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1645
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One in four dogs at top show Crufts found to be overweight.
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A quarter of dogs competing in the world’s biggest dog show are overweight, scientists said on Monday.
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true
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Health News
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An analysis of canines at Britain’s Crufts show - held annually since the reign of Queen Victoria - found 74 percent were in ideal condition but 26 percent were overweight. None of the animals studied were underweight, researchers from the University of Liverpool reported in the journal Veterinary Record. The team reached their conclusions after studying 1,000 images of 28 dog breeds placed between first and fifth in their class during competitions from 2001 to 2013. The issue was most pronounced in certain breeds, with 80 percent of pugs, 68 percent of Basset hounds and 63 percent of Labradors proving excessively fat. While obesity at Crufts is still less common than in the general pet population, researcher Alex German said the proportion of overweight animals was a concern because show dogs were assumed to be perfect specimens of their breed. Obesity causes significant health problems in dogs, including arthritis and diabetes.
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41648
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103 NHS walk-in centres have closed or been downgraded since 2010.
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We don’t know exactly, as this information isn’t collected centrally. Research from an NHS regulator and from campaign group 38 Degrees suggests more than 90 have been closed or downgraded.
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unproven
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health
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There are 16,481 fewer beds in hospitals since 2010. This is in the right ballpark, but it doesn’t seem to be the best comparison. It seems to compare the number of beds at different times of the year, but the number available fluctuates seasonally. Comparing July-September in 2010 and 2017, the decrease in beds available overnight in England is closer to 13,200. 66 A&E and maternity wards have been closed. We don’t know, as this information isn’t collected nationally. In 2014, there were reportedly plans to close or downgrade 66 in England, but while some have been, others have stayed open. 103 NHS walk-in centres have closed or been downgraded since 2010. We don’t know exactly, as this information isn’t collected centrally. Research from an NHS regulator and from campaign group 38 Degrees suggests more than 90 have been closed or downgraded. 60 ambulance stations have closed since 2010. We don’t know how many ambulance stations have closed since 2010 as national figures on this aren’t regularly published. 1,000 GP practices have closed since 2010. There are around 1,000 fewer GP practices in England in 2017 than in 2010. Some practices may have merged together, rather than closing completely, but we don’t know how many have done so. A&E four hour targets have been missed more than 10 million times since 2010. Correct. Between 2010/11 and 2017/18, around 12 million A&E attendances in England took over four hours from arrival to admission, transfer or discharge. The number of patients waiting more than 12 hours in A&E is up 2,700% since 2010. Correct (although not all patients will necessarily have been waiting in A&E). In 2011/12, 120 patients in England waited 12 hours between the decision to admit them to emergency admissions and their actual admission, compared to 3,500 in 2017/18. Spending on social care is down 8% since 2010. Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year said that between 2009/10 and 2016/17, councils’ spending on adult social care in England fell 8% in real terms. Newer analysis says that it fell by 6% over the same period. We’ve asked it for more information. There are 5,240 fewer mental health nurses since 2010. This seems to be looking at different months in 2010 and 2017, which isn’t the best comparison. Comparing the number of full-time equivalent mental health nurses between January 2010 and January 2018 (the latest figures), the drop is closer to 4,500. The number of operations classed as urgent that have been cancelled twice have doubled since 2010. Correct. The number of urgent operations in England cancelled for the second time or more for non-medical reasons more than doubled between 2011/12 and 2017/18. There has been a 22% drop in ambulances meeting their 15 minute transfer target since 2010. The decrease is actually greater—28%. In 2010/11 in England 80% of ambulance transfers were done in 15 minutes, in 2015/16 it was 58%. Claim 1 of 12
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33471
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The Gardasil HPV vaccine has been proved to have caused the deaths of 32 women.
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The Gardasil HPV vaccine hasn't been proved to have caused the deaths of 32 women.
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false
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Medical, cervical cancer, drugs, gardasil
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Gardasil is a vaccine intended for girls and young women between the ages 9 to 26 to protect against human papillomavirus (HPV), a virus which is currently linked to an estimated 70% of known cervical cancer cases. Because Gardasil prevents only the onset of HPV infections (rather than curing those who have already been infected by HPV), health officials have advocated that girls be vaccinated for HPV prior to adolescence (or as soon as possible thereafter) in order to head off the occurrence of cervical cancer later in life. The message quoted above warns that the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has already received nearly 12,000 complaints about adverse medical issues related to Gardasil vaccinations, and that 32 young women died after receiving Gardasil vaccinations. Although this information is accurate in a strictly literal sense, it is a misleading presentation of raw data that does not in itself establish a causal connection between Gardasil and the posited medical dangers. The CDC, in conjunction with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), operates a program known as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). The VAERS program collects and analyzes reports on adverse events following immunizations in order to help track the safety and efficacy of various vaccines. It is important to note that reports collected by VAERS are raw data; they do not in themselves establish causal connections between vaccines and adverse medical issues — such determinations cannot be made until the reports have been investigated, evaluated, and analyzed. (To illustrate this concept, we offer the following [admittedly far-fetched] scenario: A man who received a flu vaccination and then accidentally hit his hand with a hammer a few hours later might legitimately report that soon after he received the flu vaccine, his hand began to throb painfully. Although such a report would be literally true, it would not establish any causal connection between the flu vaccine and the adverse medical symptom of a throbbing, painful hand.) As the CDC stated in its 2009 article on “Reports of Health Concerns Following HPV Vaccination,” before the Gardasil HPV vaccine was licensed it was studied in five clinical trials involving over 21,000 girls and women of ages 9 through 26. Since that licensing the “CDC and FDA have been closely monitoring the safety of the HPV vaccine” and found that: All serious reports for Gardasil have been carefully analyzed by medical experts. Experts have not found a common medical pattern to the reports of serious adverse events reported for Gardasil that would suggest that they were caused by the vaccine. As of December 31, 2008, there have been 32 U.S. reports of death among females who have received the vaccine. There was no common pattern to the deaths that would suggest that they were caused by the vaccine. From June 2006 to March 2013, approximately 57 million doses of HPV vaccines were distributed and VAERS received approximately 22,000 adverse event reports occurring in girls and women who received them. As noted in a 2013 CDC follow-up announcement, 92% of those reports were classified as “non-serious,” the other 8% generally encompassed symptoms such as “headache, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, dizziness, syncope, and generalized weakness,” and adverse events reported to VAERS were “consistent with those identified during the vaccine’s pre-licensure clinical trials.” The CDC also noted that: In 2011, the VSD (Vaccine Safety Datalink) studied the occurrence of specific adverse events following more than 600,000 doses of Gardasil. Adverse events in the HPV vaccinated population were compared to another appropriate population (such as adolescents vaccinated with vaccines other than HPV) and included Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), stroke, venous thromboembolism (VTE), appendicitis, seizures, syncope (fainting), allergic reactions, and a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction called anaphylaxis. None of these adverse events were found to be any more common after HPV vaccination than among the comparison groups. As Matthew Herper wrote for Forbes about the reported “deaths caused by Gardasil” phenomenon: [L]et’s take a look at those 20,000 adverse events and 100 deaths and figure out what they mean. It’s absolutely clear that these are for the most part not side effects from Gardasil. Nor is the vaccine, which has been given to more than 10 million people, likely responsible for those deaths. The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System was put in place in 1990 as a result of a 1986 law that requires health providers to report harm that comes to patients within a specific time period after vaccination. A great many of these reports can come from sales reps for drug manufacturers who hear about the incidents. Unfortunately, VAERS data is notoriously spotty — better than nothing, but there’s no way to insure that potential side effects are reported. When a product gets bad press, the number of reported “adverse events” goes up. And there is no way to tell if a particular side effect is linked to the vaccine. Some people will die after any vaccination, not because vaccines cause death but because people, even babies and adolescents, die with terrible regularity. It’s true that there have been 24,000 reports of adverse events with Gardasil. There have also been 60,000 reports of death with the mumps, measles, and rubella vaccine, and 26,000 following vaccination with Pfizer’s Prevnar, for pneumococcus bacteria. And yes, it’s true that there have been 106 deaths reported after Gardasil vaccination. There have also been 101 deaths reported after vaccination with Prevnar 13, a new version of Prevnar introduced in 2010. It’s normal for these reports to pour in for safe vaccines. You can’t directly link any of those adverse events or deaths directly to the vaccines, any more than you could blame it on my morning coffee if I got hit by a truck later today. So to try to make use of this data, researchers compare the rates at which negative side effects are reported for different vaccines. The CDC and FDA did this for HPV vaccines in 2009, looking at the first 12,424 reports to VAERS and publishing the result in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They did note 2 cases of unusual neurological symptoms similar to Lou Gehrig’s disease, and there was an increase in patients who had potentially dangerous blood clots, although 90% of those patients had a risk factor for those clots, such as taking birth control pills, that might explain the increase. The researchers specifically looked at Guillain-Barré Syndrome, a neurological disorder that had been linked to a bad batch of flu shots; there wasn’t a signal that this was a problem with Gardasil. The study did result in the FDA advising doctors to watch adolescents after they get their shots, because some faint. Based on that analysis, it seems that of those dozens of deaths, only a handful could possibly be linked to Gardasil. And based on the data available, it is unlikely (though not impossible) that even those deaths were caused by the vaccine. The risks from the vaccine are very small and may be limited to headaches and fainting caused by the needle, not the vaccine itself. Gardasil has been studied in clinical trials of more than 30,000 people; Cervarix, the competitor vaccine, has run a similar gantlet. A couple of other pieces of anti-Gardasil misinformation have been widely circulated, such as the video featuring Jenny Thompson of Health Sciences Institute which is linked at the end of the warning reproduced at the head of this page: Likewise, another much-reproduced article claims that in 2009, Dr. Diane Harper (who is consistently misidentified as “the lead researcher in the development of Gardasil and Cervarix”) gave a talk at which she “came clean” and admitted that “Gardasil and Cervarix don’t work, are dangerous, and weren’t tested.” That article grossly misrepresents what Dr. Harper actually said. Dr. Harper has expressed concerns such as how long protection from vaccines such as Gardasil will last (which is not a safety issue, but rather an issue of whether the expected results of an HPV immunization program will justify the financial costs), and whether the marketing of Gardasil might lead some women to avoid taking other STD-preventing precautions, but she has never said that Gardasil “doesn’t work,” “wasn’t tested,” or was “dangerous,” as explained in great detail at the Skeptical Raptor blog: In a 2012 peer-reviewed article about Cervarix, Dr. Harper states that “Cervarix is an excellent choice for both screened and unscreened populations due to its long-lasting protection, its broad protection for at least five oncogenic HPV types, the potential to use only one-dose for the same level of protection, and its safety.” Again, she speculates that cervical cancer screening may be just as useful, but nowhere does she recommend that the vaccine not be used, that it’s safety profile is unacceptable, or that the vaccine cannot prevent cancer. In fact, she recommends expanding the guidelines for HPV vaccines for older women because as they age, they are more susceptible to other serotypes of HPV, against which Cervarix confers protection. She also states that Cervarix may also have a protective effect against some autoimmune disorders. This does not sound like a researcher who is losing sleep about the HPV vaccine, but who fully supports its use, with some exceptions. Dr. Diane Harper is one of the leading researchers in biomedical science, an individual who has spent her life studying vaccines. She has the academic training and research credibility at a level that if she said “Gardasil is dangerous,” many of us would stand up and begin to wonder. But the facts are she has not said anything of the sort about Gardasil and Cervarix. In peer-reviewed articles published in important, high impact journals, she has given strong, but scientifically qualified, endorsements to HPV vaccines. These are the facts. Any other allegations about her lack of support for vaccinations is based on misinformation, disinformation and lies. A 2009 CBS News interview with Dr. Harper is often cited as contradicting this assessment, but it does not: Dr. Harper did not state during that interview that Gardasil doesn’t work, is dangerous, or wasn’t tested. Given questions about how long the vaccine is effective for, she questioned the efficacy of giving shots to girls as young as 11 years old in parts of the world (such as the U.S.) where women regularly undergo safety Pap screening repeatedly over their lifetimes, saying that the chances of their contracting cervical cancer may be less than the “small” risks associated with the vaccine. But Dr. Harper also noted that the risks of death surrounding the administration of Gardasil were “very rare,” and that she “agrees with Merck and the CDC that Gardasil is safe for most girls and women.” Additional information: Frequently Asked Questions About HPV Vaccine Safety (CDC)
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17701
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In July 2010 the government said small businesses -- 60 percent -- will lose their health care, 45 percent of big business and a large percentage of individual health.
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Lexicon Pharmaceuticals Inc said on Tuesday France’s Sanofi SA will pay the drugmaker $260 million for the termination of their partnership to develop diabetes drug Zynquista.
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false
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Health Care, PunditFact, Sean Hannity,
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Shares of Lexicon jumped 37.8% to $2.37 in after hours trading. Under the terms of the settlement, Sanofi will pay $208 million upfront and the remainder within twelve months to Lexicon, which was eligible to receive up to $1.4 billion in milestone payments under the partnership. The four-year partnership was terminated by Sanofi in July after the results of three late-stage studies of Zynquista, which is being developed as an add-on to insulin for diabetic patients. Lexicon will regain global rights for the development and commercialization of Zynquista in both type 1 and type 2 diabetes, the company said in a statement. The drug has been approved in the European Union for use in type 1 diabetic patients but failed to win U.S. approval in March, months after a panel of experts raised concerns of the risk of diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). DKA is a life-threatening condition in which acids called ketones build up when the body starts to use fat instead of glucose as a source of energy.
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9283
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Anti-rejection medications for transplant recipients protect against Alzheimer's disease
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This release points to a novel strategy for targeting some of the pathology associated with Alzheimer’s disease that is newsworthy and deserves attention. The study that it describes shows that certain drugs may inhibit a key enzyme that contributes to Alzheimer’s plaque buildup in the brain — and that patients who took these drugs to prevent transplanted organ rejection had lower rates of Alzheimer’s disease compared with people who didn’t take these drugs. But the release’s overly enthusiastic tone may generate more than attention — it could engender false hope. The findings are interesting but preliminary, and the study’s retrospective, observational design has a number of limitations that deserved comment. Alzheimer’s disease and associated dementias are terrible diseases with no adequate treatments and no clear preventive strategies. As a result, people with the diseases and their families are appropriately interested in new treatments and preventive measures. That’s why it’s so important to get the information to the public in a balanced manner.
|
mixture
|
beta-amyloid,calcineurin inhibitors,organ transplants,University of Texas Medical Branch
|
The economic and clinical toll taken by Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia is staggering, so a treatment that could reduce the likelihood of developing the disease would have large consequences. Identifying who should receive the treatment is important since not everyone will develop dementia. That makes the cost of the intervention an issue from the economic perspective. These are difficult issues to explore in a new release, but the release could have at least signaled the importance of the discussion by mentioning the cost of these drugs. The medications are currently available for use by transplant patients — so pricing should not be hard to find. We’ll reward the news release here for providing data taken from the published study that quantities the benefits. It helpfully gives the absolute rates of dementia in those taking the drugs and in the general population. That makes the numbers easy to understand and gives an accurate sense of the size of the effect. Having said that, however, the language used in the title and the comments from the senior author go beyond what the study is capable of determining. We’ll discuss that shortcoming below under the “Evidence” criterion. The news release does point out that preventive treatment with anti-rejection drugs suppresses the immune system. But exactly what does that mean? What are the implications of this effect? The release does not provide any description of the potential problems that could occur. And that is not the only issue with these drugs. Both tacrolimus and cyclosporine have an extensive its of side effects. On the plus side, the news release does provide a good discussion of the important aspects of the study noting the previous animal studies, the underlying theory of why these drugs might work and the nature of the study design and actual data. However, the news release does not point out the obvious limitations of a retrospective observational study. And the language used in the headline and by the investigators implies a strength to the findings that isn’t appropriate: “Anti-rejection medications for transplant recipients protect against Alzheimer’s disease”. Based on that headline, readers will clearly infer that this is a cause-and-effect relationship, when the design of this study can’t support such a conclusion. These drugs are “associated with reduced risk,” but it’s too soon to tell if they “protect.” No disease mongering here. The funding sources are clearly identified. The authors disclosed no conflicts of interest in the paper, a fact which the news release could also have shared with readers. The Alzheimer’s association lists a host of strategies that may lower risk of developing dementia. These include exercise, socialization, blood pressure control and the like. In addition, there is an ongoing randomized clinical trial of anti-amyloid drugs in high risk patients. Although not explicitly stated, it is clear that the drugs in question are available. That raises a possible concern, as their availability and the news release’s enthusiasm may result in patient demand for access to this as-yet unproven strategy. The story described previous animal research leading up to the current study in humans. And the findings from the study are interesting and novel. Given that these drugs have been used for decades, at least in the case of cyclosporine, it’s surprising that this effect hasn’t been noted before — all the more reason the finding needs replicating and examination with a stronger study design. The news release is a bit too enthusiastic about the results of this retrospective observational study. One of the authors says the data “support, for the first time in human subjects, our notion that calcineurin inhibition has a protective effect on the development and possible progression and even reversal of Alzheimer’s disease.” Certainly “reversal” is beyond the pale. The release’s repeated claims that these drugs “protect” against Alzheimer’s is also not justified based on the evidence.
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37842
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"In May 2020, scientists found evidence a parallel universe exists, and in it, ""time runs backward."
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In May 2020, Did Scientists Find Evidence of a Parallel Universe Where Time Runs Backwards?
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false
|
Fact Checks, Viral Content
|
"If you spent any time on social media in the later days of May 2020, chances are you saw a New York Post article from May 19 2020 about scientists “discovering a parallel universe” circulating on social media, which is apparently a place where time “runs backwards,” at least relative to our own:In a scenario straight out of “The Twilight Zone,” a group of NASA scientists working on an experiment in Antarctica have detected evidence of a parallel universe — where the rules of physics are the opposite of our own, according to a report.The concept of a parallel universe has been around since the early 1960s, mostly in the minds of fans of sci-fi TV shows and comics, but now a cosmic ray detection experiment has found particles that could be from a parallel realm that also was born in the Big Bang, the Daily Star reported.It appeared that the New York Post sourced its information at least secondhand, and not from a science journal. It came from a separate tabloid, the Daily Star. As of May 21 2020, it was the New York Post‘s second-most “trending” story (along with a very clickable headline):The headline shown in the sidebar: “NASA detects evidence of parallel universe that’s probably better than the one we’re in.”On May 17 2020, the Daily Star carried an article which claimed:NASA’s Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) uses a giant balloon to haul delicate electronic antennas high into the cold dry air above Antarctica – where there is little or no radio noise to distort its findings.There is a constant “wind’ of high energy particles coming from outer space – some of which are a million times more powerful than anything we can generate ourselves.That page was littered with hyperlinks on words like “NASA” and “space,” but they led only to site tags, rather than external confirmation of the Daily Star‘s major claims about the very nature of physics. The “big if true” item continued:Low energy particles – neutrinos – can pass completely through the Earth, barely interacting with the substance of our planet at all. But higher energy objects are stopped by the reassuringly solid matter of the Earth.That means that high energy particles can only be detected coming “down” from outer space. To detect a heavier particle – a tau neutrino – coming “up” out of the Earth would imply that these particles are actually travelling backwards in time.And that is exactly what the ANITA scientists have seen.Finally, likely long after most people stopped reading and started sharing, the Daily Star linked to a New Scientist article from April 8 2020 (“We may have spotted a parallel universe going backwards in time”) which described three successive experiments seeking “evidence of high-energy particles arriving from space”:IN THE Antarctic, things happen at a glacial pace. Just ask Peter Gorham. For a month at a time, he and his colleagues would watch a giant balloon carrying a collection of antennas float high above the ice, scanning over a million square kilometres of the frozen landscape for evidence of high-energy particles arriving from space … But it wasn’t what they were looking for. Moreover, it seemed impossible. Rather than bearing down from above, this particle was exploding out of the ground.Incidentally, that article was “trending” as of May 21 2020, despite being six weeks old:The findings were at the very least four years old — and no parallel universes had yet come of them:That strange finding was made in 2016. Since then, all sorts of suggestions rooted in known physics have been put forward to account for the perplexing signal, and all have been ruled out. What’s left is shocking in its implications. Explaining this signal requires the existence of a topsy-turvy universe created in the same big bang as our own and existing in parallel with it. In this mirror world, positive is negative, left is right and time runs backwards. It is perhaps the most mind-melting idea ever to have emerged from the Antarctic ice – but it might just be true …Moreover, the article was clearly popular — but only its first four paragraphs were visible to non-subscribers. The balance of its content was unavailable to those without a subscription, so people searching for more about the viral claims would come across “it might just be true” and nothing further.In any event, the findings were quite old and trotted out for no good reason in May 2020 — probably solely to tack the predictably viral “NASA detects evidence of parallel universe that’s probably better than the on we’re in” headline on to the story. After all, if “NASA” says something, it’s got to be good, right?Good for traffic, at least. On the morning of May 21 2020, “NASA” was trending on Twitter, and Reuters space reporter Joey Roulette tweeted:Love how NASA is trending on Twitter over faux news of a ""parallel universe,"" as if the agency isn't just six days away from launching humans to space from US soil for the first time since 2011— Joey Roulette (@joroulette) May 21, 2020Again, this time according to Scientific American in 2018, the atypical results were observed as early as March 2016:There’s something mysterious coming up from the frozen ground in Antarctica, and it could break physics as we know it.Physicists don’t know what it is exactly. But they do know it’s some sort of cosmic ray—a high-energy particle that’s blasted its way through space, into the Earth, and back out again. But the particles physicists know about—the collection of particles that make up what scientists call the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics—shouldn’t be able to do that. Sure, there are low-energy neutrinos that can pierce through miles upon miles of rock unaffected. But high-energy neutrinos, as well as other high-energy particles, have “large cross-sections.” That means that they’ll almost always crash into something soon after zipping into the Earth and never make it out the other side.And yet, since March 2016, researchers have been puzzling over two events in Antarctica where cosmic rays did burst out from the Earth, and were detected by NASA’s Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA)—a balloon-borne antenna drifting over the southern continent.ANITA is designed to hunt cosmic rays from outer space, so the high-energy neutrino community was buzzing with excitement when the instrument detected particles that seemed to be blasting up from Earth instead of zooming down from space. Because cosmic rays shouldn’t do that, scientists began to wonder whether these mysterious beams are made of particles never seen before.A paper on the topic was published in September 2018:Since then, physicists have proposed all sorts of explanations for these “upward going” cosmic rays, from sterile neutrinos (neutrinos that rarely ever bang into matter) to “atypical dark matter distributions inside the Earth,” referencing the mysterious form of matter that doesn’t interact with light[. ]All the explanations were intriguing, and suggested that ANITA might have detected a particle not accounted for in the Standard Model. But none of the explanations demonstrated conclusively that something more ordinary couldn’t have caused the signal at ANITA.A new paper uploaded today (Sept. 26 [2018]) to the preprint server arXiv changes that. In it, a team of astrophysicists from Penn State University showed that there have been more upward-going high-energy particles than those detected during the two ANITA events. Three times, they wrote, IceCube (another, larger neutrino observatory in Antarctica) detected similar particles, though no one had yet connected those events to the mystery at ANITA. And, combining the IceCube and ANITA data sets, the Penn State researchers calculated that, whatever particle is bursting up from the Earth, it has much less than a 1-in-3.5 million chance of being part of the Standard Model. (In technical, statistical terms, their results had confidences of 5.8 and 7.0 sigma, depending on which of their calculations you’re looking at. )If that word looked familiar — “preprint” — it’s because we have seen and talked about it a lot in May 2020, incidentally also as part of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, it was a major component of reporting we have done about a “mutant coronavirus” and a very viral, but not at all science-based blog post on Medium. On the latter page, we defined preprints:What [the blogger] linked was, in fact, labeled as a “pre-print,” or “research papers shared before peer review”:A preprint is a full draft research paper that is shared publicly before it has been peer reviewed. Most preprints are given a digital object identifier (DOI) so they can be cited in other research papers.In the linked explainer on pre-prints above, it is noted that “preprints are not the final form of a research paper for most authors.” The iteration linked by [the author] and the blog was a pre-print called “COVID-19: Attacks the 1-Beta Chain of Hemoglobin and Captures the Porphyrin to Inhibit Human Heme Metabolism.”ANITA’s unusual findings were often framed as “breaking” the Standard Model (SM) of Physics. But in the Scientific American piece — which was very much less sensational — a physicist pointed out that other things don’t fit into the SM well either:“Even though the SM works very well in explaining a plethora of phenomena, it still has many handicaps,” said Seyda Ipek, a particle physicist at UC Irvine, who was not involved in the current research. “For example, it cannot account for the existence of dark matter, [explain mathematical weirdness in] neutrino masses, or the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe.”In other words, physics is weird. Physics being weird is probably the least weird thing about ANITA’s 2016 findings. And the outlet spoke to several physicists excited about the preprint and its potential:Now, several scientists not involved in the Penn State paper told Live Science that it offers solid (if incomplete) evidence that something new has really arrived.“It was clear from the start that if the ANITA anomalous events are due to particles that had propagated through thousands of kilometers of Earth, then those particles were very likely not SM particles,” said Mauricio Bustamante, an astrophysicist at the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, who was not an author on the new paper.“The paper that appeared today is the first systematic calculation of how unlikely is that these events were due to SM neutrinos,” he added. “Their result strongly disfavors a SM explanation.”“I think it’s very compelling,” said Bill Louis, a neutrino physicist at Los Alamos National Laboratory who was not involved in the paper and has been following research into the ANITA events for several months.We would be remiss to point out that although the coverage of the 2018 paper in Scientific American did involve a number of very excited physicists, it lacked something specific and relevant to the May 2020 viral brouhaha.At no point was the term “parallel universe” mentioned, not once. Nor did it mention “time going backwards.” In fact, the excited physicists typically clamored for… more research:Every physicist who spoke with Live Science agreed that researchers need to collect more data to verify that ANITA and IceCube have cracked supersymmetry. It’s possible, Fox said, that when IceCube researchers dig into their data archives they’ll find more, similar events that had previously gone unnoticed. Louis and Bustamante both said that NASA should run more ANITA flights to see if similar upward-going particles turn up.In terms of where the research might lead, again, it wasn’t to a parallel universe:In other words, the ANITA anomalies could offer scientists the key information necessary to properly tune the LHC to unlock more of supersymmetry. Those experiments might even turn up an explanation for dark matter.As for the preprint itself, the link still worked [PDF]. It was dated September 25 2018, and headlined, “The ANITA Anomalous Events as Signatures of a Beyond Standard Model Particle, and Supporting Observations from IceCube.” A blurb before the paper’s introduction read:The ANITA collaboration have reported observation of two anomalous events that appear to be εcr ≈ 0.6 EeV cosmic ray showers emerging from the Earth with exit angles of 27◦ and 35◦ , respectively. While EeV-scale upgoing showers have been anticipated as a result of astrophysical tau neutrinos converting to tau leptons during Earth passage, the observed exit angles are much steeper than expected in Standard Model (SM) scenarios. Indeed, under conservative extrapolations of the SM interactions, there is no particle that can propagate through the Earth with probability p > 10−6 at these energies and exit angles. We explore here whether “beyond the Standard Model” (BSM) particles are required to explain the ANITA events, if correctly interpreted, and conclude that they are. Seeking confirmation or refutation of the physical phenomenon of sub-EeV Earth-emergent cosmic rays in data from other facilities, we find support for the reality of the ANITA events, and three candidate analog events, among the Extremely High Energy Northern Track neutrinos of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Properties of the implied BSM particle are anticipated, at least in part, by those predicted for the “stau” slepton (˜τR) in some supersymmetric models of the fundamental interactions, wherein the stau manifests as the next-to-lowest mass supersymmetric partner particle.If you recall, the New York Post was largely responsible for spreading the claim and causing NASA to trend on Twitter on May 20 2020. The next day, they followed up with an article oddly downplaying their own role in spreading the story — this time “according to a report on CNet”:“The unusual ANITA events have been known and discussed since 2016,” Ron Ekers, an honorary fellow at CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, told the outlet.“After four years there has been no satisfactory explanation of the anomalous events seen by ANITA so this is very frustrating, especially to those involved,” he added.The reports about the NASA experiment were culled from a recent paywalled article in the New Scientist titled, “We may have spotted a parallel universe going backwards in time.”Another neutrino observatory at the South Pole, known as IceCube, has been following up on the ANITA experiment and also suggests the standard laws of physics can’t explain the odd phenomenon.“In such a situation you start exploring even more extreme possibilities,” Ekers said.But there are many competing theories that can explain things, including that the Antarctic ice may itself be giving rise to the curious events, according to the outlet.Pat Scott, an astroparticle phenomenologist at the University of Queensland, said that while the theory “is plausible,” there are myriad other theories that can account for ANITA’s detections.“There’s nothing that necessarily makes it a detection of a parallel universe,” Scott told CNET.CNet’s reporting was a direct refutation of the viral, original article, with the headline, “No, NASA didn’t find evidence of a parallel universe where time runs backward,” and subtitled “Sorry, you’re stuck with this universe”:Because the New Scientist piece is behind a pay wall, many of the subsequent reports on the parallel universe are cribbed from the opening paragraphs and don’t explain the full details behind the find, in which one of the scientists admits “there are one or two loose ends” for the parallel universe theory. There’s another neutrino observatory at the South Pole, known as IceCube, which has been following up on the ANITA observations and suggests the standard model of physics cannot explain these strange events. […]There is a really interesting science story here, but it’s not the one you’re being sold. The ANITA experiment is mind-boggling in its own right. It looks for “ghostly” particles that pass through most matter. It has definitely detected something unusual and unexpected. There are plenty of competing theories that aren’t explored in the quick news hits, like the idea the Antarctic ice may itself be giving rise to these anomalous events.Pat Scott, an astroparticle phenomenologist at the University of Queensland, explains the idea “is plausible” while suggesting there are many, many other theories that can account for the anomalous ANITA detections. “There’s nothing that necessarily makes it a detection of a parallel universe,” he says.What this boils down to is simple: There’s so much we don’t know about neutrinos that astrophysicists and scientists are still trying to unravel. “We are absolutely sure that there is new physics out there to be found,” says Clancy James, a radio astronomer at Curtin University in Australia.As the piece wrapped up, its author wrote:When you see stories like these its good to remember “the Sagan Standard”, an adage uttered by the famed astronomer Carl Sagan. It goes “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” At present, we’ve got a great theory but we lack the extraordinary evidence to back it up.News about scientists’ purported discovery of a parallel universe was predicated not on any new findings, but apparently on the way such a headline might play during a period of global distress, such as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. It started with a tabloid, the Daily Star, picking up a six-week-old item in New Scientist, which was behind a paywall after a few extremely juicy introductory paragraphs. The original findings appeared in March 2016, and scientists had yet to determine a “parallel universe” was behind them. But nothing new was discovered in May 2020, and physicists were quick to de-sensationalize the claim — in pieces viewed and shared far less, because they were much less fun.Comments"
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26231
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The flu didn't kill any Americans this year.
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The post is wrong. While COVID-19 has made assessing flu fatalities more complicated, thousands of Americans have died from influenza during the pandemic.
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false
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Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"Flawed claims that the seasonal flu has killed more people than COVID-19 have circulated around the internet for a while now. But now a post on Facebook claims the opposite: that no Americans have died from the flu in 2020. The May 16 post reads: ""Not one American died from the Flu this year - 1st time in history BUT 80K died from COVID. Do you really believe the bull---- they’re shoving down your throat. I DON’T!!!"" This is wrong. 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 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks flu illnesses, medical visits, hospitalizations and deaths and provides estimated ranges of each category. Because the agency can’t track each case of influenza through its weekly surveillance data, it provides an estimated range to ""reflect the larger burden,"" its website says. According to preliminary CDC data, there were anywhere from 24,000 to 62,000 American flu deaths from Oct. 1, 2019, through April 4, 2020. As of May 16, reported pediatric flu deaths for the 2019-20 influenza season were at 176. Flu fatalities are based on death certificate data, which are collected and estimated each week by the National Center for Health Statistics within the CDC. According to the NCHS weekly tally of influenza deaths, about 8,000 Americans have died from influenza from January 2020 to May 16, 2020. This is not counting deaths caused by pneumonia, which is a common complication of the flu. The CDC says that COVID-19, which has now killed nearly 100,000 Americans, is affecting the way people are seeking health care, so data should be interpreted with caution. While the CDC’s figures are estimates and considered preliminary, the claim that no Americans have died from the flu in 2020 is !"
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10707
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Area firm’s pneumonia treatment passes test
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This business section article reports on results of a Phase III clinical trial of cethromycin, a new type of antibiotic designed to treat community acquired pneumonia. In this case, the news article is inferior to the company’s press release. The article falls short of best practices in several ways: It features the company president’s positive assessment of the study results but does not seek independent comment. It fails to make clear that the results of the trial have not been peer-reviewed or published and that results of a related trial have not been released at all. It fails to make clear that sometimes drugs with positive results in Phase III trials are later not approved by the FDA. It fails to mention this even when reporting the company’s predicted market availability. It fails to include sufficient information about the study type, group and findings. It includes the company’s assertions that the same drug may treat MRSA, anthrax and metastatic melanoma, none proven. The reference to MRSA is made in the article’s second paragraph. The article’s shortcomings as a health story weaken it as a business story as well. Independent reporting on the medical importance and likely application of this drug would have helped readers understand the company’s financial situation. The company, which has no products on the market and is losing money, needs to put a positive spin on its recent news. By failing to explore the reality of the company’s own rosy forecast, the article does a disservice to observers in the business community as well.
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false
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"The story didn’t discuss the cost of what it called the current ""standard of treatment,"" Biaxin, nor the cost of the new drug, cethromycin. If a drugmaker says it is ready to file for new drug approval within a few months, as the story states, you can be assured they have some ballpark estimate of what they expect to charge. The story should have probed for that information. The article reports that the drug showed a 94 percent success rate in the current trial, but does not provide any more detail. The story said the new drug was found to be ""safe and effective"" but provided no details on its potential harms and no detailed safety comparison with the current standard of treatment. If the trial was small, it may be premature to assume cethromycin is as safe as Biaxin. The article fails to state that the current trial is just one of two Phase III trials the company is running, and the second has not been reported yet. The article fails to clearly state that the test demonstrated only ""non-inferiority"" to Biaxin, not superiority. It also did not say anything about the size of the trial or include meaningful details about the findings. The article does not exaggerate the risks or severity of community acquired pneumonia. By emphasizing MRSA as a cause, however, it does engage in disease-mongering. MRSA is an extremely rare cause of CAP. It also would have been useful to report the percentage of cases of CAP caused by bacteria resistant to Biaxin. Given the fact that Biaxin’s success rate in treatment is around 95 percent, fears of CAP being resistant to it may be premature or exaggerated. The article interviews only the president of the company that is developing the drug. The article includes no information from independent sources. The article states that Biaxin is the current standard of treatment for community acquired pneumonia; in fact, there are many others. The article makes clear that cethromycin, the new antibiotic under development, is not yet approved for sale. The article states that cethromycin works by a mechanism that is different from current antibiotics. It would have been useful to describe this mechanism. The article does not draw language or facts from the company’s press release. However, the article does report the drug’s potential but uNPRoven uses against MRSA and metastatic melanoma, both of which are claimed by the company’s president in a press release issued the day before the article appeared. Because only the president of the company is cited in the story, this feels like press release influence."
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31034
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A major Hepatitis A outbreak in San Diego has been pinned on undocumented immigrants there.
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We have reached out to the San Diego Regional Task Force on the Homeless seeking comment. The group reported in April 2017 that there were 9,116 people locally as “living in the streets or in shelters,” up 5 percent compared to 2016. Alvarez told us that the task force did not ask for individuals’ immigration status while compiling its data.
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false
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Medical, Hepatitis A, san diego, San Diego County
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On 3 September 2017, the web site America’s Freedom Fighters published a story that purported to directly link undocumented immigrants in San Diego, California to a local Hepatitis A outbreak: The ultra liberal city of San Diego, California which incidentally is inundated with illegal aliens is facing a health crisis and authorities have declared PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY. A public health emergency was declared Friday over an outbreak of ‘hepatitis A’ that has been linked to at least 15 deaths and 400 hospitalizations. It also closed on a more explicitly anti-immigrant note: These kind of problems are typical in liberal cities. Build the wall. God Bless. San Diego County officials did declare a local health emergency on 31 August 2017 in response to a hepatitis outbreak, but there is no indication whatsoever that it originated or was spread by the city’s local undocumented population. A spokesperson for the county’s Health and Human Services department, Craig Sturak, told us: The primary population being impacted is the homeless and/or drug-using individuals on the street. I am not aware of any connection to undocumented immigrants. Sturak confirmed to us that 15 people had died in connection to the outbreak as of 29 August 2017. However, he also said that 263 people — not 400 — had been hospitalized out of 378 cases. San Diego City Council member Chris Ward, whose district includes the downtown area (which has a high concentration of the local homeless population), told us in a statement: Like local health officials, I have seen no evidence of any connection and would strongly caution against spreading unsubstantiated rumors that serve to undermine our ability to respond to this health crisis effectively. Fellow council member David Alvarez, who has sparred with Mayor Kevin Faulconer regarding the city response to the issue, told us: There’s no validity to this. It’s just individuals who are looking to scapegoat using vulnerable populations, whether it’s our homeless community or our immigrant communities. It’s not surprising in the age of [President Donald] Trump, to be honest. But still shameful. The disease is a liver infection that, according to the Centers for Disease Control, is “usually transmitted by the fecal-oral route, either through person-to-person contact or consumption of contaminated food or water.” Following the emergency declaration by public health officer Wilma Wooten, the city began installing hand-washing stations in at least thirty locations around the city, including more than a dozen downtown. Street-cleaning crews will also be directed to remove “all feces, blood, bodily fluids or contaminated surfaces” with a mix of high-pressure water and bleach. The outbreak was traced back to November 2016, but according to Wooten, vaccination efforts and distribution of hygiene kits did not quell the spread of the infection. Experts reportedly did not gauge the speed of the outbreak until March 2017. Alvarez has called for Faulconer to declare a homeless state of emergency, saying that it would allow the city to bypass some regulations in order to designate some buildings as temporary housing. An advisor for Faulconer, Jonathan Herrera, countered by saying that Faulconer had already done so in 2016 and 2017. On 30 August 2017, the California state assembly’s Joint Committee On Legislative Audit approved a request by state Sen. Ben Hueso (D) to investigate whether the county has employed enough public nurses to deal with the outbreak.
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176
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Hurricane Dorian swirls toward anxious Florida, packing 140-mph winds.
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Hurricane Dorian spun across the Atlantic ocean toward Florida on Friday, becoming an even stronger Category 4 storm as residents and tourists alike hunkered down in one of America’s biggest vacation destinations.
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true
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Environment
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Dorian has the potential to put millions of people at risk, along with holiday attractions such as Walt Disney World, the NASA launchpads along the Space Coast, and even President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach. The Miami-based National Hurricane Center said Dorian was packing maximum sustained winds of 140 mph (225 kph) as it churned an unpredictable path toward Florida. “Although fluctuations in intensity are possible early next week, Dorian is expected to remain a powerful hurricane during the next few days,” the NHC said in a statement on Friday. On Florida’s east coast, where Dorian’s winds are expected to quickly gather speed on Monday morning, residents snapped up bottled water, plywood and other supplies as fast as they could be restocked. Some gas stations had run out of fuel. “They’re buying everything and anything that applies to a hurricane, flashlights, batteries, generators,” said Amber Hunter, 30, assistant manager at Cape Canaveral’s ACE Handiman hardware store. In the Bahamas, evacuations were already underway, two days before Dorian is expected to bring a life-threatening storm surge forecast at up to 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 meters) to the northwest of the islands. NHC Director Ken Graham saw a worrying, unpredictable situation for Florida, with the hurricane set to hit land somewhere up its east coast and potentially linger over the state, spinning slowly. “Slow is not our friend, the longer you keep this around the more rain we get,” Graham said in a Facebook Live video. It was unclear where the hurricane would hit land, but the results were expected to be devastating: “Big-time impacts, catastrophic events, for some areas 140 mph winds, not a good situation,” said Graham. Mindful of that warning, Cocoa Beach Mayor Ben Malik was putting up storm shutters on his Florida home on Friday afternoon and worrying about the flooding Dorian could unleash on his barrier island town. “It’s slowed down, we’re looking at a multiple-day event, we were hoping it would just barrel through and leave,” Malik said of forecasts that Dorian could sit over Florida for up to two days, dumping up to 18 inches (46 cm) of water. “I’m really worried about the amount of rain we’ll be getting.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis urged residents to have in reserve at least a week’s worth of food, water and medicine. President Donald Trump told reporters before leaving for Camp David for the weekend: “We’re thinking about Florida evacuations, but it’s a little bit too soon. We’ll probably make that determination on Sunday.” But Fort Pierce Mayor Linda Hudson urged its 46,000 residents who planned to evacuate not to delay. “It’s decision time now. Don’t wait until I-95 north and I-75 north and the turnpike are parking lots,” said Hudson, who experienced two devastating hurricanes in 2004. Dorian’s course remains unpredictable. One of Florida’s last major hurricanes, 2017’s Irma, swept up the peninsula, instead of hitting the east coast. Florida residents like Jamison Weeks, general manager at Conchy Joe’s Seafood in Port St. Lucie, planned on staying put. “I’m planning on boarding up my house this evening,” said Weeks. “The mood is a little tense, everybody’s a little nervous and just trying to prepare as best as possible.” In the Bahamas, Freeport’s international airport was set to close on Friday night and not reopen until Sept. 3, amid worries that Dorian will slam tourist hotspots on the archipelago. Dorian began on Friday over the Atlantic as a Category 2 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale. By Friday night it was moving at nearly 10 mph (16 kph), giving it time to intensify before making landfall. Two thousand National Guard troops will have been mobilized for the hurricane by the end of Friday, with 2,000 more joining them on Saturday. Florida officials also were making sure all nursing homes and assisted living facilities had generators. Only one in five Florida nursing homes plans to rely on deliveries of temporary generators to keep their air conditioners running if Dorian knocks out power, a state agency said on Friday, short of the standard set by a law passed after a dozen people died in a sweltering nursing home after 2017’s Hurricane Irma. North of Cape Canaveral, the Kennedy Space Center’s 400-foot (122-m) launch tower was dragged inside a towering vehicle assembly building to shelter it from Dorian, a video posted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)-owned space launch center showed.
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8512
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Singapore confirms 386 more cases of coronavirus in biggest daily jump.
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Singapore’s health ministry confirmed 386 more cases of coronavirus infection on Monday in the city-state’s biggest daily jump, taking its total to 2,918.
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true
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Health News
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The Southeast Asian island nation, which is under partial lockdown to try to curb a recent surge in infections, also reported its ninth death from the disease. A large number of the new cases are linked to outbreaks in migrant workers’ dormitories. Singapore has quarantined thousands of workers in dormitories after they were connected to several cases of the COVID-19 respiratory disease. To date, a total of 586 people have fully recovered from the infection, the health ministry said.
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11898
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In 2010, 48,000 felons and fugitives lied and illegally tried to purchase guns. They [The Obama administration] prosecuted only 44 of them.
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"Cruz said: ""In 2010, 48,000 felons and fugitives lied and illegally tried to purchase guns"" and the Obama administration ""prosecuted only 44 of them."" There may have been even fewer federal prosecutions of such felons and fugitives, figures indicate, though Cruz failed to note that this paucity wasn’t unique to one administration. It’s also worth clarifying that we don’t know if all 48,000 individuals knowingly misled the government. Few of the tallied background checks resulted in further investigation."
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true
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Crime, Texas, Guns, Ted Cruz,
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"U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas suggested that Barack Obama’s administration bears some responsibility for the mass shooter in a Texas town acquiring guns. In a late-night Nov. 6, 2017, interview with Shannon Bream of Fox News, the Republican senator said that he’d spent the day comforting residents of Sutherland Springs, where the shooter killed 26 people in a church. Cruz said he felt his anger rising on his return flight to Washington ""because,"" Cruz told Bream, ""this should have been stopped beforehand. Under federal law, it was illegal for this individual to purchase a firearm. He had a conviction for a crime that’s punishable by more than a year in prison and he had a conviction for multiple domestic violence crimes. Both of those, it’s already ineligible. ""But several things happened,"" Cruz said. ""Number one, the Air Force, the Obama administration, didn’t report those convictions to the NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) database. That’s an endemic problem; it’s a problem with the federal government, it’s a problem with the states. ""And so, when he went in to buy the guns, they ran the background check and they didn’t find it because it wasn’t in the database. But I’ll tell you we could have prevented this. In 2013, in the wake of Sandy Hook, I joined with Chuck Grassley, we introduced legislation, it was called the Grassley-Cruz legislation, and it was aggressive legislation targeting felons and violent criminals to stop them from getting guns."" Cruz went on: ""There were a couple elements of that legislation that were critical. One, it mandated that federal agencies including the Air Force report to the NICS because that was a problem back then. But two, and this is an even more critical piece, if it had been reported to the background database, when he went into Academy to buy this, these weapons, he lied on the forms. That is a felony to lie on those forms. The Obama administration didn’t prosecute those cases. In 2010,"" Cruz said, ""48,000 felons and fugitives lied and illegally tried to purchase guns. They prosecuted only 44 of them."" Readers request fact-check We’re not checking all of what Cruz said though PolitiFact in Washington found Cruz claim’s in the interview that Democrats filibustered legislation that would’ve resulted in the Texas church shooter being in prison rather than wreaking havoc. Readers asked us if Cruz was correct about the very few prosecutions of individuals for lying while buying a gun from a licensed dealer. Previous fact-checks A 1993 law requires a criminal history background check by the FBI or a state agency. If a potential buyer fails the check, the gun sale is denied and the case is referred to the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Explosives (ATF), the lead investigative agency in gun enforcement. The automated national instant background check system began operating in 1998. Some perspective: In 2013, our colleagues at PolitiFact Virginia reviewed federal reports before concluding that the Justice Department hadn’t been prioritizing perjury charges in connection with background checks for at least two administrations. During George W. Bush’s presidency, there had been 70,000 denials for gun purchases a year and some 15/100th of 1 percent of such cases were prosecuted. In the first two years of Obama’s presidency, 8/100th of 1 percent of such cases were prosecuted. By email, a Cruz spokesman, Phil Novack, told us Cruz drew on a 2012 federal report to reach his 2010 figures. Novack noted too that when Cruz made a similar claim in 2013, the Fact Checker at The Washington Post confirmed the declared 44 prosecutions based on information in the report. 2010 statistics In 2010, the report says, FBI background checks led to initial denials of 72,659 applications to purchase a gun--with 34,451 denials attributed to a person’s felony indictment or conviction and 13,862 due to the person being a fugitive from justice--48,313 combined. But most of those denials never made it to prosecutorial consideration. The report says the ATF overturned, canceled or chose not to refer for further investigation 71,410 denial cases sent its way by the FBI; some 4,732 cases were then referred to field offices for further review. Ultimately, the report says, 62 cases were referred for federal prosecution with 18 of those not taken up by a prosecutor--which leaves 44. Then again, that doesn’t mean 44 prosecutions proceeded. That’s because a dozen referrals were still pending action by a prosecutor as of Dec. 13, 2011, the report says. Otherwise, an accompanying chart shows that the 44 possible prosecutions would have been down from 77 prosecutions the year before and 105 in 2008--and prosecutorial referrals also had declined through those years. By phone, we asked the report’s author, Ron Frandsen, about the availability of more recent data. Frandsen, who works for the Missouri-based Regional Justice Information Service, said that to his knowledge, no analyses of post-2010 data have been funded. By email, Frandsen said that most likely, the 48,321 denied applications tallied for felony or fugitive reasons were found in FBI background checks after applicants failed to disclose such information on a form. ""FBI denials are referred to ATF, which investigates the cases deemed most worthy of possible prosecution. From the 2010 FBI denials, ATF referred 62 charges (against 33 people) to U.S. or state attorneys for possible prosecution,"" Frandsen said, involving nine different federal offenses and two to seven state offenses. Frandsen said Cruz was accurate in his reference to 48,000 denials. He said the reference to 44 prosecutions wasn’t accurate because the ""44"" from the service’s report refers to charges, not individual people, and those charges involved ""more than just felons and fugitives, and,"" Frandsen wrote, ""because some of the prosecutorial decisions were made by state attorneys."" There’s more data available, PolitiFact reporters have noted, in a 2013 analysis of federal weapons cases by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, based at Syracuse University. The analysis doesn’t mention background checks directly. But a chart lists 123 prosecutions in 2010 in which the lead charge was making false/fictitious statements in order to acquire a firearm or ammunition. The comparable count was 143 in 2011 and 170 in 2012, the chart states. The relevant law says it’s unlawful for anyone acquiring a firearm from a licensed dealer to knowingly make false or fictitious oral or written statements intended to deceive the seller about the sale’s legality. Explaining the few prosecutions Why has Uncle Sam seemingly been reluctant to prosecute these cases? A 2004 report from the Justice Department’s inspector general provided several answers. It said ATF agents viewed the violations ""as distracting from more important cases, such as those involving firearms, traffickers, gangs, arson and explosives"" and ""saw little purpose in investigating a standard case in which the NICS successfully prohibited a person from purchasing a firearm."" The report also said that the cases lack ""jury appeal"" for prosecutors because it is difficult to prove that a prohibited person intentionally lied on the background check and in many parts of the nation ""juries are reluctant to convict a person who attempted to purchase a hunting rifle."" Frandsen told us he hasn’t researched in depth why few violations get prosecuted. But, he said, such cases are hard to prosecute ""because the government must prove that the denied person intentionally failed to disclose a prohibition on the federal form (as opposed to just being unaware of what was on their record)."" Also, he said, there’s a belief that the main purpose of the background check requirement is to prevent a firearm transfer to a prohibited person--and the additional step of prosecution ""should be reserved for the most dangerous people, especially those with an extensive criminal history."" Our ruling Cruz said: ""In 2010, 48,000 felons and fugitives lied and illegally tried to purchase guns"" and the Obama administration ""prosecuted only 44 of them."" There may have been even fewer federal prosecutions of such felons and fugitives, figures indicate, though Cruz failed to note that this paucity wasn’t unique to one administration. It’s also worth clarifying that we don’t know if all 48,000 individuals knowingly misled the government. Few of the tallied background checks resulted in further investigation. The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information."
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33843
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Designer Tommy Hilfiger stated that blacks and Asians shouldn't wear his clothes.
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As immediately satisfying as it is to believe the old Liz Claiborne tale has updated itself by attaching to a newer, fresher designer, there’s another likely explanation that must also be considered. As Hilfiger’s clothing became more and more popular, it increasingly became a target for the Pacific Basin knock-off specialists. Hilfiger’s statements that people should foreswear Asian or Filipino bootlegs of his clothes because cheap copies don’t look good on anybody could easily have been misheard or misunderstood so that they were later remembered as statements to the effect that Asians or Filipinos themselves should not wear Hilfiger designs as they would make his clothes look bad.
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false
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Business, Consumer Relations
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Rumors that Tommy Hilfiger made a racist remark exploded onto the Internet in the fall of 1996 after a news article purporting to be from a Philippines tabloid began making the online rounds. These self-same rumors had been in circulation at least nine months earlier, but the appearance of that article brought them to critical mass: Tommy Hilfiger on Oprah Hello, please read…. and pass on if you haven’t already! Everyone needs to see this. Good for Oprah!!!! I’m sure many of you watched the recent taping of The Oprah Winfrey Show, where her guest was Tommy Hilfiger. On the show, she asked him if the statements about race he was accused of saying were true. Statements like”…if I’d known African-Americans, Hispanics, Jewish and Asians would buy my clothes, I would not have made them so nice. I wish these people would *NOT* buy my clothes, as they are made for upper class white people.” His answer to Oprah was a simple “YES”. Where after she immediately asked him to leave her show. My suggestion? Don’t buy your next shirt or Perfume from Tommy Hilfiger. Let’s give him what he asked for. Let’s not buy His clothes, let’s put him in a financial state where he himself will NOT be able to afford the ridiculous prices he puts on his clothes. BOYCOTT PLEASE…., & SEND THIS MESSAGE TO ANYONE YOU KNOW Nothing empowers people quite like their own survival! According to Cristina Peczon (author of the article), the revealing remark happened on CNN Style with Elsa Klensch, during an interview with both Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren on the latest fashion trends: Hilfiger then supposedly butted in then with a comment, something like it is one thing for one’s label to go popular worldwide, but there are some people who just don’t look well in “their” designer clothes. Hilfiger then allegedly named several Asian races, apparently saying that he preferred if “these people” wouldn’t wear their line — particularly Filipinos! Though many readers were up in arms about this article (and voicing their displeasure through calls for a boycott of Hilfiger products), no one was ever quite sure what the designer had said, whom he’d said it to, or even which ethnic group he’d slammed. One version of the rumor had him saying, “If I knew that blacks and Asians were going to wear my clothes, I would have never designed them.” More colorful renditions had him making his shocking revelation on national TV, prompting Oprah Winfrey to throw him off her show. (Oddly enough, the same story had been told about Liz Claiborne since 1991, that Oprah threw her off the show after Liz claimed she didn’t design for black women because “their hips are too big.” A 1997 newspaper article debunking the Hilfiger tale noted that “Hilfiger supposedly told style reporter Elsa Klensch of CNN that he didn’t think Asians looked good in his clothes. Then, as the story morphed, he told Winfrey the same thing about Blacks, at which point she threw him off the set. Yet representatives of both shows deny Hilfiger ever appeared as a guest.” A 1999 article also carried denials from officials of the shows on which the incident was rumored to have taken place: “Tommy Hilfiger has never appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show,” said Audrey Pass, a spokeswoman for Winfrey. “Hilfiger’s never appeared on CNN Style with Elsa Klensch,” said Kathy Park of CNN. Oprah herself did what she could to quell this slander. On Monday, 11 January 1999, she opened her show by adamantly denouncing the rumor, emphatically stating the following: So I want to just set the record straight once and for all. The rumor claims that clothing designer Tommy Hilfiger came on this show and made racist remarks, and that I then kicked him out. I just want to say that is not true because it just never happened. Tommy Hilfiger has never appeared on this show. READ MY LIPS, TOMMY HILFIGER HAS NEVER APPEARED ON THIS SHOW. And all of [the] people who claim that they saw it, they heard it — it never happened. I’ve never even met Tommy Hilfiger. On 2 May 2007, nearly a dozen years after the rumor began circulating, Hilfiger himself appeared on Oprah’s program for the first time ever to discuss (and once again debunk) the notorious rumor: Oprah: Let’s break this down. Tommy, in the 21 years that we’ve been on the air, have you ever been on the show before today? Tommy: Unfortunately, not. Oprah: And when you first heard it, Tommy, what did you think? Tommy: I didn’t believe it. … Friends of mine said they heard the rumor. I said, ‘That’s crazy. That can’t be. I was never on the Oprah show. I would never say that.’ And all my friends and family who know me and people who work with me and people who have grown up with me said that’s crazy. Oprah: Well, did you ever say anything close to that? Where do you think this originated? Tommy: I have no idea. We hired FBI agents, I did an investigation, I paid investigators lots of money to go out and investigate, and they traced it back to a college campus but couldn’t put their finger on it. Both Hilfiger and his company have steadfastly denied all forms of the rumor, and it has taken many. Depending upon whom you hear it from, he slammed Asians, Filipinos or blacks, on Oprah or Ricki Lake or BET News or Larry King Live or CNN — as a rumor, it’s a marvel of ambiguity. According to a Hilfiger company statement posted to the Internet in March 1997: Tommy Hilfiger did not make the alleged inappropriate racial comments. Hilfiger wants his clothing to be enjoyed by people of all backgrounds and his collections are put together with the broadest cross-section of individuals in mind. To reinforce this, he features models of all ethnic backgrounds in his fashion shows and advertisements. The company has answered the charges leveled against Hilfiger in its corporate FAQ, which very clearly states that not only didn’t he say what’s been ascribed to him, he’s also never been on Larry King Live, or CNN’s Style with Elsa Klensch, and only in May 2007 was he ever on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Cyberdenials or not, the rumor has legs. Earlier I mentioned it had been around at least nine months prior to its Internet explosion in late 1996. A March 1995 newspaper article noted: Then there’s the infamous disparaging “statement” the Parsons brothers and several others said they had heard that Hilfiger made about Blacks, particularly poor Blacks, wearing his clothes. As with all rumors, there are several variations, and no one can say where or when Hilfiger made the comments. One woman said a friend heard him say it on BET News. A clerk at Burdines said he heard it was on the Ricki Lake show. Hilfiger’s being cast as a racist villain is especially unfortunate because his history as a designer shows him to be anything but. Adding color and movement to everyday clothes, his designs shot into popularity fueled by enthusiastic support from the black community which adopted his fashion statements as its own. When Snoop Doggy Dogg wore a red, white, and blue Hilfiger rugby shirt on Saturday Night Live in March 1994, the word went out: Tommygear was cool. That was the same year the National Conference of Christians and Jews bestowed its National Humanitarian Award on the young designer. In 1995 Hilfiger was named Menswear Designer of the Year by the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and from there he’s gone nowhere but up.
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7646
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Roche takes on Loxo, Bayer in gene-defined cancer class.
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Roche’s entrectinib cancer pill was shown to shrink tumors in 57 percent of patients within a group that can only be identified via genetic profiling, as the Swiss drugmaker challenges an alliance of Bayer and Loxo Oncology in a new targeted treatment area.
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true
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Science News
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The trial results on patients with a gene anomaly known as NTRK fusion, which occurs in less than 1 percent across a range of tumor types, were presented at the annual congress of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) in Munich on Sunday. Germany’s Bayer and U.S. partner Loxo, in turn, released data for their rival compound larotrectinib, which slightly improved on previous high-efficacy readings in an enlarged trial. Traditionally, oncologists have made treatment decisions based on where in the body a tumor started, increasingly helped by the growing knowledge of cancer’s complex genetic drivers. Under the tumor-agnostic approach, also known as pan-tumor, drugmakers skip the organ-of-origin perspective and regroup patients based only on signature genetic mutations, but success in real life will depend on the fast spread of comprehensive gene-sequencing tools for tissue samples. Individually, the mutations are so rare that cancer units are seen as unlikely to run dedicated tests for each. Roche’s Foundation Medicine supplies the comprehensive kits, competing with Thermo Fisher Scientific and Caris Life Sciences. “It’s one of the reasons we acquired Foundation Medicine, to make this comprehensive genomic profiling routine and upfront in the course of the disease,” said Daniel O’Day, the head of Roche’s Pharmaceuticals division. Loxo’s larotrectinib pill, co-developed with Bayer, was last year shown to shrink tumors in 75 percent of patients with the NTRK fusion gene anomaly, occurring in the lung, pancreas, or more than a dozen other organs. On Sunday, the response rate to larotrectinib within an enlarged group of 122 trial participants - up from 55 initially and now spanning 24 tumor types - was shown to be 81 percent. Roche said the readings from the two NTRK fusion trials were not comparable because they are made up of different patient types. Loxo’s study, for instance, included some cancers in children, while Roche plans to investigate those separately. The Roche compound is designed to tackle several oncogenic mutations and last month, it unveiled data here on entrectinib pushing back tumors in 77 percent of lung cancer patients with a mutation called ROS1. Merck & Co’s Keytruda in May last year became the first drug to win approval for pan-tumor use, though that remains a relatively small market for the mega-selling drug. Bayer and Loxo are testing a second pan-tumor drug, LOXO-195. Roche Pharmaceutical’s O’Day welcomed a wider field. “Both things have to happen: You need genomic profiling and you need enough targeted medicines to encourage physicians to make that diagnosis upfront very complete. This is the world we’re entering,” he said. Though response rates could encourage a race for more such drugs, the need for suitable gene mutations or fusions will be a tall order, said oncologist Ulrik Lassen of Copenhagen’s Rigshospitalet, who co-authored the larotrectinib study. “You need to screen a lot of patients to find the needle in the haystack and the method is complicated, costly and time-consuming. When we get better at using these technologies, we can find more oncogenic fusions and companies will be smart enough to find the agents that target them.” Roche acquired entrectinib as part of its takeover deal with U.S. cancer drug specialist Ignyta Inc for $1.7 billion, agreed in December last year. Immuno-oncology remains another major business area for Roche, which also released positive results on using its Tecentriq drug in a group of breast cancer patients with a particularly poor prognosis.
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15430
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"Florida Democratic Party Says Jeb Bush ""oversaw (an) average in-state tuition increase of 48.2 percent during his tenure."
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The U.S. state of Arizona withdrew its support for a proposed nationwide opioid settlement with Purdue Pharma LP, saying the maker of OxyContin sought to “undermine material terms of the deal,” according to a court filing on Monday.
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true
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Education, Florida, Florida Democratic Party,
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Since Purdue filed for bankruptcy protection in September, Arizona is the first state to switch sides in the looming showdown over the privately-held company’s proposed settlement, which it has estimated is worth more than $10 billion. Purdue reached the deal last month with 24 states and the local governments that have filed the bulk of the more than 2,600 lawsuits against the company. The lawsuits allege Purdue and its Sackler family owners contributed to a public health crisis by aggressively marketing opioids while downplaying their addiction and overdose risks, which contributed to nearly 400,000 deaths since 1999, according to U.S. statistics. “Purdue and the Sackler family need to take responsibility for their role in the opioid crisis,” said Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said in a statement. Purdue declined to comment. Last week, court filings from states and local governments opposing the settlement asserted that Purdue steered up to $13 billion in profits to the Sackler family, more than triple the amount previously cited in litigation. A lawyer for some of the Sacklers last week said in a statement that much of the money was paid in taxes and reinvested in businesses that will be sold as part of the proposed settlement. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain in White Plains, New York, will on Friday consider Purdue’s request for an injunction to pause the litigation for about nine months. Purdue said it needs time to try to settle the remaining cases. Purdue also asked Drain to shield the Sacklers from litigation, even though they have not filed for bankruptcy, partly because the family has proposed contributing at least $3 billion toward the settlement. Opponents of the settlement accused the family of using Purdue’s bankruptcy to shield their wealth from victims. With Arizona, 25 states now oppose the deal. Kentucky and Oklahoma reached prior settlements with Purdue. Separately on Tuesday, a Massachusetts judge ruled against the Sacklers, who sought to have the state’s lawsuit against them dismissed. The judge rejected their argument they did not personally participate in Purdue’s conduct. Massachusetts was the first state to sue the Sacklers and Attorney General Maura Healey is leading the opposition to the proposed settlement.
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40540
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A new law in Illinois makes it illegal for people to record all interactions with police officers.
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Illinois Law Makes it Illegal to Record Police
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false
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Crime / Police
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It’s not true that it would be illegal to record all interactions with police officers under a bill approved by the Illinois legislature. The measure would, however, make it illegal to record private conversations with cops and government officials. Critics argue that it would be hard for the public to understand the difference between “public” and “private” interactions under the law. At the center of the eRumor is an amendment to Senate Bill 1342. The bill, which was approved by the state legislature on December 2, 2014, overhauls the Illinois Eavesdropping Act, which was struck down by the Illinois Supreme Court in March of 2014. The state’s high court found that the act “burdens substantially more speech than is necessary to serve a legitimate state interest in protecting conversational privacy.” The decision continued: “The statute as now written deems all conversations to be private and, thus, not subject to recording absent consent, even if the participants have no expectation of privacy. The State argues that the choice between a law that might be over-inclusive and one that might be under-inclusive is a policy matter for the legislature, not the courts. When that policy criminalizes a wide range of innocent conduct, however, it cannot be sustained. The statute criminalizes the recording of conversations that cannot be deemed private: a loud argument on the street, a political debate on a college quad, yelling fans at an athletic event, or any conversation loud enough that the speakers should expect to be heard by others. None of these examples implicate privacy interests, yet the statute makes it a felony to audio record each one. Judged in terms of the legislative purpose of protecting conversational privacy, the statute’s scope is simply too broad.” The amendment to Senate Bill 1342 addresses the recording of private — not public — interactions between police officers and citizens. The amendment also applies to police and police informants secretly recording suspects during an investigation. According to the amendment: “For the purposes of this Article, ‘private the term conversation’ means any oral communication between two or more persons, whether in person or transmitted between the parties by wire or other means, when regardless of whether one or more of the parties intended the their communication to be of a private nature under circumstances reasonably justifying that expectation. A reasonable expectation shall include any expectation recognized by law, including, but not limited to, an expectation derived from a privilege, immunity or right established by common law, Supreme Court rule, or the Illinois or United States Constitution.” The amendment doesn’t re-write the definition of “expectation of privacy.” It’s determined on a case-by-case basis under federal law using loose criteria, Cornell University Law School reports: “The Fourth Amendment protects people from warrantless searches of places or seizures of persons or objects, in which they have an subjective expectation of privacy that is deemed reasonable in public norms. The reasonableness standard is construed upon the totality of circumstances on a case-by-case basis. The person’s precautions taken to exclude others’ access are strong indicators to the expectation of privacy and might be taken into consideration by the court. The legitimate expectation of privacy must have a independent source outside Fourth Amendment. For example, private homes are at the core of Fourth Amendment protection subject to a few exceptions, as they are closely associated with the ownership interest in property law.” However, critics of the Illinois statute argue that its definition of “reasonable expectation of privacy” is overly vague. As the law is written, it could be legal for someone to record a police officer in their own home, but not in a home that they are visiting. It could also be legal to record a police officer on a sidewalk, but not inside a police car parked next to the sidewalk. The independent Illinois Policy Institute argued that the law’s vagueness would leave the public in the dark about when it’s legal and illegal to record police officers: “Under the new bill, a citizen could rarely be sure whether recording any given conversation without permission is legal. The bill would make it a felony to surreptitiously record any ‘private conversation,’ which it defines as any ‘oral communication between 2 or more persons,’ where at least one person involved had a ‘reasonable expectation’ of privacy. When does the person you’re talking to have a reasonable expectation of privacy? The bill doesn’t say. And that’s not something an ordinary person can be expected to figure out. A law must be clear enough for citizens to know in advance whether a particular action is a crime. This bill doesn’t meet that standard, which should be reason enough for a court to strike it down if it becomes law.” However, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois applauded the legislature’s passage of the bill: “It is good that the new eavesdropping statute enacted during the veto session generally protects our reasonable expectations of privacy in our conversations, phone calls and electronic communications from unwanted recording or interception, and that it does so without intruding on our First Amendment right to expose government misconduct by recording the non-private conversations of on-duty government officials. The new statute does this by prohibiting the recording and intercepting of only private conversations, unless there is all-party consent or a warrant. So the new statute generally provides that police, informants or other members of the public cannot record our private conversations without our permission. Also, we cannot be arrested or prosecuted under the new statute for recording on-duty government officials who are talking to the public as part of their jobs, because those conversations are not private. In conclusion, the law approved by the Illinois legislature wouldn’t make it illegal to record police officers or government officials in public venues, but critics argue that the vagueness of the law makes it impossible to determine what’s public and what’s private. Comments
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405
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GM halts operations at 11 Michigan plants after utility's urgent appeal.
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General Motors Co said late on Wednesday it will temporarily suspend operations at 11 Michigan plants and its Warren Tech Center after a utility made an emergency appeal to users to conserve natural gas during extreme winter cold.
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true
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Environment
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Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV also said it had canceled a shift on Thursday at both its Warren Truck and Sterling Heights Assembly plants and was considering whether it would need to cancel additional shifts. GM said it had been asked by Consumers Energy, a unit of CMS Energy Corp, to suspend operations to allow the utility to manage supply issues after extreme cold temperatures and a fire at a compressor station. It said workers were told not to report for the shifts at its Orion Assembly, Flint Assembly, Lansing Delta Township Assembly and Lansing Grand River Assembly plants, as well as other stamping and transmission plants on Wednesday evening and early Thursday. GM said it was still assessing when employees could return to work. Workers at its Warren Tech Center were also told to stay home on Thursday. In a video message posted on Facebook, CMS Energy Chief Executive Patricia Poppe said large companies, including Fiat Chrysler, Ford Motor Co and GM, had agreed to “interrupt” production schedules through Friday to tackle the issue prompted by a fire at a Michigan facility and the record-breaking cold. Poppe said the usage cuts by large businesses were not enough, and urged 1.8 million Michigan customers to turn down thermostats as much as they could to cut natural gas use in order to protect critical facilities like hospitals and nursing homes. “I need you to take action right now,” she said. Ford Motor said it had also taken steps to reduce energy use at its four Michigan plants supplied by Consumers Energy, but added the situation remained fluid. A spokeswoman said it had reduced heating levels at Livonia Transmission and Van Dyke Transmission, stopped heat treatment processes at Sterling Axle and shut down the paint process at Michigan Assembly. Consumers Energy sent an alert to mobile phones in Michigan asking residents to reduce natural gas use. In a Twitter message, Consumers Energy warned that “without additional reductions, we run the risk of not being able to deliver natural gas to families and critical facilities across Michigan – a scenario none of us want to encounter.” Consumers Energy said a fire at a gas compressor station in Michigan’s Macomb County Wednesday forced it to halt gas flow from the compressor station until safety and damage assessments could be completed.
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7326
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Virus raises specter of gravest attacks in modern US times.
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America’s surgeon general raised the specter of the gravest attacks against the nation in modern times to steel an anxious country Sunday for the impending and immeasurable sorrow he said would touch untold numbers of families in the age of the coronavirus. The government’s top infectious disease expert urged vigilant preparation for a virus that is unlikely to be wiped out entirely in the short term and may emerge again in a new season.
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true
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AP Top News, Understanding the Outbreak, Health, General News, Politics, Infectious diseases, Virus Outbreak, Michael Pence, Donald Trump
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The blunt assessments show just how much has changed in the weeks since President Donald Trump’s predictions that the virus would soon pass, and his suggestions that much of the economy could be up and running by Easter, April 12. But they also point to the suffering and sacrifice ahead until the pandemic begins to abate. The nation’s top doctor, Surgeon General Jerome Allen, said Americans should brace for levels of tragedy reminiscent of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The number of people infected in the U.S. has exceeded 300,000, with the death toll climbing past 9,000. Nearly 4,200 of those deaths are in the state of New York, but a glimmer of hope there came on Sunday when Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state registered a small dip in new fatalities over a 24-hour period. Still, Gov. John Bel Edwards, D-La., said his state may run out of ventilators by week’s end. Former Vice President Joe Biden suggested his party’s presidential nominating convention, already pushed from July into August because of the outbreak, may have to move fully online to avoid packing thousands of people into an arena in Milwaukee. Also, the Defense Department released new requirements that all individuals on its property “will wear cloth face coverings when they cannot maintain six feet of social distance in public areas or work centers.” The most dire warning, though, came from Adams, who noted it was Palm Sunday, which starts the Christian holy week that concludes with Easter Sunday. “This is going to be the hardest and the saddest week of most Americans’ lives, quite frankly,” Adams said. “This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it’s not going to be localized. It’s going to be happening all over the country. And I want America to understand that.” For most people, the virus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the toll in the coming week is “going to be shocking to some, but that’s what is going to happen before it turns around, so just buckle down.” He also said the virus probably won’t be wiped out entirely this year, and that unless the world gets it under control, it will “assume a seasonal nature.” “We need to be prepared that, since it unlikely will be completely eradicated from the planet, that as we get into next season, we may see the beginning of a resurgence,” Fauci said. “That’s the reason why we’re pushing so hard in getting our preparedness much better than it was.” Trump has backed away from comments weeks earlier that large swaths of American life would resume by Easter. The president had no public events on his schedule Sunday after a series of two-hour daily briefings on the outbreak. Vice President Mike Pence was scheduled to participate in a task force conference call from his residence in the afternoon. Much of the country is under orders to stay home, and federal officials said they have seen signs that people are listening to the message about social distancing. A few states, however, have declined to issue such orders and Adams was asked whether they should join the rest of the country. “Ninety percent of Americans are doing their part, even in the states where they haven’t had a shelter in place,” Adams said. “But if you can’t give us 30 days, governors, give us, give us a week, give us what you can, so that we don’t overwhelm our health care systems over this next week.” Gov. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., who has not issued a stay-at-home order, said federal officials who have urged them are “just looking at the nation as a whole.” “But whenever you look at our state, I think Dr. Fauci would be very pleased with the fact that we are beating some of our other states in reducing the spread and the commitment that we have to working every day to accomplish that,” Hutchison said. Gov. J.B. Pritzker, D-Ill., who was among the first in the nation to issue orders that his state’s residents stay home, suggested the federal government should step in and make the remaining states follow suit. “This virus knows no borders. And so it was up to the federal government, to begin with, to advise and to ask all the governors to put in stay-at-home orders,” Pritzker said. “Those governors, Republican governors, would have done it much earlier if the president had suggested it much earlier.” Adams appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and NBC’s ``Meet the Press.” Fauci was on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Biden was interviewed on ABC’s “This Week” while Hutchinson was on NBC. Pritzker and Edwards were on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
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15659
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"There's no statistical evidence that"" a waiting period for handgun purchases ""reduces violence whatsoever."
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"Wanggaard said, ""There’s no statistical evidence that"" a waiting period for handgun purchases ""reduces violence whatsoever."" There is research to indicate that handgun waiting periods are linked with lower suicide rates. But we did not find evidence that waiting periods coincide with less violence being committed by one person against another. If such evidence emerges, we may revisit this item. As it stands, Wanggaard’s statement is accurate but needs clarification."
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true
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Crime, Public Health, Guns, Wisconsin, Van Wanggaard,
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"Amid a surge in murderous gun violence in Milwaukee, the Republican-controlled Wisconsin Senate voted to repeal a state law that requires a two-day wait for handgun purchases. Just before the April 21, 2015, vote, the author of the bill, state Sen. Van Wanggaard, made this waiting-period claim: ""There’s no statistical evidence that it reduces violence whatsoever,"" the Racine Republican declared. With the repeal bill moving to the GOP-controlled Assembly, and likely headed for GOP Gov. Scott Walker, let’s see if Wanggaard is right. The law The District of Columbia and 10 states, including Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Iowa, have laws that require a waiting period for purchases of at least some types of guns, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Wisconsin’s law, in place since 1976, applies only to handguns and only to purchases from firearms dealers. It prohibits a handgun buyer from taking possession of the weapon until 48 hours after a background check is started -- even if the check comes back clean within a matter of hours or minutes. The City of Milwaukee, the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the Wisconsin Medical Society are among groups that oppose scrapping the law. Some say the cooling-off period can help prevent crimes of passion, such as domestic violence. Under the repeal bill from Wanggaard, who is a retired Racine police traffic investigator, a buyer could take possession of a handgun as soon as the seller completes the background check. Groups backing the repeal include the National Rifle Association, the Milwaukee Police Association union and the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation. Some say the wait following a successful background check is an ""unnecessary time tax on both the purchaser and the dealer,"" and that a person who needs a gun for protection can be put at risk. Walker has indicated he supports the repeal. Asked about such a measure in February 2015, he told the NRA: ""I think we want to be a leader in this area as well."" Studies Here are highlights from some key studies about the effects of waiting-period laws: A study done by one researcher from Georgetown University and one from Duke University that was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2000 examined the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, a 1994 federal law that established a nationwide waiting period and background check for handgun sales. (The waiting period provision was later removed.) The study concluded that the law’s waiting period was associated with reductions in the firearm suicide rate for people age 55 and older, but not associated with reductions in homicide rates or overall suicide rates. Other research has found that people who buy handguns are at a higher risk of committing suicide during the first week after the purchase. For example, an article published in 2000 by members of the Firearm Injury Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin said a Wisconsin study found a ""sharp increase"" in the risk of suicide within one week of a gun purchase. But a 2003 report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that reviewed studies on the effects of waiting periods on violence found that some studies indicated a decrease in violent outcomes associated with the delay, while others indicated an increase. And a 2012 study by one researcher from the University of Cincinnati and another from Arizona State University found no statistical effects from waiting periods on gun crimes. In a nutshell, except for suicide, the studies show Wanggaard’s claim about waiting periods and violence is largely correct. Experts Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Policy and Research, told us there is research linking more thorough background checks -- which take longer than an instant FBI check -- with reduced homicide rates. The more thorough checks are more likely to turn up reasons why a person cannot legally purchase a gun. But Webster said he is not aware of research that shows waiting periods reduce violence. Similarly, Harvard’s David Hemenway said he was aware only of research that links lower suicide rates with wait periods. Many studies link lower levels of lethal violence with strong gun control laws in general, but not with particular laws such as a waiting period, he said. Our rating Wanggaard said, ""There’s no statistical evidence that"" a waiting period for handgun purchases ""reduces violence whatsoever."" There is research to indicate that handgun waiting periods are linked with lower suicide rates. But we did not find evidence that waiting periods coincide with less violence being committed by one person against another. If such evidence emerges, we may revisit this item. As it stands, Wanggaard’s statement is accurate but needs clarification -- our definition of ."
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26538
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“Now, they’re doing tests on airlines — very strong tests — for getting on, getting off. They’re doing tests on trains — getting on, getting off.”
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The CDC is not testing passengers for COVID-19 as they get on or off airplanes and trains. The federal government is screening certain passengers at 13 airports. Screening can include looking for symptoms, but it’s not the same as a test.
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false
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Coronavirus, Donald Trump,
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"President Donald Trump said he was considering whether to stop domestic travel between U.S. hotspots for COVID-19. As he explained his reluctance to harm the transportation industry, Trump inaccurately said airline and train passengers were already being tested for the disease. ""We have to get our country back, we have to start moving again, we have to start working again,"" Trump said April 1. ""Now, they’re doing tests on airlines — very strong tests — for getting on, getting off. They’re doing tests on trains — getting on, getting off. But when you start closing up entire transportation systems and then opening them up, that’s a very tough thing to do."" We asked the White House for evidence and did not get a response. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told us it is not testing passengers at airports or train stations, a spokesperson told PolitiFact. It’s possible that Trump was referring to screening of passengers, which is happening at 13 airports for international flights. That isn’t the same as testing. Screening someone for symptoms can flag someone who could potentially have COVID-19, but it’s not as definitive as a test. It is impractical to test passengers at airports and train stations, given the slow delivery of most results and limited availability for people with symptoms. The CDC screening includes a temperature and symptoms check for travelers coming from foreign countries. Airport screenings for some international travel began earlier in the crisis. The CDC announced Jan. 17 it would screen passengers from Wuhan, China, for COVID-19 at the San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles airports. The screenings have expanded to include 13 airports, including Miami, Chicago, Detroit and Boston. They primarily affect American citizens, legal permanent residents and their immediate families who have recently been in China, Iran, or certain European countries. Travelers returning from international travel are advised to stay home for 14 days, monitor their health, and practice social distancing. Some states have implemented their own screening practices, with mixed results. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis ordered screening (not testing) at Florida airports for passengers from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. Shortly after, some passengers told the Sun Sentinel that their temperatures were not taken and they saw no visible signs of screening. In Broward County, officials are collecting forms from passengers on certain flights from the New York tri-state area, said Greg Meyer, a spokesman for the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Representatives for airports in Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit said passengers were not taking tests as they board or exit airplanes. ""Screening may occur in airports, but testing does not,"" said Florence Brown, a spokeswoman for the airport in Philadelphia. U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents are screening international travelers for visible signs of illness, such as coughing or having difficulty breathing, Brown said. International passengers from countries affected by COVID-19 may also receive a printed guide from the CDC. We contacted spokespersons for multiple airlines and did not get a response. We did not hear back from Amtrak by deadline. Trump said, ""Now, they’re doing tests on airlines — very strong tests — for getting on, getting off. They’re doing tests on trains — getting on, getting off."" Passengers on planes and trains are not being tested for COVID-19. It’s possible that Trump was referring to screenings, which could include a temperature check or a questionnaire. But even screenings are not as widespread as he said; they are happening at 13 airports for certain countries. Trump's statement about ""very strong tests"" at transportation hubs rates ."
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9779
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Bacteria From Mother May Colonize Cesarean Births
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This is a well-articulated but incomplete story about a proof-of-principle study suggesting that when babies born by C-section are swabbed with their mother’s vaginal fluids, they have a microbiome more closely approximating those of their vaginally-born peers up to a month after birth. The article does a nice job of explaining the science and placing the evidence in context, but we think that it missed the mark on the potential harms of the intervention. This is a significant omission. Emerging research suggests that the types and patterns of natural bacteria growing on our bodies are important for healthy immune, digestive, and metabolic systems. Babies born by C-section do not have the benefit of being colonized by the natural bacteria in their mothers’ vaginal tracts, so an alternative method for inoculating babies with these bacteria (and an inexpensive, easy-to-implement one, at that) may even the playing field for C-section babies.
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true
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babies,c-section,gut bacteria
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The article does not discuss the costs associated with inoculation. However, it’s implied that vaginal microbial transfer is very inexpensive (it only requires a piece of gauze, saline, and a sterile bottle – all standard hospital supplies) so we won’t ding the story for this omission. With that being said, there is a tacit assumption in the article that the transfer of bacteria from the mother’s vaginal fluids to the newborn is always in the best interest of the newborn. Clearly this is not the case as we will articulate later. If there is a risk of the transfer of less than desirable bacteria, it is reasonable to assume that bacterial screening of vaginal secretions might be undertaken (which would add cost). The transfer of pathogens to the newborn inducing infection would also have a cost. While it is beyond the scope of this report, we think that thinking about the potential downsides of a new intervention is in order. The article does a nice job of detailing the potential benefits of the microbial transfer and the results seen in the study, while giving the caveat that longer follow up studies are needed to understand the implications of various microbiome make-ups. But to be fair, the results are from a total of 4 newborns, hardly a number on which to base any strong conclusions. The story says that thus far the procedure “has proved entirely safe,” but we’re talking about only four babies here! The article assumes that all the bacteria in the mother’s vaginal secretions are “friendly.” This is clearly not the case in all patients. Significant infections can be transmitted to the newborn from bacteria resident in the mothers vaginal secretions from less than friendly bacteria including Chlamydia, Listeria and group B Strep to name a few. Suggesting that the procedure is not recommended but then pointing out that Dr. Brubaker had the procedure done for her newborn supports the notion that this is a harmless procedure — a potentially dangerous message. The story describes the study as small and proof-of-principle, although it arguably should have made more out of the fact that only four babies underwent the swabbing procedure. That’s a very small number. Nevertheless, we think the story injects enough caution to earn a Satisfactory rating. We liked that it spelled out the next phase of study to provide readers with a realistic sense of the scientific process. This article appropriately addresses the issue of increasing C-section use in U.S. and its potential repercussions. The article quotes several outside sources with the comments of Drs. Gilbert and Khoruts. We’ll rate this as Not Applicable. There is an outstanding hypothesis that colonization of the newborn with ‘friendly” bacteria from the mother’s vaginal secretions confers some advantages. This study merely test the ability to colonize a newborn delivered by cesarean delivery artificially. There aren’t really any alternatives to discuss here. The article mentions that this is not widely used among medical professionals but that women are sometimes doing it on their own or “arranging” to have it done. Given the potential risks of colonizing a newborn with less than friendly bacteria, we think that the story’s suggestion (and implicit encouragement) for women to do this on their own are unfortunate. The study was intended to determine if newborns could be colonized artificially and not to study the effects in later life. The article places this concept in proper context. The article clearly goes beyond the news release.
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35059
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Drinking hot water with lemons will cure or prevent COVID-19; drinking hot water with lemons and sodium bicarbonate will “alkalize the immune system” and cure or prevent COVID-19.
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Though early work had suggested vitamin C as a treatment for the common cold, which is also a viral upper respiratory infection, later work has cast doubt on that notion. In general, no scientific research has shown an ability for vitamin C supplementation to “kill” any upper-respiratory system virus or to reduce its spread. As summarized by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), “the evidence to date suggests that regular intakes of vitamin C at doses of at least 200 mg/per day do not reduce the incidence of the common cold in the general population.” For reference, that single lemon cut into three slices and served with hot water contains about 30 milligrams of vitamin c.
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false
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Medical, COVID-19
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A significant amount of COVID-19 coronavirus disease misinformation spreading across social media or chat apps takes the form of copied-and-pasted “advice” posts attributed to anonymous “experts”. These posts are usually riddled with scientific errors and/or promises of cures. Here we look at two such “cure” posts that involve hot water and lemons. One claim, attributed to a Chinese researcher, implores readers to “use as much natural vitamin C” as possible and suggests lemons as a good source. To that point, the post claims that regular consumption of a drink made from three lemon slices and hot water helps “against the spread of [COVID-19]” and “destroys the virus.” While vitamin C does play a role in several immune system functions, its use as a treatment to prevent or cure viral infections is unsupported by science. A second, slightly modified claim is attributed to “information” that “comes from Israel” and includes the addition of sodium bicarbonate to the hot lemon water cure. Unlike the previous assertion, which rests largely on claims about vitamin C, this cure allegedly works because it can “alkalize the immune system.” The ubiquity of this concoction in Israel, the post additionally claims, is why the country has seen no cases of the disease. “Alkalizing the immune system” is an illogical pseudoscientific concept, and at this time of this reporting, Israel had over 2,300 confirmed COVID-19 cases. This dubious claim, which now circulates in text form on social media platforms, has its origins in a video shared extensively on Facebook messenger and created by the owner of the YouTube channel “MrHealthyChannel.” Even before any medical information is presented, several red flags are apparent. “Hi, I am Jiao Shenme Mingzi from China, Researcher at the School of Medicine Zanjan University,” the post begins. Zanjan University is in Iran, and, as PolitiFact noted, this person’s alleged name closely resembles the phonetic spelling of “jiao shenme mingzi,” which is not a name but a phrase used to ask for someone’s name. The video and posts derived from transcripts of that video falsely assert that the reason we lack a medical cure for COVID-19, and therefore need a natural remedy that contains vitamin C, is a result of the novel coronavirus’ unexpected or rapid genetic mutation (an issue Snopes addressed here). In reality, this virus is dangerous because of its ability, like other infection-causing viruses, to sustain and replicate in human cells, particularly those of the upper respiratory system.
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1810
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French hospital to open wine bar to cheer up terminally ill.
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A hospital in the French city of Clermont-Ferrand is to open a wine bar where terminally ill patients will be able to enjoy a “medically-supervised” glass or two with their families.
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true
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Health News
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“Why should we refuse the charms of the soil to those at the end of their lives? Nothing justifies such an prohibition,” the Clermont-Ferrand University Hospital Center said in statement. The center’s head, Dr. Virginie Guastella, said terminally ill patients had the right to “enjoy themselves”. The bar will be the first in France to offer such a facility for patients and their families. Staff will be specially trained before it opens in the hospital’s palliative care center in September. “Medically supervised tastings will help brighten what is often a difficult daily life,” the hospital said. Although some researchers have long held that an antioxidant found in red wine is good for the heart, some recent research has determined that wine’s health benefits are exaggerated.
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35334
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"The COVID-19 Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act, or H.R. 6666, would authorize federally administered COVID-19 testing groups to enter American homes and force testing against residents' will, and then ""take"" those who test positive to quarantine sites."
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No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
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false
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Politics, COVID-19
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On May 1, 2020, as U.S. federal leaders negotiated emergency proposals to combat the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic, U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush from Illinois introduced a proposal that would set aside $100 billion to help local agencies identify people who were exposed to the coronavirus without knowing it. Rush, a Democrat who represents much of Chicago’s South Side, authored the so-called H.R. 6666 – COVID-19 Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act — a 646-word bill that would establish a new grant program under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to which local clinics, hospitals, nonprofits, and schools could apply for funding. But soon after Rush introduced the legislation — a formality in Congressional lawmaking that precedes the committee-hearing process where federal leaders negotiate the specifics of legislation and decide whether it should advance for final votes — critics on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit began sharing posts describing how they interpreted Rush’s legislation. While some of those interpretations suggested the legislation would allow grant recipients to prohibit any non-vaccinated persons into their facilities (Snopes fact-checked that claim here), other interpretations focused on what the legislation would mean for COVID-19 testing. People claimed H.R. 6666 would violate American’s constitutional rights by allowing federally-administered testing groups to enter homes against owners’ will in order to conduct COVID-19 testing and force people to take the tests, even if they didn’t want to. Soon, those types of fears around H.R. 6666 morphed into exaggerated claims that the legislation would allow COVID-19 testing groups to “enter your house, test and vaccinate you against your will and take your children,” as one Snopes reader said. Among the most popular claims were those made by anti-vaccine advocate, Dr. Rashid Buttar, who asked viewers in a live video stream on May 8 to share his read on the House bill. Buttar, a licensed Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine in North Carolina, said in the video: Basically this act is to allow individuals to come into your house and if you’ve got a cough, or somebody in your family has a cough, or you have a fever — or anything that they determine that shows that you have COVID-19 — regardless of whether you’ve been tested or not, they will also test people. … They’re going to use that to pull you or your loved ones, especially your children, away under pretense of public safety. They’re going to say that your child has to be removed from you because you have COVID-19 and so to protect your child, we’re going to take the child. Or, we’re going to take your grandmother, or your father or you and put you into quarantine. He asked audience members to contact their U.S. representatives to advocate against H.R. 6666, much like online petitions that began circulating around the same time as Buttar’s video. But these were completely false claims based on, at best, a misunderstanding of Rush’s introduced legislation. As currently written, the legislation would set aside $100 billion in federal money for fiscal year 2020 that “community health centers, school based health centers, academic medical centers, non-profits (including faith-based organizations) and other entities” can apply to use, according to a statement from Rush’s office and the legislation. Pending no amendments and final approval of the $100 billion bill (as of this writing, it was awaiting its first hearing by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce), federal health officials would prioritize grant applicants from areas that are currently underserved by medical professionals or where the rate of infections exceeds the national average. To that point, Rush elaborated on Twitter: COVID-19 is disproportionately killing black folks. My bill is about increasing testing for minorities & other medically underserved communities … Under the bill’s terms, chosen recipients would then have to use the money to buy COVID-19 testing equipment and personal protective gear, and hire and train people in their communities to run “mobile testing units” and do “door-to-door outreach” — all with the goal of helping individuals who are isolating at home and figuring out how, exactly, COVID-19 is spreading on a community-by-community basis, according to Rush and the statement. The latter objective, known as contact tracing, involves the following, according to the CDC: Contact tracing is part of the process of supporting patients with suspected or confirmed infection. In contact tracing, public health staff work with a patient to help them recall everyone with whom they have had close contact during the timeframe while they may have been infectious. Public health staff then warn these exposed individuals (contacts) of their potential exposure as rapidly and sensitively as possible. To protect patient privacy, contacts are only informed that they may have been exposed to a patient with the infection. They are not told the identity of the patient who may have exposed them. According to the CDC and national health security officials, that type of on-the-ground work to track COVID-19 transmission patterns is a key strategy for curbing the U.S. outbreak. Per the CDC, “immediate action is needed” for communities to “scale up and train a large contact tracer workforce,” like what Rush’s bill proposes to fund. A COVID-19 response plan by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health Center for Health Security summarized the need like this: In order to save lives, reduce COVID-19’s burden on our healthcare system, ease strict social distancing measures, and confidently make progress toward returning to work and school, the United States must implement a robust and comprehensive system to identify all COVID-19 cases and trace all close contacts of each identified case. Rush’s legislation had 39 co-authors as of this publication, including one Republican. The legislation does not go into detail on how, exactly, the grant recipients must conduct contact tracing nor how they must operate the “mobile health units” during the pandemic. It states: Based on the nature of complaints from critics, the latter point — that, as necessary, staff would visit people at their homes and provide them services “related to testing and quarantine” to limit the spread of COVID-19 — was likely the source of inspiration for the claims that COVID-19 testing groups could forcibly enter homes and conduct testing. Yet, a few lines lower in the bill, authors wrote “nothing in this [legislation] shall be construed to supersede any Federal privacy or confidentiality” requirements — which includes not only privacy protections for how grant recipients could use the medical information of individuals but also the Fourth Amendment right to privacy “against unreasonable searches” of property by the government and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states:
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12233
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"Blogger Says a New York physician and his wife jumped to their deaths because they ""can’t afford"" Obamacare."
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"Bloggers said a New York physician and his wife jumped to their deaths because they ""can’t afford"" Obamacare. Multiple blog posts said that the couple committed suicide because of unaffordable medical costs. That was based on initial reports about the note the pair left behind, and turned out not to be the case. News outlets later took out references to health care expenses when they updated their stories, but the flawed information remained in other posts."
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false
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Fake news, PunditFact, Bloggers,
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"A story shared on multiple websites about a New York couple who committed suicide because they couldn’t afford to pay for health care is the result of news outlets that at first wrote the pair left a note saying as much, but later walked back the claim. A July 28, 2017, post on NewsBreaksHere.com said a 53-year-old Manhattan chiropractor and his 50-year-old wife had jumped out of a high-rise window together, leaving a note that read, ""We both have medical issues, we just can’t afford the health care."" The post noted that the suicide came ""just a few hours after Senate Republicans tried to pass a bill that would repeal Obamacare,"" but that three members of the GOP had voted no, defeating the measure and keeping the Affordable Care Act in place. Facebook users flagged the story as being potentially fabricated, as part of the social media site’s efforts to curb fake news. There was a double suicide in midtown Manhattan on July 28, according to the New York Post. Glenn Scarpelli and Patricia Colant jumped from the ninth floor of the building where they worked, leaving behind a 19-year-old son and 20-year-old daughter. The husband and wife also did leave a note, which read, ""We had a wonderful life."" But the couple was deeply in debt. The New York Post reported a lien showed they had owed more than $23,000 in federal taxes, and as of April 2015 they had more than $232,000 in debt. Scarpelli had faced legal action in 2013 for not paying back a $60,000 student loan. The ""financial spiral"" in which they were trapped was too much for the couple, who elected to jump to their deaths, the Post reported. There was no mention of medical costs, or health insurance premiums, or anything else related to the Affordable Care Act. So where did all these posts mentioning health care costs come from? Initial versions of the New York Post’s story apparently cited a law enforcement source that said there was a second note at the scene. That note reportedly read, ""We both have medical issues, we just can't afford the health care."" Later versions of the story corrected that assertion, saying a New York Police Department spokesman refuted that detail, and that there was no mention of health care costs in the couple’s sole suicide note. Several posts on different websites cited a version of the story from the U.K.’s Daily Mail, which appears to have included the same details and also was updated. Neither story indicates what was changed in the text during the subsequent updates. Using an uncorrected and incomplete version of the story led those posts to highlight the erroneous assertion that medical expenses, whether through high insurance premiums or procedural costs, drove the couple to suicide. Bloggers said a New York physician and his wife jumped to their deaths because they ""can’t afford"" Obamacare. Multiple blog posts said that the couple committed suicide because of unaffordable medical costs. That was based on initial reports about the note the pair left behind, and turned out not to be the case. News outlets later took out references to health care expenses when they updated their stories, but the flawed information remained in other posts."
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25880
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Facebook post Says the NIH “15 years ago published a study on chloroquine. It is effective against COVID-(1).”
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The 2005 study wasn’t published by the NIH and didn’t prove chloroquine was effective against “COVID-1” because that’s not a real disease. The study found that chloroquine could inhibit the spread of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome in animal cell culture, and the authors said more research was needed. There are currently no approved medications or treatments for COVID-19.
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false
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Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"Chloroquine is back. The anti-malarial drug first showed up as a possible COVID-19 treatment around May 2020, when President Donald Trump said he had been taking its chemical cousin, hydroxychloroquine, to prevent getting infected with the virus. Since then, some studies have found that the drugs could help alleviate symptoms associated with COVID-19, but the research is not conclusive. There are currently no FDA-approved medicines specifically for COVID-19. (Chloroquine is chemically similar to hydroxychloroquine, but it is a different drug that’s primarily used to treat malaria. Both carry a particular risk for people with heart problems, plus other possible side effects.) Now, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine have been thrust back into the spotlight as misinformation about the drugs’ effectiveness and safety recently reappeared online. The post reads: ""N.I.H. 15 years ago published a study on chloroquine. It is effective against COVID-(1). We are being lied to America!"" 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 is flawed. First, there’s no such thing as ""COVID-1."" COVID-19 was named for the year it was discovered, not because it’s the 19th iteration. Second, the 2005 study found that chloroquine was effective on primate cells infected with severe acute respiratory syndrome, known as SARS, which is caused by a coronavirus. But while the two share similarities, SARS-CoV and COVID-19 are different diseases, and primate cells are far from human patients. Third, the study was indexed by the NIH’s National Library of Medicine, but the NIH was not involved. It was published in the peer-reviewed Virology Journal and conducted by researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Montreal Clinical Research Institute. The drug was not administered to actual SARS patients, and the study’s authors wrote that more research was needed on how the drug interacts with SARS in animal test subjects. ""Cell culture testing of an antiviral drug against the virus is only the first step, of many steps, necessary to develop an antiviral drug,"" Kate Fowlie, a spokesperson for the CDC previously told PolitiFact in an email. ""It is important to realize that most antivirals that pass this cell culture test hurdle fail at later steps in the development process."" Dr. Alex Greninger, assistant director of clinical virology at the University of Washington School of Medicine, told us that a problem in virology is trying to determine the difference of how drugs work in cell culture in comparison to humans. ""Data on chloroquine is largely taken from these cell culture studies, but we now have trials in people on hydroxychloroquine that show it’s not as effective,"" Greninger said, ""and there’s new data out in the last week that suggests that some of the reasons could be because of the cell types that SARS coronaviruses grow in, and this original experiment was done on African green monkey kidney cells, which is not the tissue we are really worried about."" The Food and Drug Administration granted emergency use authorizations for some medicines to be used for certain patients hospitalized with COVID-19, but it revoked the authorization for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in mid-June due to concerns over the drugs’ serious side effects. There are currently no FDA-approved medicines for COVID-19. ""It is no longer reasonable to believe that oral formulations of HCQ and CQ may be effective in treating COVID-19, nor is it reasonable to believe that the known and potential benefits of these products outweigh their known and potential risks,"" FDA Chief Scientist Denise M. Hinton wrote. The NIH’s COVID-19 treatment guidelines, which were developed to inform clinicians on how to care for patients with COVID-19, also currently recommend against the use of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 treatment, except in a clinical trial. But even those trials have been halted. The World Health Organization and the NIH announced in mid-June that they would stop hydroxychloroquine patient trials, citing safety concerns that include serious heart rhythm problems, blood and lymph system disorders, kidney injuries, and liver problems and failure. A Facebook post says that the NIH published a study 15 years ago that showed chloroquine was effective against ""COVID-(1)"" and that health officials have been lying to the American people. This is wrong. There’s no such thing as ""COVID-1"" and the study cited was not published by the NIH and had to do with animal cells infected with SARS, not COVID-19. The drug was not given to human patients and the study’s authors said more research was needed. Health officials caution against the use of chloroquine or hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19 patients, citing the possibility of serious side effects. There are currently no approved treatments for the virus."
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25015
|
Sen. McCain was already turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, and he became a leading supporter of an invasion and occupation of (Iraq).
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McCain's record on Iraq: eager to attack
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true
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National, Iraq, Barack Obama,
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"Sen. Barack Obama, speaking to veterans, lashed into his opponent for poor military judgment, alleging Sen. John McCain had fixated on Iraq immediately after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. ""Sen. McCain was already turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, and he became a leading supporter of an invasion and occupation of a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, and that — as despicable as Saddam Hussein was — posed no imminent threat to the American people,"" Obama said on Aug. 19, 2008. ""Two of the biggest beneficiaries of that decision were al-Qaida's leadership, which no longer faced the pressure of America's focused attention; and Iran, which has advanced its nuclear program, continued its support for terror, and increased its influence in Iraq and the region."" Obama's analysis of the war's consequences aside, we checked the record to see whether he had fairly characterized McCain's views about Iraq after 9/11 and in the run-up to the war. As a military veteran and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain was a prominent voice in late 2001 as the nation grappled with how to respond to the attacks. On Sept. 12, 2001, he appeared on Hardball with Chris Matthews, where Matthews asked whether the appropriate response should be ""a legal matter or a military matter."" ""I think it's both,"" McCain replied. ""As — as we stated, the — a nation has the right to defend itself, No. 1. But No. 2, these organizations could not flourish effectively unless they had the help and assistance and safe harbor of these nations. And it isn't just Afghanistan — we're talking about Syria, Iraq, Iran, perhaps North Korea, Libya and others."" That comment was not particularly specific to Iraq. But in an Oct. 18, 2001, appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman, with the nation on edge about the anthrax mailings and in the early stages of the campaign in Afganistan, McCain singled out Iraq. After sharing his views about how events were unfolding in Afghanistan, McCain told Letterman: ""I think we'll do fine. The second phase — if I could just make one, very quickly — the second phase is Iraq. There is some indication, and I don't have the conclusions, but some of this anthrax may — and I emphasize may — have come from Iraq."" In January 2002, while touring the flight bridge of an aircraft carrier on the Arabian Sea, McCain shouted: ""Next up: Baghdad!"" He fleshed out his views in a speech at a NATO security policy conference in Munich on Feb. 2, 2002. ""Terrorist training camps exist on Iraqi soil, and Iraqi officials are known to have had a number of contacts with al-Qaida. These were probably not courtesy calls,"" he said. ""Americans have internalized the mantra that Afghanistan represents only the first front in our global war on terror. The next front is apparent, and we should not shrink from acknowledging it. A terrorist resides in Baghdad, with the resources of an entire state at his disposal, flush with cash from illicit oil revenues and proud of a decade-long record of defying the international community's demands that he come clean on his programs to develop weapons of mass destruction."" We should note that McCain suggested on several occasions that he would prefer alternatives to full-on invasion and occupation as a means of displacing Saddam Hussein, such as on Meet the Press on July 14, 2002: ""I have always strongly felt that you must try the option of opposition from within — arming, training, equipping and helping oppositions from within; the Kurds in the North, the Shiites in the South,"" McCain told the late Tim Russert. ""At least try that option before we send Americans into harm's way."" But two days later on Face the Nation, he made clear that if it took war to remove Hussein, he was all for it. ""Look, we need a regime change in Iraq,"" he said. ""If we can do it on the cheap by having operations involving just Special Forces and some air power and opponents within, either the Kurds in the south, Shiites in the north [sic], then that's fine. But we have to be prepared to do whatever is necessary to bring about this regime change. I think we also ought to prepare the American public in — in — by way of informing them that Saddam Hussein has these weapons, continues to attempt to improve the — their capability and would not be reluctant to export them to other countries."" He continued, ""So we need to keep telling the American people that as well, as well as basically — if I may be so blunt — frightening them — frightening and scaring them every day."" In early 2003, with calls for invasion of Iraq growing more insistent, McCain's was among the most fervent voices. ""Sept. 11, 2001 showed that al-Qaida is a grave threat,"" he wrote in a Feb. 14, 2003 opinion piece in USA Today. ""Saddam Hussein has the ability to make a far worse day of infamy by turning Iraq into a weapons assembly line for al-Qaida's network. ... Saddam is an international felon who has repeatedly violated the terms of his parole and is planning further crimes with his terrorist accomplices. He must be brought to justice once and for all."" The record clearly supports the contention that McCain ""was already turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11"" — indeed he singled out Iraq on Letterman — and became a ""leading supporter"" of the war, as Obama said. We find his claim to be ."
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33346
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Children’s television show host Fred Rogers hid a violent and criminal past.
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Children's television show host Fred Rogers has been the focus of many rumors, including that he hid a violent and criminal past and served as a sniper or a Navy SEAL.
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false
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Entertainment, Broadcast Legends, Mister Rogers, Radio & TV
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In 2003 the television world mourned the loss of Fred Rogers, the gentle and genial host who delivered lessons on love, kindness, and friendship to children for over 30 years on the television program Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. His show-opening “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” ditty, his daily on-camera donning of a cardigan sweater and comfortable shoes, and his tinkling Neighborhood Trolley were all familiar, reassuring icons to millions of children (and their parents). Any popular, decent, clean-cut celebrity is fair game for all sorts of scurrilous rumors these days, it seems. We’re either too cynical or too bored to accept that a kindly, soft-spoken man who made a career out of teaching and communicating with children as an adult (no funny costumes, no frenetic comedy gags, no sickly sweet “baby talk”) could possibly live up to his television image. He must be concealing some deep, dark secret antithetical to his public persona, and the variety of rumors floated about Fred Rogers over the years certainly reflect that sentiment. Among the more common of the Mr. Rogers-related urban legends are the following claims: Fred Rogers began his television career as a result of his being convicted of child molestation; one condition of his sentence was that he fulfill a community service obligation by performing a television show for children on a local public station. This circumstance explains the lack of children on his program and the presence of adult characters with suggestive names, such as Mr. McFeely. Given the prominent, widespread protests and boycotts directed at Disney when it was revealed that Victor Salva, the writer-director of their 1995 film Powder (released through Disney’s Hollywood Pictures subsidiary), had served time for child molestation, it stretches credulity to the breaking point to believe that the host of an extremely popular children’s program on public television could have remained in that position for thirty-three years without having been hounded off the air amidst howls of condemnation from thousands of outraged parents. Fred Rogers got his start in television through his musical background when, after earning a bachelor’s degree in music composition in 1951, he was hired by NBC television in New York to serve as an assistant producer (and later as a floor director) for several of the music-variety type programs (The Voice of Firestone, The Lucky Strike Hit Parade, The Kate Smith Hour) prevalent on TV in the early 1950s. A few years later, Rogers returned to his hometown area to develop programming for WQED in Pittsburgh, the nation’s first community-sponsored educational television station. One of the initial programs he developed for WQED was The Children’s Corner, which contained many of the elements and characters Fred Rogers would incorporate into his own show when he made his on-camera debut as host of Misterogers for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in 1963. It isn’t true that no children ever appeared with Fred Rogers on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. They did at times, particularly in the earlier years of that program, but for the most part the show featured only Fred Rogers and other adult actors. This lack of youngsters on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood was due in part to the difficulties of working with very young children on scripted television shows, but primarily it was a simple stylistic choice. Although some children’s shows of the era featured youngsters who interacted with hosts on-camera, others (such as Sheriff John) opted to create the illusion of a one-to-one relationship between host and viewer by excluding children from the studio. The latter method allowed a host to establish a rapport with the youngsters in his viewing audience by appearing to be speaking to them directly and not to the other children on-screen with him. As for Mr. McFeely, the grandfatherly character who ran the “Speedy Delivery Messenger Service” in Mister Rogers’ neighborhood, his name is easily explained: ‘McFeely’ is also Fred Rogers’ real middle name, taken from his grandfather, Fred Brooks McFeely. Fred Rogers served as a sniper or as a Navy SEAL during the Vietnam War, with a large number of confirmed kills to his credit. A popular form of humor-cum-legend is to float a rumor that some mild-mannered, physically unimposing celebrity (such as John Denver or Don Knotts) not only served in the military, but held a position particularly known for requiring toughness and extreme mental and physical fortitude, such as a Navy SEAL, an Army Green Beret, a Marine Corps drill instructor, or an armed services sniper. Fred Rogers has also been the subject of such rumors, all of them false. Not only did Fred Rogers never serve in the military, there are no gaps in his career when he could conceivably have done so. He went straight into college after high school, he moved directly into TV work after graduating college, and his breaks from television work were devoted to attending the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary (he was ordained as a Presbyterian minister in 1963) and the University of Pittsburgh’s Graduate School of Child Development. Moreover, Fred Rogers was born in 1928 and was therefore far too old to have been a draftee during the period of America’s military involvement in the Vietnam ground war (1965-72) and too established in his career at that point to have run off to enlist. Fred Rogers always wore long-sleeved shirts and sweaters on his show to conceal the tattoos on his arms he obtained while serving in the military. Fred Rogers never served in the military, and he bore no tattoos on his arms (or any other part of his body). He wore long-sleeved shirts and sweaters on his show as a stylistic choice, in order to maintain an air of formality with youngsters. Although he was friendly with the children in his viewing audience and talked to them on their own level, he was most definitely an authority figure on a par with parents and teachers (he was Mister Rogers to them, after all, not “Fred”), and his choice of dress was intended to establish and foster that relationship. Fred Rogers “flipped the bird” to his young audience during the taping of his final show in December 2000: Images of Fred Rogers posing with one or both middle fingers extended have long been circulated on the Internet with captions claiming they captured the children’s show host disdainfully “flipping off” his audience during the taping of the final Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood episode. Although the pictures may appear puzzling out of context, they’re actually screen captures from a harmless moment in 1967 when Fred Rogers led some youngsters through the familiar children’s song “Where Is Thumbkin?,” which is traditionally accompanied by participants’ holding up the corresponding fingers as they are each named in the song:
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10452
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Treating fibroids without surgery
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A growing body of evidence suggests that uterine artery embolization (UAE) is a viable alternative to surgery for symptomatic fibroids for women who don't desire future pregnancy. For many women, avoiding surgery is a tremendous relief. However, there are still unanswered questions about the safety and efficacy of UAE. This story reports on a randomized controlled trial published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine comparing UAE to surgery for symptomatic fibroids. This story does a good job of explaining the problem of fibroids, describing the treaments compared and why UAE is an important advancement. However, this story is limited by the lack of balance in its sources and leaving out important information on the costs and availability of the procedure. The story accurately describes the prevalence and symptoms of uterine fibroids. The story provides adequate quantification of some of the most important things for consumers to know, such as the fact that after a year, there were no differences in the quality of life of the women assigned to UAE compared to those assigned to surgery and that 13% of those who underwent UAE had a repeat hospitalization, mostly for surgical intervention because of failure of UAE to achieve the desired results. The story could have provided more quantification of other pieces of information that women would want to know, such as length of hospital stay, time to return to work, or risk of serious adverse events. The story implies that UAE is a new procedure. The story could have mentioned that the procedure has been performed for more than 10 years in Europe and the US. The story does mention some of the potential harms of UAE, such as the need for repeat procedures for treatment of recurrent symptoms and the fact that there are questions about safety of pregnancy after the procedure. The story should have also mentioned the potential for ovarian failure, causing infertility, infection, delayed complications and a small risk of emergency hysterectomy. However, the story does not state whether uterine artery embolization (UAE) is available and if so, how widely. And availability is a real issue. It requires expertise in interventional vascular radiology and an interest in the female pelvic anatomy. Facilities offering the procedure would need strong links between gynecologists and radiologists to provide coordinated assessment and care. This is not explained in the piece. The story also does not describe the costs of UAE and how they compare to costs of surgery. The cost of UAE is quite high and for some women may not be covered by insurance.
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true
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The story does not describe the costs of uterine artery embolization or how they compare to costs of surgery. The cost of UAE is quite high and for some women may not be covered by insurance. The story provides adequate quantification of some of the most important things for consumers to know, such as the fact that after a year, there were no differences in the quality of life of the women assigned to uterine artery embolization compared to those assigned to surgery and that 13% of those who underwent UAE had a repeat hospitalization, mostly for surgical intervention because of failure of UAE to achieve the desired results. The story could have provided more quantification of other pieces of information that women would want to know, such as length of hospital stay, time to return to work, or risk of serious adverse events. The story does mention some of the potential harms of uterine artery embolization, such as the need for repeat procedures for treatment of recurrent symptoms and the fact that there are questions about safety of pregnancy after the procedure. The story should have also mentioned the potential for ovarian failure, causing infertility, infection, delayed complications and a small risk of emergency hysterectomy. The story adequately describes the design of the current study. The story accurately describes the prevalence and symptoms of uterine fibroids. The story only uses quotes from the original article and accompanying editorial. It doesn't appear that the authors were even interviewed. The story should have quoted other clinicians/researchers who were not related to the study who could have provided some perspective on what this new information means for clinical practice. The story does mention alternative options such as myomectomy (surgical removal of the fibroids), hysterectomy (surgical removal of the uterus) in addition to uterine artery embolization. The story could have mentioned other treatments such as watchful waiting, pain medications or birth control pills. The story does not state whether uterine artery embolization (UAE) is available and if so, how widely. And availability is a real issue. It requires expertise in interventional vascular radiology and an interest in the female pelvic anatomy. Facilities offering the procedure would need strong links between gynecologists and radiologists to provide coordinated assessment and care. This is not explained in the piece. The story implies that uterine artery embolization is a new procedure. The story could have mentioned that the procedure has been performed for more than 10 years in Europe and the US, although it has been limited to mostly academic hospitals. There is no way to know if the story relied on a press release as the sole source of information, although it is noteworthy that the story only uses quotes lifted from the published study and from an accompanying editorial. It doesn't appear that these people were actually interviewed.
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328
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Bayer bets on 'silver bullet' defense in Roundup litigation; experts see hurdles.
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Bayer AG plans to argue that a $2 billion jury award and thousands of U.S. lawsuits claiming its glyphosate-based weed killer Roundup causes cancer should be tossed because a U.S. regulatory agency said the herbicide is not a public health risk.
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true
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Health News
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Some legal experts believe Bayer will have a tough time convincing appellate courts to throw out verdicts and lawsuits on those grounds. Bayer has a better shot if a business-friendly U.S. Supreme Court takes up the case, experts said. But that could take years. Bayer has come under intensifying pressure after a third consecutive U.S. jury on Monday found Roundup to be carcinogenic, awarding more than $2 billion to a couple who used the chemical on their property - the largest verdict in the glyphosate litigation to date. Bayer, which inherited the Roundup litigation with its $63 billion acquisition of Monsanto last year, faces lawsuits by more than 13,400 plaintiffs nationwide, alleging the product causes cancer. The Germany-based company’s shares have been hammered since the first Roundup cancer verdict against it last August, wiping out some 40 billion euros ($44.76 billion) in market value and leaving Bayer worth less than the price it paid for Monsanto. Bayer denies that Roundup causes cancer, saying decades of studies have shown glyphosate and the weed killer to be safe. On Wednesday, the company said it will argue that the lawsuits, which are brought under state law, conflict with guidance from a federal agency, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. On April 30, the EPA reaffirmed prior guidance saying that glyphosate is not a carcinogen and not a risk to public health when used in accordance with its current label.. Citing the EPA decision, Bayer has repeatedly rebuked plaintiffs’ calls to add a cancer warning to Roundup, saying the agency would reject that change. Under the legal doctrine of preemption, state law claims are barred if they conflict with federal law. “We have very strong arguments that the claims here are preempted ... and the recent EPA registration decision is an important aspect of that defense,” William Hoffman, one of Bayer’s lawyers, said during a call with reporters on Wednesday. Hoffman said the argument applied to all U.S. Roundup lawsuits. Preemption is generally regarded as a “silver bullet defense” because it stops claims across the board, said Adam Zimmerman, a law professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles. But Zimmerman and three other legal experts agreed that Bayer faces a big hurdle convincing appeals courts that the EPA determination on glyphosate shields it from state law claims. They cited a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that the EPA’s approval of a product does not necessarily bar state law claims. The ruling, Bates v Dow Agrosciences, gives broad leeway to juries to decide if such claims should proceed, they said. Judges in the three Roundup cases that have gone to trial against Monsanto all rejected the company’s preemption argument, citing this ruling. “In light of the Bates decision, it’s going to be an uphill battle for the company to win on preemption on appeal,” Zimmerman said. Bayer also said it will argue on appeal that trial courts improperly admitted evidence that was not backed up by science. But legal experts said appellate courts generally defer to lower court evidentiary rulings. Lars Noah, a law professor at the University of Florida, said Bayer’s chances of success would increase significantly if the Supreme Court takes up the Roundup appeals. The high court only accepts around 70 cases each year, but a business-friendly majority on the court could be inclined to hear the dispute, said Alexandra Lahav, a law professor at the University of Connecticut. Since 2005, the high court has decided at least three preemption cases in favor of companies, none of which involved the EPA. The Supreme Court will soon rule in another case that rests on whether a U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval preempts tort claims. In that case, plaintiffs sued Merck & Co over the company’s alleged failure to warn of the risk of serious bone fractures associated with its osteoporosis drug Fosamax. Merck, which denies the allegations, argued the lawsuits should be preempted because the FDA did not require an additional fracture warning in the drug’s prescribing information. During a January hearing, the Justices appeared to side with the company. Bayer in a statement on Thursday said it does not believe the 2005 Bates ruling posed a barrier for the appellate courts due to other Supreme Court rulings since then. Noah agreed that the Court has more recently signaled its appetite to limit lawsuits that contradict opinions by experts at regulatory agencies. “The Bates decision by now sticks out like a sore thumb,” Noah said. “Bayer has more than enough ammunition in recent Supreme Court cases to show the trial court judges got it wrong.”
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41655
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The number of operations classed as urgent that have been cancelled twice have doubled since 2010.
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Correct. The number of urgent operations in England cancelled for the second time or more for non-medical reasons more than doubled between 2011/12 and 2017/18.
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true
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health
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There are 16,481 fewer beds in hospitals since 2010. This is in the right ballpark, but it doesn’t seem to be the best comparison. It seems to compare the number of beds at different times of the year, but the number available fluctuates seasonally. Comparing July-September in 2010 and 2017, the decrease in beds available overnight in England is closer to 13,200. 66 A&E and maternity wards have been closed. We don’t know, as this information isn’t collected nationally. In 2014, there were reportedly plans to close or downgrade 66 in England, but while some have been, others have stayed open. 103 NHS walk-in centres have closed or been downgraded since 2010. We don’t know exactly, as this information isn’t collected centrally. Research from an NHS regulator and from campaign group 38 Degrees suggests more than 90 have been closed or downgraded. 60 ambulance stations have closed since 2010. We don’t know how many ambulance stations have closed since 2010 as national figures on this aren’t regularly published. 1,000 GP practices have closed since 2010. There are around 1,000 fewer GP practices in England in 2017 than in 2010. Some practices may have merged together, rather than closing completely, but we don’t know how many have done so. A&E four hour targets have been missed more than 10 million times since 2010. Correct. Between 2010/11 and 2017/18, around 12 million A&E attendances in England took over four hours from arrival to admission, transfer or discharge. The number of patients waiting more than 12 hours in A&E is up 2,700% since 2010. Correct (although not all patients will necessarily have been waiting in A&E). In 2011/12, 120 patients in England waited 12 hours between the decision to admit them to emergency admissions and their actual admission, compared to 3,500 in 2017/18. Spending on social care is down 8% since 2010. Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year said that between 2009/10 and 2016/17, councils’ spending on adult social care in England fell 8% in real terms. Newer analysis says that it fell by 6% over the same period. We’ve asked it for more information. There are 5,240 fewer mental health nurses since 2010. This seems to be looking at different months in 2010 and 2017, which isn’t the best comparison. Comparing the number of full-time equivalent mental health nurses between January 2010 and January 2018 (the latest figures), the drop is closer to 4,500. The number of operations classed as urgent that have been cancelled twice have doubled since 2010. Correct. The number of urgent operations in England cancelled for the second time or more for non-medical reasons more than doubled between 2011/12 and 2017/18. There has been a 22% drop in ambulances meeting their 15 minute transfer target since 2010. The decrease is actually greater—28%. In 2010/11 in England 80% of ambulance transfers were done in 15 minutes, in 2015/16 it was 58%. Claim 1 of 12
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10110
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Inducing labor for convenience gets a second look
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This was an excellent story looking at practice variation and trends in medicine, namely, that of medically-managed birth which can potentially result in harms to patients and may increase healthcare costs. Cultural trends underpinning increased use are handled well: The story speculates that the increased practice of inducing labor may be influenced by obstetrician and patient schedules and the idea that it is equally safe to schedule a birth as it is to wait for a natural labor and delivery. The story is quite balanced and notes ways to reduce practice variation by adhering to established guidelines. The story also notes that requests for early labor induction may be restricted or denied by certain payers and at some healthcare settings, as the practice is not in accordance with most previously mentioned guidelines. The harms they include are well-described (if poorly supported by definitive evidence). The story addresses cost by implying there is an overall cost savings when labor is not induced early and the birth process is not medically managed if a mother and fetus are otherwise healthy. This story suggests that savings may be in the form of fewer birth complications, decreased risk of hemmorrhage and transfusion, less pain medication for longer labors, shorter hospital stays for infection or unplanned caesarean births and fewer days in neonatal intensive care for problems related to immature lungs and related respiratory problems. It is optimistic to think that the sort of data they discuss is sound; actual evidence-based cost data is meager or absent. The article likely overstates the evidence, but it does directly address cost issues. Overall, a solid piece of reporting that addresses some of the complex societal issues that may be driving the phenomenon of medically managing childbirth.
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true
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"The story addresses cost by implying there is an overall cost savings when labor is not induced early and the birth process is not medically managed if a mother and fetus are otherwise healthy. This story suggests that savings may be in the form of fewer birth complications, decreased risk of hemorrhage and transfusion, less pain medication for longer labors, shorter hospital stays for infection or unplanned caesarean births and fewer days in neonatal intensive care for problems related to immature lungs and related respiratory problems. It is however, optimistic to think that the sort of data they discuss is sound; actual evidence-based cost data is meager or absent. The article likely overstates the evidence, but we give a satisfactory rating as they do directly address cost issues. The story mentions that sometimes an induced labor is medically-appropriate for the safety of the mother and her infant. The story also mentions recent data published in Annals of Family Medicine suggesting that even in healthy women, labor induction can be safe if women are appropriately selected. However, the focus of the story is on the trend to induce labor for the sake of convenience in otherwise healthy women. The story makes the strong case that adherence to evidence-based guidelines may reduce some of the harms of this practice. Regarding the title of Nicolson’s work and the concept of ""preventive induction"", indeed the title of the paper is somewhat insidious and not directly addressed by this article. The concept that retrospective cohort data can support the concept of finding an ""optimal time"" for medical intervention to prevent risks in normal, uncomplicated pregnancies that are not post dates deserves to be closely examined. The implication is that we will be able to determine through data when it is the best time to ""prevent"" normal onset of labor. A radical notion that was not much dealt with since we are so accustomed to the concept that aspects of prenatal and birth care can prevent many outcomes which in fact they cannot. The harms they include are well-described (if poorly supported by definitive evidence). The risks may outweigh the benefits if labor is induced early without sufficient medical reason. Among harms listed are potentially longer labors and related dehydration and infection; increased rates of unplanned caesarean births; longer hospital stays for both mother and baby; increased risk of birth injuries and more time spent in the neonatal in-hospital care for babies born with underdeveloped lungs or to heal birth injuries. In the interest of balance it is important to note that few trials are available to determine the risks/benefits and costs. The story presented an advocate, a nay-sayer, some commentators, and included the concept that more research is needed. However, they may have walked-by the fact that meta-analyses of trials to date do not find strong influence on cesearean rates and are underpowered for outcomes like neonatal death, NICU admission, fetal asphyxia, etc. The story does not engage in disease mongering. The story is quite balanced and notes practice variation and ways to reduce the trend of medically-managed birth. The inclusion of details about the medicalization of birth and related cultural trends is a plus. The story cites a new mother and several researchers and obstetricians who provide perspective on this issue and list pros and cons of the increasingly common practice of induced labor in the U.S. All sources are appropriately identified by their practice, related research publications and university or medical center affiliation. This story considers the ""treatment option"" of electively substituting a medical intervention for a physiologic process without specifically noting that it is an odd concept of ""treatment"" (except indirectly in Klein’s and the Intermountain representative). The story does a good job of talking about how convenience and ""consumer driven"" the choice is but falls just short of really closing the loop that most normal things don’t require a treatment to replace them. The story notes the wide range of practice variation. The story also notes that requests for early labor induction may be restricted or denied by certain payers and at some healthcare settings as the practice is not in accordance with most evidence-based guidelines. The story notes that the practice of inducing labor and rates of caesarean births have increased. The story speculates that this practice may be influenced by obstetrician and patient schedules and the idea that it is equally safe to schedule a birth as it is to wait for a natural labor and delivery. Novelty is not invoked though the cultural trends underpinning increased use are handled well. The story has an excellent variety of sources and there is balanced reporting on the trend to induce early labor in medical practices in the U.S."
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8994
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Spironolactone may be an alternative to antibiotics in women's acne treatment
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Researchers at Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania compared about 38,000 records from women treated for acne with two different drugs. They found those who used the diuretic drug spironolactone switched to a different drug within one year at almost the same rate as those who began with antibiotics. Authors of the study viewed the prescription change as a proxy for ineffectiveness, and suggest that switching is often the result of treatment failure due to lack of efficacy or other factors. The release sends a mixed message. It calls twice for a change in prescribing practices but then states that “the findings of this study should be confirmed by a randomized controlled trial that directly compares the two treatment options.” Another problem with the release is that it doesn’t discuss any of the harms associated with spironolactone. The overuse of antibiotics is a public health problem and has been identified by the World Health Organization as a major threat. This study explored an antibiotic alternative for dermatologists, who write more antibiotic prescriptions per provider than any other specialty. The news release gives only a slight nod to the study’s main limitation — it was not a randomized controlled trial comparing different therapies — while making a strong push for dermatologists to prescribe a drug for acne that is not FDA approved for acne treatment. The evidence gathered so far is not strong enough to warrant a change in practice.
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false
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acne,antibiotic,spironolactone,University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
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The news release doesn’t provide the cost for either antibiotics or spirinolactone. It only suggests that using spirinolactone could be “less expensive” than the antibiotic course. This criterion rates a Not Satisfactory because the study did not set out to quantify benefits of a specific drug or drugs and yet the release makes numerous claims about one drug’s benefits while calling for a change in practice. The study that was undertaken can not tell us how well the drug worked or which factors contributed to discontinuance of any of the drugs. The release provided the absolute numbers of women who stopped taking a drug and switched to an alternative drug but the measurement of switching drug therapies was only a proxy for effectiveness. The release does not discuss harms of the drug other than to say it “may have a better safety profile” than oral antibiotics. Then again, it may not. Safety was not part of the study. There should be some language about spironolactone’s known side effects, which include an allergic reaction and vomiting, among others listed by the National Library of Medicine. In addition, there can be long-term consequences of lower androgens, such as decreased bone mass following continued use. The study does not provide any data on the drug’s effectiveness, and isn’t that what patients most want to know? We need much more detail about the analysis of the prescription rates, duration, and reasons for discontinuation, as well as the improvement of acne. It’s interesting but perhaps not really useful to compare how many people switched from one drug to an alternative. The release erroneously refers to acne as “one of the most common diseases in the world.” It’s not a disease. It’s a common skin condition and an annoyance for most people that have it, and can often be treated with careful cleansing and over-the-counter products. The release does not provide the name of the study funders. The release is comparing two alternatives. It would have been helpful to mention that there are other ways of dealing with acne besides just these two methods. There are a number of prudent approaches to treating acne before turning to prescription medications. The release explains that both methods are currently available and in use. It states that while some dermatologists already prescribe spironolactone for acne, the FDA has not approved it for that use. Without FDA approval, most insurers will not cover the cost of treatment. The release doesn’t make a claim of novelty, nor should it. It is not about a new drug, but a call for a new application for an old drug. There was no sensational language employed in the release.
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23183
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"Planned Parenthood Says ""Scott Walker tried to pass a law to allow pharmacists to block women’s access to birth control."
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Planned Parenthood says Scott Walker tried to pass a bill to allow pharmacists block women’s access to birth control
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false
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Health Care, Message Machine 2010, Women, Wisconsin, Planned Parenthood,
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"Planned Parenthood Advocates, the lobbying and political action arm of Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin, says it made more than 1.1 million ""voter contacts"" in the 2008 elections. The Madison-based group, which supports pro-choice candidates, has also been working to influence voters in 2010 -- including pushing them to support Democrat Tom Barrett in the Nov. 2, 2010 election for governor. The group is painting Barrett’s rival, GOP nominee Scott Walker, as ""just too extreme."" In a flier mailed to voters, it frames Walker’s views this way: ""Scott Walker tried to pass a law to allow pharmacists to block women’s access to birth control."" Is that really the case? Planned Parenthood Advocates spokeswoman Amanda Harrington said her organization’s statement about Walker is based on Assembly Bill 168, a measure Walker sponsored in 2001 while serving in the state Assembly. It would have applied to pharmacists and other health care providers, but it did not become law. The bill would have: Asked to respond to the Planned Parenthood Advocates flier, Jill Bader, spokeswoman for Walker’s gubernatorial campaign, said it was ""completely false"" that the bill had anything to do with birth control. But news stories at the time described how Walker’s bill targeted RU-486, an abortion pill, and the ""morning-after"" pill, which prevents a pregnancy. The articles also told how the proposal could have allowed pharmacists to refuse to dispense most other forms of birth control. ""Could"" and ""most"" are the operative words. But both Harrington and Matt Sande of Pro-Life Wisconsin say the protections for pharmacists in Walker’s bill would have applied to the dispensing of all types of birth control. Back to the claim about Walker. The claim does not address pills or devices, but rather how pharmacists would have been allowed to function had the bill become law. Planned Parenthood says flatly: Pharmacists would have been able to block women from getting birth control. In truth, the effects would have been more limited. An individual pharmacist could have refused to fill a particular birth control prescription. But women could have gotten the prescription filled by another pharmacist, perhaps at the same counter, or at another pharmacy. In many places, that might have amounted to an inconvenience, though in areas with few pharmacies, a refusal by one pharmacist could have created a bigger burden. As for the 2010 race, both candidates have given their views on the issue: Barrett says he opposes efforts to allow pharmacists to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions; Walker says he supports allowing pharmacists to refuse to fill emergency contraception prescriptions on moral grounds. The claim by Planned Parenthood is still off the mark. In an effort to paint Walker as extreme, the group’s lobbying arm says in a direct mail piece that Walker ""tried to pass a law to allow pharmacists to block women’s access to birth control."" That bill might have made it more difficult for some women to get contraceptives at some pharmacies, depending on who was on duty. But words matter -- the possible narrowing of access to birth control in some cases isn’t the same as blocking it in all cases."
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7931
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Synairgen gets green light for coronavirus drug trial.
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British pharmaceutical company Synairgen said on Wednesday it had the go-ahead to test a drug that could boost the lung function of patients with coronavirus, potentially assisting in the global fight against the pandemic.
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true
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Health News
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The company said it had received expedited approvals from regulators to trial the drug - an inhaled formulation of interferon-beta-1a - in hospital patients who have COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. Explaining the drug’s mechanism, Chief Executive Richard Marsden said interferon-beta was a naturally occurring protein instrumental to the body’s antiviral responses. “Interferon-beta is like the conductor of the orchestra, you make it when you’ve got a cold,” he said in an interview. “It does all kinds of things to counter the effects of viruses.” He said there was evidence that a deficiency in producing the protein could explain the enhanced susceptibility of at-risk patient groups to develop severe lower respiratory tract disease during respiratory viral infections. “Another quirk to coronavirus is that the disease itself suppresses the production of interferon-beta in the lungs, and it does this to evade the immune system,” he said. The drug, which has already shown benefits in two trials for asthma, aims to boost the amount of interferon-beta in the lungs, helping either prevent or diminish cell damage and viral replication, he said. The pilot phase of the study has been given the green light by Britain’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency and Health Research Authority. The study, which is expected to start imminently, will involve 100 COVID-19 patients in hospitals in Britain.
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14918
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"The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ""no congressional oversight."
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"Fiorina said the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ""no congressional oversight."" She has a point that where the bureau is concerned, lawmakers lack one of their strongest levers of influence -- the power of the purse. This makes it reasonable to say that the bureau has an unusually low amount of congressional oversight. However, ""low"" does not equal ""none."" Lawmakers are already flexing their muscles by advancing laws that would stiffen the bureau’s transparency rules, and the bureau’s Senate-confirmed director must testify and provide financial documentation at least twice a year to three separate congressional committees. The bureau must also be audited annually by an arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office. The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details."
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mixture
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National, Financial Regulation, Carly Fiorina,
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"During the Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee, Carly Fiorina brought up an issue that delves deep into the weeds of the federal regulatory system. She took aim at the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, a law passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by President Barack Obama that placed significant new regulations on the financial services sector. Fiorina called Dodd-Frank ""the classic of crony capitalism. The big have gotten bigger, 1,590 community banks have gone out of business, and on top of all that, we've created something called the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a vast bureaucracy with no congressional oversight that's digging through hundreds of millions of your credit records to detect fraud. This is how socialism starts, ladies and gentlemen. We must take our government back."" We wondered: Was Fiorina right that, unlike other federal regulatory agencies, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ""no congressional oversight""? We took a closer look. An unusual structure First, some background on the bureau. Its mission is to ""protect consumers by carrying out federal consumer financial laws."" This includes enforcing consumer financial protection laws, following up on consumer complaints, promoting financial education, conducting research on consumer behavior, and monitoring financial markets for risks. New agencies that seek to police well-established industries are often controversial, and the bureau is no different. Its champion was Elizabeth Warren, a liberal icon who was considered the likely first head of the bureau until her appointment was effectively blocked by Republicans in Congress. Obama’s second choice, Richard Cordray, was also kept from taking office until Obama sidestepped GOP lawmakers by making a controversial recess appointment. Cordray was ultimately confirmed with some bipartisan support in 2013. (The bureau declined to comment for this story. We did not hear back from Fiorina’s campaign.) Fiorina has a point that by Washington standards, the bureau is unusually unfettered by oversight, congressional and otherwise -- something specifically designed to limit any influence by the financial sector it oversees. Perhaps the clearest example of this long leash is that, unlike most federal agencies, the bureau does not rely on appropriations for its funding. That means that Congress doesn’t approve the bureau’s budget every year. Instead, the bureau’s operating budget comes from the Federal Reserve, currently capped at 12 percent of the Fed’s total operating expenses. This works out to about $600 million a year today. Those who are skeptical of the bureau say that seriously hampers Congress’ oversight ability. ""Oversight without any budget leverage has turned out to be completely hollow,"" said Todd J. Zywicki, executive director of the George Mason Law and Economics Center at George Mason University and a frequent commentator on the issue. Brenden D. Soucy, a Miami-based lawyer, wrote an article critical of the the bureau’s degree of congressional oversight in the Florida State University Law Review in 2013. He called the bureau ""the most independent agency in United States history."" ""The CFPB’s extreme independence is touted as one of its greatest virtues, but history has shown that while independence from political pressure can be a virtue, near total isolation is not,"" Soucy wrote. Congress does have some levers of influence So it’s clear that Congress lacks an important -- and perhaps the most important -- lever for allowing lawmakers to oversee and guide the agency. But does that really equal ""no congressional oversight""? Not really. Here are a number of ways in which Congress can oversee the bureau: • Congress can use legislation to change (or even abolish) the bureau. Indeed, there’s currently legislation in both chambers to enshrine a variety of transparency standards, some of which passed the House Financial Services Committee with bipartisan backing. • The Senate must confirm the head of the bureau. • The board’s director must testify at least twice a year before the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee; the House Financial Services Committee; and the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The bureau must also submit semi-annual budget justifications. • The bureau is subject to an annual financial audit by the Government Accountability Office, a congressional agency. Combined with other checks and balances by other parts of the executive branch and the judicial branch, this is a list of oversight mechanisms ""that will measure up against any regulatory agency in Washington,"" Warren, the bureau’s patron saint, wrote in an October 2015 op-ed. Other experts in government regulation and oversight don’t go this far -- but they add that Fiorina’s characterization is an exaggeration. ‘The CFPB has a lot longer leash that almost any other federal agency,"" said Donald F. Kettl, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. But, he added, ""Congress did it on purpose. Congress can change it."" And Soucy, the lawyer who wrote critically of the lack of congressional oversight, agreed that Fiorina went too far with this statement. ""While the CFPB is nearly completely free of congressional oversight, it is not true to say that it has ‘no’ congressional oversight,"" he said. Our ruling Fiorina said the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ""no congressional oversight."" She has a point that where the bureau is concerned, lawmakers lack one of their strongest levers of influence -- the power of the purse. This makes it reasonable to say that the bureau has an unusually low amount of congressional oversight. However, ""low"" does not equal ""none."" Lawmakers are already flexing their muscles by advancing laws that would stiffen the bureau’s transparency rules, and the bureau’s Senate-confirmed director must testify and provide financial documentation at least twice a year to three separate congressional committees. The bureau must also be audited annually by an arm of Congress, the Government Accountability Office. The statement is partially accurate but leaves out important details, so"
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30846
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A tradition of celebrating Veterans Day with ravioli dinners was initiated by President Woodrow Wilson in 1919.
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It may be the case that many Americans eat ravioli on Veterans Day, but only because many Americans eat ravioli on every other day of the year as well, not because President Wilson once served it to some White House visitors.
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false
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Holidays, ravioli, veterans day, woodrow wilson
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Veterans Day (known prior to 1954 as Armistice Day) is a U.S. holiday that celebrates the service of all U.S. military veterans and is observed on November 11 to coincide with the date of the signing of the 1918 armistice that brought an end to hostilities in World War I. Although annual presidential proclamations calling for the observance of Armistice Day on November 11 were not issued until 1926, and Armistice Day was not designated as a U.S. federal holiday until 1938, Armistice Day was first celebrated in 1919: President Wilson proclaimed the first Armistice Day with the following words: “To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory, both because of the thing from which it has freed us and because of the opportunity it has given America to show her sympathy with peace and justice in the councils of the nations.” Each year on Veterans Day a national ceremony is held at Arlington National Cemetery (usually attended by the President of the United States or, in his absence, another high government official) which includes a wreath laying at the Tomb of the Unknowns. Local observances typically include speeches from dignitaries, parades, moments of silence, and prayer ceremonies. Ravioli is a traditional Italian food consisting of a filling enclosed within two layers of thin egg pasta dough, served in broth or with a pasta sauce. The type of ravioli most familiar to Americans is a canned version filled with beef or processed cheese and served in a tomato-based sauce. Save for the fact that tinned ravioli was developed around the time of World War I, there is no connection between that food and Veterans Day, as asserted in a now common rumor: A little known fact about Veterans Day, it was originally celebrated with a dinner of ravioli. This was tradition was started by Woodrow Wilson, who invited 2,000 veterans to the White House for a dinner of ravioli on the first Veterans Day. Wilson served ravioli because the canning industry was on the rise and he predicted that ravioli would soon be the a popular meal for Americans. Since then, ravioli has been considered the traditional meal for November 11th. The rumor that ravioli is a “traditional meal” on Veterans Day, a tradition initiated when President Woodrow Wilson supposedly served a ravioli dinner to 2,000 veterans who visited the White House on 11 November 1919, originated with a spurious edit made to Wikipedia’s article about Veterans Day on 11 November 2010, which added the following paragraph: Because it is a federal holiday, many Americans have the day off from school or work for Veterans Day. Non-essential federal government offices are closed. All federal employees are paid for the holiday; those who are required to work on the holiday sometimes receive wages for that day in addition to holiday pay. The holiday is often celebrated by having a ravioli meal. This tradition dates back to the ending days of World War I when President Wilson, aware that the returning soldiers would be longing for home cooked meals, invited 2,000 soldiers to the White House and helped his staff chefs cook them ravioli, which had just become a mainstay in mainstream American kitchens due to commercial canning. In his Armistice Day address to Congress, Wilson was sensitive to the psychological toll of the lean War years: “Hunger,” he remarked, “breeds madness.” None of the sources cited in that paragraph supported the historical notion of ravioli as a traditional Veterans Day meal, though. The first footnote simply referenced a 2009 article from the Lebanon, Ohio, Western Star newspaper that coincidentally mentioned ravioli was being served as part of the lunch menu at a local school on Veterans Day. The other footnote cited a page in The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink that provided a source for Woodrow Wilson’s Armistice Day statement about hunger breeding madness rather than reform, and that mentioned how the rise in commercial canning after World War I had popularized Americanized versions of ethnic dishes such as ravioli — but it offered no connection between those two topics. (President Wilson hosted no dinners for anyone at the White House in November 1919, as he had suffered a debilitating stroke the previous month and remained in seclusion.) The false information about a Veterans Day-ravioli connection persisted on Wikipedia for exactly a year, until it was finally removed via another edit on Veterans Day 2011. During that time, however, the apocryphal tale of President Wilson’s purportedly initiating the tradition by serving a ravioli dinner to a group of veterans at the White House in 1919 was uncritically picked up and cited as fact by a number of other sources, such as a 2011 Examiner.com article: A lot of restaurants offer free meals to veterans on Veterans Day. They can order whatever they want from the menu. However, when President Woodrow Wilson designated November 11, 1919 as Veterans Day [sic], he opened up the kitchen of the White House and helped cooked [sic] ravioli for the veterans. He reasoned that the veterans might want a home cooked meal after returning from World War I. Since the veterans had survived on military rations for such a long time that a home cooked meal would be an appropriate gesture for them. There was no steak dinner because at the time the nation was in a food shortage and rationing was taking place. One of the new trends in food was ravioli, an Italian import that usually provided a serving of grain, dairy or meat, and a vegetable in one meal. It was also easily mass produced and canned for easy meals and long-term storage. So President Woodrow and his kitchen staff served 2,000 soldiers who had returned from the war.
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8564
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Brazil turns to local industry to build ventilators as China orders fall through.
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Brazil’s health minister said on Wednesday that the country’s attempts to purchase thousands of ventilators from China to fight the coronavirus epidemic fell through and the government is now looking to Brazilian companies to build the devices.
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true
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Health News
|
“Practically all our purchases of equipment in China are not being confirmed,” Minister Luiz Henrique Mandetta said at a news conference. An attempt to buy 15,000 ventilators in China failed and Brazil was making a new bid, he said, but the outcome is uncertain in the intense competition for medical supplies in the global pandemic. Last week, Mandetta referred to being outbid for Chinese supplies and on Tuesday he noted “difficulties” in guaranteeing purchases. In one positive sign for Brazil’s supply crunch, a private company said it managed to buy 40 tonnes of masks and test kits from China, with the shipment arriving by cargo plane in Brasilia on Wednesday. The purchase of 6 million masks and other protective equipment worth 160 million reais ($30 million) was undertaken by pharmaceutical and hospital equipment company Nutriex, based in Goiania, 220 km (138 miles) east of Brasilia. The firm plans to donate part of the order to medical institutions. Health authorities began to sound the alarm this week over supply shortages as hospitals faced growing numbers of patients with COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus. Confirmed cases of coronavirus infection in the country soared to 15,927 on Wednesday, with the death toll rising by 133 in just 24 hours to 800, the ministry said. Rio de Janeiro reported the first deaths from coronavirus in the city’s hillside slums, called favelas, alarming authorities who fear rapid contagion in these crowded communities that have limited access to medical care and often lack running water for hygiene. Two of the six deaths occurred in Rocinha, one of the largest slums in South America. The virus has spread to 10 of Rio’s favelas, potentially affecting 2 million people, the mayor’s office said. Mandetta reported the first case of coronavirus among the Yanomami people on the country’s largest reservation for indigenous tribes and said the government plans to build a field hospital for tribes that are vulnerable to contagion. “We are extremely concerned about the indigenous communities,” Mandetta said. Anthropologists and health experts warn that the epidemic could have a devastating impact on Brazil’s 850,000 indigenous people whose lifestyle in tribal villages rules out social distancing. President Jair Bolsonaro said in an address to the nation that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine was saving lives of coronavirus patients and should be used in the initial stages of COVID-19. Due to the absence of scientific evidence on its effectiveness and safety, Brazil’s health authorities limit its use to seriously ill patients who are in hospital. Mandetta said Brazil has hired local unlisted medical equipment maker Magnamed to make 6,000 ventilators in 90 days. Pulp and paper companies Suzano SA and Klabin SA, planemaker Embraer SA, information technology provider Positivo Tecnologia SA and automaker Fiat Chrysler have also offered to help build ventilators, he said.
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7587
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Cavs’ Love raises mental health awareness with ‘locker’ talk.
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Kevin Love can’t remember being this freshly shaven, gliding his fingers over his smooth cheeks and chin while glancing at a large mirror.
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true
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Cleveland Cavaliers, Anxiety, Mental health, Health, Cleveland, Kevin Love, Basketball, NBA, Sports, Depression
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The reflection doesn’t pain him anymore. From the outside, the Cleveland Cavaliers’ All-Star forward appears to have it all: A model’s striking looks, a multi-million dollar contract and dream job. At 30, he’s in the prime of his career, and maybe for the first time, truly happy. “I’m getting there,” he said, his voice conveying determination. “It’s still a work in progress.” Nearly a year ago, Love suffered a panic attack during a game against Atlanta. The desperate, life-altering event eventually led to revealing his long-term battle with anxiety and depression. Now Love is hoping to break down stigmas about men’s mental health. He has partnered with Shick Hydro on a website series called “Locker Room Talk” , holding candid conversations with Olympic gold-medal swimming icon Michael Phelps, former Boston Celtics star Paul Pierce and Cavs teammate and close friend Channing Frye. No topic is off limits. The first episode with Phelps premieres next month and coincides with fundraising efforts for the Movember Foundation, which promotes men growing moustaches during the month to raise awareness for prostate cancer, testicular cancer and suicide. Love recently filmed the sit-down talks with Phelps, Pierce and Frye on Cleveland’s east side while his Cavs prepared to open their first season in five years without superstar LeBron James, who signed with Los Angeles this summer. While Love knows his 11th year as a pro will be challenging (Cleveland fell to 0-4 on Wednesday night), his focus was on the series, which he views as an important step in his personal development and a natural progression toward a broader platform for more mental health initiatives. Love’s discussions with the three athletes cover a wide range of topics, including “masculinity, traumatic events, women and their roles in our lives, thoughts of suicide, anxiety. Everything.” “We’re changing the paradigm of locker room talk where it’s not just about sports anymore,” he said. “It’s life.” In their talks with Love, Phelps and Pierce open up about their past struggles with mental health. Frye brings a perspective of coping with loss and tragedy following the deaths of his parents within weeks of each other in 2016. Love hopes the frank discussions will touch people to seek help and maybe encourage them to address their problems. It took a distressing experience for Love to take the first steps in his journey. During the second half of a game on Nov. 5 against Atlanta, Love’s career took an unexpected turn and it may have saved him. He suffered a panic attack so severe that Love said he felt like he was dying. He felt trapped, gasped for air and with his heart and mind racing uncontrollably, Love frantically scrambled from room to room deep inside Quicken Loans Arena before finally collapsing on the locker room floor. He was taken to the Cleveland Clinic for tests. Love already had a sense of what was wrong. He had struggled since childhood with depression and mood swings, which he said was passed down through generations in his family. As a teenager, he would often descend into “my dark place” for weeks and experienced fits of rage. “I was angry and would break stuff,” Love said. “I would never hurt anyone, but I would act out against authority and rebel. I didn’t know why I felt that way.” He subsequently sought counseling. But after another panic episode, Love felt compelled to go public after some teammates questioned why he left another game early. Love began his personal admission with a powerful essay for the Players’ Tribune entitled “Everyone Is Going Through Something.” “In the immediate aftermath of Nov. 5, I didn’t want anyone to know. I still don’t know how I came out and played 48 hours later. I wanted to hide. I was so afraid that people were going to find out what had happened. All those events that then followed allowed me to get to a point where I was like, ‘OK, now it’s time for me to tell my story’ and I wanted to tell it in my own words.” Love remains overwhelmed at the outpouring since revealing his struggles. He and All-Star DeMar DeRozan are the most noteworthy players to express their issues, but Love said barely a day goes by that he’s not approached by someone inspired by him. “I can’t tell you how many guys around the league have come up to me and said, ‘How did you get there?’ or ‘How did you get out of it?’ And I’ve had people ask, ‘Hey, can you help me?’ “Not just becoming a sounding board but a way to help them,” he said. “It’s become just a great community, not just in the NBA but everywhere I go.” ___ More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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15920
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Mercury is used in vaccines, and there is no safe level of mercury.
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Anti-vaccine claim rooted in bad science, confusion
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false
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Georgia, Public Health, Mike Adams,
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"With a measles outbreak sprouting in 14 states, and Georgia reporting its first case in almost three years, vaccine opponents are reviving claims about the dangers of vaccines against the disease in newsfeeds across the country. An alert reader was skeptical of one Facebook post, reviving a 2012 story that purports to list ""10 outrageous (but true) facts."" It starts with the claim that helped spur the anti-vaccination movement, despite being repeatedly debunked: Childhood shots contain mercury, a powerful neurotoxin with no safe level of use. ""Doctors who inject children with vaccines are delusional,"" Mike Adams concludes from his list of claims. ""They are practicing a medical holocaust against humanity."" How could PolitiFact Georgia resist jumping in to such subtlety? Adams declined to speak with us about his conclusions regarding mercury. He referred us instead to studies on his website, most of which deal with effects of methyl mercury. That is a very different chemical from ethyl mercury, a component in the vaccine preservative thimerosal. We’ll get to that difference in a minute. But the story of thimerosal and vaccine safety bears repeating. Early vaccinations carried the risk of dangerous and sometimes lethal bacterial infections, such as a staph infection that killed four children in 1916. Thimerosal was added to vaccines to keep multi-dose vials free from such bacteria starting in the 1930s. In 1998, the British medical journal the Lancet published a paper that claimed there was a link between the MMR vaccine — for measles, mumps and rubella — and autism. The paper by Dr. Andrew Wakefield drew considerable publicity and is credited in pushing vaccination rates down in the United Kingdom and the United States. In 1999, the Food and Drug Administration held meetings to discuss the idea that thimerosal — then used in three childhood vaccines such as the hepatitis B shot — was damaging immunized infants’ brains and contributing to the rise in autism diagnoses. At the time, Dr. Neal Halsey was the chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics committee on infectious diseases. The Johns Hopkins pediatrician had long pushed for expanding vaccinations as a way for children to live healthier lives. But he was willing to entertain the idea that thimerosal was helping to impair infant brains, even though there were no data to support the theory. Thimerosal was removed and has not been used as a preservative in any vaccine on the recommended schedule for children since 1999. By 2004, Wakefield's study was retracted and would later be deemed an ""elaborate fraud"" by the British medical journal BMJ. Wakefield eventually lost his medical license over the ordeal. At the same time, several studies, including ones in 2001 and 2004 from the Institute of Medicine, found no evidence linking vaccines and autism. ""There was no convincing evidence that there was any harm from thimerosal, but I felt we would have difficulties with public acceptance of vaccines if we continued its use,"" Halsey said. ""We are not using it anymore. Now the science is definitive that the small amount of thimerosal did not cause autism or any other neurological damage. "" The damage may already have been done, though, regarding public suspicion of vaccines. Like Halsey, Dr. Paul Offit, a pediatrics professor at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, agreed that the science never supported the theory that thimerosal caused harm. But Offit worried attention to the unproven fear of ""mercury"" was minimizing the proven fear of the diseases the vaccines were designed to keep at bay. ""Before there were vaccines, whooping cough killed 8,000 children a year, polio crippled 20,000 kids and killed 1,500 to 2,000,"" Offit said. ""Measles killed 500 children a year and caused 48,000 to be hospitalized. The best way to address safety concerns is not to cater to false ones and focus on those real threats."" Adams also confuses the issue with the interchangeable use of the term ""mercury"" for both thimerosal’s ethyl mercury and the more problematic methyl mercury. Think of ethyl mercury like ethyl alcohol — easily expelled from the human body but dangerous in large quantities. Thimerosal was used in trace amounts in vaccines. Methyl mercury is the compound found in fish and water, which builds up because the body can’t easily expel it. While some amounts occur naturally in the environment, it’s more comparable to methyl alcohol, the methanol that fills your gas tank but isn’t fit for human consumption. Repeated research studies agree that there is no evidence of harm from thimerosal’s mercury compound in vaccines. But there is an even bigger problem with Adams’ claim. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, aware of the controversy and confusion, lists all ingredients in childhood vaccines for review. MMR, the vaccine making headlines now, never contained thimerosal. Neither did the shots for chickenpox, polio or others. Thimerosal, remember, was designed to prevent bacterial growth with repeated entry into a vial. Therefore, it wouldn’t be used in single-use vials most common in the United States. And there is no need for a preservative with the live virus vaccines such as measles, said Dr. Marie McCormick, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health who oversaw the committee that conducted the 2004 IOM vaccine safety review. In other words, our reader was right to be skeptical. There has been debate in the scientific community about removing a mercury compound from some vaccines. But the science has always been clear that there is no evidence that compound causes harm. Bluntly, vaccines help, not hurt. And if you still don’t believe that? Consider that the recipe in question — that is, the series of shots recommended for childhood immunization — does not include the ingredient singled out as the problem. Any claims to the contrary muddy what should be a simple issue."
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1363
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Electric cars win? Britain to ban new petrol and diesel cars from 2040.
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Britain will ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2040 in an attempt to reduce air pollution that could herald the end of over a century of reliance on the internal combustion engine.
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true
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Environment
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Britain’s step, which follows France, amounts to a victory for electric cars that if copied globally could hit the wealth of oil producers, as well as transform car industry jobs and one of the icons of 20th Century capitalism: the automobile itself. The mayors of Paris, Madrid, Mexico City and Athens have said they plan to ban diesel vehicles from city centers by 2025, while the French government also aims to end the sale of new gasoline and diesel vehicles by 2040. The British government has been under pressure to take steps to reduce air pollution after losing legal cases brought by campaign groups. Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives had pledged to make “almost every car and van” zero-emission by 2050. “There should be no new diesel or petrol vehicles by 2040,” environment minister Michael Gove told BBC Radio. The ban would only apply to conventional rather than hybrid vehicles that have both an electric and combustion engine, Gove’s ministry said. There is a mountain to climb, however. Electric cars currently account for less than 5 percent of new car registrations in Britain, with drivers concerned about the cost and limited availability of charging points and manufacturers worried about making expensive investments before the demand is there. “We could undermine the UK’s successful automotive sector if we don’t allow enough time for the industry to adjust,” warned Mike Hawes, chief executive of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders. Hawes said there were only 12,000 public charging points in Britain and new power infrastructure would be needed, as well as steps to ensure the power network could cope with large numbers of people seeking to charge vehicles at the same time. While many automakers may find it hard to countenance the end of the combustion engine, some have embraced a future where electric vehicles, or perhaps even driverless ones, prevail. This month, Volvo became the first major traditional automaker to set a date for phasing out vehicles powered solely by the internal combustion engine by saying all its car models launched after 2019 would be electric or hybrids. Renault-Nissan in 2009 announced plans to spend 4 billion euros on electric car development. But until Volkswagen (VW) admitted in 2015 to cheating on U.S. diesel emissions tests, most mainstream auto manufacturers had been slow to sink serious investment into battery cars. The backlash against diesel, without which carmakers would struggle to meet CO2 targets, has since refocused minds and produced a flurry of new commitments. VW itself unveiled ambitious plans last year to roll out 30 new battery-powered models that it expects to account for 2-3 million annual sales by 2025 - or as much as 25 percent of its vehicle production. “Even though modern combustion engines will be relevant for at least another 20 years, it is clear that the future will be ruled by electric drives,” VW chief executive Matthias Mueller said earlier this year. PSA Group boss Carlos Tavares, in the past a vocal defender of diesel technologies, said on Wednesday the French company was ready to embrace mass electrification, provided the required consumer demand and government support were there. “The rise of the electric vehicle is very much dependent on the subsidies and the support governments will be able to give to this technology,” Tavares told analysts during the company’s first-half results presentation. PSA is planning to roll out new pure-electric and plug-in hybrid models from 2019. Toyota, which pioneered hybrids but long resisted battery-only cars, changed tack last year and has since unveiled plans for a new range of pure-electric models. In Europe, so called ‘green cars’ benefit from subsidies, tax breaks and other perks, while combustion engines face mounting penalties including driving and parking restrictions. China, struggling with catastrophic pollution levels in major cities, is pushing plug-in vehicles, though in the United States there is much less appetite so far. Germany, the home of major carmakers such as VW, Daimler and BMW, should soon start phasing out petrol and diesel too, said Oliver Wittke, a transport expert in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats. But there is likely to be resistance in Europe’s biggest car market. More than 600,000 jobs could be at risk in Germany from a potential ban on combustion engine cars by 2030, the Ifo economic institute said this month in a study commissioned by Germany’s VDA car industry lobby. Germany’s major carmakers have invested heavily in diesel technology, which offers more efficient fuel burn and lower carbon dioxide emissions than gasoline-powered cars. In response to the British decision, a German government spokeswoman said on Wednesday Merkel had repeatedly warned against “demonizing” diesel vehicles. A spokesman for VW’s Audi brand, two thirds of whose European sales are diesel cars, said it could make diesel “fit for a future with even more stringent emission standards”. Yet Britain’s move will accelerate the decline of diesel cars, whose nitrogen oxide emissions have been blamed for causing respiratory diseases, in Europe’s second biggest market. The government will provide more than 250 million pounds to local authorities for schemes to restrict diesel vehicles’ access to polluted roads but said other options should be exhausted before charging users of polluting vehicles. Any restrictions or charges for polluting vehicles to use affected roads should be time-limited and lifted as soon as air pollution is within legal limits, it added. Gove said he favored road-by-road restrictions for diesel vehicles rather than outright bans from town centers or costly vehicle scrappage schemes, but did not rule them out entirely if they were local authorities’ preferred options. The government also said it would consult later this year on other possible measures including a targeted scrappage scheme. London mayor Sadiq Khan, of the opposition Labour Party, said the government’s commitment was half-hearted and steps needed to be taken before 2040 to tackle air pollution. “We need a fully-funded diesel scrappage fund now to get polluting vehicles off our streets immediately, as well as new powers so that cities across the UK can take the action needed to clean up our air,” Khan said in a statement. Turning away from oil will add to discussions about whether the world is reaching peak oil demand and how additional electric power can be generated. Some companies, including Royal Dutch Shell, expect demand to peak as early as by the end of the next decade. Demand for diesel cars fell 10 percent in the first half of the year in Britain while sales of petrol vehicles rose 5 percent, according to industry data. Sales of electric and hybrid models rose by nearly 30 percent, the fastest growing section of the market albeit from a low base.
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34785
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"Americans can send holiday cards to service members and veterans through the ""Holiday Mail for Heroes"" program."
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"What's true: The ""Holiday Mail for Heroes"" program allowed people to send holiday greetings to service members and veterans. What's false: The Red Cross changed the program to ""Holidays for Heroes,"" which is not as focused on correspondence; this means there is no longer a national P.O. Box to send cards."
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mixture
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Holidays, ASP Article, holidays, holidays for heroes
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Recent years have seen several Internet-based grass-roots promotions of programs that enable the public to send letters, cards, gifts, and other greetings to U.S. troops serving overseas or recovering in stateside hospitals, particularly around the holiday season. Unfortunately, many such promotions (such as the “Recovering American Soldier” effort) have not worked out as well as hoped due to insufficient organization, deadlines, security concerns, and other factors. Up through the 2013 holiday season, the Red Cross and Pitney Bowes sponsored a “Holiday Mail for Heroes” program to distribute holiday cards to service members, a program that encompassed not just troops who are recovering in military hospitals but also service members stationed throughout the U.S. and abroad, as well as veterans and their families. Well-wishers who wanted to get Christmas (and other seasonal) cards to U.S. service members could send those cards to a single national address, and the Red Cross/Pitney Bowes partnership would sort and distribute them to service members stateside and abroad. Now, however, the Red Cross has discontinued the national aspect of the program in favor of having card collection and distribution handled at the local level, so there is no longer one single mailing address for Holiday Mail for Heroes cards: With many service members and veterans separated from their families this holiday season due to deployments and hospital stays, the American Red Cross Holiday Mail for Heroes (HMFH) program empowers people to “Give Something That Means Something” by sending a card of thanks and support to the members of the Armed Forces, veterans and their families. Beginning in 2014, the program will take on a different look, as Red Cross chapters across the continental U.S. and Red Cross offices on military installations overseas will take complete control of the program. There will no longer be a national Holiday Mail for Heroes P.O. Box to which cards are sent. Check with your local Red Cross for times and locations of events and for opportunities to get involved. Moving forward, local Red Cross offices will collect, sort, and distribute the holiday cards using an events-based approach in their local communities. Local Red Cross offices will: 1. Hold events to sign or make holiday cards 2. Schedule card-sorting times. 3. Coordinate card delivery to the military, vets and families in their communities. These changes will allow local Red Cross offices to better concentrate on reaching out to the members of the military, veterans and families in their community — neighbors helping neighbors. The Red Cross has also provided these guidelines for sending cards to service members: Ensure that all cards are signed. Use generic salutations such as “Dear Service Member.” Cards addressed to specific individuals can not be delivered through this program. Only cards are being accepted. Do not send letters. Do not include email or home addresses on the cards, as the program is not meant to foster pen pal relationships. Do not include inserts of any kind, including photos, as these items will be removed during the reviewing process. Please refrain from choosing cards with glitter or using loose glitter as it can aggravate health issues of ill and injured warriors. If you are mailing a large quantity of cards, please bundle them and place them in large mailing envelopes or flat rate postal shipping boxes. Each card does not need its own envelope, as envelopes will be removed from all cards before distribution. Those wishing to donate items such as phone cards or military comfort kits should go to the Help Our Troops section of the Red Cross online catalogue. E-mailed entreaties from previous years have urged Americans to send cards addressed to “A Recovering American Soldier” or “Any Wounded Soldier” care of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC), but Walter Reed officials have said that any material so addressed will not be delivered: Walter Reed Army Medical Center officials want to remind those individuals who want to show their appreciation through mail to include packages and letters, addressed to “Any Wounded Soldier” that Walter Reed will not be accepting these packages in support of the decision by then Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Transportation Policy in 2001. This decision was made to ensure the safety and well being of patients and staff at medical centers throughout the Department of Defense.In addition, the U.S. Postal Service is no longer accepting “Any Service Member” or “Any Wounded Service Member” letters or packages. Mail to “Any Service Member” that is deposited into a collection box will not be delivered. Instead of sending an “Any Wounded Soldier” letter or package to Walter Reed, please consider making a donation to one of the more than 300 nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping our troops and their families listed on the “America Supports You” website, www.americasupportsyou.mil. Furthermore, that is also out of date by a number of years. The former Walter Reed Army Medical Center closed in August 2011, and merged with the National Naval Medical Center to form the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (WRNMMC) in Bethesda, Maryland. Additional information:
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22102
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"George Allen ""had 40,000 earmarks"" while he was a senator."
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British shale gas company Cuadrilla said on Thursday it would restart fracking at its Preston New Road site in Britain in the third quarter of 2019 and plans to use a thicker fracking fluid to help reduce earth tremors.
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false
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Federal Budget, Virginia, Jamie Radtke,
|
Fracking, or hydraulically fracturing, involves extracting gas from rocks by breaking them up with water and chemicals at high pressure. Operations at the first well at the Preston New road site in Lancashire where halted several times last year because of minor seismic events. British regulations demand work be suspended if seismic activity of magnitude 0.5 or more is detected. Cuadrilla CEO Francis Egan said he hoped the use of a thicker fracking liquid would help to cut down on seismic events at the second well. “We have in effect increased the concentration of the fluid so essentially there is more sand and less water,” he said in an interview with Reuters. “We may still have events reaching the 0.5 limit but hopefully not as many.” Egan said the fluid alterations had been approved by Britain’s Environment Agency. Cuadrilla and chemical firm Ineos, which has the largest shale gas license acreage in Britain, have called on the government to change seismicity regulations which the companies say have threatened to stall the industry’s development. The government has said it has no plans to change the rules. Fracking is opposed by environmentalists who say extracting more fossil fuel is at odds with Britain’s commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “At a time when the government has declared a climate emergency, the last thing we should be doing is starting an industry that extracts gas,” said Jamie Peters, a Friends of the Earth campaigner. Britain last month became the first G7 country to adopt an ambitious law to reach net zero emissions by 2050. The move will require much less gas-fired power generation and a move away from domestic natural gas, currently used to heat around 80% of the country’s homes. But Egan said the fracked gas could become a feedstock to create hydrogen and help the country meet its climate target. “The CCC (committee on climate change) report was clear hydrogen will be needed for net zero and surely it’s better to use domestically produced gas for this than imports of LNG (liquefied natural gas),” he said. Britain’s climate advisers, the CCC, said in a May report Britain will need to begin using low-carbon hydrogen in industry and for home heating to help cut its emissions and meet the target. Subject to regulatory approvals Cuadrilla said it would complete the program of fracking and testing equipment at the second well by the end of November.
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17236
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You can buy lobster with food stamps.
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Food stamp lobster claim true, but extent unclear
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true
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Georgia, Government Regulation, State Budget, Greg Morris,
|
"A food fight recently erupted in the Georgia Legislature over food stamps -- with a morsel of information tossed out by one lawmaker that was too tasty for the Truth-O-Meter to pass up. Before a Senate committee, state Rep. Greg Morris, a Republican from Vidalia, was battling for a bill he authored that would require food stamp recipients to be drug-tested. Morris was asked why no one else spoke in favor of his legislation, House Bill 772, as opposed to representatives of legal groups and other organizations who said they were against it. ""What lobbyists are there for just the average worker who’s a taxpayer?"" Morris said. ""They’re economizing and buying inexpensive cuts of meat, when with (food stamps) you can buy lobster."" So, food stamp recipients can purchase lobster. Is this ? PolitiFact Georgia thought we’d put on a lobster bib and do taste-testing as we researched this claim. A medium-tail lobster costs $7 for 5 ounces at some local supermarkets, so it’s not cheap. Our bosses said lobster was not in the budget. We trudged along. Nearly one in five Georgians, about 1.7 million people, receive food stamps (a program actually called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP), and 16,000 receive welfare (called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF), according to the Georgia Department of Human Services. Many of those are children, who would not be drug-tested under the bill. A revised version of HB 772 was passed by both chambers of the Georgia Legislature on Thursday, the final day of the session. HB 772 now heads to Gov. Nathan Deal for his signature. Morris did not return a call for comment. The lawmaker’s angst may stem from several Fox News Channel reports about an aspiring musician who used the federal benefits to buy the high-end seafood. The cable outlet showed a day in the life of California resident Jason Greenslate, who was 29 and unemployed and receiving SNAP benefits when Fox News met him. His day began with surfing. Next, he discussed plans for a party with friends. After that, Greenslate made a trip to the supermarket where he bought a rainbow roll of salmon, eel and other ingredients, coconut water and lobster that Greenslate observed was ""on special."" The lobster he purchased appeared to have a sale price on the wrapper. Greenslate used his food stamp card at the checkout counter. ""All paid for by our wonderful tax dollars,"" he said on camera. Greenslate later met with three friends and cooked the lobster on a grill. ""EBT lobster,"" he said before taking a bite. Electronic Benefits Transfer is the system that transfers the federal funds to food stamp cards. The number of Americans in SNAP has more than doubled in the past decade, from about 21 million people in 2003 to nearly 48 million in 2013, U.S. Food and Drug Administration data shows. The number of SNAP recipients has risen each year since 2000. The amount of money given in benefits has more than tripled from $21 billion in 2003 to $76 billion in 2013. Greenslate said he receives about $190 a month for food stamps, which is about $60 more than the national average benefit per person. He’s been pilloried by some of the network’s commentators for what they describe as his carefree outlook on accepting federal benefits and purchasing luxury food. In a subsequent interview, Greenslate explained he’ll buy food like lobster if he can get a deal on it. ""I’ll eat whatever is on sale,"" he said. Tales of hipsters and middle-income Americans now down on their luck buying Japanese eggplant or lemon grass with their EBT cards have been reported by news outlets in recent years. Conversely, some politicians have attempted to show the difficulty of living on food stamps by writing about the tough decisions they’ve had to make about what food to purchase. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has no restrictions on SNAP recipients buying luxury items such as steak and seafood. They also can purchase food and soft drinks that are less nutritious, such as ice cream. Alcohol, beer, cigarettes and wine are prohibited. Live animals are off the list as well. The USDA said in a 2007 report that it resisted restrictions of most foods because it says it would be difficult to regulate, considering there are more than 300,000 food products in the country. The federal agency also was worried that further restrictions would embarrass some recipients and discourage them from applying to SNAP. So are there many other food stamp recipients buying lobster? It’s unclear. Messages to the USDA were not returned. Last April, the USDA released a study of the dietary habits of some SNAP recipients once they joined the program. It found they ate more whole fruit and less of some vegetables, such as carrots. The recipients ate food with less sodium and saturated fat. It did not have a breakdown of their consumption of lobster. Most other studies found little or no change in the waistlines of recipients, contrary to thinking that food stamp use leads to obesity. Comedian Jon Stewart said Fox News is exaggerating the scope of the situation. ""Congratulations on finding your food stamp abuse Bigfoot,"" Stewart said on his Comedy Central television show, referring to Greenslate. ""That one guy you found is certainly not someone the food stamp program itself would point to as its greatest success story. But we make fun of you not for finding him, but for pretending that he somehow represents literally millions of Americans."" To sum up, Morris said that you can buy lobster with food stamps. It’s unknown how many other food stamp recipients are cracking open this yummy seafood from its shell. As the Fox News video showed, there is at least one person receiving those federal benefits who bought lobster. The man did say he does so if it’s on sale. From what we’ve seen, there are few people buying such high-end items. But it is possible, just as Morris said."
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10002
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AstraZeneca Says Brilinta Beats Plavix in Clinical Trial
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"As the individual ratings illustrate, this story on the release of partial results of a trial of a new anti-clotting drug, Brilinta, falls short of several best practices of health journalism. Most importantly: It fails to discuss costs and treatment alternatives It fails to include medical sources who could provide a useful reality check about potential clinical applications of the new drug compared to the incumbent–and to non-drug or other treatments. Having said that, the reporter does a passable job of providing caveats about the limitations of the released data, and about how efficacy and safety have not yet been proven. This story was obviously written for a business audience more focused on drug development than in clinical applications. It appeared in the business, not the lifestyle section of the Wall Street Journal. Yet the news has implications for consumers concerned about current and coming treatments for serious heart conditions. The story should be judged at least partly based on its value–or lack thereof–to a general reader. This is especially true in an age where stories written for print often reach more readers online, where there is no ""section"" context. When a story like this pops up on Google news or some other directory, readers do not know to expect a lower level of relevance and service because of the audience for which it was originally intended. Judged by these standards, as the ratings show, this story falls far short. It’s worth noting that the Wall Street Journal’s Health Blog featured an entry on the Brilinta study that in significant ways is superior to the newspaper’s report–expressing greater caution about interpreting the results and the unclear status of the drug’s efficacy and safety. Presumably the WSJ Health Blog is aimed at an audience similar to the newspaper’s. This raises fascinating questions about journalism in the digital age: Do the mannerisms of writing ""articles"" constrain the writer from leveling with readers? Is blog journalism superior to the standard kind, occasionally or frequently? Do the layers of editing a print story is subjected to add or diminish reader value? Is the doom and gloom about a news environment where most information is delivered via blogs and other sort- and fast-form content types warranted? What if professional journalists writing in blogs actually served the public better than their ink-and-paper-bound peers?"
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mixture
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"The story fails to discuss the new drug’s cost or even cite the price of its chief competitor. It may be difficult to project a drug’s cost before it’s on the market. But these drugs are expensive [Plavix, the incumbent anti-clotting blockbuster, is $4 per day] and readers should realize that. Because the story focuses on the potential of Brilinta to knock off Plavix, some discussion of price should have been included. The economic stakes are high not only for the industry, but for the public and individual consumers. The story describes the study as ""unusually large,"" invovling 18,600 patients with acute coronary syndromes. It describes the trial as a head-to-head comparison between Brilinta and Plavix and specifies the clinical end points used in the research. The story cites the company’s description of the results as ""statistically significant"" in a way that favors Brilinta over Plavix. Given the fact that little additonal data has been released [see the company’s press release on the early Brilinta results], the story earns a ""Satisfactory"" rating under this criterion. The story fails to mention the potential harms of Brilinta. Given the questions about risks of the reigning anti-platelet blockbuster Plavix it intends to replace, this is a significant omission. The risks linked to Plavix could therefore arguably demonstrate a need for a drug that reduces heart risk without introducing other potential harms. This should have been mentioned, as should have any potential risks early data link to Brilinta. The evidence of the drug’s efficacy and safety is being withheld by the company, and won’t be released until August at a cardiology conference. The story discloses this, and quotes unnamed ""analysts"" warning that until the data are released and side effects known, approval should not be assumed. Given this disclosure, the story earns a ""Satisfactory"" rating under this criterion. The story does not exaggerate the dangers of any of the heart conditions the anti-platelet drugs are designed to treat. All information in the story appears to come from company sources, though no one is quoted by name. [Other press coverage of the AstraZeneca statement fails to include additional comments from company spokesmen, suggesting the company did not provide more information to anyone.] Unnamed ""analysts"" are said to urge caution about the drug’s market value until the results are published and information about side effects is known. But the elephant absent from the room is the medical expert who could provide insight into Plavix’s risk/benefit profile, how significant its risks are from a clinical perspective, and what value Brilinta would have if indeed it provides better outcomes and its effects are more quickly reversible. It’s significant to note that this medical information would be useful not just to consumers, but to Wall Street Journal readers who follow AstraZeneca’s fortunes and who participate in the bloodsport of betting on drug blockbusters. The story takes the viewpoint of the study, which is a head-to-head trial comparing Brilinta against Plavix. Readers should know how these expensive drugs perform relative to the cheaper, older alternatives, which include aspirin and warfarin. It should also describe results for those who use non-drug treatments after getting stents or experiencing other conditions for which anti-platelet medications are used. The story makes clear that Brilinta is not yet available. It says the company plans to submit the drug for approval in the fourth quarter of this year. Wisely, the reporter resists predicting when the drug might be on the market, since this is not guaranteed. The story states that analysts claim that Brilinta’s effects appear to be more reversible than Plavix’s, which would be useful in helping heart patients prepare for heart procedures involving surgery, where a risk of bleeding is very serious. But that’s almost a worthless claim and clause in the story. Science – and evidence – not analysts – should establish novelty. We can’t be sure of the source of the information. No independent source is quoted. There are only brief references to what analysts say."
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5758
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Elderly man evicted over medical marijuana hits another snag.
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A 78-year-old New York man who was evicted from federally subsidized housing because he uses medical marijuana for pain said Tuesday that the conflicting state and federal pot laws that left him homeless are now threatening his medical care.
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true
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Homeless shelters, Legal Marijuana, Medical marijuana, New York, Marijuana, Health, Niagara Falls, U.S. News
|
“The federal government has stepped in again and squashed it,” said John Flickner, who uses a wheelchair and has a doctor’s prescription for the drug. After news reports detailed his eviction last week, Flickner, who is now staying at a homeless shelter, said the Niagara Falls program that coordinates his care suddenly dropped him, leaving him without access to doctors and transportation. An attorney for the program, Complete Senior Care, said privacy laws prevent him from discussing individual patients. But generally speaking, attorney Jerry Solomon said that because medical marijuana is illegal under federal law, the federally funded program cannot help clients access it without risking its funding. “Federal guidelines from (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) ban them from prescribing that or allowing access or having anything to do with anyone having medical marijuana,” Solomon said. “To do otherwise would jeopardize being able to service all the other patients that they have.” New York is among states that have legalized medical marijuana, but advocates say it’s not uncommon for people to be evicted from federally subsidized housing for using the drug. Last week in news reports, Flickner described steering his electric wheelchair in freezing temperatures to a center after being evicted. On Sunday, his former landlord reversed course. Flickner said he relies on medical marijuana for back pain dating to a skydiving mishap 50 years ago. “The eviction of Mr. Flickner is not a reflection of who we are or our resident service values. We are rescinding our decision and revisiting our policy for this evolving issue,” LHP Capital of Tennessee said in a statement Sunday. Flickner had not decided Tuesday whether to return. Niagara Towers is subsidized by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, which said it gives landlords discretion on whether to evict residents for using medical marijuana. Solomon said Complete Senior Care has no such discretion. CMS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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38107
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A Facebook post dubbed “A Gentle Reminder from Pope Francis” talks about how life goes by fast, and the need to focus on what’s really important.
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E-cigarette or vaping-linked lung injuries that have killed 29 and sickened more than 1,000 people in the United States are likely to be rare in Britain and other countries where the suspect products are not widely used, specialists said on Monday.
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false
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Inspirational, Religious
|
Experts in toxicology and addiction said they are sure that the 1,299 confirmed and probable American cases of serious lung injuries linked to vaping are “a U.S.-specific phenomenon,” and there is no evidence of a similar pattern of illness in Britain or elsewhere. “What’s happening in the U.S. is not happening here (in Britain), nor is it happening in any other countries where vaping is common,” said John Britton, a professor and respiratory medicine consultant and director of the UK Centre for Tobacco & Alcohol Studies at Nottingham University. “It’s a localised problem,” he told a London briefing. U.S. investigators and health officials have said there may be more than one cause for the cases of vaping lung illness. They have also pointed to vaping oils containing THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, as being especially risky. In Britain, which currently has 3.6 million regular e-cigarette users, such oils are banned and advertising of vapes is much more tightly regulated than in the United States, said Ann McNeill, a professor of tobacco addiction at the Institute of Psychiatry Psychology & Neuroscience at King’s College London. She and Britton also noted that rates of tobacco cigarette smoking - which can cause lung cancer and heart disease and is known to kill about half of all those who do it - are dropping more rapidly in Britain than in the United States. This is partly due to tobacco smokers switching to nicotine-containing e-cigarettes to help them quit, they said. “It would be a great shame if people were deterred from using e-cigarettes because of what’s happening in the U.S.,” McNeill told reporters. India, which has the world’s second-largest population of adult smokers, last month announced a ban on the sale of e-cigarettes, citing concerns about the U.S. cases. And in Malaysia, which has banned the sale of vape liquids containing nicotine since 2015, the health minister says he is now considering a total e-cigarette sales ban. Asked whether he thought such bans made sense from a public health policy standpoint, Britton said he disagreed with India’s decision and similar ones in the United States, because they send a message to tobacco smokers to continue smoking. “It’s a no-brainer - if you stay on cigarettes you will lose a day of life for every four days that you smoke,” he said. “A flat-out ban (on e-cigarettes) will kill people.”
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10303
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St. Francis heart surgeon pioneering ‘new horizon’ repair technique
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This story performed cheerleading for local research in a number of ways. It said the procedure: May revolutionize cardiac care; Could save and improve thousands of lives (no source cited for this projection); Has vast potential. But – for the new use described in the story – it’s only been tested in animals. No discussion of evidence, of costs, of harms. Only anecdotes. Incomplete discussion of alternative options for the problem in question. A reality check on a story like this: If the research came out of Ann Arbor or Columbus instead of Indianapolis, do you really think it would get this kind of play? Would it have been covered at all? If not, why not? And then why is it worthy of such hyperlocal hyperbole just because it did involve an Indianapolis physician?
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false
|
"There was no mention of treatment costs. No data were given about potential benefits. There was no discussion of potential harms of this treatment. There is no evidence presented in this story – only anecdotes. We are told that the use of this material for the treatment of heart failure is currently under study in animals. Even there, readers are not given any mean for assessing how well it is working. Nonetheless, the story states that this material will ""revolutionize cardiac care"". This story did not engage in overt disease mongering. No interview material from independent experts was included in this story. The story mentioned that the current therapies for heart failure were limited and expensive, including such things as artificial hearts, heart transplants, and left ventricular assist devices. However – it neglected to mention the medical therapy that is available to treat heart failure – which is comparatively not expensive. It also failed to indicate that the treatments mentioned are the current therapies for severe heart failure. There are current therapies for managing heart failure that enable many people to do well. The treatment highlighted in this piece is about expanding the use of a material already approved for other medical problems as a means for dealing with a variety of problems with heart muscle. So although the piece mentioned that the material was currently being tested in animals for this new purpose, the story blurs this distinction because it goes on to include a quote from a patient in whom the material was used to repair a leak due to valve repair. So the CorMatrix Extracellular Matrix may be able to solve more problems than it is currently applied to, but we don’t yet know. This means the treatment is available for some medical problems, though not the one highlighted in the story. The story was a little confusing on this one. It’s clear from the story that researchers are exploring a new use of an existing product. Does not appear to rely on a press release, although it reads like a marketing piece."
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5870
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Health reports rosy in Ohio’s otherwise ugly US Senate race.
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There’s rosy news in the nasty, high-stakes battle for Ohio’s U.S. Senate seat: Both Rob Portman and Ted Strickland are in excellent health.
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true
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Columbus, OH State Wire, Health, Ohio, Rob Portman, Ted Strickland
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Doctors’ letters provided to The Associated Press give glowing medical marks to both men. The AP requested the results of a post-primary physical and, for each, a list of any major health conditions or prescription medications. Neither has any medical problems to speak of. The two have been engaged in one of the year’s most expensive and closely watched Senate contests — though outside groups on both sides have begun pulling money from the race as Strickland fails to gain traction against Portman’s well-funded effort. The 60-year-old Portman, the Republican incumbent, is an avid sportsman who kayaks and cycles. He’s on no medications and has no illnesses or chronic conditions. Strickland, Ohio’s Democratic former governor, takes blood-pressure medicine. His doctor reports the 75-year-old has no illnesses or chronic conditions. Strickland would be the oldest person elected to a first term in the Senate — though he’d be far from the oldest in the chamber. Thirteen sitting senators are 75 or older. That includes eight who are 80 and above. The median age in the Senate is around 63. When questioned about his age, Strickland says longevity runs in his family. The Portman campaign provided a letter from the senator’s longtime doctor, James Hochwalt in Cincinnati, drawn from a July physical. “To my knowledge, there is nothing in his medical history or current medical status that would interfere with his demanding schedule and commitments of United States Senator,” Hochwalt wrote. Strickland’s physician, Paul Dusseau in Hilliard, also saw the candidate in July. In addition to an exam and lab work, Dusseau wrote that he reviewed Strickland’s “past medical history, family medical history, daily habits and activities, and health over the past year.” Dusseau issued what he dubbed an “Excellent Report!” Green Party Senate candidate Joseph DeMare is also in excellent health. His doctor, Matt Roth of Maumee, says in a letter provided to the AP that the 54-year-old takes no medication and has no ongoing medical concerns.
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23985
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Rudy Giuliani Says federal law enforcement officers cut off questioning of the Christmas Day underwear bomber by giving him a Miranda warning after 30 minutes of questioning.
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Giuliani says U.S. only questioned underwear bomber for 30 minutes before reading Miranda rights
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mixture
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National, Homeland Security, Legal Issues, Crime, Terrorism, This Week - ABC News, Rudy Giuliani,
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"The government's questioning of two accused terrorists -- Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who is accused of trying to bomb an airliner on Christmas Day 2009 using explosives sewn into his underwear, and Faisal Shahzad, who is being held for the failed Times Square bombing on May 1, 2010 -- has prompted critics to say the Obama administration is too soft on the terrorists and overly concerned with their Miranda rights. On the ABC News program This Week, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani joined many of his fellow Republicans in questioning the wisdom of reading the Miranda warning to suspected terrorists. Those warnings, which stem from the 1966 Supreme Court decision Miranda vs. Arizona, inform suspects in police custody that they have the right to remain silent and the right to an attorney. Supporters say that the warnings protect suspects from being coerced to incriminate themselves. But critics have argued that such warnings can prompt an accused terrorist to stop divulging information. In an interview with This Week host Jake Tapper, Giuliani -- a federal prosecutor in the 1980s and who served as mayor during and immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- described himself as someone who has ""administered Miranda warnings probably 1,000 times."" He argued that ""it doesn't make sense to interrupt a terrorist in the middle of his confessing and talking to you."" As an example of the risks, Giuliani cited the case of Abdulmutallab, the Christmas Day bombing suspect. ""Giving him a warning after -- after 30 minutes makes no sense,"" Giuliani said. ""It makes no sense to do that. So, sure, it may work sometimes; it may not work other times. It's not the best policy to follow. And so far, two in a row, we've gotten lucky. So let's not rely on luck. Let's rely on solid policy."" At that point, Tapper interjected. ""My understanding, during the Abdulmutallab incident, is that -- is that actually after about 50 minutes they had to take him to get medical care, and that's why he stopped talking then, because he actually -- his life was in danger. But be that as it may, I hear the point you're making."" It's worth noting that earlier in the conversation, Giuliani offered a similar, but slightly different characterization of Abdulmutallab's questioning, saying, ""to cut it off after 30 or 40 minutes like they did in Detroit on Christmas Day ... doesn't make much sense."" We e-mailed Giuliani's office but did not get a reply. We'll steer clear of the question of whether it's smart to offer Miranda warnings to terrorist suspects, because that's an opinion. But because Tapper raised a question of whether Giuliani was correct, we thought it would be worthwhile to sort out whether the former mayor's account is accurate. Right off the bat, we should acknowledge that we are hamstrung somewhat in evaluating this case independently, because the only information on Abdulmutallab's interrogation comes from the Obama administration, which is not a neutral party -- it is playing defense against Republican critics. Also, the administration's accounts of the episode came from federal officials who were not named in media accounts, although Attorney General Eric Holder did not dispute them when he testified before a House subcommittee and Republican senators have referred to the administration's timetable in a bill. That said, the administration's description of the interrogation of Abdulmutallab has been consistent on two key points: that it lasted for about 50 minutes, and that it was interrupted for medical reasons. (While the bomb in his underwear did not explode, it did catch fire, and he experienced serious burns to his groin and legs.) There is broad agreement that Abdulmutallab's pre-Miranda questioning was allowable under what is known as the ""public safety exception."" The exception was outlined in the 1984 Supreme Court decision in New York vs. Quarles. The court ruled that law enforcement officers may ""ask questions reasonably prompted by a concern for the public safety"" before they administer a Miranda warning to a suspect in custody. The media accounts have been largely consistent. Here's one timeline assembled by the Washington Post from information ""provided by administration officials, interviews and past briefings for the media"": • ""12:03 p.m.: The plane lands, and U.S. customs agents come aboard and arrest Abdulmutallab. After holding him in a special room, officials decide at 12:45 to take Abdulmutallab to the University of Michigan hospital for emergency treatment of his second- and third-degree burns. While the suspect's burns are being treated, the FBI's Detroit special agent in charge picks two agents to carry out the initial questioning of Abdulmutallab. One of the two is a veteran counterintelligence agent with experience in Iraq and Afghanistan; the other is a specialist in bomb material. • ""2 p.m.: FBI agents arrive at the hospital and discuss Abdulmutallab's physical and mental state with doctors treating him. • ""3:30 p.m.: Agents begin interrogating Abdulmutallab under rules that permit questioning about immediate threats to U.S. security without the reading of Miranda rights. The questions concern whether other bombs were on the plane, whether Abdulmutallab had co-conspirators and whether there were plans for other attacks. 'It's to take advantage of the shock of arrest,' said one law enforcement official. The interrogation produced some useful intelligence, according to this and other officials. After 50 minutes FBI agents end the questioning 'when doctors need to take him in for additional treatment because his medical condition has deteriorated,' according to the chronology."" Holder, in testimony before a House Appropriations subcommittee on March 16, confirmed the 50-minute interrogation while responding to criticism from lawmakers. He said, ""That's a fairly long period of time. Certainly, not as long as what has happened subsequent to -- subsequent to that. But if you look at the report of interview that was gotten from him in that 50 minutes, hour, there was a pretty substantial amount of information that was got from him ... that proved to be actionable, that proved to be timely, and that continues to be, at least in some ways, the basis for a lot of the cooperation that he ... has shared with us."" In addition, a Senate resolution sponsored by seven Republicans relies on the same timetable, saying that ""local agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) interrogated Abdulmutallab for 50 minutes, during which time Abdulmutallab disclosed information concerning his training in Yemen and the operation of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula"" and that ""after 50 minutes, the FBI stopped its interrogation of Abdulmutallab, agreeing to continue the interrogation after he received medical attention for the burns on his legs and groin caused by the failed bomb he had sewn in his underwear."" What is less certain -- and relevant to Giuliani's larger point -- is whether federal officials read Abdulmutallab the Miranda warning before it was clear that he would stop cooperating, or whether they Mirandized him only because he already had ceased to cooperate. The Senate Republican resolution agrees with Giuliani that the FBI acted first to read Abdulmutallab his rights, ""at which point Abdulmutallab stopped divulging information and remained silent."" A Jan. 24, 2010, Associated Press report, based on ""a series of interviews"" with federal officials, said that as Abdulmutallab was undergoing surgery, FBI headquarters dispatched a ""clean team"" to the hospital -- a new team of interrogators who would start the questioning anew, untainted by any pre-Miranda contact with the suspect. This is essentially a prosecutorial hedge against a subsequent adverse ruling by a judge to exclude information gathered without a proper Miranda warning. Information gathered by this ""clean team"" would likely be admissible in court even if the fruits of the first interrogation were thrown out. The AP reported that ultimately, ""the 'clean team' of interrogators did not pry more revelations from the suspect. Having rested and received more extensive medical treatment, Abdulmutallab was told of his right to remain silent and right to have an attorney. He remained silent."" This suggests that Abdulmutallab was Mirandized first, then stopped talking. In addition, having the clean team come to interrogate Abdulmutallab without Mirandizing him would defeat the purpose of the clean team -- which is to have an interrogation without any lingering threat of Miranda problems. On the other hand, a subsequent account -- the Post's, published on Feb. 15 -- said that ""Abdulmutallab 'had begun to wind down' and 'gave indications he was going to stop talking'"" even before going into his four-hour surgery, according to a law enforcement official who spoke to the Post anonymously. When the clean team arrived, according to the Post, he ""refused to answer their questions and ""acted like a jihadi."" It was then that he was read his Miranda rights. To recap: There is some truth to Giuliani's claim. He is right that after the initial questioning, federal authorities stopped interrogating Abdulmutallab and then, ultimately, read him his Miranda rights. But Giuliani implied that authorities stopped the questioning in order to Mirandize him. Congressional hearings and news accounts indicate that the questioning went longer than Giuliani claimed -- 50 minutes rather than 30 -- and that it was interrupted because he needed medical treatment. After the treatment, he was read his rights, although the precise sequence of events isn't clear. We find Giuliani's claim ."
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26906
|
"Facebook post Says the 2019 coronavirus ""causes sudden death syndrome."
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The 2019 coronavirus has killed 1,017 people in China. There is no evidence that the virus causes sudden death syndrome.
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false
|
Public Health, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
|
"A video on Facebook is spinning a conspiracy theory about the effect of the 2019 coronavirus. The nearly 50-minute video plays clips that purportedly show 2019 coronavirus victims. A narrator speaks over them, promoting conspiracies about everything from the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to the source of the coronavirus. A fake news chyron on the video claims: ""Wuhan super virus causes sudden death syndrome."" The video was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) It has been shared hundreds of times. (Screenshot from Facebook) There is no evidence to support the video. Most of the deaths caused by the 2019 coronavirus have been associated with respiratory problems, not sudden death syndrome. The video comes from a Facebook page called Stranger Than Fiction News, which is managed by three users in Australia, according to Facebook’s Page Transparency feature. The account in recent weeks has uploaded several videos with unproven or fabricated claims about the coronavirus. Since its December outbreak in Wuhan, China, the 2019 coronavirus has spread rapidly around the world. According to the World Health Organization, more than 43,000 people have been infected in 24 countries. In China, 1,017 have died. Researchers still don’t know much about the clinical severity of the coronavirus. Many people recover within a few days, but some, such as young, elderly or immunocompromised people, may develop more serious infections, like bronchitis or pneumonia. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the 2019 coronavirus causes symptoms like fever, cough and shortness of breath. That’s similar to coronaviruses like Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), which causes ""rapidly progressive pneumonitis, respiratory failure, septic shock and multi-organ failure resulting in death."" Some syndromes are caused by structural problems in the heart, while others are a result of electrical irregularities. There is no evidence that the coronavirus causes sudden death syndrome. A Jan. 30 study of 99 coronavirus cases found that the virus ""can result in severe and even fatal respiratory diseases such as acute respiratory distress syndrome."" Three-quarters of the patients in the study showed signs of double pneumonia, and the characteristics of those who died were consistent with a warning model that predicts who’s most likely to die from the disease. Some patients did die after experiencing heart problems, including cardiac arrest, but the study did not establish a link between the virus and sudden death syndrome. The Facebook post is inaccurate."
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9527
|
Why Biogen is breathing a sigh of relief with the latest Alzheimer’s data
|
This STAT story is a contextual view of not only the status of doomed scientific efforts so far to delay or halt Alzheimer’s dementia at its biological sources, but also of Big Pharma’s persistence at chasing an anti-amyloid cure. The reporting makes the case that in the opinion of credible researchers, the reason for failures to date is that Lilly’s drug and others didn’t get to the amyloid when and where it needed to, not that amyloid isn’t the culprit. Although the article could have made the point sooner, it does state clearly that there is still no scientific consensus that amyloid plaque even IS the right target. The story would have been greatly strengthened by giving some quantitative data about the various studies cited, as well as the inclusion of an independent expert. Given the devastating magnitude of Alzheimer’s disease, reports like the one in STAT are intensely searched for and read by not only those with personal knowledge of the disease, but by the worried well.
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true
|
alzheimer's disease
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It’s too early to discuss how much one of these experimental drugs might cost. But the article could have reported something about the estimated costs of currently caring for these patients. It’s also worth noting that if a drug is ever approved, it will cost Medicare a bundle. In the story’s descriptions of “promising” drugs from Biogen, Merck and Lilly, there is essentially zero quantification data. There needed to be some, even in a wrap-up or trend article such as this. The story did not cover harms. A problem with these drugs is that they can cause amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIAs), which are findings on brain scans that indicate swelling and small hemorrhages in portions of the brain. These were the most frequent adverse events in the Biogen study and occurred in a lot of people, especially at the higher doses. Overall, the story did a good job explaining why several major pharmaceutical firms think there is still hope for an anti-amyloid strategy for Alzheimer’s disease. As noted in the summary, it might have been useful for the article to have stated earlier–and perhaps more forcefully–that despite the confidence drug developers appear to have in the amyloid hypothesis, the scientific jury is still out. And a discussion of competing hypotheses would have been useful to add, too. No mongering here. The story had no independent sources. It also didn’t disclose the conflict of interest of Dr. Paul Aisen, who has received money from multiple drug companies, including the ones discussed in this piece. The story adequately compares alternatives and discusses the overall lack of any effective medication for Alzheimer’s disease. As noted above, however, a discussion of competing hypotheses about the origins of the disease, along with related potential treatment strategies, would have been useful to include. The article makes pretty darn clear that there will be a) no final answers to the amyloid hypothesis debate any time soon; and b) the advent of a successful anti-amyloid drug that helps those with Alzheimer’s is not close at hand. As noted earlier, this was not a “breaking news” story, but a round up of sorts of what’s happened since the Lilly drug trial for solanezumab reported negative results. But there is news-like information here about the optimism of the companies still working the amyloid hypothesis. Whether a high level of optimism is warranted or not is a good question, but the article could at least inform a healthy discussion. There appears to be original reporting and perhaps use of one (at least) news release.
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10872
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Experimental drug guadecitabine found safe in patients with colorectal cancer
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The news release discusses the findings of a small study that was designed to assess the safety of the experimental drug guadecitabine for use in conjunction with the conventional drug irinotecan to treat metastatic colorectal cancer. Phase 1 studies are designed to evaluate safety, observe side effects and identify the maximum tolerated dose (MTD). As such, the toxicity profile would be expected to be rather high. The study found that guadecitabine did cause some adverse side effects. The most concerning being low white blood cell count (neutropenia) in 73% of the subjects. One subject died from infection related to the low white blood cell count. However, the study also reported that there were positive effects with some patients — although the release clearly notes that this study was not designed to assess beneficial outcomes. Calling the drug “safe” in the headline may be a bit of a stretch, but otherwise the release does a good job of explaining the study, describing the fact that the drug is in the earliest stages of clinical testing, potential harms, and the study’s ties to the company that manufactures guadecitabine. According to the National Cancer Institute, colorectal cancer is the third most common type of cancer in the United States for both men and women. And while 5-year survival statistics are good for colorectal cancer patients who are diagnosed while the cancer is still localized (90.1 percent), the 5-year survival rate drops to 13.5 percent for patients whose colorectal cancer has metastasized. The development of new treatment options for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer is worth covering. However, this early trial is small, and so preliminary, that one wonders about the potential value. Presumably the ongoing phase II trial mentioned in the release will shed more substantial light on the potential benefits associated with the guadecitabine-irinotecan combination. Perhaps a news release would be more fitting once those results are in.
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true
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Academic medical center news release,colon cancer
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We’ll rate this “Not Applicable” given the very early nature of the study and the fact that guadecitabine is clearly still far from approval for treating colorectal cancer so it would be difficult to put a precise dollar figure on it. It’s worth noting, however, that guadecitabine is also being considered for use in treating acute myeloid leukemia (AML) — and is much further along in development for that clinical application. In fact, there is already discussion about whether the potential benefits associated with using guadecitabine to treat AML outweigh the fact that other drugs are available in generic form (and are therefore less expensive). In short, while we don’t expect a release to place a dollar amount on the use of guadecitabine, we always like to see the issue of cost addressed in some way. The release does a good job here in two ways. First, the release makes clear that the goal of this study was not to assess benefits, but to assess potential harms. That places the findings — and the study design — in context. Second, the release notes that 15 of the 22 patients had at least one imaging scan to track the extent and location of their cancers. Twelve of those 15 patients had “stable” disease, while one saw a 30 percent decrease in the size of the tumors. The headline is problematic, but we’ll talk about that under the “Unjustifiable Language” criterion. The rest of the release does a good job of describing potential harms. The release discusses eight potential harms, defines them and offers numbers on all of them (e.g., “two patients developed thrombocytopenia, a lowered count of blood-clotting platelets”). That’s very good. Two things would have made it even better. First, the release could have included an explanation of what the observed adverse effects actually mean. For example, how severe was the thrombocytopenia? And how much of a risk does that pose to a patient’s health — are we talking about the potential for bruising easily? Or a high risk of bleeding to death? Second, it wasn’t clear if the dose of guadecitabine was related to observed effects. I.e., were patients who received higher doses of guadecitabine more likely to exhibit adverse effects? The release does a nice job here. The release sets the tone in its first sentence, which begins with: “In a small, phase I clinical trial…”. The release clearly explains the goals of the clinical trial, the number and type of patients involved, and the study design. The only thing that could have made things more clear would be if the release had told readers the size of the doses each of the four study groups received — and whether dose size was related to observed effects. No disease mongering here. The release clearly states that the study was supported by Astex Pharmaceuticals, which manufactures guadecitabine. There are a lot of drugs, and drug combinations, that are approved for use in colorectal cancer chemotherapy. Given that the release explicitly states that the study was not done to assess the potential benefits of guadecitabine, we don’t expect it to compare the drug’s performance to those other drugs. The release makes clear that this was a preliminary trial and that a phase II trial is ongoing. That’s good. In addition, the release states: “Guadecitabine is an experimental drug that has not been approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.” That’s great. We wish all releases were this straight-forward about drug/treatment availability. As noted above, there are a lot of drugs and combinations approved for use in colorectal cancer chemotherapy. The release does a good job of explaining how guadecitabine may act against colorectal cancer. There are currently two FDA approved drugs that are classified as DNA methyltransferase inhibitors; decitabine (Dacogen) and azacitidine (Vidaza). Both had been used in clinical trials in the treatment of colon cancer. The bulk of the release is very good in this regard, but the first thing readers see is the headline. That doesn’t mean the headline is more important, but it does mean that the headline is subject to additional scrutiny. And the headline here reaches too far. Here’s the headline: “Experimental drug guadecitabine found safe in patients with colorectal cancer.” Here’s an excerpt from lower down in the release: “16 patients experienced neutropenia, a low count of the infection-fighting white blood cells called neutrophils; five patients with neutropenia had fevers; three patients became anemic; and two patients developed thrombocytopenia, a lowered count of blood-clotting platelets. Other side effects included diarrhea (three patients), fatigue (two patients) and dehydration (two patients). There was one death during the study, possibly resulting from febrile neutropenia caused by the treatment.” The word “safe” is relative when discussing chemotherapy treatment, but when most readers see something described as “safe” they assume that means it won’t harm them. For that reason, it’s a stretch to apply the word “safe” to any treatment in which a sample size of 22 patients is associated with this many adverse outcomes, and may have contributed to a death.
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31293
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A photograph shows President Trump touring a chemtrail plane.
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These tanks are filled with water and engineers can transfer water between the tanks during flight to shift the weight of simulated cargo or passengers. The center of gravity, or CG as pilots call it, is important to the flight characteristics of any airplane. During flight test, Boeing must ensure the plane is safe and efficient at full forward and full aft CG as well as any combination between the two.
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false
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Humor, nc scooper
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In June 2017, entertainment web site Nevada County Scooper published an article in June 2017 appearing to report that U.S. President Donald Trump had promised to shut down the government’s “chemtrail program” after touring a “chemtrail plane”. The chemtrail conspiracy theory holds that airplanes have been spraying harmful materials on the unsuspecting U.S. population in order to keep them passive and easy to manipulate: Donald Trump accompanied by select members of his cabinet toured a chemtrail-outfitted dispersal airplane at Andrews Air Force Base yesterday afternoon, according to an NBC news report today. The president is fulfilling a promise to end the controversial program and redirect government funding away from geoengineering operations and towards other programs like roads, the aging electrical grid infrastructure and of course his proposed wall between the United States and Mexico. “Today marks a great day for our country where we turn out [sic] backs on the secret poisoning of our skies, and look to a new future with better roads, a secure electrical grid, and a great wall to protect us from Mexico,” said President Trump reading prepared comments out in front of a Boeing 767 which had been retrofitted for chemtrail spraying. “And hear me you, we are not going to let scientists and other elite eggheads tell us about how to control the environment anymore. It’s America first, not the skies first.” There was no truth to this article, which originated with the Nevada County Scooper, a self-described satire website: The Scooper is a satirical website is in scope and intent. Sometimes it’s funny; often it is not. in scope and intent. It provides social criticism in a satirical, sometimes news-genre setting. We are not a “fake news” site, but rather an entertainment one. Sometimes it’s just plain-old crappy writing with a few bad jokes. Our intention is not to fool or trick anyone, but obviously it happens. We firmly believe that you can soften a person’s willingness to listen by injecting irony, and yes sometimes humor, into the conversation. Not only is the site satirical in nature, but chemtrails are a debunked conspiracy theory, making it extremely difficult to tour a chemtrail plane. The photograph posted with the story, which White House Director of Social Media Dan Scavino Jr. originally posted on 17 February 2017, shows Trump touring a Boeing Dreamliner in Charleston, South Carolina: Although the inside of this plane may look unfamiliar to most commercial airline passengers, there is nothing amiss in this image. The tanks in the photograph, which conspiracy theorists may mistake for chemtrail storage, are actually water ballast tanks that are used during test flights. Wired explained the tanks’ use in an article about a similar 747-8 test plane: The interiors are all business for flight test. In the front of the airplane, there are 16 water ballast tanks with another 16 in the aft end. A single ballast tank also sits closer to the middle and it looks like there’s a spot for one more across the aisle.
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4621
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Congo confirms 1st Ebola case in city of Goma.
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The Congolese health ministry confirmed an Ebola case in Goma late Sunday, marking the first time the virus has reached the city of more than 2 million people along the border with Rwanda since the epidemic began nearly a year ago.
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true
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AP Top News, Health, General News, Africa, Epidemics, Rwanda, International News
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The health ministry said the man who had arrived earlier Sunday in the regional capital had been quickly transported to an Ebola treatment center. Authorities said they had tracked down all the passengers on the bus the man took to Goma from Butembo, one of the towns hardest hit by the disease. “Because of the speed with which the patient was identified and isolated, and the identification of all the other bus passengers coming from Butembo, the risk of it spreading in the rest of the city of Goma is small,” the health ministry said in a statement. The virus has killed more than 1,600 people in Congo and two others who returned home across the border to neighboring Uganda. Health experts have long feared that it could make its way to Goma, which is located on the Rwandan border. The health ministries in Congo’s neighbors have been preparing for months for the possibility of cases, and frontline health workers already have been vaccinated. The confirmed case announced late Sunday in eastern Congo involves a pastor who became ill last Tuesday. He then left Butembo on a bus, and arrived at a health center Sunday showing symptoms of Ebola, the health ministry said. Violent attacks against health workers and treatment facilities have greatly compromised efforts to combat the epidemic in Butembo. Eastern Congo is home to a myriad of armed groups, and Mai Mai militia fighters are active near the hardest hit towns. Health teams have been unable to access violent areas to vaccinate people at risk of infection and to bring infected patients into isolation. Other times the violence against health teams has come from residents who do not want their loved ones taken to treatment centers or buried in accordance with guidelines aimed at reducing Ebola transmission. While the experimental vaccine is believed to have saved countless lives, not all Congolese people have accepted it. Some falsely believe that the vaccine is what is making people sick, in part because people can still develop the disease after getting the shot if they already had been infected. ___ Associated Press writer Saleh Mwanamilongo reported from Kinshasa, Congo.
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1412
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G7 told to act on antibiotics as dreaded superbug hits U.S.
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Britain told the G7 industrial powers on Friday to do more to fight killer superbugs as the United States reported the first case in the country of a patient with bacteria resistant to a last-resort antibiotic.
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true
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Health News
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U.S. scientists said the infection in a 49-year-old Pennsylvania woman “heralds the emergence of truly pan-drug resistant bacteria” because it could not be controlled even by colistin, an antibiotic reserved for “nightmare” bugs. In Japan, British Prime Minister David Cameron said leading countries needed to tackle resistance by reducing the use of antibiotics and rewarding drug companies for developing new medicines. “In too many cases antibiotics have stopped working. That means people are dying of simple infections or conditions like TB (tuberculosis), tetanus, sepsis, infections that should not mean a death sentence,” he told a news conference at a summit in Japan. “If we do nothing about this there will be a cumulative hit to the world economy of $100 trillion and it is potentially the end of modern medicine as we know it.” A review commissioned by the British government and published last week said a reward of between $1 billion and $1.5 billion should be paid for any successful new antimicrobial medicine brought to market. If the problem is not brought under control, antimicrobial resistance could kill an extra 10 million people a year by 2050, the review warned. The U.S. case is a further wake-up call for the world, although it is not the first time that colistin resistance has appeared. Medics around were alarmed last year by the discovery in China of a new gene that makes bacteria highly resistant to the medicine. Since then, the deadly strain has also been detected in Europe and Canada. The development of colistin resistance is linked to the drug’s widespread use in livestock and the European Medicines Agency on Thursday called for a 65 percent cut in the amount of the medicine used in farming. “The more we look at drug resistance, the more concerned we are,” Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters in Washington. “The medicine cabinet is empty for some patients. It is the end of the road for antibiotics unless we act urgently.” The problem is aggravated by drugmakers’ reluctance to invest in developing new antibiotics, preferring to focus on more profitable disease areas, although recently there has been some increase in investment, prompted by the superbug threat. In January, 83 companies, including Pfizer (PFE.N), Merck & Co (MRK.N), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N) and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK.L), signed a declaration urging governments to support work on new antibiotics.
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21956
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When I became president and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, it was supposed to go bankrupt . . . We turned it around with common-sense business principles.
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A thorough review of business records and interviews with executives who worked with Cain show that the chain was widely considered troubled when he arrived. It's a slight exaggeration to say it was supposed to go bankrupt. But from all accounts, Cain's performance as CEO is widely considered a success.
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true
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National, Candidate Biography, Corporations, Herman Cain,
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"Editor's note: This fact-check is a excerpt of a longer examination of Herman Cain's business accomplishments, including his work experience before and after Godfather's Pizza. Read the longer story here. Pizza is Herman Cain's biggest selling point. He says his track record running Godfather’s Pizza, a chain that once billed itself as ""the cure for the pizza emergency,"" shows he has the ability to run the country. The 620-store chain was on the brink of bankruptcy when he arrived in 1986, he says, and he ""turned it around with common-sense business principles."" A PolitiFact examination of Godfather’s, based on interviews with industry analysts and company officials, shows Cain is largely correct. The chain wasn’t literally preparing paperwork for bankruptcy, but it was widely considered troubled. Cain changed that by uniting the franchisees, overhauling the chain's advertising, and getting his team focused on its core mission: pizza. 'They got what they paid for' Cain was an executive with The Pillsbury Co. when the company bought Godfather's in 1985. The purchase was almost incidental, according to press reports from the time. Godfather’s was part of Diversifoods Inc., a conglomerate that included more than 300 Burger King franchises. Pillsbury wanted the Burger Kings, and the chain of more than 800 Godfather’s pizza restaurants came with it. ""The value of Diversifoods was its ownership of the Burger Kings, and the deal made sense without Godfather's,"" John McMillin, an industry analyst, told the Chicago Tribune shortly after the deal. ""Pillsbury got Godfather's for nothing, and some said they got what they paid for."" The chain’s problems included franchisee lawsuits, an overly long menu and a dejected workforce. Even its TV ads seemed hapless, showing a car full of executives driving around, unable to find a Godfather's. (""Find one. It's worth it,"" the ad lamely concluded.) As Cain said later, the chain had ""had one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel."" Cain attacked problems on every front. He declared the company’s advertising account up for review, pitting ad agencies against each other in a bidding war. He trimmed the menu and enforced quality standards. He pushed more restaurants to offer delivery, and he closed low-performing franchises. He emphasized communication, giving speeches at important moments to employees and franchisees. After his first 60 days at Godfather's, he gave a speech he called ""get on the wagon,"" which he now uses in political speeches. When he was a boy, Cain said, his grandfather, a potato farmer, would hitch up his mules for the weekly trip to town. Any grandchildren who wanted to go could ride along. Cain would finish the story in his grandfather’s thundering voice: ""Them that’s going, get on the wagon! Them that ain’t, get out of the way!"" 'Mesmerizing' Charles Henderson, who runs coffee kiosks in Pennsylvania, was Cain’s director of marketing back then. He says Cain is ""probably the most inspirational person I’ve ever met in my life."" ""He can be mesmerizing. He’s very dynamic. I’m not slamming our current president, but Herman Cain will give a 20- or 30-minute speech extemporaneously, and certainly without teleprompters. He is without a doubt the most dynamic speaker I’ve ever heard,"" Henderson said. Henderson said Cain succeeded because he immersed himself in all aspects of the business and wasn’t afraid to get his hands into the dough. Cain baked pies on a weekly basis after he arrived in Omaha. ""He loved to make pizzas. We had a test store over on Pacific Street, which wasn’t too far from Godfather’s, and once a week, he’d round us all up and we’d go make pizzas,"" Henderson said. Cain directed an overhaul of the Godfather's television ads that focused on Godfather's ""hot slice,"" a customized pizza slice aimed at the lunch crowd and intended to compete with Pizza Hut's Personal Pan Pizza. The new ads showed a secretary at a desk about to have a ""pizza emergency."" Godfather's, of course, was the cure. Later commercials tended toward attention-getting and even bizarre humor. The ""Studney twins"" – an old white guy and a young black guy in garish blue and green tuxedos – promoted Godfather's two-for-one specials. Another ad featured attorney-turned-actor Ben Stein of Ferris Bueller's Day Off as a burned-out hipster needing pizza. Cain himself even appeared in a series that Advertising Age named one of the best campaigns of 1989. In one ad, Cain told viewers Godfather's has conducted exhaustive research to find out why customers preferred Godfather's pizza. He introduced his director of research, who unveiled the results by unfolding a piece of paper and reading two words: ""More topping."" ""Enjoy your Godfather's pizza, and take life one bite at a time,"" Cain concluded. 'Steady the course' Jeff Campbell is the retired Pillsbury executive who selected Cain to run Godfather’s. Reached by PolitiFact at his home in San Diego, he said there was no doubt in his mind that Cain turned Godfather's around. ""He was the best thing that happened to Godfather’s in a long time,"" Campbell said. Cain has said that the chain returned to profitability within 14 months of his arrival. That number wasn’t possible for PolitiFact to independently confirm because the chain did not report its profits as a stand-alone unit, but industry analysts do not dispute that Cain stabilized the company. Technomic, a research and consulting firm focused on the restaurant industry, has research data on Godfather’s going back to the 1970s. At PolitiFact’s request, vice president Darren Tristano examined the revenues and franchise numbers for Godfather’s during the time Cain headed it from 1986 to 1995. It's not possible to determine profitability from those numbers, but they do show Godfather's place in the market, particularly in comparison with its competitors. ""It’s really hard from that period to find a strong positive or a strong negative. It’s more like ‘steady the course,’ "" Tristano said. Still, ""steady the course"" isn’t bad for a company that was troubled to start out with and in an industry that’s punishingly competitive, analysts said. Godfather’s position was particularly perilous. It wasn’t as big as chains like Pizza Hut and Domino’s, and it also had to compete with locally owned mom-and-pops in just about every market. ""They had to be very innovative to compete with the big three and with the little guys. They couldn’t rest on their laurels,"" said John Correll, a Michigan-based pizza industry consultant. ""For a number of years, Herman Cain and his management team were able to pull that off."" Pizza Hut, the industry leader at the time, was a particularly difficult foe. After Godfather's launched its ""pizza emergency"" campaign in 1986, Pizza Hut matched it with ads imitating the emergency broadcast system. In the event of a real pizza emergency, ""you should go directly to Pizza Hut and order their famous pan pizza,"" the ad said. Pizza Hut executives said the similarity was coincidence. Cain said the alleged thievery wouldn’t matter in the end, and he wouldn’t pursue legal action. ""It's not a big deal to us,"" Cain told AdWeek, which documented the feud. Godfather’s never grew fast enough to outpace giants like Pizza Hut and Domino’s, but today it still claims about 620 franchises across the country. John Chisholm was a Godfather's franchisee who owned 90 restaurants in five states when Cain arrived to run the company. ""His leadership and his ability to deal with people were just outstanding. I have nothing but the highest praise for Herman Cain,"" Chisholm said. Cain's primary accomplishment was motivating the people who worked for Godfather's, Chisolm said. The turn-around happened ""mostly through motivation and talking to people and getting people to work as a team."" Chisholm recalled Cain's first speech to the entire company as one of the ""most charismatic"" he ever heard. Cain included a copy of the speech in his 1999 book, Speak as a Leader. ""Sixty days ago I came to Godfather's with a curiosity about what I would find. I had already accepted my newly bestowed responsibilities even before I stepped foot on Nebraska soil and before I met or knew anyone or anything about Godfather's. … Sixty days ago, I came to Godfather's anxious to tackle a situation considered by some of our external constituencies to be irreversible. I came without a golden parachute because I never entertained the idea that the situation was irreversible. I came committed to prove the skeptics wrong because I have a personal, fundamental belief in the power of human determination. I came to Godfather's believing in you even before I met you. I challenge you to commit and believe in yourself and Godfather's pizza as a system."" Two years after Cain was named chief executive officer, Pillsbury decided to get out of the pizza business and sell Godfather’s. Cain and his management team decided to buy the chain in a leveraged buyout for an undisclosed sum. Cain left the position in 1996 when he went to work for the National Restaurant Association. Cain now says of his time at the pizza chain, ""When I became president and CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, it was supposed to go bankrupt . . . We turned it around with common sense business principles."" Our ruling A thorough review of business records and interviews with executives who worked with Cain show that the chain was widely considered troubled when he arrived. It's a slight exaggeration to say it was supposed to go bankrupt. But from all accounts, Cain's performance as CEO is widely considered a success."
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9154
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Common cold duration is shortened similarly by zinc acetate and zinc gluconate lozenges
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This news release describes results of a meta-analysis of seven studies on the use of zinc lozenges for shortening the duration of common colds. The study compared the effectiveness of two kinds of zinc salt in lozenges: zinc acetate and zinc gluconate. Although the studies with zinc acetate lozenges shortened colds more than those with zinc gluconate lozenges, the difference wasn’t large enough to be statistically significant. Researchers also compared the effectiveness of various doses of zinc in the lozenges and found that five trials that used low doses of 85 to 92 mg per day were just as effective as trials that used 192 to 207 mg per day. The conclusion of the study was that zinc lozenges do shorten the length of the common cold, but more studies are needed to confirm optimal ingredients of lozenges and the ideal dosage. The news release is meticulous about accuracy in reporting the study findings, but doesn’t provide any information about when zinc should be taken, the actual benefit in terms of days shaved off from suffering cold symptoms, and alternatives and disadvantages of using zinc to treat the common cold. Zinc lozenges as a means of treatment for the common cold have begun to get widespread public attention in the past three to five years. With colds being an issue that touches many people at least once a year, it is useful for the general public to have information about what type of zinc lozenge could be most effective.
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mixture
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Common cold,University of Helsinki,zinc
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No mention is made in the release about how much zinc lozenges cost. Zinc supplements can be purchased at pharmacies and most supermarkets for less than $10. The release release gives details from the original study regarding benefits of both types of zinc lozenges, as well as dosages. But the benefits are only given in relative terms, and not actual numbers. The release would have been improved if it had included the number of days a cold lasts with or without zinc supplements. We’re not sure a 30 percent shorter duration is a meaningful measure, especially without mentioning how long the average cold lasted, with ot without zinc supplementation. Another important consideration is when the zinc was taken. Does it need to be taken continuously as a preventative or does it need to be started immediately at the first sign of symptoms? If you don’t start right away does that affect how well it works? The release falls short in its description of harms of the recommended treatment. Sucking on zinc lozenges can have a number of minor but unpleasant side effects, like leaving a metallic taste in your mouth, and, less commonly, vomiting, stomach cramps, and diarrhea. The article warns that certain other ingredients in lozenges can cause zinc not to be absorbed. However, it would have been better to spell out that zinc can interfere with the absorption of some classes of antibiotics, making those medications less effective as well. Strength of evidence in a meta-analysis depends on both the quality of the evaluation of the included studies by the researcher, and the quality of the original studies themselves. This news release explains that the original seven studies were randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trials and gives some information about how the aggregate effectiveness of zinc lozenges was evaluated across studies. It also explains why one of the seven studies was an outlier. We would like to have seen a mention of the total number of people involved in the trials (575). The release also could have provided context about other meta-analyses of zinc supplements that have been performed and their conclusions. For instance this 2012 meta-analysis concluded that while zinc may shorten colds, “large high-quality trials are needed before definitive recommendations for clinical practice can be made.” There is no disease mongering in the news release. It provides some context about how zinc is believed to work to reduce cold symptoms. The source of funding for the study is not identified. We’ll rate this not applicable since a meta analysis of already completed trials is not particularly costly and may not have needed outside funding. The study itself noted there was no funding. Arguably the more important issue is whether the included studies were funded by zinc manufacturers and conducted by researchers with ties to the supplement industry. While it would have been nice to see that information included, we won’t dock the release for the omission. The release doesn’t mention alternative sources of zinc and alternative treatments for cold symptoms. Zinc is available in a number of common foods — beef, lamb, cashews, and chocolate among others. The release doesn’t talk about the availability of zinc lozenges, but given that a search on Amazon turns up hundreds of sources, and most grocery and drug stores stock zinc, that’s not a significant omission. This release release doesn’t claim the use of zinc lozenges to fight the common cold is a novel idea. The language about the purpose of the meta-analysis to determine whether there is a difference in effectiveness between types of zinc salts in lozenges is clear. The release doesn’t rely on sensational or unjustifiable language. However, it comes close when the study author states that there’s no justification for the popular phrase,”there is no cure for the common cold” because of the strong evidence that zinc lozenges can shorten common cold duration by over 30%.” A 30 percent reduction in cold duration is not necessarily a cure.
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8027
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German health institute warns pandemic could overstretch system: paper.
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Germany’s health system could face strains similar to those in Italy if the coronavirus outbreak in the country worsens, the head of the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the federal agency responsible for disease control, told a newspaper.
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true
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Health News
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Lothar Wieler’s comments came as RKI data on Sunday showed the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Germany had risen to 52,547 and 389 people had died of the disease there. “We cannot rule out that we will have more patients than ventilators in this country ... Of course, we must expect that the capacities will not be sufficient,” Wieler told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Italy’s Civil Protection Agency said earlier this week that the biggest difficulty facing its health service was a shortage of ventilators and masks — a problem that has dogged hospitals since the start of the outbreak. Compared to other countries hit by the pandemic, Germany has a low mortality rate among coronavirus patients. “This is primarily because we are testing so many people,” Wieler told the paper, adding that the large number of tests means that Germany has many cases in its statistics of younger people suffering only mild symptoms. Initial cases of the disease were mainly among people who contracted it outside Germany — for example on skiing holidays, suggesting those affected were fitter and more active. But the death toll could spike if the virus starts to spread in hospitals and retirement homes, Wieler said. “We are still at the beginning of the wave, and I can only urge everyone to take the pandemic very seriously,” Wieler said, adding that it will not be possible to assess the impact of the adopted measures until Easter at the earliest. China, where the coronavirus started, says it has largely contained domestic transmission but is cracking down on travel to the country to avoid imported cases fanning a second wave of infections. “The disease is a pandemic, it comes in waves ... Germany, too, will probably be affected by a second wave of corona,” Wieler said, adding that once new infections come down, the shutdown could be eased. “Unfortunately we do not yet know exactly where the threshold for (being able to relax some measures) lies.” More than 662,700 people have been infected by the coronavirus across the world and 30,751 have died, according to a Reuters tally.
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29943
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"Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that ""owning guns is not a right. If it were a right, it would be in the Constitution."
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As we’ve previously documented, this is hardly the first time that misinformation has been spread about her.
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false
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Politics, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, fake quote, gun control
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Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been the subject of a number of false rumors and accusations since she became the youngest woman elected to congress. In January 2019, we came across yet another meme that attempted to paint the freshman lawmaker as inexperienced and uneducated, this time by falsely attributing a fake quote about gun rights to her: The fake quote reads: “Owning guns is NOT a right… If it were a right, it would be in the Constitution.” – Ocasio-Cortez. This is not a genuine quote from Ocasio-Cortez. It was fabricated and spread in an attempt to discredit the New York congresswoman. Although this fake quote has been shared by numerous social media users, we’ve yet to encounter any postings that included information about where and when she uttered this alleged phrase. We were unable to find this quote in news articles, interviews, or social media posts; rather, this fake quote seems to only exist in memes and unsubstantiated social media posts. Furthermore, it’s simply not believable that Ocasio-Cortez, who frequently talked about gun rights during the campaign, would be unaware of the Second Amendment. During a Reddit AMA in June 2017, for instance, more than a year before this fake quote started circulating, Ocasio-Cortez said that she was a “firm believer” in the Amendment, but that she would prevent people with mental illness or a history of domestic abuse from purchasing guns. Her official campaign platform also specifically mentioned the Second Amendment. The congresswoman argued that the United States could ban assault weapons and strengthen gun-control laws without “running afoul” of the Constitution: With every mass shooting, we see lots of thoughts and prayers from our politicians, but continue to see no action. Republicans ban studying gun violence and write legislation designed to help gun stores that break the law. The NRA, a vehicle for gun manufacturers that disguises itself as a civil rights organization, is run by a man who helped arm narco-terrorists in what became the Iran-Contra scandal. Instead of fighting to save American lives, politicians bend over backwards to protect the billionaire-backed gun lobby and propose measures that would actually increase gun sales, such as the incredulous proposal to arm teachers. Alexandria knows that it doesn’t have to be this way. Even in the United States, cities and states with strong gun laws have managed to cut gun violence significantly without running afoul of the Second Amendment. Thanks in part to New York City’s tough gun laws, gun crimes here are at historic lows. But New York – and the rest of the country – has the potential to be much safer. Alexandria believes that supporting common-sense gun legislation is necessary for any politician who claims to care about the lives of constituents. She understands that gun control can save lives and make communities and schools safer.
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1746
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Dutch discover bird flu in wild ducks, cull continues.
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Dutch animal health authorities found bird flu in two samples taken from wild ducks, a government statement said, but it was unclear if that was the source of an outbreak at four chicken farms in the Netherlands.
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true
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Health News
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Duck droppings from the central Dutch province tested positive for the highly contagious H5 strain of the disease, the deputy economic affairs minister wrote in a letter to parliament. “Based on this information I am considering follow-up measures,” deputy minister Sharon Dijksma wrote. Dutch authorities said earlier on Monday they will slaughter 50,000 birds at a poultry farm after bird flu was discovered nearby. Separate testing indicated that farm infections, which have led to the culling of around 300,000 birds at four locations, were not all from the same source, the letter said. The H5N8 strain of bird flu detected at the farms has never been founded in humans. It has led to the destruction of millions of farm birds in Asia, mainly South Korea, after an outbreak earlier this year. A government statement said tests had confirmed an outbreak of the H5N8 strain at one farm in the western municipality of Zoeterwoude, where 28,000 laying hens were ordered destroyed on Sunday. A cull at a nearby farm announced on Monday was a precautionary measure, it said. Animal health authorities are testing poultry at other farms in the area. Transport restrictions were imposed on the sector two weeks ago that have hit around 2,000 poultry businesses. The Netherlands is the world’s largest exporter of eggs and the largest exporter of poultry meat in the European Union. Some experts believe that wild birds migrating from Asia carried the disease to Europe, where it infected flocks in Germany, Britain and the Netherlands.
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6595
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Phelps honored for honesty on mental health, helping others.
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While swimming to Olympic glory, Michael Phelps found comfort in the pool and quite a bit of angst out of it.
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true
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Mental health, Health, Baltimore, North America, Sports, Michael Phelps, Depression, Swimming
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His bout with depression reached its nadir in 2014 after a second DUI arrest. That’s when the most decorated Olympian of all time checked himself into a rehabilitative center in a desperate effort to make sense of it all. “When I was in my room and not wanting to talk to anybody for a number of days and not wanting to be alive, I wanted to see what other roads I could take to see if there was help,” Phelps recalled. The treatment he received — and continues to receive — charted his post-Olympic course. “I know it’s something that changed my life and saved my life and allowed me to be able to be where I am today, enjoying the platform of talking about something that’s so important,” Phelps told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday. Because he is willing to share his story of depression and raise awareness of mental health issues, Phelps was given the fifth annual Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion on Tuesday night in Boston. After participating in four Olympic Games and collecting 28 medals, including 23 gold, Phelps has dedicated his time and energy to promoting the importance of water safety and advocating for the de-stigmatization of mental health problems through the Michael Phelps Foundation. “When I first really opened up about the struggles that I had in ’15, obviously I dreamed of being able to get more publicity to this and to really share my journey and have other people share their journeys with me as well,” Phelps said. “Honestly, I never thought it would be as big as this, but it’s been a true dream to be able to watch the growth that mental health has taken, almost being at center stage.” To say this endeavor has been fulfilling is an understatement. “Through this, if I can save one life, two lives, five lives, a thousand, a million, to me that’s so much more important than winning a gold medal,” he said. The 33-year-old Phelps believes his bout with depression is a story that many can share, including CEOs and other retired athletes. After accomplishing every goal he set for himself, what was left to do? “Probably my first real depression spell was after 2004, then the next big one was after 2008,” he said. “When you set out to be an Olympian, your whole life is put on hold. All the eggs are in one basket. I would say 2004, 2008, 2012, partly after ’16 (all Olympic years) I’ve dealt with pretty severe depression spells. I was kind of lost at that point.” The Baltimore native is in a far better frame of mind now. “To have my wife (Nicole Johnson), who’s always by my side, two amazing little boys at home and a third one on the way, I’m extremely thankful of the support I’ve had to get me through these times,” Phelps said. The Ruderman Award is given to individuals who are passionate about providing opportunities for others. Phelps certainly fits that description. “Michael Phelps is a unique leader who has used his fame and status as the greatest swimmer of all time to challenge our society to remove stigma surrounding mental health,” said Jay Ruderman, president of the Ruderman Family Foundation. “For me, this award means everything because this is where my passion is and the next chapter of my life is really heading,” Phelps said. “We’re kind of scratching the surface of what can be done, and I’m looking forward to continuing this journey and accomplishing some of the goals that I have — de-stigmatizing mental health and just getting the point across that it’s OK to not be OK.” ___ More AP sports: https://apnews.com/apf-Sports and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports
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33444
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Comedian Andy Kaufman is still alive, many years after his announced death.
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As usual, we expect that long after the book Zmuda was hawking (Andy Kaufman: The Truth, Finally) is forgotten, Andy Kaufman will still be dead
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false
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Inboxer Rebellion, hoaxes
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One would be hard-pressed to think of any other entertainer who sowed as much doubt about his true character than comedian Andy Kaufman did in the 1970s and 1980s. He adopted multiple personas and stayed in character even when he was off-stage. He performed as other people. Or he had other people perform as him. Or maybe he was performing as other people pretending to be him. He staged tantrums and altercations so convincingly that audiences were left wondering whether his flare-ups were rehearsed routines or genuinely spontaneous outbursts of anger. In the end, he blurred the division between Andy Kaufman and Andy Kaufman’s comic creations so thoroughly that much of the public was no longer sure which was which. But the end did come — on 16 May 1984, a 35-year-old Andy Kaufman died of lung cancer at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. His remains were returned to New York for interment at Beth David Cemetery. His death certificate and his gravesite are viewable on-line. Nonetheless, in the thirty years since his death, “Andy Kaufman is alive!” rumors have been refueled and run out for a few laps around the track a number of times. Most recently, in November 2013 a woman took the stage with Kaufman’s brother Michael at the 9th Annual Andy Kaufman Awards hosted at the Gotham Comedy Club in New York and announced that she was Kaufman’s daughter, that her father was still very much alive, that he had faked his death to get out of the limelight and be a stay-at-home dad for her and her siblings, and that he had wanted to appear at the awards ceremony but ultimately decided not to come. She teased the audience with the statement “I don’t know how much longer he can keep everything away”: However, the woman in question claimed to be 24 years old, but Kaufman passed away more than 29 years ago, so she’s several years too young to possibly be Andy Kaufman’s daughter (unless the comedian continued to secretly father children after his reported death, which creates the logically circular scenario of his faking his death so that he could be a stay-at-home dad to kids he didn’t yet know he would have). Moreover, according to People magazine she’s reportedly a theater student, which is more highly suggestive evidence that her appearance was a stunt similar to the kind her putative father was renowned for pulling: This is where the story seems to break down a little. Some people in the audience were heard identifying the woman as a theater student, which does kind of set off some warning bells. Even more problematically, she’s claiming to be 24 years old, which is somehow (and by “somehow,” we mean “mathematically”) at odds with Kaufman’s death date 29 years ago. Kaufman does have an actual daughter, Maria Colonna, who lives in upstate New York. She occasionally does leave civilian life to comment or weigh in on stories about her dad, but thus far has not spoken about this latest one. The Smoking Gun later identified the woman as a New York City actress named Alexandra Tatarsky whose father is a psychologist and not a (deceased) comedian: In news that should shock nobody, the woman who appeared onstage claiming Andy Kaufman was alive — and that she was his daughter — is a New York City actress whose actual father is a Manhattan doctor. Posing as the late comedian’s daughter, Alexandra Tatarsky, 24, appeared at the Andy Kaufman Awards and told the audience that Kaufman dropped out of show business nearly three decades ago to be a “stay-at-home dad.” According to a source familiar with [the] Kaufman stunt, Tatarsky met Michael Kaufman while working at a Manhattan gallery exhibiting a collection of Kaufman “ephemera and artifacts” from the comedian’s personal and professional life. Tatarsky was recruited by Michael Kaufman to play the role of Andy Kaufman’s daughter. The Hollywood Reporter (THR) also got nowhere when it attempted to contact Michael Kaufman to verify elements of the story proffered by him and his brother’s alleged daughter: Andy Kaufman’s faked death is looking more and more like a hoax perpetrated by the comedian’s brother. Contacted by THR, Michael Kaufman said that the woman claiming to be Kaufman’s daughter was impossible to reach, for reasons he would explain later. He then excused himself, saying he had a dinner date with his wife. Sounding rushed and harried in a short phone conversation [the next] morning, Michael Kaufman apologized for having to delay a planned interview with THR, the second such postponement in two days. He then admitted that the attention foisted upon him in the last 24 hours had become overwhelming. “This is so, like, out of my league what’s going on here,” Kaufman said. The brother would not comment on the allegations regarding Tatarsky. Saying he was late for planned TV appearances, he only offered the following, backpedaling on his initial claims: “I think I’ve been misquoted, OK?” Kaufman says. “I never came out with, ‘He’s alive.’ I’m as skeptical as anybody else.” The 20th anniversary of Kaufman’s death also provided the occasion for some “Andy Kaufman is alive!” rumors, fueled primarily by an “Andy Kaufman Returns” blog and a press release (widely distributed via Yahoo!) proclaiming that he had emerged from hiding two decades after faking his death — accounts supposedly confirmed by his having given an interview to ABC and submitted to (and passed) DNA testing. And all of this screamed of being a very un-Kaufman-like publicity stunt: New York City, NY (PRWEB) May 19, 2004 — Twenty years ago, on May 16, 1984, most of the world believed that we had lost a comedic legend forever. This has turned out to be what will inevitably be known as the greatest comic prank ever conceived. Andy Kaufman, by all accounts, is alive and well at age 55 and is now living in New York City on the upper west side. To his loyal supporters and fans, Andy says “sorry about faking my death,” in a recent interview with ABC News at his apartment. In order to reach legendary comic status and seal his place in the history of performance art, he said it was “necessary to go away for twenty years.” Andy Kaufman’s official site has been launched at: http://andykaufmanreturns.blogspot.com/ Even though he has technically returned, Andy says that he plans to maintain his low key lifestyle that he has led for the past twenty years. He has resumed contact with friends and family. Fearing the possibility of this scenario and the potential for another hoax, Kaufman’s family has contracted with independent auditors Ernst & Young to determine if this in fact the real Andy Kaufman. He has subjected himself to medical examination and submitted DNA, hair, blood and fingerprint samples to the auditors. Ernst & Young and the Kaufman family report that with a 99% probability, this is indeed the real Andy Kaufman. His mother says, “It’s good to have Andy back.” In 1999, a new crop of Kaufman fans were born after Jim Carrey starred in the hit film Man on the Moon. “Andy’s bizarre mix of comedy and performance art will inspire fans and comedians alike for generations, especially after this stunt,” says Jim Carrey. Andy says he will make only occasional public appearances, sometimes in disguise so that you won’t know if it’s really him or someone else. Kaufman was famous for pulling this stunt with the Tony Clifton character, sometimes played by good friend Bob Zmuda. Andy says fans should tune into his website for ongoing updates to his adventures in life. As always, Andy’s stage has been the world, testing the boundaries of our beliefs, our sources of information, and our perception of reality. “It’s good to be back,” Andy writes on his website. The “celebrity-died-young actually faked his own death to drop out of the public eye” rumor has long since been milked for all its worth. Every decade sees it applied to at least one prominent entertainer — James Dean, Jim Morrison, Elvis Presley, Tupac Shakur. They’re all dead, and they’re not coming back. Ever. That someone issued a press release proclaiming Andy Kaufman to be alive signified nothing other than an attempt to capitalize on the confusion his bizarre performance style sowed during his lifetime. (Heck, if anybody was capable of faking his own death, it was that crazy old Andy Kaufman, right?) The releasing agency, PRWeb, is a for-hire wire service that will distribute anyone’s press release, about anything, for a fee. (Another PRWeb release from the same timeframe — “Ambassador from Mars Receives 181,634 Spam Emails; Says ‘Earthlings Are Not Ready’ and Takes First Available Saucer Back Home” — demonstrated that nothing was considered too silly to be distributed by the PRWeb wire service.) The supposedly recent photographs of Andy Kaufman appearing as Tony Clifton, his abusive lounge singer character, displayed in the “Andy Kaufman Returns” blog were taken from a May 2004 Andy Kaufman tribute event, during which Kaufman’s friend and writing partner, Bob Zmuda, played Tony Clifton. Zmuda himself said, during a 1999 interview: “The hoax and the practical joke are lost art forms.” But did Andy Kaufman pull one last stunt on his deathbed at age 35? No, says Zmuda. “Andy Kaufman is dead. He’s not in some truck stop with Elvis.” While Kaufman tinkered with the idea, tells Zmuda, he never brought it up again. The “Andy Kaufman Returns” blog was later amended to state that, contrary to details provided in the press release, he was not interviewed by ABC, and the alleged DNA testing was not conducted by the auditing firm of Ernst & Young. This seemed rather transparently indicative of someone’s having to backpedal after receiving complaints from companies disgruntled at having their names associated with a hoax. Indeed, within a few days the perpetrator was forced to issue another press release apologizing for his prank: On May 19th 2004 a Press Release from New York was issued claiming that infamous comedian and prankster Andy Kaufman was apparently back from the dead after allegedly faking his own death in 1984. The outlandish release had explained that Kaufman was in fact alive and well, and had been living in secrecy for the past 20 years. The report was met with scepticism by the mainstream media, but it did not prevent some news sources reporting it at as fact. Although many have speculated that Kaufman, a notorious prankster, could have indeed faked his death, a press release was issued today from 26 year old Enrique Proust of Burbank, CA, claiming he was responsible for the recent reports. “I faked the whole thing”, Proust explained, “it was very easy to do. I am deeply sorry for any distress I have caused to the Kaufman family and any of Andy’s closest friends”. He continued, “it was my intention to continue the spirit of Andy Kaufman alive and to provoke debate about his possible whereabouts, but I did not anticipate the feelings of those closest to him, and for that I’m very sorry.” On his website Proust, as Kaufman, had made several defamatory remarks about the Kaufman family, claiming that they themselves part of an elaborate hoax and were not actually related to Kaufman. It is rumoured that these remarks may have prompted their recent “cease and desist” order against Proust. Kaufman’s life-long friend and charity event organizer, Bob Zmuda, made the following statement regarding Proust’s press release. “I’m very glad to hear that Mr. Proust has decided to stop his recent activities which had deeply upset Andy’s family,” he said. “I understand Mr. Proust’s intentions, and I’m sure Andy would have loved the idea for people to believe he was still alive, but this has been a rather destructive and upsetting event for family, friends and fans of Andy’s alike.” “If Andy was coming back,” added Zmuda, “believe me, I’d know about it, and he’s definitey not”. According to Proust, his website, “Andy Kaufman Returns” will be taken down within the next few weeks and it is expected that he will post an apology and explanation shortly. “I still hope that Andy will one day make a triumphant return”, he said. If the real Andy Kaufman wanted to demonstrate he was still alive, just one public appearance would serve that purpose far more convincingly than an unverifiable DNA test. Most important, if the Andy Kaufman we remember — the brilliant, unpredictable, erratic, and unique comic genius — had finally emerged from hiding decades after faking his own death, I have no doubts that he’d find a much more imaginative way of revealing his return than an Internet press release and a rather ordinary blog, or having his “daughter” announce his imminent return to the audence of a small awards ceremony. The Kaufman hoax returned in September 2014, when Bob Zmuda reversed course (because he had a book to sell) and claimed that not only did he believe that Kaufman had engaged in some ridiculously far-fetched scheme to fake his death, but that Kaufman would be emerging to reveal his great prank to the world very soon: Kaufman, Zmuda believes, found a “body double,” someone with his general physical appearance, who was genuinely dying of cancer. Then he began changing his own physicality to match that of the dying man, including losing weight and shaving his head, and released photos of himself in this state. When the body double died, Zmuda says, a switch was made, with the double buried as Kaufman, and Kaufman being spirited away to start his new life. Zmuda believes that, given Kaufman’s self-declared 30-year timeline, his return is imminent. Kaufman died in May 1984. If Zmuda is correct, then Kaufman is already late.
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396
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J&J becomes first drugmaker to add prices to television ads.
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Johnson & Johnson said on Thursday it will start adding the price of its medicines to television commercials by next month, becoming the first drugmaker to heed a call by U.S. President Donald Trump for price transparency of drugs advertised directly to consumers on TV.
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true
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Health News
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The healthcare conglomerate said it will include both the list price of a product - the price before any rebates or discounts to insurers or pharmacy benefit managers - as well as potential out-of-pocket costs that patients will pay. The move, announced in a statement on J&J’s website, won swift praise from U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar. Last May, Azar’s office released a blueprint for reducing the cost of drug prices, which included a proposal to require disclosure of list prices in TV ads for drugs. “We commend Johnson & Johnson for recognizing the value of informing consumers about list prices and for doing so voluntarily. We call on other manufacturers to follow their lead,” Azar said in a statement. Trump made lowering the cost of prescription drugs for U.S. consumers a central issue of the 2016 presidential campaign and emphasized it again in his State of the Union Address this week. Ads for the blood thinner Xarelto, J&J’s most widely prescribed medicine, will be the first television spot to include pricing information, the company said. The treatment used to prevent blood clots costs about $450 to $540 a month. Congress has increased its scrutiny of U.S. drug pricing since Democrats took over control of the House of Representatives in January, while pressure is also coming from the Republican-led Senate. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, ranking member of the committee, on Monday invited executives from seven pharmaceutical companies, including J&J, to testify at a Feb. 26 hearing on rising drug prices.
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6124
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Feds crack Medicare gene test fraud that peddled cheek swabs.
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Federal agents took down an alleged Medicare scam Friday that exploited seniors’ curiosity about genetic medicine by enticing them to get their cheeks swabbed for unneeded DNA tests. Medicare was billed $2.1 billion.
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true
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Seniors, Genetic testing, Health care industry, Health, General News, Politics, Business, Medicare
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Dubbed “Operation Double Helix,” the crackdown targeted telemedicine companies, doctors and labs, in a joint effort by the Justice Department , the FBI, U.S. attorneys’ offices, and the Health and Human Services inspector general. Thirty-five people were charged around the country. The alleged fraud flourished at a time when many people are getting DNA tests to trace back their family heritage. Fraudsters preyed on people’s fears of harboring genetic markers for cancer. However, genetic testing is not routinely used to screen for cancer. “A decade ago, it would have given Medicare beneficiaries pause if someone wanted to get a swab from their cheek of their saliva,” said Shimon Richmond, who heads the inspector general’s investigative division . “Today people know and recognize what (genetic testing) is, and they think ‘I can get that done, and I can get it done for free and find out if I have health issues that I need to address.’” It’s a bad decision, said Richmond. Not only does it put the patient’s Medicare ID in the hands of fraudsters who can then keep reselling it for illicit purposes, but it can potentially compromise unique details of an individual’s make-up. Another downside: Medicare might deny future coverage for genetic testing when it’s really needed, since the patient’s record would show such an analysis was already done. Patients should only have genetic testing if their own doctor orders it, officials said. The alleged scheme worked like this: Officials said a telemarketing or in-person “recruiter” would convince a Medicare enrollee to take a genetic test, assuring them that the program would pay the full cost. The patient would provide their Medicare information. A doctor in league with the fraudsters would approve the test, and collect a kickback from the recruiter company. A lab participating in the scheme would run the test, bill Medicare, and share payments collected from the government with the recruiter. Bills to Medicare connected with the scam typically ranged from $7,000 to $12,000, Richmond said, with some much higher. In many cases the patient never got a report back, or the results provided were incomprehensible. Medicare paid out hundreds of millions of dollars before authorities detected the fraud and moved in. There was no single organization behind the fraud. Friday’s operation targeted defendants in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas, the Justice Department said. Nine doctors were among those charged. Others included owners of telemedicine companies and testing labs. Medicare enrollee Linda Morris of Parker City, Indiana, said she was roped in at a conference on aging well. The retired high school math and journalism teacher got her cheek swabbed by one of the many health vendors at the event. “Their ploy was, ‘Get a mouth swab and we can analyze how well your system synthesizes the drugs you are taking,’” she said. “It never crossed my mind there was anything wrong with this.” Then her Medicare statements started coming in, showing charges as high as $33,000. The program paid almost $10,000. Morris said she was never billed, and was never sent results. When she looked up the address for the test vendor it was “a house on a back road.” “I feel stupid, and in the meantime, I’m furious,” Morris said. Health fairs, church events, and senior centers are like magnets for the fraudsters, officials said. Dennie Krivokapich of Farmington, New Mexico, said he almost sent in his cheek swab following a telemarketing pitch. The retired accountant is a three-time cancer survivor and concerned about his future risk. The company sent him a kit, but the paperwork that came with it made him suspicious. “The physician who requested it was not my physician,” said Krivokapich. The marketing company kept calling him, until he blocked the number. Government-backed anti-fraud organizations known as the Senior Medicare Patrol have been trying to spread the word about genetic testing scams. Retired federal investigator Jennifer Trussell, a consultant to the groups, said fear of cancer is the scam artists’ most effective tool. “These are bad actors trying to take advantage of good medicine,” she said. Fraud against government health care programs is a pervasive problem that costs taxpayers tens of billions of dollars a year. The true extent is unknown. Experts say part of the problem is that Medicare is required to pay medical bills promptly, which means money often goes out before potential frauds get flagged. Investigators call that “pay and chase.” In recent years, Medicare has tried to adapt techniques used by credit card companies to head off fraud. Law enforcement coordination has grown, with strike forces of federal prosecutors and agents, along with state counterparts, specializing in health care investigations.
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26037
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Wisconsin was the last state to start paying COVID-related federal unemployment benefits.
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Wisconsin did have trouble getting the federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation payments to Wisconsinites, and was the last to do so. But the state started making federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance payments at about the same time as most other states.
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true
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Jobs, States, Wisconsin, Robin Vos,
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"Unemployment payments have been a big point of concern in Wisconsin since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites were laid off or furloughed due to the health crisis, putting intense pressure on the state’s unemployment insurance system. And since March 2020, a backlog of unpaid unemployment claims has led to Wisconsinites facing difficult choices when it comes to paying rent, car payments and other bills. As people wait -- some for more than three months -- Republican lawmakers and others have criticized the state Department of Workforce Development, the agency responsible for paying unemployment benefits. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, is one of them. In a June 9, 2020 Facebook post, Vos included an image that listed all 50 states with Wisconsin as the last one to start paying out federal unemployment compensation benefits under the CARES Act, which was signed by President Donald Trump at the end of March. In the image, Wisconsin is listed as starting to make federal PUC payments on April 29, 2020, just behind Connecticut, which is listed as starting its payments three days earlier. At the top: Illinois, listed as starting April 6, 2020 -- more than three weeks before Wisconsin. PUC stands for Pandemic Unemployment Compensation, though most may know this as the extra payments -- generally $600 -- offered by the federal government. Is Vos right, that Wisconsin residents were the last to get those payments? When asked for backup, Vos’ office provided a link to a study by the Hamilton Project, part of the Brookings Institute, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit research group . That study is the genesis of the list Vos shared, and reflects the same results. The study -- and Vos’ list -- specifically focuses on the PUC payments, but there is another program to add to our alphabet soup: The PUA, or Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. Those payments are available to people who wouldn’t normally qualify for unemployment. While Wisconsin was the final state to start making the PUC payments, the same study showed the state fared better on the PUA ones. The state began processing those applications April 21, 2020, with payments starting a week later -- much earlier than some states. On those payments, Nevada came in last, not processing applications until mid-May, according to the study. Wisconsin ranked nearer to the top of that list, with the earliest processing dates starting on April 13 in Alabama and Texas. Ben Jedd, communications director for the state Department of Workforce Development, acknowledged the state was last to make the enhanced unemployment payments. He blamed the state’s old computer system, as has Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. Jedd also said the delay was caused, in part, by the timing of action by Vos and other Republican Legislative leaders in scheduling a vote to suspend a one-week waiting period typically required for newly unemployed Wisconsinites. In late May, Republican leaders in the Senate and Assembly didn’t immediately schedule a floor session to take up a package backed by Evers, which included waiving the waiting period. Instead, Republicans waited three weeks for the session, causing the state to miss out on $25 million from the CARES Act to help pay for unemployment benefits. ""The reason DWD was the last to pay FPUC is the length of time it took to program our COBOL software and the fact that we had to wait for the legislation repealing the waiting week to be passed to complete programming for that change before we could begin,"" Jedd said. He also noted Wisconsin fared better on the PUA program. But that program applies to far fewer people, and the image shared by Vos makes clear that the last-in-the-nation ranking applies to the PUC payments. Vos claimed Wisconsin was the last state to pay out COVID-related federal unemployment money. He is on target about that, but the claim fails to note two important factors: Delays by Republicans played a role in the poor showing by Wisconsin, and the state fared better when it came to payments from a related federal program. Our definition for is ""The statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information."" That fits here."
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36655
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Taylor Swift was dropped from Spotify and iTunes because she supports Democrats.
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Taylor Swift’s Political Endorsements: The Rumors and the Reality
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false
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Entertainment, Fact Checks, Politics
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Pop superstar Taylor Swift — once a darling of the far-right and alt-right crowds because of her “Aryan goddess” looks and their own fevered imaginations — broke a years-long policy of silence on political matters in October 2018 to endorse a political party on her Instagram account:I’m writing this post about the upcoming midterm elections on November 6th, in which I’ll be voting in the state of Tennessee. In the past I’ve been reluctant to publicly voice my political opinions, but due to several events in my life and in the world in the past two years, I feel very differently about that now. I always have and always will cast my vote based on which candidate will protect and fight for the human rights I believe we all deserve in this country. I believe in the fight for LGBTQ rights, and that any form of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender is WRONG. I believe that the systemic racism we still see in this country towards people of color is terrifying, sickening and prevalent.I cannot vote for someone who will not be willing to fight for dignity for ALL Americans, no matter their skin color, gender or who they love. Running for Senate in the state of Tennessee is a woman named Marsha Blackburn. As much as I have in the past and would like to continue voting for women in office, I cannot support Marsha Blackburn. Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me. She voted against equal pay for women. She voted against the Reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which attempts to protect women from domestic violence, stalking, and date rape. She believes businesses have a right to refuse service to gay couples. She also believes they should not have the right to marry. These are not MY Tennessee values. I will be voting for Phil Bredesen for Senate and Jim Cooper for House of Representatives. Please, please educate yourself on the candidates running in your state and vote based on who most closely represents your values. For a lot of us, we may never find a candidate or party with whom we agree 100% on every issue, but we have to vote anyway.So many intelligent, thoughtful, self-possessed people have turned 18 in the past two years and now have the right and privilege to make their vote count. But first you need to register, which is quick and easy to do. October 9th is the LAST DAY to register to vote in the state of TN. Go to vote.org and you can find all the info. Happy Voting! ?? ?The endorsement caused ripples in political spheres, with everyone from pundits to the president weighing in on what they thought of her political leanings and affiliations. Hoaxes soon followed:Nothing on this page is real. It is a collection of the satirical whimsies of liberal trolls masquerading as conservatives. You have been warned.That didn’t stop the story from trending, of course. However, Swift’s announcement did have at least one remarkable real-world effect:“We are up to 65,000 registrations in a single 24-hour period since T. Swift’s post,” said Kamari Guthrie, director of communications for Vote.org.For context, 190,178 new voters were registered nationwide in the entire month of September, while 56,669 were registered in August.In Swift’s home state of Tennessee, where she voiced support for two Democratic candidates running in this year’s midterms, voter registrations have also jumped.“Vote.org saw [Tennessee] registrations spike specifically since Taylor’s post,” Guthrie said. The organization has received 5,183 in the state so far this month — at least 2,144 of which were in the last 36 hours, she said, up from 2,811 new Tennessee voter registrations for the entire month of September and just 951 in August.Guthrie said the site had also seen a big jump in the number of visitors since Swift’s post, with 155,940 unique visitors in the last 24 hours — second only to the number of people who visited on National Voter Registration Day on Sept. 25 when there were 304,942 unique visitors. (The average daily user count for the site is 14,078 in 2018. )“Thank God for Taylor Swift,” said Guthrie.Additionally, although we probably don’t need to even say this, Swift’s songs are still just as available on sites like iTunes and Spotify as they have always been.
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"The word ""quarantine"" stems from the Italian word for ""forty,"" representing the number of days persons potentially exposed to communicable diseases had to remain in isolation."
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Beginning in middle of the 14th century, repeated waves of plague swept across Europe. After arriving in southern Europe in 1347, plague spread rapidly, reaching England, Germany, and Russia by 1350. During this time, it is estimated that one-third of Europe’s population died. The profound impact of the epidemic led to the institution of extreme infection-control measures. For example, in 1374, Viscount Bernabo of Reggio, Italy, declared that every person with plague be taken out of the city into the fields, there to die or to recover.
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true
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Language, COVID-19
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During the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic of 2020, many Americans first became acquainted with the phrase “social distancing,” a term referring to the practice of people avoiding gathering in groups and maintaining physical space between themselves in public settings (in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19). The words “isolation” and “quarantine” also saw an increase in usage during the pandemic, but although they are often used synonymously, they have distinctly different meanings, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) explained on its website: Isolation separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick. Quarantine separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick. Thus, persons who have contracted COVID-19 and are staying at home in order to avoid spreading the illness to others are properly said to be self-isolating rather than self-quarantining. Nonetheless, the common use of “quarantine” during the pandemic got some people wondering where that word came from, a question one meme attempted to answer: The explanation offered in this meme is largely correct, although in its brevity it omits some of the more interesting etymological background. The roots of “quarantine” lay in the multiple outbreaks of bubonic plague (popularly known as the “Black Death“) that hit Europe beginning in 1347 and killed an estimated one-third of the population. According to a 2002 article published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, city officials around the Mediterranean seaport of Ragusa mandated in 1377 that persons who sought to enter the city after traveling from plague areas must first remain in isolation for a 30-day period known as a “trentino” (from the Italian word “trenta,” meaning “thirty”):
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Austin is number one in Texas in startups, venture capital and patents.
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Biogen Inc’s (BIIB.O) shock decision this week to bring its experimental Alzheimer’s drug back from the scrap heap was born out of “top secret” meetings, non-disclosure agreements and six months of hashing over trial data with scientists, regulators and statisticians, researchers told Reuters.
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true
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City Government, Economy, Small Business, Technology, Texas, Steve Adler,
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Biogen had announced in March that it would terminate two large clinical trials of aducanumab because they were likely to fail. Within weeks, a group of company researchers set out to understand what went wrong. As they studied data from a larger pool of patients who received the drug, they began to question that conclusion. In the months that followed, Biogen kept its own trial investigators and committee overseeing the trial in the dark about the possibility that some patients had benefited from high doses of the therapy, researchers told Reuters. The company said it brought in outside Alzheimer’s experts and statisticians to help it parse the new findings, and sought feedback from U.S. regulators on whether it could be considered for approval. The result, made public on Tuesday, was an astounding reversal. Biogen will seek U.S. approval for the therapy early next year, once again raising hopes for patients suffering from the brain-wasting disease. Biogen shares gained 27% on investor hopes for a multibillion-dollar blockbuster. The risks for Biogen remain high. Wall Street analysts cast doubt on whether Biogen’s analysis would pass muster with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration without an additional years-long trial to confirm the findings. Several Alzheimer’s researchers questioned why one trial appeared to succeed, while another with the same design failed. Many experts say they are reserving judgment until Biogen presents more detailed data in December. Company executives are reluctant to characterize their interactions with the FDA, but said they worked closely with the agency until they were confident in the findings. Biogen was only willing to move forward with seeking approval for aducanumab after meeting twice with FDA. The final decision was made immediately after the second of those meetings, which took place on Monday, Biogen officials said. For the FDA “to say it’s reasonable to file an application after two extensive discussions with them, formal meetings as well as a number of informal discussions, I think it’s significant,” Biogen research chief Al Sandrock said in an interview. Biogen’s earlier decision to terminate the trials was viewed as the final nail in the coffin for the so-called “amyloid hypothesis” - the theory that removing a protein associated with Alzheimer’s could stave off this fatal form of dementia. Many similar drugs had previously failed. Globally, 131 million people are expected to be diagnosed with Alzheimer’s by 2050, up from 50 million today. Any successful treatment could be worth $10 billion or more in annual sales, industry analysts say. The March announcement also raised concerns about a second therapy, BAN2401, that works in a similar way. Biogen is partnering with Japan’s Eisai on both drugs. Ivan Cheung, Eisai’s chief executive, said in an interview that he expects aducanumab’s revival will energize enrollment in a late-stage study of BAN2401, with results expected in 2022. Patients taking the highest dose of BAN2401 showed some encouraging results in a midstage trial last year. “That’s why in the Phase III trial, we are only studying the highest dose,” Cheung said. The two aducanumab trials - Engage and Emerge - started a month apart in 2015. Each had about 1,640 patients. As they progressed, the company made changes in the trial that expanded the number of patients who received a higher dose. As part of a planned “futility analysis,” outside monitors reviewed half of the data as of December 2018 to determine whether the drug had a reasonable chance of success. “So many of us felt that this might be the drug that would cross the finish line,” said Dr. Sharon Cohen, director of the Toronto Memory program, who led one of the studies. In March, she received the answer: the therapy looked like a dud. However, patients continued to receive treatment in the interim. Cohen believes the fact that some patients got a higher dose for longer helped swing results in the Emerge study, which ultimately showed a benefit. A month after announcing the failure, Biogen began analyzing results from both trials, including additional data from patients who later completed treatment. By the time Biogen had its first FDA meeting in mid-June, the company knew that one of the studies had succeeded, and understood that dose was important, said Samantha Budd Haeberlein, who runs Biogen’s Alzheimer’s program. “We did a great deal of analysis in close contact with the FDA to really understand what occurred in these trials,” Haeberlein said. “It took several months to work through that.” During that entire stretch, Cohen said she and fellow investigators were waiting to hear why the drug had failed. They expected a presentation in July during the Alzheimer’s Association annual meeting, but none came. “I was completely unaware of what had been discovered until last Sunday,” said Dr. Anton Porsteinsson, a principal investigator for the trials from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. Porsteinsson said Biogen asked him to sign a non-disclosure agreement before sharing the new analysis. Cohen said she first reviewed the new data on Monday in what she called a “top secret” meeting. She said the company wanted a few investigators to hear the findings ahead of Tuesday’s announcement, but had concerns about insider trading. Many still question why only one trial succeeded. “The signal from the positive trial was kind of convincing,” said Mayo Clinic Alzheimer’s expert Dr. Ronald Petersen, who has been a paid adviser for Biogen. It showed a 23% reduction in a key measure of cognitive decline. “But the other study, which was meant to be identical, didn’t show it,” he said. “That’s the challenge there.”
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UCB recalls Parkinson's patch, reviews 2008 outlook.
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Belgian drugmaker UCB said on Thursday it was recalling its Parkinson’s patch Neupro in the United States and some batches from Europe, prompting a review of its 2008 forecast.
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true
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Health News
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UCB shares dropped as much as 18.4 percent to 21.60 euros, their lowest level since August 2003, as investors took a dim view of the latest in a series of setbacks to hit the group. This month, U.S. health officials warned its prescription cough medicine Tussionex could be fatal for young children if taken frequently, though it is not approved for those aged under six. UCB has also yet to convince regulators its would-be blockbuster Cimzia should be cleared for treating the bowel disorder Crohn’s disease. The European Medicines Agency on Thursday reaffirmed its view that Cimzia should not be approved. Last year, UCB achieved net sales of 52 million euros ($81.7 million) from Neupro, a relatively new product. “Depending on the resolution timeline of this issue, the full effect on UCB’s business is not yet known. Therefore, UCB’s 2008 financial outlook is under review and will be updated as soon as possible,” the company said in a statement. UCB said the recall decision was not the result of contamination or toxicity but that the clinical performance of some samples on the market was not as required. “As a result, there will be an out-of-stock situation with Neupro in the United States in late April 2008. In the European Union and most other regions, Neupro supply is sufficient,” it continued. A spokeswoman said it was not clear how long UCB would be out of stock in the U.S. and likewise when it would be able to give a new 2008 outlook. KBC Securities said in a research note it had reduced its forecast for Neupro sales this year to 88 million euros from 110 million, as well as its peak annual sales estimates and cut its target price to 33.50 euros from 35.00 euros. “This disruption comes at a crucial time in the launch phase of this important franchise,” Deutsche Bank wrote, adding Neupro’s launch for restless legs could be significantly delayed by regulators’ insistence that quality problems be resolved. Neupro, delivered to patients in the form of patches stuck on the skin, is approved to treat early-stage Parkinson’s in the U.S. and early and late stages of the disease in Europe. The patches were launched in Europe in 2006 and in the U.S. in July 2007. It filed for approval to treat restless legs syndrome in the United States and Europe in December. UCB last month forecast revenue would decrease to about 3.4 billion euros in 2008 from 3.6 billion last year. Recurring core profit (EBITDA) would be about 650 million euros and net profit was expected to exceed 100 million.
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12957
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Some countries are contributing (peacekeeping) troops because they're making money off of them.
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"Haley said that ""some countries"" contribute peacekeeping troops because they make money off the U.N. payments. Every expert we reached agreed that for some nations, the financial payoff is a factor. However, they all said that money was not the sole driver, and that countries gained military training and experience from the role they played. Haley offered an accurate but limited comment on peacekeeping troops."
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true
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Global News Service, Foreign Policy, Nikki Haley,
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"U.S. senators asked South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley about U.N. peacekeeping missions during her confirmation hearing to be America’s ambassador to the United Nations. They were especially concerned about the war-torn nation of South Sudan, but Haley tackled peacekeeping more broadly. Haley said there were red flags. ""It's been devastating to see the exploitation, the fraud, abuse that's happening,"" Haley said Jan. 18. ""We have to acknowledge that some countries are contributing troops because they're making money off of them. So if they are not willing to make sure that they are punishing the violators, then we actually need to pull that country's troops out, because they're harming the peace process."" Haley was referring to cases where peacekeeping troops sexually abused the very people they were sent to protect. The most recent case involved soldiers from France, Chad and Equatorial Guinea. But it was her assertion about countries making money off of peacekeeping that caught our eye. We took a closer look. The experts we reached agreed that yes, there is a financial incentive for certain nations. On the other hand, there was equally broad agreement that money isn’t the only factor. A little background on peacekeeping Under the banner of the United Nations, countries provide troops and equipment to troubled corners of the world to help them bridge the gap between conflict and stability. Right now, the U.N. has 16 operations, and nine of them are in Africa. Between troops, police and military observers, about 100,000 personnel make up the global peacekeeping force at a cost of about $1.9 billion for the year. Who sends the most troops? Ethiopia (8,165), Pakistan (6,774), India (6,752), Bangladesh (5,635) and Rwanda (5,125). Those five countries provide nearly a third of all peacekeepers. Why they send troops Money is a factor. Brett Schaefer, a Heritage Foundation analyst, told us the countries with the largest participation tend to be middle- or lower-income nations. ""Their payments to troops are low, and the amount they get from the U.N. is generally above that,"" Schaefer said. But he noted that gaining field experience, training and international prestige are powerful drivers too. Paul Williams at George Washington University also said the money should be put into perspective: ""It is very rarely, if ever the case, that this is the sole factor behind a state's decision to contribute troops."" For Bruce Jones at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based academic center, India proves that point. ""It’s one of the most important contributors to U.N. peacekeeping,"" Jones said. ""But it no longer makes money from peacekeeping. It now loses money, but it's still doing it. So that should tell us something."" If there’s a red flag to be waved with the U.N.’s African peacekeeping missions, it might have more to do with complex regional politics. Dyan Mazurana, a professor of international affairs at Tufts University, said some countries sending troops have a clear self-interest in the fate of their neighboring states. ""They are often playing a blurry role of peacekeepers, peace enforcement and being parties to the conflict, such as supporting various armed parties, selling weapons or extracting and profiting from natural resources,"" Mazurana said. None of the experts we reached found any connection between sexual assault and the payments to countries for the troops they send. They gave the U.N. credit for acting more swiftly to crack down on abuse, but they also said continued pressure is needed to ensure that the perpetrators actually face punishment. We reached Haley’s office but never received any comment on her statement. Our ruling Haley said that ""some countries"" contribute peacekeeping troops because they make money off the U.N. payments. Every expert we reached agreed that for some nations, the financial payoff is a factor. However, they all said that money was not the sole driver, and that countries gained military training and experience from the role they played. Haley offered an accurate but limited comment on peacekeeping troops."
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Every year in the United States between 3,000 and 4,500 severe vaccine reactions are reported to the Centers for Disease Control. Not mild reactions. Severe reactions that land somebody in the hospital, the intensive care unit or cause a permanent disability or death.
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"Sears said, ""Every year in the United States between 3,000 and 4,500 severe vaccine reactions are reported to the Centers for Disease Control. Not mild reactions. Severe reactions that land somebody in the hospital, the intensive care unit or cause a permanent disability or death."" Sears reached this conclusion by doing some math based on data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But, at the least, he would have been better off sticking with the CDC’s general claim that 10 percent to 15 percent of reported reactions are deemed serious. The fact is, the CDC’s database includes a clear warning that the there is no evidence the reported cases are related to vaccines. Nor do the specific years we looked at -- going back to 2006 -- back up Sears’ specific range. The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."
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false
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Health Care, Public Health, PunditFact, Bob Sears,
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"In a debate on CNN, a pediatrician who lends a sympathetic ear to the anti-vaccine movement described what he said was one of the risks of vaccinating children. ""Every year in the United States between 3,000 and 4,500 severe vaccine reactions are reported to the Centers for Disease Control,"" Dr. Bob Sears told CNN’s Don Lemon. ""Not mild reactions. Severe reactions that land somebody in the hospital, the intensive care unit or cause a permanent disability or death."" We decided to fact-check Sears’ claim that between 3,000 and 4,500 people report severe vaccine reactions that ""land somebody in the hospital, the intensive care unit or cause a permanent disability or death."" What the CDC says, and doesn’t say The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does maintain a database of reported cases of adverse reactions to vaccines. It’s called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS for short. The system allows almost anyone -- from a doctor to a nurse to a pharmacist to a patient or parent -- to enter in any information about illnesses or medical issues that follow someone receiving a vaccine. The information is collected so that officials can spot possible trends or side effects related to particular vaccines. Before we show you the numbers for 2014, we’ll give you the same warning the CDC provides any user. It’s a warning Sears failed to present CNN viewers. ""When evaluating data from VAERS, it is important to note that for any reported event, no cause-and-effect relationship has been established. Reports of all possible associations between vaccines and adverse events (possible side effects) are filed in VAERS. Therefore, VAERS collects data on any adverse event following vaccination, be it coincidental or truly caused by a vaccine. The report of an adverse event to VAERS is not documentation that a vaccine caused the event."" We’ll say that again in our own words. There’s no proof that a vaccine caused any of the medical conditions reported in the database. That colors Sears’ statement significantly. ""There’s absolutely no linkage between cause and effect,"" Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center, told us. ""If I received the flu vaccine yesterday and got hit by a bus today, I could enter that into VAERS. But I doubt anyone would say the vaccine caused the accident. VAERS is a great reporting system to look for trends that would trigger further studies – but it does not pretend to prove that the conditions entered are related to vaccination."" Now back to the numbers. Sears specifically mentioned three outcomes that he described as ""severe vaccine reactions"" -- hospitalization, permanent disability, or death. (There is no category to report someone being sent to an ""intensive care unit,"" nor is there a searchable category for ""severe vaccine reactions."") We looked at 2014 VEARS data, which covers reports processed as of Dec. 14, 2014. VAERS data shows (as of Feb. 3, 2015): 1,244 cases of people reported hospitalized 416 cases of people reporting a disability 122 reported deaths 388 reported life-threatening cases That’s a total of 2,170 events, but once you factor out double and sometimes triple counting -- meaning a reported death could also could include a reported disability or hospitalization -- you drop to a total of 1,737 cases. (The numbers change slightly depending on how you run the search. We searched when cases were reported. Since the database is a living document, the numbers may also shift if you choose to run this calculation yourself.) On the flip side, the 2014 count is only through Dec. 14, meaning that additional cases likely will be reported before the CDC closes out the year. Sears’ defense We presented our findings to Sears, who said he approached his calculation in a more generic way. He said he looked at VAERS in December 2009. ""At that time, the site reported the number of severe reactions each year going back many years. It averaged out at about 30,000 total reactions reported yearly, and the site stated that between 10 percent and 15 percent of these were serious. That's how I get the number 3,000 to 4,500,"" Sears said. ""Now, that fluctuates every year. Some years are lower, some higher,"" Sears said. ""You looked at 2014 data, which looks to be about 1,750. That's a low year."" Here, Sears has a point. In fact, the CDC website does still include a general description that matches what Sears told us. ""Approximately 30,000 VAERS reports are filed annually, with 10-15% classified as serious (resulting in permanent disability, hospitalization, life-threatening illnesses or death),"" the CDC says. But that didn’t amount to 3,500-4,000 cases in 2014, nor any year we searched as far back as 2006. Sears is correct that 2014 appears to be a low year. Year Cases of reported hospitalization, disability, deaths or life-threatening illness 2014 1,737 2013 1,837 2012 1,934 2011 2,045 2010 2,570 2009 2,701 2008 2,465 2007 2,289 2006 1,477 Other data on vaccine injuries As we’ve written, the major flaw in the VAERS data is that it does not prove a link between the vaccine and an illness. One area where we get closer to finding a causal link is through the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The program, created on Oct. 1, 1988, was set up to help compensate victims found to be injured by certain vaccines. The program is funded by a $0.75 excise tax on vaccines recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for routine administration to children, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. According to Health and Human Services, 3,887 compensation awards have been paid since the first claims were filed in 1989. Another 9,860 claims were dismissed. A total of 633 petitions were filed seeking payment in fiscal year 2014. Petitions peaked in fiscal year 2003 when 2,592 claims were filed. This data is far from perfect. But what it shows is that in the last 25 years, the fund has paid out claims to 3,887 people -- which translates to an average of 155 paid claims per year. Health and Human Services cautions that settlements do not indicate safety concerns about the vaccine alleged to cause the injury. ""Settlements are not an admission by the United States or the Secretary of Health and Human Services that the vaccine caused the petitioner’s alleged injuries,"" officials write. ""The vaccine compensation program ... provides a bit more linkage between cause and effect, but the rulings are decided in a court of law, and science may or may not play a big role in the finding,"" Troisi told us. ""It’s also very hard to prove cause and effect on an individual case, which is what is happening with these findings."" Our ruling Sears said, ""Every year in the United States between 3,000 and 4,500 severe vaccine reactions are reported to the Centers for Disease Control. Not mild reactions. Severe reactions that land somebody in the hospital, the intensive care unit or cause a permanent disability or death."" Sears reached this conclusion by doing some math based on data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But, at the least, he would have been better off sticking with the CDC’s general claim that 10 percent to 15 percent of reported reactions are deemed serious. The fact is, the CDC’s database includes a clear warning that the there is no evidence the reported cases are related to vaccines. Nor do the specific years we looked at -- going back to 2006 -- back up Sears’ specific range. The statement contains an element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression, which is our definition of ."
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The number of patients waiting more than 12 hours in A&E is up 2,700% since 2010.
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Correct (although not all patients will necessarily have been waiting in A&E). In 2011/12, 120 patients in England waited 12 hours between the decision to admit them to emergency admissions and their actual admission, compared to 3,500 in 2017/18.
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true
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health
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There are 16,481 fewer beds in hospitals since 2010. This is in the right ballpark, but it doesn’t seem to be the best comparison. It seems to compare the number of beds at different times of the year, but the number available fluctuates seasonally. Comparing July-September in 2010 and 2017, the decrease in beds available overnight in England is closer to 13,200. 66 A&E and maternity wards have been closed. We don’t know, as this information isn’t collected nationally. In 2014, there were reportedly plans to close or downgrade 66 in England, but while some have been, others have stayed open. 103 NHS walk-in centres have closed or been downgraded since 2010. We don’t know exactly, as this information isn’t collected centrally. Research from an NHS regulator and from campaign group 38 Degrees suggests more than 90 have been closed or downgraded. 60 ambulance stations have closed since 2010. We don’t know how many ambulance stations have closed since 2010 as national figures on this aren’t regularly published. 1,000 GP practices have closed since 2010. There are around 1,000 fewer GP practices in England in 2017 than in 2010. Some practices may have merged together, rather than closing completely, but we don’t know how many have done so. A&E four hour targets have been missed more than 10 million times since 2010. Correct. Between 2010/11 and 2017/18, around 12 million A&E attendances in England took over four hours from arrival to admission, transfer or discharge. The number of patients waiting more than 12 hours in A&E is up 2,700% since 2010. Correct (although not all patients will necessarily have been waiting in A&E). In 2011/12, 120 patients in England waited 12 hours between the decision to admit them to emergency admissions and their actual admission, compared to 3,500 in 2017/18. Spending on social care is down 8% since 2010. Analysis by the Institute for Fiscal Studies last year said that between 2009/10 and 2016/17, councils’ spending on adult social care in England fell 8% in real terms. Newer analysis says that it fell by 6% over the same period. We’ve asked it for more information. There are 5,240 fewer mental health nurses since 2010. This seems to be looking at different months in 2010 and 2017, which isn’t the best comparison. Comparing the number of full-time equivalent mental health nurses between January 2010 and January 2018 (the latest figures), the drop is closer to 4,500. The number of operations classed as urgent that have been cancelled twice have doubled since 2010. Correct. The number of urgent operations in England cancelled for the second time or more for non-medical reasons more than doubled between 2011/12 and 2017/18. There has been a 22% drop in ambulances meeting their 15 minute transfer target since 2010. The decrease is actually greater—28%. In 2010/11 in England 80% of ambulance transfers were done in 15 minutes, in 2015/16 it was 58%. Claim 1 of 12
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Early data shows nearly 2x prolonged median survival for inoperable pancreatic cancer
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This news release reports results of a retrospective study comparing conventional radiotherapy for inoperable pancreatic cancer versus an adaptive radiation therapy that allows clinicians to see the tumor in real time and respond to changes on a daily basis. Targeting the tumor more specifically means higher doses of radiation can be used without increasing damage to surrounding tissues. The study, funded by ViewRay, maker of the MRIdian system, is admittedly preliminary. It is to be followed up by a clinical trial. The release would have been more helpful to readers had it mentioned costs and disclosed a conflict of interest between one of the study authors and the device manufacturer. Surgery is an option only for certain less common types of pancreatic cancer. The five-year survival rates for pancreatic cancers that cannot be treated with surgery are 12% to 14% even for those diagnosed in stage I; the five-year survival rate for cancers detected at stage IV is about 1%, according to the American Cancer Society. ACS reminds readers that five-year survival rates are estimates and that “many people live longer – often much longer – than 5 years.” In that context, a treatment that could extend the lives of the 1.5% of Americans who develop pancreatic cancer is big news.
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true
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pancreatic cancer,ViewRay
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Costs of the MRIdian on-table adaptive radiotherapy in comparison to conventional radiotherapy are not discussed. Given that it is new and more personalized than current treatment options it’s likely to be correspondingly more expensive. Certainly, more frequent MRIs would be very costly. The release provides exact information about increased survival rates in the cohorts of individuals treated with the adaptive versus the convention radiotherapy techniques. “The cohort receiving a higher dose demonstrated a near doubling of median overall survival (Kaplan-Meier estimated median overall survival of 27.8 months compared to 14.8 months).” The news release provides specific results regarding experiences of both groups with regard to toxicity from radiotherapy. We appreciate that the headline of this release starts with the words “early data” because this report deals with preliminary and retrospective research. It was not a clinical trial. Instead, results are based on retrospectively comparing treatment of two groups of patients at four institutions. Respective comparisons can’t account for a host of factors that might influence results. At the end of the news release readers are told that on the basis of these promising results a clinical trial is being planned. With five-year survival rates of 1 to 14%, it would be hard to engage in disease mongering about pancreatic cancer. This research was sponsored by ViewRay, the company that developed the MRIdian system, and the release does a good job calling attention to this. However, according to the published study, at least one of the co-authors received honoraria from ViewRay Medical Systems. Since this was not included in the release we’re rating this criteria Not Satisfactory. This study was all about comparing alternatives, so it scores Satisfactory on that criterion. It would have helped readers if alternatives would have been described more in laymen’s terms. The news release notes that the next step is a prospective clinical trial and that tells savvy readers that this treatment strategy has a long road of testing ahead. Still, we think the release could have done a better job clarifying that this therapy is not yet ready for patients, outside of the clinical trial. A study that suggests a doubling of median survival is sure to capture the attention of patients newly diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. These patients and their families are closely aware of the glum statistics for the disease. This is a practical concern that the release should have touched on. This technology is indeed novel and unique to ViewRay, though it is becoming available in more and more cancer treatment centers. No unjustifiable language was identified in the news release.
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Chinese report says illnesses may be from new coronavirus.
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A preliminary investigation into viral pneumonia illnesses sickening dozens of people in and around China has identified the possible cause as a new type of coronavirus, state media said Thursday.
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true
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Health, General News, MERS, Wuhan, Pneumonia, China, Asia Pacific, International News
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Chinese health authorities did not immediately confirm the report from state broadcaster CCTV. Coronaviruses are spread through coughing or sneezing or by touching an infected person. Some cause the common cold and others can lead to more severe respiratory diseases, such as SARS and MERS. Such viruses are common in people but more exotic versions from bats, camels and other animals have caused severe illness. The novel coronavirus is different from those that have previously been identified, CCTV said. Health authorities ruled out SARS and MERS as possible causes over the weekend. As of Sunday, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission said 59 people in the central Chinese city were being treated for the respiratory illness. Seven were in critical condition, while the rest were stable. Eight patients were discharged Wednesday, Xinhua state news agency reported. They had not exhibited any pneumonia symptoms for several days. Chinese researchers used a sample from one patient to conduct gene sequencing of the virus, said Gauden Galea, a World Health Organization representative to China. “Preliminary identification of a novel virus in a short period of time is a notable achievement,” Galea said in a statement, adding that it “demonstrates China’s increased capacity to manage new outbreaks.” Possible cases of the same illness have been reported in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan involving recent travelers to Wuhan. Since the end of 2019, Hong Kong public hospitals have reported 38 patients who presented with fever, respiratory infection or pneumonia symptoms after recent visits to Wuhan. Twenty-one of those patients have since been discharged, Hong Kong’s Hospital Authority said Wednesday. No serious cases have been found to be related to those in Wuhan, said Hong Kong health chief Sophia Chan. None of the Hong Kong patients had visited the seafood market in Wuhan where some of the mainland Chinese patients worked. The South China Seafood City food market will be suspended and investigated, Wuhan’s health commission said. A Chinese woman who works for a South Korean company was diagnosed Tuesday with pneumonia, according to the Korea Centers of Disease Control and Prevention said. Meanwhile, Taiwan authorities said Wednesday that they were quarantining a patient who fell ill with flu symptoms on Jan. 6, more than two weeks after the individual returned from a trip to Wuhan. The new illnesses had raised fears of a recurrence of SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome. The disease first infected people in southern China in late 2002, and spread to more than two dozen countries. More than 8,000 people were sickened and nearly 800 died, but no cases have been reported since 2004. Another coronavirus causes MERS, or Middle East respiratory syndrome, which started in Jordan and Saudi Arabia in 2012 and spread into about two dozen other countries. About 2,500 lab-confirmed cases have been reported, including more than 800 deaths, with cases continuing to be seen in recent years. On Wednesday, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put out a health alert advising physicians who treat patients with pneumonia-like illness to consider a possible link to the Chinese outbreak and to wear masks and take other precautions in treating patients who recently traveled to Wuhan. The CDC this week also advised U.S. travelers going to Wuhan to avoid animals and sick people and wash their hands often. ___ Stobbe reported from New York.
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2994
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Kentucky governor reaffirms support for teacher pay raise.
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Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear reaffirmed his support for a teachers’ pay raise and made a pitch to overhaul a criminal-justice system soaking up too much of the state’s money as he delivered his first State of the Commonwealth speech to the Republican-dominated legislature.
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true
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Legislature, Teacher pay, Health, General News, Kentucky, Education
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Speaking to a statewide television audience Tuesday night, the state’s new Democratic governor outlined a broad agenda that includes protecting health-care coverage, tackling criminal-justice reform, ending cuts to higher education and embracing new gaming-related revenues. Beshear, who made support for public schools the hallmark of his successful 2019 campaign, said education is the key to breaking cycles of poverty in the state. He called for bipartisan cooperation on education and other issues as Kentucky embarks on a new era of divided government. “It’s time to come together, all of us, in support of public education,” he said. “This is a new opportunity, a new start with a new governor, where we can all pledge to lift up our communities by supporting and investing in our public schools. We can wipe the slate clean, and we can move forward in support of public education together.” Beshear said the budget plan he submits to the legislature later this month will include his campaign pledge for a $2,000 across-the-board pay raise for teachers. “These teachers deserve a raise,” he said. “They are on the front lines of every problem we face as a commonwealth — from family-member addiction, to hunger, to the need for better jobs. And right now, we face a teacher shortage that threatens the education of our children.” Beshear made no mention of his predecessor, former Gov. Matt Bevin, as he touted the need for a new era of civility. It was a contrast to his former Republican rival’s caustic brand of policies. The governor’s approximately 35-minute speech was greeted with polite applause throughout. Beshear pledged to “embrace” higher education as part of his “education-first budget.”″ He also promised to support fully funding the state’s public pension obligations — another big-ticket pledge. He urged lawmakers to take on the health-care issue as part of the road map for a brighter future for the state. “That requires that our Kentucky families don’t have to worry about losing health care coverage because of a preexisting condition,” he said. “I hear members of both parties say those very words. So this session, let’s pass a state law ensuring no one can lose coverage in this state, ever again, based on a preexisting condition.” He urged lawmakers to pass legislation to curb the costs of insulin to help the approximately 530,000 Kentuckians with diabetes. He also embraced legislation to end surprise medical billings. Beshear stressed the need for new revenues to meet the state’s growing needs, endorsing a sports betting bill already introduced. He made another long-shot pitch for legalizing casino gambling — a campaign pledge that appears to face strong resistance in the legislature. “Right now we are watching more than $500 million in gaming revenue go across the border to states like Indiana, Ohio and Illinois,” he said. “It’s time to stop that flow.” Beshear urged lawmakers to pass criminal-justice reforms to reverse skyrocketing corrections costs that soak up money that could go for education and health care. Such a package should reduce prison populations, reduce repeat offending rates and provide “meaningful” addiction treatment, he said. It also needs to “consolidate and not expand our state prison institutions,” he said. The governor also called for equal pay for women and made a pitch to make Kentucky a leader in agriculture technology. He embraced speeding up the Mountain Parkway project in eastern Kentucky. The Tuesday evening event was the first of two major speeches the governor will deliver to lawmakers this month. Beshear will present his budget plans to lawmakers in late January. Kentucky entered an era of divided government when Beshear was elected governor last year. He has stressed the need for civility as he and lawmakers work on state policy. The governor continued that theme Tuesday evening, telling lawmakers: “Let me be clear, every moment we focus on partisanship, every moment we focus on national divisions, we fail to address the reality before us.” That reality, he said, includes Kentucky’s dismal rankings in per-capita income, child abuse, education and disease rates, The legislature’s top two leaders — House Speaker David Osborne and Senate President Robert Stivers — later praised the governor’s tone but said his agenda ultimately will be decided by the details of his proposals. “I think at some point in time, we’re going to have to dispense with the pleasantries and talk about governing.” Osborne said. Stivers added: “It’s now time to start having real discussions about real problems and finding real solutions. And that will be the key to this, to see if his rhetoric will be matched by his actions.”
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11058
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Study says late angioplasty futile
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The story reports on new research that shows angioplasty performed late after a heart attack (defined as 3 to 28 days) does not improve survival, chance of another heart attack, or chance of heart failure compared to taking medications alone in a subset of people. The story does a nice job of describing the current culture surrounding late angioplasty, that is, it is currently routinely done but that this new research questions that practice. This is the first randomized controlled trial of this clinical situation (as opposed to observational studies) and the results are surprising, which is described by the article. The article also describes the benefit and harm (the trend toward an increase in risk for heart attack with angioplasty) in absolute terms, which is refreshing. A criterion that was not met was the inclusion of cost information. While the article states angioplasty is expensive, it's not clear what the costs are or that medications are less expensive over a lifetime. Cost information could have made this a stronger story, but overall, the article does a nice job of meeting the vast majority of criteria.
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true
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"The article doesn't mention costs of angioplasty or costs of medications, which presumably must be taken for the rest of one's life. The article does mention that angioplasty is expensive, but does not provide real numbers or comparisons. The story provides absolute numbers of the primary endpoint over a 4-year period — ""17 percent of those given angioplasty and drugs and nearly 16 percent of those given drugs alone had either died, suffered another heart attack or developed heart failure — results considered to be statistically the same."" The story states that there was a worrisome trend toward more heart attacks in people who received late angioplasty compared to those who received just medications, although the story also tells readers that this could have been a statistical fluke or due to chance. However, other harms of the procedure were not discussed, including risks of the procedure itself, including bleeding, infection, or emotional distress/anxiety. The article also does not discuss risks of the alternative, e.g. medications, which have side effects, costs, or inconvenience. But, the story does discuss the main harm found in the study, e.g. a trend toward increased heart attacks. The research is important because it is a randomized controlled trial and the first such trial to be conducted for the clinical situation of late angioplasty in people with few to no symptoms after their heart attack. The story tells readers that enrollment of patients was delayed because ""doctors were unwilling to risk randomly assigning patients to drug treatment alone,"" indirectly stating that the study was a randomized trial. While an astute reader could probably pick up that this was a randomized trial, this fact could have been clearer. In addition, there is little context around this being the first randomized trial for this clinical situation (as opposed to retrospective observational studies), although the story does tell readers that the results were surprising and that they could change guidelines. The story appropriately describes a heart attack, and more importantly, reinforces that early opening of the artery to restore blood flow to the heart after heart attack is still beneficial and that these results don't apply to that population or indeed the majority of people receiving angioplasties. No obvious disease mongering. The article provides an independent source of information from the chairman of the American Heart Association program committee that reviewed the research. The story also provides information from the director of the National, Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, but tells readers that this organization largely funded the research, therefore disclosing potential conflicts of interest. The story tells readers that the alternative that was tested in the latest research was medications, including those to lower blood pressure and cholesterol, aspirin, and anti-clotting drugs. The story could have mentioned beta-blockers specifically, since the protective effect of drug treatment may come from this family of drugs, although this is not yet proven. And the story could have been clearer about the course of treatment, e.g. that these medications are generally taken for the rest of one's life. The story tells readers that the usual treatment for people suffering a heart attack is angioplasty, even for a subset of people who weren't treated right away (the study population)/ The article also tells readers that the tendency to perform angioplasty electively (3 to 28 days after the event) was so strong, that recruitment to the study was prolonged in order to find enough patients (and their doctors) willing to participate in the study. It's widely understood that angioplasty and standard drug therapy after heart attack are not new. The article provides independent sources of information not included in the press release."
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28975
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Chinese plants are processing chickens raised by Tyson in the U.S. and shipping them back to America.
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What's true: In 2013 four Chinese poultry processors were approved to begin shipping a limited amount of processed chicken products to the United States. What's false: China is not processing imported, U.S.-raised chickens and shipping them back to America.
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mixture
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Food, chicken, china, smithfield
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Back in August 2013, the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a final report regarding the food safety system governing the processing of chicken for export in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The gist of that report was that four Chinese poultry processors were approved to begin shipping a limited amount of processed chicken products to the United States, provided those products were derived from chickens raised in countries that met FSIS standards: The PRC was added to the list of countries eligible to export processed poultry to the United States with the following stipulation: processed heat-treated poultry products must be derived from flocks slaughtered under (1) the U.S. inspection system or (2) the inspection system of another country eligible to export slaughtered poultry products to the United States. With all outstanding issues resolved, the PRC may certify a list of establishments eligible to export processed (heat-treated/cooked) poultry products to the United States, as long as the raw poultry is sourced from countries that have been determined by FSIS to have an equivalent poultry slaughter inspection system. This action followed years of wrangling between the U.S. and China over the export of meat products to each other: The poultry trade between the United States and China has been contentious for years. Under the Bush administration, the U.S.D.A. moved to allow imports of chicken from China, which has banned imports of American beef since 2003 over worries about mad cow disease. In response, Congress blocked Chinese chicken exports. China retaliated by slapping huge tariffs on American chicken. The fight ended up at the World Trade Organization, which ruled that the tariffs were too high. After that, the U.S.D.A. then audited Chinese processing plants, giving its approval for them to process raw birds from the United States and Canada. The USDA’s action in approving Chinese poultry exports to the U.S. raised concerns among many American consumers, especially given China’s spotty record for product safety, the absence of on-site USDA inspectors, and the lack of a requirement for Chinese poultry exports to bear labels identifying their country of origin: China does not have the best track record for food safety, and its chicken products in particular have raised questions. The country has had frequent outbreaks of deadly avian influenza, which it sometimes has been slow to report. Under the new rules, the Chinese facilities will verify that cooked products exported to the United States came from American or Canadian birds. So no U.S.D.A. inspector will be present in the plants. And because the poultry will be processed, it will not require country-of-origin labeling. Nor will consumers eating chicken noodle soup from a can or chicken nuggets in a fast-food restaurant know if the chicken came from Chinese processing plants. The USDA approval also raised a host of issues for American consumers about guarantees of food safety: For starters, how will consumers here know that the processed chicken and turkey that is shipped back to the United States is the same chicken and turkey that was originally sent from the United States or other USDA-approved country in the first place? If USDA inspectors will not be on site in China, how will U.S. consumers know whether or not the poultry has been mishandled during processing, tampered with, or contaminated? Even if Chinese processing plants have passed a FSIS inspection in the past, what is to guarantee that such sanitary conditions and processing techniques would be the same when China begins processing poultry to be imported back to the United States? Furthermore, without a country-of-origin label, how will U.S. consumers know whether or not the chicken or poultry product that they decide to purchase and consume came from China? And if no such labeling is required, then how else will U.S. consumers be able to make informed decisions about the chicken or poultry product that they put into their bodies? In mid-2015, this issue was manifested online as a concern that American-based food companies were laying off workers in the U.S. in favor of shipping their chickens to China for processing, with the results to be re-shipped to the U.S. for sale here: I just read Tyson is firing 100K workers and sending its chicken overseas to China to be cleaned and packaged and then returned for sale in the United States? Have you all heard about Tyson? Cutting 75,000 jobs & sending their chicken to China from the United States to be processed in China. Then sent back to America to be sold? BOYCOTT!! Tyson company is sending Chicken to China to be processed and returned to US for sale. In substance, these rumors echoed another issue from the same timeframe regarding the acquisition of Smithfield Foods by a Chinese company, Shuanghui International Holdings, which led to similar claims that U.S.-raised hogs would be shipped to China, slaughtered and packaged for sale there, and sent back to the U.S. Although the August 2013 FSIS report theoretically paved the way for China to process U.S.-raised chickens and ship them back to America, processing giant Tyson Foods told us they are not shipping poultry to China and then re-importing it as claimed in the examples reproduced above: All of the chicken we sell in the U.S. is raised and processed here in the U.S. The posts being shared on social media channels are a hoax. We have no plans to cut jobs or process chicken in China to be returned to the U.S. It’s unclear that such activity is actually taking place at all, even on a small scale, as the economics of shipping animals and processed meat products back and forth across the Pacific are questionable: “To my knowledge,” [FSIS spokeswoman Arianne] Perkins said, “we haven’t received any information from any companies that are interested [in shipping chickens to China for processing].” Tom Super, spokesman for the National Chicken Council, which represents chicken processors in the United States, doesn’t think there will be much demand for overseas processing. “Economically, it doesn’t make much sense,” Super said. “Think about it: A Chinese company would have to purchase frozen chicken in the United States, pay to ship it 7,000 miles, unload it, transport it to a processing plant, unpack it, cut it up, process/cook it, freeze it, repack it, transport it back to a port, then ship it another 7,000 miles. I don’t know how anyone could make a profit doing that.” A likelier scenario is that any chickens exported to China from America would be processed and sold there for domestic consumption (not reshipped to the U.S.), and China’s long-term goal is to export chickens raised and processed there to the U.S.: The notion of sending American chicken to be processed in China and sent back, then, is an interim step in the larger business negotiation. The tempest is just one move in a larger chess game between the two countries, Siegel said. “In 2003, when there was the scare of mad cow disease here, China closed its market to our beef. Ever since, we’ve been pushing to reopen that market, but first they want us to open our market to their chicken — raised and slaughtered in China.”
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10682
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Fewer Colorado women getting mammograms since 2009 guideline change
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The reason for this story is the release of new studies, but readers aren’t told where the studies are presented, where they appear, how anyone can read more about their findings. Inexplicably, the story includes no response from the Task Force itself. So a clear imbalance exists in the story. Indeed, a flip side to the story that there’s a decline in 40-year old women getting mammograms is that this is a good thing. But the story never even hints at that possibility. When given the choice, one of these studies suggests that most women in their 40s continue with mammograms. The shared decision-making angle to the story is missed. Anecdote and emotion, intuition and strongly-held beliefs. That’s what has so often dominated the mammography-in-the-40s debate. This story didn’t delve into the data, and therefore, told only one side of this story.
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false
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"At some point, cost has to enter into this discussion. The story stated two things related to cost: What is that cost? To the insured? To the uninsured? How many women did lose insurance coverage in the time frame in question? The story focused on the alleged harms of the USPSTF mammography guidelines. Any benefits attributed to earlier screening weren’t quantified, and were stated hypothetically. And in so doing, the story overstated the evidence regarding benefits for the studies covered in the piece, particularly the Ohio study, without any quantification. The story didn’t quantify any harms – not those outlined by the USPSTF, nor those hypothesized by the new research reported. It included this quote: ""I think this has caused more damage than good,"" said Michele Ostrander, executive director of the Denver branch of Susan G. Komen for the Cure. But it didn’t quantify what that damage has been. You could also look at these findings from this perspective: that a 15% reduction may be appropriate; most women still got their mammogams and likely still will – so the ""damage"" by letting women make their own decisions doesn’t seem huge."
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11427
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Small scanners find hidden heart disease
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"This story about the use of ultrasound for arterial screening is confusing, thinly reported and potentially misleading. It fails to make a clear distinction between the use of ultrasound as part of conventional diagnostic practice and its more recent, commercial use for screening asymptomatic people. The report suggests that the development of more portable and less expensive devices for conventional use will lead to more widespread use in screening, which is not necessarily the case. It fails to describe existing research on arterial screening. It fails to clarify whether any of the sources has a conflict of interest. A reader who has an elevated risk for heart disease but has no symptoms would not get from this story what he or she needs: A view of what the research shows, and an even-handed assessment about the risks and benefits of screening. The story makes a serious error when it states, ""…because for one-third of heart disease sufferers, the first symptom is dropping dead of a heart attack."" Not only is this an example of disease-mongering, it appears to be a garbling of the more commonly cited American Heart Association statement that ""In 57 percent of men and 64 percent of women who died suddenly of CAD, there were no previous symptoms."""
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false
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The article reports that at a hospital the test costs $295 and from an indepdendent ultrasound technician it costs $180. The article indicates that insurers usually don’t pay for the scans when used for screening purposes. However, the story would have been stronger if it had explored the costs of unnecessary medical procedures and treatments that may be triggered by an inaccurate screen. The article does not cite any research demonstrating the benefits or risks of ultrasound arterial screening–all the supporting comments are anecdotal or are based on broad descriptions of clinical practice. The use of speculative data to illustrate how many people might be over- or under-treated as a result of population screening is very useful. But it does beg the question of what is known about the screen’s accuracy. The article briefly mentions the possible risks of overtreatment but does not detail them. And some, such as unnecessary angiograms or long-term drug therapy that may have side effects and high cost, are considerable. The article also does not mention the risk of stroke or death from surgery, or the risks that a false negative test will discourage a patient from adopting healthy lifestyle changes. The article describes some research currently taking place, but it does not look at existing research into the topic. The article notes that the American Heart Association finds insufficient evidence of benefit to justify a recommendation for screening, but does not follow that up with AHA experts (or experts with the many other groups that do not recommend screening). Based on existing data, the following groups do not recommend routine carotid screening in the general population: the National Stroke Association, the Canadian Stroke Consortium, the American Stroke Association/AHA Stroke Council, the American Society of Neuroimaging and the Society of Vascular and Interventional Neurology. The latter group just published their guideline in 1/07. The article briefly refers to a study that suggested screened patients exercised more regardless of what the ultrasound showed, but does not go into detail. The article’s lede overpromises what this technology may contribute to diagnosing asymptomatic heart disease by screening populations. The article implies that people with carotid disease have coronary heart disease; statistics suggest only 25 to 60 percent do. The article includes the example of a 41-year-old active woman with no risk factors other than family history as having carotid disease. Statistically this is the exception, not the rule. There is no evidence in the story to justify the speculation that arterial ultrasound devices will be as common in doctors’ offices as stethoscopes. The article does not report on possible conflicts of interest that the physicians quoted may have. Because there are clearly financial incentives involved in broader application of ultrasound for screening, the article should have clearly stated whether the researchers had a financial conflict of interest. It should have explored the role the device makers are taking in spreading use of the technology in the absence of evidence of benefit. The article includes anecdotes from two patients, one satisfied and one who is satisified but who has a financial interest in the devices. Adding a patient who had been misdiagnosed with screening would have added balance. The article does not mention other methods of assessing heart disease risk in asymptomatic people. Nor does it mention modifiable and treatable risk factors as an alternative to imaging. The article suggests that different types of arterial ultrasound are available in a variety of ways, from traditional diagnostic procedures ordered by cardiologists to shopping center quick-scans used as screens. It’s not clear, however, how frequently this procedure is used for screening and where it is available for that purpose. Greater availability is predicted but current availability is not specified. A reader interesed in a scan would not be sure, from this article, where to turn. The article does not distinguish clearly between the use of arterial ultrasounds for diagnostic purposes in the ER or in people at high risk for heart disease (which is not novel) and its use for screening a broad population or a self-selected group (which is more novel, though how novel is not made clear). There is no evidence that the article was based on a press release.
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3539
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Pennsylvania reports vaping death, investigating injuries.
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The Pennsylvania Health Department says one person in the state has died from lung injuries associated with vaping and it’s investigating dozens of other suspected or confirmed cases.
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true
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Health, Vaping, General News, Pennsylvania, Injuries
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The state’s health secretary, Dr. Rachel Levine, announced the death Friday and said Pennsylvania has also reported nine confirmed cases to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Health Department reported the death on Thursday to the federal agency. State officials aren’t disclosing publicly any other details about the death, such as where or when it occurred. Pennsylvania is also reporting 12 probable cases of vaping-related injury and looking into 63 other cases. The patients have suffered serious lung injuries and most have required hospitalization. Levine is reiterating a recommendation that people do not vape, particularly products that contain THC.
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9541
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Breathe. Exhale. Repeat: The benefits of controlled breathing
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This election-week story attempts to give readers news you can use: how to calm yourself with deep breathing exercises. However, it overstates the proven benefits of controlled breathing and doesn’t compare it with other stress-busting strategies, such as exercise or talking to a friend. And while some readers may have welcomed some timely stress management advice, there’s really not much news here. Additionally the story includes specific instructions for three breathing techniques, which may be helpful to readers who are curious to try them out immediately. This is not so much a critical appraisal of the techniques as an informational “hey try this” piece. Some stress can be good, motivating us to overcome challenges such as work deadlines. But severe amounts can have health consequences, according to the American Psychological Association, which says untreated chronic stress can result in serious health conditions including anxiety, insomnia, muscle pain, high blood pressure and a weakened immune system as well as contributing to the development of heart disease, depression and obesity. While controlled breathing is an age-old practice, research on the impact of such relaxation techniques is limited, and some studies on have been of poor quality, according to the NIH’s National Center for Complimentary and Integrative Health. Still, it’s not news that relaxation techniques may be helpful in managing a variety of health conditions. If this story had critically compared breathing with other strategies (eg, walking outdoors, imagery, etc) it may have been more impactful for readers.
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false
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breathing,Well blog
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Since deep breathing is free, no discussion of costs is warranted. The story asserts that controlled breathing “has been shown to reduce stress, increase alertness and boost your immune system.” It also states that studies have found breathing practices “can help reduce symptoms associated with anxiety, insomnia, post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and attention deficit disorder.” But none of these purported benefits are quantified in any measurable way–i.e., by how much does it reduce symptoms? And for how long? And the story’s opening line that you will have “calmed your nervous system” by taking just five deep breaths isn’t backed up by evidence. No harms are mentioned. The National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health says relaxation techniques such as deep breathing exercises “are generally considered safe for healthy people, although there have been a few reports of negative experiences such as increased anxiety. People with serious physical or mental health problems should discuss relaxation techniques with their health care providers.” It’s also possible that some people with serious disorders may not seek other proven treatments in the belief that deep breathing will help them. This was a tough call. The story rightly alludes to the need for more research. “How controlled breathing may promote healing remains a source of scientific study,” it says, describing a “theory” that controlled breathing can change the response of the body’s autonomic nervous system, which controls unconscious processes such as heart rate and digestion as well as the body’s stress response. But more skepticism is warranted. For example, when it comes to the description of a “small study” at Boston University of patients with major depressive disorder, who experienced fewer depressive symptoms and increased levels of a brain chemical with calming and anti-anxiety effects after they did 12 weeks of daily yoga and breathing exercises. The story mentions the lack of a control group and plans for a randomized control trial “to further test the intervention,” but nevertheless quotes the researcher’s assertion that the findings “show that a behavioral intervention can have effects of similar magnitude as an antidepressant.” That’s quite a leap. And the story doesn’t challenge an statement by a psychiatry professor who wrote a book about breathing and has a private practice teaching breathing workshops, that he has “seen patients transformed by adopting regular breathing practices.” It should have cautioned on the limitations of such anecdotes and noted that the professor clearly has a strong vested interest in this approach. No disease-mongering here. Stress is ubiquitous as are insomnia, anxiety, and depression. This is the biggest shortcoming of the article: All of those quoted have research and/or books to promote. The story could have used some sources who have a broader view of therapeutic approaches to stress. No mention is made of other approaches to manage stress. Exercise, laughter, social support, meditation and mindful prayer, and stepping away from the problem have all been shown through research to reduce stress, according to the American Psychological Association, which notes that not every strategy works for every person. Availability is not an issue with breathing exercises. As one psychologist and book author quoted in the story says, “Breathing is massively practical.” However, the story misleads readers a bit by implying that the benefits of breathing exercises can be achieved in just a couple of minutes. In fact, proponents espouse at least 20 minutes of controlled breathing on a daily basis, often over several months, to achieve benefits. Deep breathing has been a fixture in the West since the 1970s, when cardiologist Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School published the book, “The Relaxation Response.” It seems like a stretch to say that “science is just beginning to provide evidence that the benefits of this ancient practice are real. The story does not appear to rely on a news release.
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10968
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Rolfing brings woman relief from disorder
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"This was a very flawed story about the use of rolfing – a form of massage therapy – in two patients – one with tardive dyskinesia-dystonia and the other with nerve damage after back surgery. The piece was built mainly on anecdote, with several major shortcomings. Most notably, there was no description of how rolfing is actually done, no evidence to support its use, and no discussion of quantifiable benefit or harm. There was also no unbiased, independent expert interviewed. A rolfing practitioner is interviewed who promotes his practice via the story. The story also includes a link to a website promoting alternative health services. Including at least one unbiased expert would have substantially strengthened the piece, especially a medical practitioner or researcher who did not stand to benefit from rolfing or similar CAM (complementary and alternative) therapies. Better sources of consumer information would have also strengthened the piece (E.g. http://nccam.nih.gov/health/backgrounds/manipulative.htm) The story briefly lists unsuccessful trials of muscle relaxants, pain medications and acupuncture in the case of these patients’ experience with chronic pain and movement conditions. Rolfing is touted as ""life altering"", but both patients still manage chronic pain and movement limitations. While these patients may have found temporary relief via tissue and fascia manipulation, rolfing needs to be placed in the context of evidence-based medical therapies. The story does not list the cost of treatment. This is a great oversight in a story on a complementary therapy, which is typically not covered by health insurance and may need to be part of on-going pain management. While some health insurers may pay a portion of therapeutic massage for some conditions, there are few regulatory bodies that guide pricing for these therapies."
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false
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"The story does not list the cost of treatment. This is a great oversight in a story on a complementary therapy, which is typically not covered by health insurance and may need to be part of on-going pain management. While some health insurers may pay a portion of therapeutic massage for some chronic conditions, there are few regulatory bodies that guide pricing for these therapies. There is no discussion of quantitative evidence that rolfing relieves pain or improves quality of life in people with movement disorders or chronic pain conditions. The story focuses solely on positive anecdotes of pain relief from two patients who sing the praises of their rolfer who promotes his practice via the story. There are few harms with massage treatment, even with deeper massage treatments such as rolfing. However, the story neglects to mention that contraindications for massage include deep vein thrombosis, burns, skin infections, eczema, open wounds, bone fractures, and advanced osteoporosis. Bodywork that involves intensive manipulation or stretching of the deeper layers of body tissue are not suitable for people who have undergone recent surgery or have recently suffered severe injury. In the case of the man who had back surgery, the story could have mentioned that there are some risks associated with manipulation of the spine (though these would be very rare with the force used in deeper massage therapies such as rolfing). Any spinal manipulation (but particularly neck) can be associated with risk in older people. The story provides no evidence from any published literature on rolfing for pain relief, or as a complementary therapy for movement disorders. The story does not mention that most complementary and alternative therapies such as rolfing are unregulated and not covered by health insurers. Also, hyperlinks provided in the story are poor sources for credible health information. Better sources include: http://nccam.nih.gov/ and http://www.parkinson.org/NETCOMMUNITY/Page.aspx?&pid=413&srcid=375 The patient ""horror story"" of developing tardive dyskinesia from antipsychotics is unusual, particularly so severe a case. The story states that the number of people with tardive dyskinesia-dystonia is unknown but then goes on to state that 40 million Americans have general movement disorders. This leaves the impression that massage therapy/rolfing may have benefits for many of these people, which is not proven. The story focuses on two patients who had positive results from rolfing. The story also interviews a rolfing practitioner. The story includes a link to a website promoting alternative health services. Including at least one unbiased, independent expert would have substantially strengthened the piece, especially a medical practitioner who did not stand to benefit from rolfing or similar CAM (complementary and alternative) therapies. A researcher of CAM therapies (perhaps someone listed on the NIH website: http://nccam.nih.gov/health/backgrounds/manipulative.htm) could have provided some balance to the story; this person could have discussed medical therapies typically used in conjunction with mind-body techniques. The story briefly lists unsuccessful trials of muscle relaxants, pain medications and acupuncture in the case of Karen Harkin’s experience with tardive dyskinesia and Wade Penn’s nerve damage. Rolfing is touted as ""life altering"", but both patients still manage chronic pain and movement limitations. While these patients may have found temporary relief via tissue and fascia manipulation, rolfing needs to be placed in the context of evidence-based medical therapies for conditions as serious as tardive dyskinesia. Most patients with this sort of severe tardive dyskinesia-dystonia or related problems would be under the care of a neurologist, where muscle relaxants and other mainstream therapies could be applied. The story does not establish how widely available and accessible are trained rolfers. The story also does not mention the type or duration of training involved to become a certified rolfer. The story could have provided much more information on both points by listing information via the Institute cited in the story: http://www.rolf.org/ The story does not discuss the relatively recent history of rolfing or its role as a complementary therapy in helping people with chronic pain conditions improve their quality of life. We can’t be sure if the story relied solely or largely on a news release."
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11502
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The ABCs of D: Almost everyone needs more of the sunshine vitamin
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"This was an overzealous piece about an important vitamin. A more balanced piece would have included information about possible harms of excess vitamin D intake, and about availability of testing for inadequate vitamin D status. A reference for lists of foods high in vitamin D (available on the NIH website) would have been helpful to the reader. This story never overcame the cheerleading of the lead sentence: """"A single nutrient that keeps bones strong, wards off diabetes, and protects against tuberculosis, cancer, colds, and the flu."" It makes it sound like vitamin D is good for everything under the sun and that there is absolute consensus that people do not have sufficient levels. Indeed – the story states ""there's no evidence of toxicity at much higher doses"" when in fact, in extreme excess, vitamin D can be toxic. The story provides snippets about many studies that have been done to look at the impact of vitamin D on a variety of physiological processes. However, the story fails to describe the nature of the various studies and the quality of the evidence it presented. The story did not provide much practical information on sources of vitamin D or ways to maximize vitamin D that one might obtain from sun exposure. There are many health benefits currently being hypothesized for vitamin D intake and there are ongoing attempts to define adequate levels of intake. The discussion on vitamin D is open ended. But to present these discussions as foregone conclusions is a disservice to the reader."
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false
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"There was no discussion of costs of vitamin D rich foods, vitamin D supplemented foods, or vitamin D containing supplements. Though the story starts with a quip that ""it's free"", this only applies to sunlight. A brief discussion even of the costs of supplements at the doses recommended would have strengthened the story. Adequate intake of vitamin D is necessary for prevention of rickets, a bone-deforming disease. The other benefits postulated in the story included prevention of a wide range of diseases for which there is not conclusive data. The story, however, made it seem like these were a slam dunk. It would have been interesting to quantify – in absolute terms – the benefit of vitamin D on at least one specific disease before and after national supplementation of the milk supply (e.g. the incidence of rickets) and contrast it with the claims being made for vitamin D that aren't well supported by strong data. This story failed to mention that excess vitamin D is stored in the body and that excessive intake can be fatal. The evidence presented as part of this story included a ""landmark study"" having to do with vitamin D and its role in defending the body against tuberculosis, and a ""review of more than 100 studies on vitamin D"" taken to explain vitamin D's role in the seasonality of the flu. The ""landmark study"" was very interesting data on work done in a test tube which may suggest a role for vitamin D deficiency in tuberculosis susceptability. The ""review"" did not contain any actual experimental data but rather was a compilation of associations that present a testable hypothesis. Neither of these published papers actually demonstrate a clear association between vitamin D and diabetes, tuberculosis, cancer, colds, or the flu as suggested in the lead sentence of the story: ""A single nutrient that keeps bones strong, wards off diabetes, and protects against tuberculosis, cancer, colds, and the flu."" Although the primary focus could be characterized as excessive hype about a treatment, the references to avian flu and cancer amounted to disease mongering, especially when it falls under the subheadline of ""Almost Everyone Needs More of the Sunshine Vitamin."" Three researchers with interest in vitamin D were cited as was one researcher who was involved in one of the articles discussed in the story. Although the story made it clear that some scientists believe that the level of vitamin D intake is inadequate, there was no information about how one might determine if one had inadequate levels of vitamin D. The story did not include a very clear picture about what factors affect one's vitamin D status or conditions that might be particularly affected by vitamin D. Most importantly, a brief discussion about the widespread (and reliable) testing available to assess vitamin D status would have been helpful. And lastly – the story was very incomplete about sources of vitamin D if one were interested in increasing one's intake. The story included a statement that ""a mere 10 to 15 minutes outdoors at midday gives the average fair-skinned person 10,000 international units"" which is hyperbole because season and latitude greatly affect the amount of vitamin D synthesis that occurs. Even though the story included a statement about latitude a little later, the first statement is misleading for the reader. The story included mention of food sources for ""relatively modest amounts"" of vitamin D, though that does little to help the reader know how much of the foods would need to be consumed. Although the last sentence of the article listed one mini-meal plan, which, along with supplements would supply the suggested level of Vitamin D, this was an incomplete method of telling readers how to achieve adequate vitamin D intake. The story also failed to mention the effect of sunscreen on vitamin D production by the body. As is clear from the story, the possible benefits of Vitamin D have been discussed and researched within the scientific community for a long time. Does not appear to rely solely or largely on a press release."
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11555
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Egg storage untested as a fertility treatment, experts caution
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This short piece summarizes a new report from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine which urges caution about the practice of freezing of eggs for use in later attempts at in vitro fertilization. The article uses a few facts deftly to describe the efficacy of the treatment. It indicates which women are unlikely to be good candidates for the procedure, and which smaller group–for instance women with cancer whose subsequent treatments could leave them infertile–may be better candidates. The article’s main shortcoming is its failure to quote a fertility expert who endorses this use of the treatment. Even a very short article needs to balance a powerful group’s opinions with those of an informed source who disagrees.
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true
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"The article states clearly that the procedure costs around $10,000. It would have been useful to add whether this includes the cost of multiple cycles of ovarian stimulation, which are often required. The article states that freezing an egg results in a pregnancy only 2 to 4 percent of the time, compared to 25 to 43 percent for typical in vitro fertilization. The article makes clear the procedure is invasive. It would have been useful to specify whether the invasive technique of extracting the eggs can lead to future difficulties with natural pregnancy, serious disability or death. It would have been useful to add that ovulation induction itself carries some risk and may need to be done multiple times. Since the report is a summary of an expert panel’s statement, it does not face the same obligations to describe medical evidence as a story based on a study. Nonetheless, the article usefully includes data drawn from the expert statement about the chances of getting pregnant with the egg-freezing method compared to typical fertility treatments. The article does not exaggerate the emotional consequences of infertility or childlessness. The article draws data from the report–on the likelihood of pregnancy from freezing eggs compared to fresh eggs and the number of births that have resulted from the procedure. But it would have been useful to add the phrase ""according to the report,"" to improve transparency. Quoting the head of the team that issued the report is necessary but not sufficient. Even in such a short piece, a brief statement from a practioner of the technique is required for balance. The article makes clear that typical IVF using freshly harvested eggs is the main option for women seeking to get pregnant with medical assistance. The article does not state whether egg freezing is available from all, most or just a few fertility treatment centers. It states only that ""many fertility clinics"" make claims about the effectiveness of egg freezing. The article makes no claims that egg freezing is novel–the implication is that ""rainy day"" use of the technique is still fairly rare, but growing and increasingly promoted. It seems that the story may have been triggered by the press release from the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. But it does not quote the release, and it adds additional reporting."
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39660
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Reports have gone viral that a scientist from Johns Hopkins University said flu vaccines aren’t as effective as once thought and that studies used to promote widespread vaccines are often low quality.
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Johns Hopkins Scientist Questions Flu Vaccine – Authorship Confirmed!
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true
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Medical
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It’s true that a former post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University questioned the safety and effectiveness of flu vaccines in a scholarly article, but that view isn’t widely accepted in the epidemiology field. Peter Doshi was a post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine when he published an article in the British Medical Journal in May 2013 titled “Influenza: Marketing Vaccine by Marketing Disease.” Doshi argued in the article that flu vaccines could be less beneficial and less safe than once believed, and that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has overstated the threat of influenza. After his fellowship ended, Doshi became an assistant professor of pharmaceutical health services at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, according to the school’s website. Doshi’s article gained widespread attention when the website Newsmax Health reported on it in May 2013. Still, Doshi’s views are not widely accepted in the epidemiology field. In fact, Johns Hopkins University requires that its medical staff receive flu vaccinations each fall. The school’s website says the policy is for “the safety of our patients, trainees, staff, faculty, physicians and students.” Posted 10/23/14 Comments
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10462
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Study shows value of quality-of-life cancer care
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The story was marred, however, by a failure to discuss any limitations of the research or to properly quantify the benefits. In addition, its sourcing included only experts likely to hold a favorable view of palliative medicine. We cannot tackle the health care crisis without looking at the costs of care at the end of life. Medicare spends about $50 billion dollars per year on care during the last two months of life. Decreasing the suffering and improving the quality of life of people with advanced illness (lung cancer in this case) is an important goal in and of itself – and argues for the need to improve the quality of cancer care to address these issues.
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true
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"While it could have been more detailed about the actual numbers involved, this story explained that the cost of palliative care is currently comprised primarily of fees for doctor visits. It could have noted that this is the only component of palliative care that is billable currently, and that other members of the interdisciplinary care team usually cannot bill, so the cost of their salaries/time is usually borne by the institution. This story is also the only one of the four we reviewed to directly explain that palliative care might reduce overall health care costs by reducing hospital stays, emergency treatments, and futile end-of-life care. Far from ideal, but a borderline satisfactory in our view. None of the other stories we reviewed even came close to matching this. Although the description of the survival benefit was accurate and other important outcomes were at least mentioned, the story provides relative — not absolute — differences in its reporting on depression scores. It notes that depression ""was less than half as common in the palliative care group"" compared with the standard care group. So to readers this could mean that depression was found in 2% vs. less than 1% of patients in the standard and palliative care groups — a trivial difference. As it turns out, depression was found in 38% of standard care patients vs. 16% of palliative care patients, which is a very robust finding. Providing the absolute numbers to readers would have allowed them to judge the importance of this finding for themselves. As with the competing coverage, we’ll rule this one not applicable since the harms of palliative care are thought to be minimal. On the positive side, this story did a good job of describing the experiment and its outcomes and explained that the study is ""one of the best tests yet of palliative care"" — which it is. However, this story, like much of the competing coverage, failed to make note of any limitations in the research. We especially think it should have challenged the assertion, made by an editorialist, that ""palliative care should be a routine part of managing any serious illness."" We think it’s a stretch to draw that conclusion considering the limited evidence we have to support it so far. Soliciting a comment from someone outside the field of palliative medicine (a point addressed below under ""Sources"") may have yielded a counterpoint to this argument. No disease-mongering here. The story included multiple interviews with investigators and other experts and satisfies the criterion. However, we should point out that all of these sources could be loosely described as boosters for this particular study or palliative medicine in general. Two of the experts are the current and former presidents of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine–a professional group that obviously supports increased awareness and use of palliative care. The editorialists quoted are affiliated with the department of palliative medicine at a major medical center. This reporter clearly was not afraid to pick up the phone and talk to people–an instinct which we applaud. But we wish she had spoken to someone — an oncologist, surgeon or geriatrician outside of the palliative care field–more likely to provide a different, perhaps more cautious, perspective on the results. As noted in the competing reviews, the point of the study was to compare early palliative care with existing standard cancer treatment. However, the story could have provided more detail on the existing alternative – ""standard of care"" oncology care – which many have thought to be ""state of the art"". This story didn’t mention any of the barriers patients may face in obtaining access to palliative treatments–especially the specific type of care offered in this study. While there is a significant number of larger hospitals that offer inpatient palliative care consultation or services, many fewer offer outpatient palliative care services, which was the intervention in this study. Such an article may encourage cancer centers to initiate such services, but they do not often currently exist. This story did a good job of describing the palliative care offered in this study and how it differed from ""comfort care"" offered in the last few months of life. It accurately portrayed the novelty of the research. It is clear that this story didn’t rely on a press release."
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17677
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In Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire has a Senator who was the deciding vote to pass Obamacare.
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"Rubens said Shaheen was ""the deciding vote to pass Obamacare."" It’s true that all 60 Democratic votes -- including Shaheen’s -- were needed to pass the measure through the Senate. However, Shaheen, unlike Ben Nelson, was hardly a holdout until the last minute; she gave indications early on that she supported the president’s reform plan."
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false
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New Hampshire, Health Care, Voting Record, Jim Rubens,
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"With glitches continuing to hamper the federal health care website that went live in October 2013, a group of Senate Democrats is asking the White House to extend the open enrollment period for people to buy coverage. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., and nine others say individuals shouldn’t be penalized for lack of coverage if they can’t get health insurance through the new website, healthcare.gov. They want to push back the March 31, 2014 enrollment deadline to compensate for the technical problems. ""Extending this period will give consumers critical time in which to become familiar with the website and choose a plan that is best for them,"" the senators wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. With Shaheen emerging as a leading voice in favor of extending the enrollment period, her opponents in New Hampshire are seizing the opportunity to remind voters that Shaheen was one of the Democrats who helped usher in the president’s health reform law in 2010. ""In Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire has a Senator who was the deciding vote to pass Obamacare,"" wrote Republican Jim Rubens, who plans to challenge Shaheen next year, in a Nov. 4, 2013 email. New Hampshire GOP Chairwoman Jennifer Horn offered the same criticism. She said Shaheen’s call to extend the enrollment period is ""too little, too late"" and does nothing to address the ""burdensome tax increases that Granite Staters will face as a result of the individual mandate."" ""Senator Jeanne Shaheen was the deciding vote in favor of ObamaCare, and she is the reason why New Hampshire families are dealing with disastrous consequences of this awful law,"" Horn said. It’s true that Shaheen voted to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. But was she really the ""deciding vote"" in favor of the law? PolitiFact has seen numerous politicians called ""the deciding vote"" for Obamacare in the past. In Florida, a campaign ad from the 60 Plus Association attacked Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson for being ""the deciding vote"" for Obamacare. It was ruled . PolitiFact Wisconsin looked at campaign literature from Republican Senate candidate Ron Johnson that claimed Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold ""cast the deciding vote"" for the health care bill in 2009. The claim earned a rating of . In Michigan, a Republican committee said it was Sen. Debbie Stabenow. Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey and Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill have also been credited with casting the ""deciding vote."" The claims reflect the gamesmanship that every incumbent faces when opponents take a look at the voting record. Rather than just say the senator voted for a bill, the attackers up the ante by declaring it was the single vote that made the difference. In the case of the health care law, there’s a sliver of truth. All of the Democratic senators were needed to pass the bill. One of the key votes happened on Dec. 24, 2009, when 58 Democrats and two independents voted together in favor of the bill. (Sixty votes were needed for a preliminary cloture vote to prevent filibusters; otherwise the final vote couldn’t happen and the bill would have been blocked.) ""Any one of those 60 Democrats who voted for it in the U.S. Senate, had they voted no, it would not have passed,"" Rubens said in an interview. ""So any one of those 60 would have been the deciding vote."" However, PolitiFact has been unsympathetic to that argument in the past, since calling someone ""the deciding vote"" implies he or she played a pivotal role, such as withholding support until the last moment. When it comes to the health care law, Shaheen wasn’t a holdout. If any Democratic senator deserves the distinction of clearing the way for the health reform law, it was then-Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. As was widely reported at the time, Nelson delivered the 60th vote needed to send the bill to the floor of the Senate for a vote. Shaheen’s staff provided a few examples of her public comments in support of health care reform before the vote. ""The status quo is simply not sustainable,"" Shaheen said on Sept. 23, 2009. ""Now is the time to act."" She repeated her call for health reform in floor speeches on Oct. 1, Dec. 7 and Dec. 14, 2009, saying the bill will begin to address soaring health care costs. Shaheen said years of ""perverse incentives"" have encouraged doctors to do more procedures rather than practice better medicine, and that the bill will shift the industry away from the fee-for-service model. ""The many programs supported in the bill before us move us in the direction of delivery system reform, which is so important to our effort,"" Shaheen said on Dec. 15. ""By promoting innovative practices like accountable care organizations, payment reform and medical homes, we can move away from the current fee-for-service system that rewards volume over value."" As the horse-trading that produced the final Senate bill was underway, there was one brief period of tension between Shaheen and some members of the Democratic leadership. Shaheen signed a Dec. 11 letter to Senate President Harry Reid imploring him to reject a proposal to allow people to buy into Medicare at age 55. That notion was floated while negotiations were underway about including a public option in the health reform plan. But Shaheen and 11 other Senate Democrats said expanding the Medicare pool without changing reimbursement rates would exacerbate existing funding inequities in their states. The provision was dropped from the final health reform bill that passed the Senate at the end of 2009. Our ruling Rubens said Shaheen was ""the deciding vote to pass Obamacare."" It’s true that all 60 Democratic votes -- including Shaheen’s -- were needed to pass the measure through the Senate. However, Shaheen, unlike Ben Nelson, was hardly a holdout until the last minute; she gave indications early on that she supported the president’s reform plan."
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26156
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In voting by mail, “hundreds of thousands of ballots have been rejected for defects and millions more end up missing or in landfills.”
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A conservative legal group’s report said that during the past four general elections, about 28 million ballots were recorded by the government as “unknown” after they were mailed. These included ballots that were not returned by the voter, spoiled, returned as undeliverable, or otherwise unable to be tracked. Experts said it’s wrong to categorize these as “missing.” Some ballots are rejected for missing or mismatched signatures, or for arriving too late, but they represent a small proportion of ballots issued.
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false
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Elections, Coronavirus, J. Christian Adams,
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"The coronavirus pandemic has escalated the political battle over efforts to expand voting by mail, with the White House, Congress and local election officials feuding over whether to make it easier to cast ballots from home this year. A June 3 House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on protecting the right to vote amid the pandemic illustrated the divide — and turned up some questionable claims. Voting rights advocates on the left, including former Georgia lawmaker Stacey Abrams, argued that Americans need more access to voting by mail. Advocates said there has been scant voter fraud in the past, and polls show most Americans support voting by mail. Conservative legal activists, including J. Christian Adams, said that voting by mail has been problematic. Adams, who served on President Donald Trump’s defunct voter integrity commission, is president and general counsel of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, which has filed lawsuits seeking to get jurisdictions to keep voter rolls up to date or to oppose expansions of voting by mail. ""We found numerous failures in election administration, and we know from federal data that voting by mail is the most vulnerable form of voting, where hundreds of thousands of ballots have been rejected for defects and millions more end up missing or in landfills,"" Adams testified. The mailed ballots rejected for defects — sometimes as part of safeguards against voter fraud — represent a small percentage of the votes cast over four general elections. And Adams' statement that millions of ballots end up ""missing or in landfills"" is misleading. Using U.S. Election Assistance Commission survey data, the foundation said that about 146 million ballots were mailed out to voters. Of those, 28 million ballots were ""not returned by voter, spoiled, returned as undeliverable, or otherwise unable to be tracked."" The federal commission refers to these ballots as ""unknown,"" not ""missing."" Those ballots ""represent 28 million opportunities for someone to cheat,"" Adams wrote. But experts say that’s a mischaracterization of what’s generally happening with these ballots. It’s more accurate to refer to them as uncast or unreturned. ""The vast majority are sitting on kitchen counters or put in the trash or recycling because individuals who received them did not end up casting votes,"" said Barry Burden, a University of Wisconsin political scientist. There are a few reasons why someone may receive an absentee ballot and then not use it. First, millions of these ballots are in the states of Colorado, Oregon and Washington that mail ballots to every active voter. Just as many voters don’t show up in person to vote, many voters in those states skip voting even when they are sent a ballot at home. For voters in other states, some were on ongoing lists to get absentee ballots for every election cycle, and may not have been engaged in a particular one. Even among voters who requested a ballot for that particular election, there are those who, for whatever reason, ultimately didn’t vote. ""Conflating voters choosing not to cast their ballot with ‘missing’ ballots is a fundamental flaw in the argument"" against voting by mail, wrote Vote at Home CEO Amber McReynolds, formerly Denver’s head of elections. Adams’ spokesman told us that the comments about landfills refers to a statement by Paul Gronke, a Reed College political science professor and director of the Early Voting Information Center. ""Election officials ‘know’ what happened to those ballots,"" Gronke told ProPublica. ""They were received by eligible citizens and not filled out. Where are they now? Most likely, in landfills."" Gronke told us that his words were being misinterpreted to suggest something nefarious. ""These ballots were not returned,"" he said. ""They are not ‘missing.’ These are ballots that are not voted, and most likely, are simply discarded with the trash or paper recycling. That was the source of my somewhat tongue-in-cheek comment about a landfill."" We sent Adams a summary of what experts said to dispute the characterization of these ballots as ""missing."" Adams defended his use of the word to describe ballots that are essentially unaccounted for. ""They are missing because nobody knows where they are,"" he said. ""They might be in landfills. They might be in the woods. They might be in a trunk."" Adams’ group said that during the four most recent general elections, about 1.3 million ballots were rejected upon receipt out of about 146 million ballots, which works out to about 1 percent. Federal data shows that rejected absentee ballots are a small subset. In 2016, about 1% of absentee ballots were rejected, most commonly for missing or mismatched signatures, or for arriving after the deadline. Signature checks are one of the ways election officials try to safeguard against absentee voter fraud, but they can also trip up voters who simply forgot to sign their ballots, or whose signatures have varied over time. ""If you talk to election officials, they’ll tell you that signature problems are almost all due to current signatures not matching what’s on file, not due to people fraudulently voting for others,"" MIT political science professor Charles Stewart said. Rejected ballots can make a difference in an extremely close election, such as Minnesota’s 2008 U.S. Senate election between then incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken. The outcome of that election was tied up in eight months of litigation over absentee ballots that had been initially rejected because of errors by would-be voters hoping to participate in the election, said Ed Foley, an election law expert at Ohio State University. ""Obviously, that’s an unusual case, but it is one example (among others) that shows that absentee ballots are generally more vulnerable to disputation than in-person ballots,"" he said. Adams said in voting by mail ""hundreds of thousands of ballots have been rejected for defects and millions more end up missing or in landfills."" Adams was referring to the outcome of mailed ballots during the past four general elections. Mail-in ballots rejected for defects represent a very small share of the ballots issued, about 1 percent. Adams’ claim that ""millions more end up missing or in a landfill"" is misleading in implying that they were mishandled. He is referring to ballots that were mailed to voters and then ultimately ended up in a category that the federal government calls ""unknown."" Election experts said it’s wrong to call these ballots missing — they represent voters who ultimately didn’t cast a ballot. This claim has an element of truth, but leaves out important context that could give a different impression.ostly False."
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41717
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The government is putting 20,000 more police on the streets.
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The government has committed to do this. If this happens it will take the number of police in England and Wales to almost, but not quite the same level as it was at in 2010.
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true
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health
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There will be 50,000 more nurses going into the NHS. The government has committed to do this by 2024/25. Not all of these nurses will be ‘new’. The government have announced the end of hospital parking charges for patients. In December it was announced that hospitals in England will have to provide free car parking to frequent hospital visitors, blue badge holders and at certain times to staff and parents of child patients. The government will build 40 new hospitals. Six hospitals in England are getting the money to upgrade their buildings within the next five years. Up to 38 hospitals are getting money to develop plans for their hospitals between 2025 and 2030, but not to actually begin any building work. The government is putting 20,000 more police on the streets. The government has committed to do this. If this happens it will take the number of police in England and Wales to almost, but not quite the same level as it was at in 2010. The government gave the police much more use of Tasers to help deal with street crime. The Home Office announced police in England and Wales can bid for part of a fund to equip their force with more Tasers. Final funding allocations will be announced in February. The government are lifting the living wage by the biggest ever amount, up to £8.72, and it will go up to £10.50. The national living wage set by the government is set to rise to £8.72 in April, the largest rise since it was put in place in 2016. It was also announced at last year’s Conservative party conference that it would rise to £10.50 within the next five years. Claim 1 of 7
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36043
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Actor Lucy Liu is also a world renowned artist known for her lesbian paintings under the pseudonym Yu Ling, which is her Chinese name.
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Is Lucy Liu an Acclaimed Artist Known for Her Lesbian Paintings Under the Pseudonym Yu Ling?
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mixture
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Fact Checks, Viral Content
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On November 5 2019, a Facebook user shared the following post about actor Lucy Liu, indicating they were “today years old” when they discovered Liu was an accomplished artist under a pseudonym (“Yu Ling”) in addition to her acting credits:Alongside photographs of various works, Liu, and Liu posing with paintings, the user wrote:I was today years old when I found out Lucy Lui [sic] is a world renowned artist known for her lesbian paintings under the pseudonym Yu Ling (which is her Chinese name) and I have no idea what to do with this information.The “today years old” text meme is common on social media as a shorthand way of presenting information intended to be surprising or otherwise novel to fellow readers. In this instance, the interesting claim hinged on Liu — known for starring in films — somewhat secretly held down a successful career in the art world as well.A day after the claim was shared to Facebook, it appeared on Reddit’s r/todayilearned. However, the post was removed and tagged “not supported,” and users asserted the post had a “shitty clickbait title”:TIL Lucy Liu is a world renowned artist known for her lesbian paintings under the name Yu Ling from todayilearnedLucy Liu’s IMDb bio cited a birthplace (Queens, New York) and a full name of “Lucy Alexis Liu.” On Wikipedia, a section of Liu’s page stated that in her career as an artist she “previously presented her artwork under a pseudonym, Yu Ling (which is her Chinese name. )”On November 5 2019, TheCut.com published an item titled “Did You Know Lucy Liu Creates Beautiful Erotic Paintings?” The piece asserted Liu is a “visual artist who paints (among other things) lesbians entwined in bed,” but added that “she’s been showing work in private and public art shows since 1993.” A January 2019 article on Artnet.com indicated Liu had a show in Los Angeles as far back as 1993:Liu’s Twitter feed over the years shows her trying her hand at everything from printmaking to sculpture, and looking effortlessly artsy in paint-splattered jeans in film clips for Hunger magazine and the Guggenheim’s studio sessions. And unlike some other celebs who only take up a paintbrush between seasons or tours, Liu has an impressive resume that includes shows at Cast Iron Gallery back in 1993, LA’s Purple Gallery in 1997, and two years studying art at the New York Studio School, from 2004 to 2006.In that reporting, the site referenced a show in which Liu’s work appeared:The show also includes a dual-sided photo-collage, titled Velocity, that Liu made in response to the September 11 attacks. The artist took the photographs of the New York City skyline from Battery Park, a reference to the physical site of the attacks, while the collaged fabric and skeins of paint grafted over top allude more to the emotional and psychological effects. A tightly bound string on the back of the canvas holds several objects in place—a reference to Congolese symbolic traditions and Japanese “wish trees.”Also in January 2019, Artsy.net’s “Lucy Liu’s Longtime but Little-Known Art Practice Is Deeply Moving” reported:Liu’s interest in art began at the age of 15, and she has been showing her works in solo and group shows in the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Canada since 1993. Working out of a studio in New York, she now dabbles across various media, including ink drawings, paintings, silkscreens, and collages. However, most of Liu’s works involve discarded objects that she collects and transforms into emotionally resonant, intensely personal artifacts. [In January 2019], a selection of Liu’s works from 2001 to the present are on display in Singapore as part of “Unhomed Belongings,” an exhibition described as a “visual dialogue” between Liu and established Indian artist Shubigi Rao. The show is presented at the National Museum of Singapore by the Ryan Foundation, a private nonprofit run by Singaporean art collector Ryan Su.It is not uncommon for coverage of Liu’s art career to make mention of the author’s new discovery involving Liu’s art. But Liu’s art career has never been a deep secret; in October 2011, The Guardian interviewed Liu on the subject of her art. In that piece, she described herself as always having been an artist:“I have been known to dumpster-dive,” says Lucy Liu. “If I see something really fascinating and warped or distorted, like a piece of metal, I’ll jump over and grab it and create something from it.” Liu is talking about the roots of an artistic urge that began in the wastelands of Queens, New York, where she grew up. “There was something very warm about sitting in this environment of junk and rubble and discarded things, lost things. I had such a feeling of being at home.”This dumpster-diving “Lucy from the block” image is difficult to square with the elegantly attired woman curled up on a chair in front of me at Salon Vert … Liu has always been an artist, she explains. Even while she was shooting movies, she would be drawing or sewing in her trailer. But seven years ago, she scratched her art itch more seriously by moving back to New York, buying a live-in studio, and enrolling at the New York Studio School. “I realised it was something I needed to do,” she says. “It was important for me to go in that direction for my own sanity. So I went for the summer and I just realised, ‘Oh my God. There’s so much here that I need to explore. '”That story reported that Liu had previously exhibited her work under the name Liu Yu-Ling, and her use of “Lucy Liu” in relation to her art was still novel at that point:Although this [2011 exhibit] isn’t her first show, it is the first time she has exhibited under her own name, having previously used her Chinese one, Liu Yu-ling. “If I see something when I’m travelling,” she says, “or if I come upon something and I don’t understand it, I want to know more about it. I have to do something with it. Otherwise, it’s like rehearsing something but never actually performing it. You just feel like you’re going to explode.”As early as 2010, blog posts and art auction news about Liu’s work appeared. News about the sale of her painting Forever Goodbye (showing two people in an embrace) noted that Liu had used the pseudonym to ensure her work was evaluated on its merits rather than her fame:Forever Goodbye, created under the pseudonym Yu Ling, is a large acrylic work by actress and painter Lucy Liu (estimate: $25,000-$30,000). Liu, whose work is represented by the Eli Klein Gallery located in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, adopted the alternate handle in order to gain distinction as an artist through her ability rather than rely on her celebrity status.In 2013 (updated in 2015), WNYC profiled Liu’s art career, in part describing her works and noting that her decision to use her known name was relatively recent:While becoming a movie star, Liu seriously pursued painting, often bringing paints and canvases to her trailer. Liu’s paintings range from figurative to abstract, but she only recently embraced Chinese imagery in her work. A recent book of her work, “Seventy Two” bears the name Lucy Liu, rather than Yu Ling. “People are going to criticize whether you use your name or not,” she says. “I decided to embrace it fully and just go for it.”None of the works showcased in the WNYC piece were “lesbian paintings,” and all were abstract with no figures represented of any sexual orientation. A 2013 Huffington Post profile again noted Liu’s decision to use her known name, but did not characterize her work as overly erotic:“You see her complex, personal canvases — hand-stitched and stuck with funny little found objects, pieces of rubbish she has collected for years, orphaned pebbles and broken bits of butterfly wing,” wrote Hermione Eyre in the The Evening Standard about her 2011 exhibition in London. “And you see that she has poured her heart and soul and years of her life into this art, and you can’t be jaded about it.”… [Liu] confessed she was anxious about exposing her art in public, perhaps explaining why it took her the best part of 20 years to do so. “It’s time to take the bulletproof vest off,” she said. “I always thought, ‘If people think I’m a bitch, that’s fine for Ally McBeal or for chopping people’s heads off [in Kill Bill] or whatever.’ It’s easy to let people believe you are what you represent.“But it’s harder to show people who you really are. At first I was afraid of allowing people in who are not close friends and family. But then I realised that people are always making judgements about what I’m wearing or who I’m with, so why not allow them to see something that’s a real part of me?”Lucy Liu’s official website hosted many images of her years’ worth of work, pieces that made occasional appearances on the actor’s Instagram account. Around the opening of her January 2019 exhibition, she shared an image posing alongside some of her art (which was again largely abstract in nature):In Singapore? Come see my art at my 1st museum show! @Natmuseum_sg #theryanfoundation #unhomedbelongingsA post shared by Lucy Liu (@lucyliu) on Jan 9, 2019 at 7:45pm PSTOne collection on Liu’s site (“Shunga“) featured some art which was erotic. Mouseover text explained:The Japanese term shunga refers to a form of erotic art that is customarily depicted in ukiyo-e, or Japanese woodblock, imagery. It was especially popular in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries as an instructional tool for an ideally balanced life. Liu became intrigued by the overt sexual content of shunga. She found it to be a stark contrast to her own cultural upbringing, in which she was treated as a closely guarded secret. Departing from shunga’s origins as precision rendered in a small print medium, Liu created a series of paintings in an exaggerated, large scale, in which the subject is made blatant and undeniable in proportion to its status as a taboo topic during her adolescence. Liu made the paintings by stapling canvas and applied colorful paints in thick, loose, broad strokes-a process that Liu found as liberating as the subject matter of shunga itself.In November 2019, a popular Facebook post claimed that actor Lucy Liu “is a world renowned artist known for her lesbian paintings under the pseudonym Yu Ling,” which is partly accurate. Liu is a well-regarded and active artist in addition to her film career, and up until 2010 or 2011, she exhibited under the name Liu Yu-Ling to ensure any accolades came regardless of her celebrity. Liu has a small collection of works that are erotic in nature, based on an historic Japanese tradition of art. Most of Liu’s work appeared to be not “erotic” in nature, with many abstract pieces. Although it is fair to say Liu was an acclaimed artist, reducing her decades of work to “lesbian paintings” was inaccurate and sensationalist, and Liu stopped exhibiting under a pseudonym nearly a decade before the post appeared.
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5653
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Rabies found in steer in Larimer County.
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Officials say a steer in northeast Colorado has contracted rabies.
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true
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Animals, Colorado, Rabies, Health, Loveland
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The Loveland Reporter-Herald reports that Larimer County Department of Health and Environment announced it is the first confirmed case of rabies in a mammal other than a skunk this year. Rabies is most common in skunks and bats but will occasionally cross over into other species. So far this year, Larimer County has the highest confirmed rabies infections in animals across the state with 26 skunks confirmed with rabies. Health officials remind residents to have their animals, including livestock, vaccinated by a licensed veterinarian. This can prevent the spread of the infection to other animals and to humans and can prevent lengthy and costly quarantines if livestock or a pet encounters a rabid animal. ___ Information from: Loveland Daily Reporter-Herald, http://www.reporterherald.com/
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1941
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More U.S. doctors facing charges over drug abuse.
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Michael Jackson’s doctor, accused of killing the pop star with a powerful anesthetic, has joined a small but growing number of U.S. physicians facing criminal charges over their handling of prescription drugs.
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true
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Health News
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A bottle of prescription medication rests on a counter at a pharmacy in New York December 23, 2009. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson Medical negligence cases in the United States are typically handled in civil court, with the victim or victim’s family seeking money damages from the doctor. In the case of Jackson’s doctor, Conrad Murray, prosecutors allege his negligence was so extreme that he should be charged with involuntary manslaughter and punished with prison time. Fatal overdoses from prescription painkillers more than tripled to 13,800 in the United States in 1999 through 2006, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Consequently, more doctors are finding themselves in the sights of prosecutors as states like Florida and Georgia confront the growth in abuse of prescription drugs. The prosecution of doctors is seen as more effective than bringing cases against their patients. There were just over two dozen reported criminal cases against doctors for malpractice in the two decades from 1981 to 2001, according to Westlaw research by James Filkins, a doctor and lawyer who has written about the criminal prosecution of physicians. Replicating Filkins’ research, Reuters tallied around 37 reported criminal cases in the decade from 2001 to 2011, with most recent cases against doctors for over-prescribing painkillers and other controlled substances. U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration information suggests a similar trend. For 2003, the agency reported 15 physician arrests that resulted in convictions. By 2008, the most recent year with comprehensive data, the number had grown to 43. While the number of criminal malpractice cases is not large, the American Medical Association has cautioned that the trend has interfered with the practice of medicine. Civil prosecutions for monetary damages were sufficient to hold doctors accountable, the organization said. In 1995, the group adopted a resolution opposing the “attempted criminalization of health care decision-making especially as represented by the current trend toward the criminalization of malpractice.” The trend is, in part, due to an expansion in white-collar criminal law and drug control laws to include unintentional violations by doctors, said Diane Hoffmann, a law professor at the University of Maryland School of Law. Many recent cases have been brought under the Controlled Substances Act, enacted in 1970, and similar state laws. To establish guilt under the act, the prosecution must prove the physician knowingly and intentionally prescribed the medication outside “the usual course of professional practice” or not for a “legitimate medical purpose.” Prosecutors faced this question in the much-publicized case against Anna Nicole Smith’s physician, Sandeep Kapoor, on charges of violating the controlled substances law. The case hinged on whether Kapoor believed in good faith there was a medical purpose for providing the celebrity with an array of prescription drugs that led to her overdose and death in 2007, according to his lawyer Ellyn Garofalo. The jury acquitted Kapoor last year. In the Michael Jackson case, California prosecutors are not charging Murray with violating a controlled substances law. Propofol, the anesthetic Murray is accused of giving to Jackson, is not a controlled substance. The drug, administered intravenously, is used to induce anesthesia and has rarely been abused as a narcotic. Prosecutors instead allege Murray breached the standard of care when he administered the anesthetic to Jackson at home and that his gross negligence caused the singer’s death at age 50. Murray faces up to four years in prison if convicted. Murray also faces a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Jackson’s father. The legal standards in civil and criminal negligence cases are similar. Jackson’s family and prosecutors must prove Murray deviated from accepted medical practices, although the standard for a criminal conviction is “much greater” than for civil cases, said attorney Ed Chernoff, who represents Murray. Chernoff declined to discuss the Murray case specifically. Observers said one tactic he might take is to argue Jackson was addicted to sedatives and painkillers and could have given himself the fatal dose of propofol when Murray was out of the room. Prosecutors will have to prove Murray’s conduct actually caused Jackson’s death. Florida, which has a reputation as the “epicenter” of prescription drug abuse according to state Attorney General Pam Bondi, has indicted dozens of doctors and clinic operators for unnecessarily prescribing pills. The Drug Enforcement Administration says 28 of its 226 successful convictions of doctors — around 12 percent — were in Florida. Bondi and the state’s governor have launched a strike force to address the problem and, under a new law, Florida doctors generally can no longer dispense pills at clinics. “Our marching orders are that we will not turn down a pill case coming into this office,” said state prosecutor Nick Cox. It is more efficient to pursue the source of the pills — the prescribing doctors — than patients abusing the drugs, he said. Critics say the scorched earth assault glosses over tough questions doctors face, especially physicians who treat patients with chronic pain. Because pain is subjective, doctors must rely on the accounts of patients who are sometimes addicted and seeking drugs. “Doctors are not supposed to be law enforcement agents. They’re supposed to believe their patients,” said Hoffmann, the law professor. Murray’s lawyer Chernoff said it is a mistake to prosecute doctors who are not running pill mills but legitimately trying to help their patients. He blames the trend for having a “chilling effect” on the medical profession as doctors change treatment plans out of fear of facing time in prison.
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8297
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Australia to retain coronavirus curbs for at least another four weeks.
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Australia will retain curbs on public movement for at least four more weeks, Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Thursday, dashing speculation the sustained low growth in new cases could spur a quicker return to normal.
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true
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Health News
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Australia has avoided the high numbers of coronavirus casualties reported in other countries around the world after closing its borders and imposing strict “social distancing” measures for the past month. Restaurants, bars and other “non-essential” businesses have closed and public gatherings of more than two people have been banned under the threat of fines and even prison - measures that are expected to double the unemployment rate by mid-year. In response, the daily growth rate of reported new infections has steadied in the low percentage single digits, from about 25% several weeks ago, for a total of about 6,500 infections, including 63 deaths. Still, Morrison said the rules would not be relaxed until national testing capacity has been increased, contact tracing of known COVID-19 cases expanded and a response to any future outbreak fully prepared. “We want to be very clear with Australians, baseline restrictions we have in place at the moment, there are no plans to change those for the next four weeks,” Morrison told reporters. Morrison later told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that coronavirus testing may be expanded to include random sampling. An eventual staggered relaxation on restrictions was likely, he said, with curbs on manufacturing and retail industries being eased first. Morrison has in recent days pushed state and territory leaders to re-open schools. Morrison has cited medical advice that children carry a low risk of transmitting the virus as he advocated for the re-opening schools to help boost the economy, which is headed for its first recession in three decades.. However, some leaders of the eight states and territories - which administer schools - have departed from that policy and ordered schools to remain shut to all but the children of “essential” workers, including those in the health and grocery sectors. In Victoria, the second most populous state where officials have told parents to keep children at home if possible, just 3% of children attended school on Tuesday, the first day after the Easter break. Students in other states and territories remain on mid-term vacation. An agreement on the issue was not reached at a meeting on Thursday of the national cabinet, made up of state and federal leaders, formed to tackle the crisis. Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said Australia’s choice of a “suppression” strategy, as opposed to a full shutdown of public life as adopted by neighbour New Zealand, could free the country of the virus without hefty economic penalties. “We don’t feel the need to hold the country very seriously in lockdown until we have no cases,” Murphy said. “If that happens with the measures we are doing now, that would be fantastic.” In Sydney, police entered the Villawood immigration detention centre to end rooftop and hunger strike protests begun by some refugee inmates on Saturday. Three detainees who refused to come down from the roof were arrested and taken into custody. Detainees were angry the government has refused pleas to release them from the centre amid the health crisis and denied them testing. While some countries have released some non-violent detainees from prisons and detention centres, Australia has so far refused to do so. (This story was refiled to fix “contract” to “contact” in paragraph 5)
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10996
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FDA Approves Krystexxa to Treat Gout
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"There are several ways to cover FDA approval of a new drug. You could take the FDA approval itself as gospel and/or take the word of the manufacturer as gospel. Or you could do independent vetting of the claims and seek independent perspectives on ""how big a story is this?"" This story chose the former approach. We prefer the latter. A story that doesn’t quantify benefits, doesn’t explain costs (of what is likely to be a costly approach), and doesn’t seek independent expert voices is not first-class health journalism."
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false
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"No mention of costs. Why not? And, since the drug must be administered every two weeks as an intravenous infusion, cost of delivery could be another substantial issue. (Our medical editor on this story says such biologic infusions tend to cost more than $1,000 per infusion.) How could this be excluded from such a story? Unsatisfactory. All the story said was ""that the drug lowered uric acid levels and reduced deposits of uric acid crystals in joints and soft tissue."" How many people saw a benefit? How much did the drug lower these levels? Was that significant in peoples’ lives? This, again, is where the story could have benefited from an independent perspective. The story did explain: There was no discussion of the quality of the evidence and, in fact, minimal discussion of how the research was done at all. Story explains that ""about 3% of the 3 million adults with gout are not helped by conventional therapy."" So no disease-mongering here. Inadequate. We weren’t told who funded the research. And why do we have to hear claims of novelty only from a company president, lifted from a news release? That’s inadequate sourcing. The company president may say that ""Krystexxa is the first-ever and only treatment approved by the FDA for adult patients who suffer with chronic gout that is refractory to conventional therapy"" but a good news story would explain: The story is about new FDA approval of the drug. It notes that the manufacturer expects it to be available by prescription later this year. The story states: ""Krystexxa is the first-ever and only treatment approved by the FDA for adult patients who suffer with chronic gout that is refractory to conventional therapy,"" Paul Hamelin, RPh, president of Savient Pharmaceuticals, says in a news release."" But why couldn’t we have heard that from an independent expert? We’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt, but barely. Unsatisfactory. Both quotes – according to the story itself – came from a news release. Why not do independent reporting on this?"
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16762
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We are accepting more legal immigrants than we ever have in the history (of the United States.)
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"Santorum said, ""we are accepting more legal immigrants than we ever have in the history"" of the country. Over the last 10 years, in raw numbers, the United States has admitted slightly more immigrants into the country compared to any other 10-year period. But when you factor in the new arrivals as a share of the U.S. population, 1905-14 is the leading time period. And when looking just at raw numbers, the United States admitted more immigrants in 1907, 1990 and 1991. In fact, the 2013 tally -- 990,553 -- would rank 20th all time."
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false
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Immigration, PunditFact, Rick Santorum,
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"The country’s focus is trained on headlines about illegal immigration. But a claim by former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum made us wonder about the other side of our immigration policy. What’s the trend for immigrants lawfully living in the United States? Santorum’s claim came up in a heated exchange with Detroit Free Press editorial page editor Stephen Henderson during the July 13, 2014, Meet the Press pundit panel. (We fact-checked another point from Santorum’s talking points, too.) ""First off, we are accepting more legal immigrants than we ever have in the history ..."" Santorum said before some crosstalk. ""It's all chain immigration. And it's from the very countries that people have been coming from, because most of the immigration is tied to people who are already here."" So is he right about the United States accepting more legal immigrants than ever? Like other immigration figures, there are a few ways to slice the data. In some ways, he is right. In others, he is not. We tried to ask Santorum which numbers he had in mind, but a spokeswoman for his group, Patriot Voices, could not be reached by email or Twitter. Experts directed us to the Department of Homeland Security’s Yearbook of Immigration Statistics, which publishes annual numbers of people obtaining lawful permanent resident status, or a ""green card,"" dating back to 1820 (see this chart for each year’s tally). Green card recipients exclude people who come to the country for short-term reasons, such as temporary work or studies. By the raw numbers The most obvious way to look at federal data is comparing raw numbers. The government admitted the highest amount of lawful permanent residents in 1991, at 1.827 million people, followed by 1990, at 1.536 million. Those years are higher than the most recent decade’s annual admissions, which hovered around the 1 million mark. The 2013 total is 990,553, down 4 percent from 2012. Those peak years -- 1990 and 1991 -- are atypical, the result of a swath of people receiving green cards after winding through the process laid out in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, said Sumption, Migration Policy Institute director of international research. (That was the last time Congress enacted sweeping immigration reform, FYI.) The third all-time highest year is 1907, with admissions of 1.285 million people. That tops the 2006 tally of 1.266 million people and any other recent year. Looking at individual years, however, may not be as useful as the slightly broader trend, Sumption said. From 2004 to 2013, average annual admissions were 1.076 million. During the other comparable time period of 1905-1914, before numerical quotes on immigration were in place, the average was 1.012 million people. That’s slightly lower than our most recent decade. But that doesn’t mean Santorum’s claim is in the clear. By percentage of population Perhaps an even better comparison would be legal immigrants admitted over time as a percentage of the American population, other experts told us. In that case, the influx of immigrants was more dramatic at the turn of the century, when the country’s population was much smaller. ""Since the total population was 92 million in 1910, compared with 308 million in 2010, admitting more than 1 million immigrants in a single year (and this wasn't atypical of the decade) was much more significant,"" said Susan Martin, professor and director of Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of International Immigration. Looking at the data in this light allows for analysis of the country’s capacity for bringing in new people without risking competition in the labor market, Sumption said. ""Share of population is a better measure of the lived experience of immigration, the experience on the ground,"" she said. A big driver of the increase in recent years is the category for spouses of U.S. citizens, which isn’t too surprising considering the growing global economy and the fact that many people who come to the country for temporary purposes of work and study marry U.S. citizens, she said. Our ruling Santorum said, ""we are accepting more legal immigrants than we ever have in the history"" of the country. Over the last 10 years, in raw numbers, the United States has admitted slightly more immigrants into the country compared to any other 10-year period. But when you factor in the new arrivals as a share of the U.S. population, 1905-14 is the leading time period. And when looking just at raw numbers, the United States admitted more immigrants in 1907, 1990 and 1991. In fact, the 2013 tally -- 990,553 -- would rank 20th all time."
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9152
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MT Pharma America Announces FDA Approval of RADICAVA™ (Edaravone), the First New Treatment Option for ALS in More Than 20 Years
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If this release from MT Pharma America on its new amyotrophic laterals sclerosis (ALS) drug had provided a clear enumeration of the benefits of the drug, cost information, and some explanation of any conflicts of interest in the physician being quoted, it would be a solid release. In many ways, this release provides good information for reporters or even the general public. It follows the same basic tenets of most television pharmaceutical ads in that it hews to the evidence used to clear FDA hurdles and provides an ample list of side effects. ALS is a progressive neurological disorder with limited treatment options, none of which cure the disease. It belongs within a wider group of conditions known as motor neuron diseases that are caused by gradual deterioration and death of motor neurons, or nerve cells. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that between 14,000 and 15,000 Americans had ALS in 2016. “Currently, there is no cure for ALS and no effective treatment to halt, or reverse, the progression of the disease, ” according to the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS). The existing drug, Rilutek, has shown in clinical trials that it can extend life by a few months, and the newly approved drug described here, Radicava, was shown to slow decline in daily functioning. With so few treatment options available, the new drug is being welcomed as another option among very limited offerings.
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mixture
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ALS,MT Pharma America
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It’s almost as if a sentence is missing from the release. It does not say that the drug is expensive or inexpensive, but one must presume that it is expensive because it goes into some detail about a program set up to help people afford the drug. It says, “MTPharma America is helping to make RADICAVA accessible to all patients who need it and has created Searchlight Support, a patient access program for people with ALS who are prescribed RADICAVA. As soon as a person receives a prescription, he or she can access Searchlight Support, including personal case management, reimbursement support and 24/7 clinical support. Some people with ALS who have received prescriptions for RADICAVA may be eligible to receive additional assistance from MTPharma America.” According to the ALS Association, “The drug’s list price is $1K per infusion, $11K per dosage cycle, which amounts to $146K per year. This does not take into account coverage from insurance or Medicare/Medicaid.” The story does put some numbers to the benefits, but they are in relative terms and not easy to understand. “The pivotal Phase 3 study (MCI186-19), which evaluated 137 people with ALS, formed the basis for the FDA approval of RADICAVA. Data demonstrated patients who received RADICAVA for six months experienced significantly less decline in physical function —by 33 percent or 2.49 ALSFRS-R points (p=0.0013).” Although the release rightly states that the intervention improved patient outcomes by 2.49 ALSFRS-R points, there is no discussion about what this means in terms of actual patient function. A change of two and a half points might just equate to a patient not developing worse handwriting and excess saliva. These changes may be important but are minimal with respect to the degree of disability the disease causes. A statement that no change in mortality or independent living has been seen would also have been warranted. We would also liked to have seen a clear numerical comparison. How many of the 137 received Radicava for six months? How many of those patients saw a significant preservation of physical function? How many saw no benefit? The release does provide a rather long list of potential harms. And then it goes on to say, “These are not all the possible side effects of Radicava. Call your healthcare provider for medical advice about side effects. You may report side effects to MT Pharma America, Inc. at 1-888-292-0058 or FDA at 1-800-FDA-1088 or www.fda.gov/medwatch.” We’re giving it a pass here because it explains quite a bit about the study. It would have been better had it also explained whether the findings had been published in a peer-reviewed journal or undergone any other outside vetting. There is no disease mongering in the release. It also provides some context about the prevalence of ALS. The release is a corporate release. And it’s clear that the drug company that makes the drug in question is hoping to sell the drug. There are two things that are unclear, though. First, the relationship of the only physician quoted in the article to the drug or the company. Second, the relationship of Barbara Newhouse, president and CEO, ALS Association, to the company. Both basically give the findings a lot of fanfare. And Newhouse in particular provides a very positive take by talking about the potential impact on patients, saying.“We applaud the work MT Pharma America and the FDA are doing as they have taken unprecedented steps to get this treatment into the hands of patients as quickly as possible.” Drug companies often sponsor patient support organizations such as the ALS Association. For example, in 2016, the ALS Association announced MT Pharma as a “corporate sponsor” of its walk to raise money for disease research. There is no comparison to alternatives in the release. As Jeff Akst at The Scientist pointed out there, is one other drug on the market, “The drug, manufactured by MT Pharma America, the US subsidiary of the Japanese company Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation, is only the second approved ALS treatment in the U.S. The first, riluzole (Rilutek), was approved in December 1995.” The release makes it clear that the drug is only now approved for prescription in the U.S. after having been on the market in Japan and South Korea. It says, “Edaravone was discovered and developed for ALS by Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation (MTPC) and will be commercialized in the U.S. by MT Pharma America. MTPC group companies began researching ALS in 2001 through a comprehensive clinical platform over a 13-year period. In 2015, edaravone was approved for use as a treatment for ALS in Japan and South Korea.” The release establishes the novelty of the findings in that this is the first new drug for treating ALS in more than 20 years. There is no unjustifiable language in the release.
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4923
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Utah governor talks Trump, gun control ahead of Pence visit.
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Utah Gov. Gary Herbert is calling for increased discussions about mental health and violent video games in response to recent mass shootings.
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true
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Global trade, Shootings, Mental health, Health, General News, Utah, Michael Pence, Gary Herbert, Donald Trump
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Herbert added that President Donald Trump’s messaging sometimes distracts from the administration’s strong policy. During his monthly news conference at KUED-TV on Wednesday, the Republican governor said while he is open to discussing stronger gun control measures, legislators need to consider how mental illness and violent video games contribute to mass shootings. Herbert’s response echoed calls made by Trump after the deadly mass shootings in Ohio and Texas that occurred earlier this month. The president has cited mental illness and video games but steered away from talk of curbing gun sales. “There’s a sense of frustration about why this is happening ... I don’t know if there’s an easy answer on this ... it’s not fair to compare, ‘Well, they do it over here and this is their result’ as opposed to what we’re doing here in America. We are a very free and open society,” he said. Herbert’s comments come one day before Vice President Mike Pence is scheduled to visit to Utah to discuss ratification of the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement. Pence is scheduled to speak at Merit Medical Systems, a disposable medical device manufacturer Herbert called an “ideal place” to highlight the benefits of the trade agreement as the company conducts business in Mexico and Canada. Referring to Pence “a good friend” of his, Herbert said the visit would be good for Utah Republicans still wary of the president as Pence is well received in the state. “He’s a religious man. He’s conducted his life in such a way as to be considered very honest,” Herbert said. As for Trump, the governor acknowledged his “rhetoric and messaging” sometimes distracts from the administration’s strong policy. “I think what President Trump has done in many ways is really good — as far as what he’s doing,” Herbert said. “We all have a little bit of a pause sometimes with what he says.”
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8710
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UK coronavirus death toll could be far higher than previously shown.
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The United Kingdom’s true death toll from the novel coronavirus far exceeds estimates previously published by the government, according to broader official data that include deaths in the community such as in nursing homes.
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true
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Health News
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Even before the new figures, the official British death toll was the fifth-highest globally and a senior scientific adviser to the government has said the country risks becoming the worst-hit in Europe. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said 5,979 people in England had died by April 3 with COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the virus, mentioned on their death certificates - 15% more than numbers published by the health service. “I am not remotely surprised there would be an undercounting,” Bill Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told Reuters. “The UK hospital death toll that you are seeing - the one on the news each night - is a composite of things that have been trickling in over a period of time. It is not an exact number and does not include the numbers dying in places such as nursing homes.” The new numbers, which reflect both deaths caused primarily by COVID-19 and where it is mentioned as a factor, show how limited official data has been so far. Daily figures published by the health ministry record only COVID-19 deaths in hospitals. Public Health England Medical Director Yvonne Doyle said the government was working with the ONS to speed up the information. “We just need to be absolutely clear that the cause of death that is attributed is correct and that is what takes time on the death certificate to get right,” she said, adding the government hoped to produce more rapid data, preferably on a daily basis. Compared with the ONS figures, the daily hospital counts had understated the true death toll for England and Wales by 52% as of April 3, although this had narrowed from 70% a week earlier. Still, it raises the likelihood that the latest death toll for the UK as a whole - 12,107 as of April 13 - is in reality thousands higher when deaths outside hospitals are included. “These new figures ... clearly show the impact of COVID-19 for the first time,” said Martin Hibberd, professor of emerging infectious disease at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. London was hit particularly hard in the week to April 3, when the ONS said nearly half (46.6%) of deaths in the capital involved COVID-19. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is now recuperating from COVID-19 complications that almost cost him his life, initially refrained from imposing the same stringent controls as other European leaders to counter the outbreak. But as projections showed 250,000 Britons could be lost to the virus, Johnson moved to shutter the world’s fifth-largest economy and told people to stay at home. “The UK response was fractured and it was too late, and allowed a large number of people to become infected who didn’t need to become infected,” said Hanage at Harvard. “This is the start of the pandemic, not the end, and people need to understand that.” Hanage suggested a focus on testing, using new digital technologies to give targeted advice to the population, or even detecting the virus in sewage. Government scientists have said the United Kingdom will do well if it manages to keep the coronavirus death toll below 20,000. Italy has reported a death toll of more than 20,000. Including Wales, some 6,235 people had died by April 3, the ONS said. Separate data from Scotland last week showed 354 deaths involved COVID-19 as of April 5. In Northern Ireland, the toll stood at 79 as of April 3. Across England and Wales, deaths mentioning COVID-19 accounted for 21.2% of all deaths, compared with 4.8% in the previous week. The broader reading of total deaths showed that 16,387 people died in the week ending April 3 — the highest total since weekly death data started to be compiled in 2005.
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9729
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Club Drug Ketamine Gains Traction As A Treatment For Depression
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The use of ketamine to treat depression is worthy of notice, but that means it is also worthy of clear-eyed evaluation. This story gushes with glowing testimonials, but the flow of skepticism is much more limited. A physician-advocate and a grateful patient are highlighted and personalized, while critics receive limited air time and no patients who failed to respond were introduced in any meaningful way. There are trials that have produced remarkable results, but the story doesn’t explain how minuscule, brief, and limited these pilot studies were. Given the limited effectiveness of available antidepressants, and especially the time it takes for them to start working (3-6 weeks), more effective, faster-onset treatments would be very useful. Ketamine, which may have a different mechanism of action from traditional drugs, appears to be a promising early candidate for such a treatment. With that being said, readers and listeners of this story would understandably wonder why ketamine isn’t approved for the treatment of depression. And that’s the problem: the story fails to make clear that a few small studies and a pile of selected anecdotes are not the same as a consistent body of evidence from trials that include an ample range of patients and last long enough to see if the initial results are durable.
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mixture
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ketamine
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Nice detail here. The story reports that each treatment can cost $500 to $1000 and it is usually repeated every few weeks. The story also reports the treatment is generally not covered by insurance. Perhaps the main reason this story doesn’t quantify the benefits of ketamine for people with depression is that the small studies done so far have only shown that it is possible there are benefits, without fully testing how consistent or durable the effects are. The story does point out that the FDA has not approved ketamine for the treatment of depression and it mentions that the drug “doesn’t always work”, but the most prominent and memorable summary of the evidence is that “a single intravenous dose of ketamine produced ‘robust and rapid antidepressant effects’ within a couple of hours.” That sort of vague endorsement of benefits doesn’t give readers or listeners an accurate sense of how meager the trial evidence of benefits really is. Although there is a brief mention of possible harms, including abuse and hallucinations, the soft warnings in the story are undercut by statements such as, “ketamine’s safety record is so good that it’s often the painkiller of choice for children who arrive in the emergency room with a broken bone.” Again, readers and listeners are given the impression that the drug has been scrutinized far more carefully that it actually has. There is a final cautionary note from a proponent of ketamine treatment of depression that wider use could mean “something bad will happen to a depressed patient”. However, this risk is cast not as a hazard inherent in the drug, but as worry that a careless doctor will tarnish the drug’s good name. The story fails to mention that the “landmark” study pointing to antidepressant effects of ketamine included only 18 patients and lasted only two weeks. What’s more, the patients were carefully selected at an inpatient psychiatric facility… and more potential participants were excluded or declined than ended up participating. This study and some others specifically warn against trying to extrapolate the results in this sort of narrowly-selected patient group to the general sort of person living with depression in the community. This story takes the leap that researchers warned against. People with depression so bad they think about suicide are in desperate need of effective treatments, but this story gives the impression that there is a substantial body of scientific evidence to support using ketamine, when actually there are only a few tiny, short-term trials involving very unusual patients, along with an undefined mass of unscientific anecdotes. The story could have given readers and listeners a better sense of how these doctors and patients are taking a blind leap into the unknown, as understandable as that desperate action may be. This ruling is a close call that we’ll ultimately give the benefit of the doubt on. Clearly the gist of the story is that ketamine is something being offered to people with depression so bad that they are thinking about suicide despite having tried all approved treatments. But the key trial highlighted in the story included this strong cautionary note: “Although these results are provocative, they may not be generalizable to all populations with depression. The subjects in this study were a refractory subgroup who were relatively late in their course of illness, and as such, their neurobiology and pharmacological responses may be different from those with a less severe or shorter course of illness.” By featuring a man living out in the community (as opposed to a psychiatric facility where the drug was administered in the trial), it’s arguable that this story does just what the researchers warned against. The story relies almost entirely on a single passionate advocate and a single compelling patient. The story would have been strengthened and balanced by an interview with someone with a contrary opinion. We’ll give the story a pass for featuring a skeptical blog quote from the director of the National Institute of Mental Health. But the story could have done more to highlight experts who are critical of the use of ketamine and feature patients who didn’t respond to the drug. This story seems to have two different standards for summarizing study evidence. Even as the story highlights the potential benefits and minimizes harms of ketamine, it dismisses conventional treatments saying a major study concluded “current antidepressants really aren’t much better than a placebo.” For the severe depression mentioned in the story, there is evidence that antidepressants are quite a bit better than placebo. The story reports that ketamine is not approved for treatment of depression, but it is widely used as an anesthetic. The story notes that the key study it mentions was published almost a decade ago. And it suggests that the recent surge in clinics that are offering this treatment makes the story worthy of coverage now. The story goes beyond any news release.
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