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5614
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Drug overdose deaths up slightly in New Mexico.
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The number of drug overdose deaths increased to 497 in 2016 from 493 the previous year in New Mexico, a state that has led the western United States in drug fatalities as it wrestles with opioid and heroin addiction.
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true
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Health, Heroin addiction, Death rates, New Mexico, United States
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The overdose death rate remained unchanged during 2016 at 24.8 deaths per 1,000 residents, considering slight statewide population growth, the state Department of Health announced Wednesday. The rate of unintentional fatal drug overdoses — those not linked to suicides — showed a slight increase. Nearly three in four overdose deaths statewide involved opioids of some kind, including prescription pain medication and heroin. State Epidemiologist Michael Landen said the plateau in the fatal overdose rate is unsatisfactory but runs counter to a worsening national trend. “This is much more favorable than having continued substantial increases in rates, which is what we’re seeing from around the country,” Landen said. “But that’s not satisfactory. We want our rates to drop and continue dropping.” Overdose deaths in New Mexico have hovered well above the national average, even as the state has implemented pioneering policies to rein in fatalities. The state was the first in 2001 to increase access to the overdose-reversal drug naloxone, and a few years later, it led the way in releasing people from legal liability when they assist in overdose situations. This year, New Mexico became the first U.S. state to require all local and state law enforcement agencies to provide officers with antidote kits in an effort to curb deaths from opioid overdoses. State health officials are holding out hope that documented decreases in opioid prescriptions in early 2017 will help limit addiction and overdose deaths. New Mexico strengthened its prescription monitoring program in response to a surge in its drug overdose death rate in 2014, when the state ranked second only to West Virginia. In 2015, seven states had higher overdoes death rates. Full state-by-state comparisons for 2016 won’t be released until later in the year by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Health Department Secretary Lynn Gallagher cited a decrease in early 2017 in the amount of prescribed opioids and fewer dangerous overlapping prescriptions for individual patients as encouraging developments, while lamenting the continued loss of life from overdoses. “There’s a lot more work to be done,” she said in a statement. Unintentional overdose deaths in New Mexico increased to 428 in 2016 from 410 in 2015. Drug overdoses are the leading cause of death from injury in New Mexico and nationally, exceeding traffic related deaths. Emily Kaltenbach, state director for the Drug Policy Alliance, said stubbornly high fatalities should prompt new questions about state spending and tactics. Landen said recently approved funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is helping New Mexico study the effectiveness of efforts to stem overdose deaths — “to tease out what policy interventions are more effective and which ones may be less useful.” Republican New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez counts drug overdose prevention as a major priority, including efforts to increase access to medications such as buprenorphine and methadone used to wean addicts off opioid pills or heroin. At the same time, a federal review is underway into the level of access that New Mexico residents have to behavior health services, which include drug-dependency treatment, under Medicaid. The state’s behavior health system was upended in 2013 when Martinez’s administration froze payments to more than a dozen nonprofits based on concerns about possible fraud. An investigation by the New Mexico Attorney General’s Office eventually found only regulatory violations and no patterns of fraud.
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29270
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Eighteen U.S. states still have laws banning oral sex.
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What's true: Some states still have laws against oral sex on their books. What's false: These types of laws are unenforceable due to a 2003 Supreme Court ruling.
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false
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Legal Affairs, Risqué Business
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In late 2017, a picture appeared and quickly spread on social media, listing states where oral sex is purportedly still illegal and punishable in some cases by prison time: The graphic is accurate in that some states still have laws against oral sex on the books, an artifact of anti-sodomy laws that some states rewrote to specifically target LGBTQ residents. However, this graphic neglects to point out that these types of laws are unenforceable because of the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, which declared that Texas’s anti-sodomy law was unconstitutional. The high court ruled in a 6-3 decision that two gay men, John Geddes Lawrence Jr. and Tyron Garner, should not have been arrested for what police called “deviate sexual conduct.” In the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy said: The present case does not involve minors. It does not involve persons who might be injured or coerced or who are situated in relationships where consent might not easily be refused. It does not involve public conduct or prostitution. It does not involve whether the government must give formal recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter. The case does involve two adults who, with full and mutual consent from each other, engaged in sexual practices common to a homosexual lifestyle. The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. The Lawrence ruling also struck down anti-sodomy laws around the United States, which included laws prohibiting oral sex. However, according to Camilla Taylor, acting legal director for civil rights group Lambda Legal, the states with such statutes do not have to remove them from legislative records: “Some of those were enacted by constitutional amendment. Some of them were passed by statute. Those state legislatures have never rescinded them. But they’re unconstitutional nonetheless, and they cannot be enforced.” It’s true that the laws exist and are on the books. However, as of 2003, they now only exist as a legal — and unconstitutional — curiosity.
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26504
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Facebook post Says Robin Vos wore protective gear that “election workers he forced to work … do not have.”
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A Facebook post criticized Vos’ access to a mask, gloves and gown while working the polls on Election Day, saying others didn’t have the same protective equipment. But other poll workers in Burlington wore the same gear. At the same time, some poll workers across the state only had access to masks and gloves.
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false
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Elections, Wisconsin, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"After Republicans fought to keep Wisconsin’s April 7, 2020 election on track as planned amid the coronavirus outbreak, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos worked at a polling place in his district covered head to toe in protective gear. Vos, R-Rochester, volunteered to work at a Burlington polling site after thousands of poll workers across the state stayed home to avoid potential exposure to the coronavirus. The election occurred despite efforts by Democrats to avoid in-person voting, and as health officials warned against such gatherings in the middle of a pandemic. ""You are incredibly safe to go out,"" Vos told the Racine Journal Times on Election Day. Vos’ garb drew swift criticism from voters who say the Republican-controlled Legislature forced the state to hold an unsafe election. One Facebook post shared more than 4,000 times articulated that anger. ""The election workers he forced to work today do not have equivalent protection,"" the April 7, 2020 post stated. This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) The City of Burlington provided workers at its one in-person polling site with the same gear that Vos wore. But many poll workers across the state did not have that same level of protection. Let’s see where the Facebook claim lands. Quick reminder: The April 7 election took place after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers tried first to move the election to all mail, but the Republican-controlled Legislature rebuked his request and ended a special session without action. Evers then issued an executive order that would have delayed in-person voting until June. Vos and Republicans took the matter to the state Supreme Court, where the conservative majority reversed the order hours later. Now, back to the Facebook post. A video from the Journal Times, along with photos that circulated on social media, show Vos wearing a face mask, gloves and protective gown. When asked about his personal protective equipment (PPE), a staffer for Vos referred PolitiFact Wisconsin to a tweet by the Assembly speaker. ""A requirement for working at the polls was to wear PPE to protect the public and the workers,"" Vos tweeted. ""EVERY single person working at the polling place wore the same gear, not just me."" Burlington City Administrator Carina Walters said the city consolidated two in-person voting locations into a single drive-thru site at its Department of Public Works garage. The city received PPE from the Racine County Emergency Operations Center, plus some from the Burlington Fire Department. Burlington provided all poll workers with the same equipment Vos wore and also took their temperatures before and after shifts, Walters said. ""Our PPE policy for the day was to treat all persons as if they had COVID-19,"" she said. Vos was not the only poll worker wearing a gown, mask and gloves in Burlington. Beyond that protection, Vos’ tweet also shows other workers (not him) wearing face shields. But the Facebook post did not specify Burlington. The original poster told PolitiFact Wisconsin he preferred to let it speak for itself. So what kind of PPE did poll workers in other communities use? The Wisconsin Elections Commission provided surgical masks and gloves to local clerks, along with sanitizing products. Gowns and face shields were not included, per the commission’s April 3, 2020 memo. Milwaukee County provided municipalities with surgical masks and gloves but did not have access to gowns, said County Clerk George Christenson. Election workers in the city of Milwaukee had gowns, masks and gloves, but no eye shields, according to Election Commission Executive Director Neil Albrecht. Madison put poll workers behind a glass barrier and offered gloves, along with face shields for people working in close proximity. Poll workers in Green Bay also sat behind a glass barrier and wore masks, but not gowns. Vos’ wife, Michelle Litjens Vos, only wore gloves at a polling place in Rochester, the Journal Times reported. That means many people in Wisconsin worked the polls on Election Day and didn’t look at all like Vos. Still, poll workers outside Burlington had access to some of the same equipment he did. A Facebook post shared widely chastised Vos for wearing protective gear at the polls that ""election workers he forced to work today do not have."" Other poll workers in Burlington wore the same gear as Vos, so he didn’t receive any special treatment there like the claim implies. Poll workers in other parts of the state had some – but not necessarily all – of the same equipment used by Vos. That leaves us with a claim that contains some element of truth but ignores critical facts that would give a different impression."
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30956
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In September 2017, truck drivers' unions in Puerto Rico went on strike and refused to take part in relief efforts after a series of hurricanes.
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On 2 October 2017, a government spokesperson also refuted the rumor in an interview posted by CBS News reporter David Begnaud on Twitter saying, “Everyone’s working and the supplies are getting to where they have to.”
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false
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Politics, conservative treehouse, gateway pundit, hurricane maria
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With Puerto Rico experiencing a humanitarian and infrastructural crisis in the aftermath of a series of hurricanes, a flurry of stories appeared at the end of September 2017 falsely claiming that a local union representing truck drivers had gone on strike, using the devastation to leverage an improvement in their pay and working conditions. On 30 September 2017, the Conservative Treehouse blog quoted extensively (but selectively) from comments given to the Huffington Post by United States Air Force Colonel Michael Valle: “The aid is getting to Puerto Rico. The problem is distribution. The federal government has sent us a lot of help; moving those supplies, in particular, fuel, is the issue right now,” says Col. Valle. Until power can be restored, generators are critical for hospitals and shelter facilities and more. But, and it’s a big but, they can’t get the fuel to run the generators. They have the generators, water, food, medicine, and fuel on the ground, yet the supplies are not moving across the island as quickly as they’re needed. “It’s a lack of drivers for the transport trucks, the 18 wheelers. Supplies we have. Trucks we have. There are ships full of supplies backed up in the ports, waiting to have a vehicle to unload into. However, only 20% of the truck drivers show up to work. These are private citizens in Puerto Rico, paid by companies that are contracted by the government,” says Col. Valle. The Conservative Treehouse then went on to claim, again falsely, that the cause of this shortfall in truck drivers was a deliberate, coordinated strike action by the local Teamsters union. Similar claims were also made by the Gateway Pundit and entrepreneur Kambree Kawahine Koa. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters rejected these claims entirely, telling us the reports were “fake news” and adding that the Teamsters Local 901 in Puerto Rico was “doing everything but refuse to help” in relief efforts. In a statement, Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa called the reports “nothing but lies”: These viral stories spreading across the internet are nothing but lies perpetrated by anti-union entities to further their destructive agenda. The fact that they are attempting to capitalize on the suffering of millions of citizens in Puerto Rico that are in dire need of our help by pushing these false stories, just exposes their true nature. On 29 September 2017, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters issued a plea for help to members throughout the mainland United States, describing the efforts being made by local truck drivers in Puerto Rico, in the face of infrastructural devastation: The Teamsters are doing what they can to improve the lives of our members there. That includes working with Joint Council 16 as well as Local 901 leadership in San Juan to identify ways how the union can help. The Teamsters are also joining together with labor unions from across the nation to identify skilled workers to travel to Puerto Rico next week to provide much needed support in critical areas. There is currently a need for volunteer truck drivers who hold a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) to transport shipping containers from the port to distribution centers throughout the island. Additionally, the Teamsters Freight, Airline, Passenger Transport, Package, Public Services and Waste Divisions are contacting Teamster employers that operate in Puerto Rico and our local unions throughout the U.S. and Canada to identify avenues of support and volunteers. At this time, it is unclear if there are trucks available to move the containers, fuel to operate the trucks or road access to the distribution centers. However, the labor movement is working on the ground in Puerto Rico to bring volunteers to meet specific needs. Indeed, Colonel Michael Valle — one of the sources cited by the Conservative Treehouse — went on to tell the Huffington Post: There should be zero blame on the drivers. They can’t get to work, the infrastructure is destroyed, they can’t get fuel themselves, and they can’t call us for help because there’s no communication. The will of the people of Puerto Rico is off the charts. The truck drivers have families to take care of, many of them have no food or water. They have to take care of their family’s needs before they go off to work, and once they do go, they can’t call home. [Emphasis added]. A CNBC report cited in the Conservative Treehouse post also undermines the claim that there was a strike. As the reporter explains: There are 3,000 cargo containers here at Crowley, one of the biggest shippers in Puerto Rico…Here’s the problem – the truck drivers can’t get to the terminal to get their containers out…You’re looking at truck drivers who can’t be reached by their businesses by cell phone, they don’t have the gas to get to work, and then even when they do get to work, their semi-trucks don’t have fuel. The problem is the supply chain. Contrary to all this, the Conservative Treehouse claims that the local Teamsters union, which the article (again, falsely) identifies as Frente Amplio, “is refusing to move the product.” A spokesperson for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters confirmed that Frente Amplio is an independent truck drivers’ union in Puerto Rico and is not affiliated with the Teamsters in any way. In any event, the Conservative Treehouse cites a Wapa TV interview with Victor Rodriguez, President of Frente Amplio, as evidence of a strike by truck drivers. In fact, it is evidence of no such thing. In the interview, Rodriguez criticizes Puerto Rico’s governor Ricardo Rosselló for a law he signed in April that changed how truck drivers obtain permits, but he does not declare strike action or a refusal to work on the part of Frente Amplio members. He says: The truckers are doing what they need to do. The one not doing what he needs to do is the governor. Rodriguez states that his organization had actually called off a planned strike before the arrival of Hurricane Irma, which caused widespread infrastructural damage to Puerto Rico in early September. The governor of Puerto Rico was lucky — three weeks before Irma there was going to be a strike because of the law he passed. At one point, Rodriguez does point to the power and leverage held by his members, saying: The power is with the truckers. If the truckers don’t move, this country won’t move for two years. However, he does not declare a strike or refusal to work and affirms “the truckers are going to work,” in this exchange with Wapa TV’s Eliezer Ramos: Ramos: Are you telling me that truck drivers are not reporting to work because of a law? Rodriguez: No, we’re doing what we need to do. Ramos: But you just said that because of a law – Rodriguez: No, excuse me, the truckers are going to work, and I expect truck drivers in the country to keep working with the people, who made it possible for us to use the roads. Puerto Rico’s Teamsters Local 901 are not on strike or refusing to work, and they are in fact pleading with truck drivers on the United States mainland to help in the distribution of fuel and supplies there. The Conservative Treehouse’s claims about this are based on cherry-picked quotes from a United States Air Force Colonel and a CNBC reporter, both of whose full remarks make clear that truck drivers in Puerto Rico are hampered by severe problems with infrastructure and distribution, but are not refusing to work.
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37135
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A forwarded email with what the author calls the many “firsts” of President Barack Obama.
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Obama's 32 Month Report Card
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mixture
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Crime / Police, Obama, Politics, Terrorism
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This eRumor appeared all over the Internet in November, 2011 and on various political web sites but it was not found on any major news sites. The email says only that is was authored by someone named Rich Carroll but does not identify him beyond that. Let us look some of the topics in the article one at a time: First President to refuse to show a valid birth certificate – Disputed! Although there are those who dispute its validity, candidate Obama released of his birth certificate in 2008 and it was displayed on his Fight the Smears web site when questions about his citizenship were raised. Critics alleged that the document was a fake, or insufficient as proof for the office of the President. This stirred a frenzy of rumors including emails that contained faked documents including one made up to look like birth certificates from Kenya. Tow years later, in 2010, President Obama released what he said was his original long form birth certificate, from the state of Hawaii.. We have a page on the questionable citizenship of Barack Obama complete with photos of documents. Click for our findings. First President to apply for college aid as a foreign student, then deny he was a foreigner- Fiction! This rumor originated from an April Fools Joke in 2009 featuring an alleged Associated Press story that said that Barack Obama received a grant from the “Fulbright Foundation” when he attended Occidental College in California. There is no “Fulbright Foundation” but there is a Fulbright program that is sponsored by the US Department of State and does award scholarship grants to students working towards higher degrees who already have a Bachelor of Arts degree. Click for our Findings First President to have a social security number from a state he has never lived in- Fiction! Rumors about Obama’s Social Security Number began circulating in 2010 alleging that the number belonged to a deceased man who immigrated to the U.S. from France and resided in Hawaii. That proved to be fiction. This sparked additional inquires as to why the President’s Social Security Number began with 042, the three digit classification for Connecticut. According to the Social Security Administration, “The Area Number is assigned by the geographical region. Prior to 1972, cards were issued in local Social Security offices around the country and the Area Number represented the State in which the card was issued. This did not necessarily have to be the State where the applicant lived, since a person could apply for their card in any Social Security office.” Click for Social Security site First President to preside over a cut to the credit rating of the United States. – Truth! On August 5, 2011, for the first time in the history of this nation, Standard and Poor’s downgraded the US Credit Rating to one notch below AAA. According to a Washington Post article dated that same day, “the credit rating company said ‘political brinkmanship’ in the debate over the debt had made the U.S. government’s ability to manage its finances ‘less stable, less effective and less predictable.’ It said the bipartisan agreement reached this week to find at least $2.1 trillion in budget savings ‘fell short’ of what was necessary to tame the nation’s debt over time and predicted that leaders would not be likely to achieve more savings in the future.” First President to violate the War Powers Act – Fiction! The War Powers Resolution of 1973 became federal law to prevent a president from committing the United States to an armed conflict without the approval from Congress. This law requires the President to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing U.S. armed forces to military action. It also limits U.S. involvement to no more than 60 days. In 2011 President Obama bypassed congressional approval for going into Libya, but he was not the first U.S. President to do so. The War Powers Resolution was first disregarded by President Clinton in 1999, during the bombing campaign in Kosovo. First President to be held in contempt of court for illegally obstructing oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. –Truth! The President did order a moratorium on offshore drilling in waters deeper than 500 feet after the Deepwater Horizon Spill in the Gulf of Mexico in May 2010. The moratorium was struck down by New Orleans Judge Martin Feldman and according to a February 3, 2011 article in Bloomberg the Obama Administration was acting in contempt by continuing the policy. Felman’s comments on the ruling were reported in the article. He said, “Each step the government took following the court’s imposition of a preliminary injunction showcases its defiance.” Feldman added, “Such dismissive conduct, viewed in tandem with the re-imposition of a second blanket and substantively identical moratorium, and in light of the national importance of this case, provide this court with clear and convincing evidence of the government’s contempt.” First President to defy a Federal Judges court order to cease implementing the Health Care Reform Law.- Fiction! The constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has been questioned by several courts in various states in the US since it was passed into law in March 21, 2010. According to an August 12, 2011 article in Reuters a U.S. Appeals Court for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta ruled that it was unconstitutional to require all Americans to buy insurance or face a penalty but it unanimously reversed a lower court decision that threw out the entire law. First President to require all Americans to purchase a product from a third party. – Too Vague to investigate. We are not sure of what policy this is related to. If the writer of the eRumor had in mind the Affordable Care Act then this would be Truth!. When the law makers wrote the HR-3590 bill, the Democratic majority House and Senate quickly passed it and the President signed it into law. It is doubtful that anybody in government who supported this bill actually read it, Buried inside the 2409 pages of the “Obamacare” law there is a stipulation known as the “Individual Mandate,” where the Internal Revenue Service will collect a 2.5% penalty from tax returns not showing proof of enrollment of health insurance. First President to spend a trillion dollars on shovel-ready jobs and later admit there was no such thing as shovel-ready jobs.- Inaccurate! According to a September 26, 2011 article in Politico, President Obama did use the term “Shovel Ready Jobs” in a plan to fund $50 billion in improvements to highways, transit systems, railways and aviation. The idea was to put Americans back to work by construction upgrades to 150,000 miles of road, 4,000 miles of train tracks, 150 miles of airport runways and the nation’s air traffic control system. Political reported that experts did not see the jobs being as shovel ready as one would think as ” A tremendous amount of money and time is needed to get a project through a detailed design process, permitting, environmental hurdles, public hearings and land acquisition.” First President to abrogate bankruptcy law to turn over control of companies to his union supporters.- Under Investigation First President to by-pass Congress and implement the Dream Act through executive fiat. Fiction! There was no such Executive Order. Click for our findings. First President to order a secret amnesty program that stopped the deportation of illegal immigrants across the U.S. , including those with criminal convictions- Fiction! This was not done is secret and according to an August 18, 2011 ABC News report, “The Obama administration announced a major change in policy for thousands of illegal immigrants going through deportation proceedings. They now may be able to stay in the country. There are currently 300,000 deportation cases making their way through the federal immigration courts, but under the new policy immigrants classified as low-priority cases could be granted a stay and a chance to apply for a work permit.” First President to demand a company hand-over $20 billion to one of his political appointees. – Too Vague to investigate. We are not sure of what policy this is related to. First President to terminate Americas ability to put a man in space. Fiction! According to the St. Petersburg Times PolitiFact Check site, “Richard Nixon, perhaps in conjunction with Gerald Ford, would be the one to qualify for the unwanted title of “first president to terminate America’s ability to put a man in space” — not Obama.” The Apollo program ended in 1975 and had a five year gap in space launches until the Space Shuttle program was in full operation. First President to encourage racial discrimination and intimidation at polling places. On November 4, 2008 Black Panthers were spotted outside a polling place in Philadelphia, PA. One of the Black Panthers was holding a night stick. A YouTube Video taken by a local journalism student of an account with them went viral on the Internet and news outlets. A short time later, police arrived on the scene and they were removed from the scene. Charges of voter intimidation were charged but they were dropped by the Justice Department under the leadership of Eric Holder, according to an August 20, 2009 article in the Wall Street Journal. No explanation was given by Holder or anyone at the Department of Justice. The accusation that the President encouraged this incident remains unproven. First President to have a law signed by an auto-pen without being present.- Truth! According to a May 22, 2011 article in the New York Times this was a historical first when the President extended the Patriot Act by autopen during a weeklong trip in Europe. First President to arbitrarily declare an existing law unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it.- Too Vague to investigate. We are not sure of what policy this is related to. First President to threaten insurance companies if they publicly speak-out on the reasons for their rate increases.- Under Investigation First President to tell a major manufacturing company in which state they are allowed to locate a factory.- Truth! On April 20, 2011 the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) filed a complaint against the Boeing claiming that the aircraft manufacturer opened up a second 787 Dreamliner production line in South Carolina in retaliation against the union. South Carolina is a “right to work state.” On September 23, 2011 Politico.com reported that , “An Obama appointee is now asking a judge to order Boeing to relocate all 787 Dreamliner production to Washington state — a move that’s feeding the GOP narrative that Obama’s Big Government is meddling with job creation, just as the first plane nears its first commercial flight.” First President to file lawsuits against the states he swore an oath to protect (AZ, WI, OH, IN)- Fiction! The oath of the President of the United States does not have any conditions to protect U.S. States. The oath of office is in the U.S. Constitution and it says, “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” First President to withdraw an existing coal permit that had been properly issued years ago.- Under Investigation First President to fire an inspector general of Ameri-corps for catching one of his friends in a corruption case.- Under Investigation First President to appoint 45 Czars to replace elected officials in his office.- Under Investigation First President to golf 73 separate times in his first two and a half years in office.- Inaccurate! According to a June 26, 2011 White House Dossier article, written by veteran White House reporter Keith Koffler, President Obama played his 75th golf game since being sworn into office. No doubt at the time of this writing the number is greater. According to an October 24, 2009 article in Politico, Obama was in office about 10 months when he played his 24th golf game, tying his predecessor, G. W. Bush, for the number of golf games. It took Bush almost 3 years to play that number of games. First President to hide his medical, educational and travel records.– Fiction! There are no U.S. laws stating that a U.S. President or presidential candidate disclose his medical or educational background. In his books, Barack Obama wrote about his life in Indonesia. Questions about Obama’s travels could have been sparked by a rumor that was spread on YouTube by Reverend James Manning of the ATLAH church in Harlem. Manning alleged that Obama, while attending Columbia University (Class of 1983), was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency to be the operative in an arms deal with the Taliban. Manning said that Obama was selected because he was fluent in Farsi and Middle Eastern customs. President only speaks English fluently, has never learned Farsi and the Taliban did not exist until 1989. First President to win a Nobel Peace Prize for doing NOTHING to earn it. Disputed! The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Barack Obama on October 9, 2009 after he had been in office approximately 9 months. According to the Nobel Peace Prize website Obama was awarded this, “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”. On January 20, 2010 Britain’s The Guardian released a timeline showing the major events during the President’s fist year in office. In April 2009, Obama flew to England for the G-20 conference where he not only met with Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Gordon Brown but also met with Russian president Dmitry Medvedev to discuss U.S. and Russian relations. First President to coddle American enemies while alienating Americas allies- Too Vague to investigate. We are not sure of what policy this is related to. First President to publicly bow to Americas enemies while refusing to salute the U.S. Flag. Fiction! President Obama has been photographed bowing to foreign leaders during formal introductions. One of these leaders was Saudi Arabian King Abdullah. The U.S. is at war with a radical terrorist organization based in the Middle East called al-Queda, and neither Saudi Arabia or King Abdullah are considered an enemy of the U.S. Obama does not always follow the protocol of placing his hand over his heart when the National Anthem is played. Click for Findings on the bow. Click for findings on the salute. First President to go on multiple global apology tours.- Disputed! Obama did travel overseas and during his speeches make apologies for past American policies and arrogance. Former George W. Bush campaign manager, Karl Rove wrote an opinion on April 23, 2009 in the Wall Street Journal calling the Presidents trip an “Apology Tour”. In a June 17, 2009 Human Events article, attributed to Niles Gardiner, director of the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative newspaper listed ten apologies by President Obama: 1. Apology to Europe: Speech in Strasbourg, France, April 3. “In America, there’s a failure to appreciate Europe‘s leading role in the world. Instead of celebrating your dynamic union and seeking to partner with you to meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown arrogance and been dismissive, even derisive.” 2. Apology to the Muslim world: Interview with Al Arabiya, January 27. “My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect.” 3. Apology to the Summit of the Americas: Address to the Summit of the Americas, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, April 17. “While the United States has done much to promote peace and prosperity in the hemisphere, we have at times been disengaged, and at times we sought to dictate our terms.” 4. Apology at the G-20 Summit of World Leaders: News conference in London, April 2. “I just think in a world that is as complex as it is, that it is very important for us to be able to forge partnerships as opposed to simply dictating solutions.” 5. Apology for the War on Terror: Speech in Washington, D.C., May 21. “Unfortunately, faced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. I believe that many of these decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people. But I also believe that all too often our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight, that all too often our government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.” 6. Apology for Guantanamo in France: Speech in Strasbourg, France, April 3. “In dealing with terrorism, we can’t lose sight of our values and who we are. That’s why I closed Guantanamo. That’s why I made very clear that we will not engage in certain interrogation practices. I don’t believe that there is a contradiction between our security and our values. And when you start sacrificing your values, when you lose yourself, then over the long term that will make you less secure.” 7. Apology for America before the Turkish Parliament: Speech to the Turkish Parliament, Ankara, Turkey, April 6. “The United States is still working through some of our own darker periods in our history. Facing the Washington Monument that I spoke of is a memorial of Abraham Lincoln, the man who freed those who were enslaved even after Washington led our Revolution. Our country still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans.” 8. Apology for U.S. Policy toward the Americas: Editorial “Choosing a Better Future in the Americas,” April 16. “Too often, the United States has not pursued and sustained engagement with our neighbors. We have been too easily distracted by other priorities, and have failed to see that our own progress is tied directly to progress throughout the Americas.” 9. Apology for the Mistakes of the CIA: Remarks to CIA employees at Langley, Va., April 29. “Don’t be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we’ve made some mistakes.” 10. Apology for Guantanamo: Speech in Washington, D.C., May 21. “There is also no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world.” On the other hand, The FactChecker at the Washington Post said on February 22, 2011, that they “concluded that ‘the claim that Obama repeatedly has apologized for the United States is not borne out by the fact, especially if his full quotes are viewed in context. '” They claim that the apology tour never happened. Click here Washington Post. First President to go on 17 lavish vacations, including date nights and Wednesday evening White House parties for his friends, paid for by the taxpayer. – Under Investigation First President to refuse to wear the U.S. Flag lapel pin- Fiction! While campaigning for the Oval Office, Barack Obama did sport a different lapel pin from the customary US Flag pin that many patriotic Americans wear but after his election to the Oval Office the President has been seen with the traditional lapel pin. Click for findings. First President to have 22 personal servants (taxpayer funded) for his wife. – Fiction! The allegations that former first ladies from previous administrations had smaller staffs is Fiction! – at least in the cases of Laura Bush and Hillary Clinton. Click for findings First President to keep a dog trainer on retainer for $102,000.00 a year at taxpayer expense.- Under Investigation First President to repeat “the Holy Qur’an tells us,” and openly admit “the early morning call of the Azaan (Islamic call to worship) is the most beautiful sound on earth.” –Truth! and Fiction! In June 4, 2009 the President delivered a speech in Cairo, Egypt. In this speech he used the term “Holy Koran” a total of 5 times. He also said, “Now part of this conviction is rooted in my own experience. I’m a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the azaan at the break of dawn and at the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith.” There was no mention in this speech that the Azaan was the most beautiful sound to Obama’s ears. Posted 10/31/11 Updated 11/21/13
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9202
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Mount Sinai researchers involved in successful phase 3 trial of drug for liver cancer
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The news release focuses on a phase 3 clinical trial that evaluated how effective the drug regorafenib was at treating patients who had a form of liver cancer called hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and whose HCC had gotten worse despite taking sorafenib — which is currently the only available form of targeted drug therapy for treating HCC. The study, which was recently written up in The Lancet, found that regorafenib extended a patient’s life by just under three months, compared to the use of a placebo. The release addresses these findings in a straight-forward way, which is good. However, the release does not adequately address conflicts of interest related to the study, nor does it sufficiently address cost or potential harms associated with the use of regorafenib. When patients or their loved ones hear about a “successful” drug trial for a disease they are fighting, it is easy for them to jump to the conclusion that “success” means the disease is cured. That’s not the case for a study like this one. It’s important for people to know that “success” in this case means that patients survive for an additional 2.8 months. We’re glad the release states this clearly. But in order for people to truly make informed choices, they need to understand how a treatment could effect their quality of life. For many patients, it’s also important for them to understand whether a treatment option could create a significant financial burden for their families. And when evaluating any drug study’s findings, it’s important to know what sort of financial ties the researchers have with the pharmaceutical manufacturer.
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mixture
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liver cancer,Mount Sinai Hospital,regorafenib
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Cost is not addressed at all. This is particularly problematic because regorafenib (brand name Stivarga) has already been approved, and is on the market, for treating other forms of cancer. For example, an online price guide shows that 84 40-milligram tablets of regorafenib cost $15,817. This is a fair estimate of the cost of treatment, given that the initial treatment regime for patients in the clinical trial receiving regorafenib was 84 40-milligram tablets (four 40-milligram tablets per day for 21 days). The release is pretty clear on this point, noting that patients who received regorafenib had an overall survival of 10.6 months, compared to 7.8 months for patients who received a placebo. The release states only that “regorafenib was well-tolerated with manageable adverse events” [emphasis added]. This is an example of the disconnect that can occur between language commonly used among researchers and language that people use in everyday life. For example, of the 374 patients who received regorafenib, seven had deaths that, according to the journal article, “were considered by the investigator to be related to study drug.” Few members of the lay public would be likely to automatically assume that death is a manageable adverse event, even when talking about last-ditch medical treatments for advanced cancers. Other side effects that cropped up in the study, and which could significantly affect quality of life for patients, included hypertension, pain and swelling in the hands and feet, diarrhea and severe bleeding. Fatigue was also present as a side effect but the degree of fatigue is not mentioned. The release gives a concise, accurate, overview of the study. But the study reports a lot of other issues that aren’t mentioned in the news release. It appears that 75% of the patients in both groups had cirrhosis. The effect of this is not likely to be important since the percentage was the same in both groups. An open question on the study is that the authors used a one-sided statistical test, making it more likely that they would find statistical significance, when it would not be so if they had used the more common two-tailed test (which tests for the possibility of a relationship in both directions). How this statistical change would affect the results is not clear. No disease mongering here. The release does note that Bayer funded the clinical trial. However, the release doesn’t tell readers that Bayer manufactures regorafenib. We might be able to let this slide, assuming that Bayer’s ties to regorafenib are inferred, but there’s another problem. The journal article makes clear that a number of the researchers involved in the clinical trial have not only received grants from Bayer, but are also paid advisors and/or consultants for Bayer. That sort of potential conflict of interest is important to note. The release notes that patients in the study had already been treated with sorafenib, and that sorafenib is the “only other drug with proven clinical benefit” in treating HCC. That’s enough to earn it a satisfactory rating here. However, it would have been stronger if it had mentioned other elements of treatment, such as surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy. In addition, hospice or palliative care programs for patients who had run out of treatment options might result in improvement in outcomes. The release does tell readers that “In January, Bayer announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration had granted priority review status for Stivarga (regorafenib) as a second-line systemic treatment for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.” However, the release doesn’t tell readers that regorafenib has already passed FDA review for treatment of other cancers, nor does it explain to readers what “priority review status” means in terms of when the drug might be used for HCC treatment on a widespread basis. The release makes clear that this is only the second pharmaceutical treatment for HCC proven to affect patient survival, and outlines what the study findings may mean for future research on how regorafenib may be used in treating earlier stages of HCC. There are two issues here. First, as noted above under “Why This Matters,” writers need to be cautious when throwing around terms like “successful” — because they can mean different things to different people. When a headline trumpets a “successful” cancer drug, many readers may assume that the drug does more than extend life for 2.8 months. The fact that the release makes clear, in the third paragraph, that we’re talking about an extra couple of months (rather than remission) doesn’t forgive the headline. It would have been much better to have a headline that focuses on specifics, such as “extends life by 2.8 months,” rather than vague terms that can be easily misunderstood. Second, while the clinical trial’s findings are certainly worth reporting, we are rarely pleased to see a news release use vague, over-hyped (and overused) terms like “breakthrough,” as was done here.
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34485
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Centerville Elementary School in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, canceled a Christmas play because two parents complained about reference to God.
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Social media rumors accused Centerville Elementary School of canceling a Christmas play because two parents were offended by its mention of God.
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unproven
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Politics, war on christmas
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On 17 December 2016, Fox News opinion columnist Todd Starnes published an article reporting that the annual Christmas play at Centerville Elementary School in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, had been canceled because two parents were offended by its brief mention of God: The fifth graders at Centerville Elementary School in Lancaster County, Pa., have been performing “A Christmas Carol” for decades. But this year that tradition came to an abrupt end. Parents told local reporters the play was canceled because two parents complained about a line in the Charles Dickens holiday classic … The unnamed parents took offense at the words uttered by Tiny Tim, “God bless us, every one,” television station WHTM reported. “I was very surprised because it’s going on for decades and it’s a tradition at the school that everyone looks forward to,” resident Jane Burkhart told the television station. “One little line shouldn’t ruin it for every kid,” Burkhart said. “Charles Dickens is a class author, not a religious author.” Principal Tom Kramer addressed the controversy in a message posted on the elementary school’s website. “We understand that some parents are upset that the play was cancelled, but we have heard from families on both ends of the spectrum, including those who expressed appreciation that the play, as it had traditionally been prepared and delivered, was cancelled … That’s just not true,” he said. He did not specifically address the parents’ allegations that the play was cancelled because of the line, “God bless us, every one.” But he did seem to hint at some sort of issue. “Our decision is rooted in the desire to be respectful of the many cultural and religious backgrounds represented by the students attending Centerville Elementary,” he wrote. That’s a mighty big clue, folks. In order to be tolerant and diverse, public schools have to eradicate any mention of God. Starnes asserted that two parents “complained” about a line in the Christmas play, citing rumors spread among local parents about the controversy, but provided no other information about the purported objections. His piece linked to and quoted from a statement from Principal Tom Kramer, who he stated that the decision to cancel the play was made primarily due to time constraints regarding making school instruction a priority over an extracurricular activity: We want to clarify that the decision to cancel the play was a building decision, based upon interactions between myself and the fifth grade teaching team. This decision was made based primarily on instructional opportunities for students. Producing and performing a play is not part of the written curriculum for fifth grade. Over the years, preparations had evolved to take 15 to 20 hours of instructional (educational) time to produce this play. Given changes in state standards in recent years, we could not defend the commitment of this kind of instructional time to something not part of the fifth grade curriculum. The teachers agreed that they did not want our students to be put at a disadvantage relative to their peers from other schools in preparation for 6th grade; therefore, the play was cancelled … Kessler referenced the “many cultural and religious backgrounds” of Centerville families but did not suggest any complaints had been lodged about the Christmas play. Notably, he added that neither parents nor staff members chose the option of relegating the play preparation to after-school hours — had the performance truly been “banned” or cancelled because it was deemed offensive by some, continuing with the Christmas play under any circumstances would not likely have been an option. Kessler maintained the primary factor in the decision was that the event could not be accommodated as a school-hours project due to the demands of the school’s curriculum: In addition to focusing on high quality instruction, our decision is rooted in the desire to be respectful of the many cultural and religious backgrounds represented by the students attending Centerville Elementary. One rumor we’ve been addressing is that one or two families influenced this decision. That’s just not true. The instructional time issue was our primary concern. Alternative solutions were explored for offering the play differently, including the use of non-core instructional time, but it was decided by the building team to not go down this path. We also looked at having rehearsals after school hours, but, at this time, parents nor staff members have stepped forward to take advantage of this possibility. The school has since posted a FAQ about the issue that includes the following entries: Q: Was it a complaint about the line “God bless us, every one!” that prompted reassessment of the play? A: Absolutely not. Q: Was there a religious issue in the complaint? A: There was no complaint. Questions were asked about play processes and procedures. The decision had nothing to do with a religious concern; rather, the decision was made due to the amount of instructional time that this non-curricular activity had grown to require. Q: Why did the play not occur this year? A: The play did not occur this year due to the amount of instructional time this production had grown to consume. As Mr. Kramer worked with the 5th grade teaching team to understand what putting on the play entailed, it became clear that the teachers had concerns about committing roughly 20 hours of instructional time to something that is not part of the fifth grade curriculum. To provide some perspective about how this might impact instruction, committing 20 hours of instructional time to the play would be roughly equivalent to foregoing math instruction for students for one month, in that one hour of math is taught each day of the week for four weeks. Given the desire to ensure available instructional time is used to best meet the diverse educational needs of their students, and to not disadvantage students relative to their fifth grade peers across the district, the teachers Lancaster Online reported that a Jewish family had temporarily left the area after being wrongly blamed for the play’s cancellation: A Hempfield elementary school is under fire for ending its longstanding production of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” and a Jewish family has fled the county in fear because it’s being blamed for the cancellation. The school, however, has said it put an end to the play this year because it took 15 to 20 hours of classroom time to produce. The fifth-grader’s parents, who spoke to LNP on the condition that they not be named, say they didn’t complain about the play or request that it be canceled, but just asked in September if their child could be excused from the play, and were told yes. Since the school announced the cancellation in November, however, they say the child has been harassed by classmates. However, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) countered with a statement terming such reports “untrue and damaging”: The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), like many, read many numerous local and national news stories reporting that a Jewish family allegedly “fled” Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The reports claimed that the family feared retribution after being wrongfully blamed for the cancellation of the school production of A Christmas Carol. ADL investigated, and found that in actuality, the family left on vacation for winter break. “News reports alleging that a Jewish family has ‘fled’ Lancaster County are untrue and damaging,” said Nancy Baron-Baer, ADL Regional Director. “We spoke with the family, who explained that they went on a previously-planned vacation for the holidays. Stories like this can sow fear in the Jewish community and beyond, and it is important to stop the spread of misinformation. “There is no truth to the rumor that the school cancelled A Christmas Carol at the request of parents. The Hempfield School District released a FAQ clearly stating that the play was cancelled due to the inordinate amount of class time taken up by rehearsals. We commend the district for setting the record straight.”
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10401
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Higher vitamin E intake tied to lower dementia risk
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While the story has a few notable deficiencies — no independent comment and insufficient statistical detail regarding the magnitude of the effect — readers will undoubtedly come away with the right bottom line message about this study: Interesting, but inconclusive. Dementia will place a growing burden on individuals and our society as the population ages, yet there are currently no effective ways to prevent or treat this condition. Instead of offering false hope about strategies that have little chance of making a difference, stories such as this one help give readers a realistic view of where they should they spend their time and energy when trying to reduce health risks.
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true
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"The costs of foods containing vitamin E is not really in question, so we’ll call this one not applicable. The story comes a whisker away from earning a satisfactory on this one. It leads by noting that participants with the highest vitamin E intakes had a 25% lower risk of dementia compared with those who had the lowest intakes, It more precisely quantifies this benefit later in the story, where it explains that 120 people developed dementia in the group with the highest vitamin E intake compared with 164 people in the low- intake group. What would have been most informative, however, is if the story had provided some denominators for this comparison — that is, 120 out of how many people developed dementia in the first group compared with 164 out of how many people in the second? This would given readers a better sense of the absolute risk reduction associated with higher vitamin E intake. We know this sets the bar high, but for good reason, we think. There are no known harms to eating a diet rich in foods containing vitamin E, but this story goes the extra mile and notes that high vitamin E intake from supplements can cause excessive bleeding. The story uses appropriate language and caveats when reporting on the results of this observational study. It notes that the findings ""do not prove that vitamin E itself protects the aging brain,"" and there is no talk about vitamin E ""lowering the risk"" of dementia. The story also provides the key details regarding how the researchers conducted the study, including the number of participants; how vitamin E intake was assessed; how long the participants were followed; what confounding factors were included in the analysis; and how much vitamin E participants were getting in the group that had the lowest risk. Had the story sought out a comment from an expert in nutritional epidemiology, they likely would have pointed out some problems with trying to assess dietary intake from a single baseline questionnaire as was used in this study. They also would have provided additional context about the MANY other studies (including other large cohorts) that have looked at associations between antioxidants and dementia/ cognitive decline. Nevertheless, readers can’t miss the take-home message, which is that these findings are not conclusive. There was no disease-mongering of dementia in this story. Although the story is generally well balanced, it could have benefited from the inclusion of an independent comment on the findings. Valuable context about prior studies and the serious limitations of the current study would have been helpful. There is currently no proven method for preventing age-related dementia. We might have wished that this story had mentioned some other diet and lifestyle choices that are associated with reduced risk in observational studies. These include staying physically active, not smoking, eating a Mediterranean-style diet (rich in fruits and vegetables and omega-3 fatty acids), and keeping your mind engaged in intellectually challenging pursuits. But since the evidence is kind of squishy for all of this, we rule this satisfactory. The story provides a list of foods that are rich in this micronutrient. The idea that vitamin E and other antioxidants might protect against dementia is not new, and the story doesn’t suggest that it is. While the story doesn’t appear to have lifted anything directly from the press release issued for this study, it also doesn’t seem to have interviewed anyone about the research. Since we can’t be sure to what extent the story relied on a release, we’ll call it not applicable."
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8329
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Cargill-led fund to pay U.S. farmers for carbon capture, exchange credits.
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Global commodities trader Cargill Inc [CARG.UL] starting this spring will pay American farmers for capturing carbon in their field soils and cutting fertilizer runoff, an executive said.
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true
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Environment
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The Soil & Water Outcomes Fund, a partnership with the Iowa Soybean Association and third-party verification company Quantified Ventures, will then sell the environmental credits created to polluters such as cities and companies, including Cargill itself, Ryan Sirolli, Director of Row Crop Sustainability at Cargill, told Reuters. The program is a welcome source of farm revenue as the price of crops such as corn and soybeans hovers near the lowest in several years after the bruising trade war between the United States and China and, now, the coronavirus pandemic that has kneecapped the global economy. It also follows rising criticism of intensive farming practices and the companies that rely on them. Environmentalists criticized Cargill last year for delaying a self-stated goal of ridding its supply chain of crops produced on deforested land. Farmers in Iowa have enrolled almost 10,000 acres in a pilot program this spring, but the group is aiming to expand the program next season and broaden it beyond Iowa, Sirolli said. Farmer Lance Lillibridge of Vinton, Iowa, enrolled about 300 acres in the program this season and expects to get at least $35 an acre, which will offset some of his planting costs. “For a farmer, our margins are really small. In fact, right now there’s no margin at all ... This is the first time that we are rewarded for our sustainability efforts,” Lillibridge said. Funded by grants from Cargill and the Walton Family Foundation, the Soil & Water Outcomes Fund will pay farmers $30 to $45 per acre this season, depending on what environmental results are confirmed, said Adam Kiel, director of conservation for the Iowa Soybean Association. “We’ve got ambitions to go more broadly beyond Iowa in future years,” Kiel said. “Farmers view this as another revenue source on their farm that’s not a government payment.” Cargill estimates the practices would prevent runoff of 100,000 pounds of nitrogen and 10,000 pounds of phosphorus this year and sequester 7,500 tons of carbon in soils, equivalent to taking 1,480 cars off the road. The fund is among the first of its kind to seek to verify and monetize the environmental benefits of farming practices such as no-till farming and planting cover crops like grass to prevent erosion. Historically, conservation schemes have paid farmers for more environmentally friendly practices but have not verified their benefits. “We’re seeing a big shift in terms of the way we look at sustainability and how the industry is looking at it,” Cargill’s Sirolli said.
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9430
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Open windows and doors can improve sleep quality
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In this very small study of 17 healthy volunteers in the Netherlands, scientists measured their sleep as they either slept in a closed room or with doors and windows open. The story claims the volunteers “slept better” with windows and door open, but gave no numbers for the amount of improvement, and didn’t do enough to let readers know this study had a lot of limitations. Sleep quality can make an enormous difference in the risk of many chronic disorders, including obesity, diabetes, heart disease and depression, according to the Centers for Disease Control. While we welcome a discussion of sleep quality, this story about a small study provides very little context for readers on how much air quality really plays a role in sleep quality.
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mixture
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sleep problems
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The opening of windows and doors has no cost. The story doesn’t quantify what “improved” sleep quality means, only generalities. For example, the story claims improvement in fewer awakenings: “The number of awakenings and sleep efficiency improved as carbon dioxide levels decreased.” But we are not given any way to understand the magnitude–how much did these things improve? There appear to be no immediate potential harms, but the story mentions indirect ones like extra noise or concerns about security. The story doesn’t sufficiently establish the quality of the evidence here–this was a small study, with lots of potential cofounders, which are factors that could have thrown off the measurements. The story mentions one limitation–the sleep monitors often fell of the study participants. But more needed to be said that this study isn’t rigorous enough to determine that sleeping with open windows or doors leads to improved sleep. There was no disease mongering. A sleep researcher who wasn’t involved in the study was interviewed, and we could detect no conflicts of interest. The story doesn’t provide alternative treatments known to improve sleep quality, such as establishing good sleep hygiene. Windows and doors are widely available, and the story mentions that opening them might not work if there are noise or security concerns. The story does not establish what makes this research novel. It’s fairly well-known that indoor air quality can be poor, and that ventilation can help circulate the air. The story does not appear to rely solely on a news release, and quotes a researcher who was not part of the project.
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9628
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Embryo screening helps couples avoid genetic diseases
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The story is a brief overview of preimplantation genetic screening, in which couples who are using in vitro fertilization (IVF) to become pregnant have embryos tested for genetic disorders before proceeding with implantation. The story does not address cost or risks in any way. But what is most puzzling is why this story was written now. There does not appear to be a news hook, and preimplantation genetic screening has been around for decades. It’s also not made clear enough that this information applies to couples undergoing IVF only. Having a child is a personal decision, and couples who have trouble conceiving have to deal with emotional challenges as well as medical ones. For families who are worried about the risk of genetic disorders, things can be even more complex. Add to this the significant financial burden involved with addressing fertility problems, and it is often an incredibly stressful and difficult ordeal. Couples grappling with these issues may look for materials online to help them understand their options. Stories that explain the costs and risks of medical techniques and procedures related to fertility and diagnosing genetic disorders can be incredibly valuable resources.
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false
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embryo screening,infertility,IVF,Pregnancy
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The story doesn’t address cost at all, which is a huge oversight in a story about preimplantation genetic screening. First of all, preimplantation genetic screening is only an option for people who are using IVF — which is expensive and often not covered by insurance. Second, the screenings themselves often cost thousands of dollars. The story doesn’t quantify benefits. The story tells readers 1 out of 33 births has a genetic disorder. We want to know: Does the screening identify all of them? How accurate are the tests? How much do they “limit the chances of an embryo carrying a chromosomal disorder from being implanted?” Readers deserve to see numbers around these limits. It’s also far from clear this applies only to IVF. The story makes it sound like this applies to any pregnancy. The story doesn’t address potential harms. A 2011 article in the journal Nursing for Women’s Health addresses the issue nicely: “The limitations of [preliminary genetic diagnosis] should be discussed with the couple, too. These include informing the couple about the possibility of misdiagnosis and also the possibility that genetic mutation-free embryos may not be identified.” Those are risks that can’t be overlooked. There is no discussion of evidence. This is a technique that has been around for more than 20 years, and has been the subject of myriad journal articles. There is no shortage of information out there. But this story offers readers very little information about how the technique works, how accurate it is, or what research supports its use. No disease mongering here. There are two sources cited here, both of whom appear to offer these fertility services in clinics where they work. The story is upfront about that. And while this type of screening is fairly controversial, that is largely due to debates over the morality of terminating an embryo. And that debate is not the focus of the story, at least not directly. The alternative to screening before implantation is not screening before implantation. That’s sufficiently clear that we’ll rate this Not Applicable. The story makes clear that preimplantation genetic screening is available, but it doesn’t make clear that it is available only for pregnancies resulting from IVF. Based on this story, readers could be forgiven for assuming that preimplantation genetic screening is a relatively recent development. But that’s not the case. As noted in the paper in Nursing for Women’s Health: “Two decades have passed since preimplantation genetic diagnosis was successfully used to benefit high-genetic-risk couples with a known genetic disorder” (emphasis added). And that paper came out five years ago. With comments from interviews with two sources, the story does appear to go beyond any news release. But the lack of any apparent news hook, and the fact that both quoted sources offer the services discussed in the story at their clinic, make us suspicious that impetus for this story is promotional rather than informational.
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37920
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Victoria's Secret bras' tracking devices are part of a sex trafficking conspiracy.
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Rumors about Victoria’s Secret bras’ trackers and RFID tags have circulated intermittently since at least 2019, and it wasn’t until the summer of 2020 that QAnon sex trafficking rumor clusters added claims that the tags also involved “sex trafficking.” As multiple news organizations have noted, a number of retailers use and have used the technology for years in order to track inventory. Although claims were rife that Victoria’s Secret RFID tags were specifically used for tracking purposes, none included a mechanism by which the technology would in any way facilitate human smuggling or trafficking.
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false
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Disinformation, Fact Checks
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In late June 2020, a Facebook user shared a video that purportedly showed Victoria’s Secret bras’ tracking devices:In a status update, an account named “Jimm Walker” wrote:THIS IS UNREAL SO 🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬🤬Summer 2020 Facebook Posts About Victoria’s Secret Bra TrackersIn a short video, Walker holds tags up to the light in apparent bafflement, eventually cutting a tag and removing a piece of plastic:Walker’s video appeared to inspire other Facebook users to dissect the tags on Victoria’s Secret bras and remove the trackers:Often, the post simply addressed the purported radio frequency identification (RFID) tracker in Victoria’s Secret bras. However, others naturally linked the viral rumors with concurrent QAnon #SaveOurChildren child trafficking theories:so the person who created and runs victoria secret buys people’s souls and he has something to do with the sex trafficking going on. did you know that if you cut your tag in half, there is a chip/tracker on the inside. if you don’t want to cut your tag to see, just put it up to the light. shocked (also tell me why the trackers are ONLY in bras and lingerie?? not shirts, sweatpants, ONLY lingerie)Earlier VariationsCirculating sex trafficking rumors in the summer of 2020 certainly drove interest in claims about RFID trackers in Victoria’s Secret bras.However, on February 19 2020, a Reddit user shared a similar post to r/1984isreality — minus the human trafficking hysteria. In that post, the original poster (OP) included images of a similar plastic tag insert, labeled “SMARTRAC”:What the heck was in my bra?! from 1984isrealityAt the top of the thread, a commenter identified the plastic “tracker” as an RFID tag, and added further claims:Congratulations, you’ve found an RFID tag, which is used for asset tracking. And that’s exactly what they’re doing, tracking your “assets”, which you are to them.https://www.smartrac-group.com/inlays-tags.htmlVictoria’s Secret Is No Longer a SecretOn an earnings call in May 2019 the CFO of L Brands (the parent company of Victoria’s Secret) mentioned that the company is introducing RFID in its stores to improve inventory accuracy and inventory visibility. He cited this as a precursor to the company’s introduction of BOPIS. More recently, at the company’s Investor Day, the COO announced that about 1,100 of the company’s stores are slated to begin using RFID by summer 2020, with almost 350 receiving these capabilities by the end of 2019.Victoria’s Secret and PINK are two of retail’s largest specialty apparel brands. Ascena and Gap Inc. are now the only heavyweight specialty apparel conglomerates in North America that have yet to declare an intention to roll out RFID in their stores. The world’s largest specialty brand (Zara) completed its rollout years ago, and the world’s second and third largest (H&M and Uniqlo, respectively) are already using RFID in most of their stores.https://risnews.com/rfid-special-report-2020-2020-inventory-accuracy-takes-center-stageNot any different than Starbucks or other retailers tracking you sadly.Edit: More on Victoria’s Secret and RFID tags and:Brands hired former Tory Burch president John Mehas as Victoria Secret’s new CEO in late 2018, but none of Mehas’ strategies — including a swimwear relaunch, e-commerce upgrades, a new RFID tracking system (for tracking and analyzing purchases), and splitting Victoria’s Secret and its younger brand PINK (led by CEO Amy Hauk) more clearly — are moving the needle.Source [link]Your bra’s are in their database and depending on where they have their RFID scanners they know how many times you come back into the store and where you walk in the store and whether your visit includes more purchases or not. They can even validate if they want, when your bra walks by their store and whether you walk in or not.Great post, and the perfect sub to ask a question like this.If you asked Victoria’s Secret what they were doing, they would tell you that it was for inventory management, which is true, that’s even if someone in the store even knew what RFID was. But it is also used to flesh out their databases on your consumer profile, which will yes, include your bras, sizes and your walking behavior and purchase history depending on how granular they’ve installed the RFID readers in their stores.Like if you buy it at store A, then wear it while in store B, C or D.One of the linked comments was to a December 28 2019 thread on r/MRI, warning users of a “burn risk” due to the tags:Victoria Secret are now embedding rfid tags into their labels posing a possible burn risk to patients from MRIThe other link was a Motley Fool article on August 23 2019 about Victoria’s Secret parent company L Brands and the use of RFID tags to track and analyze purchases.What Caused the Rumor to Go ViralAlthough at least two Reddit posts addressed RFID tags in merchandise in late 2019 and early 2020, June and July 2020 heralded an avalanche of sex trafficking conspiracies inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic and inflated by disinformation, algorithms, and credulous readers.Perhaps the most visible of the conspiracies involved another retailer, Wayfair, and the widespread rumor that the website was using its overpriced cabinets to secretly sell children online:Wayfair Child Trafficking Conspiracy TheoryOf course that theme caught on, eventually becoming a spate of rumors that COVID-19 was a coverup for elite pedophile blood-drinking child traffickers:How COVID-19 Triggered a #SaveTheChildren Child Trafficking PanicFrom there, the lightly circulating Victoria’s Secret bra tracker rumor inevitably became mashed up with the newer iterations about and variations on COVID-19, face masks, and human trafficking.Victoria’s Secret on RFID Technology in GarmentsOn July 1 2020, Victoria’s Secret addressed one of the rumors on Twitter:Like many other retailers, this technology helps us ensure we have the right products available for our customers. We only use this technology in our back room and sales floors to help us manage inventory so that our associates can efficiently support our customers’ needs.On July 2 2020, USA Today covered the claims, noting that “RFID technology is commonly used in retail stores for inventory purposes,” and “retailers using this technology include Victoria’s Secret, Lululemon, Macy’s, Levi’s, Nike and more, according to IMPINJ, a platform that uses RFID data to help businesses,” and explaining further:RFID technology uses radio waves to communicate with, identify and locate objects, and is battery-free, according to IMPIJ. The technology allows retailers to see their inventory accurately.Zara is one of many retailers that uses the technology by cycle counting inventory every six weeks to get an accurate idea of which items are selling well and which items aren’t.In a July 2015 report, Juniper Research forecast that retailers around the world will spend $2.5 billion in loT-related hardware by 2020, which includes RFID tags and other types of sensors.Jill Dvorak, vice president of content and retail strategy at the National Retail Federation, said in a statement to USA TODAY that reliance on digital channels has increased during the COVID-19 pandemic such as curbside and online pickups. The company uses RFID technology to track inventory and it is used by many retailers. The company has confirmed the purpose of the technology and there is no evidence to prove that Victoria’s Secret is using the chips to track customers. The technology is an apparel clothing as well, not just lingerie, as users claim.TL;DRRumors about Victoria’s Secret bras’ trackers and RFID tags have circulated intermittently since at least 2019, and it wasn’t until the summer of 2020 that QAnon sex trafficking rumor clusters added claims that the tags also involved “sex trafficking.” As multiple news organizations have noted, a number of retailers use and have used the technology for years in order to track inventory. Although claims were rife that Victoria’s Secret RFID tags were specifically used for tracking purposes, none included a mechanism by which the technology would in any way facilitate human smuggling or trafficking.Comments
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"In September 2019, New York City made it illegal to call anyone ""illegal"" or an ""illegal alien,"" imposing a $250,000 fine for offenders."
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Is it Now Illegal to Say ‘Illegal’ in New York City?
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mixture
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Disinformation, Fact Checks
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In late September and early October 2019, a number of posts on social media claimed that New York City had made it illegal to call anyone “illegal” or an “illegal alien.”A September 30 2019 video post by Tim Pool was titled “NYC Announced $250,000 Fine For Calling Someone ‘Illegal Alien'”:Commenters railed against the “thought police” and (incorrectly) referenced the First Amendment:That’s completely against everything the 1st Amendment is about. We should be able to say whatever the fuck what we want…period. If they can control speech, they can control your thoughtsIn some instances, the claim was described as “a new law.” On October 1 2019, the Facebook page “ForAmerica,” which often traffics in disinformation, shared a link to an article with a similarly misleading headline, “NYC Makes It Illegal to Call Someone an ‘Illegal Alien,'” providing an excellent object lesson in willfully misrepresenting the issue:Posts such as these are often shared by readers who do not click through to the text of the article. This left many with the extremely inaccurate impression that a new law had been passed so that so much as saying the word “illegal” in any context would rack up a massive fine.The attached article — which has since been updated and clarified — began by claiming:New York City declared on [September 26 2019] that using the term “illegal alien” in a derogatory way is illegal and punishable by a fine of up to $250,000.The city’s Commission on Human Rights issued new legal enforcement guidance stating that “the use of the term ‘illegal alien,’ among others, when used with the intent to demean, humiliate, or harass a person, is illegal under the law.”Also outlawed under the guidelines are “harassing and discriminating against someone for their use of another language or their limited English proficiency, and threatening to call ICE on a person based on a discriminatory motive.”As of October 2 2019, the article included a since-removed September 26 2019 post (archived here) sent by the official @NYCgov account on Twitter. Due to its deletion or removal, only the text of the tweet remained:BREAKING: New York City has made it illegal to threaten to call ICE based on a discriminatory motive or to tell someone “go back to your country.” Hate has no place here. pic.twitter.com/8PaIozjQty — City of New York (@nycgov) September 26, 2019Archived versions of the tweet showed that in addition to the allowable 280 characters on Twitter, the account attached a statement issued by the New York City Commission on Human Rights:View post on imgur.comAnother version of the statement was available [PDF] on NYC.gov, New York City’s official website. The first of three pages was visible in the original tweet, and the included title and text portion said:NYC COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS ANNOUNCES NEW LEGAL ENFORCEMENT GUIDANCE AND ACTIONS AGAINST DISCRIMINATION BASED ON IMMIGRATION STATUS AND NATIONAL ORIGINNEW YORK –The NYC Commission on Human Rights released today new legal enforcement guidance that defines discrimination on the basis of perceived or actual immigration status and national origin under the New York City Human Rights Law in public accommodations, employment, and housing. The guidance states that the use of the term “illegal alien,” among others, when used with intent to demean, humiliate, or harass a person, is illegal under the law. Further, the guidance stipulates that harassing or discriminating against someone for their use of another language or their limited English proficiency, and threatening to call ICE on a person based on a discriminatory motive, are considered to be in violation of the law. Fines of up to $250,000 can be assessed for each act of willful discrimination, and damages are available to complainants.In the excerpt above, we emphasized context that was almost always left out of posts on social media about the legal enforcement guidelines. In the first sentence of the statement, the Commission on Human Rights made it clear that the guidance applied only to public accommodations, employment, and housing.The commission also noted that discrimination on the basis of national origin or immigration status has been illegal for decades in New York City as of 2019. The statement went on to provide examples of harassment under the scope of the law:Discrimination on the basis of immigration status and national origin have been illegal in New York City for decades. The guidance reaffirms these protections, as well as provides specific examples of discrimination in housing, public accommodations, and employment. […]Along with the release of the guidance, the Commission is announcing that it is currently investigating four discrimination cases in which ICE was used as a threat to intimidate or harass a tenant in housing, one of which was recently reported on in the Wall Street Journal after a finding of discrimination and recommendation from an administrative judge.It continued by citing landlord refusal to repair unlivable units, reducing or withholding wages, and harassment of customers in public spaces as circumstances that fell under its purview. Further examples were provided to clarify the guidance:In addition to employment and housing, the above protections extend to all users of public accommodations, including businesses such as restaurants, fitness clubs, stores, and nightclubs, and other public spaces, like parks, libraries, healthcare providers, and cultural institutions.Near the end of the statement, the commission explained its reasoning in issuing the guidance:“Across the country we have seen forced labor, extortion, wage theft, and other lawless action directed at immigrant communities, and today we are expressing our commitment to confront, address, and prevent these abuses in our city. NYC has benefitted from a history rich with contributions from immigrant communities. We honor that history by making clear that abuse of any person based on their actual or perceived immigration status will not be tolerated here,” said Cathy Albisa, Executive Director of the National Economic & Social Rights Initiative and Commissioner for the New York City Commission on Human Rights.According to widely-shared Facebook posts, New York City passed a “new law” making it “illegal” to call someone “illegal” or an “illegal alien,” with fines for violations ranging up to $250,000. In actuality, the New York City Commission on Human Rights issued a statement on September 26 2019 reiterating that “discrimination on the basis of immigration status and national origin have been illegal in New York City for decades.” New York City’s Human Rights Commission noted that the toxicity of the national discourse led the City to make “clear that abuse of any person based on their actual or perceived immigration status will not be tolerated here.”No “new law” was passed, and the guidance in question only applied to landlords, employers, and business owners legally prohibited from discriminating against the public — none of it was novel, and everyday citizens of New York City would not be fined $250,000 for using the language cited in the statement.Update 10/7/2019, 9:37am: Corrected “allowable 140 characters on Twitter” to “allowable 280 characters on Twitter.” We regret the error. –bbUpdate 10/21/2019, 9:09am: Text now reflects that Pluralist has updated their story to clarify the issue. -bb
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‘Heartbreaking’ report shows virus ravaging NY nursing homes.
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New York, by far the nation’s leader in coronavirus nursing home deaths, released details Friday on outbreaks in individual facilities after weeks of refusing, revealing one home in Brooklyn where 55 people died and four others with at least 40 deaths.
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true
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AP Top News, New York, Health, Brooklyn, Nursing homes, Virus Outbreak, General News, U.S. News
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“Every death is heartbreaking,” said Dr. Roy Goldberg, medical director at Kings Harbor Multicare Center, a 720-bed home in the Bronx which reported 45 fatalities. “These have been surreal times.” The state’s accounting of multiple deaths at 68 nursing homes was based on a survey and is substantially incomplete. It accounted for less than half of the 2,690 nursing home deaths that have been reported in the state. It also didn’t include people who got sick in nursing homes, but then died at hospitals. But it was the first time the state provided any information about homes that, according to an Associated Press tally, account for nearly 40% of the nation’s 6,912 deaths in such facilities At the top of the list with 55 deaths was Cobble Hill Health Center, a 300-bed facility in a 19th-century former hospital in a tony section of Brooklyn. Four ambulances arrived within an hour at the facility Friday, underscoring the ongoing crisis. Police showed up to assist with the removal of bodies, including one that was wheeled out the front door. The Cobble Hill home said in a statement that the deaths it reported were “based on the possibility of COVID-19 being a factor,” adding testing in nursing homes remains “extremely difficult to obtain.” “Although we’ve had an increase in deaths during the past few weeks, we have not been able to confirm that the deaths are specifically related to COVID-19,” the statement said. A total of 19 homes in New York’s report listed 20 deaths or more. The survey’s release came a day after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration reversed course and promised transparency about the worst outbreaks, after previously saying residents at the hardest-hit homes deserved privacy. Few states have released such information. Cuomo did not respond directly when asked at his daily coronavirus briefing why his administration had not alerted the public about the outbreaks sooner. “We’ve been talking about nursing homes every day for the past 30 days,” Cuomo said. “We’ve said 157 times the most vulnerable population are seniors, the most vulnerable places are nursing homes. ... I think we’ve been talking about it all along.” The state’s list omitted homes with fewer than five deaths. Connecticut released a similar list Thursday, reporting that eight nursing homes had at least 10 residents die. In Connecticut, nursing home residents account for 375 of the state’s 971 virus deaths. Officials at several of the nursing homes on the list said they were doing their best, and attributed the high number of deaths to the fragility of their patients and difficulty in keeping the virus out, rather than substandard care. “We have had our share of sadness,” Lina Scacco, an assistant vice president at Parker Jewish Institute for Health Care and Rehabilitation in New Hyde Park, where 38 people have died. “We’re all grieving here.” Scacco said the facility, whose residents include war veterans and Holocaust survivors was ravaged despite having infection control practices that exceed CDC and health department regulations and guidelines. Now, she said, they’re planning virtual memorials for residents who’ve died and grief counseling for staff members. “This has been devastating to our families,” Scacco said. Stephen Hanse, president and CEO of the New York State Health Facilities Association and the New York State Center for Assisted Living, said the figures reflect the fact that those facilities are dealing with extremely vulnerable patients. “Outbreaks are not the result of inattentiveness or a shortcoming in our facilities,” he wrote in a statement. “The very nature of long-term care is a high touch environment where social distancing is not an option. Staff are helping residents with bathing, dressing, eating and other personal daily needs.” He also blamed the state health department for worsening the situation by barring nursing homes from denying admission to patients with COVID-19 if they were medically stable. Nursing homes have been known since the earliest days of the outbreak as a likely trouble spot. A home in Washington state lost 43 residents early in the virus’s spread into the country. Italy, which was hit before the U.S., is also in the midst of a nursing home crisis, with health officials there estimating Friday that thousands of patients there have been killed by the virus. Yet even with that early warning, many nursing homes remained without adequate supplies of personal protective equipment. Testing for residents and staff remains spotty, at best. Federal officials in mid-March banned visitors, halted group activities and ordered mandatory screening of workers for respiratory symptoms, but by then the virus had quietly spread widely. Kings Harbor’s medical director, Goldberg, said staff members there created two dedicated COVID-19 units to treat infected patients and followed “every department of health and CDC recommendation and regulation.” “Obtaining PPE has always been a struggle,” he added, “but we’ve always stayed one step ahead.” New York state’s health commissioner, Howard Zucker, said the state is providing enough personal protective equipment for nursing homes and helping with staffing. “We’re working with each individual nursing home to address that. We contact them and if there’s a need for PPE ... we have stockpiles.” Many nursing home administrators also previously declined to release information, leading Cuomo to say this week that the state would begin requiring homes to inform patients and their families within 24 hours if a resident got the virus or died. Chris Laxton, executive director of the The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, applauded the state for releasing the data. But he said facilities still desperately need the state’s help. “We continue to be in urgent need of PPE, especially gowns, test kits, and surge staff, to limit staff from traveling between buildings and risking additional spread,′ Laxton said. Some nursing homes have disclosed information voluntarily that differed from the numbers put out by the state Friday. The state survey listed 10 deaths at the Montgomery Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, about 50 miles north of New York City, but facility Vice President Vincent Maniscalco said 21 residents have died recently. Eight of those patients, he said, had symptoms consistent with the virus but died prior to being tested. “It’s been a very trying time for the staff, to lose residents they care for day in and day out,” Maniscalco said. Outbreaks killed 46 at a nursing home in suburban Richmond, Virginia, and 22 at a home in central Indiana. County officials in northern New Jersey said Thursday that at least 26 patients had died at a nursing home in Andover. An Associated Press report found infections were continuing to find their way into nursing homes because screening staff for a fever or questioning them about symptoms didn’t catch people who were infected but asymptomatic. — Associated Press writers Michael R. Sisak and David R. Martin and investigative researcher Randy Herschaft contributed to this report.
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Facebook post Says fluid milk production limitations mean grocery stores are short on milk even as farmers are dumping it
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A Facebook video focuses on bottling limitations for liquid milk to explain the need for milk dumping. That is a factor, but so is the plunging demand for cheese, butter and other dairy products with restaurants shuttered. And the types of dairy products needed have changed with people confined to their homes, which factories aren’t immediately able to adapt to.
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mixture
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Economy, Wisconsin, Coronavirus, Facebook posts,
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"Soaring milk production and plummeting consumption have dealt a series of devastating blows to Wisconsin dairy farmers in recent years. But the coronavirus pandemic has been a next-level gut-shot. Shuttered schools and restaurants have cut off much of the demand for dairy, even as panicked shoppers bought out milk and other dairy products — and just about everything else in sight — as the quarantine began. A heavily-viewed Facebook video painted the scene this way: ""Although grocery store dairy shelves remain sparse … dairy farmers are being forced to dump thousands of pounds of milk down the drain,"" says the two-minute clip from Courtenay DeHoff TV. The clip goes on to say it’s not as simple as shifting production from school products to grocery store ones. ""Production lines are shuttering, and they’re scrambling to suddenly mass produce jugs when they are used to mass producing the little cardboard boxes handed out at schools."" This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Are farmers really dumping milk even as grocery stores are short of it? And are production limitations on liquid milk to blame? We checked it out. Experts we spoke with said the factors cited in the video are accurate, but said a few other important elements are at play as well. The quarantine has affected both the way liquid milk is consumed and the kind of processed dairy products needed. The Wall Street Journal said that has left dairy producers with at least 10% more milk than the industry can use. Dennis Rodenbaugh, executive vice president at Dairy Farmers of America, the largest U.S. dairy cooperative, told the Wall Street Journal for an April 9, 2020, story that as much as 7% of the milk produced in the U.S. the prior week was dumped. Patrick Geoghegan, executive vice president of industry relations for Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin, said the market swings have been enormous. ""Milk is being disposed of because of a massive and sudden loss of markets — more than half the nation’s restaurants are closed, sales of cheese are down 70 percent and some 44 percent of the nation’s cheese is sold through foodservice channels,"" he said in an email to PolitiFact Wisconsin, citing the group’s industry research. Some of the demand that remains is for products the industry isn’t set up to immediately produce. Shifting butter production, for example, from tiny packets for restaurants to large blocks for grocery stores can’t happen overnight. But the use of liquid milk had changed dramatically as well — and that’s the element the Facebook video focused on. Geoghegan said sales of fluid milk were up 55% for two consecutive weeks in March, though by early April it had fallen back to about 35% above norm. As of early April, grocery stores are more consistently stocked, but there simply wasn’t the space or production to meet that initial demand in time. ""The shelf just doesn’t hold enough and they (couldn’t) restock often enough,"" said Doug Adams, president of Prime Consulting, which researches the dairy industry. Dean Foods confirmed that their shift in production was in line with what the video described. They reduced production of paperboard milk cartons for schools by ""well over 50%"" after schools closed. ""As panic buying reached its peak, we shifted production to focus on products most in demand (whole and 2% milk for retail business) to maximize our output efficiency,"" said Anne Divjak, vice president of government relations & external communications. ""Demand has since normalized and we are back to normal production runs but still seeing significant declines in school milk and foodservice business."" School milk does comprise about 7% of all liquid milk sales, Adams said. But much of that demand remains since school feeding programs remain active. Geoghegan said there have even been intermittent shortages of school milk, since bottlers have diverted resources to meet grocery store demand. A Facebook video focused on liquid milk said bottling limitations mean grocery stores are short on milk even as farmers are dumping it. That is a factor, but it over-simplifies the situation a bit. Disappearing markets for cheese, butter and other dairy products in restaurants play a critical role in the suddenly changing dairy economy as well, experts say. Milk is being dumped not just because it can’t be bottled in the proper way, but because the overall demand for all dairy products is down. And because the forms of butter and cheese needed have changed with people largely confined to their homes."
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Watchdog: Staff issues affect care at reservation hospitals.
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The internal watchdog of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services says the often-substandard quality of care at hospitals serving Native Americans is the result of outdated equipment and technology, lack of resources and difficulty attracting and keeping skilled staff.
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true
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Health care services, SD State Wire, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health, U.S. News, Native Americans
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The Office of Inspector General on Friday released two reports that look into the longstanding challenges of the 28 hospitals directly operated by the federal Indian Health Service. The OIG, which acknowledged that reports of inadequate health care services for Native Americans have been of concern to the federal government for almost a century, criticized the agency’s limited oversight regarding compliance with federal regulations and quality of care, detailing how the agency’s regional administrators have few sources of information to assess the services provided at the facilities. The Indian Health Service, commonly referred to as IHS, is responsible for providing health care services to enrolled tribal members as part of the government’s treaty obligations to Native American tribes. But the agency has faced challenges for decades, and within the past year it has been under increased scrutiny from Congress after inspections of hospitals in the Great Plains uncovered severe deficiencies. The OIG says IHS’s eight regional offices conduct activities to monitor the quality of the facilities, but those efforts are minimal in some areas. One of the reports states that the primary source of information that the regional offices use to detect quality problems is a small number of complaints and patient harm reports. “However, according to hospital administrators, most patient complaints relate to customer service and wait times, rather than medical care,” according to the report. “Further, most hospitals (20 of 28) receive fewer than 100 complaints per year for inpatient and outpatient visits combined, averaging about 1 complaint per 1,000 patient visits. ... Considering the quantity and subject matter of complaints and patient harm reports, they are unlikely to provide hospital staff with the breadth of information needed to identify and diagnose systemic quality or compliance breakdowns.” The OIG, which gathered the information for the reports between April and October 2014, also said that only half of the regional offices conducted mock inspection surveys that could provide insight regarding the facilities’ quality practices. The watchdog also faulted the IHS for staggering findings of outdated facilities and the weekslong process that job applicants must follow, even when the physician vacancy rate was 33 percent at the time the information for the reports was gathered. According to the report, in 15 of the 28 hospitals, administrators reported that aging or inadequate physical environments affected their ability to give quality care. Corroded pipes in one hospital caused sewage to leak into the operating room. The IHS has now been under scrutiny for more than a year after inspectors from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, known as CMS, found several quality-of-care deficiencies at hospitals in South Dakota and Nebraska. At one facility, the alarming conditions of its emergency room led officials to close it for seven months. The OIG on Friday recommended that CMS inspectors survey IHS facilities more frequently. The IHS in a statement Friday concurred with recommendations made by the OIG, including the need for more training for staffers and new ways to monitor hospital quality. The IHS also said it began a mock survey initiative at 26 hospitals in May 2016 to assess compliance with the standards that facilities must meet to be able to participate in the Medicare program. The IHS’s statement also highlighted a team that was formed in February 2016 “to ensure that dependable, quality care is delivered consistently across IHS facilities.” ___ Follow Regina Garcia Cano on Twitter at https://twitter.com/reginagarciakNO ___ Associated Press writer James Nord contributed to this report from Pierre, South Dakota.
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U.S. panel triples Vitamin D intake guideline
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Most readers would take the headline “U.S. panel triples Vitamin D intake guideline” to mean that people should seek to increase their consumption, when in fact the committee concluded that while recommending a higher daily intake of vitamin D than another committee did in 1997, almost all Americans already consume enough D and calcium. By including multiple comments from members of the committee as well as other experts who dissent from some of the report findings, the story shows readers that while this report represents a consensus, it does not mean there is unanimity among researchers. This story should have alerted readers that at least some of the experts quoted appear to have financial interests in this field. The huge national spending on vitamin D supplements shows that people are interested in the potential health benefits. While this story does a generally good job on the details of the Institute of Medicine report and reactions to it, casual readers will be misled by the headline and lead sentence that are out of sync with the tenor of the recommendations. In addition, there is a tone to the article – largely through the voices of interviewees – that may lead readers to think that the IOM panel was far too conservative in its conclusions. In comparison, the NY Times piece early and often stresses – early and often – that supplements are “unnecessary, harmful” and that “this report will make people more cautious.” Readers may also want to see Paul Raeburn’s comments on the Knight Science Journalism Tracker about different framing of stories on this IOM report: “How did we arrive at so many stories out of one report? …None of these stories is wrong. They simply reflect better, or worse, choices concerning what to focus on in a report such as this with multiple conclusions.”
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true
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Philadelphia Inquirer,Supplements
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Although this story does not specifically report the cost of Vitamin D supplements, it does note that Americans spent $425 million on Vitamin D supplements in 2009 and that the spending had increased 10-fold since 2001. Simply reporting the list price of Vitamin D pills, which are just a few pennies each, might lead readers to dismiss the cost implications of this sort of recommendation; so reporting the national spending is more informative. Despite the clashing headline and lead sentence that appear to imply that Americans would benefit from increasing their vitamin D consumption, the body of the story clearly reports the conclusion of the Institute of Medicine committee that almost all Americans already consume enough vitamin D and calcium to maintain their bones… and that evidence is lacking to conclude there are other health benefits. Readers are also shown comments from individual researchers who believe their studies point to other benefits. Some of the comments appear to misstate what the Institute of Medicine actually concluded, for example, that the committee “appreciated that everyone needs more Vitamin D.” Nevertheless, on balance readers should be able to distinguish between the recommendations of the IOM committee and the opinions of individual scientists. The story doesn’t define precisely what is meant by “bone health” or “skeletal health;” however, since the IOM report made its recommendation based on a broad review of the evidence, rather that a single experiment, it does not seem necessary for this story to try to include detailed numbers about bone health or other outcomes. Although the story mentions that the Institute of Medicine committee defined upper limits of vitamin D and calcium consumption, below which harms are unlikely, it does not tell readers that the report highlighted the potential harms of excessive consumption of calcium has been associated with kidney stones and that very high levels of vitamin D are known to cause kidney and tissue damage. Increased rates of bone fractures and overall mortality have also been reported in some studies that the IOM committee looked at. (The New York Times story, by comparison, touched on most of these harms.) The story is clear that the Institute of Medicine report is based on a review of the available evidence on vitamin D and calcium. It notes that the committee found many of the studies were not able to demonstrate cause-and-effect and that the results were often contradictory, except for consistent evidence of benefits for bone health. The story also includes comments from dissenting researchers. These comments help readers understand that while this report represents a consensus of experts, there is still active debate about key aspects of the role of vitamin D and calcium in health. The story clearly reports that the Institute of Medicine committee concluded most Americans already consume adequate amounts of vitamin D. The headline, however, could lead casual readers to believe that the report urges a tripling of vitamin D consumption, the opposite of the actual intent of the Institute of Medicine committee. A mixed bag on this. The story includes comments from multiple independent sources. However, the story can be criticized for not clearly stating some potential conflicts of interest. For instance, one of the critics of the Institute of Medicine committee’s conclusions, Bruce W. Hollis, has been a consultant to a company that sells diagnostic tests for vitamin D blood levels and he was awarded at least one patent for a vitamin D assay. Reference: Inventor: Hollis, Bruce Warren (Charleston, SC) 1998 Vitamin D assay Assignee: Nhh, Biologics (East Amherst, NY) patent number: 5821020 http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5821020.html That’s worth at least a nod in the story. The story explains that there are alternatives to supplements; that vitamin D is included in foods (natural and fortified) and that vitamin D is produced in our skin when exposed to sunlight. The story reports that Vitamin D is present in certain foods, as a fortified element in many foods, as a common pill and as a byproduct of exposure to sunlight. There is no claim of novelty. The story does not appear to rely on a news release.
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Deadly deer virus found in Minnesota for the first time.
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Deer from a private herd on a Minnesota farm have contracted a deadly virus that until now has not yet been seen in the state.
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true
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Animals, Health, Deer, Minnesota, Animal health, Wildlife
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Minnesota Board of Animal Health officials say the virus was confirmed in seven deer on a Goodhue County farm and six have died. The virus, called epizootic hemorrhagic disease, or EHD, is carried by biting flies and causes rapid death from internal bleeding. No vaccine is available for infected animals. State wildlife officials say there’s no indication the virus is present in the wild deer population. And, although it’s the first time the virus has been detected in deer in Minnesota, it has been present in the Dakotas, Wisconsin and Iowa. The Star Tribune reports there are no known health risks to humans. ___ Information from: Star Tribune, http://www.startribune.com
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India bets on mobiles in battle on maternal, child deaths.
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India is betting on cheap mobile phones to cut some of the world’s highest rates of maternal and child deaths, as it rolls out a campaign of voice messages delivering health advice to pregnant women and mothers.
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true
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Health News
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Amid a scarcity of doctors and public hospitals, India is relying on its mobile telephone network, the second largest in the world with 950 million connections, to reach places where health workers rarely go. “It’s a huge priority for us,” health ministry official Manoj Jhalani told Reuters, adding that the service, advising on vaccinations and vitamin supplements, will launch in eight of the country’s Hindi-speaking states by Aug. 15.”These are the most cost-effective health interventions,” said Jhalani, the supervisor of the project, named ‘Kilkari,’ or “Baby’s Gurgle”, which will tailor its recorded messages to individual stages of pregnancy or the age of a newborn. Poor sanitary conditions and stark poverty prevail in many villages in India, which recorded 50,000 maternal deaths in 2013, when 1.3 million children died before turning five. Preventable hazards such as pneumonia, or poor nutrition, cause most deaths of mothers and babies. Many women give birth at home without access to clean water and toilets, while public medical clinics remain dilapidated and overcrowded. Over the last 18 months, almost 100,000 rural families have signed up for the voice message project, first piloted by the government of the impoverished, but resource-rich, eastern state of Bihar. With India’s health services starved for funds, the mobile phone messages are a cheaper way to spread basic tips on health. Payment delays have led to months of disruption in the traditional system of home visits by health workers to encourage pregnant women to take medicine and follow safety measures. The new project, backed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the charity arm of British broadcaster BBC, will make use of a national database to track pregnant women. Another service, Mobile Academy, will also use recorded messages to help train India’s millions of health workers. Health experts welcome the initiatives, but warn such mobile phone campaigns will not be enough to cut mortality rates unless India ramps up health services, particularly in rural areas. “This (mobile services) will have a very marginal effect,” said Dileep Mavalankar, director of the Indian Institute of Public Health in the western state of Gujarat, adding that the health system needed to be strengthened in remote areas.
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35730
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In a policy that established requirements for people to wear masks in most public settings during the COVID-19 pandemic, Oregon's Lincoln County said in June 2020 residents of color are exempt from the rule.
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On June 24, 2020, county officials issued a statement in which they said they had received “horrifically racist commentary” and were the subject of unprecedented “vitriol” from people countrywide after their mask rule went public. To explain their rationale for why they allowed people of color to be exempt from the public health requirement, the statement read:
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mixture
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Politics, COVID-19
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In light of recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for all Americans to wear facial coverings to curb the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic, numerous U.S. states and cities passed laws to establish their own set of requirements on masks in public settings in mid-2020. In Oregon, Gov. Kate Brown required seven counties to create guidelines by June 24, 2020, as businesses reopened after a months-long shutdown to limit in-person gatherings and the state’s total of COVID-19 cases increased. While authoring the directives, those Oregon counties — Multnomah, Washington, Clackamas, Hood River, Marion, Polk and, most notably, Lincoln — could decide if, or to what extent, they would enforce the requirements and to whom they would apply in their jurisdiction. That said, Lincoln County’s take on Brown’s assignment sparked allegations of racial prejudice and created a platform for people nationwide who believed all government-issued requirements on masks were unnecessary. In the days after the Lincoln County policy’s initial release on June 17, 2020, numerous people reached out to us to confirm whether the county had indeed written its rule on facial coverings so it would only apply to white residents. The question was largely a response to stories in right-wing media outlets including Breitbart with headlines such as, “Oregon County issues mask order that exempts ‘people of color’” or “Oregon County Issues Coronavirus Mask Mandate, But Only For White People,” as well as articles in the New York Post and other tabloids. A post on a site called Pacific Pundit that says its dedicated to exposing media bias claimed: If you needed any more proof that this whole COVID-19 and face mask crap was about power and control, I present to you Lincoln County, Oregon. There is only one group of people who must wear face masks and that’s white people … This whole mask order not only is about control, but it sounds pretty racist to me. Before we delve into the claim, some context. Since the CDC’s advisory that everyone wear masks in public settings where they can’t maintain a 6-foot distance from others, numerous Black men and academics have expressed concerns over the facial coverings putting Black Americans at risk of racial profiling, whether in areas where officials are monitoring for compliance with the mask requirements, or where people are simply prone to stereotyping. Kevin Gaines, the Julian Bond professor of civil rights and social justice at the University of Virginia, said in a New York Times story on April 14, 2020: Black people are profiled by police on a regular basis. … And actually, the problem, at least recently, has become even larger than that. … Many whites are just uncomfortable encountering many black people, pandemic or no pandemic, masks or no masks. On April 17, 2020, a group of U.S. senators — Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Richard Durbin, D-Illinois, Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, and Benjamin Cardin, D-Maryland — wrote a letter to leaders of the FBI and Department of Justice outlining a series of incidents in which Black men wearing protective masks were judged based on their appearance, including a citation to a case in which a Florida doctor was handcuffed and detained by police officers near his home. The letter also stated that some Black men reported being harassed for not wearing facial coverings during the pandemic. To investigate the above-mentioned claim that Lincoln County — a rural, coastal county where almost 90 percent of its nearly 50,000 residents are white (per 2019 Census data) — had mandated that only white people wear masks, we referred to the county’s Health and Human Service Department’s website. On June 17, 2020, the department (with support from the county’s three-person board of commissioners) issued a directive that said all residents must wear masks in indoor public settings and outdoor spaces where they can’t maintain social distancing, unless they were part of the following groups: In other words, it was accurate to claim Lincoln County officials had issued a policy requiring masks that only applied to white residents. We should note here that the rule, as well as guidelines on facial coverings in Oregon’s Clackamas and Multnomah counties, were not written with the intention of citing people who disobeyed but were more so about making sure employers and businesses made masks available to people, according to county leaders. The Lincoln County policy reads: The Directive is self-executing. All persons in Lincoln County are expected to adhere to its terms. Violation of the Directive does not constitute or create grounds for private persons or public employees, including law enforcement, to stop, detain, issue a citation or undertake any other enforcement action … Nevertheless, the Lincoln County measure faced swift and fierce backlash from right-wing commentators who alleged the rule put unfair restrictions on white residents and others who were confused by, what was interpreted to be, the county’s lack of concern for its non-white population’s health. One Twitter user wrote: “I thought the mask was to protect others so are they saying they don’t care if people of color get the virus? Can’t they give it to each other if they don’t wear a mask if this is true?” And a comment on Newsweek’s story on the Lincoln County measure stated: I’m Mexican-American, I’ve lived with people of all colors my entire life. …[We] must stand up to the race-mongering hysteria or we will never ever see the end of racism. Don’t let the far left take society backwards with race warfare. If we don’t stop it racism will just go on and on and one with different racial targets every 20 years for eternity.
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18557
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"Marion Hammer Says rabid animals from other states carry ""different strains of rabies"" that Florida ""vaccines and serums don’t affect."
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"Hammer claimed rabies strains carried by animals in other states ""are entirely different from Florida's, and our vaccines and serums don’t affect those other strains of rabies."" Her claim about vaccines was rebutted by veterinarians and disease experts. Even more, she admitted not fleshing out her talking points before the committee meeting."
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false
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Animals, Florida, Marion Hammer,
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"Marion Hammer, 35-year lobbyist of the National Rifle Association, is a powerful force for gun rights in Florida. So it surprised us to see her speak up at a Florida Senate committee discussion about, of all topics, animal shelters. The measure at hand would require animal shelters and animal control agencies that accept public money to keep records for the cats and dogs they take in and what happens to them. Many facilities don’t keep this kind of data and do not make the information public upon request, making it hard to grasp the scope of rescue efforts, according to a committee analysis of SB 674. Hammer is executive director of the United Sportsmen of Florida, an advocacy group she founded that values hunting. Essential to hunting are hunting dogs, which are vulnerable to bites from rabid animals. Animal ""dumping"" by no-kill animal shelters endangers hunting dogs, sheepdogs, cattle dogs, trial dogs and so on, she said. She thinks the bill requiring shelters to keep records of their animal intake will lead to accountability and less risk for domestic pets. ""Most people don't know, for example, that animals that come from other states, like Texas, carry different strains of rabies,"" she told the Senate Community Affairs Committee on April 2. ""And those strains of rabies are entirely different from Florida's, and our vaccines and serums don’t affect those other strains of rabies."" Anyone who has watched Old Yeller knows the tragic fate awaiting an unvaccinated family pet infected by a rabid animal. We wondered, though, if Hammer was right about rabies vaccines not being effective against rabid animals from other states. Rabid rundown The viral disease is passed on through saliva, affecting the brain and eventually leading to death. Cases of human rabies are rare in the United States, though humans are most likely to contract the disease from wild mammals, such as bats, skunks, raccoons and foxes, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Rabies is preventable by a vaccine made from killed virus. The vaccine is given in a series of three to five shots in the shoulder. For those wondering, the vaccine cannot cause rabies. (Read more about how the vaccine is made here.) There are different strains of rabies based on the animal that tends to contract it, and these variants can cross species, said Dr. Kimberly May, a veterinarian and American Veterinary Medicine Association spokeswoman. The canine rabies strain, for example, is no longer in the United States, but dogs and other mammals can still be infected by strains from other animals. Moving animals from state to state can increase the risk of bringing in variants of the rabies strain, said Dr. Julie Levy, director of the Maddie’s Shelter Medicine Program at the University of Florida’s College of Veterinary Medicine. She pointed to two Florida examples, including in 1994, when rabid coyotes were brought from Texas for foxpen hunting in Florida. It led to an outbreak among unvaccinated hunting dogs, resulting in the vaccinations of 29 people and euthanization of dozens of dogs and wildlife, she said. About the vaccine? Hammer ""couldn’t be more wrong about rabies,"" May stressed. The protections offered by rabies vaccines do not vary by region. ""A dog vaccinated against rabies in Florida is also considered vaccinated against rabies in Illinois,"" she said by email. ""Or Texas. Or any other state."" Levy agreed, saying the vaccines are highly protective. ""That is why dogs and cats that are well-vaccinated against rabies are protected against the strains that are carried by wildlife,"" Levy said. ""The bigger risk would be introducing new strains into our wildlife reservoirs, because wildlife is not vaccinated."" We posed the question to Dr. Charles Rupprecht, research director for the Global Alliance for Rabies Control. Same answer: ""All licensed human and animal vaccines will protect against all rabies virus variants in the New World."" After reading our inquiry, Hammer called her veterinarian. She had checked with him before the meeting to confirm what an Alachua hunting dog breeder told her about varying strains of rabies from Texas. But she forgot to ask about the vaccine part. ""Now they’ve got it worked out so it that vaccine works for just about everyone,"" she said after talking again with her vet. ""I just didn’t take it far enough."" Our ruling Hammer claimed rabies strains carried by animals in other states ""are entirely different from Florida's, and our vaccines and serums don’t affect those other strains of rabies."" Her claim about vaccines was rebutted by veterinarians and disease experts. Even more, she admitted not fleshing out her talking points before the committee meeting."
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9550
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Anti-inflammatory drugs might someday treat depression
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CNN’s story about the potential future use of a type of anti-inflammatory drug to treat depression is based largely on research described in a news release issued by the University of Cambridge. The story accurately reports serious interest by the principal investigator of the new research, and others, in tantalizing links between the immune system’s responsive inflammatory chemicals–cytokines–and mental illness. In this case, the investigators accumulated evidence for the potential value of anti-cytokine therapy by focusing on anti-depressant effects of the drugs reported as side effects in a meta-analysis of 7 substantial clinical studies, mostly involving those with autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis. The story quotes the principal investigator’s explanation for those links. But unlike the study and the news release (which we also reviewed), it waits until the last two sentences to point out that the antidepressant effects of anti-cytokine drugs are at best “mild,” and essentially fails to point out that even if the new drugs were eventually proven safe and effective for depression, it’s likely that only a small subset of depressed people–those with chronic inflammation and resistant to current antidepressants–would find benefit over and above what other treatments already offer. It’s worth noting that the news release did a better job of pointing out the limitations and side effects of any use of anti-cytokines in the future; and of making clear that randomized clinical trials are needed even to get near the point of using the drugs. Neither the news release nor the story, though, talked about the cost of this relatively new class of anti-inflammatories, some of which which are currently heavily advertised, but used to treat only severe cases of autoimmune disorders. Depression is a major worldwide disability that often goes undiagnosed or untreated. The National Institute of Mental Health estimates worldwide prevalence at 3.7 percent of adults and some estimates put the U.S. adult prevalence for major depressive illness as high as 7 percent. The costs in disability, lost productivity, and treatment are staggering; access to therapists is increasingly difficult. First-line drug therapies are often effective, but for many with chronic depression, don’t work. As a result, news about new classes of drugs or combinations of drugs to treat depression, brings huge audiences, and good coverage of such news must reflect practical realities and limitations.
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mixture
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drug costs,mental illness
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Information on the steep costs of some of these drugs is readily available, along with data on whether insurers will pay for them. There is no discussion of costs in the story about this, nor does the story mention a single one of the drugs by name–adalimubab and etanercept are two–so that readers can look for themselves. It is particularly important to mention cost in this case because biologics (the drug class in question) are notoriously expensive (adalimubab is estimated around $1,600 a month) while most first-line generic treatments for depression, like SSRIs, are much more affordable (often less than $20/month). The story makes–and attributes–statements saying studies showed the use of the anti-cytokines “improved symptoms of depression” and “lessened symptoms of depression” even in the absence of efficacy for reducing inflammation. But there are no statistics given to explain what “lessened” or “improved” means and very little about the 20 studies on which the researchers’ conclusions about the potential anti-depressant benefits of the new drugs are based. Except for a modest reference to clinical trials “still testing their efficacy and safety” for human use, and a sentence saying that “side effects must also be investigated,” the discussion of harms in this story would leave readers with the impression that these drugs don’t have any notable, already-well-known side effects. But they do. A quick check of one of the drugs (etanercept) for example, currently prescribed for some autoimmune conditions, notes that serious side effects may include heart failure, lethal blood disorders and serious infections brought on by the suppression of the immune system by way of reductions in inflammation. Seeking the input of an independent source to discuss these harms and risks as they compare to standard antidepressant treatment would have been helpful, too. The story mentions there was a meta-analysis of 20 randomized clinical trials, but offers no information about the makeup of the patient populations in those trials, the specific drugs involved in the trials, or baseline symptoms and diagnoses. As we note in our review of the news release, the meta-analysis was limited in what it could extrapolate because the anti-depressive effect was a secondary outcome of these clinical trials, which were all looking at these drugs for how they treat serious autoimmune disorders, not depression. The news release did better on this one. No mongering here, as depression is a serious illness. The story would have been stronger if it had included information on the prevalence of serious depression, and the makeup of the subset of people who might benefit from the new drugs. Also, making the connection between inflammation (a vaguely defined and far-reaching phenomenon) and depression could inspire some unfounded concerns among readers that they or their family members are at risk for the latter. The CNN story offers a quote from a source not associated with the research; and it offers links to websites and other sources where readers could find out more about funding and sponsorship of the study. This is a strong point of the story. The story makes an oblique and somewhat misleading reference to research suggesting anti-cytokines are better than “antipsychotic” medicines, but no reference at all to types and use of antidepressants, many of which are effective. The story notes that more research needs to be done before the new anti-inflammatories could be prescribed as a direct therapy for depression, and one of the researchers notes that it’s too early to prescribe them for depression. We also liked that the story mentioned other diseases that are treated by anti-inflammatories. The story does note what is novel about anti-cytokines and their possible link to mental illness, although the story would have been stronger had it connected the dots more specifically about the possible mechanism by which inflammation might affect the chemistry of the depressed brain and mind. The story, as noted earlier, relies heavily on a news release, but CNN’s writer did interview an independent source.
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8767
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Bristol, Pfizer to delay clot drug after setback.
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Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Pfizer Inc said on Tuesday their apixaban blood clot preventer failed its primary goal in a late-stage trial, and that they no longer plan to seek marketing approval next year for the pill.
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true
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Health News
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But the drugmakers and industry analysts said some data in the trial were encouraging and that the medicine could still prove effective in preventing dangerous blood clots in other large trials. “Not good news, but not a death knell either,” said Michael Castor, a portfolio manager with health-care fund Sio Capital Management. He noted that the drug remains in development, including for other uses, and did show effectiveness despite missing the trial’s main goal. The stocks of both drugmakers were little changed in after-hours trading. Bristol-Myers closed unchanged at $21.98, while Pfizer fell 23 cents to $19.28, both on the New York Stock Exchange in regular trading. The Phase III trial was designed to show whether twice-daily apixaban was at least as effective as twice-daily injections of Sanofi-Aventis’ Lovenox in preventing dangerous blood clots among patients undergoing knee-replacement surgery. The failure represents another setback for two companies that had hoped apixaban would become a big seller and bolster their earnings in the face of looming generic competition within three years for their best-selling drugs. “Not to say that apixaban is buried, but this initial poor result is another in a string of poor partnering decisions that Pfizer has recently made,” said Damien Conover, an analyst with Morningstar. The drugmakers said 9 percent of knee-surgery patients receiving apixaban developed dangerous clots, versus 8.9 percent of those receiving Lovenox. The new drug, therefore, was not deemed statistically as effective as Lovenox. Bristol-Myers said this was surprising because about 16 percent of patients taking Lovenox had developed dangerous clots in earlier studies. Patients had statistically similar incidents of major bleeding, although the combined incidence of major and non-major bleeding was significantly less in patients given apixaban, the company said. Apixaban has generated excitement because it works through a new mechanism of action, by blocking a protein called Factor Xa that is instrumental in the clotting process. A similar drug, called rivaroxaban, is being co-developed by Bayer AG and Johnson & Johnson and considered slightly farther along in testing. “This would seem to benefit Johnson & Johnson and Bayer,” said Mike Krensavage, a principal of Krensavage Asset Management. “It’s another setback for Pfizer as well,” he said, referring to its string of drug failures in recent years that has driven the company’s stock to 10-year lows. Just weeks ago, Bristol-Myers described apixaban as the most promising of its medicines in late-stage studies. Analysts have said it could become a blockbuster drug, especially if it proves effective in preventing strokes among patients with atrial fibrillation, a form of irregular heartbeat. Despite the setback, the drugmakers said they remain confident in apixaban and will continue other large studies of the medicine. “This is the first of eight Phase III trials for a broad range of indications, including atrial fibrillation, and we view all of them as very significant opportunities,” said Jack Lawrence, a Bristol-Myers research official who heads the apixaban program.
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5998
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Northern Red Sea coral reefs may survive a hot, grim future.
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As the outlook for coral reefs across a warming planet grows grimmer, scientists in Israel have discovered a rare glimmer of hope: The corals of the northern Red Sea may survive, and even thrive, into the next century.
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true
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Israel, Climate change, International News, Middle East, Climate, Science, Corals, Coral reefs, Red Sea
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There is broad scientific consensus that the effects of climate change have devastated the world’s reefs, recently ravaging large swaths of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, one of the natural wonders of the world. The carbon dioxide that humans pump into the atmosphere spikes the temperature and acidity of seawater, which both poisons the marine invertebrates and hampers their growth at alarming rates, according to studies published last year in the journal Science. Experts estimate that half of the corals that existed in the early 20th century have died. But the corals at the northernmost tip of the Red Sea are exhibiting remarkable resistance to the rising water temperatures and acidification, according to recent research conducted by the Interuniversity Institute for Marine Sciences based in Eilat. Experts hope the lessons learned in the Red Sea can help coral reefs elsewhere in the world. “Corals worldwide are dying and suffering at a rapid pace, but we have not witnessed a single bleaching event in the Gulf of Aqaba,” said Maoz Fine, an expert on coral reefs at Bar-Ilan University and director of the research. Warmer water causes corals to eject the brightly colored plants that serve as their primary food and oxygen source. This causes reefs to “bleach,” or take on a bone-white pallor that often portends mass mortality. While other hardy coral species can be found in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, “there’s nowhere else in the world that reefs are this far away from their bleaching thresholds,” said Fine. Plenty of other refuges remain unknown, but “this is the only spot we know of with a warranty ensuring these reefs stay safe for the next several decades,” he said. On a recent day at the lab, Fine examined coral fragments in water treated to simulate future global warming scenarios, pointing to their ruddy color as a sign of good health. The Gulf of Aqaba has become a refuge for tough corals that are projected to outlast far worse future conditions. Fine’s latest study, published this month in the Journal of Experimental Biology, found further cause for optimism: The coral species’ thermal resistance carries over to their offspring, indicating that future generations will also remain immune to bleaching, with implications that could extend beyond this spot of the Red Sea. Fine’s research credits northern Red Sea coral resilience to a giant natural selection event that occurred some 18,000 years ago. As glaciers retreated at the end of the ice age, reefs moved in to recolonize the southern part of the sea, where temperatures ran exceedingly high. Only corals that could bear the heat managed to reach maturity and migrate north, where they resettled in conditions several degrees cooler than their thermal threshold. Further research is underway to determine how existing in temperatures below their tolerance levels may lend corals physiological benefits. “All corals were obliterated except for the best genotypes, the winners of the climate change lottery,” said Fine. Today, these hardy corals continue to survive as Red Sea waters warm, only showing signs of heat stress at six degrees above the summer maximum sea temperature. “Not only does this give us an incentive to protect this special refuge as much as possible, but also allows us to find hints as to the most important genes for thermal resistance,” he added. Picking out winning genes can contribute to an urgent worldwide push to restore and repopulate dead reefs. Some cutting-edge labs in Hawaii and Australia have even started crossbreeding the corals that survived or recovered from the mass bleaching of their reefs to create gene banks of “super-corals” that they hope can survive future elevated temperatures. “If corals are surviving and reproducing in the Gulf of Aqaba under stressful conditions, and in the central and southern Red Sea they’re not, we can reseed the hardy corals in nearby bleached areas,” said Jacqueline De La Cour, operations manager for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch, who was not a part of the study. “Entirely new ecosystems that can withstand climate change would be established.” The U.S. agency has honed such restoration techniques in Florida, where reefs play a critical role in softening the blow of hurricanes. Jessica Bellworthy, a doctoral student in Fine’s lab, said that while it’s too soon to tell whether Gulf of Aqaba corals would retain their resilience if multiplied and transplanted to other environments, it’s a “direction we could eventually take our data.” Fine likened transplanting corals to “playing God,” saying that although such human intervention has become well-established, it carries ecological risks and raises ethical questions. For instance, should humans be introducing new species where there are natives? But some scientists contend that only a hands-on response can address accelerating reef mortality rates. From 2014-2017, corals experienced the most widespread and damaging “bleaching event” in global history, said De La Cour. Experts often compare reefs to rainforests when trying to convey their stunning diversity of life. “If you lose reefs, you lose everything that depends on them,” said Michael Webster, executive director of Coral Reef Alliance, a San Francisco conservation group. Reef death not only carries dire consequences for wildlife, but also for the homes, health and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people: those who fish, work in tourism, dwell on islands made of coral or rely on reef protection from coastal erosion. “The survivors in the Gulf of Aqaba are only going to become even more essential to us over the next 100 years,” said De La Cour. “Coral refuges show us that species can adapt. It gives us hope.”
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27687
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The theme to the original 'Star Trek' television includes never-used lyrics.
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The theme to the original 'Star Trek' television series officially includes never-used lyrics.
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true
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Entertainment, ASP Article, Radio & TV, Television
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One of the most important parts of any successful television series is its theme music. Whether the theme is a song with lyrics that provide necessary exposition to explain the show’s premise (as in the case of Gilligan’s Island) or an instrumental that offers a catchy thematic hook (like Hill Street Blues), a series’ theme music is familiar, easily recognizable beacon that signals to regular viewers week after week. Star Trek was no exception. Although the series never ranked high in the ratings during its original 1966-69 run, its theme music — a pinging, four-note opening to William Shatner’s famous “where no man has gone before” narration, followed by a melody overlaid with a quavering soprano wail — was, like The Twilight Zone‘s, recognized even by people who never watched the show itself: But even most regular viewers were unfamiliar with the theme’s lyrics, or were even aware that the Star Trek theme had lyrics, because they were never used in the show. When Desilu studios produced their Star Trek pilot , they despaired of finding a top-notch composer to score the theme music. Film and TV composers earn most of their money from residuals paid for repeat performances of their compositions, so few of them want to spend their time scoring pilots that have little chance of becoming series, or movies that will disappear without a trace. The combination of Desilu (a small studio with a history of unsuccessful pilots) and an unusual “serious” science fiction series (rare in television at the time) did not offer an promising opportunity for composers. Fortunately for Desilu (and Star Trek), their musical director recommended a talented and experienced arranger from Twentieth Century Fox by the name of Alexander Courage. Courage created the memorable Star Trek theme, as well as a number of other key pieces of incidental music and sound effects. Once the Star Trek pilot was bought by NBC, Courage was in an enviable position: he would receive royalties every time an episode of Star Trek was run (or re-run), and even more royalties if the show lasted long enough to be sold into syndication after its network run was finished. Courage’s windfall lasted only a year, until Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry suddenly laid claim to half the royalties. How? Pressured by Roddenberry, Courage had made a “handshake deal” a couple of years earlier that gave Roddenberry the option of composing lyrics for Courage’s Star Trek music (and Courage signed a contract — unknowingly, he later claimed — to that effect). Roddenberry exercised that option, writing lyrics for the main theme and then asserting his right to half the performance royalties as a co-composer. It made no difference that the lyrics were not intended to be used in the show itself and had never been recorded or released. As the lyricist, Roddenberry was entitled to an equal share of the royalties, whether or not the lyrics were ever used. Courage protested in vain that although the arrangement may have been legal, it was unethical: Roddenberry’s lyrics added nothing to the value of the music and were created for no reason other than to usurp half the composer’s performance royalties. An unsympathetic Roddenberry proclaimed, “Hey, I have to get some money somewhere. I’m sure not going to get it out of the profits of Star Trek.” And what were these lyrics? Beyond The rim of the star-light My love Is wand’ring in star-flight I know He’ll find in star-clustered reaches Love, Strange love a star woman teaches. I know His journey ends never His star trek Will go on forever. But tell him While he wanders his starry sea Remember, remember me. Some viewers think they recall actress Nichelle Nichols’ Uhura character having sung these words during a Star Trek episode, but they’re actually remembering her performing a song called “Beyond Antares” to troubled young Charlie Evans in the first-season episode “Charlie X.” (Nichols did record a [disco!] version of the Star Trek theme with different lyrics some years later.) Roddenberry’s gain was Star Trek‘s loss. Courage scored only a few episodes of the series’ first season before commencing work on the feature film Doctor Dolittle. Afterwards, associate producer Robert Justman was unable to secure Courage’s composing services for Star Trek‘s second season, something Justman attributed to Courage’s lingering disappointment over the royalty issue.
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2442
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Pesticide ban cuts South Korea's high suicide rate - a bit.
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Jang Chang-yoon was drunk and weepy one rainy night, troubled by debts from his divorce. On a dark impulse, the South Korean waiter bought a bottle of pesticide to end it all with a few toxic swigs.
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true
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Health News
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At the last minute, he changed his mind when his young daughter grabbed his arm and begged him: “Daddy, don’t die.” Unlike Jang, many people do not pull back from the brink in South Korea, which has had the highest suicide rate in the developed world for nine straight years, often drinking pesticide as their way out. But a decade after Jang’s brush with death, a ban on fatal pesticides is credited with cutting the number of suicides by 11 percent last year, the first drop in six years. The government restricted production of Gramoxone, a herbicide linked to suicides, in 2011 and outlawed its sale and storage last year. “The number of suicides by poisoning including Gramoxone fell by 477, which accounts for about 27 percent of the total decrease in the number of people committing suicide,” Lee Jae-won, an official at Statistics Korea, said last week after the government released the latest figures. Pesticide was the method of choice for almost a quarter of the South Koreans who killed themselves between 2006 and 2010, according to a government report to parliament. In the highly competitive society of Asia’s fourth-largest economy, experts say people who end up alone battling pressure for good school grades or from financial burdens have little in the way of a safety net. Despite the improvement in the suicide rate, more than 14,000 South Koreans killed themselves last year. Elderly people living in rural areas are a particularly high-risk group. Since the 1950s, older generations have been fixated on South Korea becoming more competitive and productive, a side effect of rapid industrialisation that turned a war-damaged country into one of the richest in the world. Kim Hyun-chung, a psychiatrist at the Korean Association for Suicide Prevention, sees social stigmas as a major reason for the high suicide rate. Many South Koreans who are depressed or under heavy stress are reluctant to bring up issues like mental illness or an inability to cope, he said. “The ban on toxic pesticides obviously led to the decline in the suicide rate because that is the easiest means of suicide for elderly people in rural towns,” Kim said. “But we still have bridges and charcoal briquettes.” To help limit access to lethal chemicals, the Life Insurance Philanthropy Foundation launched a campaign to provide pesticide lockers to farming towns with high rates of depression. The foundation, set up by private insurance firms, says no one from the villages with the lockers has committed suicide over the past three years, compared with one or two people from each village who had killed themselves in past years. “The lockers help reduce the impulse to get hold of pesticides because they have to find keys to open them,” Chung Bong-eun, an official at the foundation, told Reuters. The 2012 figures may offer a glimmer of hope, but the latest comparisons by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development showed South Korea was by far the most suicidal society, followed by Hungary, Russia and Japan. For Jang, working two jobs is still tough, but he regrets trying to kill himself and is happy to have his life to share with his two daughters. While he sees the ban on pesticides as a positive step, he feels for others who are under duress. “Old and young people have their own pain from either quick economic development or unemployment,” he said. “I hope the government will care more about people’s health.”
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33610
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A vengeful Polish dentist pulled out all of her ex-boyfriend’s teeth.
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‘I tried to be professional and detach myself from my emotions. But when I saw him lying there I just thought, What a b******.'
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false
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Junk News
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On 27 April 2012, the Daily Mail published an article reminiscent of a 1995 Weekly World News article and a gender-switched version of the 1996 film The Dentist, reporting that a dentist in Poland had extracted all her ex-boyfriend’s teeth after he dumped her for another woman: Anna Mackowiak, 34, is facing jail after taking her revenge on 45-year-old Marek Olszewski when he turned up at her surgery with toothache just days after breaking up with her. She gave him a heavy dose of anaesthetic and plucked his teeth out. She then wrapped his head and jaw in a bandage to stop him opening his mouth and said there had been complications and he would need to see a specialist. The dentist, who works in Wroclaw, Poland, said: ‘I tried to be professional and detach myself from my emotions. ‘But when I saw him lying there I just thought, “What a b******”.’ The article went on to state that the dentist was being investigated for medical malpractice and could face three years in jail. The story of the vengeful dentist was picked up and reprinted by a number of U.S. news outlets, including Fox News, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, Yahoo! News, MSN, the New York Post, and the New York Daily News. However, many readers expressed skepticism about this report, and with good reason: it proved to be nothing more than a fabrication. On 2 May 2012, the Polish publication Gazeta Wroclawska noted that no dentist by the name of Anna Mackowiak was working in the city of Wroclaw, as stated in the original Daily Mail article. That same day, Polish television news channel TVN4 also reported that authorities in Wroclaw had no knowledge of a dentist by that name or any dental malpractice issue similar to the one described, and that the story was apparently an Internet joke with no basis in reality. MSNBC also investigated and found that no Polish authorities were aware of any such case: “Lower Silesia Police Department has not been notified about such an event and is not investigating such a case,” Pawel Petrykowski of the Provincial Police Headquarters in Wroclaw said. A legal adviser for Poland’s Chamber of Physicians and Dentists, which handles disciplinary matters, said the organization is not investigating and has never investigated any such case, and added that there is no dental practitioner named Anna Mackowiak listed in Poland’s central register of dentists. “No information about this kind of misconduct has been provided to the Supreme Chamber,” the legal advisor, Marek Szewczycski, said in an email. “The Supreme Chamber is also not aware of any actions of this kind being taken by the Regional Chamber of Physicians and Dentists in Wroclaw, which would be the competent authority in case of a possible professional misconduct committed by a dental practitioner from Wroclaw.” The Daily Mail reporter responsible for the story admitted he hadn’t written it and professed to be unable to identify its origins: The article appears under the byline of staff reporter Simon Tomlinson. But Tomlinson said he does not know where the story came from and distanced himself from it when questioned about its origins. “I’ve drawn a bit of a blank,” he said in an email. “The (Daily) Mail Foreign Service, which did the piece for the paper, is really just an umbrella term for copy put together from agencies. My news desk isn’t sure where exactly it came from.”
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34606
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A video shows a mother forcibly shaving her daughter's head as punishment for making fun of a bald cancer patient.
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The details of the video (such as whom it pictures, and when and where it was taken) are unknown, there is no substantive documentation of what it depicts, the dialog is unclear, and we don’t know who filmed it or whether what it shows was real or staged, so what the video’s true backstory is remains unclear.
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unproven
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Fauxtography
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In June 2016, a video showing a mother forcibly shaving her daughter’s head was widely circulated via social media, along with a backstory holding that the girl had made fun of a bald cancer patient, so her mother chose to give her “a taste of her own medicine” and shave her head as a punishment for her bullying. The most popular version of the video posted to the Facebook page Bizarrefeed under the caption “Mom Shaves Girl’s Head After She Bullied Girl with Cancer”: However, the very same video had been circulated online well over a year earlier with nary a mention of cancer; rather, back then the clip was accompanied by the claim that the young woman had been punished with a head-shaving after her mother found naked pictures of her on Facebook: Mother shaves her daughter bald after seeing naked pictures of her daughter on Facebook It is still unclear for us which language is being spoken, but we can clearly state that the daughter and the mother both need some serious help. It is not a normal method to shave your daughter bald after she has performed something bad. Yes, what the daughter has done is not good for anybody, but the reaction of the mother will only make the situation worse. Neither version of the video was accompanied by anything (other than repetition) documenting that the proffered backstory was true. Some commenters maintained that the dialogue indicates the girl in the video was punished for some form of licentiousness and makes no mention of bullying or cancer patients: Actually, it’s not about bullying someone with cancer. The young daughter was being punished for having premarital sex and the family agreed to cut hair to make her unattractive to young men. Don’t believe the headlines you read especially when it’s in a different language. The persons shown in the video are speaking Portuguese, and since we happened to be in Brazil at the time this video went viral, we asked some bilingual locals if they could understand the dialogue. They all acknowledged that the audio was very difficult to make out, and they gave responses ranging from “See what happens when you laugh at people with cancer …” to “See what happens with your brother …” (and the former group admitted they may have been influenced by knowing the video’s supposed backstory).
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20436
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"The administration has issued rules for ""$1 abortions in ObamaCare"" and ""requires all persons enrolled in insurance plans that include elective abortion coverage to pay"" an abortion premium."
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"The claim that the Obama administration has issued rules for ""$1 abortions in ObamaCare"" is ridiculous; the administration has simply set a floor for how much money per month of the premiums paid by those who have chosen plans that include abortion must be placed in a segregated account in order to make sure that there’s enough money available to pay for abortion services incurred by people enrolled in that plan. The bigger charge -- that the Obama health care law ""requires all persons enrolled in insurance plans that include elective abortion coverage to pay a separate premium from their own pockets to fund abortion"" -- is also incorrect. The provision in question only affects people who purchase insurance plans that cover abortion and who do so on the exchanges -- a much narrower group than the claim suggests. And people who make such purchases will be paying their private dollars into abortion coverage accounts voluntarily. Despite some puzzling wording, ultimately the law allows for full disclosure of its abortion rules at the most obvious time, when someone is signing up for coverage."
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false
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Abortion, National, Health Care, Bloggers,
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"Many readers have asked us to review a recent claim reverberating around the Internet that stems from an article posted on an anti-abortion website, lifenews.com. The March 12, 2012, article is titled, ""Obama Admin Finalizes Rules: $1 Abortions in ObamaCare."" Referring to a rule recently issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, lifenews.com published the following: ""It’s official. The concern pro-life organizations had about the ObamaCare legislation funding abortions has been confirmed, as the Obama administration has issued the final rules on abortion funding governing the controversial health care law. Nestled within the ‘individual mandate’ in the Obamacare act — that portion of the Act requiring every American to purchase government-approved insurance or pay a penalty — is an ‘abortion premium mandate.’ This mandate requires all persons enrolled in insurance plans that include elective abortion coverage to pay a separate premium from their own pockets to fund abortion. As a result, many pro-life Americans will have to decide between a plan that violates their consciences by funding abortion, or a plan that may not meet their health needs."" We’ll look at whether the Obama administration has issued rules for ""$1 abortions in ObamaCare"" and required ""all persons enrolled in insurance plans that include elective abortion coverage to pay a separate premium from their own pockets to fund abortion."" (We emailed lifenews.com but did not hear back.) As we’ve noted before, abortion has been a thorny issue in the process of drafting and enacting a health care law from the beginning. 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 in health care plans offered to federal employees and for active and retired military. But the health care reform bill set up health care ""exchanges"" in which private insurance companies can compete for the business of buyers who do not get their insurance through an employer. The question became: Should private companies 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? The final rules from HHS don’t dramatically alter the approach taken by the law itself. For starters, 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 was passed as part of the health care law. According to the National Right to Life Committee, 15 states have passed such laws so far, with other legislatures considering similar measures. Beyond that, every state must offer at least one plan on its exchange that doesn’t cover abortion, and that plan will include the same minimum benefit package for non-abortion services that is required of every other plan sold on the exchanges. In addition, no private insurer will be forced to cover abortion; doing so will be their choice, at least in states that choose to allow it. However, unless and until opt-out laws are passed by the other 35 states, 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 special 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. More on that later.) Any insurer offering a plan on the exchange that includes abortion coverage must set up two separate accounts for dollars received and paid. One account would hold money that is used to pay for abortion services (except for abortions that are the result of rape, incest, or to protect the life of the mother, which may be paid for under the Hyde Amendment). The other account would hold money that is used to pay for everything else. All federal dollars, such as federal subsidies received by purchasers on the exchange whose incomes are low enough to qualify for them, would be deposited in the non-abortion account. Most of the premiums paid by the plan’s beneficiaries would also go into this account, but a fraction of individual premium payments would be sent to the abortion account, so that enough money is available to pay for claims submitted by beneficiaries for abortion services. The Obama administration has issued rules for ""$1 abortions in ObamaCare"" So where does that $1figure come from? HHS has determined the minimum amount that insurers offering plans that include abortion must allocate per beneficiary into this abortion account. An insurer ""may not estimate such a cost at less than $1 per enrollee, per month,"" HHS said. That’s where it comes from. But what does it mean? It means that a plan cannot contribute less than $1of premiums per month per beneficiary into the abortion fund. That’s all. It doesn’t mean that abortions will cost one dollar -- which seems an obvious interpretation of the phrase ""$1 abortions in ObamaCare."" Rather, it’s a way of filling the account so that there’s enough money to pay abortion providers for their services. The actual amount per enrollee per month may be a lot higher, depending on what the insurer’s actuaries determine. So the claim of ""$1 abortions"" is ridiculously inaccurate. What about the second claim? The law ""requires all persons enrolled in insurance plans that include elective abortion coverage to pay a separate premium from their own pockets to fund abortion."" This claim echoes many made by anti-abortion advocates since the law was first proposed. Critics argue that the health care law’s protections against taxpayer dollars being used to fund abortions are inadequate. ""The most objectionable aspect is that it is a smokescreen intended to conceal the new and massive federal subsidies (‘tax credits’) to health plans that cover abortion on demand -- a sharp break from decades of federal policy,"" said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee. ""Under Medicaid and the Federal Employee Health Benefits program, for example, federal funds do not go to plans that cover elective abortions."" But let’s parse the lifenews.com statement closely. For starters, it refers to ""all persons enrolled in insurance plans that include elective abortion services"" -- but the issue at hand actually affects only persons who purchased insurance from the exchanges. According to the Congressional Budget Office, by 2018, there will be 24 million people buying insurance through the exchanges, compared to 184 million people with either employer-provided insurance or individually purchased insurance outside the exchanges. So the maximum number of people theoretically affected by this concern is 12 percent of private-insurance beneficiaries in 2018. And that number could decline substantially once you subtract residents of the 15 states (or more) that bar any abortion coverage in exchange-sold policies, and after you subtract those individuals that purchase one of the non-abortion options required to be offered by the exchanges. This group falls well short of ""all persons enrolled in insurance plans that include elective abortion coverage to pay a separate premium from their own pockets to fund abortion."" But even this is a side issue. We have ruled in the past that the health care law does not provide federal funding for abortion. Our conclusion was that even if you have the opportunity to buy abortion coverage on the exchanges -- and Americans in many states won’t have that option -- you won’t be forced to buy such coverage. Non-abortion options will always be available on the exchanges, and tax dollars sent to those plans through federal subsidies will be placed in accounts walled off from accounts used to pay for abortion services. This all means that anyone purchasing a plan with abortion coverage will be be doing so by choice and paying for it personally. On March 16, 2012, Johnson, of the National Right to Life Committee, and his colleague, senior legislative counsel Susan T. Muskett, raised an issue about the way the law is worded. They wrote that ""if a health plan covers abortion, the rule forbids the plan from calling attention to that fact in any of its advertising or explanatory materials. The disclosure of abortion coverage can be provided ‘only as part of the summary of benefits and coverage explanation, at the time of enrollment.’ This provision seems designed for no other purpose than to ensure that many people who would not deliberately sign up for abortion-covering plans will do so inadvertently."" The text of the law does include this line: ""A qualified health plan that provides for coverage of (elective abortion) shall provide a notice to enrollees, only as part of the summary of benefits and coverage explanation, at the time of enrollment, of such coverage."" This use of the word ""only"" does seem to raise the risk that a plan’s abortion provisions won’t be fully transparent to the buyer. But we think the law does ensure disclosure for any potential purchaser who is paying attention. HHS describes the disclosure summary in question as something akin to the nutritional labels on food -- a standardized form that will allow consumers to easily compare one plan’s features to another’s before they buy. ""Before choosing a health plan, consumers will know whether the plan covers these services,"" said HHS spokeswoman Erin Shields. Our ruling The claim that the Obama administration has issued rules for ""$1 abortions in ObamaCare"" is ridiculous; the administration has simply set a floor for how much money per month of the premiums paid by those who have chosen plans that include abortion must be placed in a segregated account in order to make sure that there’s enough money available to pay for abortion services incurred by people enrolled in that plan. The bigger charge -- that the Obama health care law ""requires all persons enrolled in insurance plans that include elective abortion coverage to pay a separate premium from their own pockets to fund abortion"" -- is also incorrect. The provision in question only affects people who purchase insurance plans that cover abortion and who do so on the exchanges -- a much narrower group than the claim suggests. And people who make such purchases will be paying their private dollars into abortion coverage accounts voluntarily. Despite some puzzling wording, ultimately the law allows for full disclosure of its abortion rules at the most obvious time, when someone is signing up for coverage."
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3930
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School nurses serve many needs.
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School injuries usually don’t require much care: a Band-Aid for a scraped knee, an ice pack for a bump or bruise, or a tissue for a bloody nose.
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true
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Medication, Health, Financial markets, Janesville, Education
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That— and some TLC — usually does the job. At a recent meeting, the Janesville School Board received the annual school nursing report. The report showed that while Band-Aids and ice packs are applied by the hundreds, school nurses are dealing with more serious concerns. Between the 2014-15 school year and the 2018-19 school year, the number of students requiring health plans, daily medication, inhalers and emergency medication has slowly crept up. Nurses, with the help of health aides, hand out daily medication; set up medical kits for field trips; work with doctors, nurses and parents to serve students with medically complex needs; give eye exams; and provide education and support to parents on everything from bed bugs to seizures and toilet training to allergies, The Janesville Gazette reported. That’s the short list. By the numbers In the 2018-19 school year, the Janesville School District had five nurses serving 10,049 students at 21 district schools and 13 private or nonprofit four-year-old kindergartens. That’s a ratio of one nurse to 2,010 students. Student numbers will remain about the same for the 2019-20 school year. “While the Department of Public Instruction does not mandate a specific ratio to school districts, the average ratio of school nurses to pupils in Wisconsin school districts is 1 to 1,625,” district Director of Pupil Services Kimberli Peerenboom wrote in her report to the board. State law does not require schools to have nurses but does say “emergency nursing services shall be available during the regular school day and during all school sponsored activities of students.” Along with the five nurses, the district also uses health aides. Each elementary school has four hours a day the principal can designate as health aide hours, according to Peerenboom’s report. In the upper grades, principals don’t have hours to designate, but they can assign health-aide duties to office staff, the report stated. Some health aides are also secretaries or serve in other paraprofessional roles that involve working with students. Apart from the general cuts and scrapes, 1,715 students had a documented health condition. Asthma, allergies and attention deficit disorder make up the majority of those cases. Other conditions include Crohn’s disease, diabetes, migraines, cerebral palsy, depression, anxiety and autism spectrum disorders. In addition, 227 students take a daily medication at school, that’s up from 183 students in the 2016-17 school year. The number of students who need emergency medication has gone from 134 students in the 2014-15 school year to 231 in the 2018-19 school year. Nurses aren’t in charge of figuring out why those numbers have increased, they just have to deal with the results. In the 2018-19 school year, nurses and health aides reported 161,089 visits from students, according to Peerenboom’s report. A visit counted as anything from needing a Band-Aid to taking daily medication, the report said. With 21 schools, that’s an estimated 43 visits per day. The numbers in action Based on a recent morning spent with school nurse Heidi Bakke, 43 students a day seemed like a reliable count. An hour before the 8:20 a.m. bell at Wilson Elementary, Bakke was updating a health plan. Such plans are for students with chronic conditions who might need monitoring or intervention during the school day. Creating a plan involves a complex back and forth among the school nurse, parents, and physicians and their nurses. It can be a complicated process. ″(The nurses) are probably not going to be in the building when the emergency happens, so we train medical emergency response teams at each school,” Bakke said. The nursing team recently implemented “grab-and-go bags.” The bags contain all the emergency supplies for children with medical needs and a copy of each child’s health plan. Nurses also must prepare a similar kit when a student with a health plan goes on a field trip. And the nurses also have to let teachers know what to look for. “The kiddos who have diabetes — those are the hardest ones to train teachers on because they have frequent blood sugar checks.” Bakke said. “If the kid is out hiking at the Janesville Schools Outdoor Lab, their blood sugar might drop, so you have to have snacks available.” The morning we visited, Bakke was mentoring a new nurse, Holly Cavey. Also in the small office was Cheri Diehls, the school’s part-time health aide. Once Cavey is trained, she will have five schools to cover, while Bakke has six. That’s another change. Nurses used to travel to all schools, now they’re assigned to five or six. “It’s a better model,” Bakke said. “It provides better continuity of care. I want the kids to get to know nurse Heidi.” While the nurses worked on reports, responded to emails and took calls from physicians’ offices and parents, kids needing immediate attention trooped in and out of the office. There were general owies, issues with hearing or sight, a bloody nose, a student needing their daily medication, another needing help with an inhaler, and a half dozen other issues traditionally associated with a trip to the nurse’s office. Cavey and Bakke then headed to Franklin Middle School, where there seemed to be a lunch rush in the nurse’s office. Health aide Angela Basurto-Bonilla was keeping things calm, explaining to students that if their temperature was normal and they weren’t throwing up, it would be best for them to stay in school. The nurse’s office is across from the main office, and sometimes the new students got them mixed up. The proximity works well since sometimes the office secretaries worked as health aides. “Do you feel sick? Well, you’re in the right place,” Basurto-Bonilla told a student. Bakke said the health aides were crucial to the success of the district’s nursing program. Their skills, demeanor and their day-to-day knowledge of students are crucial to the nurse’s work. Despite the number of reports she writes and the amount of training she does, it’s the interaction with students that’s the most important to her. ___ Information from: The Janesville Gazette, http://www.gazetteextra.com
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2184
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World's first baby born via womb transplant from dead donor.
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A woman in Brazil who received a womb transplanted from a deceased donor has given birth to a baby girl in the first successful case of its kind, doctors reported.
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true
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Science News
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The case, published in The Lancet medical journal, involved connecting veins from the donor uterus with the recipient’s veins, as well as linking arteries, ligaments and vaginal canals. It comes after 10 previously known cases of uterus transplants from deceased donors - in the United States, the Czech Republic and Turkey - failed to produce a live birth. The girl born in the Brazilian case was delivered via caesarean section at 35 weeks and three days, and weighed 2,550 grams (nearly 6 lbs), the case study said. Dani Ejzenberg, a doctor at Brazil’s Sao Paulo University hospital who led the research, said the transplant - carried out in September 2016 when the recipient was 32 - shows the technique is feasible and could offer women with uterine infertility access to a larger pool of potential donors. The current norm for receiving a womb transplant is that the organ would come from a live family member willing to donate it. “The numbers of people willing and committed to donate organs upon their own deaths are far larger than those of live donors, offering a much wider potential donor population,” Ejzenberg said in a statement about the results. She added, however, that the outcomes and effects of womb donations from live and deceased donors have yet to be compared, and said the technique could still be refined and optimized. The first baby born after a live donor womb transplant was in Sweden in 2013. Scientists have so far reported a total of 39 procedures of this kind, resulting in 11 live births. Experts estimate that infertility affects around 10 to 15 percent of couples of reproductive age worldwide. Of this group, around one in 500 women have uterine problems. Before uterus transplants became possible, the only options to have a child were adoption or surrogacy. In the Brazilian case, the recipient had been born without a uterus due to a condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome. The donor was 45 and died of a stroke. Five months after the transplant, Ejzenberg’s team wrote, the uterus showed no signs of rejection, ultrasound scans were normal, and the recipient was having regular menstruation. The woman’s previously fertilized and frozen eggs were implanted after seven months and 10 days later she was confirmed pregnant. At seven months and 20 days - when the case study report was submitted to The Lancet - the baby girl was continuing to breastfeed and weighed 7.2 kg (16 lb).
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38971
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Social media posts claim that Tylenol, Motrin, Zyrtec and Benadryl products for kids and infants have been recalled.
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Children’s Tylenol, Motrin Have Been Recalled
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mixture
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Health / Medical
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These social media posts lead back to an article from 2010 about Tylenol, Motrin, Zyrtec and Benadryl products for kids being recalled, so the eRumor is outdated. WebMD posted an advisory about the recall back in 2010. Five years later, many social media users linked to the 2010 article and warned parents to clean Tylenol, Motrin, Zyrtec and Benadryl out of their medicine cabinets. McNeil Consumer Healthcare Inc. announced the voluntary recall back in 2010 because some of its over-the-counter liquid products for children and infants did not meet minimum quality standards, the FDA reports: “McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Division of McNEIL-PPC, Inc., in consultation with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), is voluntarily recalling all lots that have not yet expired of certain over-the-counter (OTC) Children’s and Infants’ liquid products manufactured in the United States and distributed in the United States, Canada, Dominican Republic, Dubai (UAE), Fiji, Guam, Guatemala, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Panama, Trinidad & Tobago, and Kuwait. “McNeil Consumer Healthcare is initiating this voluntary recall because some of these products may not meet required quality standards. This recall is not being undertaken on the basis of adverse medical events. However, as a precautionary measure, parents and caregivers should not administer these products to their children. Some of the products included in the recall may contain a higher concentration of active ingredient than is specified; others may contain inactive ingredients that may not meet internal testing requirements; and others may contain tiny particles. While the potential for serious medical events is remote, the company advises consumers who have purchased these recalled products to discontinue use.” False alarm about the 2010 recall resurfaced in 2015 after McNeil Consumer Healthcare agreed to settle a lawsuit over the recall. The company agreed to a $25 million settlement because metal particles got into bottles of Children’s Tylenol and Children’s Motrin, the Associated Press reports: “Court documents say metal particles, including nickel, iron and chromium, were introduced during the manufacturing process. Prosecutors said McNeil failed to take immediate steps to fix the problem.” The FDA confirmed that the old recall had reappeared in the news and warned consumers to visit www.fda.gov for current information on product recalls. Comments
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6129
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Kansas launches campaign to reduce stillbirth rate in state.
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The state is promoting a campaign to reduce the number of stillborn deaths in Kansas.
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true
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Health, Kansas, Topeka, Birth rates
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The Kansas Department of Health and Environment announced Wednesday it is partnering with Count the Kicks, a stillbirth prevention public health campaign. Kansas officials say the state records an average of 232 stillborn deaths each year. The campaign seeks to save 60 babies every year by decreasing Kansas’ stillbirth rate by 26 percent. The effort achieved that reduction in Iowa. Count the Kicks encourages expectant moms to track their baby’s movements once a day in the third trimester to determine how long it normally takes their child to get to 10 movements. If moms notice a change in the baby’s normal pattern, they are encouraged to call their doctors.
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9571
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There’s new hope for blood cancers, and it comes from umbilical cords
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Boeing Co’s (BA.N) stunted Friday debut of its astronaut capsule threatens to dent the U.S. aerospace incumbent’s self-declared competitive advantage of mission reliability against the price and innovation strengths of “new space” players like Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
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false
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cancer treatments
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Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company, has anchored its attempt to repel space visionaries like Musk and Amazon.com (AMZN.O) founder Jeff Bezos partly on its mission safety record built up over decades of space travel. While SpaceX and Bezos’ Blue Origin are racing to send their own crewed missions to space for the first time, Boeing or Boeing heritage companies have built every American spacecraft that has transported astronauts into space. And the single-use rockets it builds in partnership with Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) have a virtually unblemished record of mission success. “We are starting from a position of mission reliability and safety,” Boeing Chief Executive Dennis Muilenburg told Reuters earlier this year when asked about SpaceX and other insurgents aiming to disrupt Boeing on everything from astronaut capsules to rockets to satellites. “There is a difference between putting cargo in space and putting humans in space, and that’s a big step. Our very deliberate, safety-based approach for things like CST-100, that will be a differentiator in the long run,” Muilenburg said. The actual technical glitch that stunted Friday’s CST-100 Starliner mission to the International Space Station was a timer error though Boeing said it was too early to determine the exact cause of the fault. Boeing was already working to surmount other technical and safety-related challenges on the multibillion-dollar NASA human spaceflight program. A government watchdog report in November found Boeing demanded “unnecessary” new contract funds from NASA. Friday’s glitch adds to a year of intense scrutiny over how Boeing developed its money-spinning 737 MAX jetliner following twin crashes that killed 346 people in five months. While there is no link between the 737 MAX crashes and the Starliner setback, one rocket industry executive told Reuters that in both cases problems arose as Boeing was racing to catch up with fast-moving rivals. Boeing had no immediate comment. “From a public relations standpoint, this error makes them not look so good because of all the 737 MAX issues,” said Teal Group space analyst Marco Caceres. “If you look at this in isolation, I don’t think of it as a massive problem for Boeing. There are only two companies picked for this program – that is an enviable place for Boeing to be, as long as nothing tragic happens.” SpaceX successfully launched its own rival Crew Dragon astronaut capsule on a roundtrip journey to the ISS earlier this year, though it faces its own technical problems. It is challenging Boeing’s space business more broadly by slashing the cost of accessing space with pioneering reusable rocket technology. Bezos’ Blue Origin is also developing rockets and capsules for human and cargo space flights. SpaceX is working toward a manned mission in first-quarter 2020. It declined to comment on Boeing’s setback. There is no overlap between Boeing and SpaceX’s separate rocket-and-capsule systems. But Boeing’s woes raise the stakes for SpaceX to perform successfully on upcoming tests as Boeing works to pinpoint the root cause, which may trigger months of delays and new costs if NASA requires design tweaks and a redo of Friday’s mission. “SpaceX continues to move forward even if Boeing has a setback, NASA chief Jim Bridenstine told reporters on Friday. “And, back in April, SpaceX had a setback and Boeing was continuing to move forward.” Bridenstine added that NASA has a number of options on the table to make sure the impact of Boeing’s test failure does not cut off access to the space station. “There are other companies that want to be a part of commercial crew,” Bridenstine added, citing Lockheed’s Orion capsule for eventual lunar missions.
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APP HELPS SAVE SEATTLE CARDIAC PATIENT
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This is a story about the use of an app called PulsePoint in the care of a Seattle victim of sudden cardiac arrest. In the process of telling a patient story that ended well, the reader is provided with information on the app’s development, its current use across the country and how the reader can become involved in what can best be described as the crowdsourcing of out-of-hospital care for victims of cardiac arrest. While certainly an intriguing use of technology that merits news discussion, the story left us with questions: What research was conducted to show this app is beneficial? And how solid was that research? What are the potential harms or downsides of using an app in this way? How typical was the patient’s story? An American Heart Association report released in 2015 noted that there are approximately 326,000 cases of out-of hospital-cardiac arrests in the United States. The survival rate with good neurologic function is approximately 8%. Importantly, just about one-third of the victims survive when cardiac arrest is witnessed. An app that advises people nearby of an event, especially those who are trained in CPR, is likely to save additional lives–but how do we know for sure? And are the potential harms worth it? The story should have explained how proof is being collected, if at all.
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true
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cardiac arrest
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The story notes how the PulsePoint Foundation’s app is available for free download for both iOS and Android. We think that it would have been useful to put the URLs in the story, though, as well as note that CPR training is available for free in most locations. The story puts the benefits of the PulsePoint app into perspective: “It’s not clear how many lives have been saved,” it states, further hedging: “Patient confidentiality laws often prevent hospitals from disclosing a patient’s outcome.” This is enough to merit a Satisfactory rating–but with several caveats: Harms and downsides weren’t discussed. But with this app being used so widely and in so many cities, isn’t data available? One simple harm is the app simply failing to work. Another harm could be untrained or inexperienced people trying to help and causing harm from not knowing what they’re doing. Do people who sign up to use the app have to prove any sort of competency? Also, could bystanders who respond become hurt? For example, are 911 operators first establishing if the situation is safe for others to intervene before issuing an alert? As mentioned above, no one is sure how well it works to save lives, and the story makes this clear. But it should have gone a step further and clarified: Has any research at all been done? On the same note: Why do more cities keep adopting it? What evidence is being used to convince them to sign up? No disease mongering here. The reader is provided with quotes from Mr. DeMont and his wife, the developer of the app and two of the responders as well as information from unnamed Seattle officials. However, we wanted to hear from an outside emergency medicine expert to weigh in and respond to the story’s information/claims. We don’t think that the direct alternative (no access to PulsePoint linkage to a locale’s 911 system) needed to be discussed. It is clear that the app is now available and for free. It’s clear that this is a feature story about a readily available app and how more people are finding out about it and using it, so we’ll rate this N/A. However, it would have been useful to mention if there are any other apps that work in this way, or not. There is no evidence that the story relies on a news release.
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UK-EU deadlocked in Brexit talks as clock ticks down.
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Talks between the European Union and the United Kingdom on their post-Brexit relationship ground to a near-standstill Friday, with each side accusing the other of blocking progress on a trade deal just weeks before a crucial summit.
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true
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Global trade, United Kingdom, Health, General News, Brexit, David Frost, Michel Barnier, International News, Business, Virus Outbreak, Europe
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The EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, told a news conference in Brussels that a week-long round of talks had been “disappointing, very disappointing.” Barnier said there was no progress on all the most difficult issues and insisted Britain would have to show more realism. “I am not optimistic in the face of British incomprehension,” he said. The British side echoed the glum assessment, calling the mood of the talks “tetchy.” U.K. negotiator David Frost said the talks had “made very little progress towards agreement on the most significant outstanding issues.” In a statement, Frost accused the EU of insisting on “an ideological approach which makes it more difficult to reach a mutually beneficial agreement.” The two sides remain at odds over a range of key issues including fishing and the role of high courts in settling future disputes. EU leaders and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson are scheduled to have a summit at the end of June, likely by video, to take stock of the talks’ progress. Britain officially left the 27-nation bloc on Jan. 31, but remains within the EU’s economic and regulatory orbit until the end of the year. The two sides have until then to work out a new relationship covering trade, security and a host of other issues — or face a chaotic split that would be economically disruptive for both sides, but especially for the U.K. The U.K.-EU divorce agreement allows for the deadline to be extended by two years, but Johnson’s government insists it won’t lengthen the transition period beyond Dec. 31. Most trade deals take years to negotiate, so finishing something as fundamental as this in 11 months would be a Herculean task at the best of times. Many politicians, experts and diplomats believe it is impossible during a coronavirus pandemic that has focused governments’ resources on preserving public health and averting economic collapse. Both Barnier and Frost fell sick with COVID-19, though both have recovered. While the two men say they have a good personal relationship, the two sides accuse the other of seeking the impossible. Britain wants a a “Canada-style” free-trade deal that would involve the elimination of tariffs and quotas on most, if not all, goods, along with agreements on services and a range of other issues. The EU says Britain can’t have that without signing up to a swath of the bloc’s regulations on environmental standards, workers’ rights and state aid. Otherwise, they say, there wouldn’t be a level playing field. “We will not trade off our European values for the benefit of the British economy. Our economic and commercial fair play is not for sale,” Barnier said. But the U.K. government says that signing up to EU rules and standards amounts to an unacceptable undermining of the country’s independence. Frost said that to make progress, “we very much need a change in EU approach” for the next round of talks, due to start June 1. If no deal on their future relationship is agreed by the end of the year, a cliff-edge economic departure would loom again for Britain, with uncertainly over customs rules, airline slots, financial regulation and other standards. Both sides are already facing a serious recession because of the pandemic and a chaotic split on Dec. 31 wouldn’t help. ___ Jill Lawless reported from London.
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Screen heart patients for depression, AHA urges
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It has been well documented that survivors of a heart attack or patients who have undergone treatment for heart disease are much more likely to experience symptoms of depression. In the past few years, research has also shown that a co-occurence of depression along with heart disease can lead to worse outcomes and reduced quality of life. Recognizing the connection, the American Heart Association has released new guidelines calling for increased screening for depression in heart patients. Whether or not intervention in screened individuals will lead to better heart outcomes is not known, but certainly identifying and treating undiagnosed cases is a positive step. This relatively short story does a good job of on most of our criteria. However, the story does not mention any possible downsides of depression screening. While there are few risks, some of the harms could include: missing cases of mild depression, stigma, mislabeling situational stress as an illness, not to mention barriers and difficulties involved in getting the appropriate follow-up care once diagnosed. And it didn’t cost issues, or reimbursement as a barrier to effective screening.
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true
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The story didn’t describe the costs of depression screening nor did it mention reimbursement issues as a barrier to providing the screening. The story does not attempt to quantify the benefits of depression screening. The story does not mention any possible downsides of depression screening. While there are few risks, some of the harms could include: missing cases of mild depression, stigma, mislabeling situational stress as an illness, not to mention barriers and difficulties involved in getting the appropriate follow-up care once diagnosed. The story does mention that there is no direct evidence that screening for depression can improve outcomes. The story could have done more to describe the indirect evidence that support its use in heart patients. The story does not exaggerate the seriousness or prevalence of depression. The story rightly points out that depression is more prevalent in people with heart disease. The story quotes multiple experts. The story mentions antidepressants, psychotherapy and excercise as possible treatments for depression. Clearly depression screening is available but not as widely used as it should be in the context of heart disease patients. Clearly depression screening is not new but it is increasingly being advocated in the context of heart patients. Because the story quotes multiple experts, the reader can assume the story did not rely on a press release as the sole source of information.
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Feds: Seattle barrel company used hidden drain to pollute.
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A century-old Seattle barrel company has been indicted along with its third-generation owner in what prosecutors describe as a long-running pollution conspiracy.
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true
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Seattle, Health, General News, Indictments, Business, U.S. News, Wastewater, Pollution
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The 36-count indictment made public Wednesday said Seattle Barrel and Cooperage used a hidden drain to pump caustic wastewater directly into the King County sewer system. Seattle Barrel refurbishes used industrial and commercial barrels and drums. Part of that process involves washing the barrels in a corrosive solution. In a written statement provided by its attorney, Harold Malkin, Seattle Barrel blamed a former employee who was fired nine months ago. The company said it did not encourage or permit that worker’s actions and that it will contest any criminal liability for them. The former employee has not been charged. The indictment names Seattle Barrel owner Louie Sanft, whose grandfather founded the company in 1916. It also names its plant manager, John Sanft, who is Louie Sanft’s cousin. They are due to appear in court Jan. 9. The charges they face include conspiracy, which carries up to five years in prison; lying to Environmental Protection Agency investigators, which carries up to five years; and violating the Clean Water Act, which carries up to three years per count. “At a time when we are searching for strategies to protect Puget Sound and improve water quality for fish and wildlife, we need companies to do their share — not scheme for ways to pollute in private,” Seattle U.S. Attorney Brian T. Moran said in a news release. Federal prosecutors said dumping caustic, high-pH solutions into the sewer system can corrode it and the treatment plant and that the waste can wind up in Puget Sound, home to protected salmon, orcas and other species. Since at least 2009, the company’s permit from King County has prohibited such discharges. In 2012, an employee from the King County Industrial Waste Program reported seeing John Sanft dump oily waste. Over the next several months, the program conducted secret monitoring and discovered that Seattle Barrel was repeatedly dumping high-pH wastewater into the sewer. The county fined the company $55,000, an amount that was reduced to about $17,000 when the company agreed to install an expensive wastewater treatment system. Louie Sanft claimed that the system made Seattle Barrel a “zero discharge” company. That treatment system was not designed or used to handle waste from the 300-gallon (1,136-liter) tank where barrels are washed, however. The tank was supposed to be cleaned by evaporating the water from it, wiping out the remaining residue, sealing the residue in drums and then shipping it to another company for disposal. Prosecutors said the company lied about doing that. Instead, the indictment said, Louie Sanft directed employees to pump the wastewater down an a hidden drain that led to the sewer. An inspection in 2017 revealed irregularities in the company’s handling of wastewater, and covert monitoring showed that the company continued to dump it down the sewer in 2018 and 2019, the indictment said. Meanwhile, Seattle Barrel filed reports with the county certifying that it had not dumped any wastewater. The indictment says Louie Sanft directed the conduct, advising employees to look out for regulators, and that John Sanft sometimes helped. Louie Sanft’s attorney, Angelo Calfo, denied that. He said his client knew King County monitored the sewer line, so it would make no sense for him to direct an employee to dump the tank water there. Further, Calfo said, Louie Sanft paid the employee overtime to properly handle the wastewater because it was a daylong process to evaporate all the water. The only person who stood to benefit from using the sewer was the employee who got fired, the attorney said. “This case is about a former employee who cut corners for his own gain and in violation of company policy,” Calfo said. “Louie had no involvement and did not approve of what the employee was doing.”
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A viral piece of text accurately lists nine things women couldn't do in 1971.
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Then came the landmark date, marking the biggest change to America’s contraceptive potential in history. On May 9, 1960, the FDA approved Enovid, an oral contraceptive pill released by G.D. Searle and Company. By 1965, almost 6.5 million American women were on “The Pill,” the oral contraceptive’s enduring vague nickname, which is thought to have stemmed from women requesting it from their doctors as discreetly as possible. That same year, the Supreme Court struck down state laws that prohibited contraception use, though only for married couples. (Unmarried people were out of luck until 1972, when birth control was deemed legal for all.)
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true
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History
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In August 2019, as many people took to the Internet to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote on paper, a piece of text started to circulate on social media that supposedly listed “9 things that women couldn’t do until 1971” (: The following list is of NINE things a woman couldn’t do in 1971 – yes the date is correct, 1971. In 1971 a woman could not: 1. Get a Credit Card in her own name – it wasn’t until 1974 that a law forced credit card companies to issue cards to women without their husband’s signature. 2. Be guaranteed that they wouldn’t be unceremoniously fired for the offense of getting pregnant – that changed with the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of *1978*! 3. Serve on a jury – It varied by state (Utah deemed women fit for jury duty way back in 1879), but the main reason women were kept out of jury pools was that they were considered the center of the home, which was their primary responsibility as caregivers. They were also thought to be too fragile to hear the grisly details of crimes and too sympathetic by nature to be able to remain objective about those accused of offenses. In 1961, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a Florida law that exempted women from serving on juries. It wasn’t until 1973 that women could serve on juries in all 50 states. 4. Fight on the front lines – admitted into military academies in 1976 it wasn’t until 2013 that the military ban on women in combat was lifted. Prior to 1973 women were only allowed in the military as nurses or support staff. 5. Get an Ivy League education – Yale and Princeton didn’t accept female students until 1969. Harvard didn’t admit women until 1977 (when it merged with the all-female Radcliffe College). Brown (which merged with women’s college Pembroke), Dartmouth and Columbia did not offer admission to women until 1971, 1972 and 1981, respectively. Other case-specific instances allowed some women to take certain classes at Ivy League institutions (such as Barnard women taking classes at Columbia), but, by and large, women in the ’60s who harbored Ivy League dreams had to put them on hold. 6. Take legal action against workplace sexual harassment. Indeed the first time a court recognized office sexual harassment as grounds for any legal action was in 1977! 7. Decide not to have sex if their husband wanted to – spousal rape wasn’t criminalized in all 50 states until 1993. Read that again … 1993. 8. Obtain health insurance at the same monetary rate as a man. Sex discrimination wasn’t outlawed in health insurance until 2010 and today many, including sitting elected officials at the Federal level, feel women don’t mind paying a little more. Again, that date was 2010. 9. The birth control pill: Issues like reproductive freedom and a woman’s right to decide when and whether to have children were only just beginning to be openly discussed in the 1960s. In 1957, the FDA approved of the birth control pill but only for “severe menstrual distress.” In 1960, the pill was approved for use as a contraceptive. Even so, the pill was illegal in some states and could be prescribed only to married women for purposes of family planning, and not all pharmacies stocked it. Some of those opposed said oral contraceptives were “immoral, promoted prostitution and were tantamount to abortion.” It wasn’t until several years later that birth control was approved for use by all women, regardless of marital status. In short, birth control meant a woman could complete her education, enter the work force and plan her own life. Oh, and one more thing, prior to 1880 which is just a few years before the photo of this very proud lady was taken, the age of consent for sex was set at 10 or 12 in more states, with the exception of our neighbor Delaware – where it was 7 YEARS OLD! Feminism is NOT just for other women. KNOW your HERstory. A similar post on Facebook with tens of thousands of shares reported much the same in 2016 from user Lisa Bialac-Jehle. In general, the list above accurately reports nine things that women couldn’t do in 1971. We’ll take a closer look at each item below: Get a credit card in her own name As this post explains, banks were able to discriminate against women applying for credit cards until the passage of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in October 1974. The Smithsonian noted that prior to this bill, women were asked a barrage of personal questions and were often required to be accompanied by a man to co-sign for a credit card. Even then, women often received cards with lower limits or higher rates: Forty years ago, any woman applying for a credit card could be asked a barrage of questions: Was she married? Did she plan to have children? Many banks required single, divorced or widowed women to bring a man along with them to cosign for a credit card, and some discounted the wages of women by as much as 50 percent when calculating their credit card limits. As women and minorities pushed for equal civil rights in various arenas, credit cards became the focus of a series of hearings in which women documented the discrimination they faced. And, finally, in 1974 — forty years ago this year — the Senate passed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, which made it illegal to discriminate against someone based on their gender, race, religion and national origin. Be guaranteed that they wouldn’t be unceremoniously fired for getting pregnant Women faced a number of work-related consequences for getting pregnant prior to the passage of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978. On the 40th anniversary of this law, the ACLU posted a statement explaining how pregnancy often resulted in pink slips for working women: Forty years ago, working women in the United States won the legal protection to become working mothers. On Oct. 31, 1978, Congress enacted the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, making it illegal for employers to deny a woman a job — or promotion, or higher pay, or any other opportunity — because she is pregnant. The statute had an immediate, dramatic impact on women’s ability to fully participate in the workforce. Although on-the-job sex discrimination had been outlawed more than a decade earlier, pregnancy wasn’t legally recognized as a type of sex discrimination. As a result, a pregnancy often resulted in a pink slip. Some employers even imposed formal policies prohibiting pregnancy outright because their female employees were expected to project a certain image — for example, flight attendants, who were expected by airlines to convey sexual availability to their businessman customers, and teachers, who were expected by school districts to project chasteness to their young pupils. Serve on a jury Women’s road to the jury box was a long one. While the state of Utah deemed women qualified for jury duty back in 1898, it took the other 49 states several decades to reach the same conclusion. The ACLU noted that women were excluded from jury duties for a number of reasons: Aside from the “defect of sex,” women were excluded from juries for a variety of reasons: their primary obligation was to their families and children; they should be shielded from hearing the details of criminal cases, particularly those involving sex offenses; they would be too sympathetic to persons accused of crimes; and keeping male and female jurors together during long trials could be injurious to women. While this viral posts states that it wasn’t until “1973 that women could serve on juries in all 50 states,” we found that this battle was still being fought for at least another two years. In 1975, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in an 8-1 decision that it was constitutionally unacceptable for states to bar women from juries. From a 1975 article in The New York Times: The Supreme Court ruled today that shifting economic and social patterns of the last dozen years have made it constitutionally unacceptable for states to deny women equal opportunity to serve on juries. The 8‐to‐1 decision will have little practical effect on the make‐up of juries. All states, including Louisiana where the case originated, now have laws that do not exempt women from jury service, although women are treated differently from men in some instances involving such service. But the majority broke important philosophical ground by acknowledging for the first time that the role of women is society was changing and that the courts must recognize their growing economic independence in assessing their legal rights. “If it was ever the case that women were unqualified to sit on juries or were so situated that none of them should be required to perform jury service,” Associate Justice Byron R. White wrote for the majority, “that time has long since passed.” Fight on the front lines Women in the United States have been aiding military operations as nurses, cooks, and in other non-combat positions since the Revolutionary War in 1775. However, it wasn’t until 1976 that the United States Military Academy at West Point accepted women to the Corps of Cadets. Still, it would be several more years until women would find their way to the front lines. In 1994, the Pentagon restricted women from serving in “artillery, armor, infantry and other such combat roles.” This ban wasn’t lifted until 2013: The US military officially lifted a ban on female soldiers serving in combat roles on Thursday and said that anyone qualified should get a chance to fight on the front lines of war regardless of their sex. At a press conference in the Pentagon Defence Secretary Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that women had already proved themselves in action on America’s battlefields and the move was simply a way of catching up with reality. “Everyone is entitled to a chance,” said Panetta, who is retiring form his post this year. At the moment women make up about 14% of the military’s 1.4 million active members and more than 280,000 of them have done tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan or overseas bases where they helped support the US war effort in those countries. Indeed, some 152 women have been killed in the conflicts. Get an Ivy League education The Ivy League is comprised of eight universities in the northeastern part of the United States. While women were able to attend Cornell University as early as the 1870s, it wasn’t until 1983 that the final Ivy League school, Columbia College, started to admit women: The last all-male school in the Ivy League became a coeducational one yesterday when Columbia College enrolled women for the first time in its 229-year history. It was a day of celebration at Columbia, with few alumni or students criticizing the change, and with college administrators saying the decision to admit women had resulted in the most talented freshman class ever. Take legal action against workplace sexual harassment. According to Time, the term “sexual harassment” was coined by a group of students at Cornell University in 1975. The term was popularized in a New York Times article published that same year, and in 1977, three court cases confirmed that a woman could take legal action against her employer for sexual harassment: The phrase “sexual harassment” was coined in 1975, by a group of women at Cornell University. A former employee of the university, Carmita Wood, filed a claim for unemployment benefits after she resigned from her job due to unwanted touching from her supervisor. Cornell had refused Wood’s request for a transfer, and denied her the benefits on the grounds that she quit for “personal reasons.” Wood together with activists at the university’s Human Affairs Office, formed a group called Working Women United. At a Speak Out event hosted by the group, secretaries, mailroom clerks, filmmakers, factory workers and waitresses shared their stories, revealing that the problem extended beyond the university setting. The women spoke of masturbatory displays, threats and pressure to trade sexual favors for promotions … … By 1977, three court cases confirmed that a woman could sue her employer for harassment under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, using the EEOC as the vehicle for redress. The Supreme Court upheld these early cases in 1986 with Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, which was based on the complaints of Mechelle Vinson, a bank employee whose boss intimidated her into having sex with him in vaults and basements up to fifty times. Vinson was African American, as were many of the litigants in pioneering sexual harassment cases; some historians suggest that the success of racial discrimination cases during these same years encouraged women of color to vigorously pursue their rights at work. Decide not to have sex if her husband wanted to This item is referring to spousal rape. The first person to be convicted of spousal rape in the U.S. was a Massachusetts bartender who broke into the home of his estranged wife in 1979 and raped her: English common law, the source of much traditional law in the U.S., had long held that it wasn’t legally possible for a man to rape his wife. It was in 1736 that Sir Matthew Hale — the same jurist who said that it was hard to prove a rape accusation from a woman whose personal life wasn’t entirely “innocent,” setting the standard that a woman’s past sexual experiences could be used by the defense in a rape case —explained that marriage constituted permanent consent that could not be retracted. That idea stood for centuries. Then, in 1979, a pair of cases highlighted changing legal attitudes about the concept. Until then, most state criminal codes had rape definitions that explicitly excluded spouses. (In fact, as TIME later pointed out, it wasn’t just the case that saying “no” to one’s husband didn’t make the act that followed rape; in addition, saying “no” to one’s husband was usually grounds for him to get a divorce.) As the year opened, a man in Salem, Ore., was found not guilty of raping his wife, though they both stated that they had fought before having sex. But, even as the verdict was returned, a National Organization for Women spokesperson told TIME that “the very fact that there has been such a case” meant that change was in the air — and she was quickly proved right. The case believed to be the first-ever American conviction for spousal rape came that fall, when a Salem, Mass., bartender drunkenly burst into the home he used to share with his estranged wife and raped her. It’s not hard to see how this case was the one that made the possibility of rape between a married couple clear to the public: they were in the middle of a divorce, and the crime involved house invasion and violence. As TIME noted, several other states had also adopted laws making it possible to pursue such a case, though they had not yet been put to the test. Even though the first conviction for spousal rape occurred during the 1970s, it wasn’t until 1993 that spousal rape was officially illegal in all 50 states. While marital rape has been technically illegal in all 50 states since 1993, advocates argue that there are still legal loopholes in some states that allow for marital rape to be treated differently than rape. Obtain health insurance at the same monetary rate as men This item refers to the practice of “gender rating” by health insurance companies, which typically resulted in higher premiums for women seeking individual health insurance. In 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) sought to do away with the practice. NPR reported: Any woman who has bought health insurance on her own probably didn’t find herself humming the old show tune, “I Enjoy Being a Girl.” That’s because more than 90 percent of individual plans charge women higher premiums than men for the same coverage, a practice known as gender rating. Women spend $1 billion more annually on their health insurance premiums than they would if they were men because of gender rating, according to a recent report by the National Women’s Law Center. Under the health care overhaul, the practice is banned starting in 2014. The birth control pill This post correctly states that the FDA first approved an oral contraceptive (a birth-control pill called Enovid) in 1957. However, at the time, the pill was only approved for use as a “treatment of severe menstrual disorders,” and the FDA required that it be labeled with a warning that Enovid will prevent ovulation. A few years later in 1960, the FDA approved Enovid as a contraceptive. Still, the pill was only available to married couples. It wasn’t until 1972 that birth-control pills were available to all women, regardless of marital status:
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A California college student has pledged to cut off his genitals in protest of President Trump’s proposed border wall.
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College Student Pledges to Cut off Genitals over Trump Border Wall
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false
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Politics
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An account of a college freshman pledging to cut off his penis that was published as “an entertainment piece” has been mistaken for actual news. The article originally appeared at site RightWingNews.com under the headline, “California Freshman to Cut off Penis if Donald Trump Builds Wall,” on January 14, 2017. The story begins: In a bizarre form of protest, University of California freshman Seth Greenberg has promised to publicly remove his penis (he did not specify the method of removal) if Donald Trump begins project work on the US Mexican border wall. “I’m so confident that Trump is full of shit, that I will cut my dick off, publicly if he adds even a mile of new wall” stated Greenberg in an on the street interview, where he was simultaneously protesting prayer in public school. When pressed about the validity of his claim, Greenberg promised that “I will really do this. I feel that if he does actually build any of the wall, me removing my penis publicly will bring worldwide attention to the injustice being inflicted against the Mexican people.” The story was widely re-reported and shared on various right-wing websites in the days and weeks that followed its publication. Many of them missed (either intentionally or accidentally) a disclaimer appearing at the bottom of the original article that reads: “This is an entertainment piece – all information found in this article is fictitious, and no representation of any individual, living or dead is intentional.” Then, after the success of the original “entertainment” article, the site published a second report under the headline, “2nd California Student Vows to Remove Penis if Trump Builds Wall,” on January 16, 2017: In a bizarre show of solidarity with fellow University of California student Seth Greenberg, Sophomore Jakob Connulson has also pledged to remove his penis if Trump adds any additional structure to the existing US-Mexico border wall. Apparently, Greenberg and Connulson are members of a private campus group known as the “Open Borders Friends,” described by one source as being a group of radical students who don’t believe in the validity of Sovereign states. And, of course, a third “entertainment” piece followed under the headline, “More College Kids Pledge to Remove Genitals if Trump Builds Wall,” on January 19, 2017: As reported previously, 2 students at The University of California stated that they would publicly remove their penis’ if Trump enforced the existing USA-Mexico border wall. In a continuance of this trend, 4 students at the University of Washington have promised to remove pieces of their reproductive anatomy if Trump builds the wall. As these reports have been re-reported and shared on social media, they’ve frequently been mistaken for credible reports. But all of these stories fall under the category of “entertainment pieces” that are full of “fictitious” information.
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Scientific data has linked the surge in volcanic activity in Hawaii to increased fracking activity from a nearby geothermal energy plant.
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You cannot use PGV’s location (intentionally placed in an area where earthquakes are common and lava flows likely) as evidence that it caused earthquakes and lava flows. That’s not how this works. For these reasons (and so, so many more), claims that credible scientific evidence links Hawaii’s 2018 lower Puna eruption to fracking — a practice that is not, even by any tangentially related definition, occurring on Hawaii’s big island — are false.
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false
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Science, big island, exopolitics, fracking
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On 30 May 2018, conspiracy blog YourNewsWire.com made a curious claim about volcanic activity in the lower Puna region of Hawaii’s Big Island, which first began on 3 May 2018 and continues unabated. YourNewsWire, an outlet not known for its commitment to facts or accuracy, argued that this specific geologic event (which, in reality, is a continuation of an eruptive event that began in 1983) was caused by fracking — the process of injecting fluids into bedrock at high pressures to crack rocks and liberate petroleum products. The alleged culprit, counter-intuitively, is a (petroleum-free) geothermal energy plant named the Puna Geothermal Venture (PGV): Scientific data has linked the surge in volcanic activity in Hawaii to increased fracking activity at Puna Geothermal Venture. The data shows how the fracking may have been deliberately designed to create a geological process by which lava would drain from Kilauea’s summit into the East Rift Zone so as to create large new vents that would destabilize the geology, and trigger a major collapse in the Hilina Fault System. Without boring readers with the intentionally onerous and largely fallacious details, the goal of creating a covert fracking operation aimed at generating a massive landslide and/or tsunami under the guise of a green, geothermal power plant (at least, according YourNewsWire’s primary source, Exopolitics.org) is to disrupt the global world order by causing widespread economic collapse, of course: The creation of a massive tsunami through a collapse of the Hilina slump was the secret purpose behind the creation of the Puna Geothermal Venture, whose owners are linked to the Rothschild family. (Exopolitics is an alleged branch of political science that deals with extraterrestrial influence on human affairs. The link to the Rothschild family, a frequent target of conspiracy theorists and generally deployed as an anti-semitic dog whistle, is that the owner of the PGV since 2004 is a company whose founder was awarded the “Rothschild Prize for Innovation” — in 1977.) The claims laid out by YourNewsWire and Exopolitics suffer from several factual, scientific, and logical flaws, but chief among them is the fact that fracking — a process utilized by oil companies searching for fossil fuels — does not occur anywhere on Hawaii, as there are no petroleum reserves for which to frack. To get around this, Exopolitics claims that the processes employed at PGV are in essence identical to fracking, because the geothermal plant operates in a fashion that requires re-injecting a liquid into the ground. Hawaiian Electric, which had purchased energy from the plant prior to its current closure, described the process: PGV is a geothermal energy conversion plant bringing steam and hot liquid up through underground wells. The hot liquid (brine) is not used for electricity at this time. The steam is directed to a turbine generator that produces electricity. The exhaust steam from this turbine is used to vaporize (heat) an organic working fluid, which drives a second turbine, generating additional electricity. The condensed steam from the organic fluid heat exchanger is re-injected into the ground through reinjection wells along with the brine. The primary goal of this reinjection is to stabilize the land from which the water is being extracted. Without the reinjection of water (and the only fluid in this case is water), the reservoir below would dry up, making the geology susceptible to faulting or sinkholes. The primary goal of hydraulic fracturing is to destabilize the rock below and create faults by injecting fluids (many of them organic compounds) at an extremely high pressure. The two processes are simply not comparable save for the fact that they both employ fluids and the word “inject.” Exopolitics further muddles its terminology when it cites an environmental group in Hawaii opposed to a type of geothermal energy known as enhanced geothermal energy, a process that could at least in theory involve the pressurized injection of water into the ground to alter the rocks below. The goal of enhanced geothermal energy is to create wells deep enough that they reach some area of hot geologic activity. Water is then actively pumped to depth, where it steams up from the heat of the Earth and returns to the surface as steam to create energy. PGV does not employ geothermal fracking — the plant was designed before the technology existed, and regardless there would be be literally no need for it. The location of PGV, next to a fault on a continuously erupting ocean island with porous volcanic ground, has all of the rare characteristics that normally make geothermal energy hard to come by. A summary of the potential utility of geothermal fracking published in the MIT Technology Review described these conditions as a way to explain the necessity of the emerging technology. It could also serve as a explanation for why PGV is in the location that it is in: The main problem is that conventional geothermal plants rely on a rare combination of geological features. Hot rock has to be accompanied by large amounts of hot water or steam that can easily be pumped to the surface, where it would drive steam turbines to generate electricity. The rock formation needs to be porous enough that the water can be continuously recirculated and reheated to keep a power plant running. Aside from the fact that nothing that could factually be described as fracking actually occurs on Hawaii’s Big Island, the evidence presented that the lower Puna lava flows were triggered by the PGV’s “fracking” are a textbook cases of circular reasoning. Exopolitics basically attempts to make this three-part argument: To Exopoltics.org’s credit, it is true that fracking (if it were occurring, which it is not) could cause earthquakes. Unfortunately for their argument, another thing that causes earthquakes is volcanic activity — the very same activity that Exopolitics is trying to blame on PGV. You can’t use the symptom of a lava flow (earthquakes) as as evidence that earthquakes (from fracking) caused that lava flow. That’s not how this works. Are there earthquakes in the area of PGV? Certainly. There are earthquakes all over the volcanically active Big Island. Is it shocking that there would be earthquakes focused in the (extremely general) region of PGV? Not at all — recall that PGV’s location was selected due to its proximity to a major fault system, thereby allowing water to flow through the ground and come in contact with the volcanically heated region below.
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5139
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Iowa park uses goats to help eradicate invasive species.
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For the humans, some of the foliage growing among the trees in Loomis Park are invasive species that shouldn’t be there.
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true
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Environment, Iowa, Forestry, Financial markets, Invasive species, Fort Dodge
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For the herd of goats grazing there, that foliage is lunch, dinner, breakfast and snacks. The Hungry Herd, owned by Doug Bartels, of Lytton, made its first appearance at the park along the Des Moines River last year. This year, there are 33 goats including nine kids. Last year’s herd was 68 goats including 16 kids. Lori Branderhorst, Fort Dodge’s director of parks, recreation and forestry, said the goats are a great way to get an area cleared out economically and environmentally. “It’s $2.75 per head per day,” she said. “It’s a pretty economical way to get work done. It’s pretty much a non-budget project.” The first year’s goat mowing was paid for by the Fort Dodge Parks Foundation. This year’s project is a partnership with the foundation and the city of Fort Dodge. Clearing areas of forest simply isn’t a city budget item, Branderhorst told The Messenger. “The city has a lot of urban forest,” she said. “It’s not in the city budget to open up areas and clear invasive species. It’s never been. This was a good thing the Parks Foundation started.” It would be expensive to pay city crews to go in and clear the area. In addition to the labor cost, they would also have to use machinery and spray to keep the plants from coming back. This is the third time for the goats on the same area. They munched and dined twice last year. “It takes three times on the same area to get a good clean removal of invasive species,” Branderhorst said. Kevin Lunn, parks and forestry superintendent, has been earning the nickname the “Goat Whisperer.” “We make sure they have water and check the fence,” he said. “As long as the fence stays charged it’s pretty easy.” So far, there’s only been one “escape.” “Some of the babies got out,” he said. Of course, one aspect of the goats on the hillside is that what they eat gets converted into little pellets that fall to the forest floor and keep the nutrients in the forest. “They recycle it,” Lunn said. Branderhorst hopes they can keep coming back. “I hope we can continue doing it,” she said. “It’s nice and green, more sustainable and we try to do things without chemicals.” There’s another bonus: people really like the goats. “The community was pretty excited to have them,” she said. That includes the members of the Fort Dodge Police Department who stop to make sure the goats are OK as they go through the park on their patrols. Some of their self-portraits with the goats can be seen on the department’s Facebook page. ___ Information from: The Messenger, http://www.messengernews.net
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5298
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FDA warns Dollar Tree about flagged Chinese manufacturers.
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Government regulators have again warned Dollar Tree’s parent company about importing drugs and cosmetics that could be tainted due to improper product testing during manufacturing.
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true
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Health, Product testing, General News, Cosmetics
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The Food and Drug Administration said that Greenbrier International also did not properly perform its own lab analyses as required before releasing certain products, including an anti-dandruff shampoo and an acne face wash. The products were also mislabeled by the Chinese manufacturers. The FDA told Greenbrier about violations at the Chinese companies as early as 2017. The FDA’s Nov. 6 warning to Greenbrier International says that the company continued to receive products from companies on “import alert,” even after Greenbrier International agreed not to. A spokesman for the Chesapeake, Virginia-based Dollar Tree said the company is cooperating with the FDA. “We are committed to our customers’ safety and have very robust and rigorous testing programs in place to ensure our third-party manufacturers products are safe,” said Dollar Tree spokesman Randy Guiler. “We plan to meet with the FDA in the near future and expect that our plans will satisfy their requirements in all regards.” The FDA requested a response from the company within 15 days with a plan to ensure it doesn’t import or distribute tainted products. Dollar Tree operates more than 15,000 stores in 48 states and Canada under the names Dollar Tree, Family Dollar and Dollar Tree Canada.
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1369
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Blood test by Britain's Angle detects ovarian cancer in study.
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British liquid biopsy company Angle said its Parsortix blood test had beaten current methods in identifying ovarian cancer, a breakthough that could help women receive the best possible outcome from surgery.
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true
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Health News
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Headline results from a study of 400 patients in Europe and the United States showed the test to detect cancerous cells in the bloodstream correctly identified cancer in up to 95 percent of cases, the company said. The test will enable women with ovarian cancer to be referred to gynaecological surgeons who specialize in the care of women with ovarian cancer, while patients with a benign tumor will not have to travel to specialist centers. Angle founder and chief executive Andrew Newland said the study had demonstrated the ability to correctly detect cancer, and importantly correctly detect the absence of cancer. The test was nearly twice as successful in eliminating false-positives than current tests, he said. It also had the potential to identify targets on the tumor that could be used to inform treatment strategies, he said. “The vision is that a woman who has been diagnosed with having an abnormal pelvic mass will have a simple blood test and from that we will deduce whether or not she has cancer and if she does which drug would be most suitable for her,” he said. The performance of the test would now be validated in another study designed to meet European CE Mark and US FDA regulatory requirements, he said. Shares in Angle, which has a market cap of about 50 million pounds, rose 2.2 percent to 68 pence.
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1395
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Study finds UK sugar tax could save thousands from obesity, diabetes.
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A planned levy on sugary drinks due to be introduced in Britain in April 2018 could significantly reduce the number of people who become obese and develop diabetes and tooth decay, scientists said on Thursday.
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true
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Health News
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In a study on the levy’s health impacts, researchers found the positive effect would be greatest if the drinks industry responds by reformulating products to cut sugar content, rather than keep the same formulations but raise prices to consumers. The planned levy is tiered, starting from no tax on diet and low sugar drinks, a low tax on mid-sugar drinks containing 5 to 8 grams (g) of sugar per 100 millilitres (ml), and a high tax on very sugary drinks containing 8g or more per 100 ml. The government’s health department says sugary drinks are the single biggest source of sugar for children, who can have more than their recommended daily intake just by drinking a can of cola, which has nine teaspoons of sugar. The scientists studied three possible reactions by companies to the levy. They could reformulate drinks to reduce sugar content, pass some of the levy to consumers by raising the price of sugary drinks, or use marketing to encourage consumers to switch to lower sugar drinks. The Lancet Public Health journal published the results. For each scenario, the researchers mapped a realistic better and worse case scenario for health by estimating the likely impact on rates of obesity, diabetes and tooth decay. “The good news is that our study suggests that all of the most likely industry responses ... have the potential to improve health,” said Adam Briggs of Oxford University, who led the study. “The extent of the health benefits of the tax will depend on industry’s response.” In opting for a sugar tax, Britain joins Belgium, France, Hungary and Mexico, all of which have imposed some form of tax on drinks with added sugar. Scandinavian countries have levied similar taxes for many years. According to the study’s modeling, a 30 percent reduction in sugar content of all high-sugar drinks and a 15 percent reduction in mid-sugar drinks could result in 14,400 fewer adults and children with obesity, 19,000 fewer cases of type 2 diabetes a year, and 26,900 fewer decaying teeth annually. Passing on half of the cost of the levy to consumers with a price rise for high and mid-sugar drinks of up to 20 percent could reduce the number of adults and children with obesity by 81,600, result in 10,800 fewer diabetes cases and 14,900 fewer decaying teeth a year. Speaking to reporters at a briefing in London, Briggs and his team said the most likely real-life response from industry would probably involve a combination of the scenarios in the study, which might mean the benefits could increase. “The direction of the effect is clear,” said Susan Jebb, an Oxford professor who co-led the research. “This levy will have a positive impact, especially on children’s health.”
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17514
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"Buried in the Affordable Care Act is ""a huge government bailout."
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"Krauthammer said the Affordable Care Act contains a hidden government bailout for insurance companies that would cover up to 80 percent of their losses. The health care law does contain several mechanisms to mitigate potential losses for insurance companies, and the government stands to help absorb some losses up to 80 percent. But the government also stands to gain if insurance companies are able to turn profits, and the Congressional Budget Office has projected that the government would neither make nor lose money. Experts we spoke with also took issue with Krauthammer’s use of the term ""bailout."" In the past decade, bailouts came after private businesses faced a financial crisis. The measures in the Affordable Care Act have a more complicated sequence that include a variety of outcomes. This claim is partially accurate but leaves out important details."
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mixture
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Health Care, PunditFact, Charles Krauthammer,
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"Bailout has never been a pretty word in politics or business and since the Great Recession, the stigma has only intensified. When Wall Street banks and automakers General Motors and Chrysler were awash in red ink, Washington threw them a $420 billion lifeline (of which $430 billion came back), while the Federal Reserve bought nearly $1.5 trillion worth of toxic mortgage-backed securities. Enter conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer with news of a new bailout. Krauthammer wrote in the Washington Post that ""buried deep"" in the Affordable Care Act is ""a huge government bailout"" to cover ""up to 80 percent of insurance company losses."" Krauthammer is talking about a couple of important pieces in the law that limit insurers’ losses in the first few years of the program. Without those protections, most insurance companies likely would have avoided the government marketplaces where people can pick a health plan. Krauthammer, who is no fan of Obamacare, supports legislation to remove those protections for health insurance providers from the law. ""Without viable insurance companies doing the work, it falls apart. No bailout, no Obamacare,"" he wrote. We wanted to look deeper into Krauthammer’s assertion that these measures are bailouts, akin to the support offered to banks and car makers. A bridge over risky waters The Affordable Care Act does a complete number on the insurance game as Americans know it, at least in the individual and small group markets. Instead of companies making a profit through selling policies to the healthy and avoiding the ill, the law aims to pull carriers into a world where they insure everyone and compete based on efficiency and value. We’re not saying that will necessarily happen, but that’s the goal. In sickness and health and everything in between, that’s the population the insurers must work with. The problem is, if you are an insurance company, how do you decide how much to charge in such a different landscape? Until you have a few years to see who is actually in the pool and how much health care they use, the uncertainty is way beyond your comfort zone. Enter the government and a few tricks to make the risk picture more manageable. The law forces insurers to share some profits and losses across health care plans. Money shifts from companies that paid out less than average in claims to companies that paid out more than average. It’s a permanent program meant to help level the playing field. The law also protects insurers from suffering losses for providing insurance to higher cost customers -- to a point. The program is called reinsurance, and here’s how it works. The law slaps a $63 fee or tax on most policies. That pool of money, which translates to $20 billion between 2014 and 2016, helps insurers pay for claims for people who require more medical attention. The reinsurance program lasts for only three years. A third part of the law, called a risk corridor, is another temporary program meant to mitigate an insurer’s risk. It’s the program that largely drives the concern over potential bailouts. The idea behind the corridor is that the government and insurers share risk for plans offered through the government marketplaces. Like the reinsurance program, it lasts only from 2014-16. Here’s how it works. The government sets financial benchmarks for each plan offered on the marketplace. As long as insurers come close to that benchmark, nothing happens. If an insurer overperforms by up to 3 percent, they can keep the extra revenue. If they underperform by up to 3 percent, they are forced to absorb those additional costs. When the gaps get wider, however, money starts changing hands. If insurers beat their benchmark by 3-8 percent, they have to split that extra revenue with the federal government. If insurers beat the mark by more than 8 percent, the government receives 80 percent of that additional money. On the flip side, when insurers fail to meet their benchmarks the government helps absorb those costs. If insurers underperform by 3-8 percent, the government will cover half the extra cost. The government covers 80 percent of the costs after that. The Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan number cruncher of Congress, says all of these measures will be budget neutral. Some plans will share gains with the government and some will get checks from the government. Overall, the CBO predicts that the money going out will be matched by the money coming in. However, if the CBO is wrong, there is nothing to stop the money from flowing from the government to private insurers. There is no cap written into the law. The fear among conservatives is that ad hoc changes to the law since it passed could be creating a ripple effect where the marketplace insurance pools have more sick people and losses would rise. Hence, the concern over bailouts. The bailout dispute We asked Krauthammer why he called this a bailout and he said he relied on the definition from Merriam-Webster. ""The act of saving or rescuing something (such as a business) from money problems,"" he quoted. ""A rescue from financial distress."" Rescue is clearly the operative word. We looked at other definitions. The Palgrave Dictionary of Economics spoke of a rescue from ""potential or actual insolvency."" Investopedia had to prevent ""the consequences that arise from a business's downfall."" The country’s recession bailouts fit these definitions nicely. First the private firms were in crisis and then the government stepped in with taxpayer dollars. For Scott Harrington, professor of health care management at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, Krauthammer’s use of the word in the context of the Affordable Care Act gets the sequence wrong. ""Bailouts involve ex post actions to address private sector screw-ups,"" Harrington said. ""That's not what happened here."" Although the government could end up writing some large checks, the system was not explicitly set up to do that. Companies are expected to try to make a profit, and they have yet to experience any losses. Mark A. Hall, professor of law and public health at Wake Forest University, took exception to Krauthammer’s statement because Krauthammer writes as though all the money comes from American taxpayers. ""A bailout is using general taxpayer revenues to help an industry or interest group,"" Hall said. ""Here, the funding source is mainly from insurers themselves."" Mary van der Heijde, a principal and actuary with the health care consulting firm Milliman, told PunditFact that Krauthammer’s term ""strikes me as an aggressive characterization."" In her view, Krauthammer spoke only to the negative side of the program. ""This (risk corridor) provision is applied uniformly, in that both gains and losses are shared with the government,"" van der Heijde said. ""Not just losses."" Melinda Buntin, chair of the Department of Health Policy at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, noted that this is not the first time the government has used the risk corridor approach. It was part of the launch of the Medicare Part D prescription drug program. ""Under that, insurers have actually incurred higher profits than expected on average and have thus paid money back into the government,"" Buntin said. Our ruling Krauthammer said the Affordable Care Act contains a hidden government bailout for insurance companies that would cover up to 80 percent of their losses. The health care law does contain several mechanisms to mitigate potential losses for insurance companies, and the government stands to help absorb some losses up to 80 percent. But the government also stands to gain if insurance companies are able to turn profits, and the Congressional Budget Office has projected that the government would neither make nor lose money. Experts we spoke with also took issue with Krauthammer’s use of the term ""bailout."" In the past decade, bailouts came after private businesses faced a financial crisis. The measures in the Affordable Care Act have a more complicated sequence that include a variety of outcomes. This claim is partially accurate but leaves out important details."
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10107
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Cracking The Conundrum Of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
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It starts out with some good framing around the problem of diagnosing and treating chronic fatigue, but then, in a story that demands specifics, it provides only one number, noting that the study examined “over 600 patients.” The rest of the story contains statements such as, “Doctors say some treatments can help.” Which ones? It also says that “a form of talk therapy, as well as exercise, offered relief for some patients.” How many? We like that the story tapped some outside expertise to put the study’s findings in context, but the story was too short in other areas. Chronic fatigue syndrome, as the story notes, is one of the most elusive disorders in modern medicine. Is it truly a single syndrome? Is it several disorders that are ill defined and difficult to pinpoint and so end up being tossed under the same umbrella? Is it all in the patient’s mind? it can be a devastating condition – affecting physical, emotional function and financial well-being. Because science has yielded few clues to the origin and true nature of the syndrome, it is all the more important for journalists to write with precision when addressing a new scientific attempt to address chronic fatigue. This was particularly important for a controversial study like the one here because many people interpreted the study to mean that chronic fatigue is a psychological disorder.
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false
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NPR
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This was a significant hole in the story. Any sort of behavioral therapy usually requires multiple visits that can add up to thousands of dollars per month. If you add an exercise program that could require a gym membership or even a personal trainer, this could prove to be far too expensive for the typical chronic fatigue patient. The story does not quantify the potential benefits. Instead it says that the therapy “offered relief for some patients,” and it later says that those who received therapy and exercise, “improved the most, reporting less fatigue, insomnia and anxiety.” Everyone knows that exercise can make a person feel healthier and more alert, but this study was looking at a more difficult question than that. Hard numbers quantifying the actual benefits of this approach would have helped readers understand the value to place on this research. The story makes no attempt to quantify harms, even though harm rates were mentioned in the study. It does talk about the potential harms, though, in quoting a physician who treats chronic fatigue patients in Salt Lake City. The story makes a fundamental error. As written, it sounds like a three-group design, but it was a four-group design. Specialty medical care (SMC) alone versus SMC and CBT versus two other combinations of SMC and therapy. So, the critical issue is – how much additional benefit is there from these therapies compared to SMC. The fact that there was benefit is important. In addition, this appears to be a well done study with a large sample size, yet there is no sense in the story that this study was different from any of the others before. The story is quite careful to avoid disease-mongering. At the top of the story, it quickly takes readers through the last three decades of work around chronic fatigue and attempts to describe what it feels like for the typical patient. Actually, the story says “some patients,” but we’ll give it a pass here. The story only quoted two people, but we like that it at least attempted to bring in a different view on how to treat chronic fatigue. In talking with Lucinda Bateman at Fatigue Consultation Clinic in Salt Lake City, the story brought out some of the limitations of the study. The story did not compare this approach to any alternatives; other options include antidepressant medications (in fact about 1/3 of patients were on an antidepressant). The story mentions “a form of talk therapy” but never makes it clear how exactly the therapy works and whether any psychiatrist could provide it. This is one of many places in the story where additional detail would help. Cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) was offered for up to 14 sessions over 23 weeks. A booster session was offered at 36 weeks. CBT is a widely available and standard psychological treatment used for many conditions. Similar to CBT, details on the duration, frequency and availability of the competing interventions would be useful. Helping readers understand what might be involved in the intervention would improve understanding. The story never tells us enough about the type of therapy involved to decide whether it is novel. CBT is not novel and has been tested before for chronic fatigue, but only in small trials. It is a recommended therapy in some guidelines. This trial is a large head-to-head comparison of viable treatment options, so, in this respect, the findings are novel and quite important. The story did not rely on a news release.
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7520
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Industry scrambles to stop fatal bird flu in South Carolina.
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An infectious and fatal strain of bird flu has been confirmed in a commercial turkey flock in South Carolina, the first case of the more serious strain of the disease in the United States since 2017 and a worrisome development for an industry that was devastated by previous outbreaks.
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true
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Animals, Tennessee, Health, General News, United States, Flu, Bird flu, South Carolina, Iowa, Virus Outbreak, Agriculture, U.S. News
|
The high pathogenic case was found at an operation in Chesterfield County, South Carolina, marking the first case of the more dangerous strain since one found in a Tennessee chicken flock in 2017. In 2015, an estimated 50 million poultry had to be killed at operations mainly in the Upper Midwest after infections spread throughout the region. “Yes, it’s concerning when we see cases, but we are prepared to respond very quickly and that was done in this case,” said Lyndsay Cole, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. The USDA has been working in recent months with scientists and farmers in North Carolina and South Carolina, where a low pathogenic — or less severe — strain of bird flu had been detected. Low pathogenic bird flu causes few clinical signs in infected birds. However, two strains of low pathogenic bird flu — the H5 and H7 strains — can mutate into highly pathogenic forms, which are frequently fatal to birds and easily transmissible between susceptible species. Low pathogenic cases were already in an area near the South Carolina and North Carolina state line and USDA was closely monitoring and testing. The case in Chesterfield County, South Carolina was expected to be another low pathogenic case, but it came back from the laboratory high pathogenic which means the less severe virus mutated into the more severe version, Cole said. “Our scientists at the National Veterinary Services Laboratory had looked at the virus characteristics of the low path virus and they had previously indicated that this was one that was probably likely to mutate so they were watching it very closely,” Cole said. A laboratory in Ames, Iowa, confirmed the virus with that had been killing turkeys was a high pathogenic H7N3 strain of avian influenza. A report on the outbreak indicates in was discovered on April 6. It has killed 1,583 turkeys and the remainder of the 32,577 birds in the flock were euthanized. State officials quarantined the farm, movement controls were implemented and enhanced surveillance was already in place in the area. “The flock was quickly depopulated and will not enter the marketplace,” said Joel Brandenberger, president of the National Turkey Federation, an industry trade group. “Thorough disinfecting and cleaning procedures have already been initiated on premises as well as surveillance of commercial flocks in the surrounding area. This occurrence poses no threat to public health. Turkey products remain safe and nutritious.” He said poultry farmers implement strict biosecurity measures year-round and routinely test flocks for avian influenza. These measures were implemented after an H5N2 avian influenza outbreak that began in December 2014 swept commercial chicken, egg laying and turkey populations throughout much of 2015 killing 50 million birds and causing as much as $3 billion in economic damage. That outbreak is believed to have originated in wild birds. Nearly 90 percent of the bird losses were on egg-laying chicken farms in Iowa and turkey farms in Minnesota. The bulk of other cases occurred in the adjacent states of Nebraska, Wisconsin, and South Dakota. Cole said since 2015 significant planning, exercises and coordination has occurred between the federal government, state agencies and the industry. Cole said the coronavirus pandemic has not affected the ability of the government to respond to the bird flu. A highly pathogenic H7N9 bird flu strain was detected in Lincoln County, Tennessee, in a chicken flock of 73,500 birds in early March 2017. Ten days later samples from a commercial flock less than two miles away also tested positive for the same strain. The birds were euthanized and buried and the virus didn’t spread further indicating immediate mitigation action can stop spread.
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4250
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Guidelines say more women may need breast cancer gene test.
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More women may benefit from gene testing for hereditary breast or ovarian cancer, especially if they’ve already survived cancer once, an influential health group recommended Tuesday.
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true
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Cancer, Health, General News, Ovarian cancer, Breast cancer, Angelina Jolie, U.S. News
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At issue are genes called BRCA1 and BRCA2. When they’re mutated, the body can’t repair damaged DNA as well, greatly increasing the chances of breast, ovarian and certain other cancers. Gene testing allows affected women to consider steps to lower their risk, such as when actress Angelina Jolie underwent a preventive mastectomy several years ago. Most cancer isn’t caused by BRCA mutations — they account for 5% to 10% of breast cancers and 15% of ovarian cancers — so the gene tests aren’t for everyone. But mutations cluster in families, and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has long recommended that doctors screen women who have relatives with BRCA-related cancers and refer those who might benefit from gene testing to a genetic counselor to help them decide. Tuesday, the task force expanded that advice, telling primary care doctors they should also assess women’s risk if: —they previously were treated for breast or other BRCA-related cancers including ovarian, fallopian tube or peritoneal cancers, and now are considered cancer-free. —their ancestry is prone to BRCA mutations, such as Ashkenazi Jewish women. Why screen breast cancer survivors? After all, they already know there’s a risk of recurrence. Take, for example, someone who had a tumor removed in one breast in their 40s a decade ago, when genetic testing wasn’t as common. Even this many years later, a BRCA test still could reveal if they’re at risk for ovarian cancer — or at higher than usual risk for another tumor in their remaining breast tissue, explained task force member Dr. Carol Mangione of the University of California, Los Angeles. And it could alert their daughters or other relatives to a potential shared risk. “It’s important to test those people now,” Mangione said. “We need to get the word out to primary care doctors to do this assessment and to make the referrals.” Private insurers follow task force recommendations on what preventive care to cover, some at no out-of-pocket cost under rules from former President Barack Obama’s health care law. The recommendations were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Cancer groups have similar recommendations for BRCA testing, and increasingly urge that the newly diagnosed be tested, too, because the inherited risk can impact choices about surgery and other treatment. Identifying BRCA mutation carriers “can be lifesaving, and should be a part of routine medical care,” Drs. Susan Domchek of the University of Pennsylvania and Mark Robson of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, who weren’t involved with the new guidelines, wrote in an editorial accompanying them. But too few high-risk women ever learn if they harbor BRCA mutations, they wrote. For example, cancer groups have long recommended that all ovarian cancer patients be tested, but several studies have found testing is done in less than a third. Don’t skip the genetic counseling, said the task force’s Mangione. BRCA testing can cause anxiety and sometimes gives confusing results, finding mutations that might not be dangerous — things the counselors are trained to interpret. There’s a shortage of genetic counselors, particularly in rural areas, and she said counseling by phone can work. There’s a wide array of gene tests, some that search just for BRCA mutations and others that test dozens of additional genes at the same time. There’s even a direct-to-consumer kit sold by 23andMe — but Domchek and Robson warned it only detects the three mutations found most in women of Ashkenazi Jewish descent, not dozens of other mutations. ___ 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.
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6535
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Startup wants to bring back Vioxx for hemophilia joint pain.
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Could there be a second life for the once-popular arthritis pill Vioxx? A startup pharmaceutical company hopes so.
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true
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Chronic pain, Hemophilia, Health, Arthritis, North America, Business, AP Top News, U.S. News, Heart attack
|
Merck & Co. voluntarily pulled the blockbuster drug in 2004 amid evidence that it doubled the chances of having a heart attack or stroke. Now tiny Tremeau Pharmaceuticals is working to bring it back, to treat severe joint pain caused by the bleeding disorder hemophilia. That’s for far fewer patients than the millions who took Vioxx pills for arthritis and other chronic pain — but if it’s approved doctors could again legally prescribe it to anyone. Many hemophilia patients rely on opioid painkillers because nearly every other pain reliever increases the risk of internal bleeding. Considerable research shows Vioxx doesn’t do that. “It seemed to me that there was a huge unmet medical need” for these patients, Brad Sippy, Tremeau’s chief executive, told The Associated Press. He put together a plan and co-founded Tremeau last year to develop nonopioid pain treatments for rare diseases. A longtime pharmaceutical marketing executive, Sippy worked at Merck during the Vioxx era and helped with its recall from pharmacy shelves. He also knew the final patent protecting Vioxx’s monopoly was expiring this fall. When it stopped making Vioxx, Merck was facing thousands of lawsuits from people claiming the drug caused their heart attacks or strokes. Merck’s own research showed the drug doubled those risks, but lawyers for patients claimed the company downplayed or concealed that. Merck initially fought the lawsuits but in 2007 agreed to a $4.85 billion settlement. If Tremeau gets approval in a few years to start selling rofecoxib, the chemical name for Vioxx, doctors could prescribe it to other people with garden-variety chronic pain. Tremeau wouldn’t be able to legally promote those unapproved uses, but some patients likely would want it. Vioxx was so effective that some users hoarded it after Merck took it off market. “I know a lot of people who swore by Vioxx,” said analyst Steve Brozak, president of WBB Securities. “Repurposing this for the hemophilia community is particularly brilliant.” Dr. Steven Stanos, president of the American Academy of Pain Management, a professional group for pain specialists, said it made sense to try Vioxx for hemophilia joint pain. “Vioxx was very potent,” he said. The drug would still carry a strong warning about heart attack and stroke risks. Doctors would have to balance its pain benefit against each patient’s risks, Stanos said. On Tuesday, Tremeau announced that the Food and Drug Administration recently handed it an endorsement of sorts: an orphan drug designation. That’s for disorders affecting fewer than 200,000 Americans, and comes with benefits, including tax credits on testing costs and a free FDA review. Still, it’s no slam-dunk. Sippy said the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Tremeau must raise $25 million or more to pay for testing in hemophilia patients. Then the results must be good enough for FDA approval. In the U.S., just over 20,000 people have hemophilia, an inherited disorder that leaves them without key proteins in the blood needed for clotting. The slightest injury can trigger uncontrolled internal bleeding. Since the 1990s, most patients have been getting medicine that limits but doesn’t prevent all bleeding episodes. Blood buildup in the joints can damage them and cause pain. “Without other options, opioids are often the next step” after Tylenol, sometimes at high doses, said Dr. Stacy Croteau of the Boston Hemophilia Center, who is a paid consultant for Tremeau. “Rofecoxib would hopefully allow us to reduce use of opioids.” Meanwhile, Tremeau is deciding on the drug’s brand name. Sippy said the Vioxx name, no longer protected by trademark, might scare some people, while others would remember its effectiveness. “We haven’t excluded it,” he said. ___ Follow Linda A. Johnson at @LindaJ_onPharma
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32137
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A photograph shows a girl killed in a drunk-driving accident, with accompanying text recording her last words.
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The accompanying text, which supposedly records the last utterances of the “dead” girl in the photograph, is taken from a poem (“Somebody Should Have Taught Him”) which was circulated at least as far back as the year 2000 as part of a petition against drunk driving.
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false
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Fauxtography, accidents, drunk driving
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Warning teens about the perils of drunk driving may be a laudable goal, but nonetheless the nightmarish “true story” scenario presented above was pure fiction. The gruesome photograph didn’t depict a real accident of any type; rather, it was a staged accident scene established at Laguna Hills (California) High School in February 2010 as part of the Every 15 Minutes program to educate students about the dangers of drinking and texting while driving: Life’s lessons are best learned through experience. Unfortunately, when the target audience is teens and the topic is drinking and texting while driving, experience is not the teacher of choice. The Every 15 Minutes Program offers real-life experience without the real-life risks. This emotionally charged program, entitled Every 15 Minutes, is an event designed to dramatically instill teenagers with the potentially dangerous consequences of drinking alcohol and texting while driving. This powerful program will challenge students to think about drinking, texting while driving, personal safety, and the responsibility of making mature decisions when lives are involved. After lunch, a simulated traffic collision will be viewable on the school grounds. Rescue workers will treat injured student participants. These students will experience first hand, the sensations of being involved in a tragic, alcohol-related and texting while driving collision. The coroner will handle fatalities on the scene, while the injured students will be extricated by the jaws-of-life manned by Fire-Fighters and Paramedics. Police Officers will investigate, arrest, and book the student “drunk driver”. Student participants will continue their experience by an actual trip to the morgue, the hospital emergency room, and to the police department jail for the purpose of being booked for “drunk driving”.
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11178
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Beta-blockers used by musicians, athletes, students to enhance performance
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"A couple of online commenters reacting to the story exhibited more insight than the story did overall, when they wrote: ""Here we are in a performance enhancing society. Get used to it, adderall is widespread on college campuses, PED’s are ubiquitous in pro, college, and even some high-school sports, fighter pilots are high on go (greenies) pills, truck drivers live off of 5 hour energy,and now musicians are popping pills. Buy Pharma stocks!"" ""Juicing Musicians. Nothing is sacred. I agree with the folks who say getting over anxiety is part of being a great artist. You’re either cool under pressure or you’re playing your violin in the subway between shifts at…well…Subway."" Balance was thrown out the window with this piece with positive anecdotes/interviewees outnumbering cautious interviewees 6 to 2. When a drug is demonstrated to be safe and effective in one group of individuals (e.g. individuals with heart failure), this does not mean that the same is true for another group of individuals (e.g. healthy individuals). In addition, ‘sharing’ of prescription medication of any sort is potentially dangerous and unwise – in this case both for the person who would be taking the drug and also for the person who would be giving up the medication they are supposed to be taking to manage their condition. At one and the same time, the paper acted as though it had just discovered this long-standing practice of beta blocker use, yet it failed to give fundamental information that was important if this was its foray into this world of performance-enhancing drug use."
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false
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"There was no discussion of costs. The story provided anecdotes about performance anxiety relief from the use of beta-blockers such as indicating that ‘it decreases tremors and steadies nerves’. While descriptive, this type of information does not inform the reader about the amount of benefit that might be expected. Where are the numbers? Where are the data? Where’s the evidence? Mixed bag, but a confusing one so we give it an unsatisfactory score. The story indicated that beta blockers ‘can cause problems for those who use them for non-medical purposes’ and that ‘no catastrophic events have been reported’. This is both contradictory and inadequate. The story quoted one doctor who ""recalled seeing a fellow doctor pass out while giving a speech because he had taken a beta-blocker for stage fright."" We believe it is just as inadequate to cite anecdotes – and not evidence – for harms as it is for benefits. How OFTEN does this occur? The story could have given much more helpful detail on the common side effects of low heart rate, low blood pressure (and its consequences), fatigue, sexual dysfunction, and several other side effects people might experience if they took beta blockers frequently. Instead, the overall impression – steered by the weight of rosy anecdotes – was that this is a choice without negative consequences. The story provided a number of anecdotes about the use of beta blockers to alleviate performance anxiety. Although it did mention that this class of medication has not been studied in healthy individuals, this was swamped by the sheer volume of personal testimony. The use of the personal narrative in this way is misleading as it suggests that it is an adequate substitute for an actual demonstration of safety and effectiveness, which it is not. The one study it cited was 19 years old and was done in 32 people. Is that the best evidence there is? The story did not engage in overt disease mongering. It at least briefly acknowledged some dispute over whether stage fright is a condition requiring drug treatment, whether the desire to enhance performance warrants treatment with a prescribed beta blocker, etc. While numerous musicians were quoted in this story about their perceptions about the use of beta-blockers, the actual clinical perspective about this use for the medication was inadequately represented in this piece. By our count, generally positive promotional comments were represented in 6 interviewees – one of them even speculating on someone who couldn’t take the pills 46 years ago because they weren’t available with that person wondering if the pills could have saved the person’s career. Generally negative comments came from two interviewees. Forget about balance. While hailing the benefits of beta-blocker use for management of performance anxiety, there was no discussion of alternative methods, such as cognitive behavioral therapy, or even comments from other performers about how they deal with these problems. The story mentioned that beta blockers are prescription drugs that are FDA approved for treating hypertension and heart failure.It indicated that some people get a physician to write them a prescription for the drugs while some people get them from others who are willing to share. Although the story adequately describes the availability of beta blockers, it should have explained that the use described in the story is an off-label use of medication. The story was clear that beta blockers are not a new class of medication and that their use by individuals to address performance anxiety is also not new. (Although, we wonder why the paper chose to report on this now as if it WERE a new phenomenon. There’s no NEWS here.) Does not appear to rely on a news release."
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22950
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"More than 10 years of free trade ""has brought a $2 billion per day trade deficit."
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Sen. Sherrod Brown cites daily deficit figure as pricetag for NAFTA, China trade deals
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true
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Ohio, Economy, Trade, Sherrod Brown,
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"Congress may have no greater trade-agreement foe than Sherrod Brown, the Democratic U.S. senator from Ohio. It’s not that he says selling cars, soap and widgets to foreign consumers is bad. It’s just that some foreign trading partners use their cheap labor and weak environmental and safety standards to sell cars, toys and widgets to Americans at prices that our domestic industries cannot match while, according to Brown, adopting policies that make it hard to sell America’s goods abroad. So Brown was not saddened when negotiations for a South Korean trade deal went sour in November. After all, he said in a news release, more than 10 years of free trade deals have ""brought a $2 billion per day trade deficit and the loss of millions of manufacturing jobs -- jobs that should go to Ohio's skilled workers."" PolitiFact and The Plain Dealer expended plenty of bytes and ink on the lost-jobs issue during the election season, so there is no need to wade back into it here. Let’s just say that a persuasive case can be made, although the underlying data on jobs is poor. This country can send a man to the moon but it cannot precisely quantify the number of jobs lost or gained to trade. But what about Brown’s other point -- that more than 10 years of trade under the North American Free Trade Agreement and trade relations with China has resulted in a trade deficit of $2 billion a day? Causation of that kind is in dispute, and some experts and data suggest this country’s reliance on oil plays a big role in the trade deficit, with OPEC countries selling $76.4 billion more to the United States than vice versa so far this year. But imbalances with China ($201 billion and counting so far this year) play a bigger role, government statistics show. We will not argue cause and effect here, nor will we tell you not to enjoy low-price consumer goods. We’re merely examining the numbers. They show that the negative balance of trade went from $70.3 billion in 1993, just before NAFTA, to $378.8 billion in 2000, as the United States accepted permanent normalized trade with China, to a record high of $759.2 billion in 2006, according to Commerce Department records. So what of Brown’s precise number, $2 billion a day? Brown is right -- kind of. Or he’s not right, sort of. This drives us nuts too, but as we dug into the subject, we realized that different groups use different measures to describe the size of the trade deficit. You’d think it would be as easy as comparing the value of goods and services exported from the United States with those imported from other countries. So let’s show you some numbers from the Commerce Department using that exact measure. Trade deficit for 2007: $702 billion. For 2008: $698.8 billion. For 2009: $374.9 billion. The recession’s effects were glaring, but even before then the trend was downward, albeit slightly. For January through September 2010, the most recent measurement available, the trade balance was a negative $379.1 billion. Assuming the monthly trends hold through December, this year’s annual trade deficit should reach $500 billion. Divide that by the days of the year and you’d have a daily trade deficit of $1.37 billion a day. That’s 32 percent lower than Brown’s claim of $2 billion a day. But since flush times will return eventually, imports and exports will presumably resume at robust levels, too. So if Brown was referring to the trade deficits that existed before the recession, his statement would be nearly accurate, because the deficit came to an average of $1.91 billion a day in 2008 and $1.92 billion a day in 2007. But it may not be that simple. Trade balances are affected not only by wages, tariffs and the demands of consumers, but also by events beyond the recession such as currency corrections and the value of the dollar. Considering recent currency corrections, annual trade deficits could stay in the range of $500 billion, said William Cline, a senior fellow at the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics. That would make Brown’s $2 billion-a-day figure somewhat high. ""It’s a bit of an outdated figure,"" Cline said.. Yet there’s another way of viewing the data. Figures from the Commerce Department that we reviewed originated from the U.S. Census Bureau’s economic analysis unit (a bureau within a bureau at Commerce). The figures are the government’s official measure of the trade balance, used by the White House, cited in the news media and accepted broadly by economists. Yet the U.S. International Trade Commission, or ITC, which polices trade matters in the United States, maintains separate data that is used to review tariffs and trade practices. Depending on how one chooses to sort the data, a higher trade deficit can result. Brown’s office told us that his data came from the ITC. So we, too, turned to the ITC, and its staff helped guide us in using its online database. The ITC cautioned that the official figures come from Commerce, but various trade professionals use ITC data to drill down further for other purposes. We drilled. The result: A much higher trade deficit -- as high as $500.9 billion last year, in the depths of the recession, and $800 billion -- averaging $2.19 billion a day -- for 2008. How can one agency have such different figures from another? It’s easy. The ITC, concerned with tariffs, trade laws and trade policy, measures the value of goods -- cars, factory equipment, steel -- but not services. Services represent only a portion of the trade universe, yet they add a sweet spot to the equation. This country had a $132 billion trade surplus in services last year because it exported more in the way of travel, financial services, information services and so forth, than it brought in. Take away those services -- or just look at the ITC numbers -- and the trade balance becomes more bleak. It’s important to remember that when the White House and news reports mention the trade deficit, they are including services as well as goods and relying on the Commerce numbers. Even the ITC stressed this with us. But Brown aides as well as representatives of Public Citizen, a liberal public interest group, and its Global Trade Watch project, say the ITC data can be more relevant in certain circumstances. A state like Ohio exports relatively little in the way of services, for example, so the ITC’s focus on goods may be more pertinent for measuring trade’s impact in Ohio, said Todd Tucker, research director for Global Trade Watch, and Chris Slevin, a Brown aide who previously worked as Global Trade Watch’s deputy director. Even nationally, there is debate as to how much job-creating value can be found in export sectors like financial services and travel, Tucker said. Factories that make things employ a lot more people. Not to complicate this further, but ITC data can be sorted in yet another way, making the trade imbalance appear to be even worse. This occurs when some foreign-made goods are counted as ""imports for consumption,"" an ITC category with an assumption at the port of entry that the goods will be consumed in the United States. The problem occurs, critics say, when these ""imports"" wind up being shipped back abroad after being stored here temporarily. That gives them a new category on the way out -- ""re-exports"" -- which is not the same as a simple export of a product made in the United States. So they were counted as imports on the way in, but not subtracted back out as regular exports on their way out. This kind of counting, which defenders say has merit in certain circumstances, results in a higher trade deficit than when every product shipped in is counted as an import, and every product shipped out is counted as an export. By using these other categories in the ITC database, we calculated a trade deficit of $612 billion last year and a stunning $920.6 billion in 2008. These are close to the numbers Brown’s office supplied to us initially, and they support his claim -- and then some. So which figure is right? It’s a matter of legitimate dispute. Global Trade Watch says the larger numbers are more revealing and pertinent in a number of cases, especially when comparing U.S. trade relations with individual countries rather than the entire universe of global trade. The National Association of Manufacturers says that’s nonsense. From ""time immemorial,"" the Commerce/Census data have been used, measuring the total value of goods and services in and the total value of goods and services out, and that’s the only valid way to count a deficit or surplus, said Frank Vargo, the association’s vice president for international economic affairs. ""Inside U.S. Trade,"" a publication for trade policy wonks and attorneys, discussed this at length in a Nov. 12 article. It said that ""these different approaches result in widely different numbers when applied to both the global and bilateral deficits, and they have helped fuel and confuse a debate among stakeholders."" Global Trade Watch is sticking to its guns, but so is the National Association of Manufacturers. So back to Brown’s $2-billion-a-day claim: Is it accurate? Brown, who has authored a book on what he calls the ""myths of free trade,"" derives his figure from the ITC, and while the ITC cautioned us that the official balance-of-trade measure actually comes from Commerce, it is true that some authorities regard even the outlying ITC numbers as perfectly fine to use in certain circumstances. Yet even if we were to put those numbers aside and only use the Commerce Department numbers, Brown’s figures were close to the mark before the recession. This year is not the best year to measure the normal effects of trade, and no one can predict the future; perhaps the trade deficit will stabilize at a lower number such as $500 billion a year, or $1.36 billion a day. Perhaps it won’t. But based on the historical trends, regardless of which data source is used, we say Brown’s claim is ."
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11371
|
New Blood Thinner May Outperform Warfarin for Irregular Heartbeat
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This is a story about an experimental new blood thinner for use by people who have atrial fibrillation. This story delivers a sound presentation of why this drug may have benefit over the commonly used warfarin. The need for medication to reduce clotting risk from atrial fibrillation is common and there is long-standing interest in eliminating the need for routine monitoring that the current treatment with warfarin requires.
|
true
|
HealthDay,heart disease
|
The story mentioned that apixabane would cost more than warafarin, and included a quote from a company spokesperson to indicate that the exact price is uncertain as the medication has not yet been approved. The story also presented a reasoned examination of total costs for the use of warafin that accounted not just for per pill costs but also the expenses associated with the routine blood draws to examine warafarin levels. The story provided the absolute decrease in the number of strokes or clots, major bleeding events and hemorrhagic stroke as compared to the people in the study taking warafarin. The story provided good insight about possible problems associated with apixabane in patients with coronary artery disease who were simultaneously taking two blood thinners in addition to apixabane. The story provided a clear explanation about the nature of the patients, the size of the study, and the fact that it was a randomized clinical trial. The story did not engage in overt disease mongering. The story quoted a study researcher, a company spokesperson, and a cardiologist who did not appear to have ties to the study reported on. The story compared the outcome measure of apixabane to warafarin; in addition, it indicated that there is another medication in the same category that has been recently approved by the FDA. The story was clear that apixabane, the medication reported on, was experimental. The story was clear that there is already a similar type of drug that has recently been approved for use by the FDA. While the story referenced a news release, it does not appear to be its sole source of information.
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13284
|
"Donald Trump Says Hillary Clinton is ""wrong"" to say he mocked a disabled reporter."
|
"Trump said that Clinton is ""wrong"" to say he mocked a disabled reporter. Trump may deny that he intentionally mocked Kovaleski for his disability, but many Americans believe his remarks amounted to mocking, and we concur that that’s a reasonable -- indeed, perhaps the only -- interpretation of his actions. The notion that Trump’s comments about Cruz and a general undercut Clinton’s claim don’t hold water, because all three examples constitute mocking, whether a disability was involved or not."
|
false
|
National, Candidate Biography, Disability, Donald Trump,
|
"Once again, a comment by Donald Trump has become a point of contention in a presidential debate. This time, it revolved around remarks Trump made almost a year ago about a disabled reporter. At one point in the third presidential debate in Las Vegas, Hillary Clinton said, ""He also went after a disabled reporter, mocked and mimicked him on national television."" Trump interrupted, ""Wrong."" So who’s right? Here’s the background, which we have looked at before. At at a campaign rally in South Carolina on Nov. 24, 2015, Trump referred to New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski. At the time, Trump was taking heat for his widely debunked claims that he watched in Jersey City, N.J., as ""thousands and thousands of people were cheering"" the collapse of the World Trade Center following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. To defend this account, Trump cited a Sept. 18, 2001, story co-written by Kovaleski, who was a Washington Post reporter at the time. Near the bottom of the story, the Post reporters wrote that ""law enforcement authorities detained and questioned a number of people who were allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river."" However, the reporters couldn’t verify the celebrations actually occurred, as Kovaleski later explained. ""I certainly do not remember anyone saying that thousands or even hundreds of people were celebrating. That was not the case, as best as I can remember,"" Kovaleski told the Washington Post Fact Checker in November 2015. Remember, Kovaleski wrote that ""a number of people"" -- not thousands -- were allegedly seen celebrating. At the rally where he discussed Kovaleski, Trump said, ""You gotta see this guy"" and wildly flailed his arms, his right hand flopping at an odd angle as he shouted in a weird, agitated voice: ""Ahh, I don’t know what I said! Ahh, I don’t remember!"" Kovaleski has arthrogryposis, a congenital condition which limits the movement of his joints and has left his right hand sharply angled at the wrist. Kovaleski speaks with a normal voice and doesn't wave his arms around. (Watch a video of him talking about his ground-breaking reporting on the murder cases against former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez.) Many observers took Trump’s comments and motions as mocking Kovaleski. The New York Times rebuked Trump in a statement: ""We think it's outrageous that he would ridicule the appearance of one of our reporters."" And people who share Kovaleski’s condition -- formally known as arthrogryposis multiplex congenita, or AMC -- and their families launched a social media campaign with the hashtag ""AMCStrong."" Julie Reiskin, executive director of the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition, an advocacy group, said that Trump ""clearly was mocking his disability. That was very, very obvious, because he disagrees with all kinds of people at other times, and he doesn't use that voice or wave his arms like that."" (Reiskin said she was giving her view since her nonprofit group can't endorse or oppose candidates.) Reiskin said such behavior by Trump ""portrays people with disabilities as incompetent. That if you can't control your speech or part of your body that you're not competent, which is very destructive"" to the image of disabled people facing stereotypes and discrimination, she added. But Trump denied it. He tweeted, ""Clinton made a ad about me where I was imitating a reporter GROVELING after he changed his story. I would NEVER mock disabled. Shame!"" He also said in a statement at the time, ""I merely mimicked what I thought would be a flustered reporter trying to get out of a statement he made long ago."" Trump insisted that he couldn’t have known the man was disabled because ""I have no idea who this reporter, Serge Kovaleski is, what he looks like or his level of intelligence. … Despite having one of the all-time great memories I certainly do not remember him."" Kovaleski countered that as a reporter for the New York Daily News in the late 1980s and early 1990s he regularly covered Trump. He told the Washington Post he was sure the businessman remembered him -- and his condition. ""Donald and I were on a first-name basis for years,"" Kovaleski told the New York Times. In fact, Kovaleski recalled spending the day with Trump in 1989 when the reporter and other journalists flew with the billionaire on the ""inaugural voyage"" of the Trump Shuttle airline. In addition, Trump spoke familiarly about Kovaleski at the rally, calling him a ""nice reporter."" He also described him as ""the poor guy"" and indicated he knew Kovaleski’s appearance (""you gotta see this guy"") before launching into his imitation. After our fact-check appeared, the Washington Post Fact Checker reviewed both Trump’s original comments and subsequent ones he made on the same subject in Colorado. The Fact Checker concluded that ""Trump clearly mocked Kovaleski"" and it gave Trump its lowest rating, Four Pinocchios. In the meantime, some Trump supporters have shared other examples in which Trump has shaken his hands and used an odd tone of voice to refer to other people. In one video, Trump is shown referring to one of his primary rivals, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, with flailing arms and an exaggerated voice. (See it here.) In another, he uses similar, if more subdued, motions when referring to an unnamed general. (See it here.) However, neither of these examples support Trump’s denial in the debate. In the videos, Trump was clearly mocking both Cruz and the unnamed general. In fact, the video about the general -- produced by a Trump supporter -- says explicitly that he was mocking the general. In other words, the most you could say about these bits of evidence is that they demonstrate that Trump is an equal-opportunity mocker. They don’t help refute Clinton’s charge that Trump mocked Kovaleski. The Trump campaign did not respond to an inquiry after the debate. Our ruling Trump said that Clinton is ""wrong"" to say he mocked a disabled reporter. Trump may deny that he intentionally mocked Kovaleski for his disability, but many Americans believe his remarks amounted to mocking, and we concur that that’s a reasonable -- indeed, perhaps the only -- interpretation of his actions. The notion that Trump’s comments about Cruz and a general undercut Clinton’s claim don’t hold water, because all three examples constitute mocking, whether a disability was involved or not."
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7381
|
Russia slams New York Times, Financial Times on virus deaths.
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Russia’s Foreign Ministry has criticized the Financial Times and The New York Times after they reported that Russia’s coronavirus death toll could be much higher than government officials are saying.
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true
|
Understanding the Outbreak, Health, Newspapers, International News, General News, Virus Outbreak, Europe, Russia
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The articles said that they were based on a spike in total mortality rates reported by officials in Moscow, who said the capital registered about 1,800 deaths more in April 2020 than the monthly average. The New York Times reported that total is far higher than the official COVID-19 death count of 642, which the newspaper said was an indication of significant underreporting by the authorities. It quoted Tatiana N. Mikhailova, a senior researcher at the Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow, as saying that the number who died from the virus is “possibly almost three times higher than the official toll.” The Financial Times pointed to a similar surge in deaths reported by authorities in St. Petersburg, and it concluded that nationwide, Russia could have 70% more coronavirus deaths than it reports. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova complained about what she called “disinformation” by the two newspapers and said letters demanding a retraction would be passed on to both on Thursday. Danielle Ha, vice president for communications for The New York Times, told Russian news agencies the report was accurate because it was based on data released by an official state agency. The Financial Times didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press. Russia has reported over 250,000 coronavirus cases on Thursday and 2,305 deaths. The comparatively low death toll raised questions in the West, with some critics suggesting it could be much higher. The New York Times reported that Russia’s mortality rate of only about 13 deaths per million was far below the world average of 36. Russian health officials insisted that the relatively low coronavirus death toll is due to its instituting a quick ban on travel from neighboring China earlier this year, an early introduction of restrictions and tracing of the infected contacts. U.S. President Donald Trump has cited a similar travel ban for his efforts to combat the virus. Russian officials also have said the scope of testing has been significantly increased in recent weeks, allowing for officials to spot the infections quickly and prevent patients from developing life-threatening complications. Following the Foreign Ministry statement, lawmaker Vasily Piskaryov demanded that reporters from the newspapers be stripped of their accreditation, effectively banning them from working in the country. Zakharova said measures against the media organizations “will depend on whether they run the retraction.” Last month, Russian lawmakers approved fines of up to $25,000 and prison terms of up to five years for anyone who spreads what is deemed to be false information during the outbreak. Under the measure, media outlets could be fined up to $127,000 for disseminating disinformation about the virus. On Wednesday, Moscow’s health department rejected the allegations of undercounting coronavirus deaths. Officials said autopsies are being conducted in all suspected coronavirus deaths. “That’s why post-mortem diagnoses in Moscow and causes of death, in the end, are exceedingly accurate, and the mortality data absolutely transparent,” the statement said. More than 60% of deaths of people with coronavirus in Moscow were ascribed to other causes, such as cardiovascular ailments, cancer, diseases involving organ failures and other illnesses, according to the statement. Guidelines on reporting coronavirus deaths, issued by the World Health Organization in mid-April, state that “deaths due to COVID-19” should be considered as such “unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID disease.” ___ Follow AP news coverage of the coronavirus pandemic at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
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36737
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"A game called ""Blue Whale"" is encouraging children and teenagers in Russia to kill themselves."
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Was a ‘Blue Whale Suicide Challenge’ Behind a Rash of Teen Deaths?
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unproven
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Fact Checks, International, Internet, Russia, Social Media, Viral Content
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Reports about a “Blue Whale” suicide challenge or suicide game that’s allegedly responsible for hundreds of teen suicides have been lurking around on the fringes for several years. The stories are unproven — and similar warnings about online suicide games, challenges and chat rooms have been around for more than a decade.It should be noted that some believe that the Russian government has fueled reports about the “Blue Whale” suicide game so that it can be used as an excuse to crack down on internet usage among teens.The “Blue Whale” warnings seem to have started with a report that appeared in the Russian tabloid Novaya Gazeta under the headline “Groups of Death” in May 2016. According to the report, at least 130 teenagers who participated in closed groups on the Russian social network VKontakte had committed suicide from November 2015 to May 2016. The names of these groups all apparently contained the word “whale” — space whale, white whale, whale journal, sea of whales, ocean whale, and flying whale (the phrase “blue whale” did not appear in the report.) These names reference the mysterious concept of “stranding” in which otherwise healthy dolphins and whales beach themselves and die for unknown reasons.The Novaya Gazeta report tells the story of a woman named Irena, who explains that her child committed suicide after taking part in a fifty-day challenge in a closed VKontaktke whale group. Administrators of the group reportedly issued challenges each day — including self mutilating, sleep deprivation, and listening to and watching specific content — before building up to suicide on the fiftieth day.The report immediately went viral in Russia, but critics have accused Novaya Gazeta of embellishing details of the story and of reporting unverified facts. Others noted that Russian officials were quick to seize on the report as a public health threat — hinting that “Blue Whale” rumors could be an excuse for the Kremlin to crack down on internet usage among teens, the Moscow Times reports:The story — titled “Groups of Death” — immediately received more than 1.5 million hits, and sparked a media storm. Some commentators accused Novaya Gazeta of exaggerating the problem, and expressed fear that the story would only inspire authorities to impose more restrictions on the Internet, the standard reaction nowadays.Indeed, officials seemed ready to jump on their favorite hobbyhorse. The flamboyant children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov declared that the Internet and communications systems were threatening children in ways never seen before. The infamous author of the so-called “gay propaganda law” Yelena Mizulina, currently a Federation Council senator, proposed fining social networks for having suicidal content.Novaya Gazeta’s terrifying claims are yet to be verified and confirmed: Russian law enforcement launched a large-scale investigation of VKontakte communities and their connection to teenage suicide. Follow-up investigations by other media outlets concluded that much of Novaya Gazeta’s story was embellished. The Lenta.ru news website reported that ill-famed VKontakte communities were not aiming to force children to commit suicide. Rather, they were run by nerdy teenagers obsessed with accumulating likes and shares, Lenta.ru said, and publishing “shocking content” about suicide helped them drive traffic to their online groups. Such efforts did result in suicides, the investigation reported, but not hundreds of them.In November 2016, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced that it had detained 21-year-old Philip Budeikin on suspicion of hosting eight suicide challenges groups on the social network that had been linked to 15 deaths between 2013 and 2016, according to Russian media:Russia’s Investigative Committee has announced the arrest of an administrator of a group on the VKontakte social network that instigates children to commit suicide. Spokesperson for Russia’s Investigative Committee Svetlana Petrenko told TASS that “in May 2016, St. Petersburg investigators reviewed some media reports on closed groups on one of Russia’s popular social networks, that had been allegedly goading kids to commit suicide.”After conducting a probe, a criminal case on charges of instigating suicide was launched. According to the investigators, from December 2013 to May 2016, the perpetrators established eight virtual groups on the VKontakte social network to promote suicidal behavior and drive underage users to commit suicide. The investigators found out that access to these groups had been limited with membership provided by the administrator.Again, the Russian government’s response to these reports has sparked sharp rebukes from critics. Families of some teens whose suicides have been linked to the “Blue Whale” challenge have spoken out, for example, arguing that the game had nothing to do with their loved ones’ deaths, Radio Free Europe reported in 2017:Mental-health professionals and government officials are expressing concern, although for different reasons. Activists are urging a focus on the factors that drive youths to be interested in such ghoulish games, while politicians tend to see the Blue Whale phenomenon as an argument for bolstering control over the Internet.At a hearing on February 16 of Russia’s Public Chamber to discuss proposed legislation increasing punishments for inciting suicide, members heard allegations that Blue Whale had been created by “Ukrainian nationalists” as “a professionally prepared campaign that has caught up at least 2 million youths,” according to a report of the meeting in the daily Kommersant.The story quickly made its way out of Russia, with stories appearing in media outlets in Dubai, India, and the U.K, all citing the original, still unproven claim about 130 teen suicides in Russia being linked to the challenge. In the re-tellings, however, the challenge was called the “Blue Whale” suicide challenge or suicide game. One report appearing in Dubai’s Khaleej Times explained that parents had received alerts from school officials about the Blue Whale suicide game:Worried school parents in Dubai have been sharing advisories with each other via social media regarding an online craze, which has reportedly been linked to hundreds of teen deaths in Russia.The chilling challenge, called Blue Whale, is a ‘suicide game’ allegedly run by an online social media group in which gamers are being urged to complete a set of daring challenges over a 50-day period, before then being told to kill themselves.In a Whatsapp message to Khaleej Times, the advisory read: “Any parents out there or anyone that knows of any kids playing an online game called ‘Blue Whale’, please get your kids off this game. It sets them 50 challenges and the last one is to commit suicide.”Since the story went viral outside Russia, a number of reports have popped up linking attempted suicides to the Blue Whale “game.” However, it’s not clear exactly how widespread the danger is, or how many deaths can actually be linked to it. It’s also important to note that this isn’t first time warnings about suicide challenges, suicide games or suicide chat rooms have circulated. One such account from 2006 tells of “suicide chat rooms” and “suicide websites.” In the end, we’re calling claims about the “Blue Whale” suicide game Unknown.
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35677
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Vegetarians are unaffected by COVID-19 because the virus is passed on through eating meat.
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The consumption of raw or undercooked animal products should be avoided. Raw meat, milk, or animal organs should be handled with care to avoid cross-contamination with uncooked foods, as per good food safety practices.
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false
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Politics, COVID-19
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As the COVID-19 coronavirus disease spread around the world, a false claim gained traction in India during March 2020 via social media, including messages in WhatsApp. A series of posts claimed that vegetarians were unaffected by the disease, attributing it to the World Health Organization (WHO). On March 14, a post from the Facebook page I Support Indian Army (only radical Hindus join: please get 150 Hindus to join) was shared more than 600 times. The post says: No vegetarian person in the world has been caught with corona: WHO report. Vegetarians rejoice, the demons will die. But the WHO’s website does not include a report claiming that vegetarians are not susceptible to contracting COVID-19. Another post forwarded to Snopes on WhatsApp attributes a quote to Dr. Gauden Galea, the WHO representative in China. In February, he’s shown saying in a Facebook video from a page called Lebanese Vegans: As long as people eat meat, there is going to be some risk of infection. Galea’s statement was in fact taken out of context. Indian news outlet The Logical Indian found a CNN report from January 2020 where he first made the statement after the origins of COVID-19 and its ability to spread from person-to-person was discovered. In an email exchange with The Logical Indian, he clarified: “The statement was part of a longer discussion about the continued global risk of zoonotic viruses and the potential for ‘spillover’ into human populations. The intent was not to endorse any particular diet nor to condemn any other, but to recognize that as long as people eat meat, there is a need to rear animals, to slaughter them, and to distribute and sell the products. This proximity of animals and humans thus generated will create the opportunity, indeed the certainty, of animal-human spillovers of infectious disease. It is important therefore that the trade-in all livestock, from farm to table, be regulated in a One-Health approach looking at animal and human health as one continuum, with all sectors involved acting in unison. This applies to an even greater extent to the illegal trade in wild animals for food where other laws and considerations, from law enforcement to quarantine and conservation, will also apply.” Scientists suggest that COVID-19 likely came from bats first, possibly passing through an intermediary animal before infecting humans. The hypothesis that COVID-19 emerged at a live animal market at Wuhan is also inconclusive according to Dr. Stephen Turner, head of the department of microbiology at Melbourne’s Monash University. But the interactions of different species at wet markets with fresh meat, fish, and perishables has been identified as an issue, according to immunologist Dr. Michelle Baker. On Twitter, the following message was copied and retweeted hundreds of times, even though it appears to be from a parody account: The post, from March 14, says: The whole world has become fans of sanatan culture. No vegetarian in the world has contracted coronavirus: WHO report. The entire world is now doing namaste… hawans and yajnas are being done… gaumutra (cow urine) and tulsi’s benefits are being understood… Gita and Ramayana are being read. Hail sanatan This seemingly satirical post was shared by other non-parody accounts as well. The post suggests that the vegetarian lifestyle, particularly in the context of Hinduism, has protected people from contracting the virus. It also mentions rituals and belief systems specific to elements of Hinduism. Only 23-37% of Indians are estimated to be vegetarians, even though 80% of the population is Hindu. Hindus still make up a big proportion of meat eaters in the country, with an estimated one-third of upper-caste Hindus adhering to a vegetarian diet. It should also be noted that the above series of posts are proliferating on social media during a time of heightened anti-Muslim sentiment in India. Social media posts blaming the spread of the virus on the Muslim minority community are increasing, including the use of hashtags such as #CoronaJihad. In the past, Muslims and other minority groups have been targeted and faced violence over accusations of slaughtering cows and eating beef. The Indian Ministry of Health and Family Welfare also released a post busting this myth, recommending that everyone should mainly eat thoroughly cooked food: This aligns with the WHO’s recommendations on how to consume meat:
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2146
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Women more likely to die after heart attack: study.
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When it comes to matters of the heart, women should be treated more like men.
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true
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Health News
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A heart surgeon and his team performs a complex mitral valve reconstruction at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge July 5, 2007. REUTERS/Ben Edwards Among patients admitted to the hospital for a heart attack, women were far less likely than men to get angiography in which blood vessels are injected with dye so that blockages are visible on an X-ray, or angioplasty to clear blockages, a study found. Women were about twice as likely as men to die within a month of a heart attack, the study said. “This suggests that we could reduce mortality in female patients by using more invasive procedures,” said Dr. Francois Schiele, chief cardiologist at the University Hospital of Besancon, France. Schiele, who presented the research at the American College of Cardiology meeting in Atlanta, said women should be treated with all recommended strategies, including invasive ones. Some earlier studies have also suggested that women have a higher risk of death after a heart attack than men, but it is unclear why. Biological differences might explain it, researchers said, but there were also substantial differences in the treatment regimens women received. Researchers analyzed data from a registry that included more than 3,500 patients who were treated for heart attacks between January 2006 and December 2007. The women, who made up almost one-third of the patients, were nine years older than the men on average and had more health problems. In most major heart studies, the majority of patients have been men, leaving women an understudied population. The French study, sponsored by European drugmakers including GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis, found women received fewer effective treatments for heart attack. Women were almost twice as likely to die during the initial hospital stay and during the following month. Dr. Marcelo Di Carli, director of Cardiovascular Imaging at Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, noted that the risk of death is higher in women with heart disease than in men and the women in this study were older and sicker in the first place. Carli, who was not involved in this study, said he was not surprised by the findings, but noted that there is a growing awareness that women’s heart attack symptoms are different from men’s symptoms. “Just about every major hospital in the United States has a program on women’s health. Things are changing in a positive way because there’s so much research,” he said, adding that there is a recognition that women have different symptoms then men and sometimes no symptoms. One important difference, he said, is that women tend to have problems in smaller blood vessels, rather than the main coronary arteries. “This disease looks different in women,” Carli added.
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1068
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U.N. clinches deal to stop plastic waste ending up in the sea.
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Around 180 countries reached a deal on Friday that aims to sharply reduce the amount of plastic that gets washed into the world’s oceans, the United Nations said.
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true
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Environment
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They agreed to amend the Basel Convention to make global trade in plastic waste more transparent and better regulated, while also ensuring that its management is safer for human health and the environment. “I’m proud that this week in Geneva, parties to the Basel Convention have reached agreement on a legally-binding, globally-reaching mechanism for managing plastic waste,” Rolph Payet, executive secretary at U.N. Environment for the Basel, Rotterdam & Stockholm Conventions, said in a statement. “Pollution from plastic waste, acknowledged as a major environmental problem of global concern, has reached epidemic proportions with an estimated 100 million tonnes of plastic now found in the oceans, 80-90% of which comes from land-based sources,” the statement said. Payet said the negotiations, which began 11 days ago and brought together 1,400 delegates, had gone much further than anticipated. Officials attributed the progress partly to growing public awareness worldwide - reinforced by documentary films by British naturalist David Attenborough and others - of the dangers of plastic pollution to marine life. Marco Lambertini, director general of environmental charity WWF International, said that for too long wealthy countries had abdicated responsibility for enormous quantities of plastic waste and that the new accord was a highly welcome step towards redressing the imbalance and restoring some accountability. “However, it only goes part of the way. What we - and the planet - need is a comprehensive treaty to tackle the global plastic crisis,” he added. Payet said the new rules should have a significant impact on ocean pollution and ensure that plastics “do not end up where they should not end up”. Paul Rose, expedition leader for the National Geographic Pristine Seas Expeditions, said he believed changing public opinion worldwide about plastic pollution had played a positive role in the negotiations. “It was those iconic images of the dead albatross chicks on the Pacific Islands with their stomachs open and all recognizable plastic items inside it, and most recently, it’s been when we discovered the nano-particles do cross the blood-brain barrier, and we were able to prove that plastic is in us,” Rose said. An online petition entitled “Stop dumping plastic in paradise!” has attracted almost a million signatures in the past week. The new rules will take a year to come into force. But Payet said the signatory countries had said they did not want any delay, adding that the plan was to “hit the ground running”.
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41635
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A medical alert says to stop the use of anti-inflammatories for pain or high temperatures.
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This message is fake. Current advice from health authorities in the UK and Ireland say to continue taking previously prescribed medication, including anti-inflammatories unless told otherwise by a healthcare professional. The NHS says there is no strong evidence that taking ibuprofen can make Covid-19 worse, but advises people with symptoms to take paracetamol if they can.
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false
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health
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A medical alert says to stop the use of anti-inflammatories for pain or high temperatures. This message is fake. Current advice from health authorities in the UK and Ireland say to continue taking previously prescribed medication, including anti-inflammatories unless told otherwise by a healthcare professional. The NHS says there is no strong evidence that taking ibuprofen can make Covid-19 worse, but advises people with symptoms to take paracetamol if they can. Claim 1 of 2
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8368
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China reports 97 new coronavirus deaths on mainland on Sunday, toll rises to 908.
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The death toll from a coronavirus outbreak in mainland China rose to 908 as of the end of Sunday, the National Health Commission (NHC) said on Monday.
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true
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Health News
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The number of new deaths on Sunday rose 97, the NHC said in a statement on its website, another daily record increase. The central Hubei province, the epicenter of the outbreak, earlier on Monday reported 91 deaths on Sunday, while in the provincial capital, Wuhan, 73 people had died. The number of new confirmed infections on mainland China on Sunday increased, after declining on Saturday below 3,000 cases for the first time since Feb. 2. Across mainland China, there were 3,062 new confirmed infections on Sunday, bringing the total number so far to 40,171. (This story corrects milestone of Saturday’s decline)
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2764
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U.S. board allows gynecologists to treat more men.
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A U.S. professional group that certifies obstetricians and gynecologists has loosened a decades-old restriction on its board-certified members treating male patients, after mounting pressure from doctors and researchers.
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true
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Health News
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The American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ABOG) had previously said members could not treat male patients except in specific circumstances, such as circumcising babies, treating transgendered patients, and helping couples overcome infertility. However, opposition had mounted from gynecologists and others who said the policy interfered with medical research and prevented them treating male patients with chronic pelvic pain. Some obstetricians and gynecologists had also been treating men for cancer, problems such as low testosterone, and cosmetic procedures including liposuction. “This change recognizes that in a few rare instances board certified diplomats were being called upon to treat men for certain conditions and to participate in research,” Dr. Larry Gilstrap, ABOG’s executive director, said in a statement Thursday. “This issue became a distraction from our mission to ensure that women receive high quality and safe health care.” The Dallas-based board eliminated requirements that said certified members treat only women and must devote at least 75 percent of their practice to obstetrics and gynecology, saying instead a majority would suffice. The policy change matters because board certification, while not legally mandated, is viewed as a paragon of safety by many hospitals, patients, and insurers. It was intended to protect patients when some gynecologists who were board-certified by the group were practicing in areas outside the board’s expertise, such as plastic surgery, ABOG spokesman David Margulies said. First adopted in the 1930s, the policy had been ignored or opposed by doctors in some corners over the years, and the board had built a list of complicated exceptions over the past months, Margulies said. “The whole thing became a distraction from the idea that we are here to certify people, to make sure that they have the training they need,” Margulies said. ABOG says on its website it is an independent, non-profit organization that certifies obstetricians and gynecologists in the United States. It examines and certifies more than 1,700 obstetricians and gynecologists and sub-specialists in maternal-fetal medicine, reproductive endocrinology and infertility, gynecologic oncology and female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery each year.
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9200
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FDA approves Trulance for Chronic Idiopathic Constipation
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This news release issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announces the agency’s approval of the drug plecanatide (marketed as Trulance) to treat adults with chronic idiopathic constipation (CIC), a form of constipation for which there is no consistent medical explanation. The release notes that there are other treatments for the disorder and that this approval expands the options available. It also nicely clarifies that the drug has not been proven safe for those under age 18 and that it can cause mild to serious diarrhea. But it left out other side effects observed in the studies and is vague about the benefits. It would have been nice to include some numbers to put the potential value of the drug in perspective. It does explain that volunteers in two clinical trials “were more likely to experience improvement” in the frequency of bowel movements than those getting placebo, and “had improvements” in consistency and straining. But some quantitative or qualitative information would have been helpful. In both clinical trials, the overall positive response rates were about 20 percent compared to 10 to 13 percent for placebo which suggests only a modest benefit — and the release could have pointed that out. As the release points out, constipation afflicts an estimated 42 million Americans, according to the National Institutes of Health, and the costs of treating, managing and coping with chronic forms and other “bathroom diseases” is staggering, both in dollars, doctor visits, and human suffering. Most of the historic means of treating or preventing CIC require eternal vigilance, and have serious limitations. The irritable bowel syndrome and constipation “industry” is lucrative, composed of products and advice that carry side effects of their own, and with which many people cannot comply over long periods of time. As a result, new drugs designed to target specific biochemical pathways linked to CIC can become instant (and expensive) best-sellers for legions of desperate patients, and news releases and stories need to be especially cautious about the limitations of these drugs and how they compare to traditional and less expensive alternatives.
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mixture
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constipation,FDA,Trulance
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Since the FDA evaluates drugs without consideration of cost we’re rating this Not Applicable. But we look forward to the day when FDA news releases include some mention of cost in its message. The value of a new drug is a function not just of how well it works, but its cost-effectiveness. Pricing information for Trulance is likely to come soon in the wake of the FDA’s approval. For reference, other drugs aimed at the inflammatory bowel/gastrointestinal disorder market have carried high price tags. One such drug costs about $380 for a month’s supply of 30 capsules. As noted in the summary above, the release did not provide readers with a realistic picture of the actual rate of improvement over placebo in the two clinical trials cited by the FDA in its approval process. The release includes the restrictions on pediatric use and the risk of severe diarrhea. The release would have been even better if it had mentioned how often the volunteers experienced side effects and the full scope of side effects. The release describes the protocol of the studies used as a basis for its approval (“safety and efficacy of Trulance were established in two 12-week, placebo-controlled trials including 1,775 adult participants. Participants were randomly assigned to receive a placebo or Trulance, once daily.”) We wish the release had included where the studies were published so that journalists and other interested readers can easily find more information. Most health intervention news releases do include these references. No mongering here; CIC is widespread. The release provides context on the condition by citing its prevalence. Although the release notes that Synergy Pharmaceuticals Inc. makes the new drug, it does not say where the clinical trial results were published or what groups supported or carried out the research. A mention that there are numerous other prescription medications, over-the-counter drugs and lifestyle treatments available for this condition would have been beneficial here. The FDA release announces approval and most readers will understand that this is essentially the last big step in market availability. The release would have been stronger had it noted that the drug may not be available widely for a short time. The release could have noted in a bit more detail how this drug works compared to other drugs used to treat CIC, and especially how it differs from over-the-counter and “home” remedies. The release doesn’t contain any unjustifiable language.
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8881
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Thailand will override cancer drug patents.
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Thailand’s new government will override international patents on three cancer drugs, new Health Minister Chaiya Sasomsap said on Monday after a month of protests against his review of the controversial policy.
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true
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Health News
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Chaiya, under pressure from health activists and doctors who campaigned to have him sacked, said declaring compulsory licenses on the drugs would save Thailand more than 3 billion baht ($100 million) over the next five years. “The findings have convinced me to go ahead with the CLs since the ministry’s policy is to give patients good access to quality drugs at cheap prices,” Chaiya said of the review by a panel of Health Ministry officials. The decision is a blow to major pharmaceutical companies which had lobbied hard to reverse the CL policy launched by the previous government appointed after a bloodless 2006 coup. The three drugs are Letrozole, a breast cancer medicine made by Novartis AG, the breast and lung cancer drug Docetaxel by Sanofi-Aventis, and Roche’s Erlotinib, used for treating lung, pancreatic and ovarian cancer. A license issued on a leukemia drug, Glivec, was cancelled last month after its maker, Novartis, agreed to supply it free to hundreds of Thai patients. Shortly after a democratically-elected government took power in February, Chaiya ordered the review of a policy he said was a “politically correct decision, but not legally correct”. At the time he said the government could afford the full cost of the drugs, if it meant avoiding trade retaliation by the United States, home to some of the world’s biggest drug firms. U.S. officials denied there were any plans to impose sanctions on Bangkok, although Thailand was placed on a watch list, meaning Washington believed its respect for patents had weakened. When Chaiya, a businessman with no medical training, fired the Health Ministry’s top official negotiating cheaper prices from foreign drug firms, outraged health activists and doctors launched a campaign to remove him. Chaiya said on Monday the ministry would buy cheaper versions of the cancer drugs from generic producers, such as Indian firms which already supply copy-cat HIV-AIDS medicines to Thailand. Under World Trade Organisation rules, countries can issue a compulsory license to make or buy generic versions of patented drugs deemed critical to public health as long as the medicines are meant for domestic use. Former Health Minister Mongkol na Songkhla overrode Merck’s AIDS drug Efavirenz in late 2006, arguing that Thailand could not afford patented drugs for a national health plan that covers about 80 percent of the country’s 63 million people. A few months later he did the same on a Sanofi-Aventis heart medicine and an AIDS drug made by Abbott Laboratories, which refused to register several new medicines in Thailand. Mongkol, who targeted the four cancer drugs weeks before he left office, has defended the CL policy against major drug firms which accused him of stealing their intellectual property rights. ($1= 30 Baht)
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28281
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Tina Turner is gravely ill due to stomach or intestinal cancer, a stroke, and/or rejection of a kidney or liver transplant.
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What's true: Between 2013 and 2018, Turner suffered a series of major health setbacks beginning with a stroke and followed by bouts of intestinal cancer and kidney disease. She underwent successful operations in 2016 and 2017 to remove a cancerous section of her colon and to receive a kidney transplant. As of March 2019, she was still under medical treatment related to the transplant and her body's rejection of the organ. What's false: As of March 2019, there were no reliable reports of Turner suffering a recurrence of either stroke or cancer, and she was in good enough health to travel abroad, make public appearances, and conduct on-camera interviews.
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mixture
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Entertainment
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Tina Turner is a multiple-Grammy-winning singer-songwriter who has enjoyed a long and storied career in show business. Born in 1939 in Nutbush, Tenn., she began performing at the age of 19 and racked up a string of hit recordings with musician Ike Turner (whom she eventually married) in the 1960s and ’70s. Turner retired after a record-breaking international “farewell tour” in 2000, but never strayed far from the public eye, popping up in 2008 for a Grammy Awards show duet with Beyoncé and embarking soon thereafter on a highly acclaimed 50th anniversary tour throughout the U.S. and Europe. Turner suffered some serious health setbacks between 2013 and 2018, but bounced back to help mount a theatrical production based on her life and music (Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, which opened in London in April 2018), and pen a best-selling autobiography (Tina Turner: My Love Story, published in October 2018). The public was largely unaware of Turner’s health problems until she spoke of them in her memoir, revealing that she suffered a stroke in 2013 from which she was still recovering when she was diagnosed with early-stage intestinal cancer and kidney failure. The cancer was successfully treated by the removal of part of her colon, but by that time her kidney disease had progressed to the point where a transplant was required and she would have to go on dialysis until a kidney donor was found. At that point, Turner wrote, the future looked so bleak to her that she considered requesting assisted suicide: I began to think about death. If my kidneys were going, and it was time for me to die, I could accept that. It was OK. When it’s time, it’s really time. I didn’t mind the thought of dying, but I was concerned about how I would go. One of the benefits of living in Switzerland is that assisted suicide is legal, though the patient has to inject the lethal drug herself. There are several organizations that facilitate the process, including Exit and Dignitas. I signed up to be a member of Exit, just in case. Turner’s current husband, record producer Erwin Bach, came to the rescue by offering to donate one of his own kidneys. In a further stroke of good fortune, their blood types matched, and a transplant was performed in April 2017, followed by a long process of recovery. “My body keeps trying to reject the new kidney, which is not uncommon after a transplant,” Turner wrote. “This means I have to take strong doses of immuno-suppressants to weaken my antibodies and prevent them from attacking an organ they don’t recognize.” Even so, she felt that the operation had quite literally given her a new lease on life. “After a transplant, it seems that there’s always another test, another doctor’s appointment or biopsy to get through,” Turner wrote. “But I’m still here. We’re both still here, closer than we ever imagined — and that’s cause for celebration.” Those words were written in 2018, a year that would bring even more ups and downs in Turner’s life and career. While still battling transplant rejection, Turner helped mount and open a successful stage show, Tina: The Tina Turner Musical, which premiered in London in April 2018 (almost exactly year after her surgery). Then, in June, her eldest son, Craig, took his own life by shooting himself. In October, her autobiography was published. It included a heartfelt tribute to her son. None of the attendant press coverage over the course of that year reported new or recurring health problems on Turner’s part except for her ongoing treatments related to the transplant. In November, she told London’s Daily Express that overall she was doing well: “I’m in good shape now,” she said, “I’ve adjusted to the reality that doctors and check-ups will always be a part of my life. Fortunately, I have really nice doctors.” Nevertheless, rumors began to circulate, and continued to circulate well into 2019, to the effect that Turner was “gravely ill” and “near death” due to any number of alleged ailments. Some of the illnesses named in these rumors were stroke, stomach cancer, intestinal cancer, and the rejection of a kidney or liver transplant. The earliest of them appeared to be a side-effect of the extensive press coverage her book had received. Despite the fact that Turner’s stroke had occurred five years earlier (and no subsequent instances had been reported), we began receiving inquiries from readers in October 2018 (the month the autobiography came out) asking if it was true that she had just suffered a stroke. Similarly, although Turner stated in the book that tests showed no recurrence of her cancer after she underwent surgery in 2016, readers were still asking us in early 2019 if it was true that she was dying of intestinal or stomach cancer. The public was also misled by erroneous reporting from tabloid newspapers and gossip websites. For example, in October 2018, a number of these sites repeated “unconfirmed reports” that Turner was “fighting stomach cancer.” In November, National Enquirer , Radar Online, and other unreliable sources claimed that Turner was so close to death that she was “planning her own funeral.” (The same sources played up an alleged rivalry between Turner and the late Aretha Franklin, saying Turner wanted her funeral to be bigger than Franklin’s.) But three months later, in a February 2019 interview with The Sunday Post, Turner sounded upbeat and optimistic. “I don’t have any big plans but I don’t like to rule out any possibilities either,” she said. “I still love my music and some days I feel like performing again. I’ll be around for a while yet and who knows what might happen. We’ll see but in the meantime keep the music in your life. I’ve gotta say it – music is simply the best.” On 3 March 2019, Tina Turner was photographed onstage with the cast of Tina: The Tina Turner Musical at the show’s German premiere in Hamburg. Please note that she looks neither “gravely ill” nor “near death” in the photo below or in video of the occasion. Unfortunately, Turner’s management declined to answer questions about the state of the singer’s health when we reached out to them for comment, but based on the evidence, rumors of Tina Turner’s imminent demise appear unfounded.
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11407
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Mammogram Benefit Seen for Women in Their 40s
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This story includes strong comments from independent experts that can help readers get a broader understanding of the results of a study that compared breast cancer death rates among women in their 40s who lived in areas of Sweden that did or did not offer routine mammography. However, because the story reports only the percentage difference in death rates, without including absolute numbers or the number of women who need to be screened to prevent one death, readers may get the impression that the effect of mammography was larger than what the researchers actually reported. People commonly overestimate the risk of breast cancer death among women in their 40s. By not including any information about the absolute numbers of deaths among women in this study or in the population at large, the story misses an opportunity to correct common misconceptions.
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true
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"The story does not discuss the costs of annual mammography screening, or even provide a range of costs. The story does not discuss any health care policy cost repercussions of breast cancer screening recommendations. The story does not discuss the cost of unnecessary biopsies or other treatments for women who have a false positive diagnosis via mammography (greater in women 40-49). The story highlights the 26 percent difference in breast cancer death rates, but fails to include any information about the overall risk. The researchers reported that based on their results you would have to screen 1252 women for a decade in order to prevent one breast cancer death. In other words, for the remaining 1251 women, a decade of mammograms did not alter their breast cancer mortality. Although this story does not go into detail about the potential harms of screening mammography, it does include comments from independent experts who point out that the scans do lead to the diagnosis and treatment of women whose tumors would never have become life-threatening. This story briefly explains key features of this study. It also includes critiques from independent experts who note limitations of the study design and analysis – although the statement that the researchers ""did not compare the broader breast cancer death rates"" in the counties"" is unclear. Overall, there is much more the Times could have done to analyze methodological questions surrounding the Swedish study. (For example, read our blog on this matter.) Interviews with Peter Gotzsche and with Donald Berry saved the story. But so much more could have been done – another reason why more than 471 words should have been devoted to the reporting. The story does not discuss the prevalence of breast cancer among women in their 40s. That omission would not usually be considered disease mongering, but since surveys indicate most people overestimate the risk of breast cancer among women in their 40s, failing to mention the actual rates leaves those misconceptions intact. The story does include comments from experts who raise concerns about overdiagnosis; that is, the number of breast tumors discovered that are not actually life-threatening. A strong point of this story is the inclusion of comments from several independent experts with a variety of perspectives on the meaning of the latest study results. The story does not mention any potential conflicts of interest, but the researchers did not list any in their journal article. Although not discussed in detail, the story does mention that the United States Preventive Services Task Force has questioned the value of screening mammograms for women younger than 50, thus implying that not being screened is an option to consider. The availability of mammography was not explicitly addressed, but we can’t criticize the story for that. Instead, we give a Not Applicable score for this criterion. This story could have done a better job explaining how this study – and its methods – are different from earlier research on the topic.But two things lead us to give it a barely satisfactory score. First, there was a brief attempt to mention the unique ""circumstances"" of the Swedish study. Second, the story also pointed out that there’s a historical ideological pattern in the study authors’ work – noting that they ""have long been advocates of mammography screening."" It’s clear that the story was not based on a news release."
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7455
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Murphy: State doubling coronavirus ‘contact tracers’.
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New Jersey will more than double the number of public health professionals tracing COVID-19 cases, Gov. Phil Murphy said Tuesday.
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true
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New Jersey, Health, General News, Virus Outbreak, Public health, Economy
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The state will hire at least 1,000 people, creating a Community Contact Tracing Corps and supplementing the roughly 800 to 900 mostly county health officials who are tracing the people with whom coronavirus-positive residents have had contact, the first-term Democrat said. The news came as Murphy announced the state’s COVID-19 data is trending in the right direction, though he stopped short of specifying dates when the state might reopen its economy. Newly hospitalized patients with COVID-19 are down 44% since late April; the number of people in the hospital is down 34%; and patients in intensive care and on ventilators are down by an average of 27%, the governor said. “The road back is paved with five words: Public health creates economic health,” Murphy said. “We will move as quickly as we can but as safely as we must.” But while that data is headed in the right direction, Murphy said, New Jersey still leads the nation in positive cases, hospitalizations and deaths per 100,000 people. The state added about 900 new positive cases since Monday, bringing the total to about 141,000. It’s the first time since March 25 that the number of new cases has been below 1,000, Murphy pointed out. There were 198 deaths reported since Monday, bringing the death toll to 9,508. The state’s more than 500 long-term care facilities must also test all their residents for the virus by May 26 under a new health department order, Murphy said. There must also be a follow-up test a week later, and facilities must update their outbreak prevention plans by May 19, he added. Murphy unveiled a six-part plan last month aimed at reopening. Increasing testing and contact tracing were initial components of the plan. Despite calls from some protesters calling for reopening the state immediately, Murphy’s job approval ratings have been high, according to polls. Murphy repeated his calls for doubling testing to about 20,000 a day by the end of the month. He said expanding testing to first responders was an easy call and argued that expanding to people without symptoms would boost confidence that the state is ready to reopen. “(It gives) everybody out there the confidence that we have the infrastructure in place and that they know we’re on it, that we can spot a community spread or flareup with very short notice. That gives everybody in the state a kick in their step, a confidence to say, ‘You know what, I’m good on going to the county parks,’” he said. The contact tracing jobs would pay $20 to $25 an hour, and the testing and tracing program would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars, Murphy said. For most people, the virus causes mild or moderate symptoms that clear up within weeks. Older adults and people with existing health problems are at higher risk of more severe illness or death. ___ CASINOS A state Senate panel on Tuesday advanced a pair of bills that would have the state Health Department set standards for Atlantic City’s nine casinos to meet before they can reopen. They also would apply to hotels across the state. The Democratic-sponsored bills would have the department set standards on disinfection of rooms, elevators, surfaces, kitchens, gambling floors and other high-traffic areas, as well as training of workers on safe practices. They would also require the continuation of social distancing standards, including a prohibition of gatherings of more than 10 people. The Casino Association of New Jersey has already contracted with the AtlantiCare hospital system to do the same thing for the casinos, including developing recommendations on best operating and cleaning practices. No date has yet been given for reopening the casinos, which Murphy ordered closed on March 16. ___ Associated Press writer Wayne Parry in Atlantic City contributed to this report.
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7970
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Fauci says threats to his personal security 'secondary' to curbing coronavirus.
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The infectious diseases expert at the forefront of the U.S. fight against the coronavirus outbreak on Thursday downplayed reports that his personal security was being threatened, saying he felt safe and was focused on doing his job.
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true
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Health News
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"Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has faced growing threats to his safety, and the government will step up his security, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday. Asked on NBC’s “Today” show if he felt safe, Fauci said, “I do.” “I’ve chosen this life - I know what it is. There are things about it that sometimes are disturbing,” Fauci said. “But you just focus on the job you have to do and you put all that other stuff aside and try as best as possible not to pay attention to it.” ""We have a really, really very difficult situation ahead of us,"" he said, referring to the fast-spreading coronavirus pandemic that threatens hundreds of thousands here of lives around the world. ""All of that other stuff in secondary."" The Justice Department has approved a U.S. Marshals Service recommendation for more than half a dozen special agents to provide protective services to Fauci, a Justice official told ABC News. Fauci, a strong advocate of emergency measures including stay-at-home orders to curtail the spread of the coronavirus, has become a target for criticism by the far right and online conspiracy theorists, media reports have said, after he corrected several of President Donald Trump’s statements relating to the outbreak. For many others, the calm, focused health professional has been a steady voice of expertise and reassurance in a time of crisis. In addition to the threats, the security concerns include “unwelcome communications from fervent admirers,” the Washington Post reported, citing people with knowledge of the matter at the Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services. In another interview on Thursday, Fauci, who is 79 and has led his agency since 1984, acknowledged some stress. “I mean, obviously there’s a lot of pressure. I would be foolish to deny that,” he told CBS’ “This Morning.” “It’s a job to do, and we’ve just got to do it.”"
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25892
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“Under the leadership of @WVGovernor Justice, West Virginia now has the highest rate of COVID-19 spread from person to person than any other state.”
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On the day the tweet was posted, West Virginia did have the highest rate of transmission of coronavirus, according to a WVU scientist. However, using this metric communicates only one part of the picture about how hard West Virginia is getting hit by the coronavirus. Among other measurements, the absolute number of coronavirus cases ranks far below the level seen in current hot-spot states like Arizona, Florida, and Texas. And the state’s positivity rate for test results is close to the low level that experts like to see.
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mixture
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West Virginia, Public Health, Coronavirus, West Virginia Democratic Party,
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"In a thread of tweets posted July 10, the West Virginia Democratic Party blames Republican Gov. Jim Justice for the state’s jump in the rate of person-to-person transmission of the novel coronavirus. ""Under the leadership of @WVGovernor Justice, West Virginia now has the highest rate of COVID-19 spread from person to person than any other state,"" the tweet begins. The thread pointed to an announcement by Clay Marsh, the vice president and executive dean of West Virginia University Health Sciences, that the state was ranked No. 1 nationally in the rate of transmission. ""Today Dr. Clay Marsh announced that WV has the highest RT rate of any other state in the U.S.,"" the thread says. ""This means that WV is spreading COVID-19 from person to person faster than any other state in the country."" Bureau of Public Health commissioner Cathy Slemp, who resigned under pressure in late June, ""tried to warn Justice of this days before she was fired."" 🆘😷🆘 Under the leadership of @WVGovernor Justice, West Virginia now has the highest rate of COVID-19 spread from person to person than any other state. Does West Virginia, the last state in the country to confirm a positive COVID-19 case, now top the country in the rate of transmission? It does, though the tweet lacks important context about the spread of the virus in the state and the country as a whole. The West Virginia Democratic Party did not respond to inquiries for this article, but we did reach Marsh to discuss the relationship between the rate of transmission and the growth in coronavirus cases. He said scientists use two related but distinct measurements to study the spread infections such as COVID-19. One is R0, pronounced ""R-naught,"" and the other is known as Rt, or the effective reproduction number. Both measure how many people, on average, one infected person will infect. But they measure slightly different things. R0 captures how fundamentally infectious a germ is when it’s introduced into a new population. By contrast, Rt measures how much the infection is spreading at a particular moment in time, taking into account factors such as the percentage of people who have already become infected and the preventive measures being taken against the infection. ""With both of these scores, any rate that is more than 1 suggests that the disease is spreading, and any rate below 1 suggests that it is reducing,"" Marsh told PolitiFact. On July 10, the day the Democratic Party’s tweet was posted, Marsh told WVMetroNews that the state’s Rt had increased from the nation’s second lowest rate two and a half months earlier to second-worst in the country. By that afternoon, CNN had posted an article citing Marsh and reporting that West Virginia had climbed to No. 1 nationally in Rt. Marsh told PolitiFact that Rt is valuable for showing which direction the state’s level of infections could be heading in the following weeks. But other metrics are important as well, he said. Marsh said he pays attention to the positivity rate -- the percentage of newly tested people whose results come back positive for the virus. The countries and states that have been most successful have kept this measurement below 3%, and West Virginia has toggled between 3% and 5% recently. (West Virginia is also one of only 11 states that are performing an adequate number of tests to control the spread, according to a New York Times analysis.) Marsh said he also looks at the total change in the number of cases, using a 7-day or 14-day rolling average, and how close in-state hospitals are to their capacity for the number of ICU beds and ventilators In other words, Rt gives researchers an idea about how fast the disease is spreading, but it’s not the only key to understanding the virus. Andy Shi and Xihong Lin from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health agree with Marsh’s assessment in an email interview with PolitiFact. ""Ultimately, what we are doing is we are trying to take a look at, ‘how do we measure today versus how did we measure a week ago, or two weeks ago, or a month ago,’ because that gives us a better idea about how our risk is changing,"" Marsh said. The West Virginia Democratic Party tweeted, ""Under the leadership of @WVGovernor Justice, West Virginia now has the highest rate of COVID-19 spread from person to person than any other state."" On the day the tweet was posted, West Virginia did have one of the highest rates of transmission of any state. However, using this metric communicates only one part of the picture of how hard West Virginia is getting hit by the coronavirus. Among other measurements, the absolute number of coronavirus cases ranks far below the level seen in current hot-spot states like Arizona, Florida, and Texas. And the state’s positivity rate for test results is close to the low level that experts like to see."
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575
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Indonesia swine fever outbreak kills more than 4,000 pigs.
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More than 4,000 pigs have died after an outbreak of swine fever in the Indonesian province of North Sumatra, the head of the area’s food security and livestock agency said on Wednesday.
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true
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Health News
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Carcasses have reportedly been found in rivers and on streets as owners discarded them out of fear of contagion, though the agency head M. Azhar Harahap stressed the virus is only infectious to pigs, not humans. “The number of deaths is hovering around 4,000,” Harahap said by telephone. Classical swine fever (CSF) virus, also known as hog cholera, was first detected in September in the province’s Dairi district, he said, noting the agency would open monitoring posts in 38 districts. According to preliminary estimates by Indonesia’s statistic bureau, Indonesia produced 327,215 tonnes of pork meat last year, with the Hindu enclave of Bali producing the most. North Sumatra produced 43,308 tonnes last year. Asia has seen a number of recent outbreaks of CSF virus and African swine fever, with the latter decimating China’s pig herd, the world’s biggest. A year-long pig epidemic has slashed China’s pig herd by more than 40%, and has pushed prices of the country’s favorite meat to record levels.
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14714
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"The United States has a ""record number of abortions year after year after year."
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"Fiorina said the United States has a ""record number of abortions year after year after year."" In reality, the raw number, the rate and the ratio of abortions compared to live births has been falling since the early 1980s, and the decline shows no signs of stopping."
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false
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Abortion, National, Carly Fiorina,
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"Carly Fiorina may be a former CEO, but her campaign hasn’t been all about business and economics. Fiorina has made abortion one of her top issues, most notably referencing a controversial anti-abortion video during a Republican debate. On Jan. 20, 2016, at an Iowa Right to Life event in Des Moines, she cited a statistic sure to trouble her audience, among others. ""I think we're being told to settle for a nation where record numbers of men are out of work, record numbers of women are living in poverty,"" Fiorina said. ""We have record number of abortions year after year after year."" Here, we’ll look at her claim that the United States has a ""record number of abortions year after year after year."" There are two data sets for tracking abortions over the long term. One is compiled by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the other is compiled by the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit that promotes reproductive health and abortion rights. The data from the CDC is current through 2012, while the Guttmacher data -- which includes information for a few states not captured in the CDC data -- is current through 2011. Both groups’ data show the same general pattern -- a small but steady decline in abortion since the early 1980s. In plain figures, there were 1.6 million recorded abortions in 1990 compared to a little over 1 million in 2011. This chart, using CDC data, shows the declines between 2003 and 2012 in the raw numbers of abortions (the solid line), the abortion rate (the number of abortions per 1,000 women aged 15-44), and the abortion ratio (the number of abortions per 1,000 live births). The Guttmacher data shows a similar trend. Here’s the decline in the abortion rate and the abortion ratio going back to 1973, when the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationally in the case Roe vs. Wade. It’s worth noting that this second pair of charts doesn’t come from an abortion-rights advocacy group. It was disseminated by the National Right to Life Coalition. ""After reaching a high of over 1.6 million in 1990, the number of abortions performed annually in the U.S. (has) dropped to around 1.06 million a year,"" the National Right to Life Coalition wrote in its fact sheet, adding, ""By 2011, the (abortion) rate had dropped to 16.9, nearly half the peak rate, meaning abortion was a significantly less common feature in women’s lives in 2011 than it was in 1980."" And Rebecca Wind, a spokeswoman for the Guttmacher Institute, told PolitiFact that ""we have no reason to believe that the long-term decline has reversed itself in recent years."" We should note that even though the abortion rate has decreased, the annual number of abortions is still significant -- 1,058,500 in 2011, according to Guttmacher, the higher of the two estimates. Still, Fiorina’s claim -- that the United States has a ""record number of abortions year after year after year"" -- is flat wrong. Our ruling Fiorina said the United States has a ""record number of abortions year after year after year."" In reality, the raw number, the rate and the ratio of abortions compared to live births has been falling since the early 1980s, and the decline shows no signs of stopping."
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22955
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Mike Villarreal Says Gov. Rick Perry's administration has proposed ending immunizations for 113,000 kids.
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State Rep. Mike Villarreal says Gov. Rick Perry's administration proposed ending immunizations for 113,000 kids
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false
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Children, Health Care, State Budget, Texas, Mike Villarreal,
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"Democratic state Rep. Mike Villarreal of San Antonio sees the potential for ""a public health disaster"" in a document that lays out options for cutting the state health department's budget by 10 percent, according to a news release from his office. ""Perry administration proposes ending immunizations for 113,000 kids,"" says the subject line of Villarreal's Sept. 7 statement. ""We want Texas kids in school learning, rather than sitting at home or the doctor's office suffering from preventable diseases. ... If we don't prevent the spread of diseases among these children, we put at risk all Texas kids who are too young to receive their immunizations yet."" An end to immunizations for thousands of youngsters? We wondered if Villarreal's shot hit the spot. First, some background on the federal Vaccines for Children program, which Texas has participated in since 1994. According to the website of the Texas Department of State Health Services, the program provides vaccines to health care providers for eligible children, including those who lack health insurance and those enrolled in the Children's Health Insurance Program and Medicaid. In 2010, the federal government spent more than $380 million on immunizations for children in Texas, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman for the state health services department, said 4.2 million Texas children qualified for the vaccinations under the federal program that year. To expand eligibility beyond the federal requirements, Texas pitches in some dollars so that any child who comes to a public health clinic can be immunized. The department is spending $7.1 million on the program in 2010-11 and expects to need $9.5 million for full funding in 2012-13. In May, Gov. Rick Perry and other state leaders, mindful of a looming revenue shortfall (lately pegged at $24 billion), asked state agencies to spell out possible 10 percent cuts in their budgets for 2012 and 2013. In August, the health services department laid out $238 million in possible reductions, with $7.7 million of that coming out of the state's spending on childhood immunizations. That proposal represents an 81 percent cut from what the agency expected to spend on the vaccination effort during 2012-13. The agency document, which Villarreal cites in his press release, describes the impact of the $7.7 million cut: ""At this level of reduction, the overall safety-net program will need to reduce the number of children being vaccinated with GR funds (estimated 112,661 children). A significant portion of these children could be affected."" GR refers to general revenue funds. The document further says: ""This could end the public health clinic policy of turning no child away and instead will result in public clinics making referrals for those individuals that have health insurance to their medical homes for vaccines. If families are unable to go to their referral sites/medical homes, then the children may not be able to obtain vaccination services and could fall behind in the immunization schedule, ultimately lowering vaccine coverage levels and making our communities vulnerable to outbreaks of vaccine preventable diseases."" A ""medical home"" is one's usual health-care provider. While Villarreal's press release also says the Department of State Health Services ""estimates that half of the children could be immunized through other programs,"" he concludes that the end result of the budget cut would be to eliminate immunizations for 113,000 children. At the agency, Williams disputed Villarreal's interpretation. She said 112,661 is the number of kids the agency estimated would receive vaccines purchased with general revenue in 2012-13. If the Legislature reduces the state contribution to the vaccine program by $7.7 million, she said, the agency estimates that half of the 112,661 children — about 56,000 — would not be able to receive immunizations at public health clinics. However, Williams said, that doesn't mean those kids would necessarily go without. ""They may have to seek their immunizations elsewhere, such as through their regular doctor,"" Williams said. And what would happen to the other 56,000 children? Williams said the agency expects that they would still be able to receive immunizations at public health clinics, but she did not specify how that would be accomplished. ""We likely will have to fill in the gap with vaccine from other resources, possibly federal sources,"" she said, because state dollars alone may not be able to cover all of them. Upshot: There's a 56,000 difference between the number of children Villarreal said would no longer get immunized and the number of children the agency says could no longer be served at public health clinics if the proposed budget cut happens. Asked to explain the discrepancy, Villarreal told us by e-mail that he issued his September statement after his office discussed the August budget cut proposal with agency officials. ""At that time, they communicated to us that the proposal would end funding for 113,000 children and about half of them could be expected to find services elsewhere,"" Villarreal said. ""That's what I said in the first two sentences of my press release. The agency now says that we misunderstood. The point is the same either way: A very large number of our children would be left without immunizations."" We asked Williams about that early September conversation between a Villarreal staffer and Nick Dauster, director of the agency's Government Affairs Unit. She said: ""There must have been a misunderstanding between what was said and what was heard in a phone call a couple months ago. Admittedly, it’s a complex topic that involves estimates and unknowns, and our early information could have been clearer, which is why we provided clarification."" The ""clarification"" was an e-mail sent from Dauster to Peter Clark, Villarreal's legislative director, on Sept. 1 — before Villarreal issued his press release — saying that ""an estimated 56,000 children could be affected"" by the cut in immunization funding. ""This represents children who receive immunization services normally paid for by general revenue,"" Dauster wrote. Finally, we explored whether it makes sense to ascribe the agency-level proposal to the Perry ""administration,"" as Villarreal's statement does. By law, the governor appoints the chief executives as well as the governing boards of some major agencies, including the Texas Health and Human Services Commission, whose Perry-appointed executive commissioner chooses the commissioner of the health services department in consultation with the governor. Also, Williams told us that the health services staff put together its budget reduction proposals with input from commission overseers. We asked Stephanie Goodman, a commission spokeswoman, if it was accurate to characterize the health services department ideas as ""Perry administration proposals."" Her response: ""No. Our staff developed the options."" She said the governor's office wasn't involved in deciding what cuts to propose. And how does Villarreal's statement that the Perry administration proposes ending immunizations for 113,000 kids shape up? We'll take his reference to the ""Perry administration"" as a defensible poke. And a state agency has proposed ending most of the general revenue funding for immunizations for that many kids. However, the suggestion that none of those 113,000 children would get vaccinated misstates the estimated impact of the proposed $7.7 million budget cut. While the state acknowledges that half the children would no longer be served under the immunization program — and some of those may have insurance coverage — it expects the rest would still get their shots at public health clinics. However, it says it doesn't yet know exactly how those immunizations would be paid for. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to ."
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8288
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China's new coronavirus cases fall, eyes on northeastern province.
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China on Sunday reported 16 new coronavirus cases but no deaths while authorities remained on guard against a major resurgence and monitored the spread of cases in Heilongjiang province.
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true
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Health News
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The National Health Commission on Sunday also issued a notice asking for improvement in testing capacity and quality nationwide. Nine of the new cases were imported infections, data from commission showed. Authorities reported that total confirmed cases across mainland China had risen to 82,735 with 4,632 deaths as of April 18. The northeastern province of Heilongjiang has seen a rise in infected travellers arriving from Russia in recent weeks, and is now battling to contain a flare-up in local cases. Heilongjiang has reported 39 new local cases in the past 10 days, or more than 50% of all new 73 locally transmitted cases reported in the mainland during the same period. Most were related to one imported case in the provincial capital, Harbin. On Friday, 18 officials in Harbin, including a vice mayor, were punished. To help contain the outbreak, the Heilongjiang government is cautioning against family gatherings, cross infections at hospitals, and slow reporting in epidemic investigations, it said on the provincial government’s website. “The biggest political task at present is to stop the rebound and spread of the epidemic,” Wang Yongkang, vice governor of Heilongjiang, was quoted as saying. Elsewhere in mainland China, all areas in central Hubei province including Wuhan, the epicentre of the outbreak in China, are now considered low risk. However, a Beijing central district is seen as high-risk, according to a social media post by the State Council, or Cabinet. On April 15, the Chinese capital reported three local cases, all of which were linked to an imported infection. Areas that are considered of medium-risk in China include two districts in Harbin, the city of Suifenhe in Heilongjiang, two districts in the southern city of Guangzhou and Jiaozhou city in eastern Shandong province. Separately, authorities reported 44 new asymptomatic cases of coronavirus, including three which were imported. Such cases, where patients test positive but show no clinical symptoms such as a cough or fever, are excluded from China’s tally of confirmed cases. In urging better testing, the National Health Commission said all large general hospitals need to set up laboratories that meet certain requirements and can conduct coronavirus testing independently. Since March, an average 54,000 tests have been conducted a day in Hubei province and that rose to 89,000 tests on April 17, Liu Dongru, a Hubei health commission official, told a news conference on Sunday. In Beijing, the number of institutions able to conduct nucleic acid testing has risen to 50 from 17 in early February, a municipal health commission official said on Sunday. In areas under great pressure, especially at land borders, local governments should help county-level medical institutions obtain nucleic acid testing capability, the commission said. Testing should be conducted by qualified medical institutions and independent medical laboratories, it said, adding that training for medical staff should be stepped up and testing operations standardised to reduce problems with the accuracy of testing.
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28961
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"Six Flags is temporarily closing one or more of their theme parks to the public to host ""Muslim Family Day."
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"What's true: Several Six Flags amusement parks have hosted ""Muslim Family Day"" events, during which parks are reserved for the group. What's false: ""Muslim Family Day"" operates differently than any other Six Flags private event, those who try to organize ""Christian Family Day"" events are spurned, similar events are never held for Christians, Six Flags capitulated to pressure from Muslims to allow a ""Muslim Family Day"" event."
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mixture
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Politics, christian family day, muslim family day, six flags
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In September and October 2015, a flyer for an event called “Muslim Family Day” (most commonly specific to an 11 October 2015 event at the Six Flags Over Georgia theme park) began circulating among social media users. Many tweets and Facebook comments indicated users were unfamiliar with Muslim Family Day, its scope, or its purpose. According to the event’s web site, the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) began organizing Muslim Family Day outings across the United States in 2000: This event was first held at Six Flags Great Adventure, NJ, in September 2000. The event was immediately a huge success. The tragic events of 9/11 that resulted in the loss of thousands of innocent lives, also affected this event directly. The chief organizer, Tariq Amanullah, who worked on the 96th floor of WTC, Tower 2, passed away. The team was unable to come together again till year 2004, when the event came back bigger than ever before. In 2015, ICNA organized at least two Muslim Family Day events at Six Flags theme parks. On 14 September 2015, Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey, was reserved for the event, as shown by a flyer available on the park’s web site: The 11 October 2015 Muslim Family Day at Six Flags Over Georgia was listed on the park’s web site along with several other separate private events held there, such as “Math and Science Day,” “Physics Day,” “Relay for Life American Cancer Society Luminara Ceremony,” and the “Scream Out Loud LGBT Pride Party”: Six Flags Over Georgia will host Muslim Friends and Family Day, a private event in the Picnic Pavilions, presented by ICNA, Sunday, October 11, 2015. During this private event, Muslims and their friends, families, and all guests will be able to enjoy Halal foods, open-air bazaars featuring Muslim merchants, congressional prayers, informative lectures, our thrilling roller coasters and a stream of Islamic nasheed. Buy your tickets below, or enter promo code muslim on our website. Among rumors circulating on social media were claims that Six Flags locations were “closed” to non-Muslims on Muslim Family Day events, or that Christians were denied permission to organize similar events: WTF is this??! #SixFlagsBaltimore CLOSED TODAY TO ALL NON MUSLIMS! #RT AND SPREAD THE WORD #BoycottSixFlags#BREAKINGpic.twitter.com/btDYRKaywI — Anonymous (@exposes_racism) September 19, 2015 Six Flags Baltimore is closed to non-Muslims on September 19! FUCK Six Flags and FUCK the Muslim Family Day! — Dr. Frank Corleone (@DaGodfather907) September 18, 2015 Both inferences were misleading. Muslim Family Day is one of several private events organized by a variety of groups at Six Flags locations across the United States; when a group pays to rent a Six Flags park for a private event, it’s up to that group to determine how to distribute tickets for the event. Moreover, most Six Flags parks have a “Religious Group Events” page, and Six Flags St. Louis, for example, features a description geared towards attracting private events for Christian groups: Six Flags is the place for friends, fellowship and fun. Whether you’re looking for a way to bring your church community together in a new and thrilling setting or celebrating with your youth group after a mission trip, Six Flags provides entertainment for guests of all ages. We offer a variety of programs that can enhance your visit to the park including concerts by the hottest names in Christian talent and catered options in our private picnic grove. If you’re looking for a special way to celebrate, host a Sunday service at Six Flags. We offer a variety of venues and amenities, giving you the unique opportunity to combine your praise time and play time. Six Flags St. Louis will make your visit to the park one that your church members will be talking about all year long. The wording appears to be part of a general Six Flags template, as a nearly identical page was found on the web site for Six Flags Magic Mountain in California. One such upcoming event slated for that venue is the 7 November 2015 “Life Teen Catholic Youth Rally,” and a flyer [PDF] for an August 2015 event at Six Flags St. Louis definitively answers the question of when “Christian Family Day” would be held by the amusement park chain: In addition, there was “Christian Family Night” at Magic Mountain on 11 September 2015 (and a Hallelujah Jubilee the following day), a Christian music festival at Six Flags over Washington, D.C. in August 2015 [PDF], an April 2015 Christian Concert Weekend, and a Christian Fellowship Day hosted at Six Flags Over Georgia in July 2015. Many of the Christian-themed Six Flags events prior to July 2015 were subsequently archived and can no longer be accessed (so those events are likely just a handful of many that have occurred over the years). So while it’s true that at least three Six Flags parks hosted a Muslim Family Day in 2015, many more Christian-themed private events have been held at the chain’s parks (and contrary to some rumors, no “uproar” of “offended Muslims” has sought to stop them or threatened a boycott). Muslim Family Day (like any other private event) is for ticket-holders only, but non-Muslims who wished to attend were neither prohibited from doing so nor “banned” from the parks. Each Six Flags location features a page inviting groups to book religious events, and those pages primarily focus on Christian groups, churches, and organizations in their wording.
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8940
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Mayo researchers say oral apixaban safe and effective for treating blood clots in cancer patients
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A brief news release from the Mayo Clinic does a disservice to an interesting yet unpublished study that demonstrates an oral anticoagulant medication might be a good solution for preventing blood clots in cancer patients. The release discusses a conference presentation given at the American Society of Hematology annual meeting, but doesn’t mention any numerical data or describe how the study was conducted. It focuses mostly on the problems associated with commonly used injectable medication heparin, and how an oral medication might be better for patient quality of life. But the news release dedicates only one small paragraph at the end to the actual findings of the study, leaving readers with questions about study design and potential harms of the new treatment. Cancer patients, especially those with advanced cancers or certain types of cancer, are at increased risk of developing blood clots. This study evaluated a new treatment for patients with cancer who have developed blood clots. This new therapy is an oral blood thinner that is approved for other conditions, but not this one. Standard therapy for blood clots associated with cancer is a low molecular weight heparin that is injected daily under the skin. Clearly, having a medicine that would be as or more effective and could be taken by mouth would be a great advantage to patients. The striking absence of any data in the news release could have been easily remedied. We looked up the abstract of the conference presentation upon which this is based and found some data. But journalists may not look that far and patients and consumers aren’t likely to either. And they shouldn’t have to; the data should be in the release.
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mixture
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apixaban,blood clots,Mayo Clinic
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The news release did not discuss the costs of apixaban or how it compares to the cost of the injectable medication heparin. According to GoodRx, the average cost of apixaban is $424, while the average cost of heparin is $189 (these costs do not reflect insurance coverage). There is also no generic version of apixaban (sold under the brand name Eliquis) available yet. The release did quote the study author saying that a downside to heparin injections is that they “are expensive at nearly $100 per day,” however no information was provided about how apixaban costs compare. The news release was vague and did not include any absolute numbers. The lead author said that quality of life surveys showed that patients preferred apixaban over heparin, but there was no information about whether the medication was equally effective at preventing blood clots. The abstract of the conference presentation actually does show that apixaban may have been more effective than heparin; none of the patients that received apixaban had major bleeding, and fewer had deep vein blood clots than those that received heparin. These concrete numbers should have been included in the news release. While a lot of emphasis was placed on potential benefits of apixaban, no harms were mentioned. The release talks about the limitations of the comparator but not apixaban. It certainly seems that there are fewer side effects from apixaban than heparin, particularly because there are no injection-related issues (such as bruising, pain and swelling) from the oral medication. Yet this does not mean that apixaban is completely harmless; like other anti-coagulant medications, one of the side effects is major bleeding which can quickly become dangerous if not treated. In this study, patients receiving apixaban had fewer subsequent blood clots and didn’t appear to have higher rates of bleeding — the main complication of any blood thinner. Several caveats should be mentioned: first, this was a relatively small trial and included a range of different cancers. Follow-up studies are needed to confirm these results in more patients across a range of different cancers. Second, though it wasn’t statistically significant, more patients in the apixaban group had died at 6 months (15.9% vs. 10.6%). Future studies should examine this further. The news release said next to nothing about how the study was actually conducted. The only details we get are that it was a 6-month study, and that participants took monthly quality of life surveys. But how many participants were there? Was this study randomized? Nothing else is noted in the news release. The conference abstract once again sheds some light: 287 patients with different types of cancer were involved and randomized to receive either apixaban or heparin for 6 months. While this may have been a robust study, we get no sense of that from the news release. No disease mongering here. The release briefly notes how many cancer patients are affected by blood clots (1-in-5) which is useful context. The news release does not mention any conflict of interests or funding sources. The website with the conference presentation abstract lists that the lead author received research funding from pharmaceutical company Pfizer. The news release compares apixaban to low molecular weight heparin (LMWH), although as mentioned above it does not discuss any harms of apixaban or quantify any of the health benefits with numbers. It does do a good job, however, of discussing possible problems with LMWH and why apixaban might be a good alternative medication. The release notes that apixaban, a member of a new class of “blood thinners called ‘direct oral anticoagulants’ have become available.” Both oral and injectable anti-coagulant medications are now widely available at hospitals and clinics where they are administered to patients. The release addressed novelty with this statement: “it was unclear whether these drugs could be used safely in cancer patients until now.” This research is clearly aimed at using apixaban for a new indication that isn’t yet FDA approved. Other research has focused on apixaban for those with cancer but no clots. Here the focus is on secondary prevention for cancer patients that already have blood clots. No sensational language was used.
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5175
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Democrats hit Trump EPA nominee on coal lobbying, rollbacks.
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President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday called climate change “a huge issue” but not the “greatest crisis” and drew fire from Democrats at his confirmation hearing over the regulatory rollbacks he’s made in six months as the agency’s acting administrator.
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true
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Climate, AP Top News, Climate change, Lobbying, Deregulation, John Barrasso, Politics, Scott Pruitt, North America, Environment, Business, Confirmation hearings, Donald Trump
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Republicans on the GOP-majority Senate Environment and Public Works Committee mostly had praise for Andrew Wheeler, who has served as the agency’s acting head since Scott Pruitt’s resignation in July amid ethics scandals. The committee chairman, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., called Wheeler “very well-qualified” to take the job. But Democrats pressed Wheeler about his work as a lobbyist helping an influential coal magnate meet with Trump administration officials before his nomination to the EPA and his moves on deregulation and on what they said was his inattention to the growing dangers of climate change. “You seem to be consistently doing things that undermine the health and safety of this nation,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., told Wheeler. Markey asked him why he was pulling back on regulations that proponents say protect human health and the environment. “I believe we are moving forward” on protections, Wheeler responded. Wheeler cited changes he had initiated to roll back future mileage standards for cars and autos and to ease Obama-era clampdowns on dirtier-burning coal-fired power plants. He said EPA staff, whom he did not identify, had concluded that those rollbacks would ultimately lead to health gains. Environmental groups and formal assessments from the EPA and other agencies have contested that, saying the changes would increase pollution and increase harm to people and the climate. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said the rollbacks in car mileage standards and toxic mercury emissions under Wheeler were examples of unsafe deregulation and went beyond what industries themselves wanted. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., noted Wheeler had failed to mention climate change in his initial remarks to lawmakers. “Do you agree that climate change is a global crisis?” Sanders asked, shouting at times. “I would not call it the greatest crisis,” Wheeler said. “I would call it a huge issue that has to be addressed globally.” Wheeler told lawmakers that he had yet to read a massive government climate change report released late last year that emphasized man-made climate change was already underway. Wheeler said he had received one staff briefing so far on the climate change report. The work of the EPA and other government agencies, the report stresses the massive economic toll expected from increasingly severe wildfires, hurricanes and other extreme weather under climate change. Wheeler said the news media had seized upon “worst-case scenarios” of the climate report. “You are a former coal industry lobbyist that is sitting here,” Markey responded. “That’s the worst-case scenario, what you are proposing here” for easing Obama-era rules meant to clamp down on climate-changing fossil fuel emissions. Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa and other Republican lawmakers, by contrast, praised Wheeler for a move to remove federal protections for millions of miles of wetlands and waterways and other proposals. Republican lawmakers said the protections had burdened farmers and others. The grandson of a coal miner, Wheeler worked for the EPA in the 1990s and later as a longtime Republican Senate staffer. Democrats pressed Wheeler about his lobbying before joining the EPA, saying his work for coal companies should disqualify him from leading an agency that regulates coal. Wheeler’s lobbying clients included coal magnate Bob Murray, who pushed hard on the Trump administration after the 2016 elections to grant a series of breaks for the sagging domestic coal industry. Wheeler accompanied Murray to a March 2017 meeting to pitch Murray’s list of desired rule rollbacks and other breaks for coal to Energy Secretary Rick Perry. Wheeler told senators that his main work for Murray had been on health benefits and pensions. “I did not work on the plan. I do not have a copy of it. I saw it briefly,” Wheeler said, referring to Murray’s wish list. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., displayed a blown-up version of a photo taken of the meeting with Perry, showing Wheeler at Murray’s side. A second photo showed Murray’s rollback plan in Wheeler’s hands. Murray had sought some of the coal breaks that the EPA under Wheeler has since acted on. That included Wheeler signing a rule easing federal regulation of toxic coal ash, redoing an Obama rule that pushed electricity providers to move away from dirtier-burning coal plants and targeting an Obama rule limiting emissions of toxic mercury from coal plants. A watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, filed an ethics complaint Tuesday with the EPA’s Office of the Inspector General alleging that Wheeler’s oversight of those and other rollback proposals at EPA may have violated his government ethics pledge to abstain from regulatory decisions affecting his former lobbying client for at least two years. EPA spokesman John Konkus called the accusation “baseless” and “wrong” and said Wheeler works with EPA ethics officials and follows their guidance.
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13980
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"Donald Trump Says Hillary Clinton’s immigration platform would ""create totally open borders."
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Volkswagen AG (VOWG_p.DE) is ramping up production of electric cars to around 1 million vehicles by end of 2022, according to manufacturing plans seen by Reuters, enabling the German carmaker to leapfrog Tesla Inc and making China the key battleground.
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false
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Immigration, Florida, Donald Trump,
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"Volkswagen is readying two Chinese factories to build electric cars next year. The Chinese plants will have a production capacity of 600,000 vehicles, according to Volkswagen’s plans, which have not been previously reported - revealing VW’s ability to industrialise production faster than other pioneers in the electric vehicle market. Tesla is still trying to reach its goal of making more than 500,000 cars a year by building a new factory in Shanghai, China, while VW can rely on an established workforce in two of its plants in Anting and Foshun to build zero-emission cars. The scale and speed of VW’s electrification push marks a shift in favour of established manufacturers that can use existing factories and profit from combustion-engined sport utility vehicles (SUVs) to scale up faster than startups. “The truth is barriers to entry in autos remain high,” said Max Warburton, an analyst at Bernstein Research. “Making cars is hard. The move to electric vehicles will be expensive, but will probably be led by traditional manufacturers.” VW is leveraging its large infrastructure of suppliers, factories and workers, long a handicap to its profitability, more aggressively than rivals BMW, Renault SA, General Motors Co and Tesla, which were all quicker to sell a custom-designed electric car. Rather than adjusting production gradually, and using multi-powertrain platforms, Volkswagen is making a massive bet on a dedicated electric vehicle architecture, known as MEB, in the hope of increasing economies of scale sufficiently to push down the price of electric cars to around 20,000 euros ($22,262). The Wolfsburg, Germany-based carmaker is retooling eight plants across the globe by 2022 to specialise in manufacturing electric cars, and license its electric MEB platform to rivals, senior VW executives told Reuters, putting it on track to become the world’s largest maker of zero-emission vehicles. Tesla has emerged as a serious competitor with a credible car, its Model 3, Volkswagen Chief Executive Herbert Diess told Reuters last week. But startups have a hard time entering mass production without sufficient production facilities, he said. “The question is, can you expand your production quickly enough? The capital intensity is increasing,” Diess said. To fund its own electrification shift, the German carmaker aims to increase sales of VW SUVs, with combustion engines, to 40% of overall sales by 2020 from 23% in 2018. The powerstation that supplies energy for VW’s flagship e-vehicle factory in Zwickau, Germany, marked by two tall chimneys, was built to power production of the combustion-engined Volkswagen Golf. Now Zwickau can piggyback off this infrastructure to ramp up production to 330,000 VW ID electric cars by 2021. Volkswagen Group will increase economies of scale by rolling out electric vehicle platforms to its Audi, Skoda and Seat and Porsche brands. Volkswagen Group will be in a position to build 22 million electric cars by 2028, of which 11.6 million could come out of Chinese factories, VW said. For a graphic version of story ""Global automakers invest in electric vehicles"", click: tmsnrt.rs/2Hcr3H4 VW’s expansion push comes at a time when investors have started to question businesses delivering growth without real profit, a change in sentiment that is crippling the ability of several electric car pioneers to raise more cash. Back in 2016, Tesla said it wanted to build more than 500,000 Model 3 cars by 2018, a goal it has failed to meet. This year it expects to deliver 360,000 to 400,000 cars, a target that includes selling all models. Tesla’s struggles have dampened optimism about how easy it is to enter the car business, making it harder for China’s NIO, backed by internet company Tencent Holdings Ltd, as well as others like Faraday Future and Byton Ltd, to fund the next stage of growth: capital-intensive volume production and sales. “So much respect for those doing high volume manufacturing, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted earlier this month. “It’s insanely hard, but you make a real thing that people value. My hat is off to you.” After starting trial production runs at its factory in Shanghai, Tesla now hopes to reach its 500,000-vehicle target in the 12-month period ending June 30, 2020. Tesla is also looking for a site to start production in Europe. Volkswagen is converting two German plants, Hanover and Zwickau, to build electric vehicles and will retool other factories including plants in China: Foshan which VW runs together with its joint-venture partner FAW-Volkswagen, and another in Anting, which VW runs together with SAIC. It will retool plants in Emden and Dresden in Germany, Mlada Boleslav in the Czech Republic, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, in United States, as part of a 30 billion-euro ($33.24 billion)investment push into e-mobility by 2023. As a result, Volkswagen Group will be the No. 1 electric vehicle producer globally by 2025, while Tesla is likely to remain a niche player, according to UBS autos analyst Patrick Hummel. The cutthroat rivalry between automakers and software companies started when Alphabet Inc’s Google presented a prototype autonomous vehicle in 2012, leading analysts and industry executives to fear a so-called Nokia moment. This occurs when a new player from the tech sector unveils a superior design, in the way that Apple Inc presented the iPhone in 2007, ending Nokia’s dominance of the mobile handset business. Today, Tesla’s cars are generally perceived as cutting-edge and potentially more sophisticated than VW’s. Volkswagen’s ID.3, which starts production this year, has an operating range of between 330 and 550 kilometers (205 to 341 miles), below the 560 km long-range Model 3 version offered by Tesla. That is because Tesla has a sophisticated software algorithm to control how much electricity goes to the electric motor, air conditioning, seat heaters, in-car infotainment, and cooling system. Volkswagen’s edge is more blunt: price and massive economies of scale. The ID.3 has a starting price of under 30,000 euros ($33,363) in Germany. By contrast, Tesla’s Model 3 had an average selling price of $50,000 in the second quarter. The long-range version retails for 52,390 euros in Germany. The VW vehicle’s lower price comes from the carmaker’s ability to place large orders which, by nature of their size, help drive down the price. Volkswagen is investing 50 billion euros ($55.5 billion) to buy battery cells and will also license its MEB electric car platform to rival carmakers to further increase economies of scale. That is, Volkswagen will make that huge investment if suppliers can keep up. “There is a lot of investment,” Stefan Sommer, Volkswagen Group’s board member responsible for procurement, told Reuters last month. “But even the big companies like Samsung, CATL, LG Chem, the big guys, SK, they hesitate to take so much money and invest because they are not seeing the market on the other side.” “We are now seeing the first battery plants, LG in Poland, CATL in Germany, they don’t have the skilled workforce. That will be the bottleneck,” Sommer said. “It’s a learning curve everybody has to work through. This will cause some lags in supply. We have no other choice.” VW plans to license its electric MEB vehicle platform to rival Ford Motor Co, which will give VW $10 billion in revenue over the next six years. Thomas Ulbrich, Volkswagen’s member of the board who oversees production of electric vehicles, told Reuters, “Ford and Volkswagen’s agreement will be a blueprint for further licensing deals.” In the short term, Volkswagen and its Chinese joint venture partners will invest 15 billion euros to produce 15 different electric cars for China alone by 2025. “The first MEB-based vehicle is an SUV model,” Volkswagen said about its China push. For a graphic version of story ""Global automakers invest in electric vehicles"", click: tmsnrt.rs/2Hcr3H4"
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8948
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Aspirin alone a good clot buster after knee surgery
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It is certainly welcome news when a study reports that a cheaper, over-the-counter drug produces results about the same as more expensive prescription drugs that are generally trickier to use. However, this release about aspirin performing about the same as anticoagulant drugs for preventing blood clots in patients undergoing knee replacement surgery implies that “good old aspirin” is essentially without risks. The release neglects to tell readers about important limitations of the study, and its description of key aspects of the study is a bit muddled. The release does clearly point out the price differences between the drugs studied. News releases should be clear about when they are referring to the specific design or results of a study and when they are providing general context for readers. This release makes several references to blood clot prevention following knee replacement surgery and it lists the price of a 30-day supply of some of the drugs that were studied. Most readers would probably conclude that researchers studied long-term use of the drugs, when actually the only variable studied was what, if any, drug was used the day before surgery, the day of surgery, and the day after. The release also uses a quote from a researcher that improperly implies that the study compared prescribing practices before and after participating surgeons largely shifted from prescribing anticoagulants to preferring aspirin. The imprecision muddies the message to readers.
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true
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aspirin,clot buster drugs,knee surgery,Michigan Medicine
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The cost differences between aspirin and anticoagulant drugs are listed and the potential savings by using aspirin are highlighted. The release lists the percentages of patients who had a blood clot within three months of their knee replacement and emphasized that there was no statistical difference between those who took only aspirin and those who took anticoagulants. However, the release is remiss in not pointing out that the majority of patients were also treated with pneumatic compression boots. “Good old aspirin” implies that aspirin is benign and without potential harms, which is not accurate, even if the harms of aspirin are typically less than those of anticoagulants. There are two potential harms that were examined: bleeding and formation of clot. While the report notes that aspirin was “not inferior” to other anticoagulants, it was silent on the incidence of bleeding. In several places, the release mischaracterizes the study design and muddles distinctions between the results of this study and information from other sources. It neglects to point out key limitations noted by the study authors, including that the results seen in this network of Michigan hospitals may not reflect the experiences of patients elsewhere and that “this is an observational study and can only demonstrate association and not causation.” The study variable was the choice of a clot-prevention drug prescribed to patients the day before surgery, the day of surgery and the day after. The release muddles things by stating, “it’s routine for patients to take clot-preventing drugs for some time afterward.” The headline, subhead and lead sentence all refer to patients taking aspirin “after” or “following” a knee replacement. Readers are likely to mistakenly believe that the study looked at long-term use of clot-preventing drugs, rather than what it actually tracked: the choice of drug for the brief 3-day period around the procedure. The release also quotes a researcher saying, “This study is truly a real-world experience of what happened in Michigan when the majority of surgeons switched to aspirin,” Hallstrom says. “The incidence of blood clots, pulmonary embolus and death did not increase despite this dramatic change in practice.” However, this study was not set up to compare outcomes before and after a change in practice, so this prominent description of the study is not faithful to the actual study design. The release refers to “the two-year study period,” which readers could misinterpret to mean patients were followed for two-years, not just 90 days; though elsewhere the release does refer to the percentage of blood clots “over three months.” The release does not push knee replacement or clot-preventing drugs, though it does somewhat overstate the number of total knee replacements. The release cites a figure of “nearly 1 million Americans” each year, while other sources estimate the rate is closer to 700,000 per year. The disclosure statements included with the journal article reporting on this study note that Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan support the quality improvement group that did this study and pay some of the salaries of key researchers. Even though the disclosure statements say Blue Cross and Blue Shield did not specifically fund the work on this study, the release should have noted the funding relationship. The release highlights the comparison between alternatives for minimizing blood clot risk due to knee replacement surgery. The release notes that many knee replacements surgeries are performed every year. The release notes that the question of the best clot-prevention strategy for knee replacement patients has been debated for years. It cites an advantage over one recent study. Comparing the language of the release to the more-specific description in the journal article, it does seem that the release appropriately portrays this study as adding to the evidence that surgeons can use when prescribing drugs. Although the release paints a rather rosy and benign image of “good old aspirin,” the release is clear that this study found that there was no statistical difference in outcomes between patients taking aspirin versus anticoagulant drugs…and it pointed out that doctors need to consider a patient’s history of blood clots, obesity and other factors.
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16093
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"Nobody suffered any lasting injuries"" from the CIA interrogation program."
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"King said, ""Nobody suffered any lasting injuries"" as a result of the CIA enhanced interrogation program. He also said downplayed the methods, claiming it was ""not a case where people were killed,"" and that the techniques amounted to ""people being made to stand in awkward in positions."" This is the opposite of what the report showed. One need not agree with everything in it to conclude that someone did die, an eye was lost, detainees were made to stand on broken limbs and deprived of sleep for 180 hours. It’s as if King didn’t read the report before he went on the radio."
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false
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National, Foreign Policy, Terrorism, Peter King,
|
"Rep. Peter King brushed off a new Senate report on the CIA interrogation program as a partisan, one-sided account. Nothing to see here, people. Move along. During a Dec. 9 appearance on a local radio station, King, a New York Republican and chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counterintelligence & Terrorism, said that the CIA tactics were ""rough, they were tough, but they were not torture."" He went on to downplay the report’s findings. ""This is not a case where people were killed,"" he said. ""We’re not talking about anyone being burned or stabbed or cut or anything like that,"" he added. ""We’re talking about people being made to stand in awkward in positions, have water put into their nose and into their mouth. But again, nobody suffered any lasting injuries from this."" The Senate Intelligence Committee began investigating the scope of the CIA Enhanced Interrogation Program in 2009. On Dec. 9, committee chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., released the executive summary of the committee’s review of the program, which began in the wake of the 9-11 terrorist attacks. It alleges the program was not effective in gathering intelligence, CIA officials lied to Congress and the president about its effectiveness, the program was poorly managed, and the tactics were more brutal than people were told. Those conclusions are contested by many CIA officials and some Senate Republicans, who wrote a 160-page minority opinion. However, many details uncovered by the report, on which King was commenting, don’t appear to be disputed and are based on 6.3 million pages of documents and CIA cables reviewed by Senate staff. Even an ancillary reading of the Senate report’s executive summary — a 600-page document that is only one-tenth of the still-classified full study — finds King’s comments to be dubious. King’s staff did not respond to requests for comment. ""Not a case where people were killed"" Let’s put to bed one false claim King made off the bat: that no one was killed. In fact, someone did die as a result of the interrogation program. In 2002, the CIA interrogated Gul Rahman at Cobalt, an overseas detention center with an undisclosed location described as a dungeon. Many of the controversial interrogations outlined in the report took place at Cobalt. Rahman, described in the report as a suspected Islamic extremist, underwent ""48 hours of sleep deprivation, auditory overload, total darkness, isolation, a cold shower, and rough treatment,"" according to communications with CIA headquarters. Later, Rahman was shackled to the wall and made to lie on a cold concrete floor. He was stripped of all of his clothes except a sweatshirt. In the morning, guards discovered Rahman was dead, likely from hypothermia. ""Not talking about anyone being burned or stabbed or cut or anything like that"" The report describes how detainees at Cobalt were subject to something called ""rough takedowns"" that included physical abuse. ""Approximately five CIA officers would scream at a detainee, drag him outside of his cell, cut his clothes off, and secure him with Mylar tape. The detainee would then be hooded and dragged up and down a long corridor while being slapped and punched."" These takedowns were ""thoroughly planned and rehearsed"" and did cause physical harm to detainees. Rahman, for example, had abrasions on his face, legs, and hands, medical examiners found. One of the most discussed elements of the CIA report is the use of ""rectal feeding"" or ""rectal rehydration."" In at least five cases, detainees were force fed through their anus. In one instance, a lunch of ""hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts, and raisins was ‘pureed’ and rectally infused"" into a detainee named Majid Khan, the report said. While current and former CIA officials have defended the practice as medically necessary, Physicians for Human Rights said in a statement that rectal feedings are, ""a form of sexual assault masquerading as medical treatment."" The CIA’s chief of interrogations characterized rectal feeding as a demonstration of ""total control,"" the report said. Additionally, an unidentified individual in the report said the procedure was used to make people talk and helped to ""clear a person’s head."" One detainee, Mustafa al-Hawsawi, as a result of rectal feeding was ""later diagnosed with chronic hemorrhoids, an anal fissure, and symptomatic rectal prolapse,"" the report said. These instances of physical harm directly contradict King’s description. ""We’re talking about people being made to stand in awkward in positions"" King’s statement significantly downplays what detainees endured. For starters, they were not just made to stand in awkward positions. That tactic was used in addition to sleep deprivation methods that required detainees remain awake for up to 180 hours. Additionally, two detainees broke bones in their feet while trying to escape capture. Despite a CIA physician recommending they stay off their feet for several weeks, the two detainees were placed in ""standing sleep deprivation."" One of the detainees was kept awake on his feet for 52 hours, the other for an undisclosed amount of time. Similar tactics were used on a detainee with a sprained ankle and on a detainee with a prosthetic leg. Detainees were often naked and shackled with their hands above their head in complete darkness and loud music blasting. In April 2006, President George W. Bush ""expressed discomfort"" when shown images of a detainee ""chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself,"" according to the reports’ account of CIA documents. ""Nobody suffered any lasting injuries from this"" You could probably successfully argue that death is a pretty lasting injury. As were the chronic hemorrhoids and anal fissure suffered by the detainee who faced rectal feeding. But there were additional injuries as well. Abu Zubaydah, a high-level target, was captured in a raid during which he sustained a gunshot wound. Despite the obvious need for medical attention, care was instead withheld to convey that it was contingent on Zubaydah’s cooperation. The wound eventually deteriorated due to a ""combination of a lack of hygiene, sub-optimal nutrition, inadvertent trauma to the wound secondary to some of the stress techniques utilized at that stage, and the removal of formal obvious medical care,"" the report said. Zubaydah also lost an eye in custody and was subjected to waterboarding, a procedure that simulates drowning. In one session, he ""became completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth."" He was revived and vomited large amounts of water. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, often described as the architect of the 9-11 plots, was waterboarded 183 times over 15 sessions. While King alleged no lasting injuries from this technique, the report indicates otherwise, said David Schanzer, director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security at Duke University. ""Methods were approved that if used only very sporadically might not have caused permanent damage, but they were used in combination and repeatedly over a course of sometimes weeks or months,"" Schanzer said. ""I think to write off those kinds of compounded injuries as being insignificant is totally inconsistent with the facts."" Our ruling King said, ""Nobody suffered any lasting injuries"" as a result of the CIA enhanced interrogation program. He also said downplayed the methods, claiming it was ""not a case where people were killed,"" and that the techniques amounted to ""people being made to stand in awkward in positions."" This is the opposite of what the report showed. One need not agree with everything in it to conclude that someone did die, an eye was lost, detainees were made to stand on broken limbs and deprived of sleep for 180 hours. It’s as if King didn’t read the report before he went on the radio."
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22085
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The new beverage tax will increase the cost of sodas, juice drinks, sports drinks, iced teas, and flavored water up to 50%.
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Beverage association says R.I. tax would increase sugary drink prices up to 50 percent
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mixture
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Rhode Island, Health Care, Public Health, Taxes, American Beverage Association,
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"Taxes are on everyone's mind, especially in the wake of Gov. Lincoln Chafee's widely criticized proposal to impose a sales tax on previously exempt items. Now, the folks who bring us a wide variety of beverages are protesting a proposed new tax on sugar-flavored drinks. In full-page newspaper advertisements, pamphlets and placards on store shelves, the American Beverage Association, an advocacy group representing the nonalcoholic beverage industry, is warning consumers that they are going to see an increase of up to 50 percent in the price of their favorite beverage. For example, the placard we saw at a local Stop & Shop had a big red stop sign and the words: ""The new beverage tax will increase the cost of sodas, juice drinks, sports drinks, iced teas, and flavored water up to 50%."" The claim left us thirsting for the truth, so we started making inquiries. At issue are two identical bills in the state legislature -- one in the House (H5432), the other in the Senate (S2952). Both call for a tax of 1 cent per ounce on drinks with added sugar or high-calorie sweetener. Thus, a 20-ounce bottle of Pepsi would cost you an extra 20 cents. A 2-liter bottle of Mountain Dew would cost an additional 68 cents. The potential revenue, estimated at $28 million per year, would not be used to help the cash-strapped state, at least as the legislation is now written. It would instead be given to the Health Department for anti-obesity programs. The goal is to move consumers away from ""sugar-added beverages, which have no nutritional value and which have a tendency to contribute to a lot of health problems,"" said Steven DeToy, director of public and government affairs for the Rhode Island Medical Society, one of the groups pushing the legislation. Nationwide, non-diet sodas make up about 70 percent of the $75 billion carbonated soft drink market in the U.S., according to John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, they now account for half the added sugar in the U.S. diet. Opponents say the tax would be one more burden to consumers, driving shoppers across state lines to buy their soda while doing little to reduce obesity. To find out how much the proposed tax would raise prices, we went shopping. We discovered that when it comes to the purchase of individual bottles and cans, the claim wasn't close to true. A 20-ounce bottle of Coke selling for $1.49 would increase in price by 13 percent, to $1.69. An 8-ounce can of Red Bull selling for $2.29 would cost $2.37, 4 percent more. A dozen 12-ounce cans of soda priced at $6.19 per case, which we found at a Providence Rite Aid, would cost $7.63, and additional 23 percent. But if you buy soda on sale and in volume, the percentage increase is greater. For example, at Stop & Shop, you could get three of those 12-packs for $10 (or $3.34 per pack); in that case the price would increase to $4.78 per pack, or 43 percent more. If you bought a 2-liter bottle of Pepsi (68 ounces) as part of a 2-for-$3 promotion ($1.50 each), it would make each bottle cost $2.18, or adding 45 percent to the cost of each bottle. And with a 3-liter bottle of Stop & Shop-brand root beer, selling at 4 for $5 (or $1.25 each), the tax would increase the per-bottle price to $2.26, or 81 percent more, even more that the beverage association warns. So the increases are all over the scanner. There's another problem with the American Beverage Association claim. The legislation would tax only drinks to which sugar, high-fructose corn syrup or another high-calorie sweetener has been added. Diet sodas would be exempt. So would drinks with more than 50 percent fruit or vegetable juice. So would beverages you get from a soda fountain. A Coke at McDonald’s, unless it was in a bottle, would not carry the tax. In its claim, the beverage association is ignoring those distinctions. One reason may be that the wholesalers might cover the cost of the tax by spreading it out among all beverages. (They made that argument during a March 9 hearing before the House Finance Committee.) That means consumers would pay more for all types of drinks, healthy or otherwise. However, if they adopted that practice, the overall increase to consumers would fall even further. The ""up to 50%"" claim, as tenuous as it is, would be even less accurate. In summary, it is correct that if you were to buy a sugary drink on sale and in bulk, the added price could approach -- and in some cases exceed -- 50 percent because the tax would be levied on a per-ounce basis. But for individual bottles and cans, the tax would typically be far lower -- 20 percent or less for a 20-ounce drink bought for 98 cents or more. In addition, opponents of the bill are inaccurately implying that the increase would apply to all sodas, juice drinks, soft drinks, iced teas and flavored waters. That's not true; that's not how the bill is written. And if the companies decided to jack up the prices for the diet drinks and all-natural fruit drinks that would be exempted from the tax, the beverage association's estimate of the potential price increases would be even less true. By trying to have it both ways, the American Beverage Association is making a claim that is accurate but leaves out important details. (To comment or offer your ruling, visit us on Facebook.)"
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8641
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New York in 'race against time' as Trump stresses face masks are voluntary.
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Two of the principal U.S. coronavirus hot spots - New York and Louisiana - reported their biggest jumps in COVID-19 deaths yet on Friday, as the White House sent mixed messages on whether Americans should cover their face if they venture outdoors.
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true
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Health News
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Surging deaths in New York City and New Orleans showed that a wave of lethal coronavirus infections expected to overwhelm hospitals, even in relatively affluent, urban areas with extensive healthcare systems, has begun to crash down on the United States. Governors, mayors and physicians have voiced alarm for weeks over crippling scarcities of personal protective gear for first-responders and front-line healthcare workers, as well as ventilators and other medical supplies. With the federal government’s national strategic stockpile of such equipment nearly depleted, states have been forced essentially to compete against each other on the open market for vital resources. Cities across the country have also scrambled to expand hospital capacity and recruit healthcare professionals out of retirement to meet looming shortages of sick beds and personnel. New York City, the pandemic’s U.S. epicenter, has mere days to prepare for the worst of the outbreak, said Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose city has suffered more than a quarter of the 7,000-plus coronavirus deaths to date nationwide. New York is in an “extraordinary race against time,” de Blasio told a news briefing on Friday, renewing his call for the federal government to mobilize the U.S. military. “We’re dealing with an enemy that is killing thousands of Americans, and a lot of people are dying who don’t need to die,” he said. “You can’t say, every state for themselves, every city for themselves. That is not America.” Americans, almost all of them under orders to stay home except for essential outings such as grocery shopping or seeing a doctor, have heard conflicting guidance in recent days about the need for wearing face masks in public. At the White House on Friday, President Donald Trump seemed to muddy the waters further when he announced that federal health authorities are now recommending individuals wear cloth face coverings to stem transmission of the virus. But he stressed the advisory was purely voluntary, and that he would not be heeding the recommendation himself. “With the masks, it’s going to be a really voluntary thing. You can do it, you don’t have to do it. I’m choosing not to do it,” he said. Doctors and nurses, many lacking adequate supplies of medical-grade face masks and other protective gear, were already confronting an onslaught from COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the highly contagious coronavirus. One physician at a New York City hospital recounted arriving at work on Friday to learn that three of his COVID-19 patients had died that morning. A few hours later, he had intubated two others. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I’ve never even heard of something like this in the developed world,” he told Reuters on condition of anonymity, because he was not authorized to speak with the media. Another hot spot, Louisiana, reported a sharp jump in deaths, climbing 20% to 370 on Friday, marking the highest day-to-day increase in fatal cases yet for the Gulf Coast state. Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards pleaded for residents to abide by his state-at-home order as the number of infections statewide surpassed 10,000. “For those of you who are not taking the crisis seriously, I am asking you to do a better job,” he told a news conference. Louisiana’s largest city, New Orleans, where Mardi Gras celebrations in late February are believed to have spread the virus before social distancing orders were imposed, has become a focal point of the crisis. The outbreak there has proven far more lethal than elsewhere in the United States, with a per-capita death rate twice that of New York City. Doctors, public health officials and available data suggest the Big Easy’s high levels of obesity and related ailments may be part of the problem. In New York, the U.S. state hardest hit by the coronavirus in sheer numbers of infections and lives lost, the cumulative number of fatalities rose above 2,900 - on par with the death toll from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. “Personally, it’s hard to go through this all day, and then it’s hard to stay up all night watching those numbers come in,” Governor Andrew Cuomo said. New York City alone accounted for more than a quarter of the 7,077 U.S. coronavirus deaths tallied by Johns Hopkins University on Friday. Known U.S. infections, approaching 275,000 cases, made up about 25% of the more than 1 million cases reported worldwide. Many of the most gravely ill patients were dying alone as medical staff forbade relatives to be with them in their final hours for fear of a further spread of infection. Dr. Craig Spencer, director of global health in emergency medicine at New York’s Columbia University Medical Center, described the scene inside tents set up outside hospitals to help contain an increasing influx of patients. “In those same tents, I saw too much pain, loneliness, and death. People dying alone,” he wrote on Twitter on Thursday night. In New Jersey, Governor Phil Murphy ordered all flags lowered to half-staff for as long as the emergency lasts, saying his state was the first to take such a measure. Fresh data on Friday highlighted the economic consequences of the public health crisis, confirming that hundreds of thousands of Americans had lost their jobs due to the pandemic. Economists said actual job losses will prove far greater but had yet to be reflected in employment figures as much of the economy had only begun to shut down last month.
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12831
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You can almost pinpoint half of the gun violence deaths to two or three specific sections in the city. They are just areas of devastation, economically and otherwise.
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"In a recent interview with MSNBC, Durbin spoke about gun violence in Chicago. Durbin said of Chicago, ""You can almost pinpoint half of the gun violence deaths to two or three specific sections in the city. They are just areas of devastation economically and otherwise."" Durbin’s office cited a news article that used statistics from the Chicago Police Department. A press release from CPD News Affairs Office confirms this. It read: ""Three districts (7, 11, 15) are responsible for approximately 50% of murders in January 2017."" We confirmed these statistics by looking at data available on crime maps posted on the CPD Harrison, Englewood and Austin district websites. Durbin’s assessment of Chicago’s homicides is accurate. He did say you can ""almost"" attribute half of deaths to a few communities and 43 percent are in certain west and south side neighborhoods. A crime expert told us these trends have been consistent over the last five decades. Finally, we found data that shows there is a correlation between areas with high violence and economic hardship.
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true
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Illinois, Guns, Richard Durbin,
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"Politicians and national media once again have turned their attention to Chicago’s violence. The city’s nearly 800 murders in 2016 prompted President Donald Trump to repeatedly liken parts of Chicago to sections of the Middle East. Trump also has said he will ""send in the feds"" to ""fix the horrible carnage,"" but no signs of federal intervention have been seen so far. Trump’s focus on Chicago, combined with the recent murders of 2-year-old Lavontay White Jr., 11-year-old Takiya Holmes and 12-year-old Kanari Bowers, has only heightened interest in what is happening in Chicago. The subject came up as MSNBC’s Willie Geist interviewed U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., on Feb. 15. Geist asked Durbin why Chicago is so violent, especially in comparison to other major cities like New York, which saw a historically low murder rate in 2016. (The Chicago violence segment starts at 3:54) Durbin made the argument that Chicago, as a whole, doesn’t suffer from constant violence. He said the gun violence only occurs in a few areas. ""You can almost pinpoint half of the gun violence deaths to two or three specific sections in the city,"" Durbin said. ""They are just areas of devastation, economically and otherwise."" Is Chicago’s violence actually that concentrated? Murder across neighborhoods We reached out to Durbin’s office to see where he found this data. His press secretary, John Normoyle, pointed to a Chicago Tribune article published on Feb. 1 titled, ""Violence in Chicago still stubbornly high; Trump reacts again."" The story cites Chicago Police Department Superintendent Eddie Johnson who, during a press conference, said half of Chicago’s homicides in January occurred in three police districts: Englewood on the South Side and the West Side districts of Harrison and Austin. We followed up with the Police Department’s News Affairs Office to verify that statement. The department’s director of communication, Frank Giancamilli, sent back a press release from Feb. 1 that says the Englewood, Austin and Harrison police districts approximately made up half of Chicago’s 51 murders in January. The distinction is important. Data from each police district crime map shows a total of 22 of the 51 January murders can be attributed to the Englewood, Austin and Harrison districts. It’s a significant chunk — 43 percent — but not exactly half. ‘It’s a tale of two cities’ Loyola University criminology professor Arthur Lurigio said violence in these areas is hardly news. Violence has been rampant in the Englewood, Austin and Harrison areas since the 1960s, Lurigio said. ""Without even seeing the data, I would have picked those three districts,"" Lurigio said. ""These communities haven’t changed, and I expect them to continue being this violent if they experience the same conditions."" This brings us to the second part of Durbin’s statement: The areas in which gun violence is concentrated are plagued by other problems that feed the violence. ""Homicide doesn’t occur in a vacuum,"" Lurigio said. ""Violence is a public health problem, but people only view it in a criminal aspect. People in these areas are plagued by other social, economic and health problems. Things like housing foreclosures, high unemployment and school closures. So a lot of young men devalue their own life because they don’t see a future. There’s no compunction about pulling the trigger."" There’s data backing up Durbin and Lurigio’s claims. According to U.S. Census data compiled by the Chicago Tribune, both Austin and Englewood have an unemployment rate of 21 percent compared to an 11.1 percent rate in Chicago overall. East Garfield Park and West Garfield Park both make up parts of the Harrison Police District and have unemployment rates of 15 and 25 percent, respectively. Likewise, those neighborhoods have considerably lower individual incomes and higher percentages of households in poverty than Chicago as a whole. ""Chicago is like a tale of two cities,"" Lurigio said ""It’s a city that’s been utterly neglected in some parts. Give the city money to repair infrastructure where its needs it most. Fix the primary school systems in these areas. Don’t call murder a crime problem when the answers lie in investing in these blighted areas."" Our ruling In a recent interview with MSNBC, Durbin spoke about gun violence in Chicago. Durbin said of Chicago, ""You can almost pinpoint half of the gun violence deaths to two or three specific sections in the city. They are just areas of devastation economically and otherwise."" Durbin’s office cited a news article that used statistics from the Chicago Police Department. A press release from CPD News Affairs Office confirms this. It read: ""Three districts (7, 11, 15) are responsible for approximately 50% of murders in January 2017."" We confirmed these statistics by looking at data available on crime maps posted on the CPD Harrison, Englewood and Austin district websites. Durbin’s assessment of Chicago’s homicides is accurate. He did say you can ""almost"" attribute half of deaths to a few communities and 43 percent are in certain west and south side neighborhoods. A crime expert told us these trends have been consistent over the last five decades. Finally, we found data that shows there is a correlation between areas with high violence and economic hardship.
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14949
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Go look on the West Point website and you’ll see those specific words, ‘full scholarship to West Point.’ So even though it is, you know, given as a grant for anybody who gets in, those words are used.
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"Carson defended his use of the word scholarship in discussing his recruitment to West Point, saying, ""Go look on the West Point website and you’ll see those specific words, ‘full scholarship to West Point.’"" The military academy has used the words ""full scholarship"" a few times in admissions literature and advertisements and in one place on its website. However, experts say Carson’s use of the word scholarship doesn’t properly explain the application and appointment process to West Point. Carson’s statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. Correction: After this story was published, we found an additional instance of the words ""full scholarship"" on West Point’s website. The article has been updated to reflect that."
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true
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National, Candidate Biography, Ben Carson,
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"Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson stuck to his story about being offered a scholarship to West Point after a Politico article blasted him for ""fabricating"" the account. Carson has highlighted the offer to the prestigious military academy — allegedly made by Gen. William Westmoreland in 1969 when Carson was a ROTC student leader in Detroit — in his books and comments throughout the years. But Carson never applied to West Point nor does Westmoreland’s schedule place him in Detroit at the time Carson said he was, according to Politico. What’s more, there’s no such thing as a ""full scholarship"" to West Point, as everyone accepted to the five federal service academies receives free tuition in exchange for their service. When asked about discrepancy on ABC’s This Week by host George Stephanopoulos, Carson said the academy itself uses the terminology. ""Wait a minute George, go look on the West Point website, and you’ll see those specific words, ‘full scholarship to West Point,’ "" Carson said Nov. 8. ""So even though it is, you know, given as a grant for anybody who gets in, those words are used. And if a recruiter or somebody who’s trying to get you to come there or trying to get you to do that, those are the very words they will use. It’s on their website."" We wondered if the words really are advertised on West Point’s website. We could not reach the military academy. Searching for the ""specific words ‘full scholarship to West Point’"" turned up no results on West Point’s own website or on Google. The official admissions page also makes no mention of a scholarship of any kind. Instead, it simply notes that tuition, room and board, and expenses are fully paid for those who are selected to attend West Point. The academy’s diversity page, however, states that ""this four-year college experience is a fully funded scholarship."" Carson’s spokesperson told us that West Point has referred to their benefits as a full scholarship in publications, a point Carson made in a Nov. 8 Facebook post. He uploaded two West Point recruitment ads targeted at African-Americans that contain the word ""scholarship,"" including one from the 1960s, when he was a student. We also found examples of the words ""full scholarship"" used in publications that are linked on West Point’s website, as well as some old recruiting advertisements: • A dataset from 2014: ""At the United States Military Academy all students receive a full scholarship, including room & board and medical- and dental-care are provided by the U.S. Army."" • A prospectus from 2012: ""As a cadet, you are a member of the U.S. Army and receive a full scholarship and an annual salary of more than $10,000 from which you pay for your uniforms, textbooks, a laptop computer, and incidents."" • An ad in a 1991 issue of Black Enterprise magazine: ""Each year about 1,400 young men and women take advantage of the opportunity to attend West Point on a full government scholarship, which includes tuition, room and board and medical care. • An ad that appeared in a few issues of Ebony magazine in 1990: ""You receive a full scholarship, earn a degree from one of the country’s finest colleges, and build a foundation for a challenging career of service to the nation."" The financial benefits to attending military academies have been essentially described as scholarship-like or equivalent to a scholarship by USA Today, a West Point spokesperson in Forbes, and the Naval Academy. But the term ""full scholarship"" is an inaccurate description, experts told us. The phrase typically refers to a college providing financial aid to allow a candidate to attend a college free of charge, but that doesn’t really apply to West Point’s across-the-board zero-tuition policy, said Antonio Buehler, a West Point alumnus who founded the admissions coaching service Abrome. ""No such scholarship is named, every cadet is treated the same and there is an eight-year military commitment after graduation. Hence, not free,"" Buehler said. The proper terminology is ""appointment,"" said Vu Tran, a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy who runs the Denver-based admissions consulting firm Service Academy Coach. But because that’s not apparent from the get-go, Tran says he can’t fault Carson for using the term loosely, albeit incorrectly. ""I can definitely see where parents and students who are beginning the process can misconstrue it to be a scholarship,"" he said. ""But for those who have gone through the admission process and through the nomination process, they would never call it a scholarship."" Carson’s use of the words ""full scholarship"" is even more inaccurate if he’s describing his own experience, experts agreed. Tran told us it’s conceivable a ROTC commander or even a general would encourage a student to apply to West Point, touting the free tuition, but noted that anyone familiar with the process understands that that’s contingent upon nomination and acceptance. ""(Carson) would not have been ‘offered’ the opportunity to attend West Point at no cost, like all other cadets, until he applied and received an appointment, which he never did,"" Buehler said. Our ruling Carson defended his use of the word scholarship in discussing his recruitment to West Point, saying, ""Go look on the West Point website and you’ll see those specific words, ‘full scholarship to West Point.’"" The military academy has used the words ""full scholarship"" a few times in admissions literature and advertisements and in one place on its website. However, experts say Carson’s use of the word scholarship doesn’t properly explain the application and appointment process to West Point. Carson’s statement is accurate but needs clarification or additional information. That meets our definition of . Correction: After this story was published, we found an additional instance of the words ""full scholarship"" on West Point’s website. The article has been updated to reflect that. The ruling remains ."
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2273
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Invasion of big, voracious lizards threatens U.S. South: study.
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A group of South American lizards that can grow up to four feet long (1.2 meters) has established a home in the Florida wild after being brought to the United States as pets, and the reptiles could begin a voracious march across the U.S. South, according to a new study.
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true
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Environment
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Tegu lizards, which currently live in two large colonies in Florida, could expand into an area from the Carolinas to Central Texas, according to the scientific report published in July on the website for the journal Nature. “They are voracious, omnivorous predatory lizards that can live in a variety of habitats, but we can’t know what is going to happen or how intense this invasion is going to become until the effects are upon us,” said Lee Fitzgerald, a professor at Texas A&M University and curator of its Biodiversity Research and Teaching Collections. Fitzgerald, a co-author of the study, said in an interview this week it could take years for the tegu lizards to reach their potential range, but new hot spots pop up as more pet lizards escape or are dumped in the wild by owners. There are no current estimates of wild populations of tegus in the United States. In South America, the large-bodied lizards range widely east of the Andes and include species such as the Argentine black and white tegu. Armed with strong jaws and tails that they can wield as thumping weapons, the lizards in Florida devour the eggs of American alligators and ground-nesting birds, wildlife officials said. The reptiles also have a taste for insects, fruit and birds. “As far as being a damaging invasive species, it really depends on what the threatened resources are in the areas where you might get tegus,” said Robert Reed, chief of the Invasive Species Science Branch at the U.S. Geological Survey, and another report co-author. Tegu owners describe their pets as big, calm and occasionally affectionate lizards that like sunning themselves and are not picky about what they eat. But they can also be ornery and tough to handle. In Florida, local wild populations of breeding tegu lizards are found in at least two counties, Miami-Dade and Hillsborough, home to Tampa, while there have been sightings in other parts of the state, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. On private lands, Florida hunters without a license are allowed to kill tegu lizards if it is done humanely. On public lands, the state is trying to get rid of the lizards through traps. “The most important thing that the public can do to stop the spread of nonnative species like tegus is to NEVER release nonnative animals into the wild,” commission specialist Jamie Rager said in an email. “Don’t let it loose.”
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11046
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FDA Probes Safety of Popular Heart Stent
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When drug-coated or durg-eluting stents went on the market, they immediately changed clinical practice by replacing the standard bare metal stents. The purpose of the drug-coated stent was to prevent the clogged artery from becoming clogged again. However, new reports are emerging that these stents may actually be causing some clots to form. Enough evidence is mounting that the FDA convened a panel to discuss how these new developments will affect how stents are used in routine practice. This story does an excellent job of describing the scale of the problem and quoting multiple experts who fall on different sides of the debate. The story does a good job of describing the strength of the available evidence, particularly the limitations of using hosptial registries as a source of data. By accurately describing the prevalence of coronary artery disease, the story avoids disease mongering. Furthermore, the story mentions alternatives such as bare metal stents, bypass surgery and medications. The story also describes the cost of the drug-coated stents compared to the older version, the bare metal stents. The story does report the risk of clotting with the drug-coated stents, however the comparison of coated and bare metal stents is the key piece of information that is missing in this story. This information should also be presented in absolute rather than relative terms. Overall, this was a balanced and comprehensive piece.
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true
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The story describes the cost of the drug-coated stents compared to the older version, the bare metal stents. The story does report the risk of clotting with the drug-coated stents, however the comparison of coated and bare metal stents is the key piece of information that is missing in this story. This information should also be presented in absolute rather than relative terms. The story adequately describes the risk of clotting with drug-coated stents and of bleeding with Plavix. The story does a good job of describing the strength of the available evidence, particularly the limitations of using hospital registries as a source of data. By accurately describing the prevalence of restenosis, or narrowing of the artery after stenting, the story avoids disease mongering. The story quotes multiple experts who have differing perspectives on how the new information changes clinical practice. The story does mention alternatives such as bare metal stents, bypass surgery and medications. The story clearly states that drug-coated stents are common. The story clearly states that the drug-coated stents are new but have been widely used since they were introduced. Because the story quotes multiple independent sources the reader can assume that the story does not rely on a press release as the sole source of information.
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11486
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The mind as a path to comfort
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Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is a common, though mysterious condition. Drugs that have come on the market recently have been somewhat disappointing, though one wouldn’t know that given how heavily marketed they are. This story reports on a new approach to treating IBS: psychotherapy. This story does a very good job of explaining the new approach and placing it in context with existing therapies. By accurately describing the prevalence of IBS, the story avoids disease mongering. The story clearly states that psychotherapy has been around for a while, but that it is a new approach for treating IBS. The story clearly states that cognitive behavioral therapy is available, but it is not clear how widely available it is and how difficult it may be to find a practitioner. The story states that psychotherapies are “without side effects.” While that may reflect the existing data, it would have been better for the story to comment on potential side effects or harms without dismissing them. The story mentions drug treatment as the alternative, but it could have provided more information on lifestyle changes like diet and exercise. The story provides sufficient details about the design of the recent studies and it does provide quantification of benefits in absolute terms for the 10-week and 4-week groups compared to no treatment. Although the story suggests that the therapy can be expensive, this is not sufficient information on costs. Because the story quotes multiple sources, the reader can assume that the story does not rely on a press release as the sole source of information. Although there was a press release issued from the meeting, the story does not lift text from it and the story also quotes researchers who were not included in the press release. http://www.ddw.org/wmspage.cfm?parm1=451 Overall, a solid piece of journalism.
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true
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Although the story suggests that the therapy can be expensive, this is not sufficient information on costs. The story does provide quantification of benefits in absolute terms for the 10-week and 4-week psychotherapy groups compared to no treatment. The story does not provide detail on the hypnotherapy studies. The story states that psychotherapies are “without side effects.” While that may reflect the existing data, it would have been preferable for the story to comment on potential side effects or harms without dismissing them. The story provides sufficient details about the design of the recent studies. The story could have provided additional details on the hypnotherapy studies cited. We are told that “just over half” of patients in the hypnotherapy group improved, while no patients in the control groups improved, but we are not given numbers or definition of “improved.” By accurately describing the prevalence of IBS, the story avoids disease mongering. The story quotes multiple sources. The story mentions drug treatment as the alternative. The story could have provided more information on lifestyle changes like diet and exercise. The story clearly states that cognitive behavioral therapy is available, but it is not clear how widely available it is and how difficult it may be to find a practitioner. The story clearly states that psychotherapy has been around for a while, but that it is a new approach for treating IBS. Because the story quotes multiple sources, the reader can assume that the story does not rely on a press release as the sole source of information. Although there was a press release issued from the meeting, the story does not lift text from it and the story also quotes researchers who were not included in the press release.
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35846
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Chicken jerky treats from China are causing illness in pets.
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Pet owners who believe their pets have become ill from consuming jerky treats should observe the following steps to assist the FDA in its investigation:
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mixture
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Critter Country, ASP Article, Crusader Habit
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This warning blasted across the internet in 2011: WARNING!!!!! It was on Fox news earlier that 70 dogs have died as a result of eating chicken jerky treats made from chicken that has come from China. Kingdom Pets brand from Costco is one of them. Also certain Blue Buffalo brand pet foods have a recall for the same thing. Please re post and make sure all your dog friends are aware. In response to reports of illnesses in pets associated with the consumption of jerky pet treats (primarily manufactured in China), over the past several years the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued several advisories to consumers: one in September 2007, one in December 2008, one in November 2011, one in September 2012, and another in May 2014. For example, an FDA advisory released on 14 September 2012 chronicled 2,200 reports of pet illnesses associated with jerky treats: Since 2007, the FDA has become aware of increasing numbers of illnesses in pets associated with the consumption of jerky pet treats. The majority of complaints involve chicken jerky (treats, tenders, and strips), but others include duck, sweet potato, and treats where chicken or duck jerky is wrapped around dried fruits, sweet potatoes, or yams. The FDA has received approximately 2,200 reports of pet illnesses which may be related to consumption of the jerky treats. The majority of the complaints involve dogs, but cats also have been affected. Over the past 18 months the reports have contained information on 360 canine deaths and one feline death. There does not appear to be a geographic pattern to the case reports. Cases have been reported from all 50 states and 6 Canadian provinces in the past 18 months. By May 2014, those numbers had swelled to encompass 4,800 complaints: As of May 1, 2014, we have received in total more than 4,800 complaints of illness in pets that ate chicken, duck, or sweet potato jerky treats, nearly all of which are imported from China. The reports involve more than 5,600 dogs, 24 cats, three people, and include more than 1,000 canine deaths. The breakdown of symptoms associated with the cases is similar to that of earlier reports: approximately 60 percent of the cases report gastrointestinal/liver disease, 30 percent kidney or urinary disease, with the remaining 10 percent of complaints including various other signs such as neurologic, dermatologic, and immunologic symptoms. About 15 percent of the kidney or urinary cases also tested positive for Fanconi syndrome, a rare kidney disease that has been associated with this investigation. In response to this information, in May 2014 the national chain of Petco retail pet stores announced it would stop selling Chinese-made jerky treats in all of its stores by the end of 2014: Petco became the first national pet retail chain to remove all China-made dog and cat treats when it announced that it would stop selling the products in its more than 1,300 locations by the end of [2014]. “We know some pet parents are wary of dog and cat treats made in China, especially Chicken Jerky products, and we’ve heard their concerns,” said Petco CEO Jim Myers in a statement. “As a leader in the industry and the trusted partner for our pet parents, we’re eager to make this transition and to expand our assortment of safe and healthy treats, the majority of which are made right here in the U.S. Very simply, we feel this decision is in the best interest of the pets we all love and, ultimately, for our business.” Petco said that it doesn’t want its customers to take any chances. “We know the FDA hasn’t yet identified a direct cause for the reported illnesses, but we decided the uncertainty of the situation outweighs the lack of actual proof,” said Myers. “It has taken some time and careful thought to get to this point, but we’re proud to make the change and we believe our customers will be pleased with it as well.” However, the FDA still has not definitively established a causative link between pet illness and the consumption of jerky treats, stating that although they “continue to receive complaints of dogs experiencing illness that their owners or veterinarians associate with consumption of chicken jerky products … to date, scientists have not been able to determine a definitive cause for the reported illnesses”: Although the FDA has been actively investigating the reports of illnesses, no definitive cause has been determined. The ongoing global investigation is complex, multifaceted and includes a wide variety of experts at the FDA including toxicologists, epidemiologists, veterinary researchers, forensic chemists, microbiologists, field investigators and senior agency officials. At best, the FDA has so far been able to perform necropsies on a few dozen dogs whose deaths were attributed to jerky treats. That agency found half that those deaths did not appear to be related to jerky pet treats, and the causes of death in the other half may or may not have been linked to the consumption of jerky treats: FDA has had the opportunity to perform necropsies (post-mortem examinations) on 26 dogs, 13 of which appeared to have causes of death not related to consumption of jerky pet treats. Of the remaining 13 cases, an association with consumption of jerky pet treats could not be ruled out. Eleven of these dogs had indications of kidney disease and two involved gastrointestinal disease. On 22 October 2013, the FDA released a Progress Report noting that the “rate of complaints associated with jerky pet treats dropped sharply after several well-known brands were removed from the market in January 2013,” but reiterating that the “FDA has not yet identified a cause for the reported illnesses”: As of September 24, 2013, FDA has received approximately 3000 complaints of illness related to consumption of chicken, duck, or sweet potato jerky treats, most of which involve products imported from China. The reports involve more than 3600 dogs, 10 cats and include more than 580 deaths. FDA continues to investigate the cause of these illnesses in conjunction with our partners in the Veterinary Laboratory Investigation and Response Network (Vet-LIRN), a network of animal health laboratories affiliated with FDA. The complaints FDA has received include adverse events involving different sizes, ages and breeds of dogs. About 60 percent of the reports are for gastrointestinal illness (with or without elevated liver enzymes) and about 30 percent relate to kidney or urinary signs. The remaining 10 percent of cases involve a variety of other signs, including convulsions, tremors, hives, and skin irritation. It is important to note that the reported illnesses are not limited to jerky treats made from chicken. We have received complaints about duck and sweet potato jerky treats and related products, such as jerky-wrapped rawhide treats. We know that the illnesses and deaths reported are mostly linked to jerky pet treats sourced from China. Pet owners should be aware, however, that manufacturers do not need to list the country of origin for each ingredient used in their products. FDA has noticed a sharp drop in the number of complaints since several treat products were removed from the market in January 2013 following a study by the New York State Department of Agriculture and Marketing (NYSDAM) that revealed low levels of antibiotic residues in those products. Recalled products included several well-known brands believed to comprise the majority of the jerky pet treat market. FDA believes it unlikely that the reports of illness it has received are caused by the presence of antibiotic residues in jerky pet treat products. Rather, because the brands that were recalled represent a significant portion of the jerky pet treat market in the United States, FDA theorizes, therefore, that the drop off in complaints since January 2013 is the more likely the result of the general lack of availability jerky pet treat products. To date, testing for contaminants in jerky pet treats has not revealed a cause for the illnesses. The FDA also explained the difficulties it faces in trying to determine the specific cause behind pet illness reports: This investigation continues to be a challenging one for FDA. Complicating the investigation are some fundamental differences between investigations into illnesses in people versus those in pets. In human illness outbreaks caused by foodborne bacteria or contaminates, FDA works in concert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state boards of health, which collect and track cases of foodborne illness. Unfortunately, there is no equivalent for pets, which means that it is difficult to accurately evaluate the scope of an outbreak. Another complicating factor in the investigation is the lack of post-mortem information. When a person dies unexpectedly, it is not unusual for a medical examiner to perform an autopsy to try to determine the cause of death. When a pet dies, it is much less likely that qualified veterinary pathologists will have the opportunity to examine the body. By the time FDA receives reports of deaths in pets, the body has often already been cremated or buried, eliminating the chance for scientists to gather more information about potential causes for the pet’s illness. Finally, FDA does not have access to market data about food items for pets. FDA regulations do not require product registration for foods, whether they are intended for people or animals. Therefore, it is difficult to appreciate the scope of the jerky pet treat market and the different products available to consumers.
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5774
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New Mexico looks for paths to universal health insurance.
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New Mexico’s Democrat-led Legislature is embarking on a financial study of how it might provide direct access to health care to almost every resident in the state after more than a decade of weighing options for universal medical insurance.
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true
|
Legislature, Access to health care, General News, Universal health care, Medicaid, New Mexico
|
New Mexico cut the uninsured rate roughly in half since expanding Medicaid in 2014 to more people on the cusp of poverty. Enrollment leveled off in recent years with about 10% of the population still uninsured. The new fiscal study was funded this year by the Legislature amid repeatedly stalled proposals to develop a system for near-universal health care coverage. The policy arm of the Legislature has awarded a roughly $390,000 contract for studying the issue to Maryland-based KNG Health Consulting, IHS Markit of London and Albuquerque-based researcher Lee Reynis. Architects of the study are collecting public comments Wednesday at a meeting in Albuquerque. The study is expected to outline a variety financial models for expanding health care coverage. The reform advocacy group Health Security for New Mexicans Campaign is calling for a new system that shifts private insurance to a supplemental role in a way that resembles Medicare. The Legislature this year shunned a proposal to open the state’s Medicaid program to paying customers who aren’t eligible for federal subsidies but may struggle with premiums and out-of-pocket health care costs. The administration of first-year New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is separately proceeding with its own efforts to better identify the uninsured population and extend affordable care without running afoul of federal law. A recent state-commissioned study from the Urban Institute found about 187,000 uninsured residents under age 65 in New Mexico. State Medicaid Director Nicole Comeaux said just over half of those uninsured residents are eligible for federally subsidized Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program or subsidized coverage on the state-run health insurance exchange. She said the state is turning to new technology to facilitate Medicaid enrollment, offering “real time” eligibility checks through mobile devices such as smart phones. A pilot version of the program has been tested in four counties. Abuko Estrada, coverage innovation officer at the state’s medical assistance division, says New Mexico will evaluate several approaches to more affordable care implemented by other states. Those include the “basic health plan” system utilized by New York and Minnesota to provide lower-cost insurance coverage and continuous care to people whose income fluctuates above and below the eligibility line for Medicaid.
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39765
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Dimethylpolysiloxane is used in silicone caulks and adhesives — as well as in McDonald’s fries and other menu options at chain restaurants across the country.
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McDonald’s Fries Contain Dimethylpolysiloxane
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true
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dimethylpolysiloxane
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"It’s true that dimethylpolysiloxane is used in household silicon products and as a food ingredient by restaurants like McDonalds. But studies have shown that dimethylpolysiloxane (also called polymethylsiloxane) is safe for human consumption in limited amounts. Dimethylpolysiloxane is used as an anti-foaming agent that’s added to deep fried foods like French fries and chicken nuggets at restaurants like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, KFC, Chick-fil-A and Five Guys. McDonald’s explained: “The oil we use for our fried menu items, like our chicken McNuggets, world famous fries and crispy chicken sandwiches, does contain a small amount of dimethylpolysiloxane. This is an FDA-approved ingredient that helps prevent the splattering of oil as foods are cooked.” The FDA last approved dimethylpolysiloxane as a food additive in 1998. The move was requested by the Dow Corning Corporation, which describes itself as a “global leader in silicon-based technology and innovation.” The FDA placed a number of limitations on the use of dimethylpolysiloxane as a “secondary direct food additive” for human consumption: “Limitations: 10 parts per million in food, or at such level in a concentrated food that when prepared as directed on the labels, the food in its ready-for-consumption state will have not more than 10 parts per million except as follows: Zero in milk; 110 parts per million in dry gelatin dessert mixes labeled for use whereby no more than 16 parts per million is present in the ready-to-serve dessert; 250 parts per million in salt labeled for cooking purposes, whereby no more than 10 parts per million is present in the cooked food.” A number of health agencies have reviewed the use dimethylpolysiloxane as a food additive over the years, and those studies haven’t linked it to any harmful side effects. The European Centre for Ecotoxicology and Toxicology of Chemicals carried out a review in 2011 that found it had no adverse affect on the immune system and was “rapidly excreted unchanged in the feces” when ingested by humans. The World Health Organization also explored potential long-term consequences of dimethylpolysiloxane exposure in lab rats. It concluded: “Studies have been carried out on silicone fluids with and without the addition of silica. The presence of silica did not raise any toxicological problems nor did it affect the results of the experiment in a significant way. Short-term studies have been carried out in several species, including one study on an emulsion of dimethylpolysiloxane. An adequate long-term study with dimethylpolysiloxane has been carried out in the rat. None of these studies has revealed any significant toxicity.” Dimethylpolysiloxane is also used as an inactive ingredient in over-the-counter drugs, lotions and hygiene products. It can be found in makeup, nail polish, contact lens solution, sunscreen, deodorant and shampoo."
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36872
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Vincent Fleck, the father of a doctor who leaked Hillary Clinton’s medical information to the press, died suddenly and under suspicious circumstances.
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Vincent Fleck Found Dead After Hillary Clinton’s Medical Records Leaked
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false
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Politics
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Rumors that Vincent Fleck’s death was related to Hillary Clinton’s leaked medical records is nothing more than unreliable Russian propaganda. The story went viral when fringe website What Does It Mean published a report on August 11, 2016, under the headline, “Father of Doctor Treating Hillary Clinton for Dementia Mysteriously Dies” that begins: The Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is reporting today that the continuing to grow list of mysterious deaths surrounding US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has increased after the father of the doctor treating her for dementia suddenly died this past weekend — and who is believed to have been behind the leaking of her most secret medical records. The SVR first became “alerted/alarmed” regarding the circumstances of this latest mysterious death associated with Hillary Clinton on 17 July, this report says, when a “known/suspected” Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) “hit team” traveled about 70 kilometers (44 miles) from their New York City “base/headquarters” to a small village named Mount Kisco, both being located in New York State. Upon arriving in Mount Kisco, this report continues, this CIA “hit team” broke into a specialized small computer security companies annex office named Right Click Solutions, located at 322 East Main Street, but were “shocked/surprised” by the unexpected arrival of an off duty employee—who immediately called the local police forces when he noticed the break in—and who were only able to obtain a single laptop computer. That stolen laptop computer, the report continues, was owned by Vincent Fleck, the father of Dr. Daniel Fleck, the doctor who is supposedly serving as Hillary Clinton for dementia. Clinton medical records supposedly revealing that the presidential candidate has dementia were leaked hours after his death. The report relies heavily on Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The primary mission of the SVR is to gather information and intelligence for Russia, and to influence the policies of public and private institutions in foreign countries, like America, according to a complaint filed after three SVR agents were detained in New York City in 2015. So, considering that SVR exists solely to advance Russian interests in foreign policy, it should not be considered a trusted source of intelligence or news. As we’ve seen in the past, SVR reports typically spin actual tidbits of news into large conspiracies that make sweeping and unsubstantiated claims about American politics. We investigated a previous (false) report from SVR that a Clinton hit team assassinated a top Democratic official, and a previous (false) report that President Obama had bought an extravagant mansion in Dubai. In those previous stories reports SVR spun factual reports into Russian propaganda — and the same is true in the case of Vincent Fleck’s death. It’s true that Fleck died suddenly on August 8th, but facts don’t support SVR claims that a Clinton hit team was behind his death. The 69-year-old died after suffering an unknown medical event while participating in the swimming portion of the Long Island Triathlon on August 7th, Fox News reports: A 69-year-old athlete competing in a New York triathlon on Sunday died during the swimming portion of the event. Authorities said Vincent Fleck, of Mount Kisco, died after a lifeguard noticed him in distress. Suffolk County police said a lifeguard brought him in a canoe to a rescue boat, where he received first aid. He was later pronounced dead at a hospital. The emergency occurred during the 500-meter swim portion of the Smith Point Spring Triathlon in Narrow Bay. Police said it was unknown if Fleck drowned or if he suffered a medical event. The Suffolk County Medical Examiner was set to do an autopsy to determine the cause of death. So, while the exact cause of Fleck’s death has yet to be released, early reports don’t support SVR’s theory that a hit team was behind his death. Also, there’s no proof that Dr. Fleck actually leaked information about Clinton’s health, or that he treated her. Given all that, and the lack of SVR’s credibility, it’s easy to call this one fiction.
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29323
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Indiana Muslims are appalled by a billboard displaying a list of deeds by the Prophet Muhammad even though it is accurate.
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"What's true: The Muslim Prophet Muhammad had multiple wives. What's false: There are no historical accounts of the Prophet committing rape or torturing people; he was known for freeing slaves, not ""dealing"" them. What's undetermined: The age of his youngest wife, Aisha, at the time of marriage is contested; the male members of a Jewish tribe in Medina were executed for treason during a battle, but the number is also contested."
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false
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Uncategorized, daily caller, hate speech, Islamophobia
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On 7 June 2017, the nonprofit arm of the right wing media outlet Daily Caller published a story reporting that a billboard in Indiana displaying six inflammatory claims about Muhammad (the central figure of the Muslim faith) was accurate, but local Muslims were upset about it anyway. The text of the story is little more than a regurgitation of original reporting done by the local Fox affiliate WXIN about the controversial billboard drivers have been seeing from the southbound lanes of I-465 in Indianapolis. The billboard bears the title “The Perfect Man.” It lays out six accusations which include; “Married 6 year old”; “slave owner and dealer”; “rapist”; “beheaded 600 Jews in one day”; “13 wives, 11 at one time”; and “tortured and killed unbelievers.” The Daily Caller states (incorrectly) that “the facts check out except for its first box stating Muhammad married a 6-year-old”: The billboard lists six boxes below things the prophet did or beliefs he espoused during his lifetime, according to Islam’s holy book, the Quran. The billboard’s facts check out except for its first box stating Muhammad married a 6-year-old. In fact, his wife was 6-years-old when she became engaged to the prophet Muhammad and 9-years-old when they were married. The billboard signs off with “Educate Truthophobes.” We spoke to academics who study early Islam to get more information and context. Ayesha S. Chaudhry, Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and Gender Studies at the University of British Columbia, told us that everything about the billboard is wrong. The title, “the perfect man,” is poor translation from an Arabic phrase in the Koran, which describes the Prophet as an excellent example. But none of the items listed on the billboard appear in the Koran — they are historical events, and the accuracy of details surrounding them remain contested by scholars, the Muslim community to which Chaudhry belongs. Chaudhry told us that all accounts of the Prophet’s life, which occurred 1,400 years ago in 7th-century Arabia, were written at least 200 years after his death, and their reliability for accuracy is shaky: Muslims believe the Prophet is an excellent example, and deeply disagree about the kind of man he was and the things he did. There are very few things all Muslims agree on — there is one God, the Prophet is his messenger, and the Koran is the word of God. That’s the closest we can come to agreeing. All the things that are on that sign, none of them are in the Koran. The billboard is not accurate because it doesn’t represent Muslim faith. If we were to say now that Jews and Christians believe in stoning [because it’s allowed in the Old Testament], that would not be true. These statements [on the billboard], they’re not even in the Koran. The age of the young wife in question, Aisha Bint Abu Bakr, is contested — many believe she was actually in her late teens when she married Muhammad. Accounts contradict each other; while Aisha is quoted by one source saying she was six when she was married and nine when the marriage was consummated, another account describes Muhammad refusing offers from older men to marry his 9-year-old daughter because he thought her to be too young. Muhammad’s first wife, Khadija, on the other hand, was 15 years his senior and he remained married to her exclusively until she died. Chaudhry also told us she doesn’t know of any accounts of nonbelievers being tortured and killed, although Muhammad was engaged in warfare during his lifetime. There are no known accounts of the Prophet committing rape — to the contrary, the image Muslims derive from the Koran is one of a compassionate person prone to mercy: Torturing and killing non-believers — I don’t know what they’re talking about. There were several battles that happen during his life and they’re complicated. The rape comment is just hateful. I don’t know what to do with that. Aisha is a central figure in Islamic tradition who is characterized by her strength and eloquence, said Omar Suleiman, Islamic Studies professor at Southern Methodist University and president of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research: The image of [Aisha] that is projected by Islamophobes is so nasty and disingenuous. Her personality refutes the image that’s projected on her as this oppressed child that was taken and had horrible things done to her by this old prophet. She was the greatest scholar of Islam, she was an extremely confident woman and eloquent speaker. She was not afraid to challenge misogyny. Denise Spellberg, history professor at the University of Texas at Austin cast further doubt on any claims of certainty surrounding Aisha’s age, but also pointed to social norms during that point in history. In an e-mail, she told us: Most early accounts state Aisha was 6 or 7 at betrothal and 9 or 10 when the marriage was consummated. One later source in Arabic from the 13th century suggests 9 at the age of betrothal, and 12 at consummation. Child betrothal and marriage were not uncommon at this time in Arabia or throughout the pre-modern world. In Roman law, girls had to be 12, for example. What is not usually noted in reference to Muhammad is that he resisted the early marriage to Aisha. This was her father’s idea. Only when her father, probably for political reasons, forced the issue, did the Prophet agree. The rest of his marriages were to previously married women. Marriage at that time was often about forming political alliances — and Muhammad was one among many prophets in the Abrahamic faiths who had more than one wife. Muhammad was an influential political figure during his lifetime. All of his wives, except Aisha, were either divorcees or widows, which Suleiman said denotes the strategic nature of marriage in those times. Some were widows of his allies, and marriage prevented them from falling to the economic fringes of society. Chaudhry added that in an era when polygamy was commonplace, the Koran limited it to four wives. In terms of slavery, it was a reality throughout Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities during Muhammad’s lifetime. But tradition holds he purchased slaves for the purpose of liberating them. Suleiman told us Muhammad purchased 63 slaves in order to set them free, and at the time of his death he owned no slaves. Some of them were elevated to authoritative social roles. For example, Bilal ibn Rabah became a trusted companion of the Prophet, who was given the role of calling people to prayer. Spellberg told us: Muhammad is known for manumitting [freeing] slaves, although the Qur’an allows slavery (as did Jews and Christians of the era), to free a slave is enjoined by the sacred text as a good deed, as is treating slaves well. Well-known British-American orientalist Bernard Lewis addressed the issue in a 1994 book, in which he noted that slavery was a widespread reality that wasn’t by any means exclusive to nascent Muslim society but a feature of a wide swath of human civilization since Biblical times: The Qur’an, like the Old and the New Testaments, assumes the existence of slavery. It regulates the practice of the institution and thus implicitly accepts it. The Prophet Muhammad and those of his Companions who could afford it themselves owned slaves; some of them acquired more by conquest. But Qur’anic legislation, subsequently confirmed and elaborated in the Holy Law, brought two major changes to ancient slavery which were to have far-reaching effects. One of these was the presumption of freedom; the other, the ban on the enslavement of free persons except in strictly defined circumstances. Suleiman told us that the bullet point that claims Muhammad “beheaded 600 Jews” may well be an attempt to paint the prophet as an anti-Semite, but it is in regards to an incident known as the Battle of the Trench, which took place during a siege on Medina in 627. A number of Jewish tribes were allied with Muhammad’s forces — but one, Banu Qurayza, committed treason, allowing an attack to happen from the inside. An arbiter, Abdullah ibn Salam (who was a convert from Judaism to Islam) was selected to punish the tribe in keeping with the Torah — the men would be killed and women and children kept as captives. But the number of men killed is again the subject of controversy. Suleiman said it may have been 100 to 200. Spellberg pointed to a source that said 400. Chaudhry said one prominent scholar, Ibn Hajar, who died in 1449, doesn’t believe the executions took place at all. Again, Chaudhry cited the fact the account was collected 200 years after the fact: Muslims early on were disagreeing whether that actually happened. This is a really contested issue. It’s not part of the [Muslim faith’s] narrative. The billboard not only appears to be an inaccurate representation of Islam, it’s also hate speech. Rima Khan Shahid, executive director of the Muslim Alliance of Indiana told us: I do believe that the people responsible for putting up that billboard have gone through great lengths and put a lot of effort into spreading hatred in terms of resources, money and time. My offer still stands — I would love to sit down and have a civil conversation with those either responsible or those even that agree with the billboard. If we stay in our individual silos and bubbles we’ll never be able to come together. At the end of the day we can agree to disagree, but things like this billboard are making a rift in our society, whether it’s religious or political. We can’t seem to get along and we’re putting so many resources and so much time into dividing ourselves. Why not spend that into bringing us together? At the end of the day, Chaudhry said, the billboard was not meant to introduce fact but to dehumanize a segment of the population. Going through those six pieces is also ceding ground to people construing false narrative that the Prophet is evil and people following him are evil. [In the Koran] he is described as being kind and just, and those are the qualities that Muslims think about — being patient, open to dialogue. These are all things I’ve learned form the Koran.
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21761
|
"Tim Pawlenty Says scientists are ""in dispute"" over whether being gay is a choice."
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Tim Pawlenty says scientists are “in dispute” over whether being gay is a choice
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false
|
National, Gays and Lesbians, Science, Tim Pawlenty,
|
"During a July 10, 2011, appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press, host David Gregory asked Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty about the origins of homosexuality. Here’s their exchange: Gregory: ""Let me ask you about social policy. You've notably said that you're a big fan of Lady Gaga and even the song Born This Way. There's a lot of debate about a gay marriage pledge in Iowa. And related to that, I wonder, do you agree with some of those who are behind that, that being gay is a choice?"" Pawlenty: ""Well, I have two teenage daughters who listen to Lady Gaga, so I'm subjected to it. And it has some good qualities to it. But as to, as to gay marriage, I'm in support of traditional marriage as between a man and a woman. I have not supported the issues of allowing gay couples to have the same benefits … as traditional couples. And so this is an issue in Iowa and across the whole country. But I've stood in favor of traditional marriage and traditional relationships in that regard. Gregory: ""Is being gay a choice?"" Pawlenty: ""Well, the science in that regard is in dispute. I mean, the scientists work on that and try to figure out if it's behavioral..."" Gregory: ""Right."" Pawlenty: ""...or if it's partly genetic."" Gregory:""What do you think?"" Pawlenty: ""Well, I defer to the scientists in that regard."" Gregory: ""So you, you think it's not a choice."" Pawlenty: ""Well, there is no...."" Gregory: ""That you are, as Lady Gaga says, you're ‘born that way.’"" Pawlenty: ""There's no scientific conclusion that it's genetic. We don't know that. So we don't know to what extent, you know, it's behavioral, and that's something that's been debated by scientists for a long time. But as I understand the science, there's no current conclusion that it's genetic."" We decided to rate two of Pawlenty’s statements separately. In another item, we’ll look at his claim that ""there's no scientific conclusion that it's genetic."" In this item, we’ll look at the first part of the exchange. We're not fact checking whether being gay is a choice, but whether scientists are ""in dispute"" over whether it is or is not. We’ll start out by noting an important difference -- the difference between sexual orientation and sexual behavior. Scientists don’t doubt that it’s possible for someone who’s gay to choose, through sheer willpower, to ignore their impulses and abstain from homosexual activity. Both gay and straight people have been going celibate by choice since time immemorial. But scientists add that for such people, sexual impulses don’t go away. So, scientists argue, even if sexual behavior is a choice, sexual orientation -- the state of being gay, and the impulses one feels -- is not a choice. ""We only choose to act, and our actions are influenced by desires,"" said Michael Bailey, a Northwestern University psychologist who specializes in the origins of homosexuality. ""So I think that in an ordinary understanding of ‘choice,’ sexual orientation -- i.e., increased sexual desire for one type of person -- is not chosen, but sexual behavior is."" Both the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association -- the two leading organizations for their professions -- reject the idea that the driving factor in determining one’s sexual orientation is personal choice. A spokeswoman for the American Psychiatric Association -- which has about 36,000 members out of roughly 48,000 psychiatrists nationwide -- didn’t recall any significant internal dissension in recent years over the question of whether sexual orientation is a choice. Meanwhile, the American Psychological Association, which has 150,000 members, also considers it a ""settled question"" that homosexuality isn’t a choice, said Clinton W. Anderson, the associate executive director of the American Psychological Association and the director of its lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender concerns office. Interestingly, we found less division than we’d expected between gay-rights advocates and social conservatives. Michael Cole-Schwartz -- a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, a leading gay advocacy group -- said that ""there is significant agreement that one does not choose one’s sexual orientation."" Meanwhile, Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow at the Family Research Council -- a leading think tank for social conservatives -- agreed with the distinction between orientation and behavior. He suggested that fuzzy definitions of ""sexual orientation"" explain why the two camps sometimes talk past each other. ""Part of the problem is that the term ‘sexual orientation’ is somewhat ambiguous,"" Sprigg said. He suggests that it is sometimes used to cover three separate elements -- attractions, behaviors and self-identification. ""What I generally say is that I don‘t believe that same-sex attractions are a choice, but behaviors and self-identification are,"" he said. ""If Pawlenty had wanted to be more subtle, he could have asked Gregory what he meant"" by being gay. In fact, Sprigg articulated his somewhat nuanced view on the Family Research Council website in 2010, in a document titled ""The Top Ten Myths About Homosexuality."" In it, he reviewed some of the studies on this topic and concluded that ""if it was not clear in the 1990’s, it certainly is now—no one is ‘born gay.’"" Yet he went on to write that ""homosexual attractions are clearly not a ‘choice’ in the vast majority of cases."" In an interview, Sprigg said he didn’t see the two statements as contradictory. ""When I say it’s clear that no one is born gay, I don’t think any of those three factors"" -- attractions, behaviors and self-identification -- ""are fixed and determined at birth. Just because it’s not a choice doesn’t mean it’s present at birth. It could be the result of developmental factors in childhood. Sometime between the time you’re born and the time you begin to experience sexual attraction, things can happen that can affect your development."" He even pointed to an American Psychological Association statement that ""although much research has examined the possible genetic, hormonal, developmental, social, and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no findings have emerged that permit scientists to conclude that sexual orientation – heterosexuality, homosexuality, or bisexuality -- is determined by any particular factor or factors."" The scientists we spoke to freely acknowledged that much is unknown about what determines sexual orientation. (More on that in our accompanying item.) But what scientists do know pretty much rules out the idea that homosexuality is simply a choice. At this point, we need to note an important caveat: What we’ve been discussing here applies primarily to gay men. There is actually no solid scientific consensus about the causes of female homosexuality, because the research on that question has been much less extensive. We struggled with the question of how we should factor in what one might call the lesbian exception to the scientific consensus on homosexuality. Neither Pawlenty nor Gregory specifically referred to either gay men or gay women in their comments. Ultimately, we concluded that the science of what causes women to be gay was too unformed to draw any solid conclusions, so we set it aside as a factor in our ratings. So where does this leave us? Pawlenty said that scientists are ""in dispute"" about whether being gay is a choice or not. We think most people would interpret that to mean sexual orientation -- that is, attractions and impulses -- rather than sexual behavior. And on that question, it seems that the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the Human Rights Campaign and even the Family Research Council are in agreement."
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11278
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Working up a sweat may protect men from lethal prostate cancer
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This release summarizes an article in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute which reports that healthy lifestyle habits, including regular vigorous exercise, are associated with reduced risk of death from prostate cancer. The release does a fine job of describing a complex study that actually analyzed two studies and came up with a common scoring system, but could have explained the study limitations and articulated the benefits more clearly for readers. It also overstated the strength of the evidence by suggesting that these habits “save lives” — this study wasn’t capable of demonstrating that. Prostate cancer is costly — in both lives and money. It is the most common cancer in U.S. men, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2012, more than 177,000 men in the U.S. were diagnosed with prostate cancer, and 27,244 died from the disease. In 2006, it was estimated to cost the U.S. more than $9.86 billion. New information that can shed light on how lifestyle choices may limit deaths related to prostate cancer is both welcome and newsworthy. However, with so many people potentially affected (and likely to be affected), it is important to explain the benefits of those lifestyle choices in language that will be easily understood.
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true
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Academic medical center news release,Exercise,Prostate cancer
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The study evaluated the combined effect of six lifestyle habits on prostate cancer mortality. Those six factors were, as described in the journal article: “not currently smoking or quit 10 or more years ago, body mass index under 30 kg/m2, high vigorous physical activity, high intake of tomatoes and fatty fish, and low intake of processed meat.” It’s tough to put a price tag on those lifestyle choices. How much does “high vigorous physical activity” cost? How much does it cost to avoid eating processed meat? It would be easy to say this category doesn’t apply. But the release does address the issue, saying the study findings underscore “the ongoing need for more effective prevention measures and policies to increase exercise, improve diet quality and reduce tobacco use in our population….It takes co-operation and effort from multiple areas, like insurance companies, employers, policy makers and city planners, to figure out how to creatively support and encourage more exercise into most busy adults’ working day.” Recognizing the need for policies that support these lifestyle changes is important — and addresses the cost issue in a meaningful way. This is where things get a little tricky. The research described in this journal article looked at data from two different studies: the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (HPFS) and the Physicians’ Health Study (PHS). The HPFS tracked 42,701 men from 1986-2010. The PHS tracked 20,324 men from 1982-2010. The release (and journal article) explain that the researchers used the HPFS data to develop a “healthy lifestyle score,” and then applied that score to the men in the PHS to see if it predicted whether someone would contract a lethal form of prostate cancer. The researchers identified the number of lethal cases of prostate cancer in each group to calculate benefits. The release states: “Participants with 5 to 6 points [the highest scores] in the HPFS had a 68 percent decreased risk of lethal prostate cancer[,] and a 38 percent decreased risk was observed in the [PHS] for the same comparison.” Several points to make here. First, the ‘healthy’ group appeared to have been compared to the ‘least healthy’ group (score 0-1) and not all the other groups combined. This was noted in the published results but not mentioned in the release. That’s important. Second, the release does not note (but the journal article does) that the 38 percent decreased risk seen in the PHS was not found to be statistically significant. That’s also an important distinction. Third, this is the relative reduced risk, and doesn’t tell readers what the actual, absolute reduction of risk is. The release doesn’t address harms. But the lifestyle choices at issue here are (for the most part) so broadly defined that it would be difficult to say what the harms would be. What harms are associated with eating tomatoes, avoiding processed meats, or not smoking? We’ll rate this one not applicable. The release does a good job of explaining what is a somewhat complicated study design. The study is basically an analysis of data drawn from two large, previous studies — and the release describes the overall sample size, age range, and length of those two studies. But the language used to describe the results is inappropriate. Since this was an analysis of observational study data that’s unable to prove cause and effect, it’s misleading to use active verbs to describe the results. The release does this in several places: It’s more appropriate to state that these habits were “associated with” reduced risk — not that the habits “save lives” or “cut” risk. Another thing that’s not clearly explained to readers (as noted above) is what it means to develop a lifestyle scoring system based on one study’s data set, and then apply that scoring system to a second data set, when the results section is provided for both data sets. It’s confusing. We’d encourage public affairs specialists preparing news releases and reporters using them as their initial sources to focus more on the limitations of this type of research. Sometimes referred to as “data dredging,” it’s basically finding statistically significant results only by chance. In this case it’s a statistic of a statistic (up to 47% of cancer cases could be prevented with these lifestyle interventions). No disease mongering here. Funding sources were clearly identified, and there are no clear conflicts of interest. Things get tricky again here. As the release notes, most prostate cancers don’t metastasize and aren’t life threatening. But some do metastasize and can be fatal. Are there different types of prostate cancer, just like there are different types of flu? Are there genetic factors that affect risk? Readers would have benefited from that information. And we suppose that the release could have also mentioned other dietary or lifestyle factors that might help reduce risk that were not considered in the paper. However, the range of healthy behaviors discussed here is pretty broad, and it seems excessive to expect the release to address an entire laundry list of possibilities. We’ll give this a Satisfactory rating. The study was limited to a relatively high level income group and the interventions may not be attainable for all men, in all socioeconomic groups. Does partaking of vigorous physical exercise on a regular basis require access to a gym or just a high degree of motivation? Are tomatoes and fish attainable year round for all socioeconomic groups? The study addresses this to some extent when it says, “It takes co-operation and effort from multiple areas, like insurance companies, employers, policy makers and city planners, to figure out how to creatively support and encourage more exercise into most busy adults’ working day.” We’ll award a Satisfactory here. There are a lot — a lot — of papers out there on lifestyle choices and prostate cancer. In fact, the opening sentences in the abstract for the journal article says as much, while articulating what sets this research apart: “Several lifestyle factors have been associated with risk of lethal prostate cancer, but little is known about their combined effect. Our objective was to develop and apply a lifestyle score for prevention of lethal prostate cancer.” However, the release does not acknowledge all of the existing work on lifestyle and prostate cancer, and therefore fails to highlight how this paper fits into that broad body of work. Apart from the cause-and-effect statements addressed above, there is no unjustifiable language used here.
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28596
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Ancestry.com can retain the rights to your genetic information if you sign up for their DNA testing.
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What's true: Signing up for Ancestry.com's DNA test requires that you license your DNA data to them, and this data could potentially be shared by them with third parties. What's false: Allowing Ancestry.com to license your DNA data does not mean they own it, in the full, permanent, exclusive sense in which that word is typically understood.
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mixture
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Legal Affairs, ancestry.com, dna, dna testing
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On 17 May 2017, Joel Winston, a consumer protection attorney and former deputy attorney general of New Jersey, published a blog post with the claim that the genealogy website Ancestry.com was “taking DNA ownership rights” from customers and their families: Don’t use the AncestryDNA testing service without actually reading the Ancestry.com Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. According to these legal contracts, you still own your DNA, but so does Ancestry.com. The family history website Ancestry.com is selling a new DNA testing service called AncestryDNA. But the DNA and genetic data that Ancestry.com collects may be used against “you or a genetic relative.” According to its privacy policies, Ancestry.com takes ownership of your DNA forever. Your ownership of your DNA, on the other hand, is limited in years. The article has caused widespread concern and prompted a public response from Ancestry.com’s Chief Privacy Officer Eric Heath, who called Winston’s post “inflammatory and inaccurate”. In response to our questions, Heath emphasized that Ancestry.com does not take ownership of your DNA; rather, you license it to them: …The consumer maintains ownership of their data. This is actually why we need a license in order to conduct our analysis, display their results, and so on. Not only do they own their own data, but we allow them to download their raw data and they can ask us to destroy the data any time. Several documents control customers’ agreements with Ancestry.com: the terms and conditions, an informed consent agreement, and the privacy policy. Before signing up for the DNA test, Heath says, you can also opt out of allowing your DNA data to be used for research, whether academic or commercial, when signing the informed consent agreement: Aside from the right to use their data to provide our services, we always ask for separate approval to use data in any other way. For example, when you activate a kit, there is a screen that pops up as part of our Informed Consent process that asks if you want to take part in anonymous third party research projects. You can say “yes” or “no” and your choice has no impact on the basic services we provide. Heath added that you can revoke any license you give Ancestry.com to use and distribute your DNA by deleting the data or closing your Ancestry.com account: We also allow consumers to change their Informed Consent decisions at any time. So, you could agree to take part in third party research when you first sign up, but then later decide you don’t want to and we’ll respect your change of mind. Obviously, if research has been conducted that included your anonymized data, we can’t delete it after the fact. However, Winston objects to this distinction: A license is a contractual form of ownership. At its most basic, a license is defined as “a permit from an authority to own or use something.” Ancestry.com does not have “exclusive ownership” because customers still retain ownership of their own DNA. Ancestry.com does not have “absolute ownership” because customers can revoke the license. But, Ancestry.com irrefutably takes ownership of customers’ genetic data by contractual license granted in the Terms and Conditions. Omri Ben-Shahar, a University of Chicago law professor and an expert in contracts and consumer protection pointed to the same opt-outs that Heath did, saying: A lot of the things [Winston] says happen don’t have to happen — you have a choice over them. Even if a customer left every opt-out unclicked, and gave Ancestry.com full permission to do anything they were legally entitled to do with your data, Ben-Shahar says that it still be licensed, not owned, and you can still legally retract it at any time. In his blog post, Winston also pointed out that customers can revoke their consent at any time. However, he directed us towards a section of the AncestryDNA informed consent agreement that addresses the potential risks of signing up for the DNA test: There is a potential risk that data about you could become public as the result of a security breach…There is a potential risk that third parties could identify you from research that is made publicly available, for example if published in a scientific journal…When DNA samples are physically transferred from us to collaborators, there is a potential risk that the samples could be lost or taken while in transit or storage. We take precautions to reduce the likelihood that this will happen and DNA samples are not transferred with your name or contact information. As Ancestry.com explains in the informed consent agreement, the fact that they remove identifying information from your DNA data before they add it to their database does not remove this risk: Although we remove common identifying information (such as your name and contact information) from any data before publication, genetic data is different from other data because it can be used as an identifier in combination with other information. It is not currently common to do this but it can be done, particularly if genetic data about you or genetic relatives is available from other public genetic databases. Jeff Sovern, a law professor at St John’s University in New York City and an expert in consumer law, told us the circumstances under which Ancestry.com might share your DNA data with others could be wider than they first appear. One significant section of the Terms and Conditions read as follows (until it was changed in light of the May 2017 controversy): By submitting DNA to AncestryDNA, you grant AncestryDNA and the Ancestry Group Companies a perpetual, royalty-free, world-wide, transferable license to use your DNA, and any DNA you submit for any person from whom you obtained legal authorization as described in this Agreement, and to use, host, sublicense and distribute the resulting analysis to the extent and in the form or context we deem appropriate on or through any media or medium and with any technology or devices now known or hereafter developed or discovered. The company no longer describes the license as “perpetual”, and the phrase “to the extent and in the form or context we deem appropriate” has been removed: By submitting DNA to AncestryDNA, you grant AncestryDNA and the Ancestry Group Companies a royalty-free, worldwide, sublicensable, transferable license to host, transfer, process, analyze, distribute, and communicate your Genetic Information for the purposes of providing you products and services, conducting Ancestry’s research and product development, enhancing Ancestry’s user experience, and making and offering personalized products and services. In other words: we use your Genetic Information to provide products and services to you and improve our products and services for all our users. In addition, you understand that by providing any DNA to us, you acquire no rights in any research or commercial products that may be developed by AncestryDNA using your Genetic Information. Jeff Sovern said that the privacy statement’s use of examples, rather than an exhaustive list of scenarios in which user’s information can be shared, makes him “nervous”: That means the list is not complete, and there could be circumstances in which Ancestry could disclose the data that are not included in the list. Here’s an analogy: if someone says “examples of things I do when I go out are to see a movie or a show,” it doesn’t mean the person doesn’t also go out to get drunk. Signing up for Ancestry.com’s DNA test does not mean that the company owns your DNA data, in the complete and permanent way in which that word is typically understood. Customers license it to the company. Customers can choose not to allow their genetic information to be used for certain purposes, and can also revoke the license and have the DNA data and sample destroyed if they wish — something that would not be possible if Ancestry.com owned them outright. However, granting Ancestry.com that license can involve giving them relatively significant rights over DNA data, and the scope of these rights may go beyond what is immediately apparent. Furthermore, licensing your DNA data to Ancestry.com does come with risks to your privacy, as well as potentially resulting in problems obtaining life insurance or, in certain circumstances, even getting hired for a particular job.
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10774
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Focus is on deep brain stimulation to treat disorders
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"The story reports on deep brain stimulation (DBS), a potential new treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). DBS has been used to treat movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease, and recently it had been used in people with treatment-resistant depression. The story reports that this new treatment for OCD is still in early clinical trials and notes that it does not yet have FDA approval. There is speculation that the device may be approved for ""humanitarian"" reasons. The story mentions that DBS is for a very small group of people with treatment-resistant OCD. The story notes that this would mean other therapies, such as medication and cognitive or other behavioral therapies would have already been tried without success prior to consideration of DBS. It would have been informative for the reader to get data on the proportion who respond to more standard treatments. The reader could be left thinking – this medication didn't work – time to go to DBS. In fact, patients would need to fail mutiple standard treatments prior to trying this treatment. The story gives an overview of a small trial of DBS in patients with treatment-resistant OCD and depression, but it does not discuss the trial design, nor are we told if these's patients OCD symptoms improved. The story only mentions that 50% of this group (of 18 people with OCD and/or depression) scored higher on a memory test, an intermediate outcome, rather than focusing on overall response. The story does note that results from the study were presented at a conference, meaning they have not been peer-reviewed in a published journal. (See our primer on some of the flaws in trying to interpret such presentations.) The story relied heavily on one patient's anecdotal experience of reduced OCD symptoms and improved memory. The story does not mention potential harms of the device or harms of the surgery to implant the device. There is so little long-term experience with these devices that we really don't know all the the harms. The focus of the story was on impact on memory, but there was no discussion of the impact on the other symptoms experienced by the patients (do they get better? worse? ), so the picture is incomplete The cost of this treatment is also not mentioned. Estimated costs of the device and the operation to implant the device would be available as it is currently approved for the treatment of Parkinson's disease. The story provides multiple perspectives on this experimental approach for OCD. A patient, clinician, neurosurgeon, and a researcher involved in a clinical trial provide perspectives on this approach for people who have debilitating OCD and have exhausted all traditional treatment options."
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mixture
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"The story does not mention the cost of this treatment. Estimated costs of the device and the operation to implant the device would be available as it is already used in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. The story provides no quantitative benefit of deep brain stimulation for severe symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder except to say ""two-thirds of the patients scored 50 percent higher on memory measures after deep brain stimulation."" But readers are not told how reliable or significant those measures are. The story instead relied heavily on one patient's anecdotal experience of reduced OCD thoughts and behaviors and an improvement in memory. The story does not mention potential harms of the device or harms of the surgery to implant the device. The story states that deep brain stimulation would be used ""only in extreme cases"" but we are not told why. There is so little long-term experience with these devices that we don't know all the the harms. Certainly infection is one of the more serious concerns, but this is not mentioned. The story gives an overview of a small trial of deep brain stimulation, but it does not discuss the trial design, nor are we told how these patients' obsessive-compulsive disorder improved. The story only mentions that 50% of this group (of 18 people with OCD and/or depression) scored higher on memory tests. The story does note that results from the study were presented at a conference. But it does not explain whether they been peer-reviewed in a published journal. Additionally, they don't place these findings into context with other studies and they emphasize an intermediate outcome (memory) rather than focusing on overall response. The story gives accurate prevalence data and amplifies that by giving the number of individuals severely affected or disabled. The story provides multiple perspectives on this experimental approach to obsessive-compulsive disorder. The story mentions that deep brain stimulation (DBS) is for a very small group of people with treatment-resistant obsessive-compulsive disorder. The story notes that this would mean other therapies, such as medication and cognitive or other behavioral therapies, would have already been tried without success prior to consideration of DBS. That said, it would have been much more informative for the reader to get data on the proportion who respond to more standard treatments. The reader could be left thinking – this medication didn't work – time to go to DBS. In fact, patients would need to fail mutiple standard treatments prior to trying this treatment. The story reports that this is a new experimental approach to obsessive compulsive disorder still in early clinical trials. There is speculation that the device may be approved for ""humanitarian"" reasons, but the story does mentions that it does not yet have FDA approval. It would have been more helpful if they told the reader whether it was only available in research protocols or for clinical use, and if it was covered by insurance. The story reports that this is a potential new approach for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) has been used to treat movement disorders such as Parkinson's disease, and some treatment-resistant depression. Multiple independent sources are cited in this story. It does not appear the information relies solely or largely on a news release."
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3902
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Ex-officer accused of shooting neighbor claims PTSD.
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A former California Highway Patrol officer claims he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder when he allegedly shot his neighbor during an off-duty dispute two years ago, according to court documents.
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true
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Shootings, Mental health, Health, General News, Post-traumatic stress disorder, California
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The documents were filed in support of Trever Dalton’s request for treatment in a mental health diversion program rather than criminal prosecution for the Dec. 5, 2017 shooting, the Ventura County Star reported Thursday. Dalton, who resigned from the CHP last year, has pleaded not guilty to several charges including assault with a firearm. The victim, Sorin Popescu, testified at a 2018 preliminary hearing that Dalton appeared to be drunk and threw an empty can of beer at him during a confrontation in their Ventura neighborhood. Dalton went home but a short time later Popescu was struck in the back by a single bullet. Another neighbor testified he saw Dalton with a gun before the shooting. Ventura County Superior Court Judge Nancy Ayers has yet to rule on Dalton’s application, a request that Popescu opposes, the newspaper said. Dalton claims years of witnessing horrific scenes in his duties as a peace officer coupled with substance abuse influenced his conduct the night of the shooting, records show.
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14104
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In 2006, Donald Trump was hoping for a real estate crash.
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Two charities will pay $6 million to resolve claims they operated as pass-throughs for seven pharmaceutical companies to pay kickbacks to Medicare patients using their high-priced medications, the U.S. Justice Department said on Friday.
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true
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National, Bankruptcy, Candidate Biography, Debt, Economy, History, Housing, Income, Jobs, Stimulus, Wealth, Hillary Clinton,
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The settlements with the patient assistance charities Good Days and Patient Access Network Foundation were the first with foundations linked to an industry-wide probe that has resulted in $840 million in settlements with drugmakers. Both foundations provide assistance to patients seeking to pay out-of-pocket costs for medications. Good Days agreed to pay $2 million while PAN Foundation agreed to pay $4 million. Neither admitted wrongdoing. Good Days in a statement said the settlement will allow it to concentrate on providing help to people in need of life-saving medications. PAN said the settlement involved “legacy matters” rather than its current operations. Drug companies are prohibited from subsidizing co-payments for patients enrolled in the government’s Medicare healthcare program for those aged 65 and older. Companies may donate to non-profits providing co-pay assistance as long as they are independent. But the government has alleged that various drugmakers have used charities like Good Days and PAN as means to improperly pay the co-pay obligations of Medicare patients using their drugs, in violation of the Anti-Kickback Statute. The department said Good Days, previously known as the Chronic Disease Fund, from 2010 to 2014 conspired with companies including Novartis AG, Astellas and Questcor, now owned by Mallinckrodt Plc, to pay kickbacks to Medicare patients using their drugs. Those drugs included H.P. Acthar Gel, an expensive treatment for a rare infant seizure disorder and multiple sclerosis that is subject of a related lawsuit by the government against Mallinckrodt over Questcor’s donations to the charity. The Justice Department said Questcor from 2010 to 2014 used the charity as a conduit to improperly subsidize patients’ copays, allowing it to keep raising prices for Acthar, whose price increased from $50 per vial in 2001 to $32,200 in 2014. Mallinckrodt declined to comment. It has said it believed its actions were lawful. PAN similarly permitted Bayer AG, Astellas, Dendreon Pharmaceuticals and Amgen Inc to use it as a conduit to pay patients kickbacks, according to the government’s allegations. Astellas and Amgen in April agreed to pay $100 million and $24.75 million, respectively, to resolve related claims. Dendreon said it takes compliance seriously. Novartis declined to comment. The other companies’ representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
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10287
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New valve procedure doesn’t open heart
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"This was a story about evolving options for the treatment of valvular heart disease. It provided the contrast between a mother and daughter, who had open heart and percutaneous valve therapy, respectively. One involved a long hospital stay, long recuperation, and a procedure that resulted in a scar. The other required only a few days in the hospital, a short recovery period and no scar. However other than this information, the viewer was not prepared to evaluate the new medical device. The story did not explain what type of heart valve disease for which it might be used, the symptoms of heart valve disease that might suggest that use of the device might be appropriate, and did not present any information about how often the device successfully resolves the problem, how long it lasts, or any adverse events associated with the use of the device. There was also no discussion of costs. Although presented as a cutting-edge technology, this type of intervention has been under investigation for many years. This story did little to inform the viewer about the condition or its treatment options. An anecodotal imbalance is created by letting the patient get away – unchallenged – with calling this ""an absolute miracle."""
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false
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There was no cost estimate provided for this medical device. What we learn about benefits in this story are that the use of this procedure reduces time spent in the hospital, the length of the recovery period, and eliminates having the scar associated with an open heart procedure. However, the story included nothing about the extent to which the medical problems associated with heart valve disease are repaired with this device, how long the repair is expected to be functional, or other benefits that might come from the use of this device. There were no harms of treatment mentioned. This story did not really contain much in the way of evidence other than mentioning that about 70 patients had received the medical device. There was no information about the type of valve problem that was treated, or anything about the outcome following surgery. This is really the biggest weakness of the story. No overt disease-mongering. The interviewees were all fans and users of the procedure. The range of sources wasn't diverse. It would have been beneficial to have someone comment on the difference between the procedures, the types of conditions that may be most amenable to treatment with the experimental medical device, and some more about patients for whom it might be appropriate to consider use of the device. Although unclear about what exact heart valve problem was being treated, the story compared and contrasted the experience of two family members with the same medical condition treated with different options. The story painted a very positive picture for the use of the medical device vs. open heart surgery but gave no indication that both treatments may be more appropriate for specific categories of patients. The story provided no indication that there might be medical management options for the treatment of heart valve disease. This piece did include a disclaimer at the end that this procedure is done only in a limited number of centers and is investigational at this time. While the story was about a new medical device being tested to treat heart valve problems, percutaneous valve replacement dates back to the 1960's. We can't be sure if the story relied solely or largely on a news release.
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13001
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"Charles Schumer Says Donald Trump campaigned on not cutting Medicare and Social Security, but his nominee for the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Tom Price, ""made his career on cutting Medicare and Medicaid."
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"Schumer said, ""Donald Trump said when he campaigned he wouldn't cut Medicare and Social Security"" but his nominee for the Secretary of Health and Human Services ""made his career on cutting Medicare and Medicaid."" Price, Trump’s HHS pick, has supported reducing the government’s role in Medicare and block granting Medicaid, which would amount to spending reductions to both programs. While it’s clear these proposals would reduce federal spending on the health safety nets, experts say it’s not the same thing as gutting the programs entirely. Trump did pledge to leave Medicare and Social Security alone, and Price’s positions seem at odds with that. (It’s worth noting that Social Security isn’t administered by HHS)."
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true
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National, Candidate Biography, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, Charles Schumer,
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"Newly minted Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., blasted the incoming administration for already abandoning campaign pledges in an interview on MSNBC. For example, he pointed to Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, an orthopedic surgeon and President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Health and Human Services. ""Price, the guy from HHS, Donald Trump said when he campaigned he wouldn't cut Medicare and Social Security, but he turns around nominates as his HHS secretary, guy who made his career on cutting Medicare and Medicaid,"" Schumer said on Jan. 3’s Rachel Maddow Show (around the 14:10 mark). ""We’re going to slam him on these things."" Trump certainly promised to keep health care programs for seniors (Medicare) and the poor (Medicaid) intact and to protect Social Security (which doesn’t fall under HHS’ jurisdiction). But what about Schumer’s characterization of Price’s record on the health care programs? Price has supported reducing the government’s role in Medicare and Medicaid and reducing spending on the programs. That would be a major change of course from how the programs ran under the Obama administration. Trump’s pledges Throughout the course of the 2016 election, Trump largely promised to protect or save Social Security and Medicare and instead to crack down on waste and fraud, with a few detours. Trump tweeted that he would leave all three safety nets intact in May 2015, a month before he made his official presidential announcement (in which he said the same thing). During the election, Trump continued to promise to protect Social Security and Medicare during debates, numerous campaign events, multiple interviews and campaign ads. He even seemed to suggest expanding Medicare or Medicaid in some instances and (falsely) accused Hillary Clinton of wanting to cut them. Post-election, Trump’s incoming chief of staff said Trump intends to keep those promises. Trump’s health care plan, released in March 2016, proposed to turn Medicaid into a ""block grant"" program but didn’t specify what that would look like. (Typically, block grants set a cap on the amount of federal funding to states for Medicaid instead of the current structure of the federal government matching state spending.) Price’s career A doctor and staunchly conservative policy wonk, Price has made health care one of his legislative priorities in his 20-year stint as a public servant. Price, who had his own orthopedic clinic in northern Atlanta, first ran for state office in 1996. During his time in the Georgia State Senate from 1997 to 2005, he sponsored legislation ""to increase patient choice, enact Medical Savings Accounts, and reform the Medicaid system,"" according to his Georgia legislature biography. In 2006, he ran for and won former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s old seat, spurred at least in part from outrage over the rising cost of malpractice insurance (tort reform is another pet issue of Price’s). Price has focused on reducing government oversight of health care and shifting to more private insurance. The first piece of legislation he introduced was a resolution ""recognizing the need to move the nation's current health care delivery system toward a defined contribution system,"" which would be a move away from employer-provided coverage as it exists today. He also sponsored bills to increase Medicare payments to doctors, allow doctors to enter into private contracts with Medicare beneficiaries and charge the program for their services, and called for implementing cost-saving measures in Medicare and Medicaid. After Obama’s election, Price emerged as one of the leading opponents of the president’s signature Affordable Care Act. ""While the stated goal (of health care reform) remains noble, as a physician, I can attest that nothing has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than the federal government’s intrusion into medicine through Medicare,"" Price wrote in a 2009 column in Politico that advocated for ""a third way that puts patients in charge."" He has introduced a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare every legislative session since 2009. Price’s Empowering Patients First Act instead provides tax credits to help pay for private insurance plans and expands health savings accounts. The Price plan also allows for people to opt out of Medicare and Medicaid (and other government-run health programs) and choose the tax credits to purchase private plans instead. It folds in his previous advocacy of private contracting between Medicare beneficiaries and doctors. Beyond his own proposals, Price supported Paul Ryan’s 2011 budget plan, which would have eventually moved Medicare toward private insurance by giving people under 55 voucher-like tax credits to purchase plans. This is also called premium support. When he became chairman of the House budget committee, Price was the primary author of a budget for fiscal year 2016 that included $900 billion in spending reductions to Medicaid (through block granting) and $148 billion to Medicare (by leaving the Obama administration’s cost-saving measures intact), according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Price’s budget for fiscal year 2017 similarly sought: $1 trillion from Medicaid and $449 billion from Medicare. After Trump’s election, Price expressed optimism that lawmakers could overhaul Medicare in 2017. Did Price cut Medicare, Medicaid? For all of Price’s efforts to change Medicare and Medicaid and reduce spending, nothing actually came to fruition. Whether Price’s supported policies amount to ""cutting"" the health program or making it more market-oriented is a matter of debate, though he clearly wants to reduce the government’s role in Medicare. Schumer’s office pointed to Price’s comment on Medicare being government intrusion and his support for Medicare overhaul as evidence for Schumer’s claim. But a Trump transition team spokesman told us Price ""has long been a champion for strengthening Medicare for both current and future beneficiaries"" and believes that ""Medicaid provides a crucial safety-net for millions of Americans."" Experts, meanwhile, were divided over whether Price’s proposals amounted to ""cutting"" Medicare and Medicaid. The Center for Medicare Advocacy, a nonpartisan health care advocacy group, typically doesn’t weigh in on cabinet appointments but opposes Price’s nomination precisely because of his position on Medicare, said David Lipschutz, the group’s senior policy attorney. ""The policies he has advocated would significantly cut and alter Medicare,"" Lipschutz told us, listing Price’s support for a premium support model, opposition to allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices and advocating for private contracting between Medicare beneficiaries with physicians with Medicare footing the bill. Gail Wilensky, the former director at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid under President George H.W. Bush, called Price’s comment on Medicare as government intrusion a ""gross exaggeration."" But Wilensky preferred to characterize Price as a supporter of Medicare reform. She added that like Price, she supports premium support as a model for Medicare reform, as do prominent Democrats Alice Rivlin, a health care policy expert who served under President Bill Clinton, and Bob Reischauer, a fellow at the left-leaning Urban Institute. Our ruling Schumer said, ""Donald Trump said when he campaigned he wouldn't cut Medicare and Social Security"" but his nominee for the Secretary of Health and Human Services ""made his career on cutting Medicare and Medicaid."" Price, Trump’s HHS pick, has supported reducing the government’s role in Medicare and block granting Medicaid, which would amount to spending reductions to both programs. While it’s clear these proposals would reduce federal spending on the health safety nets, experts say it’s not the same thing as gutting the programs entirely. Trump did pledge to leave Medicare and Social Security alone, and Price’s positions seem at odds with that. (It’s worth noting that Social Security isn’t administered by HHS)."
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