there was a recent survey of the top airports … in the world, and there was not a single U.S. airport that came in the top 25."" He is spot-on about the rankings, but the survey in question offers only imperfect support for the argument that the federal government should invest more in its airports, since the survey measures not just major infrastructure aspects of airports (which the federal government would help fund) but also passenger amenities (something the government would not get directly involved in)."
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Experimental gene therapy improves sight in patients going blind.
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Toby Stroh was in his 20s when his doctor told him he would go blind in his 50s, and his years of playing tennis and being able to drive or work could be gone long before that.
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Health News
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Now aged 56, two years after his retina was deliberately infected with a virus carrying a gene to correct a protein deficiency that was destroying its cells, he is a regular on the tennis court and has a successful career in law. “For the last 30 years I’ve been living under the insidious inevitability of going blind,” Stroh told reporters at a briefing about his experimental treatment. “Now there is a very real prospect I will continue to be able to see.” Stroh is one of a handful of patients with an inherited cause of progressive blindness called choroideremia who took part in an early stage trial of a potential gene therapy treatment designed to correct a genetic defect that means retina cells gradually die. Although the results are from only six patients in a very early stage Phase I trial, researchers said they suggest more studies should be done to see if similar gene therapies could be developed for other more common genetic causes of blindness such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. Choroideremia is caused by a mutation in a gene that makes a protein called REP1. It affects an estimated 1 in 50,000 people and causes sufferers - mainly men - to lose their sight gradually as the cells in the retina degenerate. There is currently no licensed treatment for the condition and eventually the photoreceptor cells - the rods and cones in the retina that respond to light by sending signals to the brain - die completely, leading to blindness by middle age. In the trial, a team led by Robert MacLaren of the University of Oxford, a consultant surgeon at the Oxford Eye Hospital, injected the patients’ retinas with a vector - in this case a genetically engineered virus - to deliver a corrective copy of the gene to the appropriate part of the eye. “The virus has to be delivered to the target cells, which are the cells of the retina,” MacLaren explained. To do that, the surgeon performs an operation similar to cataract surgery in which the patient’s retina is detached and lifted, and the virus is then injected underneath with a fine needle. “The virus goes in, infects the cells and puts the protein back into the cells - so we’re harnessing the capability of the virus to infect cells and deliver its DNA,” he said. “This is the exciting thing about gene therapy,” said MacLaren, whose trial results were published in The Lancet medical journal on Thursday. “We’re talking about a single one-off genetic correction ... that has long-standing effects that so far have not been shown to diminish.” The results showed that of the six patients treated - each of them only in one eye so the other could act as a comparison - the two with the least good sight before the gene therapy had significantly improved vision six months later. In the other four patients, whose vision was only slightly impaired before treatment as they were at earlier stages of the condition, the results confirmed the gene therapy is safe, with the virus delivering its DNA without damaging the retina. “It is still too early to know if the ... treatment will last indefinitely,” MacLaren said. “But we can say that the vision improvements have been maintained for as long as we have been following up the patients, which is two years in one case.” He stressed that the therapy is still in the experimental stage, with more trials likely to take up to five years before it could be submitted for a licence with a view to making it available to all patients. “If we were able to treat people early, get them in their teens or late childhood, we’d be getting the virus in before their vision is lost,” he said. “If the treatment works, we would be able to prevent them from going blind.”
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Nevada last in states for mental health services for youths .
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Children and teenagers who need mental health care have less access to services in Nevada than in other states, advocates say.
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General News, Nevada, Mental health, Las Vegas
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The nonprofit group Mental Health America ranked Nevada 51st among states and the District of Columbia in seven categories of youths at risk, the Las Vegas Sun reported. Factors in the group’s September review included psychological and emotional disturbances, substance abuse disorders, major depressive episodes and children for whom private insurance doesn’t cover treatment. Youth mental health advocate Char Frost in Las Vegas said youth suicide rates are on the rise statewide, “There are challenges for the state of Nevada, real challenges here in terms of service providers and so on,” Robert Weires, psychological services department director at the Clark County School District, told the Sun. Frost said her adolescent son began to show signs of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression around 2005, but few local programs train mental health professionals or specialists, other than the School of Social Work at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at the UNLV School of Medicine, Almost every provider told her they don’t serve children, and the one that did had a wait of more than three months. “Our population has been increasing and we just have not been very good about growing our own professionals,” Frost said. The newspaper reported that youth mental health services in and around Las Vegas were hurt by the closure in August of Montevista Hospital, the area’s largest inpatient mental health provider for youth and adolescents. But there have been some improvements, including a new inpatient behavioral health facility at Southern Hills Hospital in Las Vegas that can accommodate as many as 20 young people. Initially designed to serve children from ages 13-17, the youth pavilion now accommodates children as young as 11 and might lower the age limit further, said Dr. David Gennis, program clinical director. Most young people who use the facility have shown suicidal views or behavioral challenges, Gennis said. Youths receive therapy, sometimes with their family or another group, to identify factors that trigger destructive behavior. They also get help developing coping skills and regulating their emotions. The average length of a stay is less than five days. Gennis said connecting families to geographically accessible outpatient therapy services can be difficult. A new inpatient-to-outpatient transition program for adolescents was expected to give some the opportunity to continue working with their Southern Hills therapists two to three days a week. “I think there’s an opportunity for us to do a better job with our very young children, to start teaching them how to manage negative or uncomfortable feelings and then how do they express behaviors (and) communicate appropriately,” Gennis said. Weires said schools have created a mental health transition team for students, but the Sun found that resources are limited and the district faces a shortage of school psychologists, whose duties include evaluating students in crisis, intervening when students show suicidal tendencies, and helping students after inpatient care. The shortage means school psychologists sometimes cover three schools with little time for anything more than crisis response. “We can’t go as deep, far and wide with any particular skill sets or services for kids if we’re spread out too thin,” Weires said. District officials recently allocated $350,000 a year to contract with an outside company, Columbus Educational Services, for 3.5 full-time school psychologists. In response to a mandate from the Legislature, the district also is working to create a suicide prevention plan that Weires said will involve strengthening relationships among psychologists, counselors, nurses and other specialists. Frost, who is also government affairs manager at United Citizens Foundation, said community organizations can help. The nonprofit delivers therapy to students during the school day because time after-school for working families can be filled with homework, dinner and other activities. Gennis said reducing stigma and reminding parents that mental health problems are no one’s fault remains key to addressing the issue.
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