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25810	“3.8% of Wisconsin’s coronavirus funding has been spent.”	Steil cited a report from the U.S. Department of Treasury, which said Wisconsin spent or transferred 3.8% of its CARES Act funds from March 1 to June 30. But that figure doesn’t include expenses already incurred or funds already committed to programs and response efforts	mixture	Federal Budget, Health Care, Wisconsin, Coronavirus, Bryan Steil,	"Wisconsin’s congressional delegation is embroiled in a debate over whether to send more aid to state and local governments squeezed by the economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in May passed the so-called HEROES Act, which would allocate nearly $1 trillion to state, local and tribal governments, among other provisions. However, Republican lawmakers and President Donald Trump balked at that plan. The Senate has not passed its own version of a new COVID-relief bill, but White House officials are negotiating with Democrats in hopes of reaching an agreement on various issues. In the midst of the debate, one Wisconsin Republican suggested Wisconsin may not need another round of federal funding. ""According to the Treasury Department, 3.8% of Wisconsin’s coronavirus funding has been spent,"" U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil tweeted on July 30, 2020. ""The rest is unaccounted for. I’ve asked Gov. (Tony) Evers to explain."" Steil, who represents the state’s 1st Congressional District, hinged his argument on data from the U.S. Department of Treasury that points to the same figure. But the Treasury’s report is only part of the story. Wisconsin received about $2.26 billion through the CARES Act to help the state manage costs stemming from the pandemic. Around $260 million of that went to Dane County, Milwaukee County and the city of Milwaukee, which were eligible for direct payments because their populations are over 500,000. That left the state with roughly $2 billion. Evers can direct the spending. He does not need approval from the Legislature. When asked for evidence to support Steil’s claim, a spokeswoman pointed to the report from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, which shows Wisconsin has spent or transferred around $75.6 million, or 3.8%, of its $2 billion in CARES Act funds. Recipients were required to report their spending to the department’s Office of Inspector General from March 1 to June 30. On July 29, Steil wrote a letter to Evers seeking ""greater clarity on Wisconsin’s use of existing federal resources."" In the letter — but not the tweet — he notes that some funds have been spent while others were only obligated. The letter cited a June 18 memo from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, which outlined $1.72 billion in COVID-19 initiatives that would be covered through the CARES Act. That leaves $280 million in federal dollars remaining. Among the plans: $200 million in aid for local and tribal governments, $260 million for a COVID-19 testing program and $110 million to provide assistance to health care providers. Another $445 million was set aside for ""hospital and community preparedness"" in the event cases surge before the end of the year. The state Department of Administration detailed those funding commitments in a July 17 letter to the U.S. Treasury Department. According to the letter, provided by Evers’ office, the documented amount does not include at least $67.2 million in costs incurred before June 30 that will be covered by federal funding. Those funds will also cover $108.3 million already obligated for the state’s coronavirus response, the letter states. ""Because of the difference in timing between purchase orders, invoices, and payments, however, as well as the reimbursement model used for several of these programs, today’s interim report will capture only a portion (of) the reach of Wisconsin’s CRF funded commitments at the present moment,"" wrote Joanna Beilman-Dulin of the DOA. Translation: The spending reported by the U.S. Department of Treasury tracks just that — spending. It doesn’t include previous expenses or allocated relief funds, such as orders that have yet to be invoiced and grant programs with applications under review. What’s more, Evers announced on July 27 — before Steil contacted the governor — that $41.6 million in federal funds had been distributed to farmers. That amount wasn’t included in the Treasury data because it was still under review when the state submitted its report. That means the number Steil cited doesn’t show the complete picture. As Congress debates what the next federal relief package should look like, Steil claimed that ""3.8% of Wisconsin’s coronavirus funding has been spent."" A report from the U.S. Department of Treasury said Wisconsin spent or transferred 3.8% of its CARES Act funds from March 1 to June 30. But that figure doesn’t account for expenses the state already incurred or funds it has committed to other programs and response efforts. A statement is when it’s partially accurate but leaves out important details or takes things out of context. That fits here."
41033	Coronavirus pneumonia is a dry cough with no runny nose.	Some Covid-19 patients do get pneumonia, and one of the symptoms is a dry cough. A runny nose doesn’t rule out Covid-19.	false	online	If you have a runny nose and sputum, you have a common cold. These are the symptoms for the common cold, but they don’t rule out Covid-19. Coronavirus pneumonia is a dry cough with no runny nose. Some Covid-19 patients do get pneumonia, and one of the symptoms is a dry cough. A runny nose doesn’t rule out Covid-19. The new virus is not heat-resistant and will be killed by a temperature of 26/27 degrees. It hates the Sun. There’s no evidence for this. There’s evidence that similar viruses transmit less well in the heat, but many countries with reported Covid-19 cases are experiencing temperatures higher than this. If someone with the new coronavirus sneezes, it travels about 10 feet before it drops to the ground and is no longer airborne. Environmental factors impact how far droplets from a sneeze can travel, but it is likely to be several metres. If it drops on a metal surface it will live for at least 12 hours - so if you come into contact with any metal surface - wash your hands as soon as you can with a bacterial soap. It’s not yet known exactly how long the virus survives on surfaces. It can survive for 6-12 hours on fabric and will be killed by normal laundry detergent . There’s no evidence the virus can survive in clothing and be transmitted this way. Drinking warm water is effective for all viruses. Try not to drink liquids with ice. There’s no evidence that the temperature of liquids consumed can protect you from viruses. Wash your hands frequently as the virus can only live on your hands for 5-10 minutes. There is no evidence yet on how long the virus can survive on the skin. But it is important to regularly wash your hands. You should gargle as a prevention with salt in warm water. There’s no evidence this will prevent or cure the virus. Covid-19 starts with a sore throat lasting 3-4 days. It then blends into a nasal fluid that enters the trachea and the lungs, causing pneumonia, which takes about 5 or 6 days. With pneumonia comes high fever and difficulty breathing. The nasal congestion makes you feel like you’re drowning. This is a roughly accurate description of the most common symptoms, although not everyone with Covid-19 gets pneumonia. The symptoms may not come in this order or at these times. There have been no reports of sufferers experiencing nasal congestion that makes them feel they are drowning. Claim 1 of 11
5570	Penn State officials confirm case of bacterial meningitis.	Penn State University officials say a student is being treated for bacterial meningitis.	true	Health, Meningitis	Administrators announced this week the student is recovering at Mount Nittany Medical Center. University health officials are working with the state Department of Health to monitor the case. Bacterial meningitis can cause inflammation of the brain. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, symptoms include fever, headache and stiff neck. Anyone who experiences symptoms is asked to contact University Health Services’ Advice Nurse service.
19945	Romneycare covers abortion, illegal immigrants and has a public option. Obamacare does not.	Facebook post compares elements of Romneycare, Obamacare	false	Abortion, Immigration, National, Health Care, Facebook posts,	"The health care debate has landed on the virtual battleground of Facebook, with comparisons being made between President Barack Obama’s 2010 law and the bill that Republican Mitt Romney signed in Massachusetts. A reader asked us to check this graphic that claims ""Romneycare covers abortion, illegal immigrants and has a public option. Obamacare does not."" We’ve also seen that statement repeated on Twitter. Obamacare, of course, is the familiar name for the Affordable Care Act passed by Congress in 2010 and signed by Obama. It seeks health coverage for every American by requiring most Americans to obtain coverage or face a fine. To help people meet that requirement, it expands Medicaid for the poor, provides subsidies for people of modest means to buy insurance, and sets up fines that have the effect of encouraging large employers to provide insurance for their employees. It also sets up insurance exchanges where individuals and businesses can purchase private insurance. Those elements are also the backbone of the health care reform Romney signed in Massachusetts in 2006. Architects of both plans acknowledge that the Massachusetts law served as the model for the national plan. As for the specific comparisons between the two, we’ll take them one by one. Romneycare vs. Obamacare on abortion PolitiFact looked at the abortion issue when Romney’s Republican primary challengers accused him of enacting taxpayer-funded abortions in Massachusetts. The state law itself does not specify what services are covered and what aren’t. Search the text of it, and ""abortion"" is nowhere to be found. But because of a 1981 Supreme Judicial Court ruling in Massachusetts, the cost of abortions must be included in publicly subsidized plans. Most private insurance plans in the U.S. include abortion coverage, and the state-subsidized plans in Massachusetts do, too. That includes coverage for Massachusetts residents enrolled in Medicaid. So it’s true that the plan makes abortion accessible through private insurance plans subsidized by the state. But that’s dictated by a court ruling that long predated Romney’s term as governor. On the federal level, coverage of abortion is a bit more complicated. Here’s how we’ve explained a similar claim: Since 1976, the federal government has been guided by the Hyde Amendment, a law that prohibits the use of federal funds for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when the mother's life is in peril. Due to that amendment -- which must be renewed every year -- abortion services are not provided by Medicaid or in health care plans offered to federal employees and for active and retired military. But the health care exchanges established by the law raised the question of whether private companies should be allowed to offer abortion coverage (as most already do) when operating through the exchanges. And what if the people buying policies are getting government subsidies to buy insurance? What resulted was essentially a compromise. When the exchanges begin operating in 2014, some states will ban all abortion coverage entirely for any plan selling on that state’s exchange. Doing so is allowed by a state ""opt-out"" clause that is part of the health care law. Beyond that, every state must offer at least one plan on its exchange that doesn’t cover abortion. In addition, no private insurer will be forced to cover abortion. Unless a state exercises the opt-out clause, insurers will be allowed to sell policies on the exchanges that include abortion coverage. To allow this, yet still abide by the Hyde Amendment, sponsors of the bill drafted a procedure to differentiate between dollars spent on abortion coverage and dollars spent for everything else. (Anti-abortion advocates have consistently argued that the approach doesn’t offer strong enough protections to prevent taxpayer funding of abortion.) The complex funding mechanisms make the question of whether Obamacare covers abortion a little fuzzy. But clearly the law provides some access to the service. Romneycare vs. Obamacare on illegal immigrants Immigration is another complicated area for the two health care laws. Before the Massachusetts law was enacted, the state had a program on the books called the Uncompensated Care Pool, which dates to the mid-1980s. When Romney’s health law passed, the name changed but the eligibility didn’t, said Brian Rosman, research director for the Massachusetts nonprofit group Health Care for All. Now known as the Health Safety Net, it reimburses hospitals and health care centers that provide care for the poor and uninsured. Who can get the care? We found the answer on the Health Safety Net website: ""Am I Eligible? The Health Safety Net (Free Care) is for uninsured or underinsured Massachusetts residents who do not have access to affordable health coverage. People of any income with large medical bills that they cannot pay are also eligible. Your citizenship or immigration status does not affect your eligibility."" Said Rosman: ""People don’t enroll in the program. They don’t get cards. Their benefits are just through the reimbursement to the health provider."" That differs from other benefits outlined in the Massachusetts law, which specifies that only people there legally can receive Medicaid benefits or government subsidies to buy health insurance. The Health Safety Net has no such restriction, although any benefit to illegal immigrants is indirect, since the money reimburses health providers, not individuals. ""It’s a state-administered program that essentially shares the cost of financing the care for uninsured and underinsured residents of the state across the whole health care system,"" said Sarah Iselin, former commissioner of the state agency that administers the Health Safety Net. She pointed out that the 2006 law expanded coverage for people who qualify for programs specifically off limits to illegal residents. The Health Safety Net only applies to people who have been determined to be ineligible for those programs. Similar to the Massachusetts program, Obamacare could benefit illegal immigrants only in a very indirect way. First, what it doesn’t do: The law does not make people who are in the country illegally eligible for health insurance through the exchanges -- in fact it specifically bars them; it doesn’t allow them to get tax credits for purchasing insurance, and it doesn’t allow them to receive Medicaid benefits. What it does do: The law provides grants to community health care centers for construction and expansion. The National Association of Community Health Centers noted in 2010 that such centers ""make up the largest national network of primary care providers. Most health center patients have low incomes, are uninsured or publicly insured, and are members of racial/ethnic minority groups."" ""The community health centers serve anybody who needs health care, and I’m sure that will include undocumented people,"" said Rosman. The Facebook post said Obamacare doesn’t ""cover"" illegal immigrants. It’s correct there are no coverage benefits for which undocumented people could be eligible, such as Medicaid or tax credits. The law did provide $11 billion over the first five years for community health centers, which treat people regardless of immigration status. That expands access to care at places where poor, undocumented people would have gone for care prior to the law, but it’s not the same as coverage. Romneycare vs. Obamacare on a public option This part isn’t complicated at all: Neither plan has a public option. In Massachusetts a public option would be a program in which the state is the insurer, and Massachusetts has no such plan. The state oversees the health care exchange, but the plans offered there are all private. The reform law expanded Medicaid in Massachusetts, but that’s a program only for people who cannot afford to purchase insurance. We checked with Rosman on this too. ""There’s nothing even close to (a public option),"" he said, adding that it was never considered in the debate about the law. Early versions of the national health bill included a public option, with the idea that a government plan might be cheaper than private plans, making insurance available to the very poor. But the public option had many opponents in Congress and did not make it into the final law. All together now The Facebook post boils down complicated pieces of legislation to a few simple points. But its summary is short on accuracy. Here’s what we found: Abortion: Romneycare enables people to purchase plans that include abortion coverage. Obamacare does as well, but it also lets states opt out and lets individuals buy plans that don’t cover the procedure. Illegal immigrants: Romneycare’s Health Safety Net reimburses health providers who care for the poor, regardless of whether they’re in the country legally. Obamacare provides grants to community health centers, which also treat anyone who can’t afford to pay for health care. Neither law provides any form of insurance coverage to undocumented people. Public option: Neither plan has a public option in which the government acts as the insurer. The Facebook post got a few things right but most things wrong, particularly about Romney’s plan. Overall"
7392	Fear that uproar over gene-edited babies could block science.	Scientists working on the frontiers of medicine fear the uproar over the reported births of gene-edited babies in China could jeopardize promising research into how to alter heredity to fend off a variety of disorders.	true	AP Top News, Health, Genetic Frontiers, North America, Pittsburgh, China, Science, Asia Pacific	Researchers are rapidly learning how to edit DNA to fight such conditions as Huntington’s, Tay-Sachs and hereditary heart disease, conducting legally permissible experiments in lab animals and petri dishes without taking the ultimate step of actually creating babies. Now they worry about a backlash against their work, too. “The alarmists who claimed that scientists won’t behave responsibly in the development of the next generation of gene editing now have ammunition,” said a dismayed Kyle Orwig, a reproductive specialist at the University of Pittsburgh who hopes to eventually alter sperm production to treat infertility. He said there is a clear public demand for the kind of research he is doing: “Families contact me all the time,” men who can’t produce sperm and aren’t helped by today’s reproductive care. A Chinese researcher sent a shock wave through the scientific community this week when he claimed to have altered the DNA of embryos in hopes of making them resistant to the AIDS virus. He reported the birth of twin girls and said there may be another pregnancy resulting from his work. International guidelines for years have said gene editing that can change human heredity — through altered eggs, sperm or embryos — should not be tested in human pregnancies until scientists learn if the practice is safe. One fear is that such experiments could inadvertently damage genes that could then be passed on to future generations. China has ordered a halt to the seemingly underground experiments by researcher He Jiankui and his team. “This is what we’re afraid of: Not legitimate scientists — it’s crazy people that would just try it without even worrying about consequences,” said Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon Health & Science University, who is conducting laboratory-only experiments on how to repair gene defects in human embryos. If the outcry results in more restrictions being added to the current patchwork of rules on what can be studied and how, the field “will be, probably, thrown back for decades,” he added. The challenge, said Pittsburgh’s Orwig, is to “convince the community that this is one bad apple but it doesn’t reflect what most people are doing.” There are multiple kinds of gene editing. Experiments to try to fix damaged genes in children and adults with diseases such as sickle cell are fairly straightforward because that drug-like approach would affect only the patient and not his or her offspring. Far more contentious is gene editing of the “germline,” or changing genes in such a way that they will be passed through generations. The big ethical question is whether such tinkering should be restricted to genes that can cause otherwise untreatable disorders, or whether medicine should be free to create “designer babies” with specific traits, such as high IQ. “I do think the public is probably open to pretty clearly therapeutic uses of this kind of thing, to prevent transmission of disease. But there’s significant discomfort, if not complete opposition, to enhancement uses,” said Josephine Johnston, an expert on biomedical ethics and policy at the Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute based in Garrison, New York. In a poll last summer, the Pew Research Center found most Americans — about 7 in 10 — said changing an unborn baby’s DNA to treat a serious disease the child would otherwise be born with would be appropriate. But support dropped sharply when people were told that that would involve studies with embryos. And just 19 percent thought gene editing for such things as enhancing intelligence would be appropriate, Pew found. How to prove that gene editing is safe enough to legitimately try in human pregnancies is a conundrum, said University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Jonathan Moreno. “No regulator follows that child over a lifetime, much less their progeny,” he noted. Another question for ethicists: Even if it were deemed safe, is gene editing of embryos really needed given today’s options? Already, families who can afford pricey in vitro fertilization can pay extra to have the embryos genetically tested — and implant only those free of well-known dangerous mutations. But such preimplantation diagnosis isn’t an answer for everyone, Johnston cautioned. IVF doesn’t always produce enough embryos for couples to choose among. And as testing uncovers more and more disorders, people will have to understand “there’s not going to be a perfect embryo,” she said. In Pittsburgh, Orwig sees sperm as offering possibly a more practical first step toward germline editing. Some male infertility is caused by genetic defects that prevent testicular stem cells from properly producing sperm. His team studies infertile men to find culprit genes. Among his plans: gene-edit stem cells, and implant the repaired ones in infertile mice to see if they produce sperm that lead to healthy baby mice. The technique could be adjusted so that the genetic change isn’t necessarily passed on to the next generation, he said. Young women undergoing certain cancer treatment already can store ovarian tissue in hopes of future pregnancy, and Orwig said one day it should be possible to remove, say, a mutation in that tissue that otherwise could spread a family’s breast cancer-causing BRCA mutation. Meanwhile, careful animal work with sperm could “lay the foundation for how one would do it in humans,” he said. “When societal views change and policies change, we’ll be ready.” ___ AP Science Writer Malcolm Ritter in New York contributed to this report. ___ This Associated Press series was produced in partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
26653	Because the Federal Reserve recently cut interest rates to near 0%, “the Fed will be of little consequence now. They’ve already used what leverage they have.”	Dropping the federal funds rate to near 0% does make it hard for the Fed to use that particular piece of leverage. But the Fed has other levers. The Fed can telegraph its intentions about longer-term interest rates to reassure lenders and borrowers, and it can purchase assets such as short-term commercial IOUs to keep credit flowing, something the Fed has already begun doing. The Fed also has multiple ways to work with financial institutions to encourage lending and guarantee loans.	false	Economy, Elections, Financial Regulation, Joe Biden,	"With a coronavirus-driven recession in sight, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden lamented what he said was the Federal Reserve’s waning power to stabilize the nation’s economy. During the March 15 debate with rival Bernie Sanders, Biden was asked by Univision journalist Ilia Calderón, ""Just hours ago, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates to near 0%, which has not happened since the financial crisis in 2008. Vice President Biden, what would you do?"" Biden called for a major bailout that benefits vulnerable individuals. Then he said, ""We’ve eaten a lot of our seed corn here. The ability for us to use levers that were available before have been used up by this god-awful tax cut of $1.9 trillion. … The Fed will be of little consequence now, they’ve already used what leverage they have, and so we’re going to have to just level with the American people."" It turns out that Biden’s wrong about the Federal Reserve: It does have other arrows in its quiver. ""What Biden was referring to is what the Fed has done in typical times since the 1970s — moving around the short-term interest rate,"" said Gary Richardson, a University of California-Irvine economist who specializes in the Federal Reserve. ""But the Fed has many other tools it can use."" When we asked Biden’s campaign to explain the remark, they noted that the rest of his answer also addressed fiscal policy — federal spending and taxation — which has been constrained by large tax cuts and high spending during the Trump era. Specifically on the Fed, the Biden campaign pointed to comments made by former Fed chairs Janet Yellen and Ben Bernanke in January, which was before a coronavirus-driven recession was widely considered likely. Even in those relatively stable times, Bernanke told an economists’ conference that existing low interest rates reduced the Fed’s flexibility, and Yellen added that ""although monetary policy has a meaningful role to play in future downturns, it's unlikely to be sufficient in the years ahead,"" the Financial Times reported. However, the Financial Times report noted a key caveat that Biden’s remark doesn’t account for. The article said the Fed’s ""alternative tools such as asset purchases and forward guidance were robust."" First, let’s explain the tool that Biden accurately says the Fed has maxed out. That’s the federal funds rate, the most commonly used, and most direct, lever the Fed can use. The federal funds rate applies to overnight loans between financial institutions. While the fed funds rate doesn’t directly affect consumers, its impact spirals outward as financial institutions set rates that do affect everyday customers, such as those for credit cards, mortgages and other loans. For years after the Great Recession, the Fed set this rate at or near zero in order to promote lending and stimulate the recovery. After a series of step-by-step increases beginning in 2016, the rate was reduced earlier this month to be effectively zero again. So what else can the Fed do to affect interest rates? It can try to shape perceptions about rates over the longer term, and in so doing, help stabilize the economy. One of those tools that has been used regularly since the 2008 recession is known as ""forward guidance."" It’s basically an effort by the Fed to telegraph its future intentions on rate-setting, communicated through a standardized set of public statements and tables. Communicating this clearly to investors provides a greater sense of certainty about the future. The Fed could make this type of announcement at its next regularly scheduled meeting, which is set for April 28 and 29, although it could call an unscheduled meeting sooner. The next tool has been commonly known in recent years as ""quantitative easing."" It involves the Fed purchasing assets that have longer time horizons, such as U.S. government securities. Less frequently, it can involve buying ""commercial paper"" — short-term IOUs that companies take out to cover temporary cash flow shortages. Indeed, just two days after the Biden-Sanders debate, the Fed announced that it was using this tool. This effort by the Fed ""ensures that companies can get the overnight funding they need to meet short-term obligations like payroll,"" Ernie Tedeschi, policy economist at Evercore ISI, told the New York Times. In 2008, after the collapse of the financial firm Lehman Brothers, the Fed ""intervened in commercial paper in a very large way. Asset purchases don’t just provide security for stressed companies; they can also be used to affect longer-term interest rates. The Fed can buy assets, driving their price up until longer-term interest rates show the movement the Fed wants. But sometimes influencing interest rates is not enough, because the economic environment is so bad that institutions are unwilling to make loans no matter what the rate is. ""In times like that, the credit markets can freeze up,"" Richardson said, meaning that credit is unavailable anywhere, and the economy spirals down further. When that happens, there is still more that the Fed can do. One thing the Fed can do to stop that cycle is to get financial institutions to make loans simultaneously, a sign of solidarity that is designed to bolster confidence and spread risk. They can also encourage banks to use the ""discount window"" — a mechanism for banks to get Fed loans at a favorable rate, with the understanding that they will make the credit available to the public. This week, the Fed reopened one mechanism used during the last recession to make short-term loans to banks. The Fed can also make loan guarantees. For instance, it could guarantee loans to strategic industries, so banks can lend more confidently. In wartime, this might mean loan guarantees for companies that make military goods. In the current crisis, it could be used to back loans for companies to expand ventilator production. Some of these emergency powers were limited by the 2010 Dodd-Frank act, which overhauled aspects of the financial services industry, particularly in ways that increased transparency. But the Fed still has significant levers it can use in a crisis. Biden said that because the Federal Reserve recently cut interest rates to near 0%, ""the Fed will be of little consequence now. They’ve already used what leverage they have."" Dropping the federal funds rate to near 0% does make it hard for the Fed to use that particular piece of leverage. But the Fed has other levers. It can telegraph its intentions about longer-term interest rates, it can purchase assets such as short-term commercial IOUs (something the Fed has already begun doing), and it can work with financial institutions to encourage lending and guarantee loans."
2685	"British homeopathy funding is ""bad medicine"": panel."	Britain should end its state funding for homeopathic treatments because they are “scientifically implausible” and work no better than placebos, an influential parliamentary panel said on Monday.	true	Health News	The Science and Technology committee said homeopathic products are not medicines and should no longer be licensed by medicines regulators. Homeopathy producers should not be allowed to make medical claims on product labels without evidence they work, it added. The committee accused the government of sending out mixed messages about homeopathic remedies by saying that while there is no evidence to back them, they can still be paid for by Britain’s public National Health Service (NHS). “It sets an unfortunate precedent for the department of health to consider that the existence of a community which believes that homeopathy works is ‘evidence’ enough to continue spending public money on it,” committee chairman Phil Willis said in a statement. “This also sends out a confused message, and has potentially harmful consequences.” An election is due in Britain later this year and political leaders are under pressure to come up with any saving they can to bring down the country’s ballooning public deficit. Ministers estimate the NHS spends around 152,000 pounds ($235,000) — a tiny fraction of its around 100 billion pound budget — on homeopathic remedies each year. In its report on homeopathy, the committee agreed with the government that evidence shows homeopathy is not efficacious — meaning it works no better than a placebo, or dummy pill. “Explanations for why homeopathy would work are scientifically implausible,” it said. Homeopathy, which originated in Germany in the 1700s, is based on a principle that “like cures like.” The theory is that substances that prompt certain symptoms can also treat those same symptoms if given in a highly diluted form. The practice is controversial because many of its central concepts do not accord with modern science. Many studies have found homeopathic remedies are no more effective than placebos. Critics say the homeopathy industry has made millions out of selling little more than “sugar pills” to vulnerable patients. Paula Ross, chief executive of the Society of Homeopaths, rejected the findings and accused the committee of wasting public money by turning its inquiry from one on the government’s policy on homeopathy to one about whether homeopathy works — a question she said the committee was ill-equipped to answer. “We would have preferred to see the government put money into much needed research into how actually homeopathy works,” she said in a statement. She argued that evidence shows homeopathy is effective beyond placebo, but “scientists have yet to understand how.” The committee said homeopathy was “a placebo treatment” and the government should have a policy on placebos — an area it said ministers were reluctant touch because prescribing placebos “usually relies on some degree of patient deception.” “Beyond ethical issues and the integrity of the doctor-patient relationship, prescribing pure placebos is bad medicine,” it said.
8375	WHO warns of global shortage of medical equipment to fight coronavirus.	The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday warned of a global shortage and price gouging for protective equipment to fight the fast-spreading coronavirus and asked companies and governments to increase production by 40% as the death toll from the respiratory illness mounted.	true	Health News	Meanwhile, the U.S. Federal Reserve cut interest rates on Tuesday in an emergency move to try to prevent a global recession and the World Bank announced $12 billion to help countries fight the coronavirus, which has taken a heavy toll on air travel, tourism and other industries, threatening global economic growth prospects. The virus continued to spread in South Korea, Japan, Europe, Iran and the United States, and several countries reported their first confirmed cases, taking the total to some 80 nations hit with the flu-like illness that can lead to pneumonia. Despite the Fed’s attempt to stem the economic fallout from the coronavirus, U.S. stock indexes closed down about 3%, safe-haven gold rose 3% and analysts and investors questioned whether the rate cut will be enough if the virus continues to spread. U.S. lawmakers were considering spending as much as $9 billion to contain local spread of the virus. In Iran, doctors and nurses lack supplies and 77 people have died, one of the highest numbers outside China. The United Arab Emirates announced it was closing all schools for four weeks. The death toll in Italy, Europe’s hardest-hit country, jumped to 79 on Tuesday and Italian officials are considering expanding the area under quarantine. France reported its fourth coronavirus death, while Indonesia, Ukraine, Argentina and Chile reported their first coronavirus cases. About 3.4% of confirmed cases of COVID-19 have died, far above seasonal flu’s fatality rate of under 1%, but the virus can be contained, the WHO chief said on Tuesday. “To summarize, COVID-19 spreads less efficiently than flu, transmission does not appear to be driven by people who are not sick, it causes more severe illness than flu, there are not yet any vaccines or therapeutics, and it can be contained,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in Geneva. Health officials have said the death rate is 2% to 4% depending on the country and may be much lower if there are thousands of unreported mild cases of the disease. Since the coronavirus outbreak, prices of surgical masks have increased sixfold, N95 respirators have tripled in cost and protective gowns cost twice as much, the WHO said. It estimates healthcare workers each month will need 89 million masks, 76 million gloves and 1.6 million pairs of goggles. The coronavirus, which emerged in the central Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, has spread around the world, with more new cases now appearing outside China than inside. There are almost 91,000 cases globally of which more than 80,000 are in China. China’s death toll was 2,946, with more than 166 fatalities elsewhere. In a unanimous decision, the Fed said it was cutting rates by a half percentage point to a target range of 1.00% to 1.25%. Finance ministers from the G7 group of rich countries were ready to take action, including fiscal measures where appropriate, Japanese Finance Minister Taro Aso said. Central banks would continue to support price stability and economic growth. In the United States, there are now over 100 people in at least a dozen states with the coronavirus and nine deaths, all in the Seattle area. Amid criticism of Americans not being able to get tested for coronavirus unless they met certain limited criteria, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence said on Tuesday that anyone can now get tested with a doctor’s order under new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). New York state reported its second case, a man in his 50s who works in Manhattan and has been hospitalized. The public transportation agency in New York, the most densely populated major U.S. city of more than 8 million, said on Twitter it was deploying “enhanced sanitizing procedures” for stations, train cars, buses and certain vehicles. China has seen coronavirus cases fall sharply, with 129 in the last 24 hours the lowest reported since Jan. 20. With the world’s second largest economy struggling to get back on track, China is increasingly concerned about the virus being brought back into the country by citizens returning from new hotspots elsewhere. Travelers entering Beijing from South Korea, Japan, Iran and Italy would have to be quarantined for 14 days, a city official said. Shanghai has introduced a similar order. The worst outbreak outside China is in South Korea, where President Moon Jae-in declared war on the virus, ordering additional hospital beds and more masks as cases rose by 600 to nearly 5,000, with 34 deaths. WHO officials also expressed concerns about the situation in Iran, saying doctors lacked respirators and ventilators needed for patients with severe cases. WHO emergency program head Michael Ryan said the need in Iran was “more acute” than for other countries. While the case numbers in Iran appear to be bad, he said, “things tend to look worse before getting better.” The International Olympic Committee on Tuesday said the summer games in Tokyo set to begin on July 24 were still expected to happen despite Japan having nearly 1,000 coronavirus cases and 12 deaths. Health officials said they would continue to monitor the situation in Japan before any final decision on the Olympics is made.
2391	Medical marijuana to be sold in Connecticut by summer: governor.	Medical marijuana will go on sale in Connecticut by summer 2014, dispensed throughout the state by four vendors, Governor Dannel Malloy said on Tuesday.	true	Health News	Marijuana is illegal in the United States under federal law, but Connecticut is among 20 U.S. states and the District of Columbia that allow use of marijuana for medical purposes. Four applicants have been chosen as the state’s first-ever legitimate producers of medical marijuana to serve the needs of seriously ill patients in Connecticut, said Malloy, who appeared at a press conference along with Consumer Protection Commissioner William Rubenstein in West Haven. The selected dispensaries are Advanced Grow Labs, LLC, in West Haven; Connecticut Pharmaceutical Solutions, LLC, in Portland; Curaleaf, LLC, in Simsbury, and Theraplant, LLC, in Watertown. Nearly 1,700 patients have been certified so far for the state’s medical marijuana program, Malloy said. The governor in 2012 signed the law to allow licensed physicians to prescribe medicinal marijuana for adults suffering from certain debilitating diseases or medical conditions.
11036	Study: New cervical cancer test improves detection	HPV infection is responsible for 99% of the incidence of cervical cancer. Theoretically, screening for HPV DNA could replace Pap smears as the preferred method for cervical cancer screening. However, because HPV infection is so common and only a small percentage of women with HPV will go on to develop cellular changes that could lead to cervical cancer, it is still uncertain whether the increase in indentified cases is worth the additional cost of the test. This story reports on the publication of two large international studies in this week’s New England Journal of Medicine. The story adequately represents the availability, novelty, alternative options and cost of the HPV test. By not exagerrating the seriousness or prevalence of cervical cancer, the story avoids disease mongering. The story rightly points out the declining mortality rate since the introduction of screening. The story also does a good job of describing the strength of the available evidence. Most notably, the story points out that neither study evaluated whether the testing resulted in increased life expectancy in those screened and that the applicability of the results to the U.S. is somewhat questionable. However, the story only quotes one independent expert. Although that person provides very valuable information, the story should have quoted at least one other expert who could have commented on the importance of these new findings on clinical practice. Finally, the story does not adequately quantify the benefits of HPV testing. Although the story says that the test combined with Pap found 51% more cancers than Pap alone, this is not adequate quantification. The story should have provided quantitative information in absolute rather than relative terms.	true		The story does mention that the test costs $50 compared to $20 to $30 for the pap test. The story could have discussed insurance coverage for the test and also potential downstream costs due to the higher false positive rate of the test. The story does not adequately quantify the benefits of HPV testing. Although the story says that the test combined with Pap found 51% more cancers than Pap alone, this is not adequate quantification. The story should have provided quantitative information in absolute rather than relative terms. The story mentions a major downside of HPV testing is that it catches transient HPV infections that resolve on their own and never cause a problem. The story adequately describes the strength of the available evidence. Most notably, the story points out that neither study evaluated whether the testing resulted in increased life expectancy in those screened and that the applicability of the results to the U.S. is somewhat questionable. The story does not exagerrate the seriousness or prevalence of cervical cancer. The story rightly points out the declining mortality rate since the introduction of screening. The story only quotes one expert and that is the author of an editorial in the same journal where the study appeared. Although that expert does provide very valuable information, the story should have quoted at least one other expert who could have commented on the importance of these new findings on clinical practice. The story does mention the Pap test as the alternative to the HPV test and discusses the pros and cons of each. The story does state that the test has been FDA approved since 2003. The story clearly states that the HPV test is relatively new. There is no way to know whether the story relied on a press release as the sole source of information.
32513	A photograph of a fatal motorcycle crash shows either an angel or the victim's ghost.	Even if the photograph were proven beyond a shadow of a doubt to be of a ghost or a spirit, it’s unclear whose it would be or why it would be there, as the motorcyclist died later at the hospital, not on the scene.	false	Fauxtography, accidents, car accidents, ghosts	On 12 July 2016, a Facebook user posted a photograph of a traffic accident in Kentucky with the following description: I took this picture just few minutes ago from the cab of my truck it was an accident between campton and Stanton on the service road just off of the mountain parkway, zoom in and pay attention to the shadow just off the top of the state trooper hat. All I say is I hope everyone involved is okay!! The accident turned out to be a fatal crash, and the motorcyclist involved died at the hospital. Local, and then national media quickly picked up the story of the “spiritual” photograph: A chilling image taken at the scene of a deadly motorcycle crash in Powell County is being shared on social media. The crash occurred 5:30 on Highway 15 near Stanton. Officials [say] the person on the motorcycle was the only person involved and he was taken to a hospital where he later died. A photo taken at the scene is hard to believe. The photo shows the image or outline of a man above the man’s body. Saul Vazquez, the man who took the photo, posted it on Facebook and said he took it from the cab of his truck. It has since been shared over 16,000 times in just 10 hours. Lots of people are drawing their own conclusions about the photo, but either way it’s causing a huge conversation on social media. [We] reached out to Vazquez, all he would he would say is that the photo has not been altered. The photograph shows the scene of a crash with law enforcement and paramedics huddled around the motorcyclist. Just above them, and between two ambulances, an indistinct grey shape appears to be rising above the scene. Television anchors (and social media commenters) speculated that it might be a spirit ascending to the next plane, or perhaps an angel, snapped by a lucky trucker as he drove by. It’s absolutely possible, even probable, that the photo was not altered. However, this photograph doesn’t show a spirit or an angel, but what’s most likely an irregularly-shaped piece of dirt that has stuck to either the lens or the camera’s internal sensor. Dirt or dust on the sensor of a camera assumes a greyish and fuzzy appearance in a photograph (and sometimes shows up as luminescent balls in night or high-contrast photography, to which the paranormally-minded sometimes refer as “spirit orbs“): If the photograph is taken with a mobile phone’s camera, the effect can be even more pronounced (and difficult to clean, if the dust is on an internal sensor): We’re not certain what Vazquez used to take the photograph, but judging by the large depth of field (the bushes closest to the photographer are only slightly blurrier than the ambulances, for example), it’s clear that the lens is stopped down to a smaller aperture. That makes the issue of dust on the lens or the sensor even more pronounced: Now when the lens is stopped down and aperture is significantly smaller, say at f/16, light rays coming from the lens diaphragm are perpendicular to the sensor filter. Because the angle is more or less straight, dust specks also cast direct and defined shadows on the sensor. That’s why dust shows up in images much smaller, darker and with more defined edges at small apertures. A graph explains the concept for the more visually-minded:
33178	"By participating in a Facebook ""secret sister"" gift exchange, you'll receive 36 gifts, books, or bottles of wine in exchange for one $10-15 contribution."	Participating in “secret sister” gift exchanges is a prospect dubious for many reasons (primarily legal ones). Reddit’s popular Secret Santa gift exchange presents an option for those who wish to exchange holiday presents with strangers, but it involves sending and receiving a single gift (not 36).	false	Inboxer Rebellion, chain letters, children's book exchange, facebook book exchange	In late October 2015, social media users began sending and receiving solicitations to participate in a “secret sisters” gift exchange scheme. Posts on Facebook, Reddit, and several forums described a process that involved sending one present (commonly valued at $10) and receiving 36 in return. Participants who opted in to the “secret sister” exchange were instructed to send a gift to the first “sister” on the list, move the second on the list to the first spot, and put their own name into the second spot. Many of the postings warned naysayers and skeptics that their objections would be deleted from comment threads: Welcome to our secret sister gift exchange! Here’s how it works: 1) Send one gift value at least $10 to secret sister #1 below. 2) Remove secret sister’s name from #1; then move secret sister #2 to that spot. 3) Add your name to #2 with your info. 4) Then send this info to 6 other ladies with the updated name info 5) Copy the secret sister request that I posted on my wall, to your own wall. If you cannot complete this within 1 week please notify me, as it isn’t fair to the ladies who have participated and are waiting for their own gifts to arrive. You might want to order directly from a web-based service (Amazon, or any other online shop) which saves a trip to the post office. Soon you should receive 36 gifts! What a deal, 36 gifts for giving just one! Be sure to include some information about yourself … some of your favorites. Seldom does anyone drop out because it’s so much fun to send a gift to someone you may or may not know … and of course it’s fun to receive. You should begin receiving gifts in about 2 weeks if you get your letters out to your 6 people right away. The majority of “secret sister” gift exchange solicitations that arrived in our inbox definitively promised 36 randomly selected $10 gifts for each “sister,” a number that seemed to hinge on static participation levels for every individual group exchange. As a telling number of social media commenters pointed out, the idea was simply a repackaging of age-old chain letter gifting schemes, the pitfalls of which are both well-known and about as ubiquitous as the practice itself. It’s worth noting that amid the myriad enticements for such initiatives on social media, many users expressed interest and committed to the exchanges. But while a handful of individuals claimed to have received a single gift, none reported an avalanche of $10 trinkets arriving at their doors. Had such a plan ever borne fruit, accounts of such success mysteriously remained virtually non-existent. However, the plausibility of actually garnering returns was secondary to a far bigger problem with the “secret sister” scheme. According to the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, gift chains aren’t just “mathematically impossible”; they’re also illegal: There’s at least one problem with chain letters. They’re illegal if they request money or other items of value and promise a substantial return to the participants. Chain letters are a form of gambling, and sending them through the mail (or delivering them in person or by computer, but mailing money to participate) violates Title 18, United States Code, Section 1302, the Postal Lottery Statute. (Chain letters that ask for items of minor value, like picture postcards or recipes, may be mailed, since such items are not things of value within the meaning of the law.) A common objection raised by prospective participants addressed the motivations for participating in the exchange; those users held that whether the scheme worked or not, the initial $10 outlay seemed a minor risk (which served to altruistically served to bring joy to others). However, that interpretation neglected to consider those solicited (by any single user’s participation) stood to lose out, thereby rendering individual intent (to give or receive) largely irrelevant. In short, the problem wasn’t whether any one person expected to receive presents back — it was the inherently unfulfillable promise that a $10 buy in would result in hundreds of dollars worth of returns for others. Whether or not user participated “honestly,” they had no hand in ensuring that those who bought in under them would receive any return on their initial investments, and the risk in question was problematic precisely because it was undertaken on behalf of others. In December 2016, the “Secret Sister” trend revisited social media as a “wine exchange” (with the same problematic status): ATTENTION WINE DRINKERS! Let’s create some positivity over the next few weeks leading up to the holidays … Anyone interested in a holiday wine bottle exchange? It doesn’t matter where you live, you are welcome to join. I need a minimum of 6 (or preferably up to 36) wine lovers to participate in a secret wine bottle exchange. You only have to buy ONE bottle of wine valued at $15 or more and send it to ONE secret wine lover. (You can even send it through Amazon!) Afterwards, you will receive from 6 to 36 wine bottles in return!! It all depends how many wine drinkers join. Let me know if you are interested and I will send you the information! Please don’t ask to participate if you’re not going to follow through with sending one wine bottle. TIS THE SEASON! Comment below if you’re in & I’ll send you the details via fb messenger – if they are confusing at all, please let me know! !
3191	Mia Farrow visits Chad to promote new approach to hunger.	Groups of women had traveled for days to find care for their starving children in Chad, blankly staring in exhaustion and with little hope. But other women smiled, relieved to see their children “fattened” by a new and simplified initiative for hunger.	true	Chad, Health, General News, Mia Farrow, Africa, Senegal, United Nations, Central Africa	In an interview with The Associated Press, actress Mia Farrow recounted the scene during her visit to the Central African nation’s Mangalme area as an envoy for the International Rescue Committee. “Once you see a child dying of hunger in a world where it isn’t necessary, in a world of abundance ... you have frustration,” she said. “When I saw this simple solution ... I said yes, there is an answer.” She is promoting the IRC’s approach to treating severe and moderate acute malnutrition, one that contrasts with the widespread method using two different products administered by two different agencies. UNICEF provides a fortified peanut butter treatment to children with severe acute malnutrition, while the World Food Program, another United Nations agency, provides a blended flours treatment to children with moderate acute malnutrition. A child with moderate acute malnutrition could arrive at a facility that only serves severe cases and not receive treatment. In Chad about 350,000 children are suffering from acute malnutrition. That number could grow as the landlocked Sahel nation faces a growing extremist threat in its Lake Chad region and refugees continue to arrive from neighboring countries. Rapid desertification exacerbates the hunger and poverty. Chad ranks 186th of 189 countries in the 2018 Human Development Index and has one of the world’s highest levels of hunger, according to the World Food Program. More than 66% of the population of 15.5 million lives in severe poverty. The IRC hopes to make treating malnutrition more efficient and less costly. CEO David Miliband has said the new approach could save millions of lives over the next decade since only 20% of some 50 million acutely malnourished children worldwide have access to treatment. The IRC hopes its pilot programs in Chad and Mali can help inform World Health Organization guidelines on treating malnutrition and allow health workers to deliver the treatments within communities and not just at clinics. “We don’t have to watch children die,” Farrow said. World Food Program spokesman Herve Verhoosel said the agency “fully supports testing and building the evidence for simplified approaches such as the one being put forward by IRC. The approach shows promise, and we’re enthusiastic about it as one of the strategies that may help improve treatment of acute malnutrition.” Malnutrition is a major cause of maternal and child illness and death in Chad, he said. He acknowledged that in remote settings some women and children may walk for hours or days to a clinic only to find treatment for one type of malnutrition available _ and could be turned away if they don’t fit the criteria. “Simplified protocols could provide a promising solution to these issues,” he said. For them to be effective, “we need to ensure that these services are also available in communities, not just in health clinics.” He noted that some evidence gaps remain on the effectiveness of the approach but said U.N. agencies are working with the IRC to generate needed data. The IRC pilot in Chad is being carried out in partnership with Chad’s health ministry, WFP and UNICEF. Nearly 2,000 malnourished children already have been admitted. ___ Follow Carley Petesch on Twitter at https://twitter.com/carleypetesch
4108	Lawsuit alleges no hepatitis C treatment for inmates.	The ACLU of Vermont and Harvard Law School have sued leaders of two state departments and a private health care provider, accusing them of refusing to treat inmates diagnosed with chronic hepatitis C.	true	Vermont, Prisons, Health, Lawsuits, Hepatitis, Burlington, Infectious diseases	The federal lawsuit in Burlington was filed Tuesday on behalf of two prisoners. They allege leaders of the Agency of Human Services and the Department of Corrections, and Centurion of Vermont’s denial of treatment violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Hepatitis C is a viral infection that attacks the liver. Corrections Commissioner Michael Touchette said he hadn’t been served the lawsuit. He said the department’s worked closely with Vermont Legal Aid and University of Vermont infectious disease specialists to ensure provisions of HCV care are at the prevailing standards.
18283	"The problem of unwanted sexual contacts in the military ""is not just a woman's issue. More than half of the victims are men."	A U.S. judge on Tuesday rejected efforts by major drugmakers, pharmacies and distributors to dismiss claims that they caused the nation’s opioid crisis, clearing the way for a scheduled landmark trial even as he pushes for a nationwide settlement.	true	National, Military, Kirsten Gillibrand,	U.S. District Judge Dan Polster, who oversees roughly 2,000 opioid lawsuits by states, counties and cities, said the plaintiffs can try to prove that drugmakers’ deceptive marketing of the painkillers caused a harmful, massive increase in supply that pharmacies and distributors did not do enough to stop. “A factfinder could reasonably infer that these failures were a substantial factor in producing the alleged harm suffered by plaintiffs,” the Cleveland-based judge wrote. The ruling was among seven decisions and orders totaling 80 pages from Polster ahead of a scheduled Oct. 21 trial by two Ohio counties against Purdue Pharma, the OxyContin maker accused of fueling the epidemic, and several other defendants. Polster also refused to dismiss civil conspiracy claims against drugmakers, pharmacies and distributors, and said federal law did not preempt much of the plaintiffs’ case. Other defendants included the drugmakers Endo International Plc and Johnson & Johnson; pharmacy operators CVS Health Corp, Rite Aid Corp, Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc and Walmart Inc; and distributors AmerisourceBergen Corp, Cardinal Health Inc and McKesson Corp. Polster also refused to dismiss a variety of claims against generic drugmakers Allergan Plc, Mallinckrodt Plc and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. Opioid addiction claimed roughly 400,000 lives in the United States from 1999 to 2017, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Critics of the industry said opioid makers hid the addiction and abuse risks of prolonged use from consumers. Rite Aid’s lawyers declined to comment. Lawyers for other major defendants did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Paul Hanly, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said his clients were pleased that Polster “almost uniformly” agreed with their positions on the dismissal requests and whether to admit various testimony. J&J has said it will appeal an Oklahoma judge’s Aug. 26 order that it pay $572.1 million to that state for the company’s role in the opioid epidemic. Purdue and its owners, the Sackler family, have been in talks on a possible $10 billion to $12 billion nationwide settlement of opioid claims, two people familiar with the matter said last week. That accord could include a bankruptcy filing for the Stamford, Connecticut-based company. Purdue and the Sacklers have denied the allegations. The case is In re National Prescription Opiate Litigation, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio, No. 17-md-02804.
10004	Gene test may aid in treating lung cancer	"This story reports on a study from Japan published in this week's New England Journal of Medicine. The authors report on the use of genetic profiling to distinguish different types of lung cancers. Because there are so many different types, it can be difficult to predict how well an individual may respond to therapy. This type of gene profiling may eventually be able to discriminate which patients are the most likely to benefit from chemotherapy from those who could possibly be spared the toxic regimens. However, until this kind of gene profiling is combined with actual treatment decisions, we won't know if the testing will live up to its promise. The story does provide survival times for those categorized as ""high"" or ""low"" risk. What we really would want to know is how this relates to the use of chemotherapy – if those at high risk could be the ones to most benefit from chemo or if those at low risk could be spared the toxic therapy. But the story points out that this information is not yet available. However, the story does not comment on harms of the testing. False postive or negative tests could have serious consequences if treatment decisions are made on the basis of the genetic tests. For example, it is possible that a person could be mistakenly labeled ""high"" risk when they really aren't and undergo grueling chemotherapy that they may not benefit from. Furthermore, although the story does mention conventional staging methods and states that this method is deficient, the story does not adequately describe the advantages and disadvantages of the new method by comparison or explain how the gene testing would fit with existing methods. For example, currently, survival is not predicted just based on stage of disease, but must also factor patient age and comorbidities, and other risk factors (including end-of-life decisions). Finally, the story states that ""widespread use is perhaps a few years away."" While this may be true, there is no justification provided for this estimate. That may be an overly optimistic prediction."	mixture		"The story does not mention costs of genetic testing. While cost estimates may not yet be available, the story could have speculated on potential costs or mentioned the range of costs for genetic testing in breast cancer. The story does provide survival times for those categorized as ""high"" or ""low"" risk. What we really would want to know is how this relates to the use of chemotherapy – if those at high risk could be the ones to most benefit from chemo or if those at low risk could be spared the toxic therapy. But the story points out that this information is not yet available. The story does not comment on harms of the testing. False postive or negative tests could have serious consequences if treatment decisions are made on the basis of the genetic tests. For example, it is possible that a person could be mistakenly labeled ""high"" risk when they really aren't and undergo grueling chemotherapy that they may not benefit from. The story adequately describes the strength of the available evidence. The story does not exaggerate the seriousness or prevalence of lung cancer. The story quotes several experts and points out who is an author on the study. Although the story does mention conventional staging methods and states that this method is deficient, the story does not adequately describe the advantages and disadvantages of the new method by comparison or explain how the gene testing would fit with existing methods. For example, currently, survival is not predicted just based on stage of disease, but must also factor patient age and comorbidities, and other risk factors (including end-of-life decisions). The story states that ""widespread use is perhaps a few years away."" While this may be true, there is no justification provided for this estimate, which may be overly optimistic. The story clearly states that genetic profiling for cancer is not new (it is currently used for breast cancer), but that this is an emerging idea for lung cancer. Because the story quoted multiple experts and quotes from the editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, the reader can assume the story did not rely on a press release as the sole source of information."
28572	Drinking cocktails from a copper mug can cause copper poisoning	What's true: Any acidic drink corrodes copper in a mug, which leaches back into the drink, increasing the level of copper in it, which could potentially cause copper poisoning and its associated symptoms. What's false: It's not clear how long a cocktail would have to sit in a copper mug, and how many drinks someone would have to drink in order to feel the symptoms of copper poisoning. What's undetermined: The exact rate at which copper from a mug leaches into drinks of various acidities.	mixture	Food, alcohol, cocktails, drinks	In August 2017, several news outlets reported that public health authorities in the state of Iowa had advised against serving certain alcoholic drinks in copper mugs: An advisory bulletin from Iowa’s Alcoholic Beverages Division notes that, in keeping with Food and Drug Administration guidelines, copper should not come into contact with acidic foods with a pH below 6. That includes vinegar, fruit juice, wine and, yes, a traditional Moscow mule, whose pH is “well below 6.0.” the bulletin says. Iowa’s Alcoholic Beverages Division did indeed publish an advisory bulletin on 28 July 2017: The recent popularity of Moscow Mules, an alcoholic cocktail typically served in a copper mug, has led to inquiries regarding the safe use of copper mugs and this beverage. The use of copper and copper alloys as a food contact surface is limited in Iowa. The bulletin goes on to explain that the Food and Drug Administration food code prohibits food or drink with pH levels of below 6 (that is, relatively acidic food and drinks) coming in contact with copper at a licensed premises like a bar or restaurant. The reasoning behind this, according to page 485 of the FDA food code, is that there is a slight but definite risk of poisoning: High concentrations of copper are poisonous and have caused foodborne illness. When copper and copper alloy surfaces contact acidic foods, copper may be leached into the food. The FDA code adds that anyone serving beverages (including water) through pipes must also have adequate mechanisms in place to prevent copper from leaching into drinks. It also points out that while copper is an important part of the fermentation required to brew beer, too much copper (above 0.2 mg per liter) kills yeast, so the level of copper leached into successfully-brewed beer falls below what is toxic to humans (about 3.5 mg per liter and above). The 28 July 2017 statement by the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division does not contain new information, new research, or a new warning about drinking from copper mugs. It is effectively a reminder, in light of the recent popularity of the Moscow mule, that Iowa has incorporated the federal regulations contained in the FDA food code. That code has contained the same restrictions on copper plumbing and containers, and the same rationale, since at least 1997. It’s clear that although copper is an important naturally occurring trace element, it can also be toxic to humans. It is also clear that toxic levels of copper can leach into food and water through both copper containers (such as those used for acidic drinks like the Moscow mule and other beverages) and through copper or copper alloy plumbing. However, what’s less clear is how much copper is enough to make you sick, and how likely it is that you’ll be harmed by drinking a cocktail from a copper mug. In 1991, the Environmental Protection Agency established a “maximum contaminant level goal” for copper of 1.3 mg per liter of fluid (page 130). According to the EPA, the MCLG is “the maximum level of a contaminant in drinking water at which no known or anticipated adverse effect on the health of persons would occur, allowing an adequate margin of safety”. A 1999 study in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives concluded that copper levels above 3 mg per liter of drinking water were associated with increased instances of nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. The National Research Council also lists several case reports and studies of outbreaks and incidences of copper poisoning. The details of these cases are not entirely reliable since they are not controlled experiments, and outcomes could have be affected by many variables. We asked the FDA for more details on (roughly) how many acidic cocktails an individual would have to consume, and how long the drink would have to remain in a copper container, before they became ill. The FDA forwarded our query to the Centers for Disease Control, whose spokesperson indicated it would be difficult to give a definitive answer: We do not have any specific information regarding how many Moscow mule drinks one would need to drink out of a copper mug to have a health risk. Generally, acidic drinks would leach copper out of the unlined copper mugs. The amount of copper would depend on the acidity of the drink and the length of time that it is in contact with the mug. We also consulted Professor Marc Solioz, a leading microbiologist who has expertise in copper toxicity; he told us that there is something of a biological early warning system that can often stop people from consuming copper-contaminated drinks: Long before you reach the highest levels [of copper in a beverage], the drink gets a metallic taste, so this is really a warning that there’s too much copper in the drink. Solioz was skeptical about the potential risk of poisoning and adverse symptoms (discomfort, nausea, vomiting) from the typical consumption of even acidic beverages like the Moscow mule from a copper container: It is clear that in these mugs there will be copper dissolved by the drinks. Most drinks are acidic, and acidic solutions dissolve copper. How much copper this is is very difficult to say. It depends on the acidity, it depends on the volume that’s in there, how long it sits in there, whether it’s stirred or not. But I would think that if you just drink a drink in… let’s say fifteen, twenty minutes, it’s probably okay. We asked Solioz whether the risk of illness would also be low for a person drinking three to five acidic cocktails from the same copper mug over the course of several hours. He replied: Generally low risk, yes. I personally wouldn’t be worried about it. Solioz emphasized that while the risk from typical consumption is probably low for most people, a small proportion of the population (around 1 in 30,000 people) have Wilson disease, which causes an accumulation of copper within the body, and could potentially be harmed by consuming acidic beverages from a copper container. While most people are able to effectively secrete copper, Solioz said, those with Wilson disease struggle to do this, so even the relatively low level of copper leached into a drink could make them sick. Solioz told us he was unaware of any research which specifically measured the rate of copper leaching in containers carrying beverages of various acidities, and over various time periods. We were also unable to find such research. The closest thing to this that we could find was a short 1957 report published in the American Journal of Public Health. This report described an outbreak of nausea, vomiting and diarrhea among nurses at a military hospital in 1954. The nurses consumed cocktails at a party that had been sitting in copper-contaminated cocktail shakers for more than two hours before many of them became sick. Dr John Wylie, the report’s author, wrote: The evidence was suggestive of the original inner plating having become worn off through frequent use and cleaning during several years… The cocktail was reconstructed, yielding the equivalent of 179 mg of copper per liter. Wylie concluded: These amounts of copper are believed to have given rise to the symptoms of chemical food poisoning precipitated by the ingestion of alcohol on an empty stomach. It’s very difficult to conclude anything from this about the rate at which cocktails might typically become contaminated in copper containers: this was a short and decades-old case report, not a scientific study (which could have controlled for various possible causal factors); the author does not make it clear whether he himself was present for the incident; and Wylie also suggests that the level of copper leaching in the cocktail was linked to significant damage to the container. Despite these serious shortcomings, the 1957 report formed the basis of the EPA’s 1991 decision that the “maximum contaminant level goal” for copper in drinking water should be 1.3 mg per liter. This recommendation remains in place in August 2017. We also asked Iowa’s Department of Inspections and Appeals for statistics on reports of copper poisoning in the state, in order to see whether there had been a spike in symptoms accompanying the increased popularity of the Moscow mule, but we were told that the state’s Department of Public Health does not track such reports. Iowa’s Alcoholic Beverages Division, meanwhile, recommends that if bar and restaurant owners are going to use copper mugs for highly-acidic drinks like the Moscow mule, they should use copper mugs lined on the inside with other metals like nickel or stainless steel.
9802	Scarred Hearts Healed After Heart Attack	It’s understandable that the researchers who appear to have found a way to reverse scarring in heart tissue would be excited about their own work, especially given that the lead researcher stands to profit from future treatments based on the research. It’s less understandable for a news story to get caught up in the same excitement. The second sentence sets the overly effusive tone: “The finding, just in time for Valentine’s Day, is the clearest evidence yet that literally broken hearts can heal.” There is no skepticism, no hint at what a treatment like this might cost, and no independent analysis to help readers understand whether phrases such as “this could change the nature of medicine” are warranted. Most important, the story ignores the fact that the stem cell treatment failed to improve the overall functioning of the heart of the treated patients. Stem cell medicine and genetic medicine are regularly championed in the press as panaceas that are going to alter the course of human health. So far, they have had a very limited impact, and stories should always bring in multiple independent experts to place a study like this in context. Heart disease is one of the leading killers of men and women in the United States, and there are studies published every week that explore new approaches to the problem. Just because one study included stem cells does not make it more important or more viable. The use of autologous stem cells to repair damaged heart muscle has been studied previously with mixed results. This phase 1 study (designed to determine the safety of the stem cell infusions) was conducted in a small group of patients who had previously suffered a heart attack and now had evidence of heart failure. Although the survival of heart attack has improved, the residual effects (heart failure) remains an elusive target. This study demonstrated small but important changes in the area of the heart attack in the treated patients. Somewhat puzzling however was the lack of improvement in the degree of heart failure in the treated patients as compared to controls. This important fact seems to have been missed in the story. Additional studies are necessary to see if in fact this approach actually improves heart function.	false	heart attack,stem cells	The treatment is too experimental, and there are no comparable treatments to allow for a meaningful discussion of costs. The story explains benefits in this way: “A year later, the mass of scar tissue in the treated patients’ hearts got 42% smaller. And healthy heart muscle increased by 60%. No such regeneration was seen in the patients who got standard care.” We thought the story should have spent more time, though, explaining the next sentence: “Because all of the patients were doing relatively well, there was no dramatic difference in clinical outcome.” If there was no dramatic difference in clinical outcome, then what exactly is the basis for all of the optimism in this story? Yes, there was more muscle regenerated but no it did not make any difference in the overall performance. So, more muscle did not equate to better function There is no mention of harms in the story. Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported on the same study and said, “A year after the procedure, six patients in the stem cell group had serious side effects, including a heart attack, chest pain, a coronary bypass, implantation of a defibrillator, and two other events unrelated to the heart.” The basic outlines of the study are described, but there is no mention of the study’s limitations or hurdles that lie ahead for this to be translated into a clinical treatment. As a result, it leaves the reader with the impression that the results are far more important than they really may be. There are numerous hurdles between a successful phase 1 study and commercialization. This fact is not made clear in the the story Some of the language in the story skirts close to disease mongering. It presents heart scarring as if it is the same as heart failure, using terms such as “resurrects” and “broken hearts.” The word “cure” creeps in and is not qualified. The stem cells “seem to be doing something much more amazing,” the story says. As noted above, the study and this story say that there were no differences in the clinical outcomes of patients who received stem cells versus those who did not. Nonetheless, we can’t ding it for disease-mongering by the definition of that criterion. No interviews with independent sources are in evidence in the story. There is one quote from an accompanying editorial. The bulk of the story is given over to effusive quotes from the lead researcher, Eduardo Marban. We appreciate that the story made note of the fact that “He invented the “cardiosphere” culture technique used to create the stem cells and founded the company developing the treatment.” We think, though, that his conflict of interest should have prompted a few calls to independent sources. There is no comparison to alternative treatments. What do patients typically do after suffering a heart attack? Given what modern medicine has achieved so far with heart care, how long can someone expect to live after having a heart attack? Are there surgical options, pharmaceutical treatments or lifestyle changes that could make a difference? Even in a short, 511-word story, some of the space devoted to the lead researcher’s quotes could have been given to even one sentence about alternatives. The story makes it clear that the treatment is still in the experimental stage. The story hints at novelty but leaves readers confused. It says that this “is the first completed, controlled clinical trial showing that scarred heart tissue can be repaired. Earlier work in patients with heart failure, using different stem cells or bone-marrow stem cells, also showed that the heart can regenerate itself.” The press release for the study also makes a claim of novelty, saying that “this has never been accomplished before, despite a decade of cell therapy trials for patients with heart attacks.” We wish the story had more clearly explained how this study was a significant improvement on earlier studies. The story did not rely on this press release from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
1917	Dutch psychologist admits he made up research data.	A Dutch psychologist has admitted making up data and faking research over many years in studies which were then published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.	true	Science News	Diederik Stapel, a psychologist working at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, said he had “failed as a scientist” and was ashamed of what he had done, but had been driven to falsifying research by constant pressure to perform. The respected journal Science, which published some of Diederik Stapel’s work earlier this year, issued an “expression of concern” editorial in which it said it now had serious concerns about the validity of Stapel’s findings. Stapel was suspended from his position at Tilburg University in the Netherlands in September when an investigation was launched by the university into his work. “The official report ... indicates that the extent of the fraud by Stapel is substantial,” Science’s editor-in-chief Bruce Alberts wrote in the journal’s online edition Science Express. The editorial was posted online late on November 1. In a statement posted on the internet via the Dutch newspaper Brabants Dagblad this week, Stapel admitted to falsifying data and apologized for his actions. “I have failed as a scientist, as a researcher,” he said. “I have adjusted research data and faked research. Not just once, but many several times, and not just briefly, but over a long period of time. “I am ashamed of this and I am deeply sorry.” Science published a study by Stapel and colleague Siegwart Lindenberg in April which found that people are more likely to discriminate against others when their surroundings are disordered and messy. Alberts said he now wanted to alert readers “that serious concerns have been raised about the validity of the findings in this report.” The process of peer review, in which other scientists are asked to critique and analyze a paper before it is accepted for publication in a journal, is designed to minimize the risk that false data will get through, but it is not infallible. British doctor Andrew Wakefield was exposed as a fraud and struck off the medical register in Britain in 2010 after his paper on links between autism and the childhood measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine was discredited and withdrawn by The Lancet, which originally published the research in 1998. Stapel said in his statement the pressure to succeed had been too great. “I was not able to withstand the pressure to score points, to publish, to always have to be better,” he said in his statement. “I wanted too much, too fast. And in a system where there is little control, where people often work alone, I took the wrong path.”
9352	A Simple Emergency Room Intervention Can Help Cut Suicide Risk	This article reports results of a study on the effectiveness of the Safety Planning Intervention (SPI), a simple intervention conducted by staff in emergency departments when a patient has been treated for an attempted suicide. The intervention involves creating a safety plan for each patient and following up with phone calls after discharge. The story — and the study that it’s based on — both tout that SPI reduced the risk of short-term suicidal behavior in half. That’s a misleading way to frame the results. More precisely, 3.03% of the patients who received the SPI intervention engaged in suicidal behavior within six months of discharge, compared to 5.29% of those receiving usual care. This is a key example of why news stories should report the absolute risk reduction. Suicide is one of the top ten leading causes of death in the United States. Almost 45,000 people died as a result of suicide in 2016. Many of these people are treated in emergency departments. Unfortunately, nearly half of suicide patients do not attend treatment afterward, or discontinue treatment quickly. Yet risk for repeated suicidal behavior is greatest during the first 6 months following a suicidal crisis. Thus, emergency department personnel may be the only point of mental health care at a critical time in these patients’ lives. A brief SPI intervention that helps patients and their families plan how to deal with suicidal thoughts and provides follow-up care could make a critical difference. But news stories must be careful to explain the study–and its limitations–so that people come away understanding what it couldn’t measure (see evidence quality, below).	mixture	suicide	We’re told the intervention takes a few minutes up to two hours for nurses or social workers to administer when a patient comes to the emergency room after a suicide attempt. We assume this counseling is provided at no additional cost, but we’d like to know for certain. One possible additional cost is having a delegated staff person in the ED at all times to accommodate these patients. Also, there may be cost savings in not having these patients wait for a full psychiatric evaluation by a psychiatrist or a psychiatric social worker or nurse. The story explains that people who received the Safety Planning Intervention cut their odds of repeated suicidal behavior in the next six months by nearly half. But that what’s known as the relative risk reduction, and it’s not the full picture. More precisely, 3.03% of the patients who received the SPI intervention engaged in suicidal behavior compared to 5.29% of those receiving usual care. This is a key example of why news stories should report the absolute risk reduction. Patients could be potentially harmed if a hospital relies too heavily on the SPI instead of more thorough and immediate psychiatric care. For example, if a patient with a serious mental illness isn’t diagnosed and treated promptly. The story informs us that the study involved 1,200 patients at 5 VA hospitals around the country who were given the treatment, compared to patients at 4 hospitals who were just sent home, and therefore served as a comparison group. But the full picture is more complicated. The story doesn’t note that this wasn’t actually a randomized controlled trial — medical records were used for the control group instead of actively enrolling patients. Also, patients who were admitted to inpatient care directly from the emergency room were excluded from the trial–so the data may only reflect lower-risk patients–and not all patients with suicidal ideation. As the study authors note, this also may explain in part why the number of suicide attempts post-hospital were low in both groups. We just don’t how this intervention helps higher-risk patients. Lastly, the patients were all mostly middle-aged military men, so we don’t know if the intervention will have similar results for other groups. Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States overall and suicide rates have increased by more than 30% in half of U.S. states since 1999. Suicide rates are especially high among middle-aged men and veterans. This story doesn’t inflate the prevalence. Two expert sources not involved with the study are cited, and we didn’t detect any conflicts of interest that should have been disclosed. The story doesn’t adequately explain what the alternatives are–if a hospital doesn’t have this protocol in place, what normally happens with suicidal patients? There’s some history of alternative approaches that could have put this intervention into context. Up until 10 years ago “no-suicide contracts” were commonly used after emergency department visits, but they were repeatedly shown to be ineffective. Around that time, safety plans were recommended as an alternative, and clinical trials among active duty military found them to lower suicide risks. Post-discharge follow-up by in-person visit or phone calls was also shown to lower suicidal behavior by up to 30%. The authors of this study, then, developed and evaluated a combination of the two approaches. We’re told that the SPI approach is becoming increasingly more available in hospitals across the country. This is the first large-scale test of the SPI intervention, so even though it is already being used in many emergency departments, the evidence for effectiveness is new. The story did not appear to rely on the news release.
21700	"Jack Bogdanski Says ""in the Legislature, (Mary Nolan) has been a party-line Democrat, showing a 100% track record in harmony with the American Civil Liberties Union."	Blogger says Mary Nolan is a party-line Democrat who voted with the ACLU 100 percent of the time	true	Oregon, Corrections and Updates, Voting Record, Jack Bogdanski,	"In early July 2011, Rep. Mary Nolan, D-Portland, announced she’d run for a spot on the Portland City Council. Not long after that, critics started taking aim. Jack Bogdanski, a local blogger, waited just one day, in fact, before he let loose in a blog that questioned Nolan’s (and her husband’s) connections to the council. He also threw in this little bit as an aside: ""In the Legislature, she has been a party-line Democrat, showing a 100% track record in harmony with the American Civil Liberties Union."" These sorts of attacks are pretty common when it comes to campaigns -- look at how much of a partisan so-and-so is, look how often the candidate votes with a specific organization. Still, they’re worth checking out, not just because it’s important to know whether they’re accurate, but also because it’s important to know what exactly, a ""100% track record in harmony with the American Civil Liberties Union"" -- for instance -- might look like. In the statement itself, there are actually two assertions. The first is that Nolan is a party-line Democrat. The second is that she has voted 100 percent in line with the ACLU. Let’s start with the ACLU. This is a pretty easy fact to check. The American Civil Liberties Union of Oregon creates a Legislative Scorecard for each session dating back to 1997. They don’t have the most recent 2011 session tabulated just yet, so we started with the scorecard that combined the voting positions from the 2009 session and the 2010 special session. On that scorecard, Nolan did get a 100 percent. In fact, Nolan got the highest score of any lawmaker in both the House and Senate. What exactly does that mean? Well, here are some of the votes that earned her that 100: -She opposed a bill that overturned a law prohibiting public school teachers from wearing religious dress. (This passed. )* -She opposed a law that created a government-operated pharmacy database of prescriptions. (This passed.) -She supported a bill that prohibited the state from taking further steps to implement the federal Real ID Act. (This passed.) -She opposed a bill that expanded the death penalty and gave fetuses equal status as a ""human being"" under state law. (This failed.) -She opposed a bill that would have allowed employers to terminate employees who hold medical marijuana cards, without evidence of impairment on the job. (This failed.) -She opposed an amendment to the Oregon Constitution’s free expression clause to allow local governments to regulate nude dancing. (This failed.) Now, that’s just two sessions worth of voting. We figured we should do our due diligence and check back as far as 2001 -- Nolan’s first term in the Oregon House. As it happens, Nolan has earned a 100 percent each year the scorecard has been done, save for 2003, when she earned an 80 percent. That year she went against the ACLU and voted in favor of legislation that limited access to public records about Oregon Health & Science University animal researchers. Besides that hiccup, though, it does seem that Nolan votes in harmony with the ACLU nearly 100 percent of the time. We asked Nolan whether this sounded right to her and, after taking a look at past scorecards, she said it did. ""I don't keep track of scorecards,"" she said. ""But i do very consistently vote to protect the rights of people of color, of women, of kids, of gays and lesbians, of whistle blowers … ""It happens that that's what the ACLU cares about. But i care about it because government ought to protect the rights of the people who don't have power of their own."" Now, let’s get to that other bit of the statement, the one that calls Nolan a party-line Democrat. To check this bit, we turned to The Oregonian’s Your Government website. People smarter than we are have created a vote recorder that keeps tabs on every floor vote made in the Oregon Capitol and then does some mathematics to figure out just how often a given representative or senator votes with her or his own party. If you look at the numbers for the 2011 session, Nolan voted along party lines just over 92 percent of the time. Your average Democrat last session voted with the party about 94 percent of the time. This database doesn’t got as far back as 2001, but we checked the figures for the 2010 special session and the 2009 regular session. In 2010, she voted with her party 98 percent of the time (same as your average Democrat), and in 2009, she voted with her party 97.5 percent of the time (also the average). Now, these scores don’t offer a whole lot of nuance in terms of what she broke with her party on, but the general idea that she votes in harmony with her party seems pretty well supported by these figures. We’ll give the statement that Nolan is ""a party-line Democrat, showing a 100% track record in harmony with the American Civil Liberties Union"" a . *CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mischaracterized the effect of this bill. The sentence has been updated. The ruling was not affected."
4315	‘This city is not livable’: New Delhi people decry dirty air.	Sakshi Chauhan has not left her house in a quiet inner-city slum in the Indian capital for the past six days on her doctor’s orders.	true	Health, General News, India, Air pollution, Asia Pacific, New Delhi, Pollution	The 22-year-old call center operator is recovering from a severe throat infection and the thick smog now blanketing New Delhi has made even breathing dangerous. “The moment I step outside, I can’t breathe properly,” she said. “I have never seen this level of pollution in my entire life.” The 20 million residents of New Delhi, already one of the world’s most polluted cities, have been suffering for weeks under a toxic haze that is up to 10 times worse than the upper limits of what is considered healthy. The pollution crisis is piling public pressure on the government to tackle the root causes of the persistent haze. Air pollution in New Delhi and northern Indian states peaks in the winter as farmers in neighboring agricultural regions set fire to clear land after the harvest and prepare for the next crop season. The pollution in the Indian capital also peaks after Diwali celebrations, the Hindu festival of light, when people set off fireworks. A declared public health emergency has remained in place in the city for the past five days. Schools have stayed closed and authorities have been handing out free anti-pollution masks to children. New Delhi’s government has introduced a system that restricts many private vehicles from taking to the roads for two weeks. It has ordered firefighters to sprinkle water from high-rise buildings to settle the dust, tried to snuff out garbage fires and ordered builders to cover construction sites to stop dust from enveloping the area. India’s health minister earlier played down the health consequences of the dirty air, insisting it is mainly a concern for those who have pre-existing lung conditions. Doctors in the capital, however, say many of their patients these days are complaining of ailments that stem from the filthy air they breathe. Dr. Salil Sharma, a throat specialist, said that 95% of the patients he has been treating over the last 10 days are sick because of the foul air. “I have patients from all age groups and most of them are nonsmokers who complain of breathlessness, chest congestion, fatigue and weakness,” Sharma said. “In some cases, I had to put some patients on a ventilator because they couldn’t breathe.” “We are right in the middle of a health emergency,” he said. A study published in The Lancet estimated that in 2017, air pollution killed 1.24 million Indians — half of them younger than 70, lowering the country’s average life expectancy by almost 1.7 years. India’s Supreme Court on Monday said the capital choking every year “could not be allowed in a civilized country.” In a ruling that followed petitions filed by activists, the top court’s judges ordered an immediate halt to the practice of farmers burning their fields in the neighboring states surrounding the capital. Some people distraught over the pollution are considering leaving the city for good. Devendra Verma, a street vendor, did not go to work for three days last week. He said he was too weak to leave his house as filthy air made him feel fatigued. “The city is not livable anymore,” he said. “Sometimes I think I should pack my bags and leave Delhi for once and all.” ___ Associated Press journalist Shonal Ganguly contributed to this report.
7199	Vukmir, Baldwin clash in sometimes combative first debate.	Republican Leah Vukmir, down in the polls a month before the Nov. 6 election, clashed with Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin on Monday, in a debate that turned combative at times as they presented starkly different positions on health care, abortion, immigration and a host of other issues.	true	Tammy Baldwin, Kavanaugh nomination, Universal health care, Immigration, Bernie Sanders, Elections, Milwaukee, Medicare	Here are the takeaways: HEALTH CARE Vukmir defended her push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, saying she would “fall in front of a truck before I would let people go without coverage for pre-existing conditions.” Baldwin said that repealing the national law, known as “Obamacare,” would “go back to the bad old days” and jeopardize protections for people with pre-existing conditions. Baldwin is a co-signer of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ “Medicare for all” single-payer health care proposal and has supported universal health care. “I do want to get to a place where all Americans have access to affordable, quality coverage,” Baldwin said. “We have to figure it out one way or another.” Vukmir said the “Medicare for all” bill, which she dubbed “Baldwincare,” would “completely turn our health care over to the government.” ABORTION Baldwin said she supports a woman’s right to choose whether to have an abortion, eliciting a passionate response from Vukmir, a nurse, who recounted holding a premature baby in her hands and seeing “that tiny heart beating so rapidly under that thin chest wall.” “Tammy Baldwin would rip that life out of the mother just like that and snuff that life out,” Vukmir said. “It’s wrong, it’s wrong.” ORAL CHEMOTHERAPY Vukmir called it a “lie that’s being perpetuated by Sen. Baldwin” that she was siding with insurance companies by voting against a bill in the state Legislature to require coverage of oral chemotherapy. Vukmir said she opposed it because of “unintended consequences” that would result in restricting people from receiving oral chemotherapy, not because she was helping insurance companies that opposed the mandate. “Sen. Baldwin wants to grab a headline,” Vukmir said. “She wants a press release and she just wants to protect her job. ... It is a scare tactic to save her job.” TOMAH Vukmir, waving papers and referencing an ethics complaint that was filed against Baldwin, said that she “turned her back on the veterans” at the Tomah Veterans Affairs Medical Center that led to the death of Marine veteran Jason Simcakoski in 2014. Vukmir said Baldwin was too slow to respond to a report delivered to her office in August 2014 detailing problems at the facility. Baldwin said Vukmir “should be ashamed of herself for using a Marine veteran’s death for her own political gain.” Baldwin noted that she worked with Simcakoski’s widow and parents to pass a law in 2015 that toughened guidelines for prescribing drugs at VA facilities, including requiring VA employees prescribing opioids to be better trained and to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention protocol. Simcakoski’s widow and parents cut two campaign ads for Baldwin in the election, while Tomah whistleblower Ryan Honl supports Vukmir and said it would be “immoral” to vote for Baldwin. An ethics complaint filed against Baldwin by a staff member she fired because of how the Tomah issue was handled was dismissed. IMMIGRATION Vukmir, the daughter of Greek immigrants, said President Donald Trump’s wall along the Mexico border “must” be built before other immigration reforms are pursued. Baldwin said she supports a comprehensive approach to immigration. KAVANAUGH Baldwin said she was concerned that the debate over confirming Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court may “silence an entire generation” of women who are victims of sexual assault. Baldwin said she found Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Kavanaugh of a sexual assault when they were both in high school, to be “credible and compelling.” Vukmir, a Kavanaugh supporter, said “there was nothing to corroborate” Ford’s allegations. She said Baldwin “didn’t even have the decency” to meet with Kavanaugh before saying publicly she would not vote to confirm him. WHAT’S NEXT Baldwin and Vukmir will meet Saturday night in Wausau for the second of their three debates. That one is sponsored by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association and will air live on television and radio stations across the state starting at 7 p.m. The third debate, sponsored by WISN-TV and the Marquette University Law School, will be Oct. 19 in Milwaukee. ___ Follow Scott Bauer on Twitter: https://twitter.com/sbauerAP ___ Sign up for “Politics in Focus,” a weekly newsletter showcasing the AP’s best political reporting from around the country leading up to the midterm elections: https://bit.ly/2ICEr3D
5791	School leaders, students stress need for mental health care.	Wyoming education officials and students say increased access to health care for students is needed to keep schools safe.	true	Access to health care, Shootings, Mental health, Health, Wyoming, Stress, School shootings, School safety, Education, Donald Trump	The Wyoming Tribune Eagle reports Michael Harris with the Fremont County School District told members of the Federal Commission on School Safety on Tuesday that several of his students share similar characteristics with man accused in the Florida high school shooting earlier this year. He thinks it’s likely that every Wyoming school district has students who like the shooter are socially unengaged, struggling academically, behaviorally challenging and may be suffering from mental illness. President Donald Trump formed the commission following the shooting. Others say they would like to see improved safety and security in schools, including more school resource officers. ___ Information from: Wyoming Tribune Eagle, http://www.wyomingnews.com
2487	Risk of birth defect doubles for cousin couples -study.	Children whose parents are cousins run more than double the risk of being born with a congenital abnormality, although the overall rate of such birth defects remains low, according to new research findings.	true	Health News	A large study in a British city with a large Pakistani community, where marriage between blood relatives is fairly common, found that so-called consanguineous parents accounted for more than 30 percent of birth defects in babies of Pakistani origin. Researchers said the findings were important evidence for use in educating populations that accept and sanction cousin marriages - including Amish, Kurdish, Romany and other relatively closed communities - about the potential risks for children’s health. Birth defects, also known as congenital abnormalities, can range from relatively minor problems such as extra fingers or toes through to more life-threatening problems such as holes in the heart or brain development disorders. Experts estimate more than a billion people worldwide live in communities where blood-relative marriage is a cultural norm. “Whilst consanguineous marriage increases the risk of birth defect from 3 percent to 6 percent, the absolute risk is still small,” said Eamonn Sheridan, a senior lecturer in clinical genetics at the University of Leeds who co-led the study and presented its results at a briefing in London. He added that this still means 96 percent of blood-relative couples are likely to have babies with no birth defects: “It’s important to note that the vast majority of babies born to couples who are blood relatives are absolutely fine.” Called “Born in Bradford” or BiB, the study was the largest of its type ever conducted and looked at more than 11,300 babies in the northern English city of Bradford between 2007 and 2011. The researchers found the overall rate of birth defects in the BiB babies - which included largely white British and Pakistani mothers but also other ethnic groups - was approximately 3.0 percent, nearly double the national rate of around 1.7 percent. Among the Pakistani subgroup, they found 77 percent of babies born with birth defects were born to parents who were in blood-relative marriages. Neil Small, a professor of Health Research at the University of Bradford who worked with Sheridan on the study, said he hoped the robust evidence provided by the study would prove useful in raising awareness among communities across the world. “At the heart of all this are children who are born with often very distressing illnesses that can create both misery in themselves and anguish in the families,” he said. “Many of these things are preventable and we hope that what our study does is contribute to a debate that means in the future, some of them will be.” Responding to the study’s findings, Hamish Spencer, a professor of zoology at New Zealand’s University of Otago who has previously researched consanguineous marriage, said they were important because there are significant public health consequences in places with higher rates of birth defects. “Awareness of the risks to the children of cousin marriage needs to be increased but in a culturally sensitive way,” he said in an emailed comment.
25180	"Every family health insurance policy has ""a $900 hidden tax"" to subsidize health care costs of the uninsured."	A reasonable estimate for uninsured costs	true	National, Health Care, Hillary Clinton,	"“You know you’re going to bankrupt the country with health care, right?” talk show host Bill O’Reilly began as an introduction to talk with Sen. Hillary Clinton about her health care plan. “Oh, no, I’m not,” said Clinton, who appeared on the The O’Reilly Factor on April 30, 2008. Clinton boiled her plan down to this: “Everybody who has health insurance who’s happy with it, you keep it. No changes. But what I am going to do is take an already existing plan -- it’s not government-run, it’s not a new bureaucracy. It’s the way Congress and federal employees get their health care. And we’re going to open it up to every American, because I think it’s about time...” “But you’re going to subsidize it,” O’Reilly interjected. “Well, we are,” Clinton said. “But here’s why. You already are subsidizing it. Your family policy has a $900 hidden tax. Why? Because when some poor person who doesn’t have health insurance...” “...goes to the emergency room...you’ve got to pick it up,” O’Reilly said, finishing her sentence. The $900 figure is key to Clinton’s plan. Yes, she is saying, the government will subsidize her health care plan. But, the thinking goes, private insurance companies will charge lower premiums to their existing customers because they will no longer have to subsidize health care costs incurred by uninsured people. Think of it like this, said John Sheils, senior vice president of The Lewin Group, a non-partisan group that has analyzed health care plans for both Democrats and Republicans: Someone shoplifts a loaf of bread from the grocery story. The price of bread is inflated a bit for everyone else to offset the store’s loss. “That’s kind of what’s going on with healthcare,” Sheils said. Hospitals have to treat people who come in and need medical care. And if those people don’t pay, “it’s kind of like walking out of the story without paying for bread,” he said. The cost is shifted onto those with private insurance. Sheils said Clinton’s claim that family health insurance policies subsidize the uninsured to the tune of about $900 a year is “in the ballpark.” Sheils believes the number is a little lower, closer to $800 per year. Hillary cites that same $900 figure in her formal health care proposal, the American Health Choices Plan. “One cause of the crisis in the health care system is that rather than containing costs, the system shifts them: about half of all hospital losses are passed along to other payers,” according to her plan. “Rather than reducing prices, the system raises families’ costs. “And, rather than covering all Americans, the system charges insured families a “hidden tax”: premiums are roughly $900 higher to pay for the cost of care for the uninsured.” It cites a report from Families USA called “Paying a Premium: The added cost of care for the uninsured.” The report was based on an analysis of data by Kenneth E. Thorpe, former Clinton administration health expert, now a professor at Emory University. Thorpe says Clinton’s figure actually is low. According to his analysis, about $922 of a family policy was used to subsidize the uninsured in 2005. But the cost of health care has gone up since then, as have the number of uninsured. In 2008, the number is closer to $1,270, he said. “The only way for hospitals to offset the costs (of the uninsured) is to have private insurers pay more than it’s worth,” Thorpe said. “It is their only means to stay financially solvent.” In 2005, private health paid about 25% more than the cost of care in hospitals, Thorpe said, citing a Medicare Payment Advisory Commission report to Congress. O’Reilly didn’t contest Clinton’s numbers, but he did take umbrage with subsidizing other people’s health care. “I mean, I don’t want to be paying for someone who’s taking heroin and drinking a bottle of gin a day,” O’Reilly said. “But I assume you want to pay for some hardworking families whose kid has juvenile diabetes,” Clinton said. “Or some woman... that just gets diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis."" “I don’t mind doing it,” O’Reilly said. Clinton’s point was that, to an extent, family health policy holders already are shouldering some of the burden for the uninsured. There may be some debate about whether the number is exactly $900 a year, as she stated, but several health policy experts agreed that she’s at least close."
16754	At some point in their lives, 99% of women use birth control.	"Happ said ""at some point in their lives, 99% of women use birth control."" It’s clear she was arguing that contraception use is widespread, and important for women who run the risk of getting pregnant. But in making the statement, Happ used an overly broad brush, applying what is true for a subset (sexually active women between 15 and 44) and applying it to a larger group (all women)."	mixture	Sexuality, Wisconsin, Susan Happ,	"The U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial ""Hobby Lobby"" decision in June 2014 involved contraception and the insurance coverage that companies are required to provide to employees under the Affordable Care Act. In a 5-4 decision, the court agreed with arguments made by Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts and crafts stores. Attorneys for the owners had argued they should not be forced to provide certain kinds of contraception that they feel violate their religious freedom. The decision was criticized by Democrats, who argued it allows some companies to make a health care decision for their female employees -- including which forms of birth control are covered. For instance, under the decision, the pill is okay, but intrauterine devices and the morning-after pill can be turned down. Jefferson County District Attorney Susan Happ, a Democrat running in the Aug. 12, 2014 primary for attorney general, laid out her concerns about the ruling in broad terms. ""Giving corporations, executives and bosses the ability to make decisions about women’s health care is deeply regrettable,"" she said in a June 30, 2014 news release. ""At some point in their lives, 99 percent of women use birth control. This decision seems to ignore that fact and side with corporations over women."" Others have cited a similar figure, including President Barack Obama on Feb. 10, 2012 when he unveiled a compromise on birth control coverage in his health care bill that aimed to address concerns raised by the Catholic Church. ""Nearly 99 percent of all women have relied on contraception at some point in their lives –- 99 percent,"" Obama said at a White House briefing. Is Happ right that virtually all women rely on birth control at some point in their lives? When asked for backup, Happ’s campaign directed us to a Feb. 14, 2013 report, ""Contraceptive methods women have ever used: United States, 1982-2010,"" published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That report was based on interviews with 12,279 women between 2006 and 2010. Each woman was asked a series of questions about whether she or a partner had ever used each of more than 20 methods of contraception. The goal of the report was to prepare national estimates on the use of contraception in the United States. Its conclusions were pretty straightforward: ""Virtually all women of reproductive age in 2006–2010 who had ever had sexual intercourse have used at least one contraceptive method at some point in their lifetime (99 percent, or 53 million women aged 15–44)."" The report said 88 percent of the women in that group have used ""a highly effective, reversible method such as birth control pills, an injectable method, a contraceptive patch, or an intrauterine device."" It added that the most common methods used were the male condom (93 percent), the pill (82 percent), withdrawal (60 percent), and the injectable Depo-Provera (23 percent). The report also said that the use of contraception had increased from 94.8 percent of sexually experienced women in 1982, to 98.2 percent in 1995 and 99.1 percent in 2006-2010. So the report is pretty clear when it comes to widespread use of contraception among sexually active women considered to be of reproductive age. But Happ’s claim was broader than that. She did not limit it to an age group, or qualify it as sexually active women, which the report did. That means there are some problems with her claim. For instance, the report says that only 86.6 percent of the women surveyed ever had sex with a male, meaning 13.4 percent never did. Similar trends were found in previous CDC surveys. A 2005 report said that about 8.4 percent of the women included in a 2002 survey said they had never had sex with a man. That survey was of 7,643 women between the ages of 15 and 44. When Obama made his 2012 statement, Cybercast News Service noted that the 2010 CDC report found 13.9 percent of women surveyed never had sexual intercourse, a figure that’s in line with the more recent study cited by Happ. So how many women are we talking about? According to the 2012 Census , the United States had about 92 million women between the ages of 15 and 44, so the number of women who never had sex is just over 12 million women. It is also worth noting that the CDC report says says 93 percent of women reported using condoms, and 60 percent reported using withdrawal as a birth control method. Those figures help drive the conclusion that virtually all women use birth control at some point in their lives. Neither, of course, is provided by prescription -- the context in which Happ made her claim. So, that also serves to skew the numbers behind the point she is making. Our rating Happ said ""at some point in their lives, 99% of women use birth control."" It’s clear she was arguing that contraception use is widespread, and important for women who run the risk of getting pregnant. But in making the statement, Happ used an overly broad brush, applying what is true for a subset (sexually active women between 15 and 44) and applying it to a larger group (all women)."
10951	Noninvasive Test for Colon Cancer Shows Promise in Early Trial	Strengths: a fairly good evaluation of the limitations of the evidence. Weaknesses: Nothing on harms. Didn’t compare the new approach with another competing new technology (as the New York Times did). But it also didn’t compare the new approach with existing colon cancer screening methods in a meaningful data-driven way. So it failed to give readers a sense of the true scope of the potential benefits. This topic is really about when we should pay attention to evidence about a new diagnostic test and how we should evaluate diagnostic tests in comparison with one another- a topic that is often inadequately discussed in both medicine and journalism.	mixture	Cancer,HealthDay,Screening	A hesitant satisfactory score. The story stated, “the cost of the test has not yet been established. It is expected to cost more than a fecal occult blood test, but far less than a colonoscopy. A fecal occult blood test can cost as little as $23 while a colonoscopy can total $700.” It is expected by whom to cost in that range? What’s the source? (Reuters reported a $300-400 cost estimate from the company.) The story does quantify the potential benefits, although the numbers are incomplete. It’s not clear, for one, how this compares to other colon cancer screening tests. The story didn’t specify the sensitivity of the test, but stated: “The sensitivity of the test is much better than what has been seen in other stool screening tests, the ACS’ Brooks added. Overall, we didn’t think the story gave readers a way to judge the scope of the potential benefits. The story kept piling up the accolades – “one more advantage” and then “another benefit is…” but in the end the story was all benefits and no harms. The New York Times story, by comparison, addressed false positives. The story makes an effort to address the limitations of reporting on the topic of a talk that hasn’t even been given yet (!) when it states: “Experts point out that studies presented at scientific meetings do not have to pass the rigorous peer review of studies published in reputable journals.” We applaud that effort but it could be improved easily. The story should state that that’s a limitation of drawing conclusions from such data! Wouldn’t that be far more explicit and clear to readers? It did include an important independent perspective from Dr. Durado Brooks of the American Cancer Society, who called the findings interesting but said, “They will be more interesting if we ever get this kind of data in a screening population….Showing that in a small group of samples is very different from demonstrating that in a population where only a small number of individuals are going to have polyps of that size.” Ideally, the story would have explained that initial accuracy studies in non-representative samples of cases and non-cases (like this one) usually overestimate performance. That is why they are planning another study. No disease mongering here. At least the input of the director of colorectal cancer for the American Cancer Society was important. The story did not compare the new approach with other similar approaches now in development, and did not give adequate data-driven comparisons with other screening methods that are now used. The story explains that “Cologuard is not yet available for sale. Clinical trials comparing the test with colonoscopy are slated to start next year.” But then it allows the lead researcher to get away with saying he “hopes that the test will be approved and available within two years.” Sure he does. That doesn’t make it a prediction you can bank on. No comparison with – not even a mention of – other competing research as the New York Times did. It does not appear that the story relied on a news release, but we are curious why both this story and the Philadelphia Inquirer used the same “Holy Grail” analogy.
27873	A Houston doctor was decapitated by a malfunctioning elevator.	Even the elevator decapitation incident related here is not unique. On 6 January 1995, a runaway elevator in a Bronx office building decapitated 55-year-old James Chenault as he tried to help fellow passengers out of a malfunctioning car. The car had stopped slightly above the second floor and the doors opened. While Chenault was holding the doors open with his back and helping a woman whose foot had become trapped, the car lurched suddenly upward, beheading him. The victim’s body fell to the bottom of the shaft, but the head remained in the car along with the remaining passengers as it shot up to the ninth floor.	true	Horrors, freakish fatalities	All manner of sudden fatality are horrendous no matter where or when or how they occur, but we seem to assign decapitations to a special category populated by modes of death we find particularly disturbing. This form of expiration is especially gruesome because the mind is cut off from the body, ending a life, and it all takes place in a flash. A person who moments before was a living, thinking being is now just a headless trunk, spurting blood like a ghoulish prop in a bad horror film. Though all forms of demise lead to the same place, this one is sickly fascinating thanks to its elevated gore quotient and the speed with which it drives home the finality of death. We’d like to think beheadings happen only in campfire tales and low-budget thrillers, but they take place in real life too, as was the case in the death of Dr. Hitoshi Nikaidoh. On 16 August 2003, this 35-year-old surgical resident was decapitated in a freakish elevator accident at Christus St. Joseph Hospital in Houston, Texas. The accident itself is hard to imagine: the ill-fated physician was trapped between the doors of the cable-propelled elevator, then decapitated as the carriage ascended. According to the Harris County Medical Examiner’s office, Nikaidoh died from multiple blunt force injuries to the head and body. His corpse was retrieved from the bottom of the elevator shaft along with two pagers, a cell phone, and an electronic organizer police believed belonged to him. The upper portion of his head, which was severed just above the lower jaw, was found in the car of the elevator. His colleague, physician’s assistant Karin Steinau, who was in the car at the time, witnessed the whole thing. Ms. Steinau told police the elevator had been out of service for a few days prior to the tragedy, but at the time of the accident the “Out of service” sign had been removed. She had rung for the elevator (with the intent of going to the sixth floor) and had already stepped into it and pushed the button for her floor when Nikaidoh tried to get into the car as the door was closing. As soon as she saw he was trapped by the doors, Steinau tried to hit the emergency stop button but was unable to do so before the rising elevator had partially decapitated Dr. Nikaidoh. The elevator continued upwards, finally stopping between the fourth and fifth floors. Steinau was trapped in the car along with Nikaidoh’s cranial remains until she was rescued by firefighters. She was treated in the hospital’s emergency room for shock. The cause of the deadly accident was a mystery. Elevator doors should not shut when there is something between them, thanks to sensors mounted in the doors. Also, a set of contacts in the door should keep the elevator from moving if the doors are not closed. Yet both these things reportedly happened. A state investigative committee later reported that faulty wiring was to blame: The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation report was done by Chief Elevator Inspector Ron Steele. Steele said an inspection of the elevator’s electrical wiring diagrams found that one controller stud had two wires connected to it, although the diagram indicated it should only have one. The controller stud on which the extra wire should have been placed was empty. [Attorney Howard] Nations said the mistake bypassed safety systems that would have kept the door from closing and the elevator from ascending. “In the course of testing and retesting the elevator [the maintenance company] had changed wiring and when they rewired it back to its original position they forgot to put this wire back where it goes,” Nations said. The maintenance company, Kone, Inc., had been working on the elevator for four days before the incident. This month, the hospital dismissed Kone from doing its elevator maintenance. Mike Lubben, vice president of Kone, said the company still was reviewing the state report but an internal investigation concluded that a wire in an electrical panel was incorrectly connected. “This contributed to a malfunction in the elevator doors,” Lubben said. “Kone is deeply saddened by this incident. We offer our deepest condolences to the family of Dr. Nikaidoh.” Although elevator fatalities are not common, they do occur from time to time, and they are not always of the “victim steps into an open elevator shaft” ilk. On 21 July 2003, 76-year-old L.A. Brown was killed at the Kenner Regional Medical Center in Kenner, Louisiana, when the gurney on which he was being transported to surgery in became trapped against the roof of an elevator when the car suddenly dropped several feet just as the gurney was being pulled out of it. On 7 May 1999, 56-year-old Mary Margaret Nowosielski died in similar fashion at the St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Michigan when the car her gurney was being rolled into suddenly went up, dragging her to the fourth floor and back down to the first floor between the car and the shaft wall.
9938	For diabetics, taking the sting out of insulin	This story explains in plain language that there might indeed be a better way on the horizon for diabetics tied to the daily routine of regular insulin injections. It could have benefited from more outside expertise, some cost information and a more thorough explanation of the risks and benefits. All told, though, readers are left with a better understanding of the challenges surrounding diabetes management than is offered in most stories about emerging drugs. As the story notes, there are potentially 70 million people in the United States who stand to benefit from an improved insulin delivery system. Writing about how a medicine is consumed is never as sexy as writing about a brand new cure or an oddball alternative therapy. This reporter shows others how you don’t have to write about the announcement being made at a medical association’s conference. Instead, you can take what’s being reported elsewhere in breathless terms as a breakthrough and build on that with solid reporting that takes readers — both those who might benefit and those who will not — inside the complicated world of medicine.	true		"This is the one big hole in the story. The one nod to costs in the story comes toward the end, where it says, ""Further, he notes, the new devices are somewhat wasteful in that they need to use more insulin to deliver the same dose as an injection, which will push their cost up."" Given that there already was a similar device on the market that failed, it would have been good to at least discuss how much that drug cost. It would have been nice to see some absolute numbers or a number needed to treat. But, given that this is a broader story and not just focused on one drug or device, the potential benefits are quantified well enough. There is a lot in here about the potential harm of not taking insulin or taking the wrong dose. There should have been some discussion of side effects seen in the new approaches. We know from the first inhaled insulin that was removed from the market that there is also potential harm from delivering insulin through the lungs. If there are other factors that affect the absorption of insulin either via the airways or the buccal mucosa it should have been mentioned. The story is not a day-after clinical trial results story but more a step-back story. In this context, the evaluation of the evidence is fair. There is no disease mongering. The story identifies conflicts and quotes one outside expert. It is clear, though, that the reporter did a lot of reading well beyond what any of the named sources say. The quotes aren’t what gives this story balance. It’s the synthesis of the facts about diabetes and insulin that does that. We’re going to grade this satisfactory, but the absence of any quotes from people who successfully use insulin with no problems, and the lack of discussion of the advent of the shorter acting insulins or the use of insulin pumps are big omissions that might not have happened if more independent sources had been used. This story does a good job comparing many of the current and potential devices, but it does fall short by not discussing the insulin pump and shorter acting insulin injectables. The story makes it clear that the key drugs discussed are in late stage clinical trials and approaching FDA consideration. The story explores the two drugs getting close to FDA approval and sets them in the larger context of the many attempts to change the way people receive insulin. As noted elsewhere in this review, we think the story should have mentioned insulin pumps and the newer short-acting insulins. But we won’t ding them for that in this criterion. The story goes so far beyond any news release. While it does not hit all the criteria, it is a great example of how to take the ""news"" of a clinical trial and build it into an interesting and informative story."
28814	Young prodigy Brandenn Bremmer achieved a number of successes before taking his own life at age14 so that he could donate his organs to others.	What's true: Brandenn Bremmer was a child prodigy who died by his own hand at the age of 14. What's false: Brandenn didn't indicate he staged his suicide to ensure his organs would go to others in need.	mixture	Viral Phenomena, brandenn bremmer, incorrect memes, People	On 14 July 2016, the Facebook page “Creepy Nouns” published an image about the life and death of Brandenn Bremmer, asserting that the boy was a prodigy who took his own life solely so he could donate his organs to others in need: The claim was disturbing, suggesting that Bremmer made one of life’s most horrifying decisions for an unusual and selfless reason: so that others could live. Moreover, his tragic altruism occurred when he was just 14, well before he had a chance to truly put his myriad talents to use. That the precocious Brandenn Bremmer lived and died is not in question: the New York Times profiled his life and sad demise in 2005: At 18 months old, Brandenn E. Bremmer began to read, his mother says. At 3, he played the piano, finished the schoolwork of an average first grader and announced that he did not care to go back to preschool. At 10, he graduated from high school, his precocious accomplishments drawing the spotlight of the national news media. This week, at 14, Brandenn died. Sheriff’s deputies in his rural Nebraska hometown near the Colorado border said the gunshot wound to his head was apparently a suicide. Noting that “Brandenn’s life” held “enormous promise, like that of a handful of other child prodigies in the United States,” the paper reported that Brandenn was euthymic and actively planning for his future when he unexpectedly killed himself and that he left behind “no note” nor any indication why he chose to shoot himself. In addition, his mother told the Times that Brandenn was “never depressed” and outwardly planning a career as an anesthesiologist (an undertaking involving several years of study). Brandenn’s mother, Patti, who found him shot when she and her husband, Martin, returned home from grocery shopping, said that Brandenn, who started college at 11, had been different, to be sure. But he had never been depressed, lonely or pressured to achieve. “So many people will want to say he was maladjusted or not socially adjusted, but that’s just not so at all,” Ms. Bremmer said in a telephone interview. “It makes me mad. People need to understand. These kids are so much more intelligent than they are. “We never pushed Brandenn. He made his own choices. He taught himself to read. If anything, we tried to hold him back a little.” Brandenn left no note, no goodbye. He had seemed cheery earlier in the day, before she left for the store, Ms. Bremmer said. She said he was busy with preparations to become an anesthesiologist, with his friends and with plans for the imminent release of a second CD of music he had composed, in the style, somewhat, of Yanni. However, the paper went on to quote Ms. Bremmer’s off-the-cuff inference in the immediate wake of Brandenn’s death: Ms. Bremmer, who writes mystery books and whose family raises and trains dogs, said she took comfort in her sense that Brandenn must have chosen his course because his organs — heart, liver and kidneys — were needed by ailing people. “He was so in touch with the spiritual world,” Ms. Bremmer said. “He was always that way, and we believe he could hear people’s needs. He left to save those people.” The vital organs were donated the night he died, as he had long made clear was his wish, she said. Ms. Bremmer didn’t specify why she believed her son’s suicide was expressly for the purpose of organ donation, merely that the thought was one that brought her comfort in what was undoubtedly the darkest time in her life. However, even Brandenn’s mother didn’t say he did kill himself to donate his organs, merely that she speculated that may have been the case. (And her remarks might have been addressing the manner in which Brandenn took his life, which preserved the vital organs most commonly used in transplantation, rather than the reason he took his life.) While Brandenn’s mother arguably knew him better than anyone, her comments were clearly made in a fog of grief just days after she discovered her son’s body. Quite possibly she was not thinking clearly in the immediate aftermath of her child’s tragic death. A 2006 New Yorker profile of Brandenn shed no further light on why the boy opted to end his life, but it did provide a broader picture of his state of mind. In that article [PDF], Brandenn’s parents discussed his plans for the immediate and distant future: His suicide was a mystery to them. They had searched the house for clues, and found nothing. He had left no note, and they hadn’t seen any warning signs. “Brandenn wasn’t depressed,” Patti said. “He was a happy, upbeat person. There weren’t sudden changes in his behavior.” Neither recalled him being particularly upset about anything in the preceding months. He hadn’t suffered a breakup, or endured a personal rejection. He hadn’t been giving away prized possessions. In fact, Patti said, he’d just added to what he called his “unfinished list”: he was selling some old Nintendo games on eBay in order to buy a PlayStation 2 console. And they’d ruled out the possibility of an accident. “Brandenn knew way too much about guns for that,” Martin said. Although Brandenn’s parents felt assured he was never “depressed,” the scant group of peers with whom he was able to interact provided a different perspective to the magazine. A teen girl identified only as “K.,” a girlfriend, shared correspondence between the two around Christmas 2004: K. wrote to ask how Brandenn’s Christmas had been. She said that she and her parents had spent the day at the movies. A couple of hours later, Brandenn responded that, aside from watching “Shrek 2,” the Bremmers had done “nothing, as a family anyway.” He explained in another email, “Yeah, that’s kind of what it’s like here, I mean, we’re a close family … we just don’t spend much … time … being … that … way … Yeah.” In the middle of their exchange, a gift for Brandenn arrived in the Bremmers’ mailbox. It was the scarf that K. had knitted, in marled gray alpaca, with suede fringes. He wrote to thank her: Your timing couldn’t have been better, for the past week or so I’ve been depressed beyond all reason, so this was just what I needed, thank you very much. She wrote back: Now, what’s this about you being depressed all week? Talk to me, I want to hear about it. Because trust me, I’ve been there, done that and all I got was this lame t-shirt. ;) Just let me know okay? I want to help if I can, and it’s really important to me that you’re happy and all that jazz. Brandenn replied: Thanks . . . I’m glad there’s someone who cares. I don’t know why I’m so depressed, before it was just every now and then, and you know, it was just “bummed out” depressed. But now it’s constant and it’s just, “What’s the point of living anymore?” I don’t know, maybe I just don’t spend enough time around good friends like you. But like I can. Not out there in the middle of nowhere. At least there’s this family kind of near by that aren’t “Cowboys,” or else just plain idiots, that I can spend time with. But even still, that’s only like once every other week at th most. Oh well. Well I should probably go, thanks for being such a good friend. Brandenn and K. then fell out of touch for benign reasons, and in March 2005, the Bremmers came home from the store to find Brandenn clinging to life after he’d shot himself. In the New Yorker profile, Brandenn’s mother revisited her statement that he had killed himself solely to donate his organs: After the suicide sank in, Patti says, she became taken with the idea that perhaps he’d actually killed himself so that his organs could be put to use in those who needed them. “Brandenn was so spiritually aware that if he sensed that people needed his help he would have helped,” she told me once. “So you’re saying he had the ability to sense that people needed something from him and that’s why he did what he did?” Martin put in, elaborating on the thought. “Yes,” Patti said. “I’m ambivalent about Christianity, but a lot of people have said he reminded them of Jesus. You know: ‘He came, he taught, he left. '” The profile also delved into Brandenn’s overall development between the ages of 14, with his parents being guided largely by Linda Silverman, a guru of sorts to parents of gifted children. When the New Yorker spoke to Silverman, she (like Patti Bremmer) expressed belief that Brandenn’s death was a function of the “supernatural” aspects of gifted children: Hilton Silverman, who had been in the kitchen, brought a platter of Reuben sandwiches to the table. Hilton has a gray beard, a wrestler’s posture, and a heavily lined forehead. He wore fleece pants, a zippered skiing turtleneck, and flip-flops with socks. “Well, I can tell you what the spirits are saying,” he said. “He was an angel.” Silverman turned to face me. “I’m not sure how much you know about my husband. Hilton is a psychic and a healer. He has cured people of cancer.” “It kind of runs in my family: my grandfather was a kabbalist rabbi in Brooklyn, and my father used to heal sick babies with kosher salt,” Hilton said. “Brandenn was an angel who came down to experience the physical realm for a short period of time.” I asked Hilton how he knew this. He paused, and for a moment I wondered if he was pulling my leg and trying to think up something even more outlandish to say next. “I’m talking to him right now,” he said. “He’s become a teacher. He says right now he’s actually being taught how to help these people who experience suicides for much messier reasons. Before Brandenn was born, this was planned. And he did it the way he did so that others would have use for his body. Everything worked out in the end.” “I’ll tell you who else is an angel,” Linda Silverman said. “I think Martin’s an angel.” “Oh, Martin, for sure,” Hilton said. “He has a positive spiritual alignment. He and Brandenn meet a lot when he’s asleep.” Linda looked at me helpfully. “You see, we don’t know how to explain these kids — not scientifically.” “Scientifically!” Hilton scoffed. Silverman seemed to hold fast to her interpretation of events, even after she saw the unhappy email messages that Brandenn had written. She doubted they were representative, and suspected that they’d been taken out of context, or even manipulated. Patti Bremmer, like Silverman, described Brandenn as an “indigo child” and informed correspondents on an e-mail list for parents of gifted children that several of her son’s organs were apportioned in a somewhat miraculous fashion to the dying. But his friends and siblings told the magazine they “agreed that he had probably felt alone or sad or frustrated or some combination of those things, and was momentarily helpless to find a way out,” adding that “unfortunately, he had been in a position to act on a suicidal impulse.” The only record of the reasons behind Brandenn’s state of mind remain in e-mails exchanged with far-flung peers, during which a state of depression (and not a grand sacrifice) was the only revealing factor mentioned by the teenager before his suicide.
8217	Thailand reports 32 new coronavirus cases in biggest single-day rise.	Thailand reported 32 new cases of the coronavirus on Sunday in the largest daily jump in infections since the outbreak began, bringing its total tally to 114, health officials said.	true	Health News	The new patients include 17 people infected at pubs and boxing stadiums, persons who were in contact with foreigners, and those who returned from overseas, Sukhum Kanchanapimai, the health ministry’s permanent secretary, told a new conference. There are 51 others waiting for test results, Sukhum said. The health ministry will on Monday propose to a virus center chaired by the prime minister to reduce people entering Thailand, to close entertainment places with high risk, and to cancel people gathering activities, Sukhum said. The ministry will also disclose places, where patient have been found, he added. On March 11, Thailand said it would temporarily suspend issuing visas on arrival to visitors from 19 countries and territories, including China, to contain the spread of the coronavirus. One person has died of the virus in Thailand. Thirty seven people have recovered and been discharged from hospital.
10691	Surgical procedure urged for atrial fibrillation	This article on catheter ablation, a treatment for atrial fibrillation (AF), is marred by three flaws: It fails to disclose that Johnson & Johnson, maker of the device being tested, sponsored the study. In fact, nearly all the researchers have deep entanglements with device makers; two of them work for the maker itself. The story fails to point out that the studied participants represent a subset of younger patients who are not representative of typical AF patients. It reports the study’s duration was one year. It was nine months. Having said that, for the most part the story is well-done: It accurately describes the procedure. It portrays the benefits appropriately and indicates potential harms. It notes the need for longer-term studies to ensure the treatment prevents death and strokes over time. The errors in the story do not result in misrepresentation, and readers will take away the fundamentally correct message: When drugs fail to treat atrial fibrillation, ablation works far better at reducing symptoms and AF occurence than a second drug regimen. They may believe incorrectly that the results apply to typical AF patients, who are older. The nine-month vs. one-year mixup seems forgiveable–as merely sloppy or rushed. But without the sponsorship disclosure readers miss any hint of the commercial hustle behind the study and research into similar devices generally. As a matter of fact, that theme would have been nicely enhanced with another detail the story omits: the cost of the device the sponsor sells.	mixture		The story does not cite costs of either the surgery or the drug treatment it is compared to. At a time when medical costs are so much in the public mind, stating treatment costs is important. When a study is sponsored by a device maker, it is all the more important to disclose costs. The story does a solid job quantifying the difference between the two patient groups in the study, clearly showing the superiority of ablation in reducing symptoms and AF occurence. But the story makes a blunder: The study reported results for nine months, not one year as the article states. For this reason the story receives an unsatisfactory rating. The story cites the most significant risks of the surgery: stroke, and damage to the veins or esophagus. It is a bit jarring, however, to learn that the surgery carries a 1 percent risk of stroke only in the last paragraph. The story is based on a randomized clinical trial; its size, duration and outcomes are adequately described. The study’s key limitations–its one-year duration and its inability to speak to the surgery’s effect on the endpoints of death or stroke–are duly noted as caveats. The limitation the reporter misses–that the study group doesn’t represent the typical AF patient–is significant but not serious enough to earn the story an unsatisfactory rating. The story does not exaggerate the prevelance or severity of atrial fibrillation. The story quotes three sources–the study’s lead author and two independent cardiologists. While this is normally adequate, all of the doctors support ablation. It would have been invaluable to speak with a cardiologist who is neutral on the procedure. This interview would likely have surfaced some of the study’s methodological limitations. More seriously, the story fails to disclose that Johnson & Johnson, maker of a device used in the surgery, sponsored the study. Many researchers have entanglements with the sponsor and other device makers. This is a serious omission. Like the study, the story compares catheter ablation to the second-line drug therapies used when a primary drug treatment is ineffective. It’s not clear whether catheter ablation is available only at highly specialized cardiac care centers or at most hospitals. It’s also not clear how widely practiced it is. The story makes no claims for the novelty of catheter ablation. It would have been useful to know how long it has been in use, however. The story uses independent sourcing and does not draw from the press release.
37857	Ventura County, California officials said they will remove children from the homes of COVID-19 positive parents.	Is Ventura County COVID-19 Testing and Removing Children from Homes?	false	Disinformation, Fact Checks	Among early May 2020 rumors about “forced testing” Americans for COVID-19 (occasionally with increasingly hysterical rumors about purported home intrusions under H.R. 6666) was a consistent claim that the government sought to remove children from parents and place them in foster care — a rumor that was exacerbated by a May 6 2020 video tweet on the same subject:WHAT WOULD YOU DO if your six year old son or daughter tested positive for COVID19 and was taken from your home to a quarantine center by Ventura Health Authorities? This SHOCKING VIDEO demands that you plan ahead. #BeBrave #HistoryRepeating pic.twitter.com/e5RC7dCO7o— Del Bigtree (@delbigtree) May 6, 2020In a May 11 2020 fact check, we examined a closely related (and completely false) rumor that California’s Department of Social Services sent a letter echoing Bigtree’s assertions:Is the California Department of Social Services Mandating COVID-19 Testing for Eligible Families — and Threatening to Place Children in Foster Care?Video and text (“VENTURA COUNTY, CA HEALTH DEPARTMENT, ‘WE’LL BE MOVING PEOPLE [FROM THEIR HOMES]”) accompanied the following commentary by Del Bigtree (@delbigtree), querying fellow users about how they might react if their child was “taken from” their home to a “quarantine center” after testing positive for COVID-19:WHAT WOULD YOU DO if your six year old son or daughter tested positive for COVID19 and was taken from your home to a quarantine center by Ventura Health Authorities? This SHOCKING VIDEO demands that you plan ahead. #BeBrave #HistoryRepeatingBigtree’s tweet displayed nearly 20,000 likes and 20,000 shares, and more than a million views. However, it is not clear what proportion of those exposed to the tweet actually viewed the content of the video itself.Those who did not could perhaps be forgiven for coming away with the belief that Ventura County officials (“Ventura Health Authorities”) had come out and stated that they would be forcibly testing California families, yanking very young children from their homes should any test positive, and farming them out to something called a “quarantine center.”A May 8 2020 Fox News item described Bigtree’s video as “edited” (but didn’t specify in which manner it was altered), and transcribed the short segment. In the May 5 2020 video, the director of Ventura County Public Health, Dr. Robert Levin, described plans to implement contact tracing and testing in that jurisdiction — saying in the purportedly damning portion referenced in the tweet:For instance, if [people who test positive for COVID-19] live in a home where there is only one bathroom and there are three or four other people living there and those people don’t have COVID infection, we’re not going to be able to keep the person in that home. Every person we’re isolating, for instance, needs to have their own bathroom. So, we’ll be moving people like this into other kinds of housing that we have available.Even condensed solely to Levin’s remarks out of context, nothing he said suggested that:A careful reading of Levin’s words appeared to demonstrate that public health officials in Ventura County were ensuring that household members in small homes would be accommodated by the county to avoid infecting one another, although the details of such measures were not immediately addressed in the quote Bigtree selected — and government removal of children to “quarantine centers” appeared to be quite a logical leap.On May 5 2020, a day before Bigtree shared the video, the Ojai Valley News covered the board meeting from which the viral video originated; an extremely benign headline (“May 5: Ventura County supervisors hear updates on reopening, contact tracing, restaurant meal program and more”) belied the not-at-all shocking nature of Levin’s broader remarks. The Ojai Valley News‘ reporting was described as “a brief rundown of presentations to the Ventura County Board of Supervisors at its May 5 [2020] meeting as those presentations occurred,” meaning each speaker’s remarks were transcribed or paraphrased in chronological order.It appeared that Levin was seventh in line among speakers at the Ventura County Board of Supervisors May 5 2020 meeting, after County CEO Mike Powers, Supervisor Steve Bennett, Public Health Director Rigoberto Vargas, Supervisor Bob Huber, and Victoria Jump, director of the Ventura County Area Agency on Aging. Each speaker’s points and comments were summarized, and occasionally quoted.Levin began with a rundown of the effects of ongoing social distancing measures and the resulting low level of infections and deaths in Ventura County relative to other parts of the United States. The newspaper’s use of summary interspersed with quotes is evident in the excerpt:Begin by trying to remember back to 10 weeks ago.We were looking at this wave that was coming at us. Our county has done an amazing job of protecting us from that wave.It is important to know what has been prevented by the county’s actions.In the same way, 10 weeks ago, deaths in our county were predicted to be 1,000. “I thought more realistically we would see 250 deaths.”Levin’s remarks were subsequently summarized and quoted in part regarding contact tracing procedures as well as support for home isolation among Ventura County residents. Once again, portions with direct quotes are marked, and the balance of commentary appeared to be paraphrased under “Contact tracing[,] What does it mean”:When someones tests positive for COVID-19, we ask them about all the people they have been in contact with. Those contacts are then contacted for possible isolation and quarantine.The [initial] estimate was that there would be 10 or more contacts for every COVID-19 case. The reality, because of social distancing, is that there are now only two, three or four contacts for every COVID-19 case, “which makes our job easier.”A person who tests positive needs to be isolated in their home, unless they are sick enough to require hospitalization.Those contacts of COVID-19-positive people will now be tested for symptoms — that is new. That contact will then be quarantined and checked on every day by Public Health.If that “contact” tests positive, they are then a “case” and not just a “contact.”The county then determines if the person needs housing, food or medication and then we meet their needs.Why is it important? By ensuring that those who have COVID-19 but are not symptomatic go into quarantine, we protect others.Emphasis on all of this is that we protect others.Attention to detail will reduce the number, will tamp the number of COVID-19 cases way down in our community. Once this program is in place, the chance of running into someone positive will go way, way downWe will avoid a hospital surge and reduce the chance of infection.When restaurants reopen, with excellent contact tracing, we can be reassured it will be [extremely] unlikely that anyone dining or working in restaurants will have COVID-19.Contact tracing is a milestone that the county must reach, and I believe has reached, to move from the governor’s Phase 1 to Phase 2.For near-perfect contact tracing and follow-up, we need 10,000 contact tracers statewide. We have 10 new contact tracers in Ventura County who began training May 4 [2020].Ventura County will bring on 40 to 50 or maybe more people to do contact tracing.The county does not anticipate having to go out of Ventura County to find enough staff for the additional contact tracing.The model is to have 10 contact tracers working with one supervising nurse, and that allows for scaleability.The state offers a virtual training academy for contact tracing. Most counties’ contact-tracing employees will participate in high-quality, free training. Several counties will pilot the program and Ventura County is in the running to be one of them and is waiting to hear back.The state will have one company to provide a contact-tracing management platform. A separate company will provide data management. Those companies will be announced later on May 5 [2020].We excerpted the entirety of Levin’s paraphrased remarks for clarity, due to the manner in which they had been taken out of context. It was crystal clear Levin was not “threatening” to remove COVID-19 positive children from Ventura County homes, nor was anyone being remanded to any “quarantine center.”Levin expressly described Ventura County efforts in contact tracing, a long-standing practice of determining who was exposed to an infected person on the days during which they were contagious. Those contacts are then notified of their exposure to infectious disease (in this case, SARS-CoV-2), and, if necessary, tested and quarantined or isolated. At the time Levin’s comments were spreading virally, Dr. Anthony Fauci entered a modified self-quarantine due to his own low-risk exposure to the virus which causes COVID-19 in early May 2020.A key component of Levin’s remarks involved Ventura County building a sturdy support structure to ensure contact tracing efforts were not negated due to lack of resource, a detail he again made extremely clear. Levin said that:Perhaps not articulated, but again clear, was the fact that exposed people without sufficient housing, food, or medication would go on to engage in activities such as work or household interactions, thereby exposing additional people unnecessarily and prolonging the localized outbreak.Although it was clear that Levin’s comments had been twisted and weaponized by purveyors of disinformation, he still apologized for the “misunderstanding”:“I either misspoke or it was misinterpreted – I’ll take the blame of having misspoke … [On May 5 2020] at this conference, at the Board of Supervisors, I gave people the impression that if you were isolated, you would be taken out of your home and put into a hotel room or a motel room or sequestered in some other way.“If I did do that, I am very sorry. That is an option. That is possible. If you become infected, you don’t want to stay in your home, you’re afraid that you’ll expose other people, we’ll work with you to find a place to stay. And, it’s likely to be a hotel of a motel. We will desire for you to have your own room in your place of residence and a bathroom that can be dedicated to just you. Now, not everyone is fortunate enough to have more than one bathroom, so we’ll work with you.”In a world not riddled by weaponized propaganda and disinformation and overrun by conspiracy theories, Levin’s clarification would be completely unnecessary. A reading of local news prior to the weaponization of his remarks could only be fairly interpreted as Ventura County’s plan to ensure that people in cramped households could be isolated in hotels or motels at the county’s expense — and no part of it discussed forcible removal of children from homes.Nevertheless, Bigtree’s tweet dishonestly impressed upon well over a million people that Levin and Ventura County “Health Authorities” were implementing police state tactics to incarcerate six-year-olds who tested positive for COVID-19. Not only did Levin say nothing of the sort in the video, a day later he reiterated that the county planned to fund isolation for anyone found to have been exposed through contact tracing and who was in need of food, housing, or medicine.Comments
8995	Adding Atezolizumab Immunotherapy to Chemotherapy Slows Growth of Advanced Squamous Lung Cancer	This release about the addition of an immunotherapy drug (atezolizumab, brand name Tecentriq) to chemotherapy for patients with advanced squamous non-small-cell lung cancer is an exercise in highlighting the most favorable interpretation of trial results that overall showed no survival difference, while burdening patients with higher rates of severe or life-threatening side effects. The release and an abstract presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting put the spotlight on a 29% “reduced risk of disease worsening or death”… while acknowledging only in the final sentence that there was no evidence of improved overall survival. What’s more, while the release refers to “disease worsening,” what the trial actually measured was “investigator (INV) assessed PFS”, that is, progression-free survival as determined by the researchers, which is not the same as “disease worsening” as reported by patients. Because the release was distributed in the same document with the research abstract, we gave it credit for including information (notably extensive disclosures, along with detailed results) that were not included in the body of the release itself. See our recent blog piece on how news release framing helped shape coverage of another cancer trial at this scientific meeting. Patients care about how long they live and how they feel during the time they have. The primary outcome of this trial was a measure of cancer progression that may not relate to survival or quality of life. Indeed, the patients given immunotherapy in addition to chemotherapy reported higher rates of severe or life-threatening side effects (including double the rate of “serious” treatment-related adverse events). So rather than the sunny headline and lead about benefits to patients, a summary of this trial could be that while researchers saw slightly slower cancer growth, patients receiving immunotherapy on average felt worse, while not living any longer.	mixture	ASCO,immunotherapy	The release does not mention cost, which is an important point in this case, because each treatment with atezolizumab (Tecentriq) can cost more than $8000. These patients were treated every three weeks, which would produce bills upwards of $12,000 per month. Although the release and accompanying research abstract include specific results, the release spins them by proclaiming benefits in the headline and lead paragraph, while burying the caveats that there’s no evidence patients lived any longer and that those who received immunotherapy suffered more severe or life-threatening side effects. The release highlighted a higher rate of progression-free survival, but that term can be confusing, because it doesn’t necessarily mean patients lived any longer, just that more time passed (in this case a median of about three weeks) before their cancers showed signs of progression. Neither the release nor the abstract discussed the quality of life of the patients in the study groups. Here again, the release and abstract include specific rates of treatment-related adverse events, but only buried deep in the text and without important context or explanation. It is not enough to glibly pass off higher rates of serious side effects as “manageable” and “consistent with known safety risks.” The release states that there were grade 3-4 adverse events in 68% of the patients receiving atezolizumab in addition to chemotherapy, compared to 57% of the patients receiving chemotherapy alone. But there is no explanation of what these numbers mean. Grade 3 usually means severe and a grade 4 adverse event is typically life-threatening. There is also no mention in the release itself of the finding that 20.4% of the immunotherapy patients suffered “serious” treatment-related adverse events, compared to 10.5% of those who received only chemotherapy. Although the release describes key features of the trial, it does not point out that the primary outcome (cancer progression as assessed by the researchers) is a test result that may not correspond to how patients feel and which may not predict improved survival. In addition, while the release says the trial was a randomized controlled trial, it does not say if it was blinded or double-blinded. The quality of the study is not really assessed. The release explains that squamous non-small cell lung cancer accounts for 25-30% of all non-small cell lung cancers and accurately portrays the poor prognosis of this cancer. The release notes that the trial received funding from F. Hoffmann-La Roche. We will give the package of release and abstract a satisfactory rating because the abstract includes a long list of ties between the researchers and industry. The disclosure statement is almost as long as the description of the trial and its results. This trial is a direct comparison with existing treatment. As it turns out, a similar trial involving squamous cell lung cancer patients, also presented at ASCO, that used a different immunotherapy drug, did report improved overall survival, but those results were not public when this release was written. The release refers to the brand name of the immunotherapy drug, which would be enough to alert most journalists covering the ASCO meeting that that this drug is approved for other uses. However, given the cost and marginal benefit, many insurers will not pay for it which would make it prohibitive for most. The release characterizes this trial as one example of a broader effort to explore the addition of immunotherapy to chemotherapy when treating people with lung cancer. It is perhaps prophetic that the release more often refers to immunotherapy in general, rather than the specific drug used in this trial, since the makers of another immunotherapy drug announced at the ASCO meeting that their product improved the overall survival of similar patients, something the drug used in this trial has not demonstrated. The release could be rated as satisfactory on the criterion, if readers assume that the claims of “rapid change in clinical practice” refer only to immunotherapy in general, not to the drug tested in this trial. Since this drug has not shown longer overall survival, it is likely that any changes in prescribing will favor a competing drug that has now demonstrated longer survival results.
35239	"U.S. President Donald Trump praised China for its ""transparency"" in handling the coronavirus outbreak, then later criticized the World Health Organization for doing the same."	COLLINS: […] You’re criticizing the WHO for praising China for being transparent, but you also praised China for being transparent in January.	true	Politics, COVID-19	In mid-April 2020, social media users shared a comment made by U.S. President Donald Trump at an April 14 press briefing and contrasted it with a previous tweet of Trump’s in an effort to highlight the president’s flip-flopping narrative on the Chinese government’s handling of the COVID-19 coronavirus disease outbreak in late 2019 and early 2020. During the April press briefing, amid strong criticism of his own administration’s response to the pandemic, Trump announced he was planning to halt U.S. funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), strongly criticizing it for taking China’s assurances about its handling of the coronavirus outbreak “at face value” and for praising China’s “so-called transparency” in that regard. In light of that, CNN White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins pressed Trump about a January 2020 tweet in which he, too, praised the Chinese government’s “transparency” in handling the crisis at that early juncture. Their full exchange can be watched on video here around the 00:55 mark, but the moment in question went as follows:
28140	An Australian teen was taken to hospital with blood pouring from his feet after ‘sea lice’ attacked him after he soaked his feet in the water at a Melbourne beach.	What's true: An Australian teenager found his legs covered in blood, unable to stop bleeding, after soaking his feet in the water. What's false: Marine scientists have concluded that the critters responsible were likely sea fleas, not sea lice.	true	Medical, Medical, sea creature	On 6 August 2017, Daily Mail Australia ran a story with an alarming headline: Teen rushed to hospital with blood pouring from his feet after flesh-eating SEA BUGS attacked him as he swam at a Melbourne beach The article describes a 5 August 2017 incident in which 16-year-old Sam Kanizay decided to soak his legs in the ocean after playing soccer. When he removed his legs from the water after about 30 minutes, they were covered in blood: Sam Kanizay, 16, was soaking his legs in the water at Dendy Street Beach in Brighton, Melbourne, on Saturday evening when he said he felt his legs tingling. He told Fairfax Media he presumed it was because his legs were sore from playing football and the water was cold. But after coming out of the water about 30 minutes later, he found his legs were covered in tiny sores which were oozing with blood. […] After attempts to stop the bleeding were unsuccessful, the teenager spent his weekend at two different hospitals, where doctors also tried and failed to stop the sores from bleeding. One nurse advised the bites could be from sea lice, but it was no more than a ‘guess’. While Daily Mail latched onto this guess with some certainty (even adding a sidebar about the critter), the Sydney Morning Herald later reported that marine scientist Genefor Walker-Smith had examined the critters in question and found that they were most likely amphipod crustaceans — commonly known as “sea fleas”: Museum marine scientist Dr Genefor Walker-Smith has examined specimens collected by Sam’s father, Jarrod Kanizay – using bites of meat as lures – at Brighton on Sunday night, and said the creatures were sea fleas, not sea lice as first thought. Yes, these tiny (half-a-centimetre to one-centimetre long) carnivores will feed on human flesh, but Dr Walker-Smith said there was no cause for alarm. She said the number of bites sustained by 16-year-old Sam was unusual and a swarm of fleas might have been attracted by a cut in his skin, or Sam might have stepped near a fish carcass they were feeding on. While Kanizay is expected to make a full recovery, the issue of his excessive bleeding has remained somewhat mysterious. Walker-Smith suggested that some sea fleas might inject an anticoagulant into their food to prevent blood from clotting: [Walker-Smith] said it was not surprising that Sam’s bleeding would not stop – this symptom had been seen in bite cases from crustaceans before, although she hadn’t heard of it among crustaceans in this group. “It is possible that the amphipod has an anti-coagulant that it released like leeches do, so it stops the blood from clotting.” […] “It probably did make it worse that [Sam] was standing still; they may not have been able to cling on too tightly if he had been moving through the water. They’re used to eating dead things still on the bottom [the ocean floor].”
10761	Your diet can prevent Alzheimer’s	Some of Europe’s biggest banks are being challenged by environmental groups to sever all lending to utilities which they say are still developing new coal-fired power plants.	mixture		The call comes as some 190 countries meet in Madrid to assess progress on the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, which demands a virtual end to coal power by 2050. A United Nations report last year said almost all coal-fired power plants would need to close by the middle of this century to curb a rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius, in line with the level scientists say is needed to stave off the worst effects of climate change. “Some banks have pledged to not directly finance new coal plants but they are providing general finance to companies which are building new plants,” Katrin Ganswindt of German environmental pressure group Urgewald told Reuters. Urgewald and BankTrack, an NGO focused on banks and the activities they finance, said an analysis of the 10 most active European lenders to companies which are still planning or developing new coal plants indicated total debt funding had risen to $56 billion between 2017 and the end of September 2019. This compared with a calculation of $48 billion for the period 2014 to 2016, the pressure groups said in a report provided to Reuters on Thursday. The 10 banks were Barclays, BNP Paribas, Credit Agricole, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, ING, Nordea, Standard Chartered and UniCredit. (GRAPHIC: Lending by European banks to utilities building coal-fired power plants - here) Most of those named said the report did not reflect their efforts to stop funding coal plant development or a commitment to lowering carbon emissions. Credit Suisse declined to comment. Britain’s Barclays said it no longer provides project finance to any new coal-fired power plants or expansions of existing ones and disagreed with some of the data: “The report misrepresents and does not differentiate cases where Barclays finances a subsidiary investing in renewable energy, when its parent company may have other subsidiaries involved in coal, which have no relationship with Barclays.” Since Paris, many European banks have adopted policies such as cutting lending to firms which rely on coal for a high percentage of their revenues or pledging to end funding for new mines. Last week UniCredit said it would halt all lending for thermal coal financing by 2023, while BNP Paribas said this month it would stop financing the thermal coal sector in the European Union by 2030 and by 2040 worldwide. Deutsche Bank said that since 2016 it no longer finances “directly or indirectly the construction of new coal-fired power plants or new mining projects for the production of steam coal”. Some banks have increased their funding of renewable energy projects and stepped up engagement with clients to encourage a faster shift away from coal production and consumption. “In a majority of cases we know the use of funds and are able to do our due diligence to make sure the financing is compatible with our policies, which include no direct financing for new coal-fired power plants,” Standard Chartered said. Urgewald and BankTrack said their analysis was based on financial databases and public disclosures of loans obtained by 258 coal power producers and the underwriting of bonds issued by them, although for some syndicated loans and bond commitments the analysis had estimated each bank’s share. Dutch bank ING said it did not “recognize the figures mentioned by Urgewald and the conclusions drawn from them”. “ING supports new clients in the utilities sector only when their reliance on coal is 10% percent or less and they have a strategy to reduce their coal percentage to close to zero by 2025,” it added.
34683	An angry mother delivered a scathing response to school officials after her daughter was punished for punching a classmate who snapped her	Since this story does not contain any specific details about where or when it happened or who was involved, it is impossible to verify. But since the editors at Not Always Learning strive to only publish stories based on factual events, we’ll concede that somewhere at some school at some time some girl hit some boy after some boy snapped some girl’s bra. Possibly.	unproven	Fauxtography, education	On 19 February 2015, a user-submitted story about a mother’s angry response to her daughter’s being punished for punching a male classmate who snapped her bra was published on the website Not Always Learning. The story, titled “Was Bra-ced for a Different Reaction,” reported that a female student (identified only as “daughter”) was about to be punished for hitting a male student (identified only as “boy”) before her mother stepped in and explained to the teacher that the school should be punishing “boy” instead of “daughter” since “boy” was the one who had sexually assaulted “daughter” when he snapped her bra: (I’m an A&E nurse. We’re not allowed [to keep] our phones on us; they’re to be kept in our lockers. A call comes into hospital reception on a private line for me.) Phone: “This is [Teacher] from [School]. There’s been an incident involving [Daughter]. We need you to come in.” Me: “Is she ill or injured? Can it wait until my shift is over in two hours?” Phone: “[Daughter] has struck another pupil. We’ve been trying to call you for 45 minutes. It really is very serious.” (I go to the school and am ushered into the head’s office. I see my daughter, her head of year, a male teacher, the headmaster, a boy with blood around his nose and a red face, and his parents.) Head: “Mrs. [My Name], how kind of you to FINALLY join us!” Me: “Yeah, things get busy in A&E. I’ve spent the last hour administering over 40 stitches to a seven-year-old who was beaten by his mother with a metal ladle and then I had to deal with the police regarding the matter. Sorry for the inconvenience.” (After watching him try to not act embarrassed, he tells me what has happened. The boy had twanged my daughter’s bra and she had punched him in the face twice. I got the impression they were more angry with my daughter than the boy.) The details of the above-quoted story are impossible to verify since all names and locations have been redacted. Without this information we have to rely on the source, the content of the article, and basic intuition. While Not Always Learning publishes user-submitted stories that “are based on actual, real events,” the FAQ section explains that some stories are changed from second-hand tales to first-person accounts for dramatic effect: Sometimes we will need to edit a story slightly to make it suitable for publication. Scene-setting is great, but extraneous detail may need to be cut down a little. Your submission might explain that this didn’t happen to you but to your classmate/colleague/friend, but the audience doesn’t need to know that. Don’t worry, we still aim to keep the spirit of the story alive and ensure it remains as hilarious as ever! The stories published on Not Always Learning are user-submitted anecdotes meant to entertain readers. While the editors supposedly endeavor to ensure stories are based on real events, an amusing story clearly takes precedence over a factual one. Which brings us back to the content of “Was Bra-ced for a Different Reaction.” The story is filled with unnecessary detail to make the mother character the only credible voice; for instance, the story gives plenty of detail about the mother’s heroic work in the A&E (accident and emergency room), while the other characters are painted as ignorant and incompetent: Me: “Oh. And you want to know if I’m going to press charges against him for sexually assaulting my daughter and against the school for allowing him to do it?” (They all get jittery when I mention sexual assault and start speaking at once.) Teacher: “I don’t think it was that serious.” Head Of Year: “Let’s not over-react.” Head: “I think you’re missing the point.” (The boy’s mother then starts crying. I turn to my daughter to find out what happened.) Daughter: “He kept pinging my bra. I asked him to stop but he didn’t, so I told Mr. [Teacher]. He told me to ‘ignore it.’ [Boy] did it again and undid my bra so I hit him. Then he stopped.” (I turn to the teacher.) Me: “You let him do this? Why didn’t you stop him? Come over here and let me touch the front of your trousers.” Teacher: “What?! No!” Me: “Does that seem inappropriate to you? Why don’t you go and pull on Mrs. [Head Of Year]’s bra right now. See how fun it is for her. Or on that boy’s mum’s bra. Or mine. You think just because they’re kids it’s fun?” The mother’s quick retorts also seem implausible. The story depicts a very frustrating situation, yet the mother manages to find the perfect words at every turn. While this is possible, it seems more likely that the story was written after the incident as the writer recalled exactly what she should have said. There’s no English word for this concept: the French use the term “esprit de l’escalier,” the Germans know it as treppenwitz, and fans of Seinfeld call it the Jerk Store Paradox. The story concludes with a final speech about sexual assault from this enraged mother as she scolds the teacher and the headmaster, threatens “boy,” and takes “daughter” out of the office: Head: “Mrs. [My Name]. With all due respect, [Daughter] still beat another child.” Me: “No. She defended herself against a sexual attack from another pupil. Look at them; he’s nearly 6 feet and 11 or 12 stone. She’s 5 feet and 6 stone. He’s a foot taller than her and twice as heavy. How many times should she have let him touch her? If the person who was supposed to help and protect her in a classroom couldn’t be bothered what should she have done? He pulled her bra so hard it came undone.” (The boy’s mum is still crying and his dad looks both angry and embarrassed. The teacher won’t make eye contact with me. I look at the headmaster.) Me: “I’m taking her home. I think the boy has learnt his lesson. And I hope nothing like this ever happens again, not only to [Daughter], but to any other girl at this school. You wouldn’t let him do it to a member of staff so what makes you think he can do it to a girl of 15 is beyond me. I will be reporting this to the governors. And if you–” turning to the boy “–EVER touch my daughter again I WILL have you arrested for sexual assault. Do you understand me?” (I was so angry I gathered my daughter’s things and left. I reported it to the Board of Governors, several of whom I know from Church (it’s a Catholic school), and was assured it would be strongly dealt with. I also reported it to OFSTED (Government-run school monitoring) and they were equally as horrified and assured me they would contact the school. My daughter was put into a different class for that subject, away from the teacher and the boy.)
26442	Facebook post Says Democrats are on vacation until May 4 and “refuse to come back” to sign a bill to help small businesses.	Both the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are in recess until May 4 to avoid transmitting the coronavirus. No political party has refused to come back.	false	Fake news, Facebook Fact-checks, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,	"President Donald Trump recently said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi needs to come back from ""vacation,"" blaming her for a stalemate over a deal to add funds to the exhausted small business loan program, which ran out of money on April 16. Posts on Facebook take the vacation claim further, and suggest that all Democrats are on vacation until May 4 and ""refuse to come back"" to sign a bill to replenish the program. This is misleading. All of Congress, which includes House and Senate Republicans, are in recess to avoid spreading the coronavirus. 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.) Congress announced it would extend its recess until May 4 to continue practicing social distancing and avoid transmitting the coronavirus. ""As the country continues working together to flatten the curve, following the advice of health experts, the full Senate is not expected to travel back to Washington D.C. sooner than Monday, May 4th,"" Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement on April 14. ""All members will receive at least 24 hours’ notice if this changes. This bipartisan decision reflects consultation with Leader Schumer and my colleagues in Senate leadership."" House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer made a similar announcement April 13, saying that absent an emergency, the ""House is not expected to meet prior to Monday, May 4, 2020."" Senate leaders announced on April 21 that the two parties reached a deal for another relief package. The legislation could be approved by unanimous consent, which does not require a majority of members to be present. But Democrats have not refused to come back from ""vacation."" Both the Senate and the House are in recess until May 4 to avoid spreading the coronavirus. The decision was made by congressional leadership. This post rates ."
11155	Neurofeedback Gains Popularity and Lab Attention	"This is a story about a purported surge in the popularity of neurofeedback to treat a host of neurological ills, despite a chronic lack of large, well-controlled trials to provide reliable evidence about benefits and harms. The existence of a single, small trial sponsored by the NIH (involving a mere 36 children with ADHD) hardly demonstrates that the treatment is ""gaining attention from mainstream researchers."" The story could have done a better job of highlighting that support for this treatment comes primarily from those with a financial interest in its popularity. This story did provide information suggesting that neurofeedback is not an effective treatment. It erred in spending too much time suggesting that it might be of benefit when there is a complete absence of data to support such claims. While the headline of this story is slanted, on the plus side, it includes comments from many experts with a variety of perspectives. This story matters because it lends credence to a treatment modality in the absence of documentation."	true		"The story provided cost estimates for a couple of neurofeedback treatment regimens. It also indicated euphemistically that it is not paid for by insurance companies. Although the story points out that there has not been enough study of neurofeedback to know whether claims of benefits are justified, it highlights an anecdote of a family who believes the treatment helped their child. Without any countervailing examples, this sort of personal story overwhelms the dry statements of doubt, leaving an unbalanced impression. In considering this criterion, perhaps the most troubling aspect of the story is that it jumps from one condition to the other. Is the treatment good for autism, ADHD and other attention issues, cognition in old age? It’s a red flag when proponents of a treatment claim, in essence, that it’s good for whatever ails you. We will give the story the benefit of the doubt on this criterion because it did at least mentions that there are potential harms, but the story would have been better if it had given more detail about the type and frequency of harms. It should have also clearly noted that risks exist even when a treatment is supervised by a skilled practitioner.One of the potential harms raised is this uNPRoven treatment may be favored over proven options like behavioral therapy and medication. The story mentioned readily available neurofeedback packages while at the same time had stern warning from a society spokesperson that people can have seizures or anxiety attacks if they use equipment that they get from ebay and use without supervision. No information about how commonly problems such as these occur. In trying to give readers an overview of the available evidence on neurofeedback, the story fails to give readers enough information to judge the quality of the research. Most of the references to studies fail to note whether they were randomized controlled trials or something less rigorous. Although the story includes sharp comments from experts who note the paucity of evidence on neurofeedback treatments for serious conditions, it blunders by allowing a researcher to claim prematurely that participants in his trial are showing improvement, even though the results have yet to be released or reviewed by others. It also seems odd that the story portrays the National Institute of Mental Health as a ""former skeptic"" of neurofeedback, simply because the institute is sponsoring a trial. Studying something is not the same as supporting it, after all, isn’t putting something to the test exactly what a skeptic does? The story did not engage in overt disease mongering. The story included quotes from advocates as well as skeptics about benefit to be obtained through neurofeedback treatment. Although the story includes one comment refering to proven treatments, readers are short-changed by the lack of detail or any discussion of the weight of evidence backing alternatives as comapred to the vague and scarcely studied claims of benefit from neurofeedback. The story mentioned that there are 7,500 mental health professionals that offer neurofeedback services. The story seemed to provide a nice history of neurofeedback devices from the 1960’s. The story does not appear to be based on a news release."
2299	Ukraine conflict hampers recovery of sick children.	Maria, a nine-year-old girl suffering from cerebral palsy, was able to stand and walk unsteadily on her own before the outbreak of armed conflict between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.	true	Health News	Now, after five months of shelling in and around her hometown of Yasynuvata, a strategic rail hub that has changed hands several times during the conflict, her condition has deteriorated as stress has stiffened her muscles and crippled her posture. She can no longer stand unsupported. “Kids like Maria are much more afraid than others,” said Maria’s grandmother Tamara, who brought the girl through fighting and roadblocks for treatment in Donetsk, the region’s largest city and now the separatists’ main stronghold. “All this bombing has pushed her recovery back by about a year and a half,” she said, cradling Maria in her arms. Maria is among about 30 young patients undergoing treatment in the half-full Donetsk clinic which specializes in children’s neurological disorders. It is now awaiting the arrival of a boy who needs to learn how to walk again after sustaining shrapnel wounds that damaged his spine. He is one of the more than 8,700 people to have been wounded in the conflict which erupted in east Ukraine in April and which has so far killed more than 3,660 people, according to the United Nations. Many schools, hospitals and other public institutions are closed after being hit by shelling or because of nearby fighting that has meant it is too dangerous to continue operating. The clinic also suffers from an acute shortage of money in rebel-held territory, where many public-sector workers no longer receive salaries from Kiev and the separatists’ self-proclaimed “Donetsk People’s Republic” (DNR) has virtually no resources to make up for the shortfall. “I treat children and that requires money, whether they come from Ukraine yesterday or the DNR tomorrow. We just need to keep going,” said the clinic’s director, Oleg Yevtushenko. “And I don’t ask my staff who they are backing (in the conflict). We need to work for the children and that’s it.” On his desk lies a pile of papers prepared for when he is required to register his clinic and staff under the DNR rather than Ukraine. “For now, the DNR has nowhere to take money from, they first need to start collecting taxes. I am ready to register as required but I need to know there will be money for us,” said Yevtushenko. He said the Ukrainian authorities were still covering the clinic’s utility bills and, after a break, had paid his staff’s salaries for July, August and half of September. But the future remains very uncertain, despite a fragile ceasefire - marred by sporadic shelling - which has broadly held across the region now for more than a month. The crisis in east Ukraine, which has affected the lives of many civilians, has dragged ties between Russia and the West to new lows. The West has imposed economic sanctions on Russia for what it sees as Moscow’s role in fanning the separatist unrest and supporting the rebels with arms and troops. Moscow accuses Kiev of mistreating the mainly Russian-speaking region of east Ukraine but denies playing a role in the conflict, despite evidence to the contrary cited by human rights campaigners and groups representing Russian soldiers’ families. In Yasynuvata, the fighting often left Maria and her grandmother without electricity, enough food or medicines. Maria has grown to fear the sound of shelling and men wearing military camouflage, widely used by both sides in the conflict. Even in the clinic she has not been able to forget the war. One day, she got a shock when a rebel fighter wearing dark-green camouflage uniform walked in. It turned out he was visiting his wife and their heavily disabled baby daughter, who was being treated next to Maria. “When Stephanya was born, she was unresponsive, everyone told us she would die,” said her mother Viktoria, holding her daughter wrapped in a white shawl. “But she is with us and we are treating her here. From the tone of her voice I can now tell what she needs from me.” The family lives in the town of Yenakievo where, before the conflict, Viktoria ran a shop and her husband was a miner. Born prematurely, Stephanya is very small for her one year and three months of age. Her mother has tears in her eyes when she talks of her husband fighting, but she hopes it may allow them to get better treatment for Stephanya in Moscow. “He sometimes comes home to wash his uniform. But since he joined the ranks of DNR fighters, that makes me a DNR supporter as well, I guess,” she said. “Yes, I hope we will live better than under Kiev and I hope we will be an independent state but, honestly, most of all I hope my daughter gets better.”
14115	"George Holding Says North Carolina Rep. Renee Ellmers was the only Republican to vote against ""an amendment to prioritize the deportation of sexual criminals who are illegal immigrants."	"Holding said Ellmers was the only Republican to vote against ""an amendment to prioritize the deportation of sexual criminals who are illegal immigrants."" Holding was correct about Ellmers’ conspicuous break from party ranks. But his description of the amendment was a bit misleading, since anyone convicted of a felony for a sex crime was already prioritized for deportation. Ellmers has also long said she voted against the bill due to fears that it would lead to less reporting of domestic violence. That’s a key piece of context that was missing from Holding’s assessment of her record."	mixture	Immigration, Congress, Criminal Justice, Crime, Public Safety, North Carolina, George Holding,	"In their first debate, three candidates for the Republican nomination for North Carolina’s U.S. House District 2 squared off last week on who deserves to represent the area in Washington, D.C. The district was recently redrawn to include most of the suburban Wake County areas around Raleigh as well as all or part of the more rural Harnett, Johnston, Wilson, Nash and Franklin counties. In an oddity created by the new boundaries, two of the primary candidates are incumbents now fighting for the same seat. Throughout the debate, Rep. George Holding attempted to paint himself as a staunch conservative who won’t budge on controversial issues. Rep. Renee Ellmers attempted to paint herself as a more pragmatic conservative who would rather get things done. That fight was perhaps most apparent in a back-and-forth on immigration policy. Holding accused Ellmers of being too liberal in a 2015 vote. ""We had an amendment to prioritize the deportation of sexual criminals who are illegal immigrants,"" Holding said. ""Mrs. Ellmers was the only Republican to vote against that amendment."" It’s true that Ellmers was the only Republican to vote no on that particular amendment, which was tacked onto a bill regarding Department of Homeland Security funding. She was also one of 10 Republicans who voted against the bill as a whole. However, the amendment in question did more than just prioritize the deportation of dangerous sexual criminals. It also would’ve prioritized people convicted of domestic violence or less serious, misdemeanor sexual crimes. And it was because of fears over unintended consequences of those extra provisions – which Holding neglected to mention – that Ellmers has long said she voted no. Immediately after the 2015 vote, Ellmers said in an interview with McClatchy’s D.C. bureau that she opposed it because it ""may remove protections for victims of sexual assault or domestic abuse."" That was the same stance taken by the National Task Force to End Sexual and Domestic Violence and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Both groups urged a ‘No’ vote, saying the amendment would lead to domestic and sexual violence going unreported. ""Victims of domestic violence often do not seek help when they know that the consequences to the perpetrator (for example, a spouse or parent, or perhaps other family member) may result in the perpetrator’s deportation,"" the task force wrote to members of Congress. ""This often takes place due to their financial dependence, and even close relationship to the perpetrator."" The bishops agreed, writing: ""While presented as a measure that helps domestic violence victims, we fear that it actually would discourage many such victims from reporting abuse."" The amendment and the bill as a whole passed the House despite that opposition. But the amendment in question was removed by the Senate, which passed the bill and sent the new version back to the House, which approved it even though it didn’t include the amendment. President Obama then signed the bill into law. That chain of events led Ellmers, during the recent debate, to shoot back at Holding. ""That amendment was completely meaningless, and you know it was,"" she said. And even though Holding brought up sexual criminals, the amendment would have changed nothing for the most egregious offenders. Undocumented immigrants who commit felonies – including serious sexual crimes like rape – were already given top priority for deportation. Ellmers referenced that in the debate: ""As far as deporting those who are the worst offenders – those illegal immigrants who are pedophiles – my goodness, are we not doing that now?"" It was a rhetorical question. But according to the government, we are indeed doing just that. In 2014, the Department of Homeland Security listed its highest priorities for deportation: convicted of a felony, convicted of gang-related crimes, caught at the border or suspected of being a terrorist or spy. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) report on the 2015 fiscal year said 98 percent of the 235,413 people deported that year met one of its criteria or were otherwise considered a threat to public safety. At the debate, Ellmers also said she voted no because she thought Republicans should have worked with Democrats to find a compromise instead of letting President Obama set the country’s immigration policy while Congress remains in a boondoggle. ""I find it interesting that we are still in a place where we are having this conversation about what we are not getting done,"" Ellmers said. Our ruling Holding said Ellmers was the only Republican to vote against ""an amendment to prioritize the deportation of sexual criminals who are illegal immigrants."" Holding was correct about Ellmers’ conspicuous break from party ranks. But his description of the amendment was a bit misleading, since anyone convicted of a felony for a sex crime was already prioritized for deportation. Ellmers has also long said she voted against the bill due to fears that it would lead to less reporting of domestic violence. That’s a key piece of context that was missing from Holding’s assessment of her record.
10658	Shingles Vaccine Cuts Disease Risk 55%	This story about how the shingles vaccine performs in the real world takes a somewhat different tack from the HealthDay and Reuters stories we also reviewed. It includes discussion of a second study documenting low usage rates of the vaccine, but the story fails to give readers any comments from experts (like those quoted in the HealthDay story) who explain why some people have put a lower priority on the shingles vaccine. The story covers many of the basic points on the effectiveness study, though readers are not told what is new and different about this study compared to earlier research. There is a good description of who was included in this study, but little attention to the potential sources of bias inherent in this sort of observational study. In addition to reporting the 55 percent reduction in relative risk and the absolute risk reduction (6 versus 13 cases per 1,000 people per year), we wish this story had noted that the study found that 71 people need to be vaccinated in order to prevent one from having a shingles attack. When this story discusses the study documenting low usage rates, it states that “doctors may not be aware of the new recommendation.” It could be argued that many doctors have been aware of the recommendations, but have had a healthy skepticism of the original study, and did not yet have the results of this current study, which is at least a start at getting information on the generalizability of the original study’s results. Many doctors may be cautious about immediately jumping on the bandwagon of a new vaccine. If patients are healthy, the onus is on the physician to provide more good than harm, especially in prevention. Finally, the story is unbalanced when it ends with this comment without challenging it: “Once the patients learn about it, most are agreeable…”Everybody wants it…” Our medical editor who reviewe this story believes that many patients are cautious and/or skeptical of new vaccines (or any vaccines, for that matter), especially when the condition is shingles, and many patients do not think of the condition with “horror stories” but rather something usually self-limiting and also treatable.	true	WebMD	This story includes a comment that “vaccine expense is another barrier for some” and that not all insurance plans cover the cost of this vaccine, but readers are not told that it can cost about $200. Nonetheless, we’ll give it the benefit of the doubt on this criterion since cost and insurance are at least addressed. Although this story leads with only the relative risk reduction of 55 percent that researchers found in this study, it quickly places that effect in context with that of other vaccines (which generally provide greater protection). The story also reports the absolute risk figures of 6.4 cases per 1,000 people per year among those vaccinated and 13 cases per 1,000 people per year among those who were not vaccinated. These numbers help readers put the effects into the overall context of the risk of shingles. We think readers would have benefitted from also being told that based on the results of this study, one case of shingles is prevented for every 71 people vaccinated. This figure makes clear that while some people who are vaccinated are spared from a shingles attack, not everyone should expect to personally benefit from vaccination. The story should have pointed out that the study looked at a limited time span and that the researchers can’t say whether the effects of the vaccine persist through later years. That’s an important caveat, since a 60-year-old who had chicken pox as a child is at risk for a shingles attack for the remaining decades of life. If the vaccine cuts the risk of attacks in half, but only for the first few years after vaccination, then the lifetime reduction in risk would be much smaller. The story reports that earlier research identified side effects of the vaccine, including redness and pain at the injection site. But an inquiring story would have asked about side effects in the new study. Although this story did a better job than the other stories we reviewed in describing the participants of this study as members of the Kaiser Permanente health plan in southern California, like the other stories, it failed to address the potential sources of bias inherent in this sort of observational study. The study authors highlighted the limitations of the study design and explained what they did to try to identify and adjust for bias. The story should have given readers more information on these study limitations. The story reports that this vaccine is recommended for people 60 and older. It also includes a comment about who should not get the vaccine, “including people with a compromised immune system and certain cancers.” Our medical editor on this story thought there was an element of disease-mongering in how the story didn’t emphasize that it is post-herpetic neuralgia that “can last months or even years” and by not then emphasizing immediately that most people with zoster do not have this condition. But we’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt on this criterion. The story includes an independent source. However, the comments of the independent source don’t address the specific methods or findings of this study. Instead, they begin to wander off into a discussion of the relationship between stress and shingles attacks. The story does tell readers that this study was funded by the Kaiser Permanente health plan and that the lead author has received support from the vaccine’s maker for other research. As this story points out, less than 7 percent of people age 60 or older have gotten the shingles vaccine (while many more in that group have gotten flu, pneumonia and other vaccinations). The story should have addressed the reasons that so many primary care physicians and their older patients have decided that deferring vaccination against shingles is a reasonable option. The shared decision-making option of NOT being vaccinated was not given a forum here. Instead, the line: “Once patients learn about it, most are agreeable. “Everybody wants it, because they have heard all the horror stories,” (said UCLA’s Dr. Galler. )” The story reports that this shingles vaccine has been available in the Untied States since 2006. The story makes clear that this is the only vaccine approved to reduce the risk of shingles and that it has been available in the United States since 2006. However, it fails to explain what is new about the information provided by this study. The other stories we reviewed (HealthDay and Reuters) explained that this study offers a glimpse at how the vaccine is performing in the real world, as opposed to the idealized conditions of the clinical trial that led to the vaccine’s approval. The story does not appear to rely on a news release.
14008	Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world.	David Beckham says Swaziland has the world's highest rate of HIV	true	Global News Service, Public Health, David Beckham,	"British soccer star (or footballer if you prefer) David Beckham is a long-time goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. For a decade, he has lent his presence and fame to help the United Nations agency in its work with children around the world. A video posted on Facebook showed Beckham’s visit to Swaziland, a landlocked nation on the border between South Africa and Mozambique that has just over 1 million people. In the video, which has been viewed more than 1.3 million times, Beckham said ""Swaziland has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world."" That statistic checks out. Here’s the research behind it. There are two ways to talk about the reach of HIV/AIDS (or any disease for that matter). There’s prevalence, which tells you the fraction of people who are infected with the virus at any particular time. And there’s incidence, which tells you how many new people get infected in a given year. Swaziland tops the rankings for both. UNAIDS, the United Nations group focused on HIV/AIDS, reports that last year, HIV prevalence among adults 15-49 in Swaziland was 28.8 percent of the population -- more than 1 out of 4. The incidence rate was 2.36 per 100 person-years. These charts, drawn from UNAIDS data, back up Beckham’s claim. The CIA World Factbook has the same rankings, although the actual numbers vary a bit. A survey published in 2012 by the Swaziland Ministry of Health found slightly higher rates -- 31 percent prevalence and 2.4 percent incidence -- but that would certainly leave the ranking unchanged."
1918	DIY cervical cancer test could save lives: study.	A do-it-yourself test for cervical cancer could help prevent thousands of cases of the disease in women who don’t have easy or regular access to smear tests, scientists said on Wednesday.	true	Health News	The DIY test, which detects the human papillomavirus (HPV) responsible for cervical cancer, was widely accepted in a trial involving 20,000 women in Mexico and was more effective than traditional smear tests at picking up early signs of disease. British researchers who helped develop the test and led the trial said the results, published in the Lancet medical journal, suggest the DIY kit has the potential to help thousands of women who live in countries where smear testing is difficult or impossible. Smear tests are conducted by a nurse or doctor and checked manually by a cytologist who makes a judgment after examining a sample under a microscope. The DIY test can be taken by a woman at home and the sample is then assessed by an automated system. Cancer of the cervix is the second most common cancer in women worldwide, with about 500,000 new cases and 250,000 deaths each year, according to the World Health Organisation. Virtually all cervical cancer cases are linked to genital infection with HPV, the most common viral infection of the reproductive tract. Cervical cancer is more common and more deadly in countries where women have no access to screening, meaning cases are often detected too late for treatment to work. A study in September by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington found that both breast and cervical cancer cases and deaths are rising in many countries, especially in poorer nations where more women are dying at younger ages. In wealthier developed countries, cervical screening programs have been in place for many years, and more recently, national immunization programs using vaccines from drugmakers Merck and GlaxoSmithKline have been launched to protect girls from HPV. Attila Lorincz, a professor of molecular epidemiology at Queen Mary, University of London, who worked on the trial of the DIY test, said it could also help some women in wealthier nations who will not or cannot have smear tests in a clinic and are declined HPV vaccination. “Unlike many forms of disease, we can actually prevent cervical cancer — but only if women have access to screening or if young girls are vaccinated against the virus,” he said in a statement. In the trial in Mexico, around half of the 20,000 volunteers took the DIY test of vaginal samples collected at home, while the other half went to clinics for smear tests. The results, published in the Lancet journal, showed the DIY test picked up more than four times as many cases of cervical cancer and more than three times as many cases of a pre-cancer condition called cervical intraepithelial neoplasia, which can be treated to prevent the disease developing. Crucially, uptake for the at-home test was higher than for the smear test, Lorincz said, suggesting that women prefer this type of screening. “Our findings show that women are happy to take the test and that it is very sensitive at picking up women who are at risk of developing cancer,” he said. “This sensitivity is vital for a woman who may only get tested once or twice in her life.” The research team said the test still has limitations. For example, it tends to produce more so-called “false positives” — picking up women who after further tests turn out to be healthy — and this adds to the burden on health care services. They said further research was needed to address these problems.
35074	Photographs show a venomous caterpillar known as an asp.	According to the American Association for Clinical Chemistry (AACC), the asp is “one of the most toxic caterpillars in North America”:	true	Horrors, Insect Infestations	In 2014, we collected this post from Facebook: This little critter is called an ASP. Believe it’s a caterpillar. KILL IF YOU COME ACROSS ONE. THESE ARE PAINFUL WHEN YOU ARE STUNG BY ONE, WILL SEND YOU TO HOSPITAL, CAUSING NERVE PAIN/DAMAGE AND ARE POSSIBLY POISONOUS. THESE ARE BECOMING MORE N MORE SEEN. SO WATCH YOUR LIL ONES SURROUNDINGS!!! JUST THOUGHT I’D SHARE. MAKE SURE YOU DO THE SAME. The larval form of the Megalopyge opercularis species of moth is found primarily in the southeastern United States (largely in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida) and goes by a number of common names, including the southern flannel moth caterpillar, pussy moth caterpillar, puss caterpillar, tree asp, and the asp caterpillar. The asp (as we’ll refer to it here) somewhat resembles a colored ball of cotton and is venomous not in the sense that it bites, but in that it is covered in fur-like spines that contain venom that can cause varying forms of distress to humans who come into contact with them. The peak months of envenomation are July through November, and symptoms of envenomation typically include burning pain, swelling, nausea, and itching. As noted in a 2007 Clinical Toxicology article about asp caterpillar envenomation: Asp caterpillars pose a seasonal health hazard. Intense, throbbing pain develops immediately or within five minutes of contact with the caterpillar. Stings on the arm may also result in pain in the armpit region. Erythematous (blood- colored) spots typically appear at the site of the sting. Other symptoms can include headaches, nausea, vomiting, intense abdominal distress, lymphadenopathy, lymphadenitis, and sometimes shock or respiratory stress. Pain usually subsides within an hour and spots disappear in a day or so; however, with a larger dose of the venom, it is not uncommon for the symptoms to last several days or longer. Often, those envenomated by the asp caterpillar find that health care professionals have never seen nor heard of the creature; the caregivers are left with little to go on, and the victims are left with the distress of an unknown prognosis. Existing literature often involves a single case study, a self-reported envenomation, or a handful of cases. The need for better information about these caterpillars is not purely academic: at times public schools in Texas have been temporarily shut down because of outbreaks of the caterpillar, and more generally the problem of ignorance in the medical community can lead to under-treatment or mistreatment.
10298	Prevention of Genetic Breast Cancer Within Reach	This news release covers new published research around the use of a drug — denosumab — as a preventative treatment for those women who might have a genetic disposition to a certain type of breast cancer, those who carry the BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutations. While this multinational research news release presents the discovery as hopeful and exciting, the leap from rodent studies to humans is likely long, tenuous and far from certain. The news release treats the benefits and evidence found in the research somewhat vaguely, but over-reaches in describing the potential application of denosumab in preventing breast cancer. The release also claims that denosumab would be the first drug for preventing breast cancer, but Tamoxifen and raloxifene have already been approved for reducing breast cancer risk. The main contribution of this research is the role of a previously approved drug, denosumab in treating patients with a gene mutation that increases the likelihood of breast cancer. The research advances our knowledge of the breast cancer proteins RANKL and its receptor RANK, yet it bears to be seen how this mice-related research is going to apply to humans down the road. It is a little irresponsible to title a news release that “prevention of breast cancer is within reach” when the genetic anomaly that increases a woman’s risk of breast cancer is so rare in the population. The risk of a news release like this is that many women, fearful of breast cancer, may seek genetic testing and be subject to all its downstream consequences (dealing with false positives, the psychological impact and the stress and anxiety caused by the tests themselves). It needs to be emphasized that mutations in the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2 are rare and are linked to a very small fraction of all breast cancer. In the U.S., between one in 400 and one in 800 people in the general population have a BRCA1/2 mutation.	false	Breast cancer,Independent research center news release	The cost of the treatment in question, denosumab, (trade name: Prolia) is not mentioned. While the release states that the cell cultures receiving the RANKL blockade treatment had “significant reduction of growth and spreading of breast tissue cells” and “virtually no malignant changes in breast tissue” compared to those in the control group that developed multiple early breast cancer lesions. But no hard numbers or percentages are provided to quantify what a “significant reduction” is or what “virtually” means in this case. We also want to underscore that the results were only seen in cell cultures and in mice, not in humans. Denosumab — as well as carrying out genetic testing — comes with harms, none of which are mentioned in the release. Denosumab is described as “an antibody with very few side effects,” but this does not accord with the results of a online drug database which shows a lengthy side effects list, some of which are serious. Denosumab was approved by the FDA for osteoporosis in postmenopausal women in 2010 and for giant cell tumor of the bone in 2013. It carries an increased risk of osteonecrosis (a painful condition caused by reduced blood flow to the bone which causes it to die) of the jaw and femoral hip fractures, increased infection susceptibility, and low calcium levels in the blood, among others. Women at risk might be expected to take such a drug for decades. We’re not provided the parameters of the study, with the exception that it was a phase 2 and that there was a treatment group and a control group. There were useful disclaimers around the research presented here such as “careful phase III clinical trials are now needed to confirm the efficacy in humans.” However, the next sentence asserts: “thereafter, any woman who has been tested positive for a BRCA1 mutation could take RANKL blockade as prevention measure to reduce her dramatically increased breast cancer risk.” People reading this release may jump to the conclusion that it will dramatically reduce their chance of breast cancer, when that is simply extremely tentative at this moment. The release doesn’t exaggerate (or sugar coat) the risk of breast cancer. And yet it does seem to “drug monger” a bit by pressing the idea that denosumab could be a preventive “for everyone” even though the research is clearly limited to mice and cell cultures with the BRAC1 or BRAC2 gene. The release states that the research received funding from the U.S. Department of Defense but it doesn’t provide other important information that adds transparency. According to the published study, the Institute of Molecular Bioltechnology has applied for a patent on using RANKL inhibition to block breast cancer and that Amgen, Inc. (the maker of denosumab) provided RANK-Fc and financial support for the study. The release mentions prophylactic surgery as the only current method for reducing breast cancer risk. It doesn’t compare denosumab to mastectomy nor to bisphosphonates, which are other drugs that interfere with RANKL proteins and RANK receptors. Denosumab has been on the U.S. market as an approved treatment for certain types of osteoporosis since 2010 and tumors since 2013 but it is not approved as a preventative breast cancer treatment. The release may be misleading readers by suggesting it is “already approved.” The completion of safety and efficacy trials in humans are years down the road. The release doesn’t even say that advanced trials are planned, only that they’re “needed.” The release claims that the research led to the discovery that RANKL is the main driver BRCA1 mutation-driven breast cancer. A second claim is that an already approved drug could be “the first breast cancer prevention drug.” However, that’s misleading since Tamoxifen and raloxifene are FDA-approved drugs for reducing the risk of breast cancer. The release appears overly optimistic throughout considering the research has not yet been performed in humans. Statements like those below may give false hopes to women or encourage them to undergo additional genetic screening when the drug isn’t even tested or approved for use in breast cancer prevention. In addition, the mention of the actress Angelina Jolie seemed inappropriate, considering that this celebrity had a very rare genetic condition that led her to take drastic measures in undergoing prophylactic mastectomies. This reference is more likely to confused than inform the reader.
656	New York court blocks state ban on flavored e-cigarettes.	A New York court on Thursday temporarily halted a state ban on the sale of flavored e-cigarettes, giving the embattled vaping industry a breather just a day before the state’s prohibition was due to take effect.	true	Health News	The appellate court ruling puts a hold on the ban that was announced by New York state’s Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo last month in response to widespread growing concern about the rising use of e-cigarettes among teens and a nationwide spate of lung illnesses. The ban, which was due to start on Friday, will remain on ice until at least Oct. 18 when the Supreme Court in Albany is scheduled to hear the case brought by industry trade group Vapor Technology Association arguing for a preliminary injunction on the ban. “We are very pleased with the New York State Appellate Division’s decision, which acknowledges the strength of our claims about the State’s executive overreach, and which preserves the ability of hundreds of small businesses to remain open and continue to serve their adult customers,” Tony Abboud, executive director of the association said in an emailed statement. New York Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said he remained confident the ban would eventually be enforced. “Make no mistake: this is a public health emergency that demands immediate action to help ensure the wellbeing of our children, and we’re confident that once the court hears our argument they will agree,” Zucker said in a statement. A handful of states have imposed or are eyeing similar bans as the crisis grows and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends people stop using vaping products. Governors in Michigan and Rhode Island have announced sales restrictions, while Massachusetts imposed an outright ban for four months while it examined potential new regulations. Ohio’s state governor this week urged lawmakers to pass a ban. U.S. health officials earlier on Thursday reported 18 deaths due to a mysterious lung illness linked to e-cigarettes and other vaping products and said the number of confirmed and probable cases of the condition now exceeds 1,000. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission also on Thursday ordered several e-cigarette companies, including Juul Labs Inc and Nu Mark, to turn over sales and advertising data, in the first sign of a likely probe of their marketing practices. Tobacco giant Altria Group Inc owns Nu Mark and has a 35% stake in Juul. Abboud noted that New York state lawmakers had already raised the minimum age for the purchase of vapor products from 18 to 21 from November and imposed a tax increase. He said the lobby group was ready to work with officials “to achieve the twin goals of restricting youth vaping, which already is illegal, and preserving flavored alternatives for adults desperately trying to quit smoking.” The New York state Department of Health had pledged to provide retailers with a two-week grace period before conducting site visits to enforce the ban on all flavored e-cigarettes besides tobacco and menthol.
24398	"A new Republican litmus test ""would have resulted in (the GOP) kicking out Ronald Reagan."	Olbermann says proposed GOP litmus test would freeze out Reagan	mixture	National, History, Pundits, Keith Olbermann,	"To enforce ideological purity, a proposal before the Republican National Committee would deny party funding to any GOP candidate who bucks the party's stance on at least three items from a 10-point checklist of issues. The idea has sparked controversy within the Republican Party, and Democrats have seized on it as ammunition for their claim that the GOP has become too rigidly doctrinaire to appeal to many American voters. Keith Olbermann, the liberal host of Countdown on MSNBC, welcomed the proposal on his Nov. 23, 2009, show as evidence that Republicans are out of the mainstream. Olbermann told viewers that the resolution -- which invoked the name of former President Ronald Reagan six times in its preamble -- would have effectively blackballed Reagan himself had it been in place during his political career. By Olbermann's count, the late conservative icon would have scored a measly four out of 10 -- just half of the eight he would have needed to secure financial backing from the party. As we looked at the Republican proposal, we were struck by how specific its 10 items are to today's political environment. Reagan didn't have to consider wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or the prospect of gay marriage, for example. As a result, just a few of the checklist items can be directly compared to the issues Reagan faced, first during two terms as California governor and then as a two-term president. Because of this uncertainty, we won't rate Reagan -- or Olbermann -- in detail on each of the 10 issues. But if three problematic issues for Reagan exist, we think it's fair to say that he'd lose funds under the terms of today's proposal. We'll start by pointing out the one issue of the 10 that presents a clear case of Reagan overstepping today's Republican orthodoxy: • ""We support legal immigration and assimilation into American society by opposing amnesty for illegal immigrants."" In 1986, Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, which provided a path to amnesty for illegal immigrants who could prove that they had been in the United States for a certain period of time. Case closed. In the meantime, we settled upon six issues that we don't think can be used as fair comparisons, even though Olbermann did cite a few of them as examples of Reagan's unorthodox behavior on related issues. They are: • ""We support market-based health care reform and oppose Obama-style government-run health care."" • ""We support market-based energy reforms by opposing cap and trade legislation."" • ""We support workers’ right to secret ballot by opposing card check."" • ""We support victory in Iraq and Afghanistan by supporting military-recommended troop surges."" • ""We support containment of Iran and North Korea, particularly effective action to eliminate their nuclear weapons threat."" • ""We support retention of the Defense of Marriage Act."" While health care, energy policy, labor rights, military strategy, foreign affairs and gay rights were issues in Reagan's day just as they are today, we concluded that the battles in Reagan's time, and in ours, had enough unique factors that it's impossible to be sure what his actions then would have meant about the policy debates of today. That leaves three issues to determine whether Olbermann is right that Reagan would have been denied GOP funding. One is: • ""We support protecting the lives of vulnerable persons by opposing health care rationing and denial of health care and government funding of abortion."" Six months into his governorship in 1967, Reagan signed the Therapeutic Abortion Act, which has been widely described as the most liberal abortion law in the nation before the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe vs. Wade . Among other things, it permitted California's government-run Medicaid program to pay for abortions. ""Reagan later admitted that abortion had been 'a subject I’d never given much thought to,'"" wrote Paul Kengor and Patricia Clark Doerner, co-authors of ""The Judge: William P. Clark, Ronald Reagan’s Top Hand"" in the National Review , a conservative magazine. ""Moreover, his aides were divided on the question. ... Years later, Reagan remarked that he did 'more studying and soul searching' on the issue than any other as governor."" Ultimately, Kengor and Doerner wrote, Reagan signed the bill, fearing that the Legislature would be able to override his veto and pass an even more sweeping measure. But that was far from the end of the story. Reagan biographer Lou Cannon told PolitiFact that ""one of the reasons that Reagan became an opponent of abortion is that so many abortions were performed under the Therapeautic Abortion Act of 1967"" -- more, even, than the bill's sponsors had envisioned. So, during the remainder of his political career, Reagan used his bully pulpit aggressively to oppose abortion. His presidential administration made some tangible antiabortion moves, such as instituting the ""Mexico City policy,"" which denied foreign aid funding to groups that ""perform or actively promote"" abortion. The second is: • ""We support the right to keep and bear arms by opposing government restrictions on gun ownership."" As governor in 1967, Reagan signed the Mulford Act, which forbade the carrying of weapons in public. Later, in a 1991 speech, the former president spoke in favor of the Brady Bill -- a measure aggressively opposed by gun-rights groups that would establish a waiting period for gun purchases, so that law enforcement officials could conduct a background check on the purchaser. The law was named for Reagan's former press secretary, James Brady, who was seriously injured in John Hinckley's 1981 attempt on Reagan's life. (The bill was first introduced in Congress in 1987 and never made it to Reagan's desk during his presidency; Bill Clinton eventually signed it in 1993.) Despite these two actions, Reagan, as president, was generally a supporter of gun rights. Upon his death in 2004, the National Rifle Association eulogized him as a ""hunter, rancher and outdoorsman,"" as a life member of the group, and as the first sitting president to address the NRA at an annual meeting. In addition, he signed the Firearm Owners Protection Act of 1986, which included some provisions that tightened rules on gun ownership but which also eased many existing rules on firearms. It is generally considered a victory for the NRA rather than for gun-control forces. On both guns and abortion, then, Reagan unquestionably broke with today's Republican orthodoxy on one or more occasions -- but he also did things that were fully consistent with that orthodoxy. Finally, we'll look at the item dealing with fiscal policy. It's a bit complicated because it contains four parts: • ""We support smaller government, smaller national debt, lower deficits and lower taxes by opposing bills like Obama’s 'stimulus' bill"" Reagan gets unalloyed credit for sticking to the Republican principle of lowering taxes. When he entered office, the top marginal income tax rate was 70 percent. By the time he left office, it was 28 percent. Measured another way , the effective individual income tax rates dropped for Americans in many tax brackets, not just the richest. Judging whether Reagan promoted ""smaller government"" is trickier. For starters, ""smaller government"" could be defined to include such intangible factors as decreased regulation rather than just federal outlays. But even looking at federal spending, the trendlines are somewhat contradictory. Overall federal outlays increased by 57 percent over eight years, or about 7 percent a year. However, much of that increase was driven by defense spending. Looking at nondefense discretionary spending, the rise was much more modest -- 16 percent over eight years, or about 2 percent a year. Because that was less than the average rate of inflation during his presidency, some economists would consider that a cut. That said, it's pretty clear that Reagan didn't stick to the other two elements of this item -- deficits and debt. The average annual deficit during Reagan's presidency was $167 billion, with shortfalls ranging from $79 billion to $221 billion. By contrast, his two immediate predecessors, Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford never ran a deficit larger than $74 billion, and the president before them, Richard Nixon, never produced a deficit bigger than $23 billion. (Nixon even recorded a modest surplus in 1969.) As for the national debt, it rose from about $953 billion when Reagan took office to roughly $2.7 trillion when he left -- a bit less than three times its initial size. So on this item, too, both sides can pick and choose their evidence to show that Reagan did, or didn't, adhere to Republican fiscal orthodoxy. It's possible to draw at least two conclusions based on Reagan's example. One is that Reagan -- perhaps unhappily for ideologues on both the right and the left -- did not have immutable principles throughout his entire political life. He was a politician -- one who had to respond to his constituents, as well as to the specific demands and constraints of his office, whether it was governor or president. The other conclusion to draw is that parties themselves do not necessarily have immutable principles. Reagan's biographer Cannon points out that at the time the California Legislature passed the abortion bill, ""more Republicans supported it than Democrats. That's because the issue was then seen almost entirely in religious terms, and there were more Roman Catholics among the Democratic legislators than the Republicans. In 1967, most Republicans agreed with the mantra of keeping the government out of the bedroom and the boardroom. ... So Reagan went along with the prevailing doctrine of his party at the time."" Similarly, when the Legislature passed the Mulford Act, it won the support not just of liberal gun-control advocates but also of conservatives, who saw it as a way to weaken the growing power of the radical Black Panther movement, according to Guns in American Society: An Encyclopedia of History, Politics, Culture, and the Law, Volume 1 . When Reagan signed both the gun bill and the abortion bill, then, one can easily argue that he was actually adhering to the conservatism of the time, even as he bucked the conservatism of today. This contrast underscores the challenges facing Olbermann and others who seek to discredit the RNC proposal. Indeed, the lead sponsor of the RNC resolution, James Bopp Jr., acknowledged as much after liberal attacks like Olbermann's began to emerge. According to the New York Times ' Caucus blog, Bopp ""noted that the principles would change over time. ... Many of these were not issues in the 1980s, like cap and trade, card check, stimulus bill, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Obamacare. So these were not measures that Reagan took a stand on, but I have no doubt that he would be right on each one. If we were proposing this resolution in 1981 for the 1982 election cycle, we would list, strategic missile defense, Reagan’s tax cuts, etc. He was right on those issues."" But our mission here is not to critique the usefulness of Bopp's 10-point checklist; it's to judge whether Olbermann is right to say that Reagan would have fallen short on three or more items. On one item (amnesty for illegal immigrants) Reagan definitely broke with today's conservative orthodoxy. But on three others (abortion, gun control and fiscal policy) evidence exists in either direction. So, deciding whether Reagan qualifies under the rules of the resolution ends up being a tough call with evidence for both sides."
3482	Vaping group plotted lobbying efforts at Trump’s DC hotel.	America’s vaping industry has in recent years taken its fight to fend off regulation directly to President Donald Trump’s doorstep, with a lobbying group twice booking annual meetings at his Washington hotel and e-cigarette maker Juul hiring two of his former White House officials.	true	Lobbying, General News, Politics, Health, Business, Technology, Tobacco industry regulation, Donald Trump	In 2017 and 2018, the Vapor Technology Association met at Trump’s hotel to strategize how to lobby the administration, with a Republican lawmaker at one conference advising it to emphasize jobs created by the growing industry and how regulation could devastate hundreds of small vaping businesses. An intensive, multimillion-dollar lobbying effort by the industry in the last two years alone had largely been successful, until an outcry over hundreds of breathing problems and at least six deaths among users of e-cigarettes and similar devices led the Trump administration to crack down Wednesday with a proposal to ban flavored e-cigarettes popular with teens. Ethics experts point to vaping as a glaring example of what they were worried about from the moment Trump took office — an industry seeking to shape government policy while putting money in the president’s pocket by holding events, booking rooms and paying for food at one of his properties. “Whether it is foreign governments or e-cigarette companies, there is a perception that staying at a Trump hotel benefits the patron in some way,” said Matthew Sanderson, a former legal adviser to several Republican presidential campaigns. “This cuts to the heart of why there are concerns about the president having active business interests.” The Vapor Technology Association did not reply to an email and phone request for comment on its lobbying efforts but told The Associated Press last year that it booked Trump’s hotel for budget reasons and its proximity to Capitol Hill. This year’s meeting will be held next week at Washington’s Hotel Fairmont. As for Trump’s proposed ban, the group said in a statement that there was no evidence that vaping is to blame for recent cases of lung illness and urged the president to reverse course before “small businesses around the country are forced to close their doors, and tens of thousands of people are laid off.” Anticipating such criticism, Trump appeared to walk a line Wednesday between acknowledging the wealth created by the burgeoning industry and the growing health dangers. “They’ve become very rich companies very fast. The whole thing with vaping is ... it’s been very profitable,” Trump said. “But we can’t allow people to get sick, and we can’t have our youth to be so affected.” The Vapor Technology Association has spent $678,000 on federal campaigns in the past three years, with Juul pitching in $3.7 million more. Last year, Juul hired former Trump communications aide Josh Raffel and, earlier this year, Johnny DeStefano, who served as counselor to the president. Among those lobbying on Juul’s behalf are Jim Esquea, who worked during the Obama administration as an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services, and Ted McCann, who was a top policy aide to former House Speaker Paul Ryan. The 2017 vaping conference at the Trump International Hotel in Washington featured a keynote address from Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican pushing the Food and Drug Administration to pull back on a 2016 rule requiring e-cigarette makers get federal approval. Ten days later, the FDA did just that, announcing that manufacturers of e-cigarettes and cigars already on the market would get a reprieve of four years — since changed to three years — before they would be required to get agency approval. Tony Abboud, executive director of the Vapor Technology Association, told the AP last year that it was “overly simplistic” to suggest the event at Trump’s hotel had anything to do with the FDA delay. In June last year, the group held a second two-day conference at Trump’s Washington hotel, with speakers lined up to talk about such topics as “ending improper marketing,” ″reclaiming the public health narrative” and “defending flavors.” The keynote speaker, then-U.S. Rep. Ryan Costello of Pennsylvania, was quoted by the business magazine Fast Company as saying that the industry needed to talk about jobs if they hoped to fight off regulation. “If there’s one thing elected officials want to be on the right side of, it’s job creation,” Costello said. “Lead with: improved public health outcomes from those switching, and then the economic impact. How many jobs will this legislation cost? How many small businesses will close? That’s what legislators need to know.” ___ Associated Press writers Jill Colvin and Matthew Perrone contributed to this report from Washington.
6591	Reliving Communist past helps East German dementia patients.	Every weekday morning, white-haired women patiently line up before a door at a Dresden retirement home, step in, and quickly step back nearly six decades into their past in Communist East Germany.	true	Dresden, Health, International News, Berlin, Germany, East Germany, Dementia, Europe	Most of the women — in their late 70s at the youngest — are suffering from severe dementia, but the reminders from bygone days trigger memories and skills once thought lost, and produce surprising levels of happiness and comfort. They park their walkers next to a Kaufhalle sign from the former East German grocery chain, put on their colorfully-patterned nylon aprons and start the day just like they did some 50 years ago. They chop up bell peppers, tomatoes and sausages for the popular Hungarian salad of their youth, wash dishes in an original 1960s metal sink and iron their laundry with old-fashioned pressing irons while happily humming along to schmaltzy East German tunes coming from a record player. It’s hard to imagine that many were — not so long ago — bedridden and unable to eat or use the bathroom on their own, said Gunter Wolfram, the director of the Alexa home in the former East German city of Dresden. “From the first day on, this room has been a big success story,” Wolfram said. “The people are very happy to recognize things from the old times. They immediately feel comfortable.” The 49-year-old, who grew up in East Germany himself, said it was sheer coincidence that he found out that Communist kitsch and other memorabilia brought comfort to some of his 130 residents. The revelation came two years ago when he decided to decorate the home’s movie theater with a vintage flashy Troll scooter that was once very popular in East Germany. “Instead of paying attention to the movie, these people got so excited about the motorcycle. They could all of a sudden remember how to start the ignition, and chatted with bright eyes about outings to the Baltic Sea on their own Trolls a long time ago — it was amazing,” Wolfram said. Inspired by this, he set out to create an entire room in 1960s East German style. He scoured the region’s flea markets and soon had an impressive collection of well-known Ossi — slang for anything and anybody from East Germany, products. He gathered Spee and Fewa laundry detergents, yellowed magazines and the plastic pepper-and-salt shakers that almost every family in East Germany owned. He also found a wooden wall unit that only the well-to-do could afford at the time. Together with his colleagues, he set up the 1960s room — and the home’s residents were so eager to spend time in a place that felt like home they started coming in droves. Because of the room’s success, the waiting list for future residents is full and directors from other retirement homes have called Wolfram, asking for advice. Soon the demand for the daily trip back into the past had become so popular that Wolfram added a second room, this one designed in East German 1970s style — including psychedelic-patterned curtains, tasseled floor lamps and a bright-orange rotary dial phone. In West Germany, capitalism ruled and U.S.-style consumerism flourished only a few years after the end of World War II, but materialism was frowned upon in the Communist East and consumer goods were scarce. Since only a few brands were sold in the country’s Kaufhalle supermarkets, they have very high recognition value among former East Germans. Some of the items also feature prominently in the 2003 Golden Globe-nominated German movie “Good-bye Lenin!” in which the son of a woman, who had slipped into a coma before the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall, desperately tries to re-create the old East Germany after she finally wakes up in a reunited Germany. The boy stacks the home with the famous Spreewald pickles and other products from the DDR — as the German Democratic Republic was called in German — trying to obliterate all signs of capitalism. Herlind Megges, a gerontologist from Berlin’s Charite university hospital who has not been involved in the Alexa home project, said such memory therapy can help improve the capabilities and well-being of dementia patients. “Memory therapy is often used because it activates exactly what’s still there and still working well,” Megges said. “It’s important for these people, who don’t feel well in this world because it doesn’t match their current memory, that there’s an environment where they feel comfortable.” Objects from earlier phases of a patient’s life that are connected to comfortable feelings can lead to physical and cognitive improvement, Megges said. Often patients can still retrieve memories from their childhood and early adulthood even when their short-term memory fails. Millions of elderly around the world suffer from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia in which they lose their ability to respond to their environment. While there’s no cure yet, research institutions worldwide are trying to find better ways to treat the disease, delay its onset and improve the quality of life for dementia patients. “We’re treating the symptoms, we currently cannot treat the causes of the disease,” Megges said. For Gerda Noack, a 92-year-old retired hat maker born and raised in Dresden, the yesteryear room has been a blessing. The elegant Noack, who always wears a carefully knotted silk scarf around her neck, used to roam the hallways of the retirement home all day, says Wolfram. She was restless and frustrated, always looking for something she thought she had lost — until she started visiting the 1960s DDR room. While standing in the room’s kitchen last week, she peacefully stirred the chopped-up peppers in an old frying pan, then later cleaned up dishes with an expression of contentment. Asked if she was happy, she nodded cheerfully, waiting for the nurses to dish up the Hungarian salad she had helped to prepare. “These old, routine activities in the company of other women in a familiar environment really make our residents much more at ease with themselves,” said Wolfram. “It’s almost become like a job for them, where they spend the entire week here with a whole new sense of purpose.” ___ Follow Kirsten Grieshaber on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/kugrieshaber
11002	Popular Bone Drugs Linked to Reduced Colon Cancer Risk	One can tell a lot about how a story is going to be from its lead quote. This HealthDay story on a new study indicating potential cancer prevention benefits from bone density drugs — quoted Dr. Gad Rennert, the study’s lead author, sounding “These [new] findings are meaningful because they point to a possible protective effect of this class of drugs being relevant to prevention of many different cancers. … This is [similar] to the effect that we and others have shown for [cholesterol-lowering] statins.” From there on, Rennert is allowed to pump up the benefits of these drugs and to sweep aside any concern about their risks or broad application to a large population. Contrast that with the Reuters Health story which chose to quote Eric Jacobs from the American Cancer Society saying, “The lower risk of colorectal cancer risk seen among bisphosphonate users in this study is intriguing….However, these results should be interpreted with caution and require confirmation by additional studies.” From that point on, the story took a cautious, objective look at the study’s findings. We wish both stories had done a better job parsing the evidence, but we think that, overall, Reuters Health provided better context for readers. Roughly 1 out of every 20 people in the US will develop colorectal cancer at current rates. If taking a simple pill for $10 a month can keep cancer at bay, the world would be a much better place. Because solutions to significant health challenges are usually not that simple, this story and others that covered the same study should have been more cautious in explaining the results and showing readers why they might not translate to an immediate benefit for them.	mixture	Cancer,HealthDay	Unlike the Reuters Health story, this story did not discuss costs. This is a shame because if the monthly cost is $10, as Reuters Health notes, that may be cheap on an individual level. As a public health policy, though, $120 a year across a huge population could add significantly to an already overspent health care system. The lead says, “People who take drugs called bisphosphonates to prevent bone loss may also reduce their risk of developing colorectal cancer by almost 60 percent compared to those not on the drugs, a new study suggests.” What this story and the Reuters Health story failed to do was give the raw numbers that are provided in the study itself. The story should have said that 138 women in the non-cancer group took biophosphonates and 97 in the cancer group took them, meaning that 41 women appear to have benefited from taking the drugs. If the study had found that 97 women had taken these drugs in both groups, the study would not have made headlines. Also, it might have been helpful to show that there were actually larger differences in some of the other factors that were studied. For example, 120 women in the group of cancer patients had a history of colorectal cancer in the family compared to 75 women in the control group. This story did a better job of mentioning “The magnitude of the reduced risk is less important because this is an association study…” But then it goes on to say that the magnitude of the benefit is similar to cholesterol lowering medicines. The main difference is that this story, despite the caveats mentioned, is more enthusiastic about the findings than the Reuters story. We give this story and the Reuters Health story credit for at least mentioning some of the risks of taking bisphosphonates. “The researchers noted, however, that the risks of using bisphosphonates include the possibility, in rare cases, of osteonecrosis of the jaw (destruction of the jawbone or jaw tissue). Bisphosphonates used for osteoporosis have also been linked to a rare fracture of the thigh, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.” But neither story quantified the harms in any way. This story also failed to point out, as the Reuters Health story did, that “earlier study from the UK had found no link between bisphosphonate and colon cancer. Indeed, it found a higher risk of throat cancer in patients on the medication.” The story makes a good attempt at explaining the quality of the evidence. It says, “For the study, Rennert’s team collected data on almost 1,900 postmenopausal women who took part in the Molecular Epidemiology of Colorectal Cancer study, which is a population-based trial in northern Israel….The researchers found that taking bisphosphonates, mostly Fosamax, for at least a year was associated with a significant 59 percent reduction in relative risk for colorectal cancer.” The story added a nice detail missed by Reuters Health, saying, “The findings in this study show that bisphosphonates are associated with a reduced risk of developing colorectal cancer, but they cannot confirm a causal effect — that is, the study doesn’t prove that the use of bisphosphonates is responsible for the lower risk of colorectal cancer.” But both stories fail to point out that this study did not look at 933 women who took the drugs and 933 who did not. Of those 1,866 women, only 97 of the cancer patients took the drugs, and only 138 of the women without cancer had taken them. So, yes, the researchers were able to find what appears to be a statistically significant risk reduction, but they also found differences in physical activity, body mass index, vegetable intake and the use of statins and aspirin. The study highlights the biophosphonate connection, but the story should have explained why a difference of 41 women without cancer taking these drugs out of a total of nearly 2,000 would be enough evidence to support some of the cheerleading in the story. Though this story, in some ways, provided more information on the quality of the evidence, it too missed the point that the biggest limitation of the study is that factors related to the women’s underlying risk of cancer were lower in those taking bisphosphonates, and that the authors did not collect adequate information to control for those differences. This is why one needs a randomized trial. And the mention that such a study should be “relatively easy” to do is not likely to be true. One will need a very large population to detect any difference on top of routine screening with a colonoscopy. One cannot do a study and not offer the control patients current standard of care. That means everyone needs to be screened first. This will be a very hard, expensive study to do. Neither story engaged in disease-mongering. Both stories quoted the exact same sources: the lead author and Eric Jacobs, Strategic Director of Pharmacoepidemiology at the American Cancer Society. But both stories used their comments in very different ways. The Reuters Health story did not allow Rennert to run wild with enthusiasm. The HealthDay story did. For example, when the story notes that “A randomized trial is needed to prove that bisphosphonates are protective against colorectal cancer, Rennert said.” It follows that sobering bit of news up immediately with, “It should be relatively easy, as it seems that all that is needed is a year of treatment to see the effect,” he said. Should be relatively easy? Ask any drug company how much time it takes and what it costs to bring a drug to market and no one will tell you that clinical trials are easy. This is especially troubling given that a previous study just last year showed no benefit, and, remember, we are talking about just 41 women who appear to have staved off cancer by taking these drugs. Both stories relied on Jacobs from the American Cancer Society for the same bit of context. “Fortunately, there are other proven ways to help lower risk of colorectal cancer, he said. “In particular, all Americans, 50 or older, should get a screening test so that precancerous polyps can be detected and removed before they turn into cancer.” Both stories make it clear that these are drugs currently on the market. This story provided even more detail, saying, “Bisphosphonates include such common drugs as Fosamax (alendronate), Boniva (ibandronate), Actonel (risedronate) and Reclast (zoledronic acid). These drugs work by increasing bone thickness, thereby reducing the risk of fractures, the researchers said.” This story made it clear that the findings are part of a series of findings, some of them contradictory, about the side benefits of different drugs for cancer prevention. It says, for example, “However, the lowered risk of colorectal cancer seen with bisphosphonates may be due to the way the drug acts in the body, which is similar to how cholesterol-lowering drugs called statins work, according to Rennert.” Neither story relied on a news release.
2777	KaloBios Pharma pulls plug on asthma drug, shares plunge.	Shares of KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc fell nearly 50 percent in extended trade after the company said it would stop developing an asthma drug that failed in a mid-stage study.	true	Health News	The drug, KB003, failed to bring about a clinically meaningful improvement in the pulmonary function of patients with severe asthma when tested against a placebo in 160 patients. The San Francisco-based company said it would focus on developing other treatments in its pipeline, which include a drug for cancer and another to prevent a common gram negative bacterium. KaloBios shares fell to a low of $2.65 in extended trading. The company had a market capitalization of about $150 million based on its Wednesday close of $4.65 on the Nasdaq.
12181	"Matthew Rosendale Says Sen. Jon Tester ""believes that we should have a national registration so that the people of Montana should have to ask permission before they purchase a gun, ask permission from the federal government."	"Rosendale said Tester ""believes that we should have a national registration so that the people of Montana should have to ask permission before they purchase a gun, ask permission from the federal government."" Tester’s record shows opposition to a federal list of lawfully-owned guns and gun owners. To claim he supports this is absurd."	false	National, Guns, Matthew Rosendale,	"While declaring his U.S. Senate bid, Republican hopeful Matt Rosendale zeroed in on the Second Amendment record of his opponent Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont. ""Tester believes that we should have a national registration so that the people of Montana should have to ask permission before they purchase a gun, ask permission from the federal government,"" Rosendale, Montana's state auditor, said in a July 31 interview on Voices of Montana. We decided to investigate whether Tester supports a national gun registry. It turns out the opposite is true. This point may seem obvious but it bears highlighting: the government does not have a single, consolidated list of all guns and all gun owners across the country, or, what a layperson would call a national gun registry. ""When people talk about national gun registration, they most commonly are talking about a list of people who own guns lawfully, or a list of the guns that are lawfully owned,"" said David Kopel, a policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute who has authored several books on gun control. An important caveat, however, is that the National Firearms Act of 1934, which Congress passed in response to that era’s rash of organized crime, did set up a registry for limited types of guns and other weapons. Those included machine guns, which fire multiple rounds with a single pull of the trigger; short-barreled rifles or shotguns; disguised guns, like those made to look like a belt buckle; hand grenades; and silencers. While some might consider the registration of machine guns and silencers to be a national gun registry, that’s inconsistent with common parlance. Further, Rosendale’s statement alleges Tester supports a registry to apply broadly to ""the people of Montana,"" and Rosendale’s campaign gave no indication he was referring to the narrower National Firearms Act registry. We asked Rosendale’s campaign for evidence that Tester supports a national gun registry. They pointed us to a vote Tester cast in favor of a 2015 amendment sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that failed in the Senate. Did that measure seek to establish a federal list of guns and their owners? Not even close. For the past nearly 20 years, federally licensed gun dealers have been required to run an FBI background check on customers. Would-be purchasers are checked against an FBI list of people prohibited by law from owning guns: those with felony convictions, known illegal aliens and domestic abusers, to name a few categories. The Feinstein amendment sought to extend the FBI’s list to those on the U.S. government’s consolidated terror watchlist of known or suspected terrorists, and grant the attorney general discretion to deny them from buying a gun. The Rosendale campaign’s argument appears to be as follows: Because the terror watchlist has mistakenly listed innocent people, the watchlist could be used as a national gun registry. Experts dismissed the notion that to deny gun sales to the government’s list of known and suspected terrorists, flawed as it may be, is the same thing as making a federal list of lawfully-owned guns and its owners. ""The terror watch list is not a gun registry,"" said Philip J. Cook, a professor of public policy studies at Duke University and an expert on gun control. ""In fact, if the Feinstein amendment were passed and enforced, then the terror watch list would be a registry of people who did not have guns!"" David Hemenway, a professor of health policy at Harvard University who has written extensively about firearms policy, said the Rosendale campaign’s explanation of the Feinstein amendment doesn’t add up. ""This simply has involved changing the criteria for passing a background check. It is nothing like a registry,"" Hemenway said. ""He doesn't seem to understand what a registry is."" So Rosendale’s central claim is flat wrong — but he didn’t stop there. Rosendale said the registry Tester allegedly supports would require Montanans to ""ask permission from the federal government"" before they purchase a gun. Because the alleged gun registry proposal is a fiction, it can have no policy implications. So this extra bit only serves to enhance the claim’s absurdity. The Rosendale campaign said further that Tester’s votes against several measures means he is tolerant of a national gun registry because these measures would have made it harder to enact one. However — leaving aside whether these bills would have done that — the reality is that Tester’s record shows clear instances where he opposed gun registries. Tester voted for the 2013 Manchin-Toomey Amendment, a bipartisan background check plan, which we previously found would have strengthened federal law prohibiting the creation of a national gun registry. In 2011, he was among a group of lawmakers who pushed for a provision to block federal funding from being used to retain gun background check records for more than 24 hours, and voted in favor of the bill that contained this provision. (Tester expressed concern as early as 2006 that maintaining such records could be the first step toward a national gun registry). He also co-signed a 2011 letter to President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raising Second Amendment concerns that a proposed U.N. arms trade deal could lead to an ""international gun registry."" For this, Tester earned praise from the National Rifle Association for ""stand(ing) on the side of America's 80 million gun owners in opposition to those who want to eliminate our freedoms."" Rosendale said Tester ""believes that we should have a national registration so that the people of Montana should have to ask permission before they purchase a gun, ask permission from the federal government."" Tester’s record shows opposition to a federal list of lawfully-owned guns and gun owners. To claim he supports this is absurd."
7595	Nursing home with state’s deadliest virus outbreak sued.	The daughter of a woman who died after contracting the coronavirus at a Portland long-term care facility filed a $1.8 million lawsuit Thursday claiming elder abuse.	true	Health, General News, Oregon, Judith Jones, Nursing homes, Portland, Virus Outbreak, Lawsuits	Angela Brown says her 75-year-old mother, Judith Jones, contracted coronavirus and died because of Healthcare at Foster Creek’s negligence, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported. In the complaint, Brown listed problems state investigators found at the nursing home, now connected to 29 deaths and 119 cases of COVID-19. The Oregon Department of Human Services recently suspended the home’s license. Foster Creek is run by Benicia Senior Living and is owned by St. Jude Operating Company, and both are named in the lawsuit. A Benicia co-owner didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment and St. Jude representatives couldn’t be reached. Jones, who had dementia, lived in a locked unit at Foster Creek. For Brown, that afforded some comfort, because staff said workers weren’t going from unit to unit, the lawsuit says. But state inspectors’ findings said the outbreak’s spread to the locked unit was likely due to staff working across units. On April 18, Jones was taken to a hospital emergency room with a fever, according to the lawsuit. She tested positive for the coronavirus and died April 25.
24829	"Measures in Barack Obama's health plan could ""lower health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year."	Savings projection is best case scenario	mixture	National, Health Care, Barack Obama,	"During a 30-minute campaign ad that aired Oct. 29, 2008, Barack Obama laid out his policy proposals in detail, including health care. ""In the last year, I've visited many hospitals that are computerizing records and implementing technology that improves patient care and dramatically reduces costs,"" Obama said. ""That's why my health care plan includes improving information technology, requires coverage for preventive care and pre-existing conditions, and lowers health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year, and you can keep your same coverage and your same doctor."" As Obama's statement makes clear, he brings down costs by introducing efficiency to the existing health care system. He believes the savings should be reflected in lower costs for health insurance and medical care. We wanted to look into that $2,500 number and see what's behind it. From our previous coverage of health care, we know that it's difficult to forecast costs with precision . But we were curious whether Obama's number was an approximation of realistic savings or an outlandish exaggeration of what experts would say is possible. The Obama campaign pointed us to a memo several researchers at Harvard University wrote after the campaign asked them to review Obama's plan . Their report concluded that health savings could reach about $2,500 per family, though they included the caveat that ""there is no consensus in the research community about how much each element will save, or how much could be saved if these elements were effectively implemented in combination."" We then turned to an independent health policy expert, Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University. He drew up detailed examinations of the Obama and McCain health plans that he published this summer. Thorpe considered savings that could be achieved through the following Obama proposals: • expanding evidence-based, best practice programs in public programs like Medicare • accelerating the adoption of electronic health information technology, such as electronic medical records • promoting wider use of wellness programs designed to reduce obesity and smoking • reducing administrative costs through changes in insurance programs • creating a clinical effectiveness research institute to discourage unproductive health care spending • improving patient safety by reducing preventable medical errors Obama's plan has additional cost-savings measures that relate to the way private insurance works. Thorpe did not include those measures in his analysis. Thorpe concluded that by 2012, the Obama plan could reduce health care spending by $203 billion to $273 billion per year. It sounds like a lot, but it's actually not that much when you consider the United States spends more than $2.5 trillion annually on health care. Thorpe's report figured that Obama's proposal could reduce total spending by between 6 and 9 percent. Other researchers believe it could be more, with some estimates as high as 30 percent. So take the total savings Thorpe found and divide it by about 140 million tax filers -- a rough equivalent for families -- and you get savings of between $1,500 and $2,000 per family. That's $1,000 to $500 away from what Obama touts, but he is likely using more aggressive savings targets. Both sets of numbers, however, are estimates based on events that have not yet come to pass, and it's not really possible to say that one set is wrong and another is right. Thorpe did say, though, that Obama's proposal is superior to John McCain's in achieving cost savings because Obama has designated funding to get initiatives off the ground, such as $50 billion over five years to encourage health information technology. McCain's plan does not include this funding, Thorpe said. The $2,500-per-family savings that Obama mentioned in his ad is a speculative estimate of what he hopes will happen once all the pieces of his plan are in place. It's $500 to $1,000 dollars higher than the number we came up with using Thorpe's independent analysis. We recognize that plans are vague and it's difficult to predict future numbers with any precision. But Obama's numbers are significantly higher than the best independent estimate we could find. So we find his statement ."
4244	More surgery for Minnesota football player, cancer survivor.	University of Minnesota football player and four-time cancer survivor Casey O’Brien is facing more surgery this week to remove a spot in a lung.	true	College football, Cancer, Health, General News, Football, Minnesota, Minnesota Golden Gophers football	The walk-on holder made his college debut at Rutgers on Oct. 19, holding all three of the Gophers’ fourth-quarter extra points in their 42-7 victory. O’Brien this season has shared the story of his cancer fight with ESPN’s “College GameDay” and other programs. The sophomore from St. Paul, Minnesota, initially was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer at age 13. He has since had a left knee replacement, multiple lung operations and chemotherapy treatments. The Star Tribune reports O’Brien was nearly two years cancer-free when he wrote about the surgery update Monday on Twitter. ___ More AP college football: https://apnews.com/tag/Collegefootball and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25 ___ Information from: Star Tribune, http://www.startribune.com
4085	State: 5 cases of lung disease possibly linked to vaping.	Connecticut public health officials say they are now investigating five cases of lung disease in state residents possibly related to the use of e-cigarettes or vaping products.	true	Health, Lung disease, Connecticut, Public health	The state Department of Public Health on Friday said it had learned of three more Connecticut residents hospitalized for severe lung disease possibly related to the products, on top of two they already knew of. The agency says all five became ill in July and August and have since been discharged from the hospital. Federal health officials said Friday they had identified 450 possible cases, including at least three deaths, in 33 states. Patients experienced symptoms such as cough, shortness of breath, chest pain, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and fever. No single product or substance has been linked to all the cases.
16178	China has made enormous progress in its human rights. That is a fact recognized by all the people in the world.	"Chinese President Xi Jinping said, ""China has made enormous progress in its human rights. That is a fact recognized by all the people in the world."" There is a grain of truth here: China’s rapid economic growth has lifted millions of its residents, though hardly all of them, out of extreme poverty. Still, China remains an authoritarian state without truly free expression and democratic choice, and where political dissidents and those who practice civil disobedience face harsh penalties. Meanwhile, China executes thousands of people a year and imprisons or forces labor on hundreds of thousands of others with scant due process. Finally, many groups — ethnic minorities, the disabled, and migrant workers, to name a few — remain marginalized by the state. It’s tough to claim ""all the people in the world"" recognize China has made ""enormous gains"" in human rights when groups that monitor human rights and other outside observers continue to find problems with China’s record."	false	National, China, Human Rights, Foreign Policy, Xi Jinping,	"During a trip to Beijing this week, President Barack Obama announced major agreements with China, one to reduce carbon emissions and another to increase travel between the two countries. But the visit was not without controversy. During a press conference on Wednesday with Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Mark Landler, a White House correspondent for the New York Times, questioned China’s record on human rights and noted that some American media outlets, including his own organization, have experienced difficulty getting residency permits in China. ""I’m wondering in the spirit of these reciprocal visa arrangements that you’ve agreed to this week with business people and students, isn’t it time to extend that sort of right to foreign correspondents who seek to cover your country?"" Landler asked. Xi replied with a rare, unscripted response, telling foreign reporters they need to ""obey China's laws and regulations."" He went on to defend the country’s human rights record. ""Ever since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and especially over the last three decades and more of China's reform and opening era, China has made enormous progress in its human rights,"" Xi said, according to a translation provided by the White House. ""That is a fact recognized by all the people in the world."" When we put the Chinese leader’s statement to the Truth-O-Meter, we found that human rights organizations were not as glowing in their assessments of China’s record on this issue. ""It’s very standard Chinese political rhetoric,"" said Sophie Richardson, the China director at Human Rights Watch in an interview with PolitiFact. ""It may be very nice that President Xi wishes his statement is true, but to suggest among other things people in China and around the world uniformly agree is ludicrous."" Attempts to reach a spokesperson with the Chinese embassy were unsuccessful. Some improvements There is some good news. Experts and human rights advocates we spoke with say that improving economic conditions have indeed produced better living conditions for many Chinese citizens. As it is, when Chinese leaders claim progress in human rights, they are mostly referring to ""human welfare,"" said Patrick Keenan, an expert in human rights and international law at the University of Illinois. ""They're thinking about China's incredible economic growth and the ways that that economic growth has improved the lives of poor people in China,"" Keenan said. ""China's growth hasn't helped everyone, of course, but it is true that poor people, on average, are better off than they were a generation ago."" The reform era of the 1970s that opened China’s doors to a degree to the rest of the world resulted in a vast economic expansion, especially in the urban centers. Some social freedoms followed, such as the ability to move or take different jobs. However, such gains only accrued to certain sectors of the population. For example, according to Human Rights Watch, millions of farmers and herders who are Tibetan — an ethnic minority in China — have been subjected to a mass rehousing-and-relocation policy that forced them into socialist villages. And more generally, outside China’s rapidly growing cities, the economic gains have been less significant. There are two other notable areas of progress, each with limits. First, China has signed several international conventions and treaties pertaining to human rights. While there are clear examples of these agreements being ignored, the simple fact that China has agreed to them ""is important because it creates an opportunity to make claims against the state,"" said Richardson of Human Rights Watch. All told, China has signed 10 of the 16 United Nations agreements pertaining to human rights. However, in most cases, China has attached a stated ""reservation"" that says they won’t abide by parts of the agreement that interfere with state laws. For example, while China agreed to an anti-torture convention, it added that it would not recognize a clause that allows the United Nations to investigate suspected torture, thus eliminating the enforcement mechanism. Second, Human Rights Watch notes some growth in civil society within China, such as new legal-aid services to victims of domestic violence, disabled children and other at-risk groups. These services often do not enjoy recognition from the state, though, and their leaders face imprisonment. Still, they represent seeds of change. ""That degree of organization, participation and serving as a counter to the state is incredibly important,"" Richardson said. A long way to go Any acknowledgement that China has made gains on some issues comes with the caveat that the country is ""starting off a much lower base than most,"" said Joshua Castellino, a law professor at Middlesex University in London and at the Irish Center for Human Rights. ""Against (progress), there remain major issues on political participation, freedom of religion, and the use of the death penalty,"" Castellino said. On the death penalty, Human Rights Watch says China ""leads the world in executions."" While the exact number isn’t known, it’s estimated at about 4,000 a year. Additionally, Amnesty International estimates 500,000 people are ""currently enduring punitive detention without charge or trial, and millions are unable to access the legal system to seek redress for their grievances."" Many detained people are activists and political dissidents. China retains a one-party system, meaning citizens have no real choice or say in their government, and the Chinese Communist Party has authority over all judicial and legal proceedings in the country. The Internet has created opportunities for activists to engage, communicate and inform. However, China has aggressively moved to rein in these efforts through widespread censorship and blocking outside content from reaching Internet users in China. (This is known as the ""Great Firewall."") Additionally, the Chinese Communist Party has recently moved to make it easier to charge activists and Internet critics as part of a crackdown on free expression. ""Use of torture to extract confessions is prevalent, and miscarriages of justice are frequent due to weak courts and tight limits on the right to defense,"" according to Human Rights Watch. Nobel Peace Prize recipient Liu Xiaobo is serving an 11-year sentence for non-violent protest against the state, while his wife remains under house arrest. Liu’s trial lasted 20 minutes, according to Amnesty International. These types of human rights abuses are deemed necessary by the state to preserve ""social stability,"" Human Rights Watch says. Historically, China has used ""re-education through labor"" — forced labor camps — as a means of punishment. Officials have said they plan to abolish these camps, but so far it appears they have been replaced with other types of detention without trial. In addition, the disabled face discrimination in employment and education opportunities, workplace safety is a major concern, migrant workers cannot get residence permits that allow them access to education and other social services, and women can be punished, including being forced to have abortions, for violating government family planning laws. ""In the U.S., Europe, and many other parts of the world, the idea of human ‘rights’ means things like freedom of religion, assembly, voting rights, anti-discrimination provisions to protect minorities and people with disabilities, and the like. On these measures, China is not doing well,"" Keenan said. ""There is endemic local corruption, abuses of political opponents, restrictions on free expression and assembly, abuses of property rights, discrimination against people who are out of favor with the government, no real voting rights as that idea is understood in the West, and so on."" Our ruling Chinese President Xi Jinping said, ""China has made enormous progress in its human rights. That is a fact recognized by all the people in the world."" There is a grain of truth here: China’s rapid economic growth has lifted millions of its residents, though hardly all of them, out of extreme poverty. Still, China remains an authoritarian state without truly free expression and democratic choice, and where political dissidents and those who practice civil disobedience face harsh penalties. Meanwhile, China executes thousands of people a year and imprisons or forces labor on hundreds of thousands of others with scant due process. Finally, many groups — ethnic minorities, the disabled, and migrant workers, to name a few — remain marginalized by the state. It’s tough to claim ""all the people in the world"" recognize China has made ""enormous gains"" in human rights when groups that monitor human rights and other outside observers continue to find problems with China’s record."
7362	St. Louis Archdiocese closes 3 schools because of COVID-19.	Three Catholic elementary schools that were already struggling financially will close because of the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, as the outbreak continues to impact businesses and institutions across the state.	true	Michael Brown, Health, General News, St. Louis, Virus Outbreak	The Archdiocese of St. Louis announced Friday that Most Holy Trinity Catholic School and Academy, Christ Light of the Nations School and St. Joseph School in Manchester will close at the end of the school year. The archdiocese said it had provided financial help for all three schools but the support was hurt by the suspension of public Masses and the resulting loss of contributions. At a meatpacking plant in northern Missouri, nearly 400 employees underwent voluntary testing for COVID-19 this week. State health department officials said 14 of the 363 employees who were tested were positive for COVID-19. More than 900 employees at the plant have yet to be tested. A Smithfield spokesman said in an email the company does not confirm COVID-19 cases at its plants out of respect for its employees’s privacy. Gov. Mike Parson on Friday toured a suburban Kansas City Ford plant that plans to bring some employees back Monday. Parson inspected new safety procedures at the plant in Claycomo, where 2,500 employees will return to work Monday as part of a national trend of autoworkers going back on the job. More than 7,300 worked in the Missouri plant when it shut down in March. Missouri reported 10,456 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Friday, an increase of 139 from Thursday. The state also has recorded 576 deaths, 14 more than Thursday. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms that clear up after 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. And a daycare operator in Columbia lost an effort to receive a temporary restraining order against Boone County regulations meant to slow the spread of the coronavirus, KMIZ reporte d. Paul Prevo, owner of Tiger Tots, sued Boone County health department director Stephanie Browning on Monday, arguing that she did not have the authority to impose regulations that are stricter than Parson’s order allowing nonessential businesses to reopen on May 4. Judge Brouck Jacobs said he was deferring to Browning’s expertise in determine the best ways to combat the virus and ruled that Prevo’s lawyers did not show they are likely to succeed in the case, which is legally required to receive a temporary restraining order. .
11419	HSRx Group's Acne Product Outperforms Market Leader in Clinical Trial; Demonstrates Faster Reduction of Acne Count, Redness & Severity	This news release describes a head-to-head trial of two acne medications. The trial design sounded impressive; it was randomized, double-blind and placebo controlled. But that intro was the best the release had to offer readers. There were no details from the study to back up subsequent claims. This news release has a lot of what we don’t want to see in a news release — fear mongering, hype, unjustifiable language, and lack of evidence. Acne is the most common skin disorder in the US affecting between 40-50 million persons of all ages and races. This chronic inflammatory disease, when untreated, can lead to physical scars, skin hyperpigmentation, and psychological problems. It primarily affects adolescents and teens. There are multiple OTC and mail-order (direct to consumer) formulations (including antimicrobial agents and cleansers) and it is a huge business (>1billion dollars annually). In an era where appointments with pediatricians, family physicians and dermatologists are not so easy to come by, buying OTC products is a great option if they work.	false	industry/commercial news releases	There is no mention of cost in the release, not even a mention of where this new product will be on the spectrum of OTC products via-a-vis price. For a product whose manufacturer boasts in the release that it will come out of the gate to become a global competitor, one would expect they’d have a price point to offer. We’re told that “After 24 hours treatment, the percentage of subjects with reduced acne count was 64% greater for those using HSRx 2121 than for subjects using the competing product.” Various other relative comparisons are provided that are all about as clear as mud since they don’t contain any absolute numbers. Example: “the percentage of subjects with unsightly acne-associated redness was reduced nearly three times as much…” Three times as much as what? Harms are not mentioned. Most OTC acne medications come with a warning to start slowly with small amounts until you know how your skin will react. Common side effects include dryness, redness, peeling, itching, burning, and rashes. Nice try describing this as a ‘head-to-head’ comparison and a “randomized controlled trial.” Alas, there is more we don’t know (and need to know!) than what is revealed here. There is a fair amount of fear mongering here. The release calls acne “a universal plague”, “unsightly” and even cites a NASA “warning” about acne bacteria living on the International Space Station! (The release links, by the way, to a story in the UK Daily Mirror — not exactly a credible news source.) For the record, NASA itself never produced a “warning” as stated in the release. Its scientists merely described all kinds of organisms found on the ISS which, not surprisingly, include bacteria that live on human bodies (http://microbiomejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40168-015-0116-3). The release also refers to acne as “among the 10 most prevalent human infectious diseases” as if it were some deadly virus or bacteria. Though bacteria does play a role in acne, it is, in fact, better known as an inflammatory condition and bacteria is but one pathophysiological mechanism responsible for it. We’ll give the benefit of the doubt here. The release states that the trial was conducted by their pharma company HSRx Group and speaks openly about marketing. In fact, most of the release talks about what a great business opportunity it is and the potential for profit (vs. how it might impact the millions of sufferers): “The HSRx product demonstrated superior treatment performance throughout the entire clinical study.”That makes for a powerful marketing advantage,” Sullivan said.” And: “Our acne treatment product has enormous commercial potential, evidenced by the significant licensee interest it has attracted. As with each of our next generation OTC drug products, we intend to license HSRx 2121 to a leading marketing entity that has the resources and expertise to maximize sales, here and abroad,” Parise said.” If you go to the website of the research organization you will find their acne study summaries (which interestingly DO mention the types of acne formulations used). Makes one wonder even more why the news release neglected to mention this. This was the release’s greatest omission. The release is about a head-to-head trial but does not name one of the two products being tested. In the FDA-approved OTC acne product realm there are many brand names but only four basic medications that are sold alone or in combination. They are benzoyl peroxide, salicylic acid, alpha hydroxy acids and sulfur. There are many OTC and many prescription medications most of which use the basic ingredients in multiple different ways and combinations. There are also several non-medication types of interventions such as laser therapy, acupuncture, etc, used frequently for acne. The release doesn’t state if the product is available now or when it might become available. We don’t know if this is a novel compound or not since we don’t know what’s in it. We get no useful information here about what’s in the formulation and why is it new (type of ingredient, new dose, novel delivery model? new combo of existing ingredients?). It is inappropriate and unjustifiable to include acne “among the 10 most prevalent human infectious diseases” when threats like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, influenza, Ebola are deadly, unlike acne, and in a whole other class of disease. The strong claims made without providing data on the comparison product are completely unjustified. “The HSRx product demonstrated superior treatment performance throughout the entire clinical study.” We also get hyped statements about NASA acne warnings, and we’re troubled by the highlighted outcome being the profit potential and NOT patient-oriented outcomes (and reduction in suffering).
9874	GlaxoSmithKline seeks new approval for breast drug	"A drug company applies to expand its approval for a drug (Tykerb) for advanced breast cancer in the US and Europe. And the only source quoted in the story is an employee of the drugmaker. That is not sound journalism. The story failed to: discuss costs, which are considerable with this drug; give a complete description of common side effects and rare but serious problems that can occur; quantify the benefits that the drug company put in its application for expanded approval. Instead, the story read like a drug company news release. Women with advanced breast cancer deserve better information than this. Finally, the story failed to give the highly significant context that just last month the UK’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) recommended that the drug ""should not be used, except in the context of clinical trials, as it is not a cost effective use of resources."""	false		"There was no mention of cost – and Tykerb is a VERY expensive drug – thousands of dollars each month. There was no quantification of benefit in the story – strange when the entire story is about the drugmaker seeking new approval for the drug. Upon what evidence is that request based? The story says that Tykerb can damage the liver and harm a fetus. But that’s an incomplete listing. Tykerb can cause rare but very serious problems with heart failure and pulmonary toxicity. The drug can also cause diarrhea, skin rash, swelling, redness, pain and or peeling of the skin on the hands and feet, anemia, nausea and vomiting – along with a host of less common side effects. The story was way off in this regard. The story cites one GlaxoSmithKline study presented last December. But is that the entire body of evidence upon which the new approval application is based? Because it’s the only evidence cited in the story. The study didn’t exaggerate the condition of advanced breast cancer. The only source interviewed in the story is an employee of the drugmaker. Where was any perspective from an independent clinician? While the story gave a brief description of hormone therapy combined with chemotherapy, it wrote these off as causing ""nasty side effects"" without giving any substantive data-driven comparison of this approach vs. Tykerb, whose side effects can be pretty ""nasty"" as well. The angle of the story is the drug company applying for approval in the US and Europe for its drug Tykerb as a first-line treatment for advanced breast cancer that is hormone sensitive.. The past use of Tykerb was clearly explained in the story. We can’t be sure the extent to which the story may have relied on a news release. We do know that the only source quoted in the story was from the drugmaker."
40950	Covid-19 is not a virus, but a bacterium being amplified by 5G which causes inflammation and hypoxia.	Covid-19 patients can get secondary infections from bacteria. Hypoxia and types of inflammation can be symptoms of Covid-19. There’s no proof Covid-19 is in any way related to 5G.	false	online	Italy has concluded Covid-19 is not a virus, and people are actually dying of amplified global 5G electromagnetic radiation poisoning. Italy disobeyed world health law from the WHO saying not to carry out autopsies on Covid-19 patients. The WHO never said autopsies couldn’t take place. Italy has found that Covid-19 is actually disseminated intravascular coagulation (thrombosis). The way to cure this is antibiotics, anti-inflammatories and anticoagulants. Antibiotics do not directly treat Covid-19, which is caused by a virus. The anti-inflammatory ibuprofen is being trialled for use against Covid-19 and an anticoagulant has been used in some Covid-19 cases. Aspirin is not a specific cure. Covid-19 is not a virus, but a bacterium being amplified by 5G which causes inflammation and hypoxia. Covid-19 patients can get secondary infections from bacteria. Hypoxia and types of inflammation can be symptoms of Covid-19. There’s no proof Covid-19 is in any way related to 5G. People with Covid-19 should take aspirin 100mg and Apronax or paracetamol. Trials into both of these drugs’ effectiveness in treating Covid-19 are ongoing, but haven’t concluded yet. Paracetamol can ease symptoms but isn’t a specific treatment. Covid-19 clots the blood causing thrombosis, stopping blood flow and oxygenating the heart and lungs. Severe Covid-19 can cause blood clotting problems and issues like this have been seen in Covid-19 patients, but this is not the only thing that can be fatal in patients. In a day, Italy sent home more than 14,000 patients after treating them with Aspirin and Apronax. The Italian Medicines Agency doesn’t mention aspirin or apronax in its list drugs used to treat Covid-19 outside of clinical trials. And there’s no record of a day when 14,000 people were sent home from hospital in Italy. There is an order to incinerate or immediately bury Covid-19 bodies without autopsy. There is no such order. Claim 1 of 10
8725	Passengers face two weeks on virus-hit cruise ship off Japan.	Around 3,700 people are facing at least two weeks locked away on a cruise liner anchored off Japan after health officials confirmed on Wednesday that 10 people on the ship had tested positive for coronavirus and more cases were possible.	true	Health News	While the infected patients were transferred by Japan’s coastguard to hospitals on the mainland, the rest of the passengers and crew on board the Carnival Corp (CCL.N) ship were placed in quarantine and given health screenings. The 10 cases were among 31 results received so far from 273 people tested. Passengers on Carnival’s Diamond Princess, which had arrived in Yokohama on Monday after a 14-day round trip, will now spend another two weeks on the ship off Yokohama port near Tokyo. They took to social media to detail their predicament, posting photos of officials in masks and gowns conducting health checks, room service meals and empty corridors and decks. British passenger David Abel said passengers were confined to their cabins on Wednesday morning, with staff delivering food room-by-room. “The challenging situation for me is that I’m an insulin dependent diabetic,” Abel said in a video taken in his cabin and posted to his Facebook page, adding that regular and timed food intake was a key part of managing his condition. “We don’t have a choice in what we can eat, the announcement recently was that they’re starting on the bottom deck and working their way up - I’m on the ninth deck.” A 43-year-old Hong Kong resident on the ship with six family members said they had been given coffee and water, but no food, by lunchtime on Wednesday. They were hungry but had snacks of their own, he said. “I am not looking forward to the range of emotions in the next two weeks,” he told Reuters from his family’s windowless room, declining to be named. “Will deal as they come.” Another passenger, using the handle @daxa_tw, tweeted that he was “hearing from many sides that people are troubled and uneasy”. Separately, public broadcaster NHK said an additional two people had tested positive in Japan. One was a man in his 40s who was visiting Chiba prefecture, east of Tokyo, from China’s Wuhan, the epicentre of the virus. The other was a man in his 20s who lives in Kyoto. He had not been to China but had contacts with Chinese tourists as he worked in hospitality industry, NHK said. That brought the total number of people infected in Japan to 35. Carnival’s Princess Cruises said quarantined passengers would get free internet and telephone services and the crew was working to keep them comfortable. The ship was caught up in the global coronavirus epidemic after an 80-year-old Hong Kong man tested positive for the virus after disembarking in Hong Kong on Jan. 25. The man had joined a shore excursion in Kagoshima, southwestern Japan, on Jan. 22, local media reported. He was believed to have been in close contact with 36 passengers, Kyodo news reported, citing Japan’s health ministry. Two of those people are among the 10 who have already tested positive, Kyodo said. Health Minister Katsunobu Kato said officials would continue to monitor the remaining passengers and crew for the potential development of symptoms. None of the 10 infected people - three each from Japan and Hong Kong, two Australians, one American and one Filipino crew member - had severe symptoms, NHK reported. Carnival said quarantined passengers would get a full refund and a future cruise credit. The ship would go out to sea to perform “normal marine operations”, it added, including the production of fresh water, before receiving food and other supplies from Yokohama. Not all passengers were overly concerned about their situation. American Ashley Rhodes-Courter posted a text message exchange on Instagram with her parents, Gay and Phil Courter, who are on board the ship. “The food is great, the staff is in good spirits and we’re all in the same boat,” the couple said. “Plus, they have not run out of some great Pinot noir.”
11467	The Bypass Effect on Diabetes, Cancer	This 60 Minutes segment devotes a laudable amount of time to descriptions of the benefits of gastric bypass surgery for diabetes, independent of weight loss. It also reports on the link between the surgery and reduced cancer risk. The segment’s main failing is the amount of time devoted to eight patients with positive outcomes and two physicians who have professional interest in a positive portrayal of the surgery. The broadcast gives no airtime to skeptics, independent researchers and patients with poor outcomes. The result is an excessively positive, one-sided piece. This is a shame. The fact that gastric bypass appears to reduce risk of diabetes independent of weight loss is credibly documented and a subject of continued independent research. It has produced new insights into the mechanism of the disease. The surgery may indeed become a more widespread treatment for severe and moderate obesity and its associated risks, such as diabetes and hypertension. But by piling on exclusively positive anecdotes, and devoting so much airtime to supporters at the expense of independent sources and skeptics, the piece loses credibility. An important medical story is buried by a mound of hype. A more balanced story would have incorporated information about the limitation of studies to date and opinions from doctors who are doing research on the safety of the procedure. This is one case where our ratings criteria may have allowed for a deceptively-high four-star score.	true		"The segment reports that the surgery costs about $25,000 and is not always covered by insurance. The segment uses figures repeatedly to back up assertions made by the sources. But with the exception of the American Cancer Society data on cancer, the information comes from sources that are either self-interested (surgeons who perform the surgery) or not specified. The segment mentions some harms of the surgery, including death, depression and suicide. The segment repeatedly refers to ""studies."" But in no case does it describe what kind of studies these are, whether and where they were published, whether they were conducted independent of self-interested sources, etc. While most if not all of the evidence presented in this story is factually correct, there are many limitiations to the studies themselves that reduce the scientific confidence in these facts. For example, the report cites a reduction in diabetes of 80 percent, but the current long term evidence indicates that many of these patients do have recurrence of their diabetes in the long-term. This story they relies on the statement of one physician who said, in his experience, these patients don’t have recurrence. Another example is the rate of death due to surgery. The story quotes the same physician who says the rate is now 1/1000. This is not entirely accurate for most centers in the U.S — it’s closer to 2/1000 in the best of surgical centers. And that’s 2/1000 who die IN THE HOSPITAL — there are many more deaths that occur in the first 30-days, 90-days, and 1-year that can be directly attributed to the surgery itself. The segment does not exaggerate the risks or burdens of obesity or diabetes, which are considerable. The segment draws on the experience of eight patients, all of whom have had positive results. It also quotes at length a surgeon who is an enthusiastic advocate of the surgery, a surgeon participating in Brazilian clinical trials on the procedure’s effect on diabetes and a physician who had the surgery himself with positive results. A doctor who expresses mild skepticism about the total weight that follows surgery is quoted. The segment quotes an American Cancer Society epidemiologist, who describes the links between obesity and several cancers. Absent are skeptics who could raise questions about such issues as the long-term effectiveness of the surgery’s ability to ""cure"" diabetes, the nutritional challenges of a post-surgical diet, and the wider range of outcomes observed for different forms of the surgery. Absent also are patients who had outcomes different from those repeated so frequently here: Those who developed illness due to nutritional deficiences, those who regained the lost weight, and those whose diabetes was not ""instantly cured."" The segment mentions medications to control weight, diabetes and hypertension, but only to describe them as ineffective and unnecessary for those who have the surgery. There are no alternative treatment approaches that are as successful as surgery for reducing body weight and diabetes. The segment makes clear that the gastric bypass operation is widely available and done as many as 200,000 times per year. The segment makes clear that the operation is common, citing 200,000 surgeries per year. It also reports that the surgery was done as early as the 1950s. There is no evidence the report is based on a press release. Many previous news reports have been done on the link between the surgery and reduced incidence of diabetes independent of weight loss, however."
7618	Rhode Island takes steps to protect elderly during pandemic.	Rhode Island is taking extra steps to protect residents of the state’s nursing homes and assisted living facilities who are particularly susceptible to the coronavirus, state Department of Health Director Nicole Alexander-Scott said Friday.	true	Rhode Island, Health, General News, Assisted living, Pandemics, Nursing homes, Virus Outbreak	The state reported an additional 13 COVID-19-related fatalities on Friday, bringing its total to 118 deaths. Of the 13 new deaths, 10 lived in what Alexander-Scott called congregate-care facilities. One of the new deaths was a person over the age of 100, she said. More than 90 of the people who have died in Rhode Island lived in such facilities. “We are doing everything we can to keep them safe,” she said. Measures either already in place or set for launch soon include isolation at the first sign of symptoms; aggressive and more frequent testing of residents and their caregivers every seven to 10 days; and the creation of “strike teams” that can be deployed to nursing homes that are experiencing outbreaks to aid the staff. The state will also provide support for families taking care of elderly relatives at home, she said. In addition to the 13 new deaths, the state Department of Health announced 366 new cases of the virus Friday, bringing the state total to almost 4,200. For most people, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and those with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness or death. ___ WORKERS’ COMPENSATION Beacon Mutual Insurance Co., Rhode Island’s dominant workers’ compensation insurer, will work under the presumption that front-line health care workers with COVID-19 got the disease in the line of duty, and are therefore eligible for benefits, Gov. Gina Raimondo said Friday. The company will also expedite the claims of health care workers, the Democrat said. ___ PREPARED FOR SURGE Rhode Island’s hospitals are prepared for an expected surge in coronavirus patients, the governor said. The state’s hospitals have increased bed capacity by about 250%, and the state has also set up two temporary field hospitals with 1,200 additional beds if hospitals are overwhelmed, she said. Even though the state has procured 1.2 million masks, 1.5 million gloves and 10,000 face shields for health care workers in the past week, it is still short of its goal of having a one-month supply of personal protective gear in reserve, she said. ___ LEGISLATIVE ACTIVITIES CANCELED The state legislature has canceled all House and Senate sessions and all committee hearings that had been scheduled for next week because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to a statement from the General Assembly on Friday. ___ OCEAN STATE JOB LOT Rhode Island-based discount retailer Ocean State Job Lot’s charitable foundation has distributed more than 150,000 surgical masks to hospitals, law enforcement agencies and fire departments across New England, it announced Friday. While most of the masks went to hospitals in Rhode Island and Massachusetts, the North Kingstown company donated 2,000 masks each to state police in Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont; and 200 to each police chief and fire chief in the 140 communities where Ocean State Job Lot stores are located. ___ VENTILATOR PROJECT The University of Rhode Island’s project to refurbish unused sleep apnea machines for use by COVID-19 patients launched on Friday, a university spokeswoman said. The project is a partnership involving the university, the Rhode Island Commerce Corp., the state Department of Health, fire departments and other partners. The project has been collecting donations of CPAP and BiPAP machines not currently being used. They are being refurbished by a volunteer group of engineers, designers, technicians and doctors. They will be distributed as needed and can be used as supplementary respiratory equipment, giving doctors the flexibility to free up time on hospital ventilators. ___ STATE OFFICE CLOSED Rhode Island Department of Human Services has temporarily closed its Pawtucket office after dozens of employees came into contact with a colleague who tested positive for the coronavirus, officials said. The office has been closed to the public since March 17, but staff continued to work handling applications for public assistance. About two-thirds of the roughly 100 workers assigned to the office are affected and are in quarantine, agency spokeswoman Alisha Pina said in a statement.
38541	Warnings that sea lice have invaded beaches in Florida have sparked panic on social media.	Sea Lice Attacking Florida’s Beaches	mixture	Health / Medical, Warnings	Warnings about sea lice on Florida beaches are true — but they’re also misleading. Posts began circulating on social media in early June that warned Florida beachgoers of sea lice “invasions” that have left swimmers with painful red welts all over their bodies, like the one pictured here: The photo is real, and it was circulated by Florida public health officials in a warning about sea lice or “seabather’s eruption,” at beaches. Sea lice are actually the larvae of jellyfish, which are nearly invisible in ocean waters but leave simmers with painful red welts on their skin, according to public health officials: For the past 11 years, during the months of March through August, residents and tourists along 250 miles of Florida’s southern Atlantic coastline have complained of an annoying pruritic rash, primarily within areas covered by bathing suits. Although this problem has existed since the early 1900s at least, it has not been formally recognized and understood until recently. The first study (a retrospective case review of ED cases seen during 1992) and a sample population survey were conducted at Boca Raton Community Hospital. The outbreaks appear to have intensified in the last 4 years, as reflected in the number of cases reported as well as the severity of response in individual cases. Because most affected people treat themselves, it is difficult to determine the total annual number of cases. However, a conservative estimate of 10,000 cases in 1992 can be made. So, the phenomenon isn’t new, and most residents of Florida and other warm weather states are well aware of sea lice. In 2016, sea lice outbreaks appeared to be cropping up further west in the Gulf of Mexico than in year’s past, and headed toward Alabama beaches, an NBC affiliate reports. We’re calling warnings about sea lice true, but misleading. Sea lice isn’t necessarily new, and there doesn’t seem to be a greater risk of swimmers being affected by it in 2016 than in year’s past. Comments
7457	Governor replaces health commissioner amid virus pandemic.	Gov. Ned Lamont announced Tuesday — a day after Connecticut surpassed 3,000 coronavirus deaths — that he had replaced the public health commissioner, a change a state official said was made because of missteps dating to last year.	true	Ned Lamont, Eric Brown, General News, Social services, Connecticut, Nursing homes, Virus Outbreak, Public health	The Democratic governor did not say why he was replacing Renée Coleman-Mitchell with Deidre Gifford, commissioner of the state Department of Social Services, who will also serve as acting public health commissioner. A state official said Lamont removed her for several reasons, including being slow to act on a plan to protect nursing homes from the virus and refusing last year to publicly release school-by-school vaccination rates. The official was not authorized to disclose the information and spoke on condition of anonymity. Coleman-Mitchell, in a statement released by her attorney, Eric Brown, said she was told by the governor’s office that Lamont’s decision was not related to her job performance. “I am proud of the work of the Department of Public Health during this time of unprecedented turmoil and threat to the public health,” the statement said. “Our coordinated response to the COVID-19 public health crisis earned praise from public health experts around the country. Our citizens have uniformly praised our efforts to keep communities safe.” Brown said Coleman-Mitchell is trying to work with the governor’s office on a departure compensation package and there has been no determination on whether to legally challenge the firing. Lamont did not get into specifics about the firing when asked about it by reporters during a visit Tuesday to a warehouse that had received a shipment of personal protective equipment. “I just had to make a decision. I thought this was a good time to make a change,” Lamont said. “I think the job has changed, let me put it that way, and ... in terms of public health long term, I wanted closer coordination between our different departments, starting with Social Services.” Lamont announced in a written statement earlier Tuesday that he had replaced Coleman-Mitchell. “Her service over the last year has been a great deal of help, particularly in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic that has brought disruption to many throughout the world,” Lamont said. Coleman-Mitchell had worked for the Public Health Department for 18 years, including the past year as commissioner. She previously was a section chief for the agency, managing chronic disease programs. Lamont had become increasingly frustrated with Coleman-Mitchell, most recently because of the slow implementation of a plan to protect nursing home residents, according to the state official who spoke anonymously. The plan involved converting some health care facilities into “recovery centers” set aside mostly for nursing home residents who have left the hospital but still might be contagious or lack immunity. Several centers are now open. Coleman-Mitchell said in her statement that she was “most proud of my role in promoting and implementing creation of COVID recovery facilities, which will help make our retirement and elderly community populations safer and less susceptible to the indiscriminate suffering that the virus causes.” As of last week, when the latest data on Connecticut nursing homes was released, coronavirus-related deaths at nursing homes — more than 1,600 — represented nearly 60% of the deaths statewide. Coleman-Mitchell had fallen out of favor, also, for her handling of a personnel issue with former Deputy Commissioner Susan Roman, the state official said. Roman, who resigned in March, alleged in her resignation letter that she was subjected to racial discrimination at the department, including being called the “white deputy commissioner” and the “great white hope.” Roman is white, and Coleman-Mitchell is black. Roman did not say in the letter who called her those names. Roman declined to comment Tuesday. Roman has filed a complaint with the state Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities that remains pending, said CHRO attorney Michelle Dumas Keuler. She said she could not release details of the complaint because it is considered confidential while an investigation is pending. In August, Lamont overruled Coleman-Mitchell and ordered the release of school-by-school vaccination rates. The move came a day after Coleman-Mitchell said she planned to release only county-by-county immunization data and no school-by-school rates, amid a debate on whether to end religious exemptions to mandatory vaccinations for school children that sparked public protests. ___ Associated Press writer Chris Ehrmann in New Britain contributed to this report. Ehrmann is a corps member for Report for America, a nonprofit organization that supports local news coverage, in a partnership with The Associated Press for Connecticut. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
11453	Coffee buzz protects brain from Alzheimer’s	Look at that headline – “Coffee buzz protects brain from Alzheimer’s.” Think of how many coffee stories you’ve seen. Think of how many Alzheimer’s stories you’ve seen. Then appreciate that this work was in mice – and that the story goes out of its way to not only pump up the mouse findings but to project about human data that no one has yet seen. And then you can understand why readers get turned off to preliminary research stories that hype extremely preliminary findings.	false	Alzheimer's,MSNBC	Not applicable – the cost of coffee not in question. The story states: “Amazingly, the equivalent of four to five cups of caffeinated coffee every few days led to much improved memories in the Alzheimer’s mice.” All the mice? All the time? Did any fail to respond? Just a simplistic, formulaic introduction states: “For years we’ve been told that caffeinated coffee was bad for us. It’s unhealthy and addictive, doctors warned.” But it’s precisely these kinds of “once it was bad for you but now it’s good for you” stories that turn people off to health/medical/science news. This is the nut graf, as it were, of our review. There wasn’t one word about the limitations of such mouse research. In fact, the piece went out of its way to anticipate reactions like ours and to counter it, when it concluded: “Lest you dismiss this study because it’s just in rodents, Arendash says he’s got new data in humans. That data is still being analyzed, he says, but so far it looks like caffeinated coffee has the same impact in people as it does in mice.” So you give the researcher carte blanche credibility for data we haven’t seen? We don’t think that’s in anyone’s best interests. No overt disease mongering of Alzheimer’s disease. The piece promoted one researcher’s work with no insight provided from anyone else in the vast field of Alzheimer’s research. No comparison is provided – not even a line – about any other research studying possible methods of protection from or prevention of Alzheimer’s onset. Not applicable – the availability of coffee not in question. At least some context was provided about other, prior research in this field. We can’t be sure of the extent to which the piece relied on a news release. But we can be sure that no independent perspective was provided.
1684	Hunt for ancient royal tomb in Mexico takes mercurial twist.	A Mexican archeologist hunting for a royal tomb in a deep, dark tunnel beneath a towering pre-Aztec pyramid has made a discovery that may have brought him a step closer: liquid mercury.	true	Science News	In the bowels of Teotihuacan, a mysterious ancient city that was once the largest in the Americas, Sergio Gomez this month found “large quantities” of the silvery metal in a chamber at the end of a sacred tunnel sealed for nearly 1,800 years. “It’s something that completely surprised us,” Gomez said at the entrance to the tunnel below Teotihuacan’s Pyramid of the Plumed Serpent, about 30 miles (50 km) northeast of Mexico City. Some archeologists believe the toxic element could herald what would be the first ruler’s tomb ever found in Teotihuacan, a contemporary of several ancient Maya cities, but so shrouded in mystery that its inhabitants still have no name. Unsure why the mercury was put there, Gomez says the metal may have been used to symbolize an underworld river or lake. Previously uncovered in small amounts at a few Maya sites much further south, it had never been found in Teotihuacan. Difficult to mine and prized for its reflective properties, mercury was rare in ancient Mexico. Archaeologists believe may have lent it a supernatural significance for ritual ends. Deeper into the complex comprising three chambers, Gomez expects to find the elusive last resting place of a king. If Gomez is right, it could help settle a debate over how power was wielded in Teotihuacan, a city boasting massive stone pyramids that was home to as many as 200,000 people and the heart of ancient empire that flourished between 100 and 700 A.D. Teotihuacan, or “abode of the gods” in the Aztec language of Nahuatl, was distinct from the Mayan civilization. Its inhabitants left behind no written record, abandoning the city long before the Aztecs came to power in the 14th century. Spaniards dug at Teotihuacan in the 1670s, but rigorous scientific excavation of the site did not begin until the 1950s. Gomez’s six-year slog in the tunnel has already yielded tens of thousands of artifacts including stone sculptures, fine jewelry and giant seashells leading to the three chambers. The painstaking excavation has slowed due to extreme humidity, mud, and now, the need for protective gear to avoid mercury poisoning. George Cowgill, a U.S. archeologist who has spent more than four decades excavating Teotihuacan, says the mercury find increases the odds of finding a tomb. “But it’s still very uncertain, and that is what keeps everybody in suspense,” he added. Mexican archeologist Linda Manzanilla believes that at its peak, the city was ruled not by a single king, but a council of four lords, and that Gomez may find the remains of one of them. To bolster her argument, she cites the absence of a single palace or the presence of kings in any of the city’s many murals. The excavation of the chambers should be finished by October, Gomez said, with an announcement of findings by the end of 2015.
8804	Bristol-Myers to develop KAI heart-attack drug.	Bristol-Myers Squibb Co has struck a deal to develop KAI Pharmaceuticals’ experimental medicine for lessening the impact of heart attacks, the companies said on Tuesday.	true	Health News	Bristol-Myers will pay an initial $25 million to the privately held company, and fund future development of the medicine, KAI-9803, which is expected to enter mid-stage Phase 2b clinical testing by the end of the year. Bristol-Myers also may pay up to $192 million should the medicine reach various developmental and regulatory milestones. Also at KAI’s option, Bristol-Myers will buy $10 million of the smaller company’s stock at the time of a qualified initial public offering or under other specified future conditions. By blocking a protein pathway tied to the death of certain cells, KAI-9803 is designed to reduce the size of the heart attack and to improve clinical outcomes during treatment. In earlier studies of patients undergoing angioplasty for treating heart attacks, those receiving injections of KAI-9803 experienced less damage to heart muscle compared to patients receiving a placebo, the companies said. Bristol-Myers shares rose 1 cent to $21.64 in morning trade on the New York Stock Exchange.
32624	Pat Robertson asserted the Orlando nightclub shooting was God's punishment for legalizing same-sex marriage.	Nonetheless, the UK’s Mirror was duped into reporting Newslo‘s obviously satirical piece as straight news (and have since removed it from their site):	false	Junk News, orlando nightclub shooting, pat robertson	On 12 June 2016, the web site Newslo published an article reporting that Pat Robertson, the American media mogul and former Southern Baptist minister, had said that the recent mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub that left fifty people dead was God’s punishment for the June 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision that guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry: Authorities in Florida said at a news conference Sunday morning that “as many as 20 people died” in a shooting at an Orlando nightclub. The gunman was killed. Orlando Police Chief John Mina said at least 42 people have been transported to area hospitals. Mina said officers were called to Pulse Orlando, a popular gay nightclub, at around 2 a.m. after reports of a shooting. He said officers engaged in a gun battle outside the club before the suspect went back into the building where more shots were fired. He said the gunman then took several hostages. Pat Robertson, conservative televangelist who is no stranger to anti-gay remarks, was among the first to comment on the incident. Spotted at the scene of the event, Robertson made several interviews to reporters who were covering the story. Among other things, The 700 Club host told reporters he flew in via private jet from his home in Virginia immediately after hearing about what he referred to as “a justified terrorist attack.” “I don’t even need to tell you what all of this means,” Robertson said, according to the Orlando Sentinel. “This is how God is punishing us for the shameful SCOTUS ruling on same-sex marriage, a catastrophic piece of legislature that I have so vigorously attempted to shoot down. Pat Robertson said no such thing, however. Newslo is a site that mixes tiny bits of real news with heaping piles of fake news, leaving it to readers to click a “Show Facts” button to highlight which portion of a given article is actually true. In this case, only the initial paragraph (describing the Orlando shooting) of the report was real, and everything following it (relating to Pat Robertson) was false.
6067	DC public psychiatric hospital to get drinking water fixed.	A public psychiatric hospital in the nation’s capital may soon have running water again.	true	Health, General News, Legionnaires disease	The district’s deputy mayor for health and human services, Wayne Turnage, tells WTOP-FM that St. Elizabeths Hospital’s water operations should be fully operational by Friday. The district-owned facility has been without running water since Sept. 26 when the bacteria that can cause Legionnaires’ disease were found in its water system. Staff and patients are relying on bottled water and running water substitutes, such as body wash spray. An attorney for patient advocacy group Disability Rights DC says the lack of potable water has been difficult. Andrea Procaccino told The Washington Post last week that some patients hadn’t been able to shower for days. Despite the lack of potable water, the hospital has continued to admit patients. ___ Information from: WTOP-FM, http://www.wtop.com
7916	Trump curbs travel from Europe as coronavirus disrupts schools, sports.	President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered travel from Europe to the United States restricted for 30 days, responding to mounting pressure to take action against a rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak disrupting nearly all corners of U.S. daily life.	true	Health News	Trump, whose administration has come under sharp criticism for its response to a public health crisis that he has previously downplayed, also announced several steps aimed at blunting economic fallout posed by coronavirus. The travel order, which starts on midnight Friday, does not apply to Britain, or to Americans undergoing “appropriate screenings,” Trump said. “We are marshaling the full power of the federal government and the private sector to protect the American people,” Trump said in a prime-time televised address from the Oval Office. “This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history.” Soon after, Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives unveiled a broad package of proposals to help Americans affected by the coronavirus outbreak, including paid sick leave, family leave and medical leave. Trump, whose re-election bid on Nov. 3 could hinge on how well he responds to the crisis, stopped short of declaring a national emergency as the number of coronavirus infections continued to mount. He did not address a shortage of diagnostic test kits, which according to experts has made it difficult to gauge the full scale of outbreaks in the United States and curtail transmission of the virus. After triggering confusion by suggesting that “trade and cargo” from Europe would also be suspended, Trump clarified that “trade will in no way be affected” by the travel restriction. “The restriction stops people not goods,” he said in a tweet moments after his speech. Amid the confusion, Washington, D.C., resident Michelle Cravez, 30, who is visiting her brother in Prague, noticed her phone exploding with notifications after a night out. Cravez, who planned to travel home next week, quickly rebooked a ticket leaving early on Friday morning. “It quickly became apparent that demand was pushing costs up and seats were going fast,” she said in a Twitter conversation with a Reuters reporter. “Shortly after, we find out that this ruling may not apply to citizens. Still, with everything so fluid - who knows whether flights start getting canceled - we decided to bite the bullet and book a new itinerary that got us home before the deadline.” Trump’s travel order, which applies to 26 European countries, capped a day of mounting upheavals on the domestic front from a highly contagious respiratory illness, also known as COVID-19. In the hard-hit Seattle area, the largest public school district in Washington state announced an unprecedented two-week suspension of all instruction as Governor Inslee banned public gatherings of more than 250 people in three surrounding counties. The greater Seattle area is the epicenter of the deadliest, and one of the largest, clusters of coronavirus infections in the United States, accounting for the bulk of at least 38 U.S. fatalities from the disease. Washington state has documented 373 coronavirus cases, including 30 deaths, most of them concentrated around a long-term care facility in the Seattle suburb of Kirkland. There were 1,311 cases in total in the United States, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally. The outbreak took a major toll on U.S. sports on Wednesday as the National Basketball Association said it was suspending the season until further notice after a Utah Jazz player tested positive for the coronavirus. Earlier in the day, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) said its wildly popular “March Madness” basketball tournament games would be played in arenas without fans. Late-night television was taking a hit as well, with at least two shows produced in New York City - NBC’s “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” and CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” - planning to begin taping without a live studio audience for the first time, Hollywood trade publication Variety reported. The outbreak even touched one of Hollywood’s most beloved stars, as Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks announced on Twitter that he and his wife, Rita Wilson, had tested positive for coronavirus in Australia, where he was on a film shoot. Coronavirus outbreaks have flared in several European nations, especially in Italy, whose government has imposed a virtual lockdown of the entire country. Seeking to stem the financial and economic impact of the pandemic, which has sent stocks plunging over the past week, Trump instructed the Treasury Department to defer tax payments without interest or penalties for certain business and individuals hit by the health crisis. The president also said he would take emergency action to provide financial relief for workers who are ill, quarantined or caring for others due to coronavirus. And he said he was directing the Small Business Administration to provide capital and liquidity to firms affected coronavirus, including low-interest loans. Wall Street stocks plunged because of uncertainties surrounding the coronavirus, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average .DJI confirming a bear market for the first time in over a decade. [L1N2B42ID] The market concern was compounded by a Reuters report that the White House had ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified. U.S. stock futures ESv1 slid as the president spoke, falling more than 4%. The World Health Organization described the coronavirus, which emerged late last year in China, as a pandemic on Wednesday for the first time. Social and public routines have seen widespread disruptions in the United States for weeks, with concerts and conferences canceled and universities closing their campuses as they shift to online instruction. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade would be postponed, following several other cities that have likewise scrubbed their March 17 holiday celebrations. Public gatherings have been suspended in a coronavirus “hot zone” in New Rochelle, a New York City suburb. Democratic presidential contenders Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders were reassessing how to campaign in the face of the spreading outbreak.
31536	Robbers in shopping mall parking lots are using ether-filled perfume bottles to render their victims unconscious.	Long-standing crime warning holds that thieves are trolling parking lots and rendering their victims unconscious with perfume samples.	false	Crime, crime warnings, Grave Robbery	For nearly twenty years now, Internet users have been immersed in warnings advising them to be wary of persons attempting to sell perfume in store parking lots: PLEASE PASS THIS ALONG TO YOUR WOMEN FRIENDS!!! I was approached yesterday afternoon around 3:30pm in the Wal-Mart parking lot at Forest Drive, by two males, asking what kind of perfume I was wearing. Then they asked if I’d like to sample some fabulous scent they were willing to sell me at a very reasonable rate. I probably would have agreed had I not received an email some weeks ago, warning of a “wanna smell this neat perfume?” scam. The men continued to stand between parked cars, I guess to wait for someone else to hit on. I stopped a lady going towards them, pointed at them, and told her about how I was sent an e-mail at work about someone walking up to you at the malls or in parking lots, and asking you to SNIFF PERFUME that they are selling at a cheap price. THIS IS NOT PERFUME – IT IS ETHER! When you sniff it, you’ll pass out. And they’ll take your wallet, your valuables, and heaven knows what else. If it were not for this e-mail, I probably would have sniffed the “perfume”. But thanks to the generosity of an emailing friend, I was spared whatever might have happened to me. I wanted to do the same for you. PASS THIS ALONG TO ALL YOUR WOMEN FRIENDS, AND PLEASE BE ALERT, AND AWARE!! The scenario described above isn’t a real danger. No one has reported having been robbed in this manner, save for one woman in 1999 whose claim was suspect (for reasons we discuss below). This legend doesn’t even describe a plausible scenario because, despite what books and television shows may depict, rendering a person unconscious from a mere sniff or two of some substance is not easy to do. Ether is nasty, volatile stuff that requires a great deal more than a few brief inhalations to knock a person out. In fact, it’s hard to think of any substance that could produce the instant unconsciousness described here. This legend appears to have begun in late 1999 with a widely-circulated Internet message that used one specific news report as a basis for implying that ether-wielding robbers were a potentially widespread menace: Watch out-this is for real! I just heard on the radio about a lady that was asked to sniff a bottle of perfume that another woman was selling for $8.00 (In a mall parking lot). She told the story that it was her last bottle of perfume that regularly sells for $49.00 but she was getting rid of it for only $8.00, sound legitimate? That’s what the victim thought, but when she awoke she found out that her car had been moved to another parking area and she was missing all her money that was in her wallet (total of $800.00). Pretty steep for a sniff of perfume! Anyway, the perfume wasn’t perfume at all, it was some kind of ether or strong substance to cause anyone who breathes the fumes to black out. SO, Please beware … Christmas time is coming and we will be going to malls shopping and we will have cash on us. Ladies, please don’t be so trusting of others and beware of your surroundings-ALWAYS! Obey your instincts! The incident described above was “real” in the sense that a Mobile, Alabama, woman claimed it happened to her on 8 November 1999 and reported the alleged robbery to the police, but it’s false in that no evidence ever surfaced to verify her story. Bertha Johnson, a 54-year-old Mobile woman, maintained that at about 2:00 PM on Monday, 8 November, she had pulled into the parking lot of a bank when a woman approached her car and offered to sell her bottles of cologne that ordinarily retail for $45 for the low price of $8. Ms. Johnson says she sniffed a sample of the cologne, and the next thing she knew it was around half an hour later, she was standing with her keys in her hand at a wicker store two miles away from the bank, her head was throbbing, and $800 she had been carrying ($500 of her own money plus $300 of her employer’s) was missing. However, her claim had some surface implausibilities: Sure enough, several weeks later the toxicology reports concerning tests run on blood and urine samples taken from Ms. Johnson immediately after the alleged attack did not indicate the presence of any unusual or abnormal substance in her system. The case remained officially open, but this one smelled like a scam cooked up by Ms. Johnson to abscond with her employer’s money. Now, in true urban legend fashion, this tale has gone from a news report of an alleged victim’s unsubstantiated story to a general warning that this sort of thing might happen to you to a specific warning that this type of robbery is actually happening. It isn’t happening though, and it probably never did, not even once. It’s interesting to see how little occurrences that aren’t even part of the scenario described are now being reported as evidence of narrow brushes with these non-existent robbers. For example, the following was prefaced to one e-mailed example: Some of you got this email some weeks ago like me. I just wanted to pass along that I was approached yesterday afternoon at around 3:30 p.m. in the Wal-Mart parking lot at Forest Drive by 2 males asking what kind of perfume I was wearing. I didn’t stop to answer them and kept walking toward the store. At the same time I remembered this email. The men continued to stand between parked cars — I guess to wait on someone else to hit on. I stopped a lady going toward them, pointed at them, and told her what they might ask and NOT to let them get near her. When that happened, the men and a lady (I don’t know where she came from!) started walking the other way toward their car parked in far corner of the parking lot. I thank Jane Shirey for passing this along — it might have saved me from a robbery. I’m passing this along to you’all so you can warn the women in your life to watch out for this … Now, men asking passing women about the perfume they’re wearing isn’t at all the same thing as crooks using rigged perfume bottles to knock out their victims. The fact is, some companies (such as Scentura) do hire people to sell perfume door-to-door or in parking lots, and some of these salespeople do indeed work in pairs, pitch their wares from cars, and employ aggressive sales tactics (which include approaching women and asking them what kind of perfume they have on). But now that this legend is circulating, people dutifully report any sighting of perfume-selling strangers in parking lots as “proof” of this fictional crime wave of ether-bearing robbers being real. Indeed, we routinely receive e-mails from women who have had encounters with folks vending perfume in parking lots and who have concluded (based on nothing but spurious rumor) that they were about to be robbed. They write to report we’re all wrong about this sort of robbery not taking place because hadn’t they themselves almost had it happen to them? That no “knockout potions” were offered to them and no robberies (completed or attempted) took place does little to dissuade them from their certainty that they came within a hair’s breadth of harm at the hands of some innocent freelance perfume sellers. We wrote the original article about this rumor in 2000. As far along as April 2006, Alabama police were still having to field reports on this non-existent form of crime and inform the public that it’s a hoax: Police are debunking as a hoax reports of a man trying to use ether to abduct a young girl outside Eastdale Mall. Capt. Huey Thornton said the report, generated in an e-mail circulating throughout Montgomery, is false. Thornton said the people named in the e-mail asserted their daughter was approached by a man outside the mall, but that details of the e-mail have been “significantly embellished.” The e-mail states that investigators told the couple a man posing as a perfume salesman had asked other young girls to “smell the perfume on his hand,” which turned out to be ether. “The Montgomery Police Department is not familiar with any cases in the city where a subject matching the description in the e-mail has approached anyone posing as a perfume salesman or any cases where ether has been involved.” Since 2000 (when we wrote our original article), we’ve been keeping our ears and eyes open for news of any instances of this sort of robbery happening in real life. So far, the closest thing to arise is a July 2008 case in a town in Louisiana. In Houma, Louisiana, a woman named Patches Wegmann was arrested after two men she plied with cologne claimed to have suffered ill effects from what she’d had them breathe in. The first said she accosted him, sprayed a cologne sample on a piece of paper, and waved it under his nose. Subsequently, after he returned to work, he passed out, his symptoms including dizziness, shortness of breath, and numbness in his extremities. The second said the cologne’s fumes left him feeling light-headed, and it irritated his skin. Wegmann was charged with second-degree battery and unlawful solicitation, but the battery charge has to do with forcing perfume samples upon unwilling parties, not because there was anything necessarily noxious in the substance she forced upon them. The incident remains under investigation, and authorities say it’s not clear that anything other than perfume was sprayed on either man. In 2001 a false Internet rumor about seven women having died after sniffing perfume samples sent to them in the mail spread in the wake of the September 11 attacks. This newer rumor was a combination of two older and equally baseless scares: the 1999 “perfume robbers” tale (which is the topic of the article above) and the 2000 Klingerman Virus warning about blue virus-laden sponges mailed in envelopes marked “A gift for you from the Klingerman Foundation” which supposedly caused 23 deaths. The 2001 “deadly perfume samples” rumor brought into play the specter of lurking terrorists using the U.S. mail system to murder the innocent in a women-targeted replay of the anthrax mailings horror. The “deadly perfume samples” rumor is distinct and indeed far removed from the “perfume robbers” one, yet folks are prone to confuse the two because they both use the word ‘perfume.’
16584	Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts.	"Paul said, ""Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts."" We found that the government’s 1033 program, which gives surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, has contributed to police militarization by offering free equipment. But it’s not the only thing. Police culture has shifted toward militarization for a number of reasons over the past 40 years. The program (and Washington) might not be the cause of police militarization, but it does incentivize and allow that culture to continue."	true	National, Criminal Justice, Homeland Security, Crime, Military, Public Safety, Terrorism, Rand Paul,	"With heavily armored vehicles stationed in the streets and law enforcement officers dressed in camouflage, many have dubbed Ferguson, Mo., a ""war zone."" After a white Ferguson police officer shot and killed black teenager Michael Brown Aug. 9, much of the conversation has focused on race relations, and the interactions between police and the community. There’s also been criticism of local police forces using military-style equipment and generally giving the appearance of conducting a military operation. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., weighed in on this topic in a Time magazine column, where he said big government’s to blame for this trend. ""Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts by using federal dollars to help municipal governments build what are essentially small armies—where police departments compete to acquire military gear that goes far beyond what most of Americans think of as law enforcement."" Many recent media reports have tied police militarization to a federal program that gives surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies. Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., has announced that he’s working on a bill to amend this program, in order to scale back police militarization, in light of the situation in Ferguson. We wanted to know more about the program and what experts had to say about it. They told us that the program certainly has contributed to a militarized police force, but that's not the only reason. What is this program, and is it to blame? Paul’s talking about the 1033 program, known as such because it’s outlined in section 1033 of the 1997 National Defense Authorization Act. Congress first approved the program in the 1990 National Defense Authorization Act (then section 1208), as part of the country’s war on drugs, which began in the 1970s. Law enforcement agencies felt outgunned -- police carried handguns, while drug criminals wielded assault rifles. However, much of the equipment the agencies wanted was far out of their price range. The 1033 program allows local law enforcement agencies to acquire surplus military equipment, at nearly no cost (they have to pay for transporting the equipment). This ranges from field gear -- like assault weapons, armored vehicles, night-vision goggles and bulletproof vests -- to office supplies -- like filing cabinets, computers and desks. More than 8,000 agencies participate in the 1033 program, which has given out more than $5 billion in property since it started, according to the website of the Defense Logistics Agency, the government body that oversees the program. (To be clear, the incentive here is the free equipment alone, not any additional payment or reward for accepting it.) Law enforcement agencies apply for specific equipment through the Defense Logistics Agency. Agencies are given preference if they request equipment specifically for counter-drug and counter-terrorism purposes. Additionally, since 9/11, law enforcement agencies have received grants from the Department of Homeland Security to address potential terrorist threats, and some have used those grants to purchase military gear. Public opinion on police using military equipment varies with context, said Jim Bueermann, president of the Police Foundation and a former police chief. For example, in the case of a major bank robbery where multiple robbers have machine guns and are holding people hostage, the community would likely be glad their local police has comparable weapons, an armored vehicle and protective gear. However, when police break out that sort of equipment and military-style tactics at a peaceful protest, they look understandably bad, Bueermann said. For example, HBO television host John Oliver ridiculed police in Keene, N.H., recently for requesting a ""military-grade armored personnel truck,"" citing the town’s annual pumpkin festival as a potential terrorist target. (We rated Oliver’s statement .) What else is at play? We spoke with many experts, and all agreed that there is an upward trend of police militarization. They said the 1033 program has accelerated this trend, but it’s not the sole cause. Much of the change is rooted in police culture. In fact, many of the experts we spoke with said that absent the 1033 program, police would still want military-grade equipment -- they just wouldn’t be able to afford it. ""Militarization is not just equipment -- it’s an ideology and a mindset,"" said Victor Kappeler, associate dean of justice studies at Eastern Kentucky University. The shift from a community service culture to one that is more militaristic began in the 1960s with the rise of SWAT teams -- made prominent by the Los Angeles Police Department and their response to the violent Watts Riots, said Brian Buchner, president of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. Police departments across the country quickly created their own SWAT teams elite squads that used military-like tactics. Police started to use SWAT-like tactics in less hostile situations -- such as no-knock raids to execute low-level drug busts -- because of a small (and in some cases unreasonable) fear that they would encounter heavily armed suspects, Buchner said. ""That training seeped into other parts of police operations and police culture,"" Buchner said. The 1033 program has exacerbated the problem, because in the past, when police agencies didn’t have this equipment, they were unable to act as a military force, Kappeler said. Instead of responding to a protest with armored vehicles, they would have had to address the issue in a ""community-based"" way. But it’s not just the government pushing this equipment on law enforcement agencies. Private defense manufacturers have also started to make dual-purpose equipment that they can market to the military, as well as civilian law enforcement agencies, said Kathleen Campbell, a professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point who studies role convergence between police and the military. (Campbell asked us to note that her views and research are her own and do not reflect the views of West Point, the army or the federal government.) Now when police officers see military-style equipment and uniforms in catalogs, they think that’s what they’re supposed to look like -- perpetuating the culture, said John DeCarlo, an associate professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a former police chief, in a Washington Post interview. Culture spillover also comes from interactions between the police and military, Campbell said, noting that the two collaborate in anti-drug and anti-terror efforts. Aspects of police work that mirror the military -- like officer hierarchy and a focus on discipline -- make the profession a good fit for former military personnel. A 2010 Bureau of Labor Statistics study found that 10 percent of all employed male veterans ages 18 to 54 work in some sort of protective service, which includes police, sheriff officers, correctional officers, bailiffs and security workers. The recent recession also could have forced police to lose sight of community policing, Bueermann said. Stripped down to their bare bones, some agencies have lost community policing positions, like school resource officers, and are left only with the law enforcement positions. This makes them appear less like they are there to help the community and more like they are there to control it. And it has made agencies more inclined to take advantage of programs like 1033 because they can get free equipment. Our ruling Paul said, ""Washington has incentivized the militarization of local police precincts."" We found that the government’s 1033 program, which gives surplus military equipment to local law enforcement agencies, has contributed to police militarization by offering free equipment. But it’s not the only thing. Police culture has shifted toward militarization for a number of reasons over the past 40 years. The program (and Washington) might not be the cause of police militarization, but it does incentivize and allow that culture to continue."
751	China says pork supply will be enough for upcoming holidays.	China, the world’s top pork consumer, will secure sufficient supplies of the meat for upcoming holidays, including the Lunar New Year in late January, said an official on Wednesday, as concerns grow over a looming shortage and soaring prices.	true	Environment	China’s pig herd has shrunk by a third following a severe outbreak of deadly African swine fever, and pork prices have surged since June on tightening supplies. Peng Shaozong, a manager in the pricing department of the National Development and Reform Commission, however, told reporters that supplies will be sufficient for this week’s Mid-Autumn festival, as well as for the upcoming October holidays and Lunar New Year, which falls in January next year. China produces about half of the world’s pork, but analysts have said output could fall by as much as 25% this year, and that imports will not be able to cover the gap. Peng sought to allay growing fears about the rocketing prices, saying the government had the “confidence and capability” to secure enough meat and stabilise the market. He also said the government is studying plans to release pork from state reserves for the holidays. Some cities have already released pork from reserves and sold it into the market at discounted prices. Several ministries are as well rolling out policies to encourage farmers to expand their output. Those policies, though, will take time to bear fruit. Vice Agriculture Minister Yu Kangzhen, speaking at the same briefing, noted that the African swine fever situation is still “severe”. A fresh outbreak was reported by the ministry in the Ningxia region in China’s northwest on Tuesday. Yu said the government has not loosened its efforts to control and prevent the spread of the disease, which kills almost every pig it infects. Yu also said that Beijing will launch a national disinfection campaign in the autumn.
28442	A list accurately portrays the NFL's history on free speech issues.	In other words, if Pittsburgh Steelers running back DeAngelo Williams again wears eye black with “FIND THE CURE” during Breast Care Awareness Month in honor of his mother who died from breast cancer, or teammate William Gay wears purple cleats for domestic violence awareness, or teammate Cameron Heyward wears eye black with the words “IRON HEAD” to honor his father who died of cancer, the league likely will fine them, just as it did last season.	mixture	Politics, nfl	A viral list purportedly cataloging the NFL’s history on freedom of speech issues has been bouncing around the internet since at least September 2017: So tell me again How The NFL supports Freedom of Speech……….Here are some fun facts about the hypocrites over at the NFL. In 2012 the NFL had an issue with Tim Tebow kneeling for each game to pray, they also had an issue with Tebow wearing John 3:16 as part of his blackout to avoid glare and made him take it off. In 2013 the NFL fined Brandon Marshall for wearing green cleats to raise awareness for people with mental health disorders. In 2014 Robert Griffin III (RG3) entered a post-game press conference wearing a shirt that said: “Know Jesus Know Peace” but was forced to turn it inside out by an NFL uniform inspector before speaking at the podium. In 2015 DeAngelo Williams was fined for wearing “Find the Cure” eye black for breast cancer awareness. In 2015 William Gay was fined for wearing purple cleats to raise awareness for domestic violence. (not that the NFL has a domestic violence problem…) In 2016 the NFL prevented the Dallas Cowboys from wearing a decal on their helmet in honor of 5 Dallas Police officers killed in the line of duty. In 2016 the NFL threatened to fine players who wanted to wear cleats to commemorate the 15th anniversary of 9/11. So tell me again how the NFL supports free speech and expression? We have not been able to determine the author of this list. It is frequently shared as a block of text on online forums, and has also been printed in the “letters to the editor” sections of various newspapers: The list first started circulating in the wake of a league-wide demonstration on 24 September 2017, when more than 200 fooball players, coaches, and owners knelt or locked arms on the field in response to remarks made by President Donald Trump about peaceful protests by players during the U.S. national anthem: NFL players responded in full force Sunday after President Trump repeatedly called for swift punishment against those who chose to protest by not standing during the national anthem. Demonstrations spread throughout the league as many players broke out of their routine by joining the protests or engaging in team-wide displays of unity. The Associated Press estimated 204 players elected to either kneel or sit during the anthem. Outlets such as the New York Post published op-eds arguing that the NFL has a double standard when it comes to freedom of speech issues as they seemingly supported these player’s rights to protest but had previously fined players for voicing support of other causes. An article in the conservative Daily Wire blog entitled, “NFL’s Free Speech: Kneeling For The Anthem Is Fine, But Fighting Breast Cancer And Domestic Violence? Shut Up” even mentioned several of the items that would be later included on this list: The NFL has one heck of a double standard when it comes to free speech, as was abundantly illustrated on Sunday. The league had no problem with players showing disrespect for the American flag and national anthem by kneeling during the playing of the anthem, but there have been numerous instances in which the league has fined players for using their free speech to publicize worthy causes such as Mental Health Awareness week, fighting breast cancer or targeting domestic violence. (It should be noted here that although the NFL briefly showed support in 2017 for the players protesting police brutality and social injustice during the National Anthem, the league announced that players would be required to stand if they are on the field during the National Anthem in 2018.) There is, however, a major flaw to this argument. Every item on the “NFL’s Free Speech History” list deals with a violation of the league’s unusually strict strict uniform policy. The protests during the National Anthem do not. Regardless, here’s the facts behind the items on this viral list. In 2012, the NFL had an issue with Tim Tebow kneeling for each game to pray and wearing Bible verse messages. Mixture. Although kneeling before football games has become associated with a form of protest, that wasn’t the case when Tim Tebow was an active member of the National Football League. Tebow, like many NFL players, would frequently kneel in prayer before games or after big plays. We found no record of the NFL having any issues with Tebow’s kneeling, and as it was a common occurrence among players across the league, we doubt that they ever did. The league did prevent Tebow from wearing “John 3:16” on his eye black, but the league wasn’t specifically singling out the quarterback or his religious beliefs. The league has a longstanding rule against modifying uniforms and prohibits players from marking themselves with personal statements: “The NFL is looked upon as the highest level of sport and we want our players to look professional in every aspect of their game, including the uniform,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said. ”… The players understand the rationale behind it. Where you draw the line would come into play in some instances. A player may feel that, ‘I should be able to shout out to my friend or my family,’ vs. not allowing some other player to do so. We have this policy and it’s widely understood.” The rule covers the helmet, jersey, pants, shoes, tape, wristbands, and headbands. No writing on any part of the body. Before each game uniform reps – former NFL players – prowl the sidelines looking for violators. When the teams go back into the locker room before the game starts, they are given a list of players who are in violation of the rule. The NFL rulebook contains more than five pages of conditions, and it has been criticized by a number of outlets for being unnecessarily strict. Regardless, the NFL does not allow players to convey personal messages via any part of their uniforms: Throughout the period on game-day that a player is visible to the stadium and television audience (including in pregame warm-ups, in the bench area, and during postgame interviews in the locker room or on the field), players are prohibited from wearing, displaying, or otherwise conveying personal messages either in writing or illustration, unless such message has been approved in advance by the League office In October 2013, the NFL fined Brandon Marshall for wearing green cleats to raise awareness for people with mental health disorders. True. Former Chicago Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall was fined $10,500 by the NFL for violating its uniform policy after he wore green shoes during a game against the New York Giants: Chicago Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall says he has been fined $10,500 by the NFL for wearing green football shoes in the Oct. 10 game against the New York Giants. Marshall had said before last Thursday’s game he was wearing the shoes to attract attention to Mental Health Awareness Week. Marshall has been treated for a personality disorder in the past. Marshall posted the league letter informing him of the fine on Twitter and wrote: “Football is my platform not my purpose. This fine is nothing compared to the conversation started & awareness raised.” Marshall was fined again (this time for $15,000) later that season for wearing orange cleats. In 2014, Robert Griffin III entered a post-game press conference wearing a shirt that said: “Know Jesus Know Peace” but was forced to turn it inside out before speaking at the podium. Mixture. There was an incident in 2014, but the list misreports what actually happened. As mentioned, the NFL has a very strict uniform policy that not only covers what the players wear on the field, but also what they wear during pre- and post-game activities. When Griffin entered this post-game conference in September 2014 he was wearing a shirt which read “Know Jesus Know Peace.” However, he turned this shirt inside out before he reached the podium. A number of outlets reported at the time that the NFL had “forced” him to turn his shirt inside out. The story was even further exaggerated by outlets who argued that this incident showed that the NFL was anti-religion. Both of these assertions, however, are incorrect. A Redskins spokesperson at the time said that Griffin did it voluntarily to avoid a potential fine. Although this shirt may have violated the league’s rules on personal messages, the Washington Post noted that the shirt also contained an unapproved logo. Griffin, who had previously been fined twice by the NFL for wearing a non-approved logo on game days, would have normally changed into his post-game (and league-approved) attire before the press conference, but the quarterback was dealing with an injury at the time and decided to wear an informal (and not approved) outfit to the conference: As usual, Griffin had brought an outfit of dress clothes to the stadium to wear to his postgame news conference. But because he had just spent a few hours getting his ankle put back together and getting treatment on that injury, the quarterback never put on his outfit of dress clothes. Instead, he used his crutches to hobble into the media room while still wearing that T-shirt. Of course, the T-shirt in question happened to have a message: Know Jesus Know Peace/No Jesus No Peace. The shirt comes from Christian clothier Not of This World — the company’s logo, with a halo and a cross, is seen right after the final E — and it obviously reflects Griffin’s strongly held Christian viewpoints. Griffin, though, has been twice fined by the NFL for wearing non-approved logos or clothing on game days. He was fined $10,000 for wearing an Adidas shirt to his news conference after he was hurt against the Ravens in 2012, and he was fined another $10,000 by the NFL for wearing an Adidas logo on the field before a 2013 preseason game. So before he addressed reporters on Sunday — in his uncharacteristically informal attire — Griffin turned the Know Jesus Know Peace T-shirt inside out. In 2015, DeAngelo Williams was fined for wearing “Find the Cure” eye black for breast cancer awareness. True. DeAngelo Williams was another play who ran afoul of the NFL’s uniform policies. In 2015, he was fined for wearing pink in support of of breast cancer awareness: Williams, who has lost his mother and four aunts to breast cancer, will reportedly be fined $5,787 by the league for breaking the NFL’s uniform policy. Williams had previously requested to wear pink shoes or wristbands throughout the season to honor the women he has lost, but was told by NFL vice president of football operations Troy Vincent that the league would not allow it. In 2015, William Gay was fined for wearing purple cleats to raise awareness for domestic violence. True. William Gay was also fined by the NFL for breaking the league’s uniform policy. The Pittsburgh Steelers safety was fined $,5787 (the same amount as Williams) after he wore purple cleats: Pittsburgh Steelers safety William Gay has been fined $5,787 for wearing purple cleats in Week 7 in honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, reports NFL.com’s Aditi Kinkhabwala. Gay’s mother was killed in an act of domestic violence. He was fined because the purple cleats violate the NFL’s uniform code. In 2016, the NFL prevented Dallas Cowboys players wearing decals on their helmets to honor five Dallas police officers killed in the line of duty. True. As should be abundantly clear by now, the National Football League doesn’t often make exceptions to its dress code policy. In fact, when news outlets reported that the league was preventing the Dallas Cowboys from wearing decals in honor of five officers killed in the line of duty, they noted that decision was “unsurprising”: The Dallas Cowboys asked the NFL if the team could wear decals honoring the fallen members of the Dallas Police Department and the NFL, unsurprisingly, said no. When training camp opened in Oxnard, Calif., earlier this offseason, the Cowboys unveiled “Arm in Arm” helmet decals, designed to pay tribute to the men who lost their lives during the downtown Dallas shooting in July, while also symbolically representing the Cowboys support of the community. Naturally, the NFL won’t let them wear the decals during the regular season. “Everyone has to be uniform with the league and the other 31 teams,” Jerry Jones said Wednesday. “We respect their decision.” In 2016, the NFL threatened to fine players who wanted to wear cleats to commemorate the 15th anniversary of 11 September 2001. The one concession the NFL has made in regards to its uniform policy involved the commemoration of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. Although the league reportedly warned at least one player that altering their uniform for the attack’s anniversary would result in fines, the league never actually issued them: The NFL won’t fine players who violated the league’s equipment policy to honor victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on Sunday, but that doesn’t mean the league is easing up on the uniform policy. Players honoring other causes will still have to open their wallets, as they have in the past.
29106	The ingestion of raisins or grapes can produce acute renal failure in dogs.	What's true: Several published cases have documented the development of acute renal failure in dogs who consumed large quantities of grapes or raisins. What's false: Many dogs ingest grapes or raisins with no harmful effects, and the scientific mechanism linking grapes and raisins to acute renal failure in canines is unknown.	mixture	Critter Country, Crusader Habit	Most dog lovers have long been exposed to dire warnings urging that canines should not be offered or allowed to ingest grapes and raisins, lest they suffer kidney failure (i.e., acute renal failure) as a result of ingesting them. However, the mechanism behind why renal failure might occur in some dogs after they have consumed grapes or raisins, as well as the criteria that put some dogs at risk but not others, remain largely unknown. An increase in reports American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) of dog poisoning potentially associated with grapes and raisins began in 1999, spurring research into the topic. Starting in 2001, several researchers, including Vice President and Medical Director of the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center Sharon Gwaltney-Brant, began to comb through veterinary records for cases of kidney failure in dogs following grape or raisin ingestion. A 2005 study by Gwaltney-Brant and others identified 43 such cases occurring between 1992 and 2002. These cases involved a fairly broad range of grape (or raisin) types, included a wide range of amounts consumed by each dog, and took place across several breeds of dog. Most cases included several familiar markers of kidney failure, such as excesses of nitrogen, phosphate, and calcium in the bloodstream that betray a weakly functioning kidney. These cases involved an average of 16 ounces of grapes or raisins per dog but ranged widely (from 1.5 to 32 ounces per animal). Each case included vomiting as one of its clinical signs, and fatalities resulted in just under 50 percent of instances. That study, however, did not offer a hypothesis for why grapes might cause harm to a dog’s kidneys, and it noted that many dogs ingest grapes or raisins in similar amounts without suffering any harm whatsoever. “The toxic principle that causes [acute renal failure] after ingestion of grapes or raisins in dogs is unknown,” the study stated. In February 2019 we reached out to Gwaltney-Brant to ask if any progress had been made since the early 2000s, and she told us via email that: We really don’t know much more now than we did 18 years ago. Unfortunately, funding for research into things like grape/raisin intoxication in dogs is scarce. Certainly there have been several more publications on the subject, including case reports or case series, a summary of pathological lesions in affected dogs, and a retrospective study. One institution did do some in vitro preliminary studies and found an aqueous extract from the superficial area of grape that caused cell death in canine kidney cells in cell cultures (did not harm kidney cells from humans), but to my knowledge that’s as far as anyone has researched it; as far as I know, the aforementioned study was not published but was presented as a poster at a toxicology conference. We have several anecdotal cases in cats and a few in ferrets, but these have not been published either. As veterinarian Ahna Brutlag explained on the website of the VCA chain of animal hospitals, dogs are more likely to become poisoned if they ingest large amounts of grapes or raisins, but each dog seems to have its own sensitivity level. Because the cause of toxicity is unknown, Brutlag recommends taking action immediately if grape ingestion is suspected and offers several common symptoms associated with kidney failure: Since it is currently unknown why these fruits are toxic, any exposure should be a cause for concern. If you suspect that your pet has eaten any of these fruits, please contact your veterinarian or Pet Poison Helpline, an animal poison control service, immediately. Do not waste any time. Since there are still many unknowns associated with this poisoning, it is better not to take any chances when it comes to your dog’s health. The most common early symptom of grape or raisin toxicity is vomiting, which is generally seen within 24 hours following ingestion. Lack of appetite, lethargy, and possibly diarrhea can be also seen within the next 12-24 hours. More severe signs are not seen for 24-48 hours after ingestion – often after acute kidney failure has already begun. Signs of acute kidney failure include nausea, lack of appetite, vomiting, uremic breath, diarrhea, abdominal pain, excessive thirst, and excessive urination. The bottom line is that grapes and raisins can and have caused acute renal failure in some dogs, but others have consumed these fruits without issue. In other words, grapes and raisins are poisonous to some dogs, but not to all of them. Unfortunately, as Brutlag explained, “There is no way to predict which dogs may be more sensitive.”
6644	Vaping-related illness reported in Snohomish County.	Authorities say a woman in her 20s is the first person in Snohomish County to have a vaping-related lung illness.	true	Health, General News, Washington, Vaping, Everett, United States	KOMO reports the case brings the total in Washington state to six reported cases that also include one in Mason County, two in Spokane County and two in King County. The Snohomish Health District said the woman was admitted to a hospital in August with shortness of breath and difficulty breathing. She has since been released and is recovering. The woman reportedly purchased vaping products from legal retailers. Across the United States, more than 500 cases have been reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
10886	Study is likely to bolster stent-graft use	This is a technically well written story about a recently published study comparing two procedures that can be used to treat abdominal aortic aneurysms. It accurately reported the information from the study that found benefits associated with the less invasive procedure. However it should be noted that in the study, while outcomes for patients receiving each surgical treatment are reported, in some of these patients, the alternative surgical intervention may not have been possible. Although the study authors tried to adjust for these differences whenever possible, these patients could have potentially biased the study results in favor of one of the surgical options. For balance, the story sought out the opinion of someone who could provide some comment about the benefits of the more invasive procedure. But the story didn’t compare the risks and benefits of surgery versus watchful waiting or active monitoring. It also did not mention anything about the types of patients for whom the two procedures discussed might be options. Without these pieces of information, it is not possible to fully appreciate the implications for people who might consider such treatment.	true		"There was no discussion of costs associated with either procedure. The story did include clear numbers for potentially lethal ruptures following surgery, reinterventions, later abdominal operations, and most importantly, it did provide the surgical mortality rates for both procedures. It did not , however provide sufficient information about the risk of death from aortic aneurysms if left untreated in order for the reader to evaluate the relative benefit to be gained from the treatments discussed. We’ll give a satisfactory score here, but address this in the ""Treatment Options"" section below. The story compared the percentage of patients dying during the two procedures as well as the percentage who would need re-treatment at a later point in time. But the story did not mention that there is evidence that the endovascular repair in those who are not physically well enough to undergo the open procedure does not provide benefit in terms of mortality. Thus for a subset of patients, undergoing the procedure and accompanying recovery involves the harm of discomfort and risk without benefit. The article strictly compares stent-graft and surgery which is what the study cited did and does a fairly good job of summarizing lower short-term mortality advantages and fewer abdominal operations with stent-grafts but more repeat aneurysm interventions and higher long-term risk of rupture with stent-grafts. An important omission, though, is that the story failed to compare the risks and benefits of treatment to those associated with taking a watchful waiting approach to the condition. Although this was not part of the study the story was reporting on, it is essential for understanding how much ‘benefit’ the treatments actually provide. Nonetheless, we’ll give the story the benefit of the doubt on this criterion, and will address this concern in the ""Treatment Options"" section below. The story did not engage in disease mongering. Though most of the story was about the advantages of endovascular repair of aortic aneurysms, the story did include a quote from a surgeon who does open repair indicating that he felt that open repair was a better fix. The story did not provide adequate information about treatment options. The story did not provide sufficient information about the risk of death from aortic aneurysms if left untreated in order for the reader to evaluate the relative benefit to be gained from the treatments discussed. Watchful waiting (or active monitoring) is an option, but it was not discussed. The story was about a study comparing two treatments for abdominal aortic aneurysms. Because the story mentioned that it was about aneurysm repair in 2001 and 2004, a reader could infer that both are current procedure. This was a story about a new comparison of treatments for the management of aortic aneurysms. There is no evidence that the story relied solely or largely on a news release."
8214	Four more African nations confirm coronavirus, new controls put in place.	Mauritania, Rwanda, Seychelles and Central African Republic confirmed their first coronavirus cases on Saturday, bringing to 23 the number of African countries that have reported positive tests for the virus.	true	Health News	Moving swiftly to contain its spread, Rwanda, Senegal, Madagascar, Mauritius, Morocco and Kenya announced tougher control measures, including bans on public gatherings, halting flights and closing schools and universities. Three days after the World Health Organization (WHO) described the outbreak as a pandemic, there is concern among health specialists about the ability of some African nations to meet the logistical and financial challenges posed by the fast-spreading virus. Borders are porous and many nations have extremely poor health infrastructure. Some countries, like Somalia, are fighting insurgencies while others, such as South Sudan, have high levels of malnutrition. But governments are implementing preventative steps to try to keep the virus at bay. “To prevent the outbreak entering in Madagascar, all flights connecting Madagascar to Europe are suspended for 30 days,” Madagascar President Andry Rajoelina said in a statement. Madagascar, one of the world’s poorest nations where malnutrition is rife and outbreaks of deadly diseases are common, will also suspend air links to the nearby islands of La Reunion and Mayotte, he said. The East African nation of Rwanda, which registered its first coronavirus case on Saturday, announced hours later that schools and universities would be closed for two weeks starting from Monday. The Health Ministry also called for all places of worship to close their doors and for large gatherings such as weddings and sport events to be postponed. In West Africa, Senegal announced schools and universities would stop classes and canceled all religious festivals. So far, Senegal has reported 21 cases. The United Nations said that as of Friday, 39 countries had closed schools worldwide, affecting more than 420 million children and young people. Other nations suspended flights. Authorities in Kenya, which confirmed its first case on Friday, banned all major public events and said they would restrict foreign travel. Some private schools said they would close down starting next week. Kenya is East Africa’s richest economy, the regional headquarters for many multinationals and a major regional transit hub. In North Africa, Morocco suspended flights from 21 countries on Saturday. So far, Morocco has confirmed 13 cases. Most cases reported on the continent so far are foreigners or locals who traveled abroad. Rapid testing and quarantines have been put in place to limit transmission. (This story corrects name of Madagascar president).
2554	Vietnam and Cambodia hit back at landmark Laos dam.	Vietnam urged Laos to halt construction of a $3.5 billion hydropower dam pending further study, environmental activists said on Friday after a meeting of the Mekong River Commission.	true	Environment	The activists said Cambodia, also downriver from the Xayaburi dam, accused Laos during heated discussions on Wednesday and Thursday of failing to consult on the project. The dam in northern Laos, the first of 11 planned for the lower Mekong river running through Southeast Asia, threatens the livelihood of tens of millions who depend on the river’s aquatic resources, activists say. “Vietnam requested that no further developments on the Mekong mainstream occur until the Mekong mainstream dams study agreed upon at least year’s Council Meeting is completed,” International Rivers, an NGO devoted to river conservation, said in a statement. “The Cambodian delegation asserted that Laos had misinterpreted the Mekong Agreement.” Officials from Cambodia and Vietnam were not immediately available for comment. Ministers from member countries that make up the Mekong River Commission (MRC) overseeing the river’s development — Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand — met in northern Laos on Wednesday and Thursday. The MRC is bound by treaty to hold inter-governmental consultations before dams are built. But members have no veto. “In the absence of an agreement, other countries can disagree if they like but this can’t stop Laos,” said Jian-hua Meng, a specialist in sustainable hydropower at the World Wildlife Fund. “The role of the MRC is now being questioned along with the level of investment put in the organization.” In December 2011, MRC member states agreed to conduct new environmental impact assessments before construction proceeded, but last August Ch Karnchang PCL, the Thai construction company behind the project, said it had resumed work. A groundbreaking ceremony in November signaled the formal start of construction, said Meng. Ch Karnchang’s 50 percent-owned subsidiary, Xayaburi Power Co, has received a 29-year concession from the Laotian government to operate the dam’s power plant and Thailand is set to buy around 95 percent of the electricity generated. Milton Osborne of the Lowy Institute, an Australian foreign policy think tank, said Xayaburi marked a turning-point that would enable others to build their own dams, including Cambodia. He described as a “monstrous disaster” a proposal for a Chinese power company to build a dam at Sambor in northeastern Cambodia, on a tributary of the Mekong. “It would be so disastrous, blocking one of the main fish migratory systems,” he said by telephone. Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia share the lower stretches of the 4,000-km (2,500-mile) Mekong. Activists say dams could threaten food security in Cambodia and Vietnam. The river provides up to 80 percent of the animal protein consumed in Cambodia and sediment and changes to river flow threaten the Mekong Delta, which contributes half of Vietnam’s agricultural GDP. Cambodia approved its own hydroelectric dams in November. A second Cambodian project, the Lower Sesan dam in northern Stung Treng province, is a joint venture between Cambodian, Chinese and Vietnamese companies. Campaigners say it would reduce the fish catch in a country with malnutrition issues.
11434	New research raises hopes in quest to find universal flu vaccine	The story attempts to present the results of a phase 1 trial of a new approach to a flu vaccine. But it unfortunately falls well short of ideal. Suggesting the new vaccine target flu virus proteins and the existing vaccine attacks others is simply not correct. Vaccines activate portions of the immune system. The fact that the virus used in the new vaccine is a dramatically attenuated cousin of the smallpox virus is missed entirely as was the study design and outcomes. While the story did point out the vaccine was a long way off from availability, the limitations of the approach were not discussed in any detail. The available flu vaccines contain inactivated or killed flu virus. Proteins on the outer surface of the virus activate the immune system response reducing the likelihood of infection or reducing symptoms. Different strains of the virus have different surface proteins. The strains of flu virus that cause illness can change from year to year, making it necessary to change the vaccine annually. The makeup of the vaccine is based on the best available evidence at the time of manufacture and changes from year to year consistent with the various strains presumably causing infection. Although the existing vaccines are very effective when they contain the correct virus strains, the guesswork involved sometimes falls short. Even when the vaccines are on target, they are less effective in the elderly. The elderly suffer the majority of the 36,000 deaths seen annually in the US. A vaccine that works against all strains of the flu virus and works better in the elderly would be a major advantage. The new vaccine under development by the Oxford Jenner Institute is said to take advantage of the internal proteins’ ability to activate T cells. This represents a new approach to way the body can respond to exposure to the flu. However, the approach is not totally new – having been first identified in 1983.	mixture	CNN	Since this vaccine is not yet available, a discussion of costs is not necessary. It’s clear from the story that the vaccine is in the early stage of development and will not be available for at least several more years. In reality, this approach to developing vaccines was originally suggested in a study in 1983. The approach used by scientists at the Jenner Institute is novel in that a Modified Vaccinia Ankara (MVA) virus was used. It would have been an interesting sideline to point out that this is a close relative to the smallpox virus that has shown promise as a delivery system for a variety of vaccines.
10273	MS breakthrough: Replacing diseased immune system halts progression and allows repair	This is nearly a textbook example about how a news release can take mixed results from a clinical study and both highlight the promising findings while illuminating the harms and other issues, too. The only glaring omission here was any mention of the costs of treatment, which likely are considerable. The release discusses a clinical trial of a therapy for multiple sclerosis (MS) that includes destruction of the immune system with chemotherapy and reconstitution of the immune system with previously preserved patient’s blood stem cells. The study is of 24 subjects followed from 4 to 13 years. As the news release states, “MS affects approximately 2.3 million people around the world, causing symptoms that range from blurred vision to extreme fatigue to partial or complete paralysis.” This therapy is intended for only those with severe relapsing disease, but these are the people who become the most disabled the quickest and for whom specific MS drugs do not seem to work well.	true	Hospital news release,Multiple Sclerosis	There is no mention of the cost of this therapy. However, it is already used for treating leukemia and some other types of cancer and so the costs should be known. Because the treatment involves destruction of the immune system via chemotherapy and the use of stem cells, it is a very complex and intensive treatment requiring long hospital stays. This therapy is likely extremely expensive. The release clearly indicates that all of the subjects showed benefits from the therapy with none of the patients requiring MS drugs, showing additional brain lesions or exhibiting a clinical relapse. It provided quantification in almost each of its bullet points on outcomes from the therapy. It also states that 40 percent of the subjects regained some of their lost function. In the very first quote — the first quote! — the release talks about side effects. This is a huge departure from most news releases about clinical studies. It says, “This is very exciting. However, it is important to note that this therapy can have serious side effects and risks, and would only be appropriate for a small proportion of people with very active MS. People with MS who have had significant disability for a long time would likely not benefit.” So it acknowledges the risks and then goes beyond. These people will benefit. These people will not. You have to appreciate that clarity. The release also says later, “Indeed, one participant in this study died of liver failure due to the treatment and another required intensive care for liver complications. The treatment regimen was modified over the course of the study to reduce toxicity, but all participants still developed fevers, which were frequently associated with infections.” The release explains all of the relevant details about the structure of the study, saying: “Led by Dr. Harold Atkins and Dr. Mark S. Freedman of The Ottawa Hospital and the University of Ottawa, the trial included 24 participants who were followed for up to 13 years.” By noting high up that the study was small on participants but long on duration it provides people with the right context for understanding how to weigh the evidence here. There is no disease mongering in the release. And we like how the release took care to stratify the different levels of MS and not to talk about it as a monolithic disease. It was a good reminder for writers that people don’t experience diseases in one way and that diseases can change their character as they progress. Very early in the release it notes who funded the study and — a rarity — how much the study cost. “The $6.47 million trial was funded by the MS Society of Canada and its affiliated Multiple Sclerosis Scientific Research Foundation. The research was also supported by The Ottawa Hospital Foundation, The Ottawa Hospital Department of Medicine and Canadian Blood Services.” The release doesn’t mention any alternative treatments or compare how the new therapy compares with the standard treatments. The study does compare the patient volunteers’ individual outcomes before and after treatment. The release establishes that the therapy is available at limited locations where it states, “People who are interested in this therapy should speak with their own neurologist, who can request a referral to The Ottawa Hospital MS Clinic or another major hospital with experience in this area….” While acknowledging that the combined chemotherapy and stem cell intervention has been used previously, the release describes the novelty of this research as: “Our study is unique in that we used a stronger cocktail of drugs to eliminate the immune system, we followed the participants for a very long time, and the majority of our participants have had significant, long-lasting responses.” The release is cautious where it needs to be and provides the right context for readers to understand that these are promising findings but only for a small segment of the population.
33472	Former president George W. Bush was arrested in Dallas for cocaine possession.	Soon afterwards links and excerpts referencing this article were being circulated via social media, with many of those who encountered the item mistaking it for a genuine news item. However, the article was just a spoof from Empire News, one of many fake news sites that publishes fictional stories such as “Cure for Cancer Discovered; ‘Amazingly Simple’ Says Researcher,” and “College Student Excused from Classes After Dog Eats Grandmother,” and “Woman Gives Birth, Confuses Doctors by Asking for Maternity Test.” Their disclaimer page notes that Empire News “is a satirical and entertainment website.”	false	Media Matters, george w bush, Not Necessarily The News	On 24 July 2014, Empire News published an article positing that former president George W. Bush had been arrested after a traffic stop in Dallas for cocaine possession: One of the most notorious Presidents in history of The United States of America is back in the spotlight, but not because of his politics. George W. Bush was arrested in a Dallas suburb late Tuesday evening after a routine traffic stop uncovered over an ounce of cocaine in his glove compartment. Dallas police say they pulled over Bush after he made a right turn without signaling. Officers report they were surprised when seeing it was the ex-president, but felt something was off about his behavior. They say Bush seemed under the influence of a narcotic, and the officers on-scene asked to search the car. Curiously, Bush consented, and police found the narcotics.
24593	"A provision in the health care reform bill for end-of-life counseling for seniors is not ""entirely voluntary."	Palin claims Obama misled when he said end-of-life counseling is voluntary	false	National, Health Care, Sarah Palin,	"After wide denunciation ( including here ) of Sarah Palin's claims last week that the proposed health care reform bill would create ""death panels,"" the former Alaska governor again went to her Facebook page to answer the critics and reassert her claim that end-of-life counseling authorized in the House version of the health plan is not ""entirely voluntary."" We've looked at this claim before when Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York, went on the radio show of former Sen. Fred Thompson on July 16, 2009, and said, ""Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner."" We gave that statement got our lowest rating, ! But the issue has hardly dissipated. In fact, on Aug. 13, 2009, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, announced that the Senate Finance Committee has ""dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration entirely"" from its version of health care overhaul legislation because it could be ""misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly."" But it remains in the House bill. Palin may have stepped down as Alaska governor last month, but she remains a prominent Republican voice. In a town hall meeting on health care on Aug. 11, President Barack Obama specifically referenced Palin's ""death panel"" phrase when discussing what he said was incorrect information that has been circulating about the health care bill. ""It turns out that I guess this arose out of a provision in one of the House bills that allowed Medicare to reimburse people for consultations about end-of-life care, setting up living wills, the availability of hospice, etc.,"" Obama said. ""So the intention of the members of Congress was to give people more information so that they could handle issues of end-of-life care when they’re ready on their own terms. It wasn’t forcing anybody to do anything."" In her Facebook response the following day, Palin accused Obama of fudging the truth. ""With all due respect, it’s misleading for the president to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients. The issue is the context in which that information is provided and the coercive effect these consultations will have in that context."" Palin then accurately cited some of the language Section 1233 of the House version of the health care plan, which is titled ""Advanced Care Planning Consultation."" As Palin says, the provision ""authorizes advanced care planning consultations for senior citizens on Medicare every five years, and more often 'if there is a significant change in the health condition of the individual ... or upon admission to a skilled nursing facility, a long-term care facility... or a hospice program.' During those consultations, practitioners must explain 'the continuum of end-of-life services and supports available, including palliative care and hospice,' and the government benefits available to pay for such services."" Palin then argues that this provision must be viewed in the context of a health care bill whose stated purpose is ""to reduce the growth in health care spending."" ""Is it any wonder,"" Palin writes, ""that senior citizens might view such consultations as attempts to convince them to help reduce health care costs by accepting minimal end-of-life care?"" That's an opinion. What we're trying to get at here is Palin's claim that the end-of-life counseling is not ""entirely voluntary."" When we wrote about McCaughey's claim that the end-of-life counseling was mandatory, we cited several health care experts who said McCaughey was simply misreading the provision, that the bill would make the counseling available, but voluntary. In no way would these sessions be designed to encourage patients to end their lives, said Jim Dau, national spokesman for AARP, a group that represents people over 50 and has lobbied in support of the advanced planning provision. Dau called McCaughey's comments ""not just wrong, they are cruel. ... We want to make sure people are making the right decision. If some one wants to take every life-saving measure, that's their call. Others will decide it's not worth going through this trauma just for themselves and their families, and that's their decision, too."" When Palin reasserted the not ""entirely voluntary"" claim on Aug. 12, we spoke with Dr. Gail Wilensky, who was administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration, directing the Medicare and Medicaid programs, under President George H.W. Bush. She is now a health care policy researcher who focuses on health care for the military and veterans. ""There are a lot of things not to like about the House bill,"" she said. ""I don't think this is one of them."" Wilensky also confirmed that the end-of-life counseling sessions in the House bill are voluntary. ""If you want to be in a position to determine your own fate, this is what you want to do,"" she said. ""If you don't want to deal with that, or think about that, that's fine, too."" The legislation ensures that people do not have wait until they become ill to get an appointment with their doctor paid for by Medicare, she said. ""This is the kind of conversation you'd like people to have when they're not under physical duress or emotional duress and with their physicians and their families,"" she said. Later in her Facebook post, Palin seems to acknowledge that the counseling isn't explicitly mandatory, but that in practice it would be. She cites an opinion piece from the Washington Post's Charles Lane, in which he writes, ""Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren't quite 'purely voluntary,' as Rep. Sander M. Levin, D-Mich., asserts. To me, 'purely voluntary' means 'not unless the patient requests one.' Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive — money — to do so. Indeed, that's an incentive to insist. ""Patients may refuse without penalty,"" Lane wrote, ""but many will bow to white-coated authority."" The bill would, in fact, authorize Medicare to reimburse doctors who provide this kind of counseling. And we think it's fair to opine that this creates an ""incentive"" for doctors to provide end-of-life counseling. We also think it's fair to argue that a frail elderly person in poor health might ""bow to white-coated authority."" But given the leaps in logic that have been popular in some conservative circles in recent weeks that this provision translates to government-mandated euthanasia, we think it's important to be clear about what the bill says. The fact is that there is nothing in the health care bill that would require people to get the end-of-life counseling. Perhaps, as Lane — and by extension Palin — argues, patients might feel some subtle pressure from a doctor to get the counseling. But the patients make the call. That's the definition of voluntary. We've said in our previous item that it was voluntary, and we see nothing in Palin's argument that proves otherwise. And so we rule her claim ."
5472	Police block doctor from leaving Zimbabwe for treatment.	A Zimbabwean judge on Tuesday ordered police to allow a doctor recuperating after an alleged abduction to seek medical treatment outside the troubled country, but police later blocked him from leaving and scuffled with his lawyers.	true	Africa, Health, General News, Zimbabwe	The leader of the Zimbabwe Hospital Doctors Association, Dr. Peter Magombeyi, was freed last week after disappearing for several days. His alleged abduction after leading a pay strike led to days of protests by health workers and expressions of concern by diplomats and others. More than 50 government critics in Zimbabwe have been abducted this year alone, Human Rights Watch and others have said, while the government has warned against what it calls “fake” abductions it asserts are meant to make it look bad. Magombeyi since his release has been in a private hospital, and his lawyers had accused police of camping outside and refusing him permission to leave for neighboring South Africa for urgent specialist treatment. High Court Judge Happias Zhou ruled that Magombeyi is entitled to travel outside the country for treatment as he is not under arrest. “The actions of the police are in violation of his right to liberty and freedom of movement. He has a right to access health services anywhere he wants,” said Jeremiah Bamu, one of the doctor’s lawyers. But hours later, police surrounded the hospital and blocked him from leaving, scuffling with lawyers. “As you can see, police are denying him right of passage,” said lawyer Rose Hanzi. “They are violating a court order.” A police spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment. The lawyers also said preliminary medical assessments on Magombeyi revealed possible physical harm and psychological trauma. Zimbabwe’s health sector, like its economy, is in crisis. Many services are unavailable due to collapsed infrastructure, lack of medicines or unavailability of doctors and nurses who say they can no longer afford transport to report for work. ___ Follow Africa news at https://twitter.com/AP_Africa
8867	Eli Lilly denies NYT report on Zyprexa.	Eli Lilly and Co on Friday denied a report in The New York Times that said a senior executive had encouraged the promotion of its schizophrenia drug Zyprexa for a use not approved by federal regulators.	true	Health News	The report said John Lechleiter, set to become chief executive in April, wrote an e-mail in 2003 discussing the use of Zyprexa by children and teenagers, although it is only approved for adults with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Eli Lily said the report was “flat out wrong” and it mischaracterized Lechleiter’s e-mail. “Dr. Lechleiter’s email was nothing more than a call to action to ensure Lilly’s development organization placed a high priority on conducting clinical trials to address these important medical questions,” it said in a statement. The report comes as Lilly faces lawsuits involving marketing and side effects of the drug, including higher risk of diabetes, weight gain and heart problems. The state of Connecticut sued the company on Tuesday, accusing it of illegally marketing and concealing its serious side effects. It faces similar accusations in Alaska. Zyprexa, by far Lilly’s biggest product, had sales of $4.76 billion in 2007, including U.S. sales of $2.24 billion. Lilly was accused in Connecticut of promoting the drug for anxiety, depression and attention deficit disorder in children despite its not receiving FDA approval for those uses. While doctors may prescribe medicines in any way they see fit, companies are allowed to promote them only for uses approved by U.S. health regulators.
20839	President Obama has raised taxes 19 times.	Electronic cigarettes and heated tobacco products are not helping fight cancer, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Friday, urging smokers and governments not to trust claims from cigarette firms about their latest products.	mixture	National, Taxes, Mitt Romney,	The seventh “WHO report on the global tobacco epidemic” said blocking the industry’s interference was critical to cutting the harm from tobacco use. “The tobacco industry has a long history of systemic, aggressive, sustained and well-resourced opposition to tobacco control measures,” the report said. “While some strategies are public and others more covert... all have the goal of weakening tobacco control.” The report said tobacco giant Philip Morris International was trying to position itself as a responsible public health partner via its “Unsmoke” campaign, which encourages people to “change to a better alternative”. The WHO said the campaign aimed to ensure tobacco remained socially acceptable, while confusing consumers with terms such as “smoke-free products”, which may refer to products with toxic emissions and unknown short-term and long-term health effects. Philip Morris spokesman Ryan Sparrow said the WHO’s message made it harder to provide safer options for people who cannot quit smoking. “There is no question that the best choice for smokers is to quit cigarettes and nicotine altogether. The reality is many people do not. We cannot turn our backs on them,” he said. “Organisations like the World Health Organization need to stop talking at smokers and start listening.” The WHO report said the industry hoped to win respectability through manipulative messages such as claiming their products were part of a “harm reduction” strategy, even though cigarettes still account for 97% of the global tobacco market. Vinayak Prasad, programme manager of WHO’s tobacco control unit, said development of new products was solely intended to expand the markets of tobacco firms. “There is no difference between cigarettes and heated tobacco products except that in terms of exposure: the exposure is less and the smoke is not visible,” he said. Electronic cigarettes, containing nicotine but not tobacco, were promoted as a way to quit smoking. But there was no evidence to justify the claim, and evidence from the United States showed they had increased the prevalence of young people smoking, he said. “So it’s also a gateway for young people,” Prasad said. “The answer is it needs to be regulated. WHO has clear guidelines – to get electronic cigarettes regulated. And if you are banning it, fine, but if you aren’t banning it don’t let it (go) free in the market, because the young people are taking it up.”
7581	Study: Michigan prison workers facing mental health crisis.	Michigan prison workers are facing a mental health crisis that includes much higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidal thoughts and alcohol abuse than in the general public, according to a study released Monday.	true	Alcohol abuse, Anxiety, Mental health, Prisons, Health, Michigan, Post-traumatic stress disorder, General News, Depression	The report , conducted for the state Department of Corrections by Desert Waters Correctional Outreach, found that corrections employees also are more likely to have symptoms related to depression and anxiety. Nearly 140 workers, or 1.1%, are currently and actively planning to kill themselves, said the study, which was based on an anonymous survey of about 3,500, or 29%, of employees who chose to participate. “These findings are a cause for grave concern, as they point to a mental health crisis among MDOC employees and a workforce culture in dire need of assistance and support,” the authors wrote, noting similar findings in other states and jurisdictions. At least three male corrections officers have died by suicide this year. Heidi Washington, director of the corrections department, said it is working to create a “culture of wellness that seeks to reduce stress.” An employee wellness unit that was recently established will provide confidential mental health support and referrals to staff, and a peer support and chaplaincy program also is being developed. The staff discipline process is under review, and hundreds of new employees are being hired in an effort to reduce the use of overtime. “The MDOC and its partners, including the Legislature, labor organizations and our communities, must make it a priority to protect these brave men and women, too, by offering them the support they need,” Washington said in a written statement. The report said the rates of major depressive disorder, generalized anxiety, PTSD, suicidal ideation and alcohol abuse among corrections workers exceeded those of first responders, military members and the general public by several times. Nearly one in four of all department employees meet the criteria of PTSD, seven times the national average. Nearly one in five meet the criteria for alcohol abuse, 2.7 times the national average. The study said the overall quality of a working environment has a greater impact on one’s mental, physical and family health than exposure to danger or trauma. Policy changes such as improved working conditions, systemic programming and staff trainings can make a difference, according to the report. ___ Follow Eggert on Twitter at https://twitter.com/DavidEggert00
6230	Soft soil makes Mexico City shake like it was built on jelly.	The soft soil that lines the ancient lake bed that Mexico City is built on amplified the shaking from Tuesday’s earthquake and increased its destructive force, seismologists say as they try to better understand the quake that has killed more than 200 people.	true	AP Top News, Mexico, Washington, Science Says, Latin America, Lakes, Geophysics, Science, Earthquakes, Mexico City	Scientists are looking at other quirks of the magnitude 7.1 earthquake, including the absence of aftershocks and if it is somehow related to a distant, even stronger, Mexican temblor that struck a dozen days earlier. LIKE JELLY Mexico City is built on deep, soft soil that was once the bottom of a lake. Instead of cushioning the city from earthquakes, it exaggerates their effects, said James Jackson, a professor of geophysics at the University of Cambridge in England. The vibrations, or seismic waves, from the hard rocks below are amplified by the soil and sediments above, making the surface — and the structures built on the surface — shake longer and more intensely. “It’s like being built on jelly on top of something that is wobbling,” Jackson said. The soft sediments were the major cause of damage in Mexico City’s 1985 earthquake, according to Cornell University geophysicist Geoffrey Abers. OTHER SOFT SPOTS The same deep soft soil effect worsened the deadly 2015 Nepal earthquake because Katmandu is also built on a dry lake bed, Jackson said. While the geology is not quite the same, Los Angeles, Seattle and the San Francisco Bay area have soft soil that can amplify seismic waves, according to U.S. Geological Survey seismologist Oliver Boyd. New Zealand has been affected by similar issues in past quakes, he said. WHERE ARE THE AFTERSHOCKS? Scientists have been unable to detect any aftershocks as of Wednesday afternoon, said USGS seismologist Paul Earle. Usually an area can expect an aftershock one magnitude lower, which would be in the 6.1 range, he said — even though Tuesday’s quake was a type that is usually accompanied by fewer aftershocks. Unlike most earthquakes, it did not happen where two tectonic plates meet. Instead, Tuesday’s quake happened in the middle of the Cocos plate, the result of pressure built up as it slips under the North American plate. This so-called “slab fault” quake usually has fewer aftershocks, like the relative quiet after a 2001 earthquake in Seattle. Tuesday’s quake was deeper than normal at 51 kilometers (32 miles) below the surface, and deeper quakes are also associated with fewer aftershocks. TWO IN TWELVE DAYS Tuesday’s earthquake was the second in just 12 days in Mexico. The first was a magnitude 8.1 quake that struck southern Mexico and killed at least 90 people. Geologists say the second quake was not an aftershock because it was too far away — about 650 kilometers (400 miles) — from the first. Most aftershocks are within 100 kilometers (62 miles), Earle said. It was also not a release of stress generated by the far-off quake, Earle said. Still, he said, seismologists will probe further to see if there might be some kind of link between the two — or not. “Earthquakes are random,” Earle said. “Sometimes they happen spaced out in time. Sometimes they happen at the same time.” ___ Follow Seth Borenstein on Twitter at @borenbears . His work can be found here . ___ This Associated Press series was produced in partnership with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
7567	COVID-19 vaccine hunt heats up globally, still no guarantee .	Hundreds of people are rolling up their sleeves in countries across the world to be injected with experimental vaccines that might stop COVID-19, spurring hope — maybe unrealistic — that an end to the pandemic may arrive sooner than anticipated.	true	AP Top News, Science, Understanding the Outbreak, Technology, General News, Politics, Health, Business, Pandemics, Racing for a Remedy, Virus Outbreak, U.S. News	About 100 research groups are pursuing vaccines with nearly a dozen in early stages of human trials or poised to start. It’s a crowded field, but researchers say that only increases the odds that a few might overcome the many obstacles that remain. “We’re not really in a competition against each other. We’re in a race against a pandemic virus, and we really need as many players in that race as possible,” Dr. Andrew Pollard, who is leading the University of Oxford’s vaccine study, told The Associated Press. The hard truth: There’s no way to predict which — if any — vaccine will work safely, or even to name a front-runner. As Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. government’s top expert, put it: “You need more shots on goal for a chance at getting a safe and effective vaccine.” The first cautious tests of March, when small numbers of volunteers got injections to check for side effects, have turned into larger studies in China, the U.S. and Europe to look for hints that different vaccine candidates really protect. Next: Finding out for sure if any of the vaccines work in the real world by testing large groups of people in areas where the virus is circulating — a tricky prospect when study participants may be in places where the virus is fading or they are told to stay home — and finding a way to quickly distribute lots of doses of any successful candidates. Policymakers are devising plans to try to overcome both obstacles in an attempt to compress the years it usually takes to develop a vaccine. Asked if a vaccine by January was possible, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus task force coordinator, told Fox News Sunday “on paper, it’s possible. It’s whether we can execute,” she said. Fauci has cautioned that even if everything goes perfectly, 12 to 18 months to develop a vaccine would set a speed record — and January will mark a year since the National Institutes of Health began creating its own COVID-19 vaccine, now in trials with Moderna Inc. MULTIPLE SHOTS WORK IN MULTIPLE WAYS Depending how you count, there are between eight and 11 vaccine candidates in early stages of testing in China, the U.S., Britain and Germany — a collaboration between Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech last week began a study in Germany that’s simultaneously testing four somewhat different shots. More study sites are about to open in still other countries — and between May and July another handful of different vaccines is set to begin first-in-human testing. There’s no shortage of volunteers. “This allows me to play a small role in fighting this thing,” said Anthony Campisi, 33, of Philadelphia, who received his first test dose of Inovio Pharmaceuticals’ DNA-based vaccine at the University of Pennsylvania last month. “I can be a guinea pig.” The initial vaccine candidates work in a variety of ways. That’s important because if one type fails, maybe another won’t. Different types of vaccines work better in some virus families than others. But for coronaviruses, there’s no blueprint. Back in 2003 when scientists attempted vaccines against SARS, a cousin of the new virus, animal studies hinted at safety problems but then SARS disappeared and vaccine funding dried up. Vaccines against another COVID-19 cousin named MERS have only reached first-step safety testing. “In 20/20 hindsight, we should have worked harder on coronavirus vaccines back then,” said Dr. Sten Vermund, dean of the Yale School of Public Health. Now, “we’re obligated to try a variety of strategies if we want fast results.” PROS AND CONS China’s Sinovac and SinoPharm are testing “inactivated” vaccines, made by growing the new coronavirus and killing it. The companies have revealed little information about how the shots differ. But the technology is tried-and-true — polio shots and some types of flu vaccine are inactivated virus — although it’s hard to scale up to rapidly produce millions of doses. Most other vaccines in the pipeline aim to train the immune system to recognize a piece of the new coronavirus — mostly, the spiky protein that studs its outer surface. One way: Use a harmless virus to carry the spike protein into the body. It’s easier to produce but determining which virus is the best “carrier” is a key question. China’s CanSino Biologics brewed its vaccine using a common cold-causing adenovirus, engineered so it won’t spread in the body. And in case people’s immune systems fight off the cold virus before the vaccine can do its job, Pollard’s Oxford team instead chose an adenovirus that normally infects chimpanzees. Another way: Inject a piece of the coronavirus genetic code that instructs the body itself to produce spike protein that in turn primes the immune system to attack. It’s a new and unproven technology but one that promises even faster production. Vaccines made by NIH and Moderna, Inovio Pharmaceuticals, and that Pfizer-BioNtech collaboration use genetic code approaches. Still more methods are next in line: Vaccine made of spike protein nanoparticles, and even a nasal spray alternative to shots. PROVING THEY WORK Most vaccine studies so far are tracking safety and whether volunteers’ blood shows any immune reactions. Some have jumped to larger numbers quickly, but there’s still concern about being able to prove real-world protection. If study participants are holed up at home or live in areas where the virus has quit spreading rapidly, then too few may get sick for scientists to tell if the vaccine or social distancing was what protected them. The Oxford study, for example, will track about 1,000 people, half given the real vaccine. But the team plans a later-stage study with another 5,000 volunteers for a final answer and knows it might have to move to other countries. “When you’re chasing a pandemic, the place that looks like the right one to go to today will be the wrong place two weeks from now. And that makes it really difficult,” Pollard said. In the U.S., some lawmakers have urged a different and controversial experiment: Recruit young, healthy volunteers who agree to be deliberately infected with the new coronavirus to prove if a vaccine protects them. But some healthy adults do die from COVID-19 — and until doctors better understand why, that so-called “challenge study” makes for a risky proposition with serious ethical questions, Yale’s Vermund noted. The World Health Organization last week called for countries to offer to be test sites for an international project that will speed the timeline by admitting on a rolling basis promising vaccine candidates for further study in locations where COVID-19 remains widespread at the time. In the U.S., the Trump administration is planning its own project dubbed Operation Warp Speed that will overlap studies of “different candidates that are made differently and act differently,” Birx said. If early evidence was strong enough and the virus is still widespread, the Food and Drug Administration might even consider emergency use of a vaccine before final test results were in, Dr. Peter Marks, who directs the FDA office that oversees vaccines, recently told reporters. SUPPLYING THE WORLD Whenever the first useful vaccine is identified, there won’t be enough for everyone. So a growing number of vaccine makers say they’re already starting to brew tons of doses — wasting millions of dollars if they bet on the wrong candidate but shaving a few months off mass vaccinations if their choice pans out. “We need to start building new manufacturing sites now,” said Wellcome Trust vaccine chief Charlie Weller. “And we need to accept that some of these sites will be created for vaccines that will ultimately fail.” It’s not just a gamble for shareholders. The U.S. government already has deals with Moderna and Johnson & Johnson that together total nearly $1 billion and include scaling up production. “The critical thing at the beginning is just to make as much stuff as we can,” said Dr. Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which is funding several COVID-19 vaccine attempts around the world. Even if one works, expect rationing early on as policymakers determine who most needs the first doses — possibly health workers or the elderly — until there’s enough for the world, rich and poor countries alike. “I am concerned about what I call vaccine nationalism. That’s the tension between obligations elected leaders will feel to protect the lives of their citizens” versus the imperative for equitable global sharing, Hatchett said. And with billions who’ll need a dose or maybe several, just one winner in this race won’t cut it. “It’s not likely that one manufacturer or one candidate vaccine is going to be able to deal with the global need and supply that need,” Pollard said. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. ___ For more coverage of the pandemic, visit https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.
41941	President Trump “signed an executive order allowing our veterans to get 100% medical bills paid at hospitals other than a V.A. hospital.”	Q: Did President Donald Trump sign an order allowing veterans to get full medical bills paid at hospitals outside the VA?A: No, but Trump has continued a program that allows some veterans to seek outside care.	mixture	Veterans Affairs, veterans benefits,	Q: Did President Donald Trump sign an order allowing veterans to get full medical bills paid at hospitals outside the VA? A: No, but Trump has continued a program that allows some veterans to seek outside care. There is a FB post going around saying veterans are 100% covered at any hospital, a bill signed by President Trump. Is this so?A Facebook post shared and continually reposted in recent days claims that President Donald Trump “signed an executive order allowing our veterans to get 100% medical bills paid at hospitals other than a V.A. hospital.”But no such executive order was ever signed, as evidenced by a review of Trump’s more than 60 orders made between 2017 and 2018.Several readers inquired with FactCheck.org about the veracity of the claim.We looked at news reports and White House statements and could find no evidence to support the post, which in one instance was shared more than 209,700 times. It reads in full:“For all the Trump haters; today President Trump signed an executive order allowing our veterans to get 100% medical bills paid at hospitals other than a V.A. hospital. This will save the lives of many American service men and women who have been on V.A. waiting lists, some for years and many dying while waiting. Now they can go to ANY hospital they want… This is how our veterans SHOULD be treated!!! Thanks President Trump!! !”That’s not to say that Trump hasn’t used his signature to address veterans’ issues.The president has continued the Veterans Choice Program, a program started in 2014 following a scandal over wait times at Veterans Affairs facilities. The program was created through the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act, a bipartisan bill that was signed by President Barack Obama. The Veterans Choice Program allows some veterans who experience difficulty obtaining care from a Veterans Affairs medical facility to seek care elsewhere. To qualify, veterans must be enrolled in the VA health care system and demonstrate certain barriers to using the VA system (such as wait time or distance).In 2017, Trump signed a bill that eliminated the program’s expiration date and twice signed legislation (in August and December) that authorized funding to keep the program afloat.The Veterans Choice Program doesn’t necessarily guarantee everything is free, either. Some veterans could have copayments under the VA system — determined by financial assessments — and are still responsible for those payments under the choice program, according to the VA. The VA reports that “while most Veterans receive cost-free care and services based on eligibility factors, such as service connection and/or income, the 2016 average annual out-of-pocket costs for all other Veterans was just $320.”Trump also has used executive orders to advance veterans-specific policies, including one aimed at increasing accountability at the VA and adding protections for whistleblowers. Another extends mental health coverage to all veterans during the first-year transition back to civilian life.Update, July 6: On June 6, Trump signed the VA MISSION Act of 2018, a bipartisan bill that calls for a number of changes at the VA. The new law continues the Veterans Choice Program for a year, but then replaces it with the Veterans Community Care Program.The new program expands the criteria for those who seek care outside of the VA health care system. For example, it allows a veteran to go to a private provider if the “covered veteran and the covered veteran’s referring clinician agree that furnishing care and services through a non-Department entity or provider would be in the best medical interest of the covered veteran.”The Congressional Budget Office estimated that “in the early years of the program, roughly 640,000 additional veteran patients would be referred out to community care each year.” The law also requires the VA to provide veterans access to walk-in care from non-VA providers; the veterans may be required to pay copayments, as determined by the VA.“10 Things to Know About the Veterans Choice Program.” U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. 10 May 2017.“2017 Donald Trump Executive Orders.” Federal Register. Accessed 12 Mar 2018.“2018 Donald Trump Executive Orders.” Federal Register. Accessed 12 Mar 2018.“Health Benefits.” U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Accessed 13 Mar 2018.“The Affordable Care Act, VA, and You.” U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Accessed 13 Mar 2018.Trump, Donald J. Executive Order 13793. 27 Apr 2017.Trump, Donald J. Executive Order 13822. 9 Jan 2018.U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Inspector General. “Review of Alleged Patient Deaths, Patient Wait Times, and Scheduling Practices at the Phoenix VA Health Care System.” 26 Aug 2014.U.S. House. “H.R. 1370, An Act to amend the Homeland Security Act of 2002 to require the Secretary of Homeland Security to issue Department of Homeland Security-wide guidance and develop training programs as part of the Department of Homeland Security Blue Campaign, and for other purposes.” 22 Dec 2017.U.S. House. “H.R. 3230, Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014.” 7 Aug 2014.U.S. Senate. “S. 114, VA Choice and Quality Employment Act of 2017.” 12 Aug 2017.U.S. Senate. “S. 544, A bill to amend the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014 to modify the termination date for the Veterans Choice Program, and for other purposes.” 19 Apr 2017.“Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act \| About the Choice Program.” U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Accessed 12 Mar 2018.
5597	2nd Mexican state allows conscience objection for doctors.	Rights officials expressed concern Tuesday after a second state congress in Mexico passed a “conscience objection” law that would allow medical personnel to refuse to perform procedures that violate their religious or ethical convictions.	true	Access to health care, Mexico, General News, Abortion, Latin America, Science	The Council to Prevent Discrimination said a new law passed in the northern state of Nuevo Leon threatened people’s access to health care. “Conscience objection should not any under circumstances lead to Nuevo Leon failing to provide health services to the public, above all if the motivation for that objection were based on acts that the law considers discriminatory,” the council said in a statement. The governmental National Human Rights Commission has filed a Supreme Court appeal against the first law, approved in the central state of Morelos in August. The commission argues that law is unconstitutional because it could restrict access to health care for women who seek an abortion. But it also noted the state rules could also impact people who are gay or HIV-positive. “Medical personnel and nurses could deny services based on health reasons, including HIV and AIDS, or based on gender or sexual preferences,” the commission warned. The court has yet to rule on that appeal. Another state in northern Mexico passed a similar law Oct. 15. The Nuevo Leon state law, like the one in Morelos, says objections cannot apply in medical emergencies or when a patient’s life is in danger.
4971	Sanders never considered leaving race after heart attack.	Bernie Sanders said Thursday that he never considered dropping out of the presidential race after suffering a heart attack last week and characterized his recovery as “so far, so very good” despite acknowledging that the incident left his heart “with some damage.”	true	Health, General News, Politics, Election 2020, Heart attack, Bernie Sanders, Nevada	In an interview with CNN from his Vermont home, where he is recuperating, the senator said he felt “not an ounce of pain” and that, after attending Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate in Ohio, he’s likely to make trips to Iowa, Nevada and possibly New Hampshire. “We’re ready to go full blast,” Sanders said. His campaign announced that Sanders would use livestream to address and take questions from the United Food and Commercial Workers presidential forum Sunday in Altoona, Iowa. The state kicks off the presidential nominating process in less than four months. “When you hear the word ‘heart attack’, you’re thinking of somebody lying on the ground in terrible pain. It wasn’t the case, OK,” Sanders said. “The day I woke up after the procedure, no pain. Zero pain. No pain right now. I feel really good.” He said he felt symptoms for several weeks that he “should have paid more attention to,” including being especially fatigued after long campaign days, having trouble sleeping and sometimes feeling a “little unsteady” at the podium while speaking at events. He said he once moved to hold a microphone to his mouth and realized his arm hurt. On the evening of Oct. 1, he was at an event in Las Vegas and asked for a chair to be brought on stage “for the first time in my life,” he said. Sweating profusely, he said he left the event quicker than usual and was heading back to the hotel when pain in his arm prompted him to head to an urgent care medical facility where “the doctor made the diagnosis in about three seconds.” Taken by ambulance to the hospital, Sanders said he underwent surgery to insert stents for a blocked artery in about 45 minutes. “Who knows, there’s some folks who think that I might be a little bit stronger because I’ll have an artery that’s not blocked,” Sanders said. He said he’s learned that many hundreds of thousands of people have the same procedure every year. Sanders said he had begun seeing a cardiologist in Vermont who told him he was “on the road to a full recovery.” “There was some damage but, what happens is, is within the next month we’ll see what happens,” he said. “But so far, so very good.” Asked about taking new medications or changes to his diet, Sanders said he would watch his diet more carefully. “We’re going to do better with food.” The interview came hours after Sanders posted a 7-minute online video to supporters saying he’s getting his endurance back and growing “stronger every day.” He also tweeted a clip under the heading “Playoff baseball comes to our backyard” featuring Sanders hitting baseballs and exclaiming “All right!” when a staffer off camera caught one of his popups. While lying in a hospital bed last week in Las Vegas, he said in the video that he “thought about a lot of things, needless to say,” including “what would have happened” if he did not have health insurance through his job as a senator and Medicare. Sanders insisted the experience made him “feel even more strongly” the need to continue “efforts to end this dysfunctional and cruel health care system” and provide universal health insurance through a “Medicare for All” plan. He also recalled thinking, “Yeah, I’ve had a rough week. I’ve suffered adversity and that’s true.” But, he added, many people are dealing “with a lot more pain than I am,” including homelessness, the need to work multiple jobs or having to forgo college because of fears about debt. Sanders staff initially said stents were inserted for a blocked artery, revealing only two days later that he had suffered a heart attack. The senator originally suggested he may slow his pace of campaigning after his health scare but backtracked in a Wednesday interview with NBC News. He told CNN that what he meant was that he probably would not do four rallies a day as soon as next week. Sander’s national campaign co-chairwoman, Nina Turner, seemed to back up his original sentiment, though, saying previously that Sanders staffers were examining where and how to make changes to reflect concerns about his health. Asked during the CNN interview about waiting to disclose he had a heart attack, Sanders said “people do have the right to know about the health of a senator and somebody who’s running for president” but that the initial information was incomplete. “The first concern, I think that people had, was we had to understand what was going on,” he said “before we’re going to, you know, reveal information dribble by dribble.”
9479	Finding the Right Medication: Gene Test May Help Treat Depression	This NBC story uses the narrative of a woman who struggled to find an effective medication to treat her severe depression to talk about the potential benefits of using genetic testing to identify which drugs may be most effective in treating depression, with the fewest side effects, for specific patients. Unfortunately, it lacks discussion of any rigorous research supporting the clinical utility of such genetic testing, the potential harms patients might experience as a result of genetic testing, or how the specific genetic test discussed in the story differs from others currently in use. As the story notes, the Centers for Disease Control report that about one of every 20 Americans 12 and older cope with depression and some of them (not “many more,” as the story claims) experience severe side effects from the drugs used to treat depression. Finding the correct drug and the correct dosage for a specific patient can require a sometimes extended process of trial-and-error, with depression sufferers sometimes enduring multiple trials of different drugs before they find one that is effective and has an acceptably low level of negative side effects. Thus, a test or tests that would effectively enable doctors to determine ahead of time which patients are likely to respond well or poorly to specific types of drugs would offer substantial benefits.	false	depression,genetic testing	The story notes that the genetic test touted costs $179 and says it is often covered by insurance. The article is nominally about the Genefolio test that’s offered by the Avera Institute for Human Genetics. But the only specific numbers provided in the story pertain to a different test called GeneSight. That’s misleading, since it suggests that the two tests are interchangeable. These are two different products looking at different genetic profiles to make recommendations. It’s like using data from the AT&T cell network to show how great T-Mobile’s coverage is. The story also doesn’t do enough to explain what the numbers provided mean. Does the 70% reduction mean that patient symptoms went from a 10 out of 10 to a 3 out of 10? Or from 2 out of 10 to 0.6 out of 10? Both are possible and the story should have clarified the difference between relative and absolute numbers. There is no discussion of any potential harms of genetic testing, and the article also does not discuss the fact that some genetic tests may focus only on a single genetic marker, making them far less useful. Tests that are inaccurate may falsely suggest that patients will or will not respond to a specific drug, delaying effective treatment. Moreover, genetic test results can have significant negative social, emotional and financial consequences for patients, including the possibility of employment and insurance discrimination based on the test results. The article offers no information whatsoever about the one study that was cited, other than to say it was “conducted by the Mayo Clinic,” so it’s impossible to tell whether that study was rigorous and therefore trustworthy or not. In any case, one study of one genetic test–no matter how rigorous–cannot produce evidence supporting the use of a range of similar tests. The single patient profiled who took 23 different combinations is not representative of typical person with depression. Also, the story said that “many” people with depression experience severe side effects, but offers no data to back up such a claim. The only three sources in the story are two employees of different branches of the Avera medical organization, which developed the specific genetic test (Genefolio) discussed in the article, and a depression patient whose doctors used that test to help identify why the patient was responding so poorly to previously described drugs. The article mentions that other organizations are “exploring the role of pharmacogenomics,” and it mentions one other specific test, GeneSight Psychotropic, which it describes as “similar to many used in hospitals.” This is enough to merit a marginal Satisfactory score. It does not say how similar the Genesight Psychotropic test is to the Genefolio test developed by the Avera Institute for Human Genetics, as we note above in the quantified benefits criterion. Thus, the article provides no data whatsoever about the clinical utility of Genefolio or of any other genetic tests other than GeneSight Psychotropic; instead, it focuses on the anecdotal story of how the Genefolio test helped a patient’s doctor decide to prescribe for her a lower dose of an older antidepressant and on the positive results that produced. It says Avera is “offering” the test and that there are others used in hospitals. It’s pretty clear that they are available, at least to some people. This is sufficient for a Satisfactory rating, though the story would have been stronger if it had explained this more thoroughly. The story includes no information about how the Genefolio test differs, if at all, from any other genetic tests currently available. The story does not appear to be based entirely on a news release; there does appear to be enough original reporting to rate the story Satisfactory on this criterion.
24304	I have had the challenge during this administration to suspend no less than 37 public officials in about 36 months.	Florida Gov. Crist says he has suspended 37 public officials	true	Florida, Charlie Crist,	"Some of Florida's public officials have been bad boys and girls, Gov. Charlie Crist says. ""You know, I have had the challenge during this administration to suspend no less than 37 public officials in about 36 months,"" Crist told reporters gathered in Tallahassee on Jan. 27, 2010. ""It's pretty stunning, and it's pretty disappointing."" The Florida Constitution enables Crist, as governor, to suspend any elected public official indicted for a crime and remove public officials from office who are convicted. The governor also can suspend state or county officials -- anyone from people appointed to state or local boards or even public notaries -- for misconduct. Is Crist really on a suspension-a-month pace? We asked the governor's office for a list of people suspended by the governor since he took office in January 2007. Officials provided a seven-page document listing 38 names and titles of people they say the governor has suspended or removed from public office. Each entry includes a corresponding charge and points to an executive order codifying the action. (You can read the governor's document for yourself.) The list includes some familiar names: No. 28 -- James ""Bob"" Richburg, the former Northwest Florida State College president. Richburg was suspended from the board of directors of Workforce Florida in April 2009 after being indicted in the case involving former House Speaker Ray Sansom. Sansom has been accused of falsely securing $6 million in taxpayer money to construct a college building that would double as an aircraft hangar for a friend and major Republican donor. No. 35 -- Scott Rothstein. Rothstein was suspended from a judicial nominating committee after agreeing to be permanently disbarred. A major political fundraiser, Rothstein pleaded guilty on Jan. 27, 2010, to five counts of racketeering, fraud and money laundering as part of a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme. * No. 34 and No. 38 -- Miami City Commissioner Michelle Spence-Jones. Spence-Jones was suspended by Crist in November 2009 after being arrested on charges that she redirected $50,000 in county funds to a now-defunct family business. She won her seat back in a special election in January 2010. She was immediately suspended again. The list also includes people probably unfamiliar to most, including eight notary publics. The notary publics, who are considered state officers under Florida law, were suspended in most cases for notarizing signatures and documents improperly. Examining the full list, we found some problems: * Beverly Gallagher, a member of the Broward County School Board, is listed wrongly both as No. 30 and 32. Her entries point to two different executive orders -- one that removes her from office, and one that removes someone else. Gallagher and Broward County Commissioner Josephus Eggelletion (No. 31 on the governor's list) were arrested in September on federal corruption charges, accused of taking bribes. * Gregory Burke is both No. 7 and No. 25. Burke, a commissioner of the South Walton County Mosquito Control District, was first suspended from office Dec. 13, 2007, then removed by Crist on Dec. 24, 2008 -- hence the two separate entries. * Two officials -- Miami City Commissioner Johnny Lee Winton and Hollywood City Commissioner Kenneth Wasserstrom -- were removed from office by Crist but actually suspended by Gov. Jeb Bush. * Another official, Miramar City Commissioner Fitzroy Salesman, appears on the list twice. The first entry was from March 2007, when he was reinstated into office by Crist (he had been suspended by Bush). Salesman was then suspended by Crist in December 2007 after being arrested. * No. 20, Johnny Green, was suspended from the Cross City water board after being charged with one count of conspiracy to commit bribery, according to the governor's office. Green's entry appears to note that the suspension was dissolved by Executive Order 08-235, but that order actually acknowledges a judicial vacancy in the 17th Judicial Circuit. The governor's list also includes one person who has returned to office and appears to overlook another person the governor suspended in 2008. John Scanlon, a commissioner with the Fort Myers Beach Fire Control District, was suspended after drug charges, but reinstated after completion of a pretrial diversion program. And James Roy Paul, superintendent of the Escambia County School District, was suspended from office by the governor in June 2008 after being charged with driving under the influence. But he was not on the governor's list. Where does all of that bring us in the accounting? First, we excluded the double reference to Gallagher and the entry reinstating Salesman. That drops us to 36. We then added Paul, who was not on the governor's list. Back to 37. We then double-checked that everyone on that list had been in fact suspended. We relied on the governor's online repository of executive orders, and when that didn't help, news accounts. When both options failed, as it did in one case, we asked the governor's office for the executive order directly. Then there was the case of three officials (Winton, Wasserstrom, Burke) whom Crist removed from office. You can make an argument that reduces the number of suspensions to 34. Crist told reporters he has had to ""suspend no less than 37 public officials"" since taking office in 2007. He's just about right on. The number actually includes people Crist removed from office, a more severe punishment than suspension. And the final number includes the suspensions of eight public notaries -- not what most people think of when they hear ""public official."" Crist gets points off for both, and from PolitiFact, a rating of ."
2443	Drug 'Molly' is taking a party toll in the United States.	Artist and therapy student Anna and her friends marked a birthday in New York recently with a familiar ritual: They pumped up the electronic music, danced, and celebrated with a special guest called Molly.	true	Health News	“It was a group of about 12 people at someone’s house and we were all just celebrating,” Anna recalled. “Somebody had it and, and you know, it was a pretty electronic music kind of crowd.” Molly, an illegal stimulant frequently sold in pill form, has become prominent in the electronic music scene over the past decade, said Anna, 26, who did not want to give her full name because she is in school and “counseling people to be healthy.” Molly is the street name for a drug that is pushed as the pure powder form of a banned substance known as MDMA, the main chemical in ecstasy. In the last five years, Molly has made its way into popular culture, helped by references to it made by entertainers such as Madonna, Miley Cyrus and Kanye West. The drug’s dangers became more clear after a rash of overdoses and four deaths this summer, including two at a huge annual electronic music festival in New York City. The parties of the late 1980s and early ‘90s saw the heyday of ecstasy, but its popularity began to wane a decade ago after a number of deaths and hospitalizations. That’s when Molly made her way onto the scene. Over the last few years, drugs sold under that name have “flooded” the market, said Rusty Payne, a spokesman with the Drug Enforcement Administration. In some states, there has been a 100-fold increase - the combined number of arrests, seizures, emergency room mentions and overdoses - between 2009 and 2012, according to DEA figures. The drug is accessible and marketed to recreational drug users who believe it to be less dangerous than its predecessor, which was often cut with other substances, from Ritalin to LSD. Like ecstasy, Molly is said to give a lengthy, euphoric high with slight hallucinogenic properties. In reality, however, the promised pure MDMA experience “doesn’t exist,” said Payne. Most of the Molly is one of several synthetic designer drugs that have been flooding the U.S. and European marketplace from chemical labs primarily based in China, Payne said. “A lot of people are missing the boat here,” he said. Molly could be anything ... 80 to 90 percent of the time we are given a chemical or substance believed to be Molly, we’re finding most of the time it is something completely different.” Four recent deaths attributed to Molly have thrust the club drug into the national spotlight. On August 31, a 23-year-old Syracuse University graduate and a 20-year-old University of New Hampshire student died after taking what they believed to be Molly during an electronic music concert in New York City. The deaths, and several other reported overdoses, prompted the Electric Zoo festival to cancel the final day of the concert. A University of Virginia student died at a rave in Washington, D.C., the same weekend, after taking what her friends said was Molly. Days earlier in Boston, a 19-year-old woman died in a club and three concert-goers overdosed at the waterfront, police said. In Atlanta, this weekend’s TomorrowWorld music festival organizers warned on its website of zero-tolerance for MDMA use, but noted: “If you or someone around you has taken something that you are concerned about or need help, it is important that you tell our staff. We are here to help and never judge.” The number of visits to U.S. emergency rooms involving MDMA has jumped 123 percent since 2004, according to data compiled by the Drug Abuse Warning Network. In 2011, the most recent year on record, there were 22,498 such visits. In the New York concert deaths, the medical examiner found lethal mixtures of MDMA and methylone, a synthetic stimulant, the DEA said. “It’s exactly the same phenomenon that occurred with ecstasy a decade ago,” said Dr. Charles Grob, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine and an expert on MDMA. “Ecstasy had terrible reliability and it’s the same with Molly. Though it’s being marketed as pure MDMA, it’s a hoax.” Overdose symptoms can include rapid heart beat, overheating, excessive sweating, shivering and involuntary twitching. Grob said references in pop culture can fan misconceptions. Miley Cyrus admitted in July that a lyric in her new dance anthem “We Can’t Stop” was a reference to Molly. Last year at a Miami concert, Madonna, the mother of a teenager, asked: “How many people in this crowd have seen Molly?” She later said she was referring to a friend. The illusion that MDMA is somehow less harmful has been branded with Molly, according to Anna. “I have definitely heard that people think that it’s pure. I have some friends that are like ‘I only want to do Molly. I won’t do other stuff’ because it’s marketed as something that’s somehow better,” said Anna. “But actually no one knows what’s in it. All of it is a gamble.”

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